Since they don’t know who did it yet, I can’t raise money for the “Let’s pay a prison guard to beat and rape him” fund.  Until then, a fund has been set up for the family of the man who died to try and help a stranger.

Ainsworth Family fund
Whitney Bank – Algiers Branch
501 Verret Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70114

Link to the original story about the murder: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/25/us/louisiana-good-samaritan/index.html

So when I had my own kids who were having some of their own inner turmoil in realizing that there’s no real “magic” in the world, I give them this talk which has helped me in my life.  How we know that nothing is impossible.

The way I look at it, if you can find one thing that is TRULY impossible, you can use it to define the subset of “impossible” things.  Something like, Fairuza Balk stumbling on my site, falling in love with my picture and my writing and coming to track me down to ask me out.  Or, Eli Manning hand-picking me to be his backup quarterback.  You know, the kind of thing which isn’t a matter of “it’s currently impossible”, but “it’s impossible”.

I think everybody would agree that one such item that’s “impossible” is something coming out of nothing.  That is, if you have a vacuum with no air, no gravity, no anything – And you suddenly made something appear in it, that would be believed to be an illusion (because it’s believed to be impossible).  Another “impossible” item would be something having no beginning.  That is, something having always existed.  For infinity, but in reverse.

Willing to admit that those two things are impossible?  Okay, good.  Because the thing is, ONE of those two things had to have happened for you to be reading this right now.  It HAS to be one of them.  Because there are only two “how the Universe started” scenarios:

1) There was nothing.  No time, no space, no anything at all.  And then suddenly there was everything.  An entire Universe of matter, anti-matter and all the rest just suddenly came into being.

2) Something always existed.  Think back to what made the Universe.  Gas?  Dust?  “Stuff”?  Okay, what made that stuff?  More gas?  More dust?  Okay, what made THAT stuff?  If you follow it back, something either came out of nothing or something always existed.

One of those two things happened.  There’s no other option.  And both of those things are impossible.  Therefore we can say that magic is real and nothing is impossible.  Just really, REALLY unlikely sometimes.

(So just in case, Ms. Balk and/or Mr. Manning - My email is matt@brainscatters.com)

In a nutshell, I have developed a formula which allows you to calculate (with surprising accuracy) if the person in the car next to you is a complete idiot.  Introducing – The Rouse Theory:

where

The Carlin Constant is a value which is equal to approximately 1/2, based on George Carlin’s apt observation that : “Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are stupider than that“. 

Let’s do an example.  Say that you’re trying to figure out why the person in front of you is going ten miles under the speed limit in the fast lane.  Simply count the number of bumper stickers and plug it into the equation.  If they have exactly one bumper sticker, it would give you:

So there is roughly a 75% chance that they’re driving that slow because they’re an idiot.  While those are good odds, it’s hardly mathematically definitive.  After all, there’s a 25% chance that they’re driving slow because they’re old and/or drunk and/or female.

However, let’s say that somebody came to pick you up for a blind date and you want to see right away if he’s an idiot.  When he’s walking you to his car, simply count the number of bumper stickers and you can figure it out before you even start the evening.  If he has five bumper stickers, you would find:

There’s a 95% chance that he’s an idiot, and you should do an immediate about face and go back inside, locking the door behind you.  If you don’t want to be rude, feel free to refer him to this article.

As with all great mathematical theories, there are a few points that need to be made:

• The number of bumper stickers must be greater than or equal to one, otherwise you’d be dividing by zero.  So if there are no bumper stickers, you can just go with the Carlin Constant.
• It doesn’t matter what the bumper stickers actually say.  It doesn’t matter if the stickers are political or funny or pointless.
• Not everything counts as a bumper sticker.  Things like having one logo emblem for a college football team, or a magnetic “We support the troops” ribbon don’t count towards the equation.
• If you notice, the Rouse Theory will never say that somebody has a 100% probability of being an idiot.  No matter how many bumper stickers they have, it will bring the probability asymptotically closer to 100% but will never actually reach 100%.  At some point though, you can feel safe simply say that it’s effectively 100% and that the person is without any doubt a complete idiot.
• This only counts for people over the age of 21.

So now that I’ve developed my theory, it’s up to YOU guys to help me prove it!  Please to be sending me pictures of people’s cars that have bumper stickers on them, with a story of whether or not the person driving was an idiot.  I will complile the submissions here and together we can help prove the theory.  If I get enough evidence so that  I submit it to mathematical journals, I will gladly give a footnote credit to anybody and everybody who helps me to prove the theory.

Now get out there and find me those idiots!

*If you have a ton of bumper stickers on your car and would like to try and DISPROVE my theory, I’m open to that too.

Now if you look back to the original picture, you can see where it is and it kind of jumps out at you.  You might be asking “Okay, it’s a person… What’s the big deal?”.  The big deal is that he was home alone.  So the window behind him is reflecting the empty room he’s in.  And it’s showing a fairly creepy looking person standing watching him.  Okay, maybe it’s looking out the window, but it’s creepy nonetheless.  Is it something besides a person?  Subsequent photos show nothing there that even kind of resembles this thing.  I don’t 100% believe in ghosts, but would love to have proof of them.  And this picture is the second best evidence I have seen from a personal source.  Okay, I’m going to blow it up 400%.  Ready? 

Come on, party people – Tell me that isn’t a person.  Go ahead, tell me.  PLEASE.  Because just between us girls, it’s kind creeping me out and I don’t like looking at it.  First person to come up with a reasonable explanation of what that thing is becomes my new best friend.  Personally, I think it looks like a girl.  And not a happy alive girl, either.  The whole thing just bothers me for some reason.

 You can find the original picture here.

http://www.brainscatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/01-Number-58.mp3

Check it out here: IamI

Go to http://non.tuxfamily.org to check it out for yourself.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen something like this done on a *nix platform, and having to compile my own binaries took me back to my college days.  Only thing that was missing was my being a drink away from being drunk and spending all my free time on a computer.

Never mind, it’s exactly like my college days.

But just in time for the holidays, this story has a happy ending.

To mark the tenth anniversary of BN, Bill Doty (its founder) has rebuilt BN into something bigger, brighter and prettier than ever.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the beta version at Brokennewz.com for yourself.

Who knows, we might have to do something to mark its tenth anniversary and its relaunch…