Adam Carolla Has Never Been Funny

Adam Carolla has never been funny.

The managing editor of Breitbart news:

Either Men Are Funnier Than Women, or Rolling Stone Is Sexist
by Alexander Marlow

What follows is a gotcha of leftistbrainsploding proportions...

Last week, Rolling Stone published their "50 Funniest People Now" list and featured only 12 women out of 52 comics.

I have a number of problems with the article, not limited to but including the fact that a) For a publication that considers itself edgy, the only surprise in the list is that they shoehorned 52 names into a "Top 50" list, b) They audaciously claim Tina Fey's 2008 Sarah Palin sketches were not "mean-spirited," and c) They leave world's most downloaded podcaster, comedian Adam Carolla, off the list entirely. I would bet big money that Carolla is ommitted purely because he doesn't resemble RS's politically correct world view. Still, according to Rolling Stone, the Podcast King and bestselling author is not as funny as Charles Barkley or Joan Rivers.

A) Don't pretend you give a shit about edginess.
B) The Sarah Palin battle is over. She won. She has your money.
C) Adam Carolla has never been funny. Charles Barkley and Joan Rivers are funnier than Adam Carolla.
D) "Ommitted" Mr. Managing Editor?

Yet, the most newsworthy item is the breakdown of 40 men to 12 women on the list.

In June of last year, Carolla was ripped unmercifully in countless media outlets for saying in an interview with the New York Post that "dudes are funnier than chicks." He clarified that he didn't mean that all "dudes" are funnier than all "chicks," but that a greater percentage of men are funny:

The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks

[...]

When it comes to comedy, of course there’s Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, Kathy Griffin — super-funny chicks. But if you’re playing the odds? No.

If Joy Behar or Sherri Shepherd was a dude, they’d be off TV.

But this was the headline of the Post article: "The man's man Macho laughman Adam Carolla says Tom Cruise is from outer space and women just aren’t funny." Of course, Carolla never said women "aren't funny," he said they're not as funny as men.

Predictably, the media attempted to brand him as a sexist.

Now let's return to the Rolling Stone article, where they list over three times as many men as women in their list of top comedians right now. The only reasonable conclusion to draw from it is that Rolling Stone considers men funnier, and yet, when Carolla said this, he was tarred and feathered.

So which is it, are men funnier than women or is Rolling Stone sexist?

Let's continue with the list theme.

~) Maybe the list IS sexist!
!) Maybe Rolling Stone IS sexist! Go go feminist hero!
@) Maybe you give zero shits either way.
#) Rolling Stone ≠ The Media.
=) One list does not mean that now and forever X is true, however much you think snow disproves global warming.
$) Captain Crunch is really good.
%) There might be reasons beyond comedy why a woman might not want to have co-workers like Adam Carolla.
^) Curse the liberal New York Post for distorting the words of Adam Carolla.
&) Adam Carolla should be used to being ripped unmercifully because he is not funny.
*) As of today Adam Carolla is off TV.

Aw Shucks

Gomer Pyle gets married:

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -

Jim Nabors, the Hawaii resident well known for his starring role in the 1960s television sitcom "Gomer Pyle, USMC," married his longtime male partner early this month, he told Hawaii News Now Tuesday.

Nabors, 82, said he married his companion of 38 years, Stan Cadwallader, who's 64, in Seattle on Jan. 15.

Quick! I Need a Truckload of Onions!

Foodie nightmares commence:

About 27 tonnes of caramelised brown goat cheese - a delicacy known as Brunost - caught light as it was being driven through the Brattli Tunnel at Tysfjord, northern Norway, last week.

The fire raged for five days and smouldering toxic gases were slowing the recovery operation, officials said.

Bastard Bait

If he doesn't have it already the BBBB will soon be enslaved by this:

Theme and Variation

Imənna just be bad and steal this whole goddamned post:

A Feast of Pure Reason
By Fred Schwarz
January 28, 2013 3:17 P.M.

This morning’s New York Times says The New Republic is “the journalism equivalent of high-fiber pasta.” Like much of what I read in the Times, that’s a little too Zen for me, but it got me thinking about what sort of food National Review might correspond to. Here are some possibilities:

A nice big bowl of Lucky Charms. Start with the plain beige cereal part: That represents writers like Ramesh and VDH, whose stuff is tasty and filled with vitamins, establishing a solid base. The marshmallow bits are guys like Lileks and Rob Long, who add color and variety and a bit of crunchiness. And the milk is Rich and the editorial staff, who provide context and hold everything together, hopefully without making it too soggy. Or, returning to the pasta theme...

Farfalle with prosciutto and green peas. Farfalle because of all the conservatives who wear bow ties; prosciutto because with its rich, aged flavor, created using methods that have been passed down for centuries, it represents the accumulated wisdom of the ages; and peas because they go so well with prosciutto.

A peanut-butter sandwich. Because NR’s editors have been quite partial to them over the years.

Chop suey. Back in the mid-20th century, when every Chinese restaurant still had chop suey on the menu, the standard joke about Chinese food was that an hour after eating it, you were hungry again. The same principle applies to the Corner, which keeps its readers coming back to get the latest updates.

Yorkshire pudding. In recognition of the deep and longstanding British influence on NR — though, if you’re borrowing from the Brits, better ideas than food, right?

Don’t know what we’d have for dessert, except maybe a dobostorte with only three layers — because seven would be wasteful (it’s Austrian, after all).

It stands on its own, but I suppose I have to add something for form's sake:

Fluffernutter
Organic peanut butter and marshmallow creme on soft white bread at Star Provisions, Atlanta

The childhood favorite--peanut butter and marshmallow fluff--gets an all-around upgrade at Anne Quatrano's gourmet-to-go café. They bake a light, pillowy white bread--"the base for any good sandwich is fresh bread," says chef de cuisine Gary Fincer--and make the silky fluff in-house from egg whites and sugar, like a meringue. The peanut butter comes from Big Spoon Roasters, an artisan nut-butter company in North Carolina, which Fincer prefers for its rustic taste. "It's not homogenized, so the oil separates to the top and you have to stir it back in. We like it because it's just really peanutty--there are no additives or sugar, and it's not too processed. It's a grown-up peanut butter," he says. Once assembled, the sandwich is griddled on the flattop, so the finished product is buttery and crisp on the outside and sweet and creamy within.

Star Provision's Fluffernutter
Marshmallow Fluff:
1 cup egg whites
1 1/2 cup plus 1 cup glucose
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups sugar

Whisk egg white with 1 1/2 cup glucose and vanilla on low speed using a whisk attachment. In a saucepan, add sugar, 1 cup water, and 1 cup glucose. Cook until temperature reaches 240 degrees, then add to the egg whites while mixing constantly, until it is fluffy, silky, and smooth.

White Bread
1 egg
1.76 ounces milk
15.9 ounces water
1.76 ounces fresh yeast
2.45 ounces soft butter
1/2 ounce kosher salt
3.5 ounces sugar
2.2 pounds flour

Place the egg, milk, water, yeast, and soft butter in the mixing bowl. Add salt, sugar, and flour. Mix on low until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and is smooth and soft, not sticky. Let rest for 90 minutes. Portion at 1 1/2 pounds for a large pullman. Shape, cover with plastic, and let rise until doubled. Bake in convection oven at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. Cool on cooling rack.

Assembly: Toast bread lightly, smear with marshmallow fluff and Big Spoon Roasters peanut butter, and season with salt.

UPDATE:

Since it seems HTML Mencken is on a posting jag I suppose I should add more links to Fred Schwarz's text in tribute.

Steveston

Developments

Danwei:

About 20 km outside Beijing, tourists sitting in tour buses from Beijing north-eastwards towards the Badaling section of the Great Wall can spot the remains of an eerie shell of a castle some distance from the expressway. With concrete spires sticking out above dusty corn fields, the castle remains as a relic of the grandiose ideas of men who’ve long since passed through the grinding mill of elite politics, corruption and prison in China. All around Beijing, architectural artefacts of previous decades remain, many decayed and going to ruin.

This article is a tour through some of the more spectacular wastelands of contemporary Beijing, places that will surely be developed into something entirely different at some point in the future, when the interest groups that control the land and construction finally make a deal they can live with.

The Intersection Between Video and Painting

The VAG Ian Wallace exhibition is astoundingly boring, but apparently he was on about the "intersection of painting and photography" which I don't really believe applies to putting a big photograph near a rectangle of colour. But what do I know.

The obvious problem there, labourwise, is that you have to do two things: take the photo and paint the painting. Video, however, will do your paint-swipes for you if your subject is in motion or you have a sufficiently palsied hand.

Voila! A pulse to wipe the slate clean at intervals offset to the loop of the video and you have as many paintings as frames in the loop, which, if you let this run in Quartz Composer or as a screensaver, is about 1865 possible paintings (one of which might be good!) and thus close to two million equivalent words, making me a prolific writer in the bargain. Take that, Wallace!



Sound by robots because they work cheap.

That Ain't Right

WHAT THE F UPDATE:

I suppose I am allowed to draw no conclusions from French contribution to METAL Fairyland:

Practical Politics

More stuff from old Smithsonian feeds:

The executioners of the Ottoman Empire were never noted for their mercy; just ask the teenage Sultan Osman II, who in May 1622 suffered an excruciating death by “compression of the testicles”–as contemporary chronicles put it–at the hands of an assassin known as Pehlivan the Oil Wrestler. There was reason for this ruthlessness, however; for much of its history (the most successful bit, in fact), the Ottoman dynasty flourished—ruling over modern Turkey, the Balkans and most of North Africa and the Middle East—thanks in part to the staggering violence it meted out to the highest and mightiest members of society.

Seen from this perspective, it might be argued that the Ottomans’ decline set in early in the 17th century, precisely at the point when they abandoned the policy of ritually murdering a significant proportion of the royal family whenever a sultan died, and substituted the Western notion of simply giving the job to the first-born son instead. Before then, Ottoman succession had been governed by the “law of fratricide” drawn up by Mehmed II in the middle of the 15th century. Under the terms of this remarkable piece of legislation, whichever member of the ruling dynasty succeeded in seizing the throne on the death of the old sultan was not merely permitted, but enjoined, to murder all his brothers (together with any inconvenient uncles and cousins) in order to reduce the risk of subsequent rebellion and civil war. Although it was not invariably applied, Mehmed’s law resulted in the deaths of at least 80 members of the House of Osman over a period of 150 years. These victims included all 19 siblings of Sultan Mehmed III—some of whom were still infants at the breast, but all of whom were strangled with silk handkerchiefs immediately after their brother’s accession in 1595.

[...]

For most of the bostancıs’ victims, the sentence was carried out immediately after the serving of the fatal sherbet by a group of five muscular young janissaries, members of the sultan’s elite infantry. For a grand vizier, however, there was still a chance: as soon as the death sentence was passed, the condemned man would be allowed to run as fast as he was able the 300 yards or so from the palace, through the gardens, and down to the Fish Market Gate on the southern side of the palace complex, overlooking the Bosphorus, which was the appointed place of execution. [...]

If the deposed vizier reached the Fish Market Gate before the head gardener, his sentence was commuted to mere banishment. But if the condemned man found the bostanci basha waiting for him at the gate, he was summarily executed and his body hurled into the sea.

Running from office.

Background Noise

Hey Townhall! Dance! DANCE! DO THAT CRAZY BIGOT DANCE!



But wait, what's that?



That's right crackers, you've gone far enough and it's gun-confiscatin' time.

Being Helpful

Jay Nordlinger:

The AP reported — though “reported” is not the word — “HAWKISH NETANYAHU LIKELY TO BE RE-ELECTED.” The wire service continued, “Israelis, who head to the polls Tuesday, no longer seem to believe that peace with the Palestinians is possible.”

I have two comments on the AP’s spin: First, they have called Netanyahu “hawkish,” and that he is. But I wonder whether they would refer to a dovish leader as “dovish.”

Wonder no more!

Second, it may be that Israelis voting for Netanyahu are realistic: realistic about what it takes to make peace, keep peace, and ensure national survival. Maybe they think that Netanyahu stands between them and annihilation by Iran. Maybe they think that he is the one to look out for Israeli interests when there is a hostile, or semi-hostile, in the Oval Office. Maybe they think that true peace with the Palestinians can be forged only on a realistic basis, not on wishful thinking.

I recommend removal of that last clause.

The Real World is Complicated

Wheels on the Bus

Anchor and Moon

The Golden Age of Barbarity

Charles C.W. Cooke:

In 1975, New York state had over 80 school districts with rifle teams. In 1984, that had dropped to 65. By 1999 there were just 26. The state’s annual riflery championship was shut down in 1986 for lack of demand. This, sadly, is a familiar story across the country. The clubs are fading from memory, too. A Chicago Tribune report from 2007 notes the astonishment of a Wisconsin mother who discovered that her children’s school had a range on site. “I was surprised, because I never would have suspected to have something like that in my child’s school,” she told the Tribune. The district’s superintendent admitted that it was now a rarity, confessing that he “often gets raised eyebrows” if he mentions the range to other educators. The astonished mother raised her eyebrows — and then led a fight to have the range closed. “Guns and school don’t mix,” she averred. “If you have guns in school, that does away with the whole zero-tolerance policy.”

But how wise is that “zero-tolerance policy”? Until 1989, there were only a few school shootings in which more than two victims were killed. This was despite widespread ownership of — and familiarity with — weapons and an absence of “gun-free zones.” As George Mason University economist Walter E. Williams has observed, for most of American history “private transfers of guns to juveniles were unrestricted. Often a youngster’s 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22-caliber rifle, given to him by his father.” This was a right of passage, conventional and uncontroversial across the country. “Gee, Dad . . . A Winchester!” read one particularly famous ad. “In Virginia,” Williams writes, “rural areas had a long tradition of high-school students going hunting in the morning before school, and sometimes storing their guns in the trunk of their cars during the school day, parked on the school grounds.” Many of these guns they could buy at almost any hardware store or gas station — or even by mail order. The 1968 Gun Control Act, supported happily by major gun manufacturers who wished to push out their competition, put a stop to this.

Obviously Newtown would have gone completely differently if the first-grade students had been packing.

Bus Project

More Smithsonian Filler

Kids of the 70s draw the future.

◶◠◵

A fan with a thrilling name writes to John Ransom:

Moonbat Exterminator wrote: JR, your assertion that computing a single number for the average temperature of the planet is mathematically impossible is incorrect. It would in fact be a simple, straightforward calculation. In statistics, it's called the mean of sampling means. The weakness of such a statistic is that the enormous variability in the data far exceeds the variability in that number. Even the 90 % confidence interval would be much larger than the variations in that average, making it useless from a practical standpoint.

Dear Moon,

I think we are talking about two different things, but your post actually proves my point.

I live in Colorado where temperatures can vary quite a bit from place to place, even covering only short distances.

I drove about 5 miles yesterday and experienced a temperature difference of about 7 degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s not because of huge altitude differences.

Unless you can account for those differences everywhere, and map them according to the area occupied for each temperature, which you can’t possibly do, there is no real average temperature for the planet. Not one that has any real significance.

The larger point, which I think we both agree on, is that for purposes of global warming, no actual “average” temperature has been calculated that’s meaningful in the debate.

Even if you DO account for every area, you then have to account for HALF that area. So let's imagine we do that. BUT THEN! Yes, my friends, you have to account for half of that area as well.

And this is why John Ransom knows that trying to order a steak cooked the way you like it is impossible.

Telling

Teller:

I’m all for helping science. But after I share what I know, my neuroscientist friends thank me by showing me eye-tracking and MRI equipment, and promising that someday such machinery will help make me a better magician.

I have my doubts. Neuroscientists are novices at deception. Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

I remember an experiment I did at the age of 11. My test subjects were Cub Scouts. My hypothesis (that nobody would see me sneak a fishbowl under a shawl) proved false and the Scouts pelted me with hard candy. If I could have avoided those welts by visiting an MRI lab, I surely would have.

But magic’s not easy to pick apart with machines, because it’s not really about the mechanics of your senses. Magic’s about understanding—and then manipulating—how viewers digest the sensory information.

I think you’ll see what I mean if I teach you a few principles magicians employ when they want to alter your perceptions.

And more.