State Department Official Says Nice Things About Kim Jong Il & More in Chad’s Steaming Pile

Here are just a few things in Chad’s Pile that you will hear on Lubbock’s First News this morning. Give Chad your feedback on the steaming topics.

1. Smart and Funny? (link)

Many things have been said about Kim Jong Il, none of them have ever been flattering though. Unless you lived in North Korea, and then all you said were nice things otherwise you would end up missing. Outside of North Korea though, nothing nice was ever said about the former "Dear Leader". At least that's what we though. According to the Weekly Standard, Wendy Sherman the undersecretary of state for political affairs had a lot of nice things to say.

the high ranking State Department official as saying that "He was smart and a quick problem-solver," and that "[Kim Jong Il] is also witty and humorous. Our overall impression was very different from the way he was known to the outside world."

Sherman sat next to Kim at a stadium to watch a huge festival of synchronized dancing. She says she turned to Kim and told him she had the sense that in some other life, he was a "great director."

"He clearly took such delight in putting these performances together," she says. "And he says, yes, that he cared about this a great deal and that he owned every Academy Award movie, he had watched them all, and he also had every film of Michael Jordan's NBA basketball games and had watched them as well."

Rather odd praise considering the North Korean regime is possibly the most evil in the world.

Odd indeed.

2. Gov't. Waste (link)

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has released a new report called the "Wastebook 2011" which gives examples of the most egregious ways taxpayer money was spent... or wasted.

Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in “Wastebook 2011” include:

• $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.

• $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.

• $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.

• $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

• $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.

• $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

• $10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan.

• $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.

• $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.

• $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.

Read the full report: here

I wonder if the Sesame Street characters had to wear burkas.

3. Liars (link)

According to a new study, people are more likely to lie when texting.

A new paper to be published next year in the Journal of Business Ethics finds that people are more likely to lie via text compared to face-to-face communications, video conferencing or audio chat.

The paper is based on a study of 140 students that were grouped into pairs and asked to engage in a role-playing game. One student took on the role of a stockbroker, the other student played a buyer. Researchers told the "stockbroker" that the stock they had to sell would lose 50% of its value in one week. They also gave the "stockbroker" a financial incentive to sell as much of the bad stock to the "buyer" as possible.

Researchers found that the stockbrokers were most likely to engage in duplicitous behavior -- either lying about the quality of the stock, or not mentioning how bad it was -- if they conducted the buy/sell conversation via text message.

They were most likely to be honest about the quality of the stock if the conversation happened via video, which beat out both face-to-face communication and audio chat.

This makes sense really. It's easier to lie when you aren't directly speaking to someone. Do you lie more when you text?

These and many more topics coming up on Wednesday’s edition of Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty. Tune in mornings 6-9am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App.