The American Spectator

Another Perspective

Unsound Bites

By Jay D. Homnick on 4.23.09 @ 6:05AM

OK, my daughter Naomi (born 7/12/84) was married last night -- I now have two daughters and a son invested in the bonds of matrimony -- so for today, head swimming, no big ideas, just random thoughts, unsound bites from the apple of life.

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The Federal Trade Commission fined Kellogg's for its commercial claiming Frosted Mini-Wheats had been shown to enhance the attention spans of children by 20 percent.

In fact, only half the children in the study bought attention, and only 11% gained 20%. I suppose they went from five seconds per sound bite to six.

This strikes me as excessively punitive and makes me wonder why federal regulators get distracted from weightier matters to waste time on such nonsense. You would think we employ professionals of a caliber to focus on… hey, look at that guy on the scaffolding way up there washing windows… cool…

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Speaking of serial offenders, the killer who was ticking names off Craig's List turns out to be a medical student, or so say prosecutors.

Apparently the recession is so severe, the school will no longer supply cadavers for research, leaving young pupils to fend for themselves.

On a more serious note, this should quiet suggestions that the victims shared culpability by having engaged in high-risk behavior, meeting people in an insufficiently selective setting.

No one can be faulted for accepting a date from an aspiring physician. Our prayers go out to the bereaved families.

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The surviving Somali pirate has been imported to New York City by a team of about twenty federal agents, about one for every year of his age.

There is some debate just how old he is -- notwithstanding our vigesimal vigilance -- with a woman claiming to be his mother claiming he is sixteen. Then again maybe she figures we'll give him citizenship in order to try him, after which she will be given a compassionate visa to hold his hand on Visiting Day.

Add up the salaries of the people policing, transporting, incarcerating and prosecuting him, plus incidental expenses, and the final bill will be two or three times the ransom we saved. Still, we prefer to spend the money here to… ahem, stimulate the economy.

(This is from the can't-resist-sharing department. My brother, Israel Homnick of Indianapolis, was driving down the highway behind a dump truck with a load of construction debris. Pebbles were falling onto the highway as the driver sped over bumps on the road. My brother turned to his wife in the passenger seat and said: "Now that man needs tarp money.")

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