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June 30, 2010
Losing Is the New Winning
Anti-competition guidelines which punish winners have seeped into our culture over the last several decades.
This Ottawa soccer rule is just the consummation of a larger trend. Many public school districts in the US now discourage or prohibit intra-class competition, not just in games but scholastically as well. Why? Because competition inevitably leads to winners and losers, which leads to athletic or intellectual hierarchies, which leads to social hierarchies, which leads to social inequality. And thatâs the biggest no-no of all. But the prohibition against competition is often a prelude to a more Orwellian inversion of reality. Many kid's sporting leagues have something called The Mercy Rule, in which the officials stop keeping score after a certain point if two teams are so mismatched that the game would otherwise become a farce. From there, however, it is a small step to the "Ottawa Rule" whereby you are allowed to score as much as you want, but if you outscore your opponent by too much, you'll be declared the loser. -- Zombie
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (4)
June 29, 2010
Big Bucks from Breitbart
» Reward: $100,000 for Full "JournoList" Archive; Source Fully Protected - Big Journalism
Andrew Breitbart fronts it: I've had $100,000 burning in my pocket for the last three months and I'd really like to spend it on a worthy cause. So how about this: in the interests of journalistic transparency, and to offer the American public a unique insight in the workings of the Democrat-Media Complex, Iâm offering $100,000 for the full JournoList archive, source fully protected. Now there's an offer somebody can't refuse.
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:43 PM | Your Say (0)
JournoList: iowahawk's got the sekrit chat transkripts, lol
Welcome to the Journolist Top Secret Progressive He-Man Wingnut Haters Club and L33t H4xoR Chat Room.
Disclaimer: this is a private discussion forum intended solely for the benefit of JournoList members. Reproduction, transmission, redistribution, or description, in whole or in part, of any content (including, but not limited to, private insults, insider innuendo, political manifestos, hair styling tips and/or gossip) without the expressed written consent of the commissioner is strictly prohibited. Please read and agree to the User Consent Form. And, as always, remember the first rule of JournoList: there is no JournoList. -- iowahawk's sekrit chat transkript is HERE
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:12 PM | Your Say (1)
The Slow, Steady, and Certain Death of Europe's Brain
EU to ban selling eggs by dozen
Under the draft legislation, to come into force as early as next year, the sale of groceries using the simple measurement of numbers will be replaced by an EU-wide system based on weight. It would mean an end to packaging descriptions such as eggs by the dozen, four-packs of apples, six bread rolls or boxes of 12 fish fingers.
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:50 PM | Your Say (3)
The Slow, Steady, and Certain Death of American Literature's Brain
Like other compulsive masturbators, Jeffrey Eugenides of the New Yorker, yes, the New Yorker, just can't control himself. (Wait for it.)
Semiotics 211 was limited to ten students. Of those ten, eight had taken Introduction to Semiotic Theory. This was visually apparent at the first class meeting. Lounging around the seminar table, when Madeleine came into the room from the wintry weather outside, were eight people in black T-shirts and ripped black jeans. A few had razored off the necks or sleeves of their T-shirts. There was something creepy about one guy’s face––it was like a baby’s face that had hideously aged––and it took Madeleine a full minute to realize that he’d shaved off his eyebrows. Everyone in the room was so spectral-looking that Madeleine’s natural healthiness seemed suspect, like a vote for Reagan. -- Jeffrey Eugenides: “Extreme Solitude” : The New Yorker
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:36 PM | Your Say (6)
There is no "Dither" in "Leadership:" "It only took him two months, one week and three days to do it:"
"The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico." -- Brutally Honest: Ditherer-in-chief
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:02 PM | Your Say (0)
"So puzzling and inexplicable that health insurance rates keep rising."
“Bill Passed in Albany to Make Insurers Pay for Autism Care”
Posted by Vanderleun at 4:47 PM | Your Say (1)
There's Art and Then There's Fart
A Lucio Fontana "Concetto Spaziale, New York 21" put the sale back on track.
The battered copper plaque, slashed through in the central area with further haphazard dents, dates from 1962. The Spatial Concept went up to £914,850. This is not bad for something that resembles a metal piece picked up on the local scrap heap. -- Sotheby's Sale Leaves Its Audience Dazed - NYTimes.com
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:32 AM | Your Say (3)
Don Colacho’s Aphorisms: #1,269
The two terms of the democratic alternative today — oppressive bureaucracy or repugnant plutocracy — are canceling each other out. Combining into a single term: opulent bureaucracy. At once repugnant and oppressive. -- Don Colacho
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (0)
Secession As Startup: Providing Examples & Competition
America did not merely secede and copy the governing documents or style of the United Kingdom.
Rather, it innovated, creating a system based on the English Common Law, yet different, one with explicit checks and balances to restrain government, and with no place for a monarch. It was an experiment with a more radical form of democracy than existed anywhere in the 18th-century world. And it was an incredibly successful experiment, as the combination of that innovative rule-set and the empty frontier resulted in America growing rapidly in population, wealth, and influence. During the open immigration periods of the 19th century, some years saw over a million new immigrants arrive "yearning to breathe free." As a result, the new American state had influence far beyond its shores. -- « Let A Thousand Nations Bloom
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (0)
Remember, kids...
If at first you don't secede, try, try again. -- Marginal Revolution: Secession
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (0)
Canada's Most Passive-Aggressive Protester
"Nothing says standing up for what you believe in like setting a police car on fire, after finishing your finest naked trumpet solo. Did I mention there was body paint involved?" -- Buzzfeed
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (2)
Spy! I'll go her bail if she can be released into my custody
Anna Chapman going viral as a web-wide lust object in 5, 4, 3, 2....
A red-headed femme fatale is among eleven people arrested by the FBI and accused of spying for Russia in an extraordinary Cold War-style espionage plot. Anna Chapman, believed to be a 28-year-old divorcee with a masters' degree in economics and her own online real-estate business, is being held without bail after prosecutors called her a 'highly trained agent' and a 'practised deceiver'. -- Mail Online
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (4)
Cat Burgler
Cat Woman on the Loose in Manhattan!
"A serial stickup artist with a penchant for disguises -- including a cat mask -- has sunk her claws into shoe and beauty stores in Manhattan and Queens ... According to the source, the lithe 5-foot-6, 115 pound thief, described in a wanted poster as possibly Middle Eastern, strode into the store at around 1:30 p.m. She prowled for about 45 minutes before donning her disguise and pouncing on a sales clerk ... She got her paws on $86 in cash and scampered off, the source said."
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (0)
Whispering "No-O:" Marketing Guru Seth Godin Gets a Clue
A demagogue cares so much about winning that he'd rather wreck the system itself than lose. It's okay, he believes, to root for the failure of the republic or to destroy civility or democracy if it leads to something that could be called a win. -- Seth's Blog: Winning
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:52 AM | Your Say (0)
June 28, 2010
"Something's name is God"
"One chemist I talked with does not believe in God, yet she says she craves a sense of something beyond herself that provides a feeling of purpose and meaning and a moral compass. -- BrothersJudd
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:22 PM | Your Say (0)
BREAKING! LADY GAGA FOUND IN SEINFELD’S HOUSE (NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT)
Lady Gaga said she was polite to Seinfeld.
“I only used one finger. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to give him the double-barrels with kids in the house.” Seinfeld immediately responded, “When did a finger become a barrel? You can’t store anything in those barrels. Why is it called a barrel on a gun? Maybe they were so drunk in the Wild West, they got confused and starting calling things by the wrong name. They could have called it a basket. Put a new basket on that pistol.” Lady Gaga fell asleep while Seinfeld was talking, as did his wife and kids. (via ;Weekly World News)
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (0)
Trust But Verify
we find the address there. We believe in Amazon.com because when we order a book from it it usually arrives in the mail after some days. We can do business on EBay because the trading cards we buy eventually show up at our doorstep. Whether it is code that claims to add two numbers or a formula which describes the acceleration of objects falling under gravity we could in principle reproduce it ourselves. Stories whose truth relies upon the acceptance of a privileged point of view will be increasingly harder to sell as time goes by.... Facts which come from a Black Box — whether the dictation of a supernatural being, or a birth certificate only the elect can see, or files of no known provenance dropped off wherever Julian Assange is– must overcome the modern requirement for direct inspection. News from a Black Box will be increasingly regarded as doubtful even if it is true. This doesn’t necessarily mean that news can’t start from a Black Box, but like a preached faith, the news requires eventual revalidation before it gains final acceptance. -- Belmont Club ｻ No Secret Place
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:11 AM | Your Say (0)
June 27, 2010
The People's Movement for the Promotion of Projectile Vomiting
Hands Across the Sand is a movement made of people of all walks of life and crosses political affiliations. This movement is not about politics; it is about protection of our coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife, and fishing industry. Let us share our knowledge, energies and passion for protecting all of the above from the devastating effects of oil drilling.What to do at a Hands Event
STEP 1 Go to the beach at 11 AM in your time zone for one hour, rain or shine.
STEP 2 Join hands for 15 minutes at 12:00 forming lines in the sand against oil drilling in our coastal waters.
STEP 3 Leave only your footprints.
-- HT: Sondrak: "Today everything liberals do is like totally awesome!"
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:25 PM | Your Say (5)
President Revises Afghan ROE
(HT: Theo)
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (1)
CIA Director Putz Says, Relax You've Got 2 Years
"CIA Director Leon Panetta says Iran probably has enough low-enriched uranium for two nuclear weapons, but that it likely would take two years to build the bombs."-- June 27, 2010 Wow, that makes me free to plan at least one and a half vacations. Thanks, Leon.
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:54 PM | Your Say (1)
Global Warming Juggernaut Rolls On, But...
One thing is true:
The people in charge of the (delicate cough) "science" sites, such as Nature, Scientific American, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Live Science, never, ever, read the comments in their AGW articles. Ever. Because, if they did, they'd be aghast at how mocked and ridiculed the majority of their AGW articles are.... AGW: The "In case you were wondering" Edition - Maggie's Farm
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (0)
"The Limits Define the Center" Opening The Overton Window
Chicago Boyzon The "Overton Window" and how to apply it
"If you read this in context, you see instantly why the right is being taken to the cleaners by the left at the grass roots level. These denizens of liberty are still focussing on the sclerotic, corrupt, and generally brain-dead âpolitical classâ while the left is both paying kids to go door-to-door and putting policy and issue ads on TV."
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (2)
You Own Your Own Words: Own Up
Ezra Klein's juicebox-level of Leftist propaganda-feed group-think journalism and the defenders of General McChrystal'screw of wisecrackers as being abused by the Rolling Stone's reporter have something in common: Neither are willing to stand in public behind the truth that anything that passes from one's lips is public property....
In my garage, I have boxes full of literally thousands of published pieces I’ve written during and since college. That’s 46-years of comment and analyses. Many, most?, are easily available on the web. I'm also surprised at how many correspondents have archived my emails, when I haven't. If any want to publish them, have at it. I said it. I stand behind it, or will answer for it. -- Journalist or Kindergarten Ethics? Bruce Kesler @ Maggie's Farm
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (0)
Nothing says a person can't both a victim and a perpetrator.
People who think that open borders are the solution to Mexican poverty
are exactly like the people who thought that more home ownership will make better Americans. They confused cause and effect. Home ownership is not the cause of more responsible, more engaged citizens, it's the effect. Crossing the border isn't the cause of wealth and freedom, the border exists to be crossed because of a difference in wealth and freedom. Give irresponsible people mortgages and they'll just be irresponsible people with debt they can't pay. Bring people from a corrupt and impoverished state to a relatively healthy and wealthy state, and they'll just bring their own dysfunctions with them. -- everlastinggodstopper - Gosh.
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:28 AM | Your Say (0)
2 FOBs ("Friends of Barry")
Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama
and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They'll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The management of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their "Beyond Petroleum" marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats' favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam. -- Mark Steyn: Learning the rules of an unengaged president
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:12 AM | Your Say (1)
June 26, 2010
The Not-So-Little List of "Approved" Reading
"E pur si muove!": "Common Reading" and Liberal Bias
The list is especially interesting reading. It is a peek into the claustrophobic world of people who get all their news from NPR, whose idea of an interesting author is Barbara Kingsolver, who are sure that global warming is the most serious emergency we now face, and who don't seem to be aware of the global sovereign debt crisis. That's right. It's the world of the typical humanities professor.... Anyone who is not a PC liberal can immediately detect the PC ethos just by browsing through the assigned book titles. We can smell it, like a choking whiff of sweet incense.
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:56 PM | Your Say (0)
"How About Those Mets?" Quadrennial US Soccer Fever Finally Breaks
Our long national vuvuzela nightmare is over: Ghana eliminates US for 2nd straight World Cup
Posted by Vanderleun at 4:57 PM | Your Say (3)
Obama, Lady Gaga compete for Facebook fan record
The smart money's on Gaga: "I'm just trying to change the world one sequin at a time." [ - CNN.com]
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:31 PM | Your Say (0)
OilCane: We're Going to Need Bigger Paper Towels
It just keeps getting BETTER! The First OilCane? What Happens if a Hurricane Rides over the Oil Spill
Should a major hurricane push the spill towards the gulf coast there will be nothing that can be done to stop it. No amount of planning or engineering will help. No number of visits to the gulf by the president or any other official will stop the inevitable. The storm surge will drive the water and the oil miles inland. Everything in its path will be coated in a greasy bath of crude. Even the wind may have oil in it. In New England, I have seen hurricanes and tropical storms that have blown salt spray many miles inland from the coast. The leaves of the trees eventually turn brown and fall off. In the case of the gulf it will be oil that will spray the trees, buildings and everything else in the way.
But there's a silver lining!:
"Should, heaven forbid, the world's first Oilcane wreak havoc in the Southeast, one man will have to shoulder substantial blame. One man's legacy will be utter economic and environmental ruin. One man's unsuitability for the highest office in the land will be crystal clear even to the most obtuse observer." -- Ross
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:26 PM | Your Say (1)
Afghanistan Still Rotting
- The whole operation is still rotting from the head, however. Between Obama, McChrystal, Joe Biden, Robert Gates, Richard Holbrooke, Karl Eikenberry, and Hamid Karzai, we had inhabiters of seven distinct planets. It does not surprise me that the two closest on this list were McChrystal and Karzai. I only wish four of the remaining five were not still orbiting. David Warren
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (0)
Panderfest In Toronto
- Pandering is one of the activities that bring politicians, journalists and diplomats together,
and the G-20 summit is a panderfest of historic proportions. Politicians pander to the prejudices and aspirations of their constituents.... The press is also in the pandering business. Many readers are less interested in understanding the world than in receiving confirmation that their existing understanding of the world is correct. For many of the people who read the serious press, the belief that the world is moving smoothly into a new era of North South cooperation along a path of institutional development and reform is an important part of their world view. They also want and perhaps need to believe that the world’s political and economic authorities know what to do about the economic issues we face and are laboring earnestly together to solve common problems. The G-20 story reinforces these important if delusional narratives in ways that both the producers and the consumers of serious journalism find deeply appealing. Pointless G-20 Summit Unfolds In Toronto - Walter Russell Mead's Blog - The American Interest
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (0)
Nation's Boyfriends Dreading 'Free Event In The Park' Season
- NISKAYUNA, NY—With summer officially beginning this week, the nation's boyfriends groaned Thursday in anticipation of yet another "Free Event in the Park" season. "Kelly already wants us to go see some Brazilian horn player and these people who use puppets to make fun of politicians. I'm sure they're fine, but we just got AC this summer," said Jason Evans, a boyfriend. "Plus, we go out all the time." A spokesperson for the nation's girlfriends countered that it would be a shame not to take advantage of the tons of cool-sounding cost-free events, which include a craft fair, an outdoor screening of The Wizard Of Oz, and the appearance of a modestly successful mid-90s alternative band at the Tulip Festival. America's Finest News Source via Morgan
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (0)
June 25, 2010
Blog posts published today on the web
In real time: Blogging Statistics - Worldometers How many? It's Friday and there are now 536,745...6...7...8.....
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:18 PM | Your Say (1)
Today's History Lesson
If history has any lessons, one is that it's never too soon to make friends in the military. -- MENCIUS MOLDBUG
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:09 PM | Your Say (0)
Putting the "Dim" Back in "Democrat"
Dem county supervisor: Arizona's law might have been justifiable if it was a border state
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:16 AM | Your Say (4)
June 24, 2010
Vers le bas avec la langue française
"Studying other languages is a pointless waste of time since the best stuff will eventually be translated into my language, and as for the rest, it's just better that I'll never even see it." -- The Fourth Checkraise
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:43 PM | Your Say (1)
What One Word Do the Obamallatioistas Have for That Manly-Man's Man?
"Brilliant!" <-- Clicky it.
[Morgan made this! Brilliant!]
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:33 PM | Your Say (4)
Arizona = America
"Arizona is just a rogue state that doesn't play by the rules -- the way America is supposed to be. I heard federal officials went down there to yell at them, but they forgot their ID so Arizona deported them to Mexico. I wish we had more states like that." -- IMAO » Blog Archive » Rogue State[HT: Morgan]
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:29 PM | Your Say (2)
"My Favorite Left-Wing Policy Idea...
... is that one which necessitates raising marginal tax rates on people who make more money than (or have larger trust funds than) the idea's proponent, and using the anticipated revenues to fund jobs/roles for him and his college friends that involve regularly making key decisions about strangers' lives. That particular left-wing policy idea is AWESOME. -- « Rhymes With Cars & Girls
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (1)
Not on McChrystal's Reading List
neo-neocon quotes General William Tecumsah Sherman:
"If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast."Is it too late to retask a Predator mission onto Jan Wenner's ass? Or would he enjoy it too much? Just askin'.
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (6)
Afghanistan, Bananastan
"Let me see if I understand this...
A four star General, West Point graduate, is drinking beer with a reporter from Rolling Stone, but at the same time a Predator drone flown by a N.E.A. educated Lieutenant is remotely killing a high value target, along with the wife, three children, mother-in-law, grandmother, five neighbors visiting, and the dog. Now, a new four star General, who was accused of betraying America by a Democratic fund raising organization, is now in charge of buying Russian helicopters for the Afghan Air Force whose pilots are being trained in America, but have mostly gone AWOL after they went to their very first strip bar. Is that about it?" -- Comment by Capt. Dave on For $663.8 billion We Get 2 Generals? @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (0)
The Perverter's Spin
It is typical of the spin era that the first serious “crisis” in relations between General McChrystal and President Obama occurs over a few disobliging words the General and his team spoke about the President and his team. The endless rounds of deaths and dangerous patrols, the delays in finding political settlements on the ground and the ubiquitous ability of the “insurgents” to reappear are not apparently worthy reasons to recall the General for talks, but a magazine article is. -- The President and the General | John Redwood
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:11 AM
But What About?
The What-Abouts: Critical Obstacles To A Return To Constitutional Governance
Thanks to the Democrats' bizarre policy directions and public gaffes since the November 2008 elections, hope appears to be rising...but that blimp can be deflated more easily than we like to think. Among the needles sharp enough to let the air out of our gasbags are the what-abouts: the bevy of objections to limited government based on "the way things are.""The way things are" is often employed in place of "the way things have to be." (This is especially true when the speaker has a personal interest in "the way things are.") Any aspect of "the way things are" that commands a constituency of some sort will give rise to a what-about:
* "What about the poor?"
* "What about the environment?"
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:08 AM | Your Say (1)
June 23, 2010
Just Give Us the Olds Please
"Be careful. People like to be told what they already know.
Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things -- well, new things aren't what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don't want to know that man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds. Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true." -- Terry Pratchett through the character Lord Vetinari from his novel, "The Truth: a novel of Discworld" -- Confirmation Bias « You Are Not So Smart
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:38 PM | Your Say (4)
June 22, 2010
The Persistence of Fascism
Taken over a woodland near the village of Zernikow to the north-east of Berlin.
In the mid-late 1930s, with Hitler in charge, a swastika of larches was planted in the midst of a pine forest. For most of the year the larches are invisible, but, in the winter, when the larches change colourthe swastika stands out (for anyone who happens to be flying in a plane). -- Totalitarian Trees ｫ Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:22 PM | Your Say (6)
Argumentative inflation
There's a style of argument you'll meet with often in life,
which means you'll also meet with it often in the press and online. It consists of taking some straightforward and unobjectionable proposition and then exaggerating it to the point of absurdity. When the absurd version of it is challenged you can retreat to the more modest one. But then, of course, you could have started and finished with that and avoided talking nonsense in the first place. -- normblog:
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (0)
June 21, 2010
Dems Just Wanna Flash Before They Crash
Pedal to the metal time: The bloodbath over health care and the post facto revelations about its probable costs and intrusive tentacles have lead not to introspection but to more zeal for even more unpopular sweeping notions, such as amnesty and cap-and-trade. Instead of sending promised troops to the border, we get promises to sue Arizona. The dismal response to the BP spill was used to fuel an even more unpopular cap-and-trade. -- Full Speed Ahead! - Victor Davis Hanson - The Corner on National Review Online
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (0)
Russia to Become More Pro-Growth Than US
Russia will scrap capital gains tax on long-term direct investment from 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev has said. Mr Medvedev said that in terms of improving Russia's investment climate "we, I hope, are moving forward". [As the US backslides deeper into the hole.]
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:14 PM | Your Say (0)
On Your Knees!: Feminism's Indoctrination Continues
These women have been talked by their philosophy professors into allowing themselves to be used for someone else's sexual pleasure. They have been so thoroughly indoctrinated, even brainwashed by their teachers that they actually believe that falling to their knees in front of the mighty phallus is empowering. -- Had Enough Therapy?: Should We Wave Good-Bye to Feminism?
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (2)
QOTD (So far)
"Naturally, my lefty-liberal friends believe and maintain that there are no Democrats at Tea Parties. They know this because they’ve never been to any." -- Little Miss Attila
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (1)
Scapegoating Israel
Israel and the Surrender of the West by Shelby Steele
This is now—figuratively in some quarters and literally in others—the moral template through which Israel is seen. It doesn't matter that much of the world may actually know better. This template has become propriety itself, a form of good manners, a political correctness. Thus it is good manners to be outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza, and it is bad manners to be outraged at Hamas's recent attack on a school because it educated girls, or at the thousands of rockets Hamas has fired into Israeli towns—or even at the fact that Hamas is armed and funded by Iran. The world wants independent investigations of Israel, not of Hamas.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (0)
Aging Academic Wunderkinds
He is a prime example of despair masquerading as hope, of extreme materialism masquerading as transcendence, and of grandiosity masquerading as magnanimity. Not to mention abject foolishness masquerading as wisdom. No wonder he has so many honorary doctorates. -- One Cʘsmos: Loafing and Laughing Our Way Toward the Real Singularity
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (0)
June 20, 2010
First wisecrack about the prototype being and ex-Wife or girlfriend loses.
Rape-aXe: South African doctor invents female condoms with 'teeth' to fight rape
Ehlers is distributing the female condoms in the various South African cities where the World Cup soccer games are taking place. The woman inserts the latex condom like a tampon. Jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line its inside and attach on a man's penis during penetration, Ehlers said.(via - CNN.com)Seems to me the mechanics might actually encourage a man to, shall we say, stick around. Not really the outcome one would be looking for.
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:37 PM | Your Say (18)
God Forgive Me I've Read Them All
Five Best Books for Curmudgeons
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:41 PM | Your Say (4)
Ruling Forever in the Kingdom of O
I think the presidency was always sort of a warm-up, a preparation for worldwide messiah-in-chief.
It won't be too bad a life -- sort of like living in the Edwards mansion talking about marital bliss and the wretched "other America" or Gulfstreaming into Oprah country while hawking Green, Inc. for those down in the lowlands. Once the left gets over the dismal record of Obamaâs actual governance, they can afford once again to be mesmerized by four more decades of Obama planet healing tomfoolery. -- Works and Days » Obamaâs Straws And Our Tired Back
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (0)
Pathetic, Ironic, Desperate, and Sad: Hey, That's "Progressive!"
One Cʘsmos: Obama and the Hope-a-Dope Strategy
Perhaps you have to be of my generation, but for me, there is nothing quite as pathetic as when cadge-drive time comes around, and PBS digs out some old hippies to sing the same songs they sang 40 or 50 years ago, in the same way, hopefully kindling the same rancid emotions. Can you imagine having to sing something you wrote at the age of 20, while expressing the same emotions you felt then with conviction? It is no wonder then that these people literally haven't taken a new political imprint since 1967. Ironic too that this desperate flight into the past is called "progressive."
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:57 PM | Your Say (0)
"Sic Semper Tyrannis"
Pro Commerce says Blame it on John D.
BP is the creation of John D. Rockefeller. John D.s company was split up by 1911, a decade after he retired. He designed one hell of a brilliant and efficient company. One of the split off companies, Standard Oil of Ohio kept growing and buying other less productive oil companies until, a century later, it became the current BP. Oil companies have to be big so they can stand up to nations, most of which are run by tyrants, including the current temporary occupant of the White House.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:43 PM | Your Say (4)
Post-Racialist Society Postponed
Fifty to seventy-five years from now, I think our present "corrective" obsession with race will be seen for what it is -- as a pernicious flip side of overt racism, an entrenchment of attitudes not made much less evil or silly merely because it's a bit more subtle than what it replaced. Our great-grandchildren will consider racial special pleading every bit as ugly as racial prejudice, and wonder why we didn't. Their historians will tell them we were traumatized for generations by the Holocaust and be right, but that fact will have lost much of its emotional impact through the passage of time. This wound, too, will heal. -- Armed and Dangerous A Specter is Haunting Genetics
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:05 PM | Your Say (0)
Quotations from Chairman P.J.
“Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.
It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.” -- by P.J. O'Rourke
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (0)
June 19, 2010
Taking the Shortcut to Iran?
Report: U.S., Israeli warships cross Suez Canal toward Red Sea According to eyewitnesses, the U.S. battleships were the largest to have crossed the Canal in many years, Al-Quds reported.
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (2)
Weekend WeirdWatch
- Some days you just can't win. Man shoots himself in the head, then hit by truck, lives.
- The balloon goes up in Korea: Toy balloons released by kindergarten children sparked a security alert in South Korea amid growing military tensions with North Korea.
- Wearing his 5 pound iron helmet, pushing his pram, followed by his monitor, he set out to walk around the world.
- 'On Many Occasions, I Have Asked Him Not to Touch Himself'
- "You do know how to vuvuzela, don't you?" The dreaded vuvuzela claims its first victim: Woman bursts her windpipe 'by blowing too hard'
- But of course: Team that researched CO2's effect on human/bear conflicts tranquilizes a bear, which wakes up and almost immediately kills a hiker? via Tom Nelson
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:53 AM | Your Say (1)
June 18, 2010
Michelle Obama's Mirror Knows All, Sees All, But Would Rather Not
Here’s what I can make out so far: BP screwed up royally. But somehow Big Guy waived our long-standing rule of law and replaced it with his own infinite messiah-like wisdom and levied a $20 billion down payment towards total future damages – also to be determined by Big Guy: Barry’s Pay-As-You-Go Plan. I think it’s set up so that if BP doesn’t pay, Big Guy gets to put their assets into his own bottomless hole: the Obamacare fund. It’s a win-win.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (0)
Hillary's Little Red Choo-Choo Gets Set to Go Round the Bend
Sensing's calling it at Sense of Events: Ice princess more popular than Mr. Cool; Hillary2012 stage is set
If the November House and Senate elections turn out to be the Democrat train wreck that politicos of both parties say it will be, Hillary will resign from Secretary of State effective the first or so of 2011. Magically, her book about international politics and her experience as secretary will hit the shelves before Labor Day. She'll already have formed her presidential race exploratory committee by then and the full campaign apparatus will be in place by the end of October. The 2012 Iowa caucus will be in early January as usual and the Hillary 2012 train will be in full steam.
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (5)
Your moment of Zenbama: Empty desk. Empty mind.
"Normally presidents have had a printed copy of the speech in their hands or on the desk, in case the teleprompter freezes or fails. Mr. Obama's desk was shiny and empty." -- Peggy Noonan: A Snakebit President - WSJ.com
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (1)
Dam It All!
Let's say we want alternative power to produce just 30% of our current baseline power needs.
Let's make a very conservative estimate that we only need to have a 25% stored reserve. (This very optimistically assumes that alternative power will otherwise be able to provide sufficient power, when it's needed, 75% of the time.) So, 25% of 30% equals 7.5 % of the total (0.30*0.25=0.075).
By happenstance, hydroelectric power today produces 8% of the nation's electricity. This means that if we want to use hydraulic storage to make alternative power work, we will have to recreate the 93% of the generating capacity of every currently existing hydroelectric facility in this country. That's right, Hoover Dam, the entire TVA, all the damns in the Rock Mountains, all the rest, all duplicated.
That alone raises the question: Where the hell are we going to put these dang dams anyway? -- Shannon Love @ Chicago Boyz -- The Myth of Alternative Power and Hydroelectric Storage
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (3)
The First Twitter Execution
The world learned that the go-ahead had been given for the execution by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner when the Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff sent out this tweet:
Via: Leｷgal Inｷsurｷrecｷtion
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:18 AM | Your Say (2)
June 17, 2010
Warming Consensus Phony? Surprise. Surprise.
The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider @ National Post
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was "only a few dozen experts," he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony. "Claims such as 2,500 of the world's leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate are disingenuous," the paper states.Full report in PDF HERE.
Posted by Vanderleun at 6:30 PM | Your Say (2)
Cobb. Word.
Somehow Americans have come to think that they can put the right body in the Oval Office
and the awesome power of his rock and roll can deflect bullets, or turn beaters into Ferarris like something out of a ZZ Top video. They think that narrowing down the complexities of the world to a phrase like 'Axis of Evil' is a sign of arch stupidity and that they should expect failure after failure coming from a stupid man from Texas (a stupid state). The solution, according to such people, is to hire a slick talking dude from Harvard who can talk his way out of a paper or plastic bag. And they picked well. But what they didn't understand is that ... Well babies are bald, shirtless humans with bags of crap around their waists. But you don't get an award for not having them. You get an award for having them and working through the mess they create without the benefit of magic. Wars are bloody, awful, horrid affairs where you kill the enemy until he loses his desire to fight back. That's peace, when people are too bloodied to vent their deadly frustrations. Oil drilling is deadly dangerous work. That's why the people who work on oil rigs are called roughnecks. And guess what. There is no pushbutton solution. There is no single hole to plug. There is no neat collection of asses to kick. Huge parts of the world are inherently unpredictable, messy and chaotic and you can never control them from the White House. But neither this President nor the people who elected him believe that. -- Push Button For Security - Cobb
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (2)
LinkDings: Now with creamy topping!
- The Largest Oil Spills in History, 1901 to Present
- Keep up with the "I'm melting! Melting!:"The Daily Bayonet ｫ Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Jun. 17th 2010
- And then whack 'em with Environmentalists as Battered Spouses
- Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise
- Trailer for The American. You will be seeing this movie.
- “Crude Politics: The drilling experts speak out on the Obama deepwater moratorium” aka “Ken Salazar and Obama: Lying, dissembling, partisan, CYA-determined crapweasels.”
- The Fourth Checkraise: Power to ration equals power to kill
- Caldwell: “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” At the moment, he is on track to be neither.
- He Wears It: Star Wars fashion illustrations by John Woo
- "Don’t let two people get together and separate themselves from the pack, or they might do something subversive, like…think differently." The Anchoress
- Assholes of Washington Watch; The American Spectator : Engulfing the Internet "Look at the Gulf oil spill, that's what happens when we let corporations just do their own thing without any accountability. We can't allow that to happen with the Internet. We won't allow it."
- Unsolicited email I'm currently ignoring: "How are you doing ? Sorry I didn't inform you about my travelling to Spain for a program, I'm presently in madrid spain and I'm having some difficulties here because I misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where I'm putting up. My money, and other valuable things were kept in it. I need you to do me a favour, please assist me with a loan of $ 2,000 USD, to sort-out my hotel bills and to get myself back home."
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (3)
Michael Moore and the Subtitle of the Century (So Far)
From 32 Poorly Translated Subtitles - Urlesque
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (0)
The Chief Sings "Hail to the Me"
Obama's recent Gulf oil spill speech in song:
Don't blame me, I stole it from Mark @ Your Zen Moment of the Day ｫ westsound modern
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (1)
Why Ann Coulter Gets Paid the Big Bucks
ALVIN GREENE: THE MOST QUALIFIED DEMOCRAT I'VE EVER SEEN
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Greene was not a "legitimate" candidate and called his victory "a mysterious deal." (Yes, how could a young African-American man with strange origins, suspicious funding, shady associations, no experience, no qualifications, and no demonstrable work history come out of nowhere and win an election?)HT: Rodger
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (9)
Cobb's Suspicious
You know I've heard a lot of crazy things, especially since I listen to the No Agenda Show. But one thing I don't hear is that Wall Street has been hacked. I mean, I have heard that just about everything on the planet has been cracked some kind of way, but why is it that I never hear that Wall Street has been?
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (0)
Truth in Packaging is Important
A Southwest Airlines employee called police after finding human heads in a package set to be transported to a Fort Worth medical research company, the airline said. "It wasn't labeled or packaged properly," said Ashley Rogers, a Southwest spokeswoman. -- NBC
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (0)
Moon and Puppy Thrown @ Bikers
Student Hurls Puppy At Hell's Angels Biker Gang In An 'Offensive Gesture'
A German student has been arrested after throwing a live puppy at a group of Hell's Angels motorcycle gang members Monday in what was assumed to be meant as an insulting gesture. According to German police, the questionable canine toss came shortly after the 26-year-old student -- whose name has not been released -- had more blatantly offended the bikers by dropping his pants toward the group, who were congregating at a club in the Bavarian town of Allenhausen, near Munich.
The student then escaped from the bikers on a bulldozer, which had been stolen from a nearby construction site. Though officials believe he originally planned to drive it all the way to Munich, he later abandoned the bulldozer on a major thoroughfare, resulting in a 5 km (3 mile) wide traffic jam. "What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hell's Angels is currently unclear."
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (4)
June 16, 2010
Surviving Obama supporters respond to his call to help "plug the hole."
[ED: "Yes, I know it's sort of irritating, but given the context I could watch it forever.]
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (6)
A Word from Our Sponsor
Other campaign methods focus on evasive action like fleeing town halls and throwing cash at problem constituents. But CONG-FU is the only system that attacks the problem at the source -- your opponents' windpipes! End those reelection fears and gain self confidence. With CONG-FU, you'll turn the tables on angry critics by making them flee from you. Order "CONG-FU: The Death Touch" today and by November your constituents will be afraid to pull the lever for anybody else! -- iowahawk: Enter the Dragon
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (0)
It's Summer. Time for Some BoatLinkDrinks
- Who doesn't have a moment to spare for Hot Chicks with Machine Guns?
- So what's Larry David cooking up for the new season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"? Previously hot chicks with no machine guns?
- No writer's block available or needed: "99% of writing is: figuring out how to make it good later."
- Two things from Fifty things that make you a better person: 46. If the teevee show is put on the teevee to indoctrinate, rather than to entertain, change the channel. 47. If the school’s special activity is there to indoctrinate rather than to educate, pull your child out of it.
- Speaking of schools, P. J. O'Rourke says,"End Them, Don’t Mend Them."
- Never Trust a Programmer: "The programmer’s path to hell is paved with the word yes."
- Cap'n Crunch's full name is.... 22 Fictional Characters Whose Names You Don't Know
- The hallucinatory world of Yao Jen Chang: Projects - Opium, Studies of the Ephemeral
- Uptight? Fear of holes/clusters/maybe cracks.. trypophobia? Take it to Small Steps Forums - The Forum for Anxiety Disorder & Panic Attack Sufferers
- The Great Piano Scam In 2003, Joyce Hatto became one of the most famous pianists in the world, thanks to a fraud hatched by her husband, William Barrington-Coupe.
- How Universities Breed Dependency A dean tried to rescue a student who missed the regular exam and then failed to show up for a scheduled make-up on the grounds that he “was in the process of coming out in a homophobic society.”
- "A college degree entitles one to squat."Gee, why will no one hire them? asks Don Surber
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:06 AM | Your Say (10)
Obama's Speech: The Althouse/Reynolds Duet
Althouse says "This is such embarrassing cliché rhetoric: Some say we can't do it. I say we can't not do it." Reynolds replies, "I think I used that line with a girlfriend, once." -- On the President's Speech | Little Miss Attila
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:55 AM | Your Say (0)
June 15, 2010
Limbaugh on Love
When you look back on your life, no matter what you have accumulated and no matter what you have acquired and achieved,
life is about people and friends and the relationships you have with the people you love. That's what life is all about, and when you look back, the nostalgic moments, the warm moments of your life always will be about that, always will be about relationships that you had with people that you love, always will be about events that you have experienced with people that you love. -- Rush Limbaugh Describes the Happiest Weekend of His Life
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:56 PM | Your Say (2)
Dumbest PR Headline of the Hour
This from one pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com who obviously labored long and hard of that chunk of gunk. It's amazing that people such as pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com can not only get paid for this spew, but avoid being decapitated by a just and righteous God of the Copybook Headings. Just remember....
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:33 PM | Your Say (0)
Deepwater: What Happens Next?
Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets.
I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.
Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us....
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well. -- The Oil Drum | Deepwater Oil Spill - A Longer Term Problem, Personnel - and Open Thread 2
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (3)
Yetzer Hatov's Gonna Getcha
“I pretty much have my bad inclination [‘yetzer hara’] under control; it’s my good inclination [‘yetzer hatov’] that always gets me into trouble.” -- Rabbi Wolfe Kelman via When Good People Do Bad Things - Dennis Prager - National Review Online
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (0)
The solemn Declaration and Protest of the commonwealth of Virginia
“Whilst the General assembly thus declares the rights retained by the states, rights which they have never yielded, and which this state will never voluntarily yield,
they do not mean to raise the banner of disaffection, or of separation from their sister-states, co-parties with themselves to this compact. They know and value too highly the blessings of their union as to foreign nations and questions arising among themselves, to consider every infraction as to be met by actual resistance; they respect too affectionately the opinions of those possessing the same rights under the same instrument, to make every difference of construction a ground of immediate rupture. They would indeed consider such a rupture as among the greatest calamities which could befall them; but not the greatest. There is yet one greater, submission to a government of unlimited powers. -- via Thomas Jefferson 1825 - TO WILLIAM SHORT - The Works, vol. 12 (Correspondence and Papers 1816-1826)
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:21 AM | Your Say (0)
June 14, 2010
Get. OUT!
Dow Theorist Richard Russell: Sell Everything, You Won't Recognize America By The End Of The Year
Do your friends a favor. Tell them to "batten down the hatches" because there's a HARD RAIN coming. Tell them to get out of debt and sell anything they can sell (and don't need) in order to get liquid. Tell them that Richard Russell says that by the end of this year they won't recognize the country. They'll retort, "How the dickens does Russell know -- who told him?" Tell them the stock market told him.
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:03 PM | Your Say (4)
Meanwhile, back in the real world...
The coffee table has become an evening fort, hiked up at four corners under two dozen of my lesser hardbacks. Padded and draped, pillows blocking the short ends, he's left an open panorama view of the television, a bagful of banana popsicles already half gone.The wind's picked up, blowing out the humidity, leaving a photographer's sky of beautifully dry, saturated evening light. Cicadas are chirring, three fawns have bedded down under the clutch of oaks by my front door, the tree frogs are beginning their nightly concert and my son is in his fort.
Posted by Vanderleun at 7:00 PM | Your Say (0)
In Other News: Arianna Huffington gives her face a "Full Brazilian"
Huffington Post is ALL OVER this one: Brad Pitt Trims His Beard
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (3)
When you're green all the poo flows downhill
In collaboration with Marei Wollersberger,
our project for the Future of Vienna entitled "CitizenEvolution" has been chosen to be exhibited at the MAK in Vienna. One scenario describes how adapting rooftops in Vienna will enable individuals to generate energy by extracting filtered bio gases from pigeon poo. -- The Future of Self-Knowledge
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (3)
How to change a tire.
"My earlier mild disgust was now evolving into an insane rage." -- westsound modern
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:51 AM | Your Say (1)
Have you ever found a secret room in your (or anyone else's) house?
It seems that many people have.
"I had a friend buy a three story house to chop up into apartments. The basement apartment had a boarded up wall that didn't fit the rest of the original building. Once she ripped the boards down there was a 40 foot hallway that snaked to a bomb shelter. The shelter was almost empty but it had a window in the bottom of a backyard fish pond." -- An endless but fascinating thread @ : AskReddit
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (1)
June 13, 2010
I Oppose and Detest Genocide, but for the Taliban I'll Make an Exception
Taliban hang 7-year-old boy accused of being a spy, suicide bomber kills 40 at Afghanistan wedding All of them. The whole gene pool. In a large and refining fire. Soon. Pour encourager les autres.
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:07 PM | Your Say (10)
To Any Criminals in the Portland, Oregon, Area
If you're looking for an easy robbery,
stop by the Red and Black Cafe. This left-wing anarchist-owned establishment, located at 400 Southeast 12th Avenue, Portland, Oregon, does not serve police officers, so you won't have to worry about a police officer being present when you rob it. Once you rob it, since the owners hate the police they wouldn't call them and you won't go to jail since they support "community forums" and "restorative justice" instead of punishment. Also, since it's a radical leftist hangout, the feminists and emasculated "men" who work and eat there probably don't carry concealed, so you won't have to worry about getting shot by an employee or customer. -- Flyover Libertarian
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:00 PM | Your Say (8)
"Disaster can be our friend."
Although history never repeats itself,
except awkwardly and approximately, we are in the metaphorical sense back in the 1930s. Which is to say, flat broke, getting fiscally dust-bowled, and not yet even half aware of the war clouds on the horizon. And this despite enemies that make no secret of their desire that we should become extinct. (And are progressing now towards making Israel extinct, by way of clarifying their position. And while we are washing our hands like Pilate.)Which is where I look for hope: to the clouds. For if it is beginning to rain tarnish, they must have a silver lining. -- David Warren
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:28 PM | Your Say (2)
Neo Asks and Answers....
The Press and Obama: Where's that Lovin' Feeling?
My shorter answer:
"Why doesn't Obama respect and hang out with the media that made him? Simple. Just because someone uses whores doesn't mean he respects or wants to spend time with them."
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (5)
June 12, 2010
Deep Down They Hate Us
My concern with democracy is highly specific.
It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us. -- Morals & the servile mind by Kenneth Minogue - The New Criterion
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:23 PM | Your Say (2)
"i spit in the face of those who blather about ghandi and passive resistance.--"
it is immoral to not resist aggression.
whether in matters personal, political, religious or in statecraft, ..., it matters not, ... , to not resist aggression is to aid and abet the aggressor, and to assure that after your demise at his hands, he will seek the conquest of another. whatever you may feel the worth of the stance to you as a personal matter, by adopting such a stance, you assure the suffering of another: no high blown assertion of morality can escape this essential fact, and to inflict this suffering on another, perhaps less capable of protecting him or herself than you, is immoral, unethical, and unforgivable. -- summer patriot, winter soldier
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:34 PM | Your Say (6)
Shut It Down Already
When you talk about the government "shutting down"
the reason that most people sprout a smile is that they know that most firefighters and police will stay on the job no matter what. They know that "government shutting down" means primarily that you stop paying the tens of thousands of professional leaches who draw a government -- i.e., a taxpayer-funded -- paycheck without (let us be candid) doing much of anything. Savor the phrase "government shutting down"the next time you visit the DMV or the next time you have some interaction with some other government official -- the next time, e.g., you catch sight of your state senator or congressman. Doesn't sound so bad does it? -- Roger's Rules » The age of the IOU, or chickens/roost, and "anarchy literally"
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:17 PM | Your Say (2)
No Sheeples Shoots.... SCORES! Nothing but NET!
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:13 PM | Your Say (1)
An Old Sermon Story
An angel awoke who had slept through the first two centuries after Jesus had gone down to earth and ascended back to heaven. The angel went to the Lord and asked, “Where did you go?”
Jesus replied, “I've been down on earth.”
The angel asked, "How did it go?"
Jesus said, "They crucified me."
The angel protested, "You must have had a wide influence."
Jesus said, "I had twelve followers, and one betrayed me to my death."
The angel asked, "What will become of your work?"
Jesus said, "I left it in the hands of my friends."
"And if they fail?" asked the angel.
Jesus said, "I have no other plans."
via Sense of Events: The pivot day of history
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (1)
June 11, 2010
Silenced by Courage
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was black, so they could not dismiss her as a racist;
she had lived in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands and the United States, so they could not call her an ignorant provincial hick; she was an avowed atheist, so they could not call her a Christian bigot on a crusade against peaceful Islam; and she was multi-lingual, articulate, and brilliant, so they couldn't just call her stupid. All the pejoratives they usually apply to people who disagree with them wouldn't work, and so they were left to confront her ideas, and those ideas stripped them naked, rent their garments of superiority and condescension into tatters at their feet, and left them angry and confused, whining to each other in the corners of the room, unable to say anything to her face. Their favorite weapons, ad hominem name-calling and sneering condescension, were disarmed. -- ｻ Ayaan Hirsi Ali Upends Leftist Stereotypes in Santa Monica - Big Government
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:26 PM | Your Say (1)
HIV Sweepstakes: D.C. is Number !
What can I say? A city of winnahs!
While the pandemic AIDS problem throughout Africa deserves to receive much of the world’s efforts, information about the increasing HIV incidence in certain U.S. groups is difficult to find in media reports. As representative examples, epidemiological data continues to be collected, showing:Looking for Dr. Molinari's career to implode in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....-- Do we have a forgotten U.S. pandemic? by Dr. John A. Molinari - Dental Economics
- From 2004 to 2007, the estimated number of newly diagnosed HIV/AIDS in the 34 states with the recently developed confidential name-based HIV infection reporting system increased 15%. While this may reflect changes in an improved reporting system, it may in fact indicate a rise in the HIV infection.
- The current prevalence of HIV infection within certain subpopulations actually challenges rates observed in areas of Africa. Think about it for a moment. The incidence of HIV-infected adults in Washington, D.C. (one in 30) is actually higher than reported numbers for Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Rwanda.
- In addition, incidence of HIV infection among men who have sex with men in some cities and urban areas increased in 2007, and was higher than the population incidence in severely affected countries such as Kenya (7.8%) and South Africa (16.9%).
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:02 PM | Your Say (5)
Cash & Carry
Just mindboggling: PHOTO'S OF A MEXICAN DRUG LORD'S HOME AFTER BEING RAIDED That is cash piled on that table in the background! (And in the closets, the backroom, the suitcases, the filing cabinets, the plastic bins, the bathroom.....)
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:11 PM | Your Say (2)
Republicans: They Thirst for Death
Technology adoption is always a chancy thing.
The GOP will have an effective Twitter strategy in place by around 2016. That result will be sandwiched between Stacy McCain’s 2015 adoption of TweetDeck, and the 2014 replacement of Twitter as the dominant communication tool by a to-be-announced technology. --I Fail To See How Twitter Can ‘Hurt’The GOP : The Other McCain
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (0)
The Abused & Schizotypal President
American Thinker: A Shrink Asks: What's Wrong with Obama?
Along with a delusional disorder, Obama may fit for a mild psychotic disorder called schizotypal disorder. It may explain some of Obama's oddness. People with schizotypal disorder hold bizarre beliefs, are suspicious and paranoid, and have inappropriate and constricted affect. They have few close friends and are socially awkward. A schizotypal is someone like your strange cousin Becky who is addicted to astrology, believes she is psychic, and is the oddball at social gatherings. Schizotypal Disorder does ring some bells vis-à-vis Obama. One way the diagnosis doesn't fit, however, is that schizotypals are generally harmless, odd ducks. Not so with Obama.
--Trauma: My gut tells me that Obama was seriously traumatized in childhood. His mother disregarded his basic needs, dragged him all over the place, and ultimately abandoned him. But I think there may be something even more insidious in his family background. While I can't prove it, the degree of Obama's disconnect reminds me of my sexually abused clients.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (5)
You do realize, in the end, that Israel's going to win, right?
A major war is coming that will pit the Muslim world against Israel,
perhaps led by Iran, and in the end the Ayatollahs will deeply regret instigating this, as we don't believe Israel will allow the Islamic Republic of Crazy to exist when the dust settles. Israel will do to Iran what the US should have done years ago, and usher in a regime change. If there's any luck in the world, Israel will do the same thing to Lebanon, Syria, Lybia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and every other Muslim nation. All of their governments deserve toppling and, frankly, need to be knocked back to the stone age militarily, economically, and institutionally. We would add culturally and socially, but these lunatics are already there. -- HillBuzz
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (4)
The Internet Kill Switch
A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet....
Because there are few limits on the president's emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition. -- Senators propose granting president emergency Internet power | Politics and Law - CNET News
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:37 AM | Your Say (4)
June 10, 2010
"The things I miss..."
From a letter to her husband killed in Afghanistan:
I miss your kisses. You are hands down, by far, the best kisser in the entire universe. I miss those soft, full lips. They were incredible. Love at first kiss, you said it right baby. If it weren't for your amazing kissing skills, we would not be where we are today - you know it! That's what won me over, it was always funny to think about. You made my knees go weak and then you used to make fun of me for it! I made your knees weak. I miss weak knees. -- A Little Pink in a World of Camo: Things I Miss
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:06 PM | Your Say (2)
Briggs is onto the "Oh go fuck yourself" global warming story of the week.
Castrations To Increase Due To Global Warming; Or, Reindeer Not Having A Ball
See if you have the smarts to follow this: global warming is going to cause "thick ice layers on top of [the] snow" in Norway, which will make "it harder for reindeer to reach the lichen that they feed on beneath."
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:57 PM | Your Say (1)
QOTD (So far)
"These things -- the beauty, the memory of our own past -- are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." C.S. Lewis, via Belmont Club ｻ The Singer Not the Song
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:00 PM | Your Say (2)
The New Hope & Change
It's our sincere hope that Sarah Palin's emerging "pioneer feminism" sweeps the country,
washes over the GOP, and drowns the Romneys and Pawlentys completely, creating a better Republican Party than has ever existed in our lifetimes. We think we'd still end up as Independents in the end, but who knows what will happen when Governor Palin is in charge.... We believe things are so bad under Obama that even by 2016 Americans won’t be ready to trust someone with a (D) after their name in the Oval. We also believe President Palin will win re-election handily in 2016, because every day she proves to us more and more that she has just what this country needs, right when she needs it. -- HillBuzz
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (1)
June 9, 2010
The Oil Spill Prophecy
Gedaliya injects some sense into the muck at The Blame Game « Jaded HavenAnnually, 48,000,000 barrels of oil (naturally) bubbles up from the Gulf sea floor. If there are 30,000 barrels coming out of the wellhead each day (a middling estimate), that would amount to ~10,000,000 barrels a year, about a quarter of the known natural seepage.
The Gulf ecosystem is well-adapted to the presence of this material. What is really threatened isn't the ecosystem, isn't the fishing industry or the oil industry. What is threatened is the tourism industry, for after all, who wants to go to the beach and sit or step on a tar ball?
Right now the nation is in some kind of hysterical frenzy as if the end of all is close at hand. It isn't. The tourism industry in the Gulf will be suing BP for decades. They'll try and bleed BP dry.
There are tens of thousands of (previously) unemployed Southerners strolling up and down beaches with plastic bags and shovels soaking in the rays while casually poking around the sand for about 10 minutes out of every hour they're paid.
Environmentalists get to rant and rave for free on national television.
The mass media has oily pelicans to put on its front pages and its newscasts.
This will all end when that stupid underwater camera shows nothing coming out of the well head. After that, the nation will forget about it quick.
Posted by Vanderleun at 5:59 PM | Your Say (12)
Guess which book is the No. 1 Bestseller at Amazon.com right now?
Thought You'd Never Ask: Hayek kicks buttThe Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, first published in 1944. That's right. One of the best rebuttals of collectivism, statism, and fascism ever penned. Invaluable to an understanding of socialist agitation and the slippery slope of current-day politics.Not sure about reading such a heavy tome? I'm featuring the Classic Comic version in my main panel. Yes, that one over on the left. Scroll for it.
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:41 PM | Your Say (3)
Dear Wikipedia,
Okay, so you “redesign” your home page and spiff up that puzzle globe. No real reason for that that I can see except that people who can dick with something that’s pretty good can always dick with it to make it worse.
Let’s talk the “Wikipedia Search” box on the home page. Since the Stone Age of the Web it was always, like fooking ALWAYS, near the top on the left hand side of the home page. Now it’s in the upper right corner on a long diagonal across the page.
Let’s review: Most of the world reads from left to right. For over a decade you’ve trained all of your billions of users to position the mouse cursor on the left.
But now we all, all of us BILLIONS, have to track the mouse across the long diagonal. A second or two for every Wikipedia search but multiply that by billions a day and what have you got other than a USELESS CLUSTERFUCK OF A DESIGN UPGRADE?
Did you design geniuses come to work with the express idea, “Let’s see what small change we can make that will irritate billions every day?” Or did you just kick back behind three roofies, a pack of smack, and ten bong hits and throw darts marked “Search” at an interface digram?
Thank you for allowing me to share.
-- KA-CHING!Posted by Vanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (5)
June 8, 2010
This just in...
- Helen Thomas to be inducted into Museum of Natural History | The People's Blog
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:20 PM | Your Say (3)
Tuesday's Links Are Full of Grace
- Steve Jobs at D8: The Full, Uncut Interview The wide-ranging chat runs for more than 90 minutes, and covers everything from Jobs’ fraying relationship with Google (GOOG) to his stance on Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, to his lack of interest in the TV market. | D8 Conference | AllThingsD
- "I was at a dinner party where one actress had adopted a child from Africa and she was saying: ‘I want my children to know their heritage.’ I said: ‘lock them in a room and throw them a jar of flies.’" -Joan Rivers Word Around the Net
- WTF is HTML5 (Infographic) And why we should all care.
- "De-masking the Bridges" is a soundwalk that will explore the small triangle between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge in DUMBO. Elastic City | Reshaping New York Through New Walks
- Titian’s Palette includes one full-sized tube each of six colors: Lapis Lazuli (natural ultramarine or lazurite), Malachite, Lead-Tin Yellow, Italian Yellow Earth, Vermilion, Ercolano Red, Lead White and German Vine Black. Hidden Loci and Technological Change @ things magazine
- The 10 elements of news: immediacy, proximity, consequence, prominence, suspence, oddity, sex, conflict, emotion, new. Don Surber
- Is There a Monolith on Mars' Moon, Phobos? 'When people find out about that they are going to say, "Who put that there? Who put that there?" Well the universe put it there, or if you choose God put it there." You Couldn't Make This Up Dept.
- The Explorer “I am not a scientist,” Cousteau told The Christian Science Monitor in 1986. “I am, rather, an impresario of scientists.” The Smart Set
- Ken and Barbie Are Sorta Plain Compared To These Two iOwnTheWorld.com » Blog Archive » A Little Palin Porn
- Squeaky Clean ‘Porn Has Never Touched This Computer’
Posted by Vanderleun at 3:37 AM | Your Say (1)
June 7, 2010
The Odious Guest
A ripping yarn of drink and disaster:Rising out of my chair and reaching for a piece of firewood that I thought might serve nicely to send Scabby back to dreamland, my wife, declining to wait for a gallant rescue, caught him in the breadbasket with a well placed elbow sending him back peddling. He stumbled over a chair, glanced drunkenly off of a large cedar tree, hit the waist-high split rail fence at cliffs edgewith a considerable head of steam and without further fanfare, broke through the top rail and went over the side head first.... -- continued @ Your not my type. ｫ westsound modern
Posted by Vanderleun at 11:18 PM | Your Say (0)
Helen Thomas is "the tip of the shark’s dorsal fin just breaking the surface of the water"
They completely and utterly ignored anything the Communist did no matter how vile. Today, they've staked their reputation on the assertion that Israel's evil actions are the controlling factor in the conflict in the regions. They ignore anything that the enemies of Israel do, no matter how vile. By publicly proclaiming such a delusional outlook, they are forced to adopt ever increasingly radical assertions in order to justify their de facto alliance with evil. The only way they could justify carrying water for the Communists in Indochina was to paint America as being even worse. Today, the only way they can justify carrying water for the racist, sexist, homophobic, brutal autocrats of the Middle-East is to claim that Israel is even worse and/or that the actions of the autocrats are just reactions to whatever bad thing Israel has done. -- Chicago Boyz Helen Thomas the HarbingerDrive her and the whole pack of them fast to their tombs.
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:11 PM | Your Say (1)
Post Turtle
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:48 PM | Your Say (5)
Monday's Links Are Fair of Face
- 'Nasty' The First and Final Word on/for Helen Thomas: Everyone knows she is a nasty piece of work and has been a nasty piece of work for decades. And when I say a nasty piece of work, I don't simply mean her opinions on Israel. She's been full-spectrum awful. I've known a few people who knew her 40 years ago, and she was slimy then too. The Helen Thomas 'Scandal' - Jonah Goldberg
- If we are left to wonder why the government is so absolutely inept at dealing with real-life disasters, perhaps it is because “policy” has become politics divorced from material reality. Bookworm Room » Where it goes wrong – by guest blogger Danny Lemieux
- One Cʘsmos: Liberal Threats to Liberalism It is simply a truism that liberty is not high on the list of values that animate the single woman. Rather, they much prefer to be swaddled by the state.
- The tenured intellectual is the only known creature that denies its own existence. They are, therefore, dangerous animals. William M. Briggs, Statistician » Sophomoronology, John C. Wright’s Pathology of Intellectuals
- Now, because of my suspicion that my reliance on these things is stealing a literary mode of thinking, I've become increasingly suspicious of my love for gadgets and technology. Nicholas Carr on the 'Superficial' Webby Mind - Culture - The Atlantic
- Stonehenge at Night, 1944 - Light-bomb archaeology.
- Courage and Carnage: Remembering D-Day, 66 years ago - a photo essay @ The Big Picture - Boston.com
- "Each year at budget time, the Fourth Estate would scramble to be worthy in the eyes of Capitol Hill for increased support." Word Around the Net: SAVE THE LEGACY MEDIA, PART 4
- ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Rights Holder Sets June Production Start Whether Or Not Stars Align Says four films will be made from the book. Four?
- Two popular types of bad copyediting are (1) editing that didn’t need doing in the first place, and (2) needed editing that didn’t get done. Bad Editing and the Word Processor - The Subversive Copy Editor Blog
- 8 Mysterious Unsolved Sounds Is some mythical, nightmarish sea monster responsible for the bizarre ocean sound known as ‘The Bloop’?
- Dear Newsweek Beta Males: Y’all never stopped writing in your slam books, did you? Still smarting from the sting of being shot down for prom? Newsweek, Heal Thyself
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (1)
Door. Ass. Bang!
- Hearst Newspapers: HELEN THOMAS ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT WASHINGTON, June 7, 2010 – Helen Thomas announced Monday that she is retiring, effective immediately. Helen Thomas "retires" Translation: Lo, Hearst hath said unto Thomas, "At once, good-night: Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once."
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (5)
June 6, 2010
Lileks = Pith
"Let me put it another way: when they write the history of the early part of the 21st century, people who worried about the impact of long hot showers on the Climate, or wondered what would replace zombies, will not figure high in the roll call of significant actors." -- Monday & Tomorrow – The Bleat.Posted by Vanderleun at 11:20 PM | Your Say (0)
Dana Milbank Needs to Resign WaPo In Order to Spend More Time with His Penis
- Seriously. What else can one ask of a toad who writes glop such as, "God spoke to Moses through a burning bush on Mount Horeb. He apparently speaks to Republicans through a spewing oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico." Dana Milbank - If oil spill is 'an act of God,' BP merits divine retribution Dana, your dick, it's not just for typing anymore.
Posted by Vanderleun at 2:47 PM | Your Say (2)
Must Read Series of the Moment
As each level of fiction collapses before the onslaught of offended Reality, many more levels of lies remain. The massive foundation of social, economic, cultural, biological, political and geopolitical illusions on which the modern Western state perches as though on a layer of sweet and airy meringue is already so pitted and fissured that all but diehard Snatchers perceive it. Alas, frank public debate of the underlying phantom crossbars is proscribed by Snatcher laws and speech codes. Moreover, the majority of the population is hostile to such debate, for it’s guy-wired by Pod mental chipsets implanted by the state’s compulsory education and remotely controlled by all other major social institutions nonstop for the last 45 years.
Posted by Vanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (2)
Church of the Holy Links
- The Future Of America's Working Class is on display daily in Watford, England.
- "I would knock off every crocodile on earth too...." Best blog comment of all time?
- Oh, this will end well: “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities,” Ali Shirazi, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative inside the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying. Robin Shepherd Online
- For his father on D-Day: He was 25-years-old when he hit Omaha Beach, 38-years-old when I was born. The Daily Bayonet « Some D-Day Thoughts on Rights
- Translation of Thomas’s statement: "I wish I hadn’t said it, and I especially wish I hadn’t gotten caught on camera saying it." neo-neocon Well, at least Helen Thomas…
- After 45 years of an accelerated Long March through every Western institution, society is now not only controlled and manipulated at will by Gnostic Loons fired up by fanatical religious zeal, but largely populated by pitiable Pod creatures “snatched” by the Loons in a multi-generational campaign. All gyre in some Inverse Reality vortex that bears no resemblance to actual life on Earth. From Meccania To Atlantis - Part 16: Exodus 1: Reality for Radicals
- Resolved: If we boiled them in oil, this stuff would stop. House of Eratosthenes
- An experimental drug for lung cancer patients with a certain gene showed extraordinary promise in early testing.... Money Grubbing EVIL Private Sector Pharmaceutical Company Develops Drug With REAL HOPE
- With Obama as the U.S. president it is open season on Jews everywhere on the planet. Where is John Brown when we need him?
- Do you support Arizona's tough new law on illegal immigration? Vote yes or no.
- Bull Tech Examples of Bull Tech include the Chevy Volt, the Tesla, ethanol, and biofuels. American Thinker: Green Tech Defined
- In which "Plug the hole!" meets "Shut off the damn volcano!" Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: Have You Seen My Clapper?
- Life Isn’t Fair: Galarraga’s Imperfectly Perfect Game Conserve the game as it is. Resist change, embrace tradition.
- Well, at least he's still got Sir Paul McCartney Obama loses the Left: suddenly, it's cool to bash Barack
- Obama was in no way responsible for the catastrophe, and that there is nothing he can do about it. He is being held to blame for "inaction," as wrongly as his predecessor was held to blame over Hurricane Katrina, by media and public unable to cope with the proposition that, "Stuff happens." David Warren
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (0)
June 5, 2010
Branding FAIL
Posted by Vanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (4)
"Saturday's Links Must Work for a Living"
- What? You're not an Islamophobe? Why in heaven's name not? Straight talk from Pat Condell via Curmudgeonly & Skeptical
- Marilynne Robinson: Can science solve life's mysteries?
"Here is another instance of evolution, to illustrate my point. The universe passed through its unimaginable first moment, first year, first billion years, wresting itself from whatever state of nonexistence, inflating, contorting, resolving into space and matter, bursting into light. Matter condenses, stars live out their generations. Then, very late, there is added to the universe of being a shaped stick or stone, a jug, a cuneiform tablet. They appear on a tiny, teetering, lopsided planet, and they demand wholly new vocabularies of description for reality at every scale. What but the energies of the universe could be expressed in the Great Wall of China, the St Matthew Passion? For our purposes, there is nothing else. Yet language that would have been fully adequate to describe the ages before the appearance of the first artifact would have had to be enlarged by concepts like agency and intention, words like creation, that would query the great universe itself. Might not the human brain, that most complex object known to exist in the universe, have undergone a qualitative change as well? If my metaphor only suggests the possibility that our species is more than an optimised ape, that something terrible and glorious befell us, a change gradualism could not predict – if this is merely another fable, it might at least encourage an imagination of humankind large enough to acknowledge some small fragment of the mystery we are." -- An edited extract from Marilynne Robinson's Absence of Mind
- Even though evil as an idea may have been out of fashion, as a reality it has never gone away. The faces of evil
- I'm drunk on Rimbaud while I read the gin bottle. I invented girls wearing their underwear on the outside of their clothes. Sippican Cottage: Lumber Up. Limbo Down
- You and I both know that if we found Osama, it would be all over. It being 'every reason' we are over there. Only Osama - Cobb
- Never Forget: Obama's not incompetent, he's malevolent. American Thinker Blog: Don't be fooled by Obama's 'incompetence'
- Think twice before wearing the banana skirt.
- The Right Tool for.... Most women consider oral a convenient tool and not an especially fun one to use. Playing The Piper « Jaded Haven
- It’s time for our second annual “first historic toxic organic garden peacock harvest.” Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog: Peacock Blue. And Green. All Organic
- Surprise! Many of the core policies which Americans have pursued in the hope of achieving stability while consolidating American leadership are making American leadership increasingly difficult in an increasingly unstable world. Terrible Twins: Turkey, Brazil and the Future of American Foreign Policy
- Yes, the Arabs have hundreds of millions, Israel seven. Yes, they have oil, the Israelis none. Yes, libel a Jew and it’s cute, libel the prophet and go into hiding. And yes, Israel is a surrogate often for anti-Americanism. But all that said, it is still strange that so many westerners focus such antipathy and attention on Israel on precisely the topics that they otherwise ignore in other countries. Works and Days » Should Jews Apologize to Turkey or Go Back to Poland and Germany?
Posted by Vanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (0)
June 4, 2010
LinksLite
- The one nation able to defuse the crisis between Turkey and Israel is America. And President Obama has his head a mile under the Gulf. Belmont Club » The Black Hand
- QOTD: "Depending solely on news from biased sources is nothing more than a lazy circle jerk of simplistic reverb. It’s cultish myopia at its most basic level, a rejection of intellectual curiosity, basing what you read according to your ideological creed." Eyes Wide Shut « Jaded Haven
- Landslide lake in Pakistan - The Big Picture Stunning photo essay on a gigantic disaster you probably don't know about.
Posted by Vanderleun at 12:52 AM | Your Say (0)
June 2, 2010
Global Linktification
- One Sweet Ride. A certain 1972 Chevy has had my attention for the past few months. I’m not in a position to get one, but damn I think about it all the time. I really love all of those 1970s Chevy trucks, especially the C10s and the late 70s Suburbans a la Bad Blake. Like a Two-Tone Rock @ A Continuous Lean.
- 100 Things That Do Not Make You a Better Person 96. Telling BP to “Plug The Damn Hole!” House of Eratosthenes
- Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz What happens when you add Alka-Seltzer to water in outer space? Miss Cellania -
- In case that is not obvious, ask yourself: why on Earth are we drilling for oil in mile-deep water, in the complete absence of a technology adequate to fix mishaps when they happen? Don't you suppose there are places on dry land, say, in Alaska, or in the vast Federal lands in the western states, where they could be drilling instead? Why would a greedy business corporation be doing something as expensive and dangerous -- to itself as well as everyone else -- as what it is doing? "E pur si muove!": Criminal Charges for BP?
- D'oh, the humanity. Photos: The Horrifying Toll of the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
- Thoureau's Pencils Before he wrote about civil disobedience and spent his time at Walden Pond, he worked at the family pencil company. Thoreau perfected a process of using clay as a binder to make the soft, loose graphite hard and suitable for pencils. Suddenly the New England graphite could be used to make a pencil that didn’t leave giant smears, and the Thoreaus’ business took off. By the middle of the 19th century, the Thoreaus were selling pencils with varying graphite hardness, which they numbered 1 through 4. mental_floss Blog » What Makes #2 Pencils So Special?
- People Who Need People: In contrast to the US mine clearing bot, the Nazis simply marched Soviet prisoners across minefields to clear them. That solved the problem of feeding POWs and clearing the mines at one stroke. The Soviets, not to be outdone, used Soviet citizens to march across Nazi minefields to clear them out.... During the Iraq-Iran war, Khomeini did Hitler and Stalin one better. He used Iranian children to clear pathways through minefields. Belmont Club
- President Obama: I will not rest in my relentless, partisan attacks no matter how obvious my incompetent handling of the Gulf spill becomes
- "It was ended, as most of these are, by a man with a gun. In this case, himself...." The Smallest Minority
- Tipper and Al are splitsville… …and there’s sorrow and consternation in the land. Seriously, there is. neo-neocon knows about this: "One of the basic rules of marriage is that no one knows anything about anyone else’s marriage."
- Sir Paul's judgment about US Presidents is equal to his judgment about second wives: "Paul McCartney would like President Obama's critics to let him be. “I’m a big fan, he’s a great guy. So lay off him, he’s doing great.” Paul McCartney Hey, Paul, we'll get back to you on that in November. Okay?
- Sheer Drudgery: One month, three quarters of a Billion (with a B) views -- "THANKS FOR MAKING MAY 2010 THE LARGEST MAY IN DRUDGEREPORT'S 15 YEAR HISTORY! THE PAGE WAS VIEWED 784,621,221 TIMES [PASSING LAST MAY'S 600,973,530].. " DRUDGE REPORT 2010®
Posted by Vanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (5)