""Hit me" said the masochist. "No" said the sadist."

The only time reality TV has done anything useful - Parts of Anti-Polygamy Law in Utah Ruled Unconstitutional by Federal Judge - Hit & Run : Reason.com: 

"A federal judge with the US District Court in Utah ruled portions of the state’s anti-polygamy law unconstitutional, effectively decriminalizing the practice of polygamous cohabitation...

"The case was brought to court by Kody Brown, who is married, lives with, and has children with four wives, and whose family is featured in TLC’s Sister Wives. Most polygamists’ lifestyles are not as public as the Browns’, so the issue may not have come to a head absent the reality show...

"While child brides, abuse, and other problematic activities should be dealt with and appropriately prosecuted, consenting adults in a plural relationship should not be threatened with punitive action. Judge Waddoups' ruling will help integrate these communities into society so that when abuse does occur, it will be more willingly reported and investigated.""

Fred On Everything: 

"I encounter a sententious suit-and-tie federal civil-serpent from NSA saying the Edward Snowden has endangered the national security of the United States, eeeek. At this, I shuddered and began mentally designing a bomb shelter.   But then I wondered how, precisely, are Americans now endangered? Is there a massed invasion fleet of Arab swordsmen poised to devastate North Carolina, and we need to read their tactical codes? I pictured Winston-Salem savaged by scimitar-wielding, hashish-smoking maniacs on weird double-humped camels. These be parlous times, methought. Or are Yemeni nuclear forces readying a first strike? Maybe this was the problem. As delivery systems they could use FedEx and UPS. Or maybe Snowden just embarrassed the children in the tree-house at Fort Meade, where everybody has a Captain America secret decoder ring.

Next, I see that some wet-lipped psychopath piloting a drone has killed fifteen people at a Yemeni wedding. Drones seem to hit a lot of weddings.  These massacres, I suppose, are the result of letting little boys play Grand Theft Auto. I pictured an Air Force of trigger-happy eleven-year-olds in arrested development. However, I concede that targeting weddings does make military sense: I have been to many weddings, and they all looked like Al Quaeda convoys. It’s just how weddings are...

But why, it occurred to me, should we expect the Pentagon to win wars? It has nothing to gain by winning, and everything to lose. From a budgetary point of view, victory would be as bad as defeat. In either case, contracts would slow."

Getting your head around the Pentagon's titanic, enormous, unauditably large budget - Boing Boing: "America's military owns more than 170 golf courses and manages enough land to host 93 Los Angeleses, and the Afghan/Iraq invasions have no meaningful peace dividend -- they're a permanent upward ratchet on the military budget."

Eat more butter, have less heart attacks - The Real Association Between Butter and Heart Disease in Sweden | DietDoctor.com: 

"The outdated fear-mongering propaganda claiming that a dramatically increased butter consumption in Sweden has also increased the incidence of heart disease is once again crushed by reality. New statistics from The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare show the exact opposite. The incidence of heart attacks in Sweden keeps plummeting, for both men and women, just as they have done since 2005. We are becoming healthier, despite eating more and more butter."

 

Better than the friendzone, for sure.