Weird News of the World Thread

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Student Sues Over Professor's Obsession With Her Bondage-Porn Past

A former Portland State University undergraduate has filed a $1 million lawsuit against her faculty mentor for sexual harassment over the professor's alleged obsession with the student's experiences as a BDSM model and sexual-abuse survivor.

The suit, which alleges some bizarre sexual situations in great detail, highlights a tension "between a faculty member's legitimate academic engagement with sexually tinged topics" and "sexual matters inappropriate to discuss with a student," according to the Portland Oregonian.

Whitney "Theda" Orlando was pursuing a degree in psych and French at PSU when she struck up a collegial relationship with Assistant Professor Marcia Klotz, taking Klotz's courses on Feminist Literature and Erotics of Power. They had similar research interests, and Orlando began to work with Klotz more closely.

In 2009 Orlando confided to Klotz that she used to model in bondage photographs, sometimes in the nude. Over the next three years, Orlando alleges in her lawsuit, Klotz used her position of power to pressure Orlando into providing pornographic images from her past work. A "state of sexual and romantic tension" arose between the two, according to the court papers.

Early on in their correspondence, Orlando also told Klotz that she'd been molested by a middle-school teacher and still felt some effects from the experience. Rather than take that as a cue to back off, the professor allegedly pressed Orlando for more intimate details and encouraged her to do research related to sexual abuse.

Things seemed to escalate. The lawsuit alleges that Orlando felt pressured into watching a documentary on porn with Klotz and Klotz's husband at their home, leading to an "increasingly romantic and sexualized" relationship that made Orlando ill at ease:

Klotz encouraged plaintiff to explore sexual and BDSN-related subjects with her, including discussing aspects of plaintiff's childhood sexual abuse. Klotz admitted to finding plaintiff's earlier sexual abuse erotic, and expressed an interest in replicating aspects of that abuse with plaintiff in a BDSM context.

To illustrate her erotic interest in her partners' sexual trauma, Klotz shared with plaintiff details of Klotz's sexual interactions with her submissive male partner that included reenactments of that male partner's childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his father. Plaintiff believed that Klotz was attempting to recruit plaintiff to participate in similar kinds of sexual encounters with Klotz.
The stress apparently took a serious toll on Orlando, who was eventually hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat. But when Orlando tried to shift to another research project with a different professor, Klotz accused her of shoddy work and plagiarism to their program coordinator—a potential career-ender.

Orlando, who is seeking damages from the university, left school and is finishing her degree elsewhere; Klotz now teaches at a university in Arizona. The last course Orlando took with Klotz, ironically, was an independent study section titled Privacy Rights.

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/05/student_lawsuit_says_portland.html

That is definitely a weird professor

 

[Teelie]

Weird is an understatement. She was exploiting sexual abuse for her own personal interests.

 

[KevanG]

That's creepy on several levels.

 

[Hal_Jordan]

Good luck with that, fascists.

Russia Bans Cursing in Movies, Books and Music

http://mashable.com/2014/05/06/russia-bans-cursing/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not *****ing around.
The president signed a new law on Monday that will prohibit cursing in music, books, movies and at entertainment events throughout the country as of July 1. Existing books, CDs and hard copies of movies that contain curse words provide a warning label about the obscene language. Anyone who breaks the law is subject to a fine.



Violating the new policy can cost an individual $56 to $70, according to Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS. Officials can be fined $112 to $140 and businesses would be charged $1,117 to $1,396. Repeated violations will come with higher costs.
Russian officials will decide what qualifies as cursing in case of a dispute, but the New Yorker reports that the law centers around the "four pillars" of mat, a Russian word for especially obscene profanity. One of those words translates into something like "****e," and you can read about the other three here.

Several media outlets report that the crackdown on dirty language is Putin's next step in building a brand of Russian conservatism that sits in stark contrast to the open society of many Western nations such as the United States. He has also recently signed laws outlawing "gay propaganda" and tightening press freedoms.
The Russian government will reportedly stay out of the artistic process of musicians, performers and other artists, so they will be free to break the law and invite fines. That said, it is obviously unclear how the Russian government will actually enforce the new regulation.
___________________


The good news is conservative Americans who want to secede have a new place to look into moving to.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Spectacular fire tornado from hell is here to kill us all

Fire twister. Fire tornado. Firenado! Whatever you want to call these suckers of flames and souls, this instagram by NiceJalapeño is pretty damn cool (and, like she says, pretty scary in person.) I hope they make Firenado: The Movie soon.

I hope I never come across one of these

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

This Travel App Is the Closest You'll Ever Get to North Korea

North Korea is a weird place. It sounds a little insensitive to put it in such stark terms, but the arrival of the new North Korea Travel app—the first of its kind—offers a unique new perspective on the isolated country. The app is exactly what it sounds like: a travel guide that "allows users to explore the world's most secretive nation at home, work, or on the go." Sounds like fun, right?

The app ($1) itself seems just as mysterious as the destination. While it was developed with a tour guide with a decade's worth of experience traveling in North Korea, most of the attractions and even the cities seem totally foreign to the average American. After all, for most of the past 50 years, the country's been off limits to most of the Western world. So how would we know which is the best restaurant in Pyongyang or if restaurants even exist in Pyongyang? (Spoiler: They do.)

But times have changed. Nowadays—and in spite of the State Department's warnings not to—you can go to North Korea on a guided tour. Based on the number of Americans held prisoner in North Korea in the past few years, you should definitely be careful. You should also bear in mind the fact that North Korea called the U.S. "a living hell," so don't expect the locals to be too friendly.

Honestly, though, the app is interesting even if you can't make it above the 38th Parallel. According to its designers, the travel guide can "give you insider information on every single location you can visit in North Korea." This seems like a dubious claim, but again, North Korea is a weird place. There are spots that are specifically designed to show off the best the country has to offer. Forced labor camps aren't among them. Inevitably, though, even the pictures of bar interiors and strange factories are pretty fascinating. It's worth noting that North Korea Travel is not the best-designed app—and it's full of bugs—but it is full of interesting information, too.

http://www.northkoreatravel.com/guideapp/

I know most of you have this on your bucket list so enjoy!

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Animals Are Eating Other Animals to Get High

What, you think that man alone actively seeks the sweet release of chemical intoxication? Child, please, the need to get tanked is ubiquitous throughout nature, and has been since we first crawled out of the primordial ooze and realized life on land wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. From frog-licking horses to puffer-chewing dolphins, here are four animals that just love to get lifted.

And it's not just an innocent bite of catnip or locoweed at the end of a tough week either. These animals are hardcore junkies that will go to any lengths to get their fix—even if that means murdering smaller, less adorable animals.

All Hail the Hypnotoad: Australian Dogs Love Licking Frogs

Dogs in suburban Queensland have developed a taste for cane toads, or rather, their toxic secretions. See, this invasive species is armed with a highly potent defense against predation. When threatened, it secretes a milky-white fluid known as bufotoxin which causes mild hallucinations in small doses but can easily kill a full grown human in sufficient quantities.

But the clever pooches of Queensland have apparently figured out just how much how to lick to get the mind-altering effects without getting sick. Unfortunately, many of them are turning into addicts, according to one vet, and may eventually overdose on the toxic treat.

"This phenomenon of animals deliberately getting intoxicated by cane toads, it's fascinating," said veterinarian Megan Pickering. "It just seems unbelievable that an animal will go back for a second try. But nevertheless we do have many documented cases of patients who deliberately - on a regular basis - will seek out a toad and they seem to be able to lick the toad in such a way that they seem to get a very small dose."

Horses Take a Trip on Mr. Tree Frog's Wild Ride

[YT]uQP1MM4V7NI[/YT]

It's not just dogs that have learned to love the toad, South American horses too have long loved licking the excretions of the waxy monkey tree frog, which produces a short-lived but intense euphoria far stronger than locoweed. However, the active chemical compound from waxy monkey tree frog film—dermorphin—has now found its way into professional stateside horse racing and could threaten to turn entire stables into junkies.

In 2012, after months of rumors of a new and powerful painkiller being employed by trainers, a Denver lab discovered more than 30 horses from four states with dermorphin metabolite in their systems.

Dr. Steven Barker, who directs a testing laboratory at Louisiana State University, told the NYT he suspected that most of the dermorphin had been artificially synthesized. "There's a lot out there, and that would be an awful lot of frogs that would have to be squeezed," he said, "There are a lot of unemployed chemists out there."

Dolphins Inject Themselves with Pufferfish Venom

Dolphins are the hippies of the high seas. These bohemian aquatic mammals are the only other species known to have sex not just for reproduction but also just because it's fun. What's more, they've recently been observed getting absolutely blitzed on pufferfish venom.

Like the toad-licking dogs of Queensland, dolphin pods have been seen nuzzling and gently chewing on sea urchins then passing the spiny animals around for others to enjoy. By ingesting just the right amount of venom, the dolphins appear to enter a temporary trance-like state.

"This was a case of young dolphins purposely experimenting with something we know to be intoxicating," Rob Pilley, a zoologist who also worked as a producer on the series, told the Sunday Times. "After chewing the puffer gently and passing it round, they began acting most peculiarly, hanging around with their noses at the surface as if fascinated by their own reflection."

And as if that isn't enough to crown them Caligula of the Seas, dolphins will gladly bite the head off a fish and skull **** it in front of you.

Lemurs and Capuchins Bathe in Millipede Poison for Fun and Profit

[YT]LwQ0ZiTYkQ[/YT]

Deep in the jungles of Madagascar lives a population of Black lemurs who have discovered a sort of dual action bug-repellent/hallucinogen. They have been observed picking up and biting toxic millipedes, then rubbing the defensive chemical that the bug secretes all over its fur. Not only does this reportedly repel other biting insects (because nobody wants to mess with something that smells like pissed-off millipede), it also supposedly inhibits their monoamine oxidase (MAOI) system—which provides the high sensation.

So getting on another level is a common thing a lot of animals do, pretty cool

 

[Teelie]

Good luck with that, fascists.

Russia Bans Cursing in Movies, Books and Music

The good news is conservative Americans who want to secede have a new place to look into moving to.

This sounds too far-fetched to be true.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Nope it's totally true, I read about it earlier although it is a specific rural language that he is banning and not the normal tongue. I will try and find the link but I'm a lil tipsy right now

 

[Marvolo]

Good luck with that, fascists.

Russia Bans Cursing in Movies, Books and Music

http://mashable.com/2014/05/06/russia-bans-cursing/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not *****ing around.
The president signed a new law on Monday that will prohibit cursing in music, books, movies and at entertainment events throughout the country as of July 1. Existing books, CDs and hard copies of movies that contain curse words provide a warning label about the obscene language. Anyone who breaks the law is subject to a fine.



Violating the new policy can cost an individual $56 to $70, according to Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS. Officials can be fined $112 to $140 and businesses would be charged $1,117 to $1,396. Repeated violations will come with higher costs.
Russian officials will decide what qualifies as cursing in case of a dispute, but the New Yorker reports that the law centers around the "four pillars" of mat, a Russian word for especially obscene profanity. One of those words translates into something like "****e," and you can read about the other three here.

Several media outlets report that the crackdown on dirty language is Putin's next step in building a brand of Russian conservatism that sits in stark contrast to the open society of many Western nations such as the United States. He has also recently signed laws outlawing "gay propaganda" and tightening press freedoms.
The Russian government will reportedly stay out of the artistic process of musicians, performers and other artists, so they will be free to break the law and invite fines. That said, it is obviously unclear how the Russian government will actually enforce the new regulation.
___________________


The good news is conservative Americans who want to secede have a new place to look into moving to.

Its a ****ing word, Putin. Grow up and stop being afraid of words. Ill never understand this mentality, and despise that society has allowed the concept and stigma of "dirty words" to continue for as long as it has.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

here it is:

Vladimir Putin Bans Russia's Four Most Important Curse Words

George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words have nothing on Russia's mat, a profane vocabulary that's common throughout the country, and especially prevalent in male-dominated spaces like prisons and the army. Mat has a long history in poetry, parody, and political speech, and, on Monday, Vladimir Putin signed legislation to ban it.

Much of mat springs from a handful of base words, as David Remnick explains in the New Yorker. The big four are khuy ("cock"), pizda ("****"), ebat' ("to ****"), and blyad ("****e" or "*****")—and those words will be banned from movies, concerts, and theatre performances starting July 1.

Prescribed punishments include fines of anywhere from $40 to $1,400, depending on whether the violator is a private citizen, an official, or a business. Movies that use the words won't be certified for distribution, effectively cutting them off from a national audience.

There are exceptions, but they're extremely murky. According to Remnick, the Ministry of Culture claims the swearing ban will only affect "pop culture" and will not apply to art: "It will be up to the artistic director to decide what to do with swearing, whether to break the new law or not, we will not interfere in the process."

But the difference between "pop culture" and "art" is whatever the Kremlin says it is. And Putin's administration isn't exactly known as progressive when it comes to freedom of expression.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/06/world/europe/russia-swearing-law/

I'm sure some of those words got censored here but you get the idea

 

[Marvolo]

Putin must find it hard to focus on these dirty words and their destruction while he is in the process of committing an illegal war and seizure of Ukranian land.

 

[Teelie]

Even for Putin this is absurd.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Look at This 8-Legged, 2-Sex-Organ-Having Goat

This eight-legged, male-and-female-reproductive-organ-having goat—nicknamed "octogoat"—was born earlier this week in Croatia.

"I counted his legs and I thought I was seeing things," farmer Zoran Paparic told reporters. "Then I called my neighbor to make sure that I am not crazy."

According to ITV News, the kid's extra legs and sex organ are the result of an under-developed twin. Alas, the little guy likely won't be with us for long; local vets say he'll probably die within the week, though they added that if he survives he could live as long as two or three years.

 

[Teelie]

And they said mixing spider DNA with goats to make them produce silk instead of milk was safe.

 

[KevanG]

Sounds like knowsbleeds thread come to life.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

An Enterprising Band Made $20,000 Scamming Spotify

A Los Angeles band figured out a way to make $20,000 from Spotify by doing absolutely nothing.

The royalties started pouring in after Los Angeles band Vulfpeck wrote Sleepify, a completely silent album, and posted it to Spotify.

The scheme, intended to fund a tour of free shows, called for fans to stream the silent album through the night as they slept.

The band's fanbase is small—about 1,000 or so—and Spotify's royalty rate is only $.007 a stream, but the overnight plays began to add up.

Fans played the album nightly, each generating up to $3 as they slept, according to an interview in Vice. Spotify soon owed Vulfpeck a $20,000 royalty check.

Eventually the streaming service figured out what was going on.

"It's a clever stunt but we prefer Vulfpeck's earlier albums," Spotify spokesman Graham James said. "Sleepify seems derivative of John Cage's work."

Of course Spotify's sense of humor only goes so far—last week they made Vulfpeck remove the album, citing a violation of their terms and conditions.

Pretty slick

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Cannibal Cop Is Now a Jailhouse Cook

Gilberto "Cannibal Cop" Valle, the former NYPD officer convicted of conspiring to kill and eat dozens of women, has become quite the chef in prison, according to his mother.

"He has mastered making pizza," Elizabeth Valle told the New York Daily News, adding that his food is so good even the guards have become fans. She said the prison kitchen workers don't hold a grudge against the former cop; in fact, she claims they regularly crack jokes about her son's attempted cannibalism. "Don't stand too close to the oven, and that kind of thing," she said.

Of course, we shouldn't be surprised that Cannibal Cop knows a thing or two about cooking.

Valle was convicted more than a year ago, but has yet to be sentenced; if his conviction is upheld, he faces life in prison.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...oking-inmates-guards-prison-article-1.1783911

It's all fun and games till he cooks an inmate

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Our Electronics Are Messing Up How Birds Navigate

The air is thick with electromagnetic noise these days. AM radio waves, the electromagnetic hum of computers—it's invisible to us, but birds seem to detect them with their internal magnetic compass. A new study finds that electromagnetic noise disorients European robins, raising the intriguing and frightening possibility that our cities and their signals could be disrupting the annual bird migration.

It started as a failed science experiment. When Henrik Mouritsen moved from rural field sites to University of Oldenburg in a German city, his tests with robins suddenly stopped working. Migratory birds can navigate with the help of an internal magnetic compass, but his birds were now behaving as if they had no idea which way was north or south. He tried everything—from altering diets to lighting to the shape of the experimental cages. The only thing that worked as taking the birds out of the city and into the backwoods.

The breakthrough finally came with an aluminum screen. The screen made up part of a Faraday cage, and with the screen in place, the magnetic compasses of the birds in the city worked again. This was seven years ago. Mouritsen and his team have spent the time since checking and rechecking their experiments to rule out a fluke.

Where exactly does the disruptive "electrosmog," as Mourtisen calls it, come from? They've ruled out wi-fi, cellphone signals, and power lines based on their frequencies. That leaves things like AM radio and electromagnetic fields from electronic such as computers, printers, and refrigerators remain as possible suspects.

People have complained about electromagnetic sensitivity, but as Ed Yong points out at his blog for National Geographic, there is no definitive scientific proof humans are affected by it. This is some of the first evidence that an animal can find artificial electromagnetic fields disruptive.

It's not yet clear how this affects birds in the wild, who have to fly thousands of miles in their annual migration, but it certainly suggests that cities be affecting wildlife in ways we ourselves can't detect. To sound, light, and plain-old pollution, we might add pollution of the electromagnetic spectrum.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13290.html

Poor birds

 

[Teelie]

It's less weird news and more sad that she had to do this because the school was so cheap and petty.

Mom picks up tab for unpaid school lunches

A Michigan mom has decided to pay off the outstanding lunch balances of every student in her son's high school after he was allegedly denied a hot meal last week because he had no money in his account.

"I realize I didn't have to do that but I don't want another kid going through what my son went through," Amanda Keown told CNN affiliate WBND.

The total amount she had to fork over was less than $100 -- a price she said was totally worth it to save other students from going through what her son, Dominic Gant, experienced.

"It was really embarrassing, especially in front of the whole class," Gant told WBND. The junior said his lunch was taken away by school officials right after it was served to him, all because he had an outstanding balance of less than $5 in his account.

HLN has reached out to Dowagiac Union Schools but has yet to receive a comment. The principal of Dowagiac Union High School spoke to WBND and said that the teen shouldn't have gone hungry.

"There's no reason why a student should ever go without lunch, even if they have overdrawn their account. They can seek out one of the adults in the lunchroom and ask for permission to charge for another day," Pieter Hoekstra said.

Hoekstra explained that a private contractor runs the lunch program so there isn't much flexibility with payments because if the accounts go unpaid, the school is left holding the bill. He also said that the school regularly communicates with parents about the balances left on their kids' lunch accounts.

There have been several similar stories cropping up around the country in recent months. A group of about 30 to 40 elementary school students were turned away from the lunch line in January because they couldn't pay for their food, according to CNN affiliate KSL. A third-grader in Howell, Michigan, raised more than $30,000 in February to help pay for school lunches after witnessing another student being denied a hot meal. And there was a lunch angel in Indianapolis who paid more than $1,200 to cover outstanding lunch accounts in April, according to CNN affiliate WTHR.

HLN TV

 

[Teelie]

Amazon’s latest patent is sillier than the peanut butter sandwich patent

Thought the peanut butter sandwich patent was a joke? That one doesn't even register a chuckle compared to a patent recently granted to Amazon.com. The e-commerce giant now can claim a legal monopoly on the process of photographing people and things against a white backdrop.

The patent, issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office, is making some folks in the photography community do a double-take. Amazon’s patent, called Studio Arrangement, details a specific arrangement of elements in a photography studio that the company believes helps foster the production of the most aesthetically pleasing images.

The white-backdropped photo and video studio layout, which looks and sounds similar to basically every other photo studio in existence, includes: "A front light source aimed at a background, an image capture position located between the background and the front light source, an elevated platform positioned between the image capture position and the background, and at least one rear light source positioned between the elevated platform and the background."

The patent, granted in March, even describes the use of a table: "A subject can be photographed and/or filmed on the elevated platform to achieve a desired effect of a substantially seamless background where a rear edge of the elevated platform is imperceptible to an image capture device positioned at the image capture position." (Look out yearbook pictures everywhere.)

The company offers plenty of technical details for a process that basically consists of turning on some lights at various angles, adding a table to elevate the subject being shot, and setting the subject in front of a white backdrop. For example, the arrangement includes:

A background comprising a white cyclorama; a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background, the longitudinal axis further being substantially perpendicular to a surface of the white cyclorama; an image capture position located between the background and the front light source in the longitudinal axis, the image capture position comprising at least one image capture device equipped with an eighty-five millimeter lens, at least one image capture device further configured with an ISO setting of about three hundred twenty and an f-stop value of about 5.6;

The purpose of such an arrangement, Amazon explains, is to achieve various photographic effects without requiring lots of post-production work or green screens. The company describes that this process enables a photographer to "achieve the effect noted above without any image manipulation due to the particular arrangement of the subject, camera, lighting, and background.”

The patent also details a specific work-flow process.

Whether this process is overbroad or fails to meet the legal requirements for patent eligibility is subject to a debate that will likely be ongoing. But as things currently stand, Amazon now appears to have control over yet another area of the commercial marketplace should it choose to wield such power.

Neither Amazon nor the USPTO were available for comment on Thursday morning.

Ars Technica

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

No words to describe how stupid that is

 

[Ant-manic]

Cannibal Cop Is Now a Jailhouse Cook

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...oking-inmates-guards-prison-article-1.1783911

It's all fun and games till he cooks an inmate

Michael Pena should play this guy in the movie.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Harvard Plans to Hail Satan, Confirms Conservative Fears About Harvard

An undergraduate student group has announced plans to hold a Satanic "black mass" on Harvard's campus Monday evening, freaking out Catholics and conservatives who probably figured the Ivy was a dark servant of Beelzubub all along.

Via Boston Magazine:

Members of the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club, who posted fliers and notices on campus and online about the Satanic worshipping happening on May 12, said the event is educational and meant to add historical context to a lecture on the subject that will precede it. "Our purpose is not to denigrate any religion or faith, which would be repugnant to our educational purposes, but instead to learn and experience the history of different cultural practices," the group said in a statement. "This performance is part of a larger effort to explore religious facets that continue to influence contemporary culture."
The independent group, which is working with the Satanic Temple (of totally-metal-Oklahoma-statue fame), put out this flyer to promote the gathering:

Needless to say, handwringing handwringers in the right-wing blogosphere wrung their hands, although responses from the Catholic Diocese of Boston and the Catholic League were uncharacteristically measured.

For its part, Harvard's Extension School pointed out in a news release that it had no control over the students, but was content to let them do their thing:

Students at Harvard Extension School, like students at colleges across the nation, organize and operate a number of independent student organizations, representing a wide range of student interests.

Harvard Extension School does not endorse the views or activities of any independent student organization. But we do support the rights of our students and faculty to speak and assemble freely.
The school statement added that the Cultural Studies Club was planning an entire series of events—"including a Shinto tea ceremony, a Shaker exhibition, and a Buddhist presentation on meditation—as part of a student-led effort to explore different cultures." Considering the explosion in troll-culture's popularity in recent years, it seems only fair to have a Satanist thing, too.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/...ural-studies-club-hosting-satanic-black-mass/

I understand wanting to learn about other cultures but what would one surmise from a black mass?

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

America's Most Republican-Leaning Company Makes White Bread

Corporations are people. Like people, they have political opinions. If you're looking for the most Republican corporate persons in the world, you're probably thinking Koch Industries. But you should be thinking white bread and interstate-redneck food.

The New York Times' Upshot blog took a dive into historical campaign donations to see not who gave the most money, but who gave the most money to just one political party. You see, even the Koch brothers and the big banks and defense contractors and most other big soft-money rollers like to spread the wealth around to Republicans and Democrats, usually in tune with whoever's political stock is rolling.

But some companies stay the course over many decades. Like the makers of America's most famous and famously metaphorical flavorless fluff, Wonder Bread:

The political action committee of Flowers Foods, a Georgia company that produces the pillowy sandwich bread, Tastykakes and Nature's Own baked goods, has given more than 99 percent of its political contributions since 1979 to Republicans. Only three Democratic congressional candidates have gotten money from its PAC since 1984, and not one in the past 20 years.

The PAC of Koch Industries, the well-known supporter of Republican candidates and conservative causes, has given nearly as much money to Democrats in the past 14 months as Flowers Foods has in more than 30 years.
That's a far more lopsided tally than the most Democratic-leaning corporate entity, Citizens Financial's PAC.

Who else gives almost exclusively to Republicans? A lot of construction firms, a financial information business, and also "The Cracker Barrel Old Country Store PAC," which "routinely gives them more than 80 percent of its contributions."

Truly, it pays to be egg-no-ra-moose.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/u...-company-the-makers-of-wonder-bread.html?_r=0

I guess they never heard that old adage about not putting all your eggs in one basket, but heck; if your going to vote may as well be what your product represents