VIA: Friday, December 18 (Updated)

The Burning of the Bull: An Emblem for the Year of Our Lord, 2008 -- A bull sarcophagus in which a member of the Ubud royal family was cremated burns during the funeral ceremony Tuesday July 15, 2008 in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. - 2008 in photographs @ The Big Picture

• Against Assisted Suicide: "What manner of sentient being seeks to facilitate its own demise, only to perpetuate the illusion that they control their own lives?"

  Physician-assisted suicide is not at all about “death with dignity”, but rather about actively enlisting the culture in support of radical individual autonomy. Not only must we exert full control over the time and manner of our death — which we have always been able to do, by simply killing ourselves — but we demand that society support, honor, and praise this decision, without the faintest whiff of criticism or condemnation. It is not sufficient that we be able to kill ourselves. Rather, it is necessary that we actively kill those societal sensibilities and strictures which condemn such a choice as morally misguided and potentially destructive to our human dignity and our social fabric. - The Doctor Is In [This entire essay is a powerful argument against our secular society of perpetual indulgence which I commend to all.]

• The 40-Year Scam Continues: Climate science has come to this: We are now being told, in effect, to ignore the data and believe the hypothesis. - American Thinker: Climate Crisis = Logic Crisis

• Salon. Where hydrocephalic morons go to empty their drool cups. Velociworld on "...and so the war came."

  The Axis (read: Nazis) are collaborating (read: Quisling) with the neo-Confederates (read: skinhead white supremacists) against their common opponent -- The American Union (read: Abe Lincoln's emancipating brigades). Mr. Lind could save time, space, and valuable sputum by simply calling Southerners nigger-dragging crackers.

• Brutally Honest: What the hell is The Office of The President Elect? Should I salute? Place my hand over my heart? Or simply extend my right arm high....

• I'm finally getting the recognition I deserve: The Army's brain lives in Seattle

• His dad's computers vs his computers: I make faster mistakes than he ever did.

• Is Obama vulnerable to blackmail? Welcome to the Big Leagues, Slugger.

• The Incomprehensible University: "Western culture has taken a peculiar turn in the last century-and-a-half, resulting in proclivities of thought and imagination that render us largely incapable of comprehending one of our own, most venerable institutions: the university."- First Principles

• 1. OUR CITIES WILL DIE OF THIRST and 9 other dud predictions about global warming from 2008. [VIA VODKAPUNDIT ]

• What is eliminationism? It describes a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination. - James Taranto @ BOTW

• Comparisons: The Bernie Madoff Case Is Basically the Plot of Arrested Development

• "Tiny feet are being stamped." Merely "removing" the EU flag was an outrage, if notquite in the sense that the French president meant.Far better ifthis wretched raghadbeen torn down by jubilant, cheering crowds andceremonially burned.Theashes could thenhave beenflushed into some rank Bohemian sewer. Sarko & Klaus - Andrew Stuttaford - The Corner on National Review Online

• The Daily Gut loves "USA Today for never letting me down in their predictable, predictableness. They lead the pack in what I call Alzheimer's journalism, in that they keep reporting the same story over and over again, as if it has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!!"

• "Did you ever notice that Peter O’Toole has a double-phallic name?" -- Groucho Marx, in a letter to Dick Cavett.

• iowahawk: SantaCorp Pleads Case For Bailout SantaCorp, which lost over $2 trillion in FY 2007, has seen a steady erosion in market share and profitability over the last five years. Industry analysts say that its precarious position is due to a number of factors. "You might say it's a perfect snowstorm."

• P.J. O'Rourke, Future Schlock "Name an avant-garde painter. Nope, dead. Nope, dead.... Name a great living composer. Say “Andrew Lloyd Webber” and I’ll force you to sit through Cats and Starlight Express back-to-back."

• Atomic NerdsHorrible New Species Discovered Shocking pink dragon millipede. The best part? When threatened, it squirts cyanide.

• Sense of Events on Qualifications and credentials Welcome to hope and change folks. Same old identity and entitlement politics, amplified.

• Assistant Village Idiot on Diet "There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry." -- Mark Twain

• I, Pencil

  I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple. Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.

  [Everyone should read this classic essay on economics. At least twice.]