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December 31, 2012

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret...

"As I watch the entire grand circus of the Enlightenment collapsing, I can only laugh.

But at which group of clowns? The Ringmasters, who will kill everyone under the Big Top if they have to in order to keep them inside the turnstiles? The acrobats, who frantically throw pratfall after pratfall in the face of the audience in order to keep them from noticing that the kingpole is broken? Or the butchers, cooly hawking crap to the rubes in the seats even as the top begins to fall?
No. My laughter is reserved for the audience -- the jaded gentry, the schoomarms, the empty-eyed, slack-jawed food tubes who shucked out their wealth in the belief that the circus was better than reality, and that the show could go on forever.
So, Mister Bandmaster! Strike up the "Stars and Stripes Forever" for one last time. The Big Top is on fire, and nobody's going to get out before it all falls down in flames around them.
New Years' Resolution: resist the urge to say "I told you so" as the firing squad takes aim. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret... "-- B Lewis comment on Side-Lines: The American public believes itself to be free,

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:55 PM | Your Say (2)

New Year's Resolutions

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:50 PM | Your Say (3)

Less, Please

"Capitalism and the good life. There is a limit beyond which material goods don’t make us happier. We believe that. We also believe we are under that limit... " -- | Commonweal magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:26 PM | Your Say (1)

"Ya gotta have a gimmick!"

The Specialty always comes with a gimmick. Obviously, President Obama’s is that He’s black.
Take issue with anything President Obama did or said, and you must be some kind of racist. That’s the gimmick. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s gimmick is that she’s a frumpy middle-aged woman, who looks like she’d have trouble holding on to her husband, and the nation knows that she does have such trouble. You aren’t even allowed to discuss this in mixed company — but the fact remains, nevertheless, that that’s her gimmick. She gives bullying speeches and does a lot of hollering, but when she runs things the results turn to crap... -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:11 PM | Your Say (2)

Best Essayist: 'I'd like to thank all the reading people.' [Bumped]

Winner - 2012 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

Doug Ross @ Journal: #Fab50: Announcing the 2012 Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winners Best Essayist: Gerard Van Der Leun, American Digest.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (37)

The American public believes itself to be free,

to have a spirit of rugged individualism, to live in a democracy admired by the world. In fact Americans are not particularly free and becoming less so by the minute, are not individualists but herd consumers formed by a controlled press, and do not live in a democracy. And totalitarianism comes. -- Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 AM | Your Say (7)

December 30, 2012

Advanced Vocabulary Training 8

antonomasia: substituting an epithet for a proper name or v.v. (e.g. your lordship or Judas)
kislar-aga: a high-ranking eunuch (under sultan and grand vizier) in the Ottoman Empire
guimpe: a type of garment covering the neck and shoulders, often part of a nun’s habit
sutler: a merchant who accompanies an army and sells the soldiers provisions
colback: also calpac. A black hat of felt or sheepskin common to Asia Minor
reimbushment: reversing one’s course along previous tracks (e.g. in snow)
dolman: a Turkish woman’s cloak or mantle with capelike sleeves
quotidian: commonplace, or recurring daily (comp. “quartan”)
adust: dry or burnt, esp. in the humoral system of medicine
impassible: variant of impassive - incapable of suffering
solecism: a violation of etiquette in manner of grammar
incondite: crudely or poorly constructed or composed
hippanthrope: one who believes himself a horse
pullulate: to teem or swarm, or to breed or bud

--Coldewey's Curiosities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (12)

QOTY

QOTD: "Decades hence, our offspring will listen in disbelief when we tell them we used to pay billions of dollars to warehouse children in “gun-free zones” overseen by morons; that 21st-century kids were groomed for 19th-century jobs and came out functionally illiterate but experts nonetheless on the subjects of Kwanzaa, “safe” sex, and something called global warming." --Kathy Shaidle, Ban School, Not Guns

[VIA Doug Ross @ Journal]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (5)

The Thomas Friedman Op/Ed Generator

Why Nations Fail | "The first rule of holes is that when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels.

If I had fifteen minutes to pitch my idea to politicians, I'd tell them two things about education. First, there's no way around the issue unless we're prepared to spend more: and not just spend more, but spend smarter by investing in the kind of green energy that makes countries succeed. -- Make your own @ the Friedman Op/Ed Generator

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (3)

"Higher" Learning

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.” – William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 AM | Your Say (1)

The Hundred Best Lists of All Time

* 1 and 100 may be switched in certain states.-- The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:38 AM | Your Say (1)

Christ of Saint John of the Cross

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“Desolation is a file, and the endurance of darkness is preparation for great light.” -- St. John of the Cross
Dali: "In the first place, in 1950, I had a 'cosmic dream' in which I saw this image in colour
and which in my dream represented the 'nucleus of the atom.' This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it 'the very unity of the universe,' the Christ!" In order to create the figure of Christ, Dali had Hollywood stuntman Russell Saunders suspended from an overhead gantry, so he could see how the body would appear from the desired angle. -- - La Wik

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:50 AM | Your Say (1)

December 29, 2012

Calm Morning, detail , 1904 Frank Weston Benson

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Complete painting here.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 PM | Your Say (0)

Frozen Bubbles Suspended Below Abraham Lake

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"Even though the icy surface was around 8-9 inches thick, it still scared the hell out of me,
not only because of the fact that I could see all the cracks... and the darkness of the lake bottom through the glassy surface, but also because of the deep boomy, cracking sounds coming from underneath the lake's surface." --- - My Modern Metropolis

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 PM | Your Say (1)

Door. Ass. Bang!

Deport me? If America won't change its crazy gun laws... I may deport myself says Piers Morgan [To quote the Bard: " Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once. "]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:57 PM | Your Say (4)

Earth to Obama Suckers: Shut Up and Get Ready to Bleed

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Folks freak at size of tax hikes if fiscal cliff isn’t averted - NYPOST.com “It’s that much higher?” asked IT worker Vikas Kataria, 34,
who discovered that his combined household income of about $250,000 per year will cost him nearly $10,000 more in taxes. “I thought it was a couple thousand — but that’s a lot,” said Kataria, who works at Merrill Lynch in Manhattan and is married to a systems analyst for a brokerage firm. “That’s huge!”
[Hey, they wanted the feeling of Obama's third biggest lie being broken and now here it comes.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:14 PM | Your Say (10)

Black "Scholar" Cornel West: 'Who cares about those little white kids?'

Cornel West: 'No Tears' for 'Vanilla' Sandy Hook “We can’t just shed tears for those on the vanilla side of town,” West said. "But it’s a good thing that we now have a discussion on gun control.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:30 PM | Your Say (4)

A culture of crowds makes crazy people even crazier.

There's nothing for paranoia like a major city and these days we all live in the major city of a culture that is crowded in even its most rural areas.

Crowd culture expects everyone to follow the leader, to join the meme, to move with the flow, but that is something that crazy people cannot do. The madman is always out of step and out of sync, the paranoid schizophrenic occasionally makes a compelling leader, but he is unable to be a follower. --Sultan Knish: Madmen and Crowds

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:26 PM | Your Say (0)

"After watching a documentary about the tragic story of Jonestown, "

"I was struck by the utterly unthinking way that so many people put themselves completely at the mercy of a glib and warped man, who led them to degradation and destruction. And I could not help thinking of the parallel with the way we put a glib and warped man in the White House." -- Thomas Sowell

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:41 PM | Your Say (3)

This Just In: People's Front of Judea joins Free Syria Army

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from The Pan-Arabia Enquirer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (0)

115th Mobile Abortion Detachment Provides Crucial Support At Kandahar

While some of the hardest jobs on deployment fall on the men and women of the medical profession,

the job of Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Dalten is a particularly difficult one. As the commanding officer of the 115th Mobile Abortion Detachment, the only deployable abortion facility in the US Army, it falls on her to ensure that America’s fighting women can receive safe and timely access to abortions in combat zones and stay in the fight. -- The Duffel Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:15 AM | Your Say (2)

"The new history guidelines suffer from the failings of modern academia.

As you read them, you imagine a senile old man, shuffling around in his pajamas and muttering, “Race, class, gender…race, class, gender.” Everything is about demographic interest groups. --Our History, and Theirs | Power Line

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:15 AM | Your Say (0)

Make Way for Ducklings and Froggers!

First this:

Then Seinfeld's The Frogger:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (1)

December 28, 2012

“Moderation?”

That was one thing when the golden prize of the Presidency was at stake,
but given the demands of Fabian warfare, politically, moderation is a loser. A war of attrition and supply is what is needed. And that demands no moderation at all. Rather a grinding semi-guerilla warfare to pick off and make examples as the Partisans in WWII did with the Nazis, or Cossacks did to the Grenadiers in Napoleon’s time. -- Obama, Gun Control, and the Russian Winter | whiskeysplace

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:49 PM | Your Say (1)

"The model being to fight Obama at every turn,"

"offer no decisive battle of annihilation, and cut off his money supply. Over the fiscal cliff? Sure.
It will hurt Obama’s ability to “feed” his army of Sandra Fluke sluts doing paper-pushing NGO or government jobs, push more EBT money to ghetto voters and barrio (illegal alien) voters, and hand out goodies generally to crony capital. Obama’s great weakness is that while his army all HATES HATE HATES Straight White men like Hannibal’s hated Rome, they still have to eat. And none of them are good at finding food on their own. -- Obama, Gun Control, and the Russian Winter | whiskeysplace

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:47 PM | Your Say (4)

This Just In

General That Did Things Besides Boinking His Biographer Passes Away Quietly | The Rumford Meteor

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (1)

The two most regrettable traits in a young mind

The ignorance of the uninformed combined with the arrogance of the zealot.

All too often students in these courses become revved up over a particular writ — solar power, gay marriage, the war on women, multiculturalism — without the skills to present their views logically and persuasively in response to criticism. Heat, not light, is the objective of these classes. --Works and Days » An Anatomy of a Most Peculiar Institution

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (1)

I sense the beginning of a trend

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As in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.

Then again there was the really long run in which 2000 was also the first year since 999 AD without a 1 in it.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (2)

John Kerry "is a perfect fit for the Obama Administration. "

Rodger shares: "This coward who awarded himself the necessary three Purple Hearts that allowed him to exit Vietnam early, unscathed. This man whose comrades later called him a fraud, unfit for the presidency.

This man who lied (perjured himself) before Congress about atrocities committed by American troops in Vietnam. This man whose organization voted on whether to assassinate Republican hawks in the Senate!! This man who in violation of the law conducted his own "peace talks: with the North Vietnamese, and later with Nicaragua's Sandinista government; both acts that should have landed him in prison. This man who threw his (unearned) medals away in a public display, and later admitted they were someone else's medals. -- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (2)

The Polluters

We’re enshrouded in a thick layer of Smug, people are running around adding to the gaseous covering everywhere you turn, but the atmospheric pollution is only the beginning of the problem. There are still the effects of unwise decision-making, waiting to confront us at the least opportune time. Global warming, climate change, whatever, that political movement is merely a subset of this. It is the golden age of the intellectual, defined by Tom Wolfe as “a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others.” --House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (0)

Tomb Boom!

Will 'Fiscal Cliff' Accelerate Millionaire Deaths?

If the life of an elderly wealthy family member extends into 2013, the tax bills will be substantially higher. An estate that could bequest $3 million this year will leave just $1.9 million after taxes next year. Shifting a death from January to December could produce $1.1 million in tax savings.
[Hide, Granny, hide!]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (2)

Zero-Sum Prez

P.J. O'Rourke: Dear Mr. President, Zero-Sum Doesn't Add Up You sent a message to the world. The message is that we live in a zero-sum universe.

There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You had no answer to Mitt Romney's argument for more pizza parlors baking more pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas we've got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (7)

December 27, 2012

When kitchen knives are outlawed only outlaws will have kitchens.

Doctors say knives are too pointed. UK Doctors' kitchen knives ban callA&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing....

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all. They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:08 PM | Your Say (12)

Advanced Vocabulary Training 7

heliograph: a device with shutters and mirrors used for sending Morse code via sunbeams
auscultation: listening to internal organs for medical purposes (e.g. with a stethoscope)
erethism: physiologically or psychologically, abnormally sensitive or irritable
appanage: something one is entitled to by rank or position, real or figurative
arras: a tapestry or hanging, or a gift given by the husband at marriage
trepidant: characterized by trepidation (an uncommon adjective)
indurate: to make enduring, unfeeling, or hard, or to accustom
strathspey: a type of slow Scottish dance
corant: a quick but stately dance
pleach: to interweave or braid
-- Coldewey's Curiosities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (1)

China to Rock

Beijing spends a billion to get China rocking From the top of a hillside in Pinggu village,

an hour's drive from central Beijing, the future of China's music industry doesn't look like much – just a vista of Mao-era farmhouses and parched cabbage fields. Yet Beijing officials have announced plans to spend more than 10 years and £1.4bn turning the area into the "China Music Valley", a sprawling compound that will be home to recording studios, instrument makers, music schools, five-star hotels and an arena in the shape of a peach.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (0)

Vatican to Suck

Sistine Chapel tourists to be vacuumed and cooled to protect frescoes

"We will cover the 100 metres before the entrance with a carpet that cleans shoes; we will install suction vents on the sides to suck dust from clothes and we will lower temperatures to reduce the heat and humidity of bodies," said Paolucci.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (0)

Ted Kennedy to Stay Dead

Ted Kennedy Jr. not running.... for John Kerry's Senate seat. --neo-neocon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (0)

And I quote...

"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him had better take a closer look at the American Indian." -- Henry Ford [Via la chien de chasse @ Maggie's Farm]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (0)

Breaking!

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From Tulsa’s Fox23

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (2)

"Is it worth a human life "

Random Thoughts | Right Wing News

If you don’t want to have a gun in your home or in your school, that’s your choice. But don’t be such a damn fool as to advertise to the whole world that you are in “a gun-free environment” where you are a helpless target for any homicidal fiend who is armed. Is it worth a human life to be a politically correct moral exhibitionist?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:38 AM | Your Say (0)

Enough Already

The experts have had their chance. Their "maximum security, zero tolerance, gun-free zone" notion stands revealed as no security at all. --ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (0)

December 26, 2012

"Leftist control freaks"

often try to find signs of "market failure" to justify government intrusion into thefree and voluntary exchange of goods and services.

Similarly, they seek signs of "freedom failure" with the same goals. It's about power of the elites over us little people - always for our own good, of course, because we are "the masses." However, there are no "masses" in America and there is no aristocracy of any sort, political or otherwise. Isn't obesity a "freedom failure"? Of course it is. North Korea has no such problem because they enforce "food control." -- - BIRD DOG @ Maggie's Farm

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 PM | Your Say (0)

Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers’ Engravings

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A rare, authentic collection of 282 Vietnam era Zippo lighters went on the auction block June 21st at Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati. -- 23 MORE ATAccidental Mysteries: 06.24.12

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 PM | Your Say (2)

"Kwanzaa seems to be creeping back...."

Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga's United Slaves -- the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. -- Ann Coulter - December 26, 2012

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 PM | Your Say (3)

Bradley Manning Charges Dropped; Soldier Exploits Loophole in UCMJ

When accused of leaking over 250,000 classified documents to a foreign national,
Manning coolly rebutted that his actions were in protest against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. When told that his behavior in Iraq was illegal, Manning retorted that it was no more illegal than the American invasion. At one point Manning began emulating Major Nidal Hasan and grew a beard. The final straw, according to observers, was when Manning married his cellmate and sued for federal benefits and Basic Allowance for Housing. -- The Duffel Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:12 PM | Your Say (4)

In which the end always justifies the means.

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One chooses as one chooses because one knows what one wants, and is ready to pay the price.
One chooses classical civilization rather than the Theban desert, Rome and not Jerusalem, whatever the priests may say, because such is one’s nature, and—he is no existentialist or romantic individualist avant la parole—because it is that of men in general, at all times, everywhere. If others prefer solitude or martyrdom, he shrugs his shoulders. Such men are not for him. He has nothing to say to them, nothing to argue with them about. All that matters to him and those who agree with him is that such men be not allowed to meddle with politics or education or any of the cardinal factors in human life; their outlook unfits them for such tasks. -- The Question of Machiavelli by Isaiah Berlin

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:12 PM | Your Say (0)

School Resource Officers

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A school resource officer watches hallway happenings at Centennial High School in Franklin.
School resource officers are law-enforcement officers who have been assigned full time to middle and high schools of Williamson County, Tenn., for many years. Other Tennessee counties' school systems have them, too. Understand that, as the photo shows, these officers are armed and always have been. This has been completely uncontroversial here. After all, aren't cops supposed to be armed? --Sense of Events: Guns in my town's schools

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (4)

"What Really Happens in the TSA Private Room?" [Bumped]

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Personally, in the I.O. room, I witnessed light sexual play among officers, a lot of e-cigarette vaping, and a whole lot of officers laughing and clowning in regard to some of your nude images,  dear passengers.
 Things like this are what happens (at the very least) when you put people who are often fresh out of high school or a GED program (although there are actually a few TSA screeners with PhDs, which I guess is sad on so, so many levels) with minimal training and even less professionalism, into the position of being in charge of analyzing nude images of people in a hermetically sealed room. --Letter From a Passenger: Taking Sense Away
From Taking Sense Away | Confessions of a Former TSA Screener.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (6)

Sign of the Times

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iOwnTheWorld.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (0)

Where In the World Is Hillary Rodham Clinton?

'Not tonight today this week this month, Congress, I have a headache.' -- Where's Hillary? | The Weekly Standard [For that matter, where's Bill?]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (5)

Time for Some Common-Sense Publishing Controls

When the Founders wrote the First Amendment, they could never have conceived a technology

that would allow anyone to publish anything at any time, at almost no cost, and have it readable by millions instantaneously. But surely the Founders never intended for every single citizen to be able to exercise such a right -- in their wisdom, they would have known it would lead to chaos and unfettered thought. -- Rand Simberg

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:31 AM | Your Say (0)

"The commoners"

not only think that passage of the latest “landmark legislation” is all that is needed to achieve perfection and finally ascend to that plateau of Nirvana,

but that if you argue or question the idea then you must be the stupid one. .... It isn’t that they really are that dumb; if they were, they wouldn’t be able to get dressed in the morning and go walking around. The problem is that they just don’t pay attention. They want to go in to the voting booth, poke the right chad, and have everything come out alright. --House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (2)

Yes they are hiring more men with shades and assault rifles.

The irony is that the beneficiary of this budgetary largesse

is an agency which was just raked over the coals for its incompetence. The Associated Press reported that the State Department was criticized for "systematic failures"€ which allowed the attack on its Benghazi consulate to take place. As punishment it will now receive a huge infusion of money. -- Belmont Club » Stayin' Alive

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (2)

Within an hour, the responsibility is transferred from a killer

to the society at large and then to the groups that do not share the values of the new collectivist society.

War is declared. Press releases are faxed. Letters are sent out. "We need your help, Michael." "Stand with us, Susan." The dead are buried and their bodies are used to make the mulch of a new wave of political repression and profiteering. The dead, like singing competition contestants, are ultimately disposable, as are their killers. It is the producers and the judges who endure. --Sultan Knish: Madmen and Crowds

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (1)

December 25, 2012

Winterfall and Snowfall

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Via Mme Scherzo

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (1)

"Somewhere in Portland,"

"there’s a very old building, and that very old building has a very, very old basement. An incredible basement, a video-game-level basement, a set-decorator’s dream basement. And when you walk past the janitors office, with the wonderfully decked halls…." --> GoTo The Basement @ cabel.me

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (2)

"Intellectuals"

"— replacing what works with what sounds good." -- Thomas Sowell

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (1)

The Morning After the Night Before

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (0)

Things Are Looking Up

It may not feel like it, but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world.

That sounds like an extravagant claim, but it is borne out by evidence. Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age. --Why 2012 was the best year ever

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (4)

December 24, 2012

Prepare ye the way of the Lord,

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make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. -- Isaiah 40

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (1)

Don't Forget

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (1)

December 23, 2012

Cute All The Way Down

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (5)

Boing! Boing!

The Gold-Plated Slinky Is Ridiculous This is a $120 14-karat gold-plated Slinky. I hear it only works when it’s going down like the fancy marble steps of a mansion. But that’s neither here nor there. The real question is, why the hell does this exist?

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:36 AM | Your Say (8)

December 22, 2012

It's Come to This!

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Martin Loofah King: I Have A Clean

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:10 PM | Your Say (2)

Advanced Vocabulary Training 6

perorate: to speak formally or at great length, or to conclude a speech in such a way
irredenta: a region allied by race or history to one country but ruled by another
naometer: apparently a title given in secret societies. Possibly a fabrication.
abnegation: self-denial, or the relinquishment of a right or property
anchylosis: the adhesion or growing together of bones in a joint
tendentious: showing a tendency, bias, or purpose
hylic: material or corporeal; pertaining to matter
atabeg:
a Turkish high official, such as a vizier
spagyric: related to or resembling alchemy
sacerdotal: of or relating to priests
rachitic: suffering from rickets
-- Coldewey's Curiosities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (0)

Farming the Sahara and the End of Malthusianism

Slowing population growth. The restoration of massive swaths of farmland to nature.

Increasing world food supplies. Lower food prices for billions of people. Massive water supplies beneath the driest deserts. Abundant oil and gas. The 21st century is looking like it will be a very different kind of place than the greens and Malthusians have warned us about. --| Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (1)

The more liberal our society becomes,

the more its problems caused by liberalism are blamed on society’s remaining conservatism. -- Liberals and state psychiatric hospitals

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (0)

One week after the riots I legally purchased a pistol

Korean shopkeepers were specifically targeted by black rioters.

But the Koreans owned guns and heroically defended their property and lives through force of arms, frequently using M16′s against heavily armed looters. So anyone who tells you that private citizens don’t need assault weapons are just plain ignorant. Besides, it is the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs. --Jew Without a Gun

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:50 AM | Your Say (3)

December 21, 2012

Left wing ideologues aren’t against guns or violence.

They are only opposed to others breaking their monopoly on violence.

A gun for me but not for thee is fine by them. Since this means only one side can have a monopoly street intimidation historical demagogues sponsored rival groups of thugs. For example Hitler created his own cadre of goons and his own labor unions. The Nazi labor union was called Deutsche Arbeitsfront. -- Belmont Club サ The Battle of the Bads

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 PM | Your Say (3)

The Drudge Paradox

This sorry spectacle of messenger-shooting resembled nothing so much as a herd of stupid naked fat people trying to play Twister. -- - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (1)

December 20, 2012

Mayans ‘full of shit’ say experts from within lead-lined bunker

Speaking from one and a half miles beneath the Sierra Nevada mountain range, experts from the Institute for Studies dismissed 21/12/12 apocalypse predictions as hokum. --The Daily Mash

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 PM | Your Say (0)

As we learn more about our cells, we forget more about our souls.

Were Hitler and the countless Germans who cooperated in the killing of six million Jews, and who made lamp shades out of their skin, simply the products of an inadequate German mental health system? Or should we revisit the existence of evil? --Why America is becoming hell on earth

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 PM | Your Say (1)

The New Black Death

Even after taxes are raised and government granted more power poverty and mass murder will still be with us. What if you prayed to Obama and your prayers were not answered? -- Belmont Club サ Joe and the Volcano

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:43 PM | Your Say (1)

Keeping It Simple

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The Three Most Modern Nativity Sets You've Ever Seen. Each of the characters is a minimal wooden block that is recognizable by it's colour, proportion and place in the composition.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (9)

December 19, 2012

Obamavilles

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Across the country, tens of thousands of underemployed and jobless young people,
many with college credits or work histories, are struggling to house themselves in the wake of the recession, which has left workers between the ages of 18 and 24 with the highestunemployment rateof all adults.... Had Enough Therapy?: Homelessness in Obama's America

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:16 PM | Your Say (7)

Who Are The People Who Design These Horrific Video Games?

Everyone is writing about how Adam Lanza was addicted to super-violent, super-realistic video games No-one has asked: "Who makes these video games? Where do they get their warped, violent, evil ideas from?" --Camera Lucida

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (11)

Malthusianism

Malthusianism is a psychological disposition more than an intellectual conclusion,

and we have no doubt that the alarmists among us will find new looming catastrophic shortages to warn us about. But it’s striking nevertheless that centuries of failed predictions haven’t dented the confidence so many people have in what is so clearly a wrong-headed approach to world affairs. -- Via Meadia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (0)

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery

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As Parmigianino did it, the right hand Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer And swerving easily away, as though to protect What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams, Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together In a movement supporting the face, which swims Toward and away like the hand Except that it is in repose.... -- More At PoemHunter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:28 AM | Your Say (0)

Robert H. Bork, 1927-2012

The vicious campaign waged against Judge Bork set a new low....

Reporters combed through the Borks trash hoping to find compromising tidbits; they inspected his movie rentals, and were disgusted to find the films of John Wayne liberally represented.  So hysterical was the campaign against Judge Bork that a new transitive verb entered our political vocabulary: '€œTo Bork,' scruple at nothing in order to discredit and defeat a political figure. --Roger's Rules

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (1)

Because we are just not decadent enough!

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Candy Magazine's Trannie Michelle Obama. Publisher Luis Venegas says "
I remember back in early 2007 when the Democratic Party’s nominees were narrowed down between two ‘controversial’ stereotypes never before seen for presidency: a black man, Barack Obama; and a woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton. At that time, I thought, ‘when will the time come when these archaic walls break down and the White House will be occupied by, for example, a black, transsexual woman?’”
When indeed?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (4)

This Just In

Elementary School Student Killed By Flu In Central Maine. President Expected To Call For Assault Virus Ban

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (2)

December 18, 2012

Do Civilians Armed With Guns Ever Capture, Kill, or Otherwise Stop Mass Shooters?

1. In Pearl, Mississippi in 1997, 2. In Edinboro, Pennsylvania in 1996, 3. In Winnemucca, Nevada in 2008, 4. In Colorado Springs in 2007. --The Volokh Conspiracy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 PM | Your Say (1)

The Racist Roots of Gun Control

Racist arms laws predate the establishment of the United States. Starting in 1751, the French Black Code required Louisiana colonists to stop any blacks, and if necessary, beat "any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane." If a black refused to stop on demand, and was on horseback, the colonist was authorized to "shoot to kill." -- 1993 Clayton E. Cramer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:28 PM | Your Say (0)

"He'€™s old. He's white.

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He's clearly a member of the '€˜evil 1%'.
He doesn'€™t pay his taxes. He admits to taking part in war atrocities. He committed treasonous acts and also admits breaking the law by meeting with Viet Cong leaders. His 'Vietnam Veterans Winter Soldier Investigation'€™ was later exposed as a total fraud.  €œHe wore fake medals while testifying before Congress. And, based on this photo, he'€™s clearly a '€˜gun nut'€™. But he'€™s a liberal -- so there's nothing to see here. Meet your next Secretary of State, John Kerry. -- The Gay Republican

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (3)

Ban Chicago!

The Children's Defense Fund notes that the firearm injuries rate for children and teens is 5 per 100,000 for whites and 51.1 per 100,000 for blacks. Representative of these child deaths is Heaven Sutton, 7, who was shot outside her Chicago home while tending to her lemonade and candy stand. -- Belmont Club / White Lightning

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:40 PM | Your Say (0)

Fools rush in where fools have been before.

Newtown students return to school after last week's shooting [No child of mine would ever return to a public school where the killings of last week happened. Never. Not Ever.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (7)

"I know Liza Long. "

They grow up watching their mother's hen-peck their fathers until the father finally gets fed up and divorces. -- Waznmentobe

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (2)

Nostalgia - it's not like it used to be

The young are so very nostalgic. They have so little by way of personal history that they polish it up and make it shine like a treasured heirloom. -- BBC News - A Point of View:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (0)

"I became successful because I knew what I learned in school about probability was bullshit."

Most of Taleb's ire is directed at business schools, specifically the one at Harvard. --This Is Not a Profile of Nassim Taleb

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (0)

No lie too low and vile

Iran’s state-run news network blames ‘Israeli death squads’ for Sandy Hook shooting

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (1)

Half a century ago, Freudianism possessed

the same kind of hegemonic dominance that the neurobiological approach now enjoys within the psychiatric community. -- The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (0)

Liberal compassion is not the compassion of equals.

It is a revolutionary pity that uses empathy only as fuel for outrage. --

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (0)

To protect our children, it€™'s time to outlaw school buses

Because, at long last, something must be done! -- Bookworm Room »

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (0)

December 17, 2012

And of course today is "Bill of Rights Day, 2012"

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America... -- Presidential Proclamation The White House

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:57 PM | Your Say (9)

The Road to Damascus

And you think Connecticut and the United States have a gun, violence, and maniac problem? Let Sultan Knish set you straight.

Imagine the Crips and the Bloods, armed to the teeth by every country from Mexico to China, fighting over the ruins of California cities, and you get some idea of the glorious Syrian civil war being fought by the Brave Syrian People, most of whom at this point are about as Syrian as the Palestinians are from Palestine, in a conflict that will determine once and for all who will be ethnically cleansing who this year.....

And we, as befits the nation that Obama described as one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, happen to be in the Sunni axis, ensconced somewhere between the fattest child-molesting members of the Saudi and Qatari royals, the most vicious Turkish and Egyptian Islamists, and the Eurocrats looking to score oil deals with the former and arms deals with the latter, and political points with their domestic population of Sunni Islamists who have the unfortunate habit of blowing things up....
There are Sunni and Shiite militia members from neighboring Lebanon and Syria. There are Pakistanis fresh from Waziristan and Libyans looking for a good brawl. There are Scud missiles and chemical weapons and broken buildings, torn corpses and roads full of refugees fleeing for their lives. There are tanks and jets and fleets. There are armies and militias, truckloads of weapons and bodies, fire behind them and death ahead of them. And they're all hurrying, running and racing to Damascus..... And then the real killing will begin. -- Sultan Knish:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:53 PM | Your Say (0)

Dickinson's Desk Very Sippicanesque

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At Harvard's Houghton Library: The writing stand that Emily Dickinson used as a desk in her bedroom. No wonder her poems were so short. -- A Survey of Emily Dickinson’s Family Artifacts – Flavorwire

And at Sippican Cottage Furniture Company of Maine you find the Mount Lebanon End Table.

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:48 PM | Your Say (0)

Advanced Vocabulary Training 5

drugget: a coarse, shabby fabric of cotton or wool (from the French drogue, trash)

murrain: a plague, especially among cattle (from the French moraine, pestilence)

gymnosophist: one of a sect of Indian ascetics who refused themselves clothes

prorogue: to postpone, discontinue, or suspend a legal or legislative meeting

cruet: one or more small bottles or containers for oil, vinegar, salt, etc

fadge: to agree or succeed; or, a bale of wool under 100kg

epopee: an epic poem, or epic poetry in general

spilth: something that was spilled (clearly)

nanger: apparently a type of gazelle?

tomrig: a wild girl or tomboy

fumid: smoky or vaporous

froppish: testy or contrary

diffide: to act distrustfully

peckled: speckled

-- Coldewey's Curiosities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (3)

“What is the problem to which this is the solution?”

Furnishing Your Tidy Little Mind : The Other McCain

A professor of media ecology at New York University, he was outraged that billions of dollars were spent in the 1990s to connect every American classroom to the internet: “Why? Is there clear evidence that children learn better when they have access to the internet? The answer is no.” . . .

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:04 PM | Your Say (0)

“Special coverage of Our Nation’s Tragedy will continue, right after these advertisements for laxatives and car insurance.”

Networks pay millions of dollars a year for the services of news anchors who can pretend that what they’re doing is anything other than a carnival sideshow to sell the advertiser’s product. News for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Read — these lucrative televised spectacles inspire less cynical scoffing than they deserve. --Furnishing Your Tidy Little Mind : The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (1)

In Which Ezra Klein and "Doctor" Rosenbaum Are Eviscerated

But only, sad to say, as a metaphor: Mark to Myth | finem respice

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (2)

To believe that the human and social catastrophes caused by liberalism

can be solved while liberal rule is maintained is like believing the social and economic catastrophes caused by Communism could be solved while Communist rule was maintained. --Liberalism and mental illness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:27 AM | Your Say (1)

The Low Information Citizens Gather

Portland Protesters Say There Should Be Some Sort Of Law Against Shooting 27 People At A School | The Rumford Meteor

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (0)

Decoding Tattoos

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 AM | Your Say (2)

Your government is making you crazy.

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No, it’s not the CIA implanting microchips in your head, you paranoid kook. -- The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (0)

"If you’re a media member or politician,"

"do you have armed security? Do you have a permit for a gun yourself? (I'€™m asking you Dianne Feinstein!) If so, what makes your life more valuable than other people's?" -- Instapundit

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (1)

December 16, 2012

Who Says There's No Good News?

Michigan approves concealed weapons in schools, churches

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:13 PM | Your Say (0)

School shooter Adam Lanza killed his mother with ‘multiple’ shots to her head

Criticism From a Friend: Can We Help Victims of Random Sarcasm Syndrome? : The Other McCain

For all the good Science did her, Nancy Lanza might as well have called in a voodoo witch doctor to cure her son, but at least now we have evidence that firearms training is ineffective as psychiatric therapy for Strange Young Men. Didn’t even need an NIMH grant to prove it.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 PM | Your Say (0)

“Crazy” is not synonymous with “stupid,”

and kooks are capable of learned responses. Sympathetic attention is a powerful carrot, to use Cynthia’s analogy, and if being a kook gets you sympathetic attention, then kookiness is thereby incentivized. --The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:17 PM | Your Say (0)

"I indeed baptize you with water; "

"but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." --Luke 3:7-18

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (0)

"O generation of vipers"

In the week before Jesus was crucified, he entered the Temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

People must have been highly offended at his actions. Who did he think he was? What right did he have to impose his views on others? Jesus never worried about what people would think about him. Enough was enough! It was time for direct action. Have we finally had enough now? -- Sense of Events: An Advent Sermon After Sandy Hook

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (1)

"Well, it's cool that I got an article in the Times, maybe I'll get to write another one."

If I tie her to a chair and shine the heat lamp on her and ask her whose fault "all this" is, she'll answer the Republicans. --The Last Psychiatrist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (0)

"What is a man in the infinite? Who can comprehend it?"

It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short, it is one of the greatest sensible marks of the almighty power of God that our imagination loses itself in that thought. -- Pascal and monad [HT: HInds]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (4)

December 15, 2012

Holy Innocents


Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 PM | Your Say (0)

[Bumped] In the midst of our prayers, let's pause and let's review...

..... some of the unsung benefits of home schooling in the 21st century.

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:15 PM | Your Say (23)

We Must Disenthrall Ourselves

"The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." -- Abraham Lincoln

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:55 PM | Your Say (3)

So what do Detroit teachers get paid in exchange for a 4 percent and 7 percent success rate?

The Detroit metropolitan area has the highest average public school teacher pay

among metropolitan areas for which data are available, at $47.28 per hour, followed by the San Francisco metropolitan area at $46.70 per hour, and the New York metropolitan area at $45.79 per hour. -- Sultan Knish: Friday Afternoon Roundup - The Only Way to Stop a Gun is With a Gun

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:22 PM | Your Say (3)

Not tonight, Congress. I have a headache.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won't testify to Congress next week on Benghazi,

after fainting and suffering a concussion Saturday and due to her ongoing stomach ailment. "While suffering from a stomach virus, Secretary Clinton became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion...." -- | The Cable

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:52 PM | Your Say (7)

More Gun Control? Are You Kidding?

I say, no, what we need is more kook control.

But no member of Congress in either party would have the guts to introduce “The Dangerous Lunatic Incarceration Act of 2013,” which would put wackjobs like Adam Lanza some place where they couldn’t kill people. Chris Rock was right: “Whatever happened to ‘crazy’? . . . What? You can’t be crazy no more? Did we eliminate ‘crazy’ from the dictionary?” --Chris Rock Was Right : The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (0)

Who to blame for mass murder?

This may sound weird, but my gut hunch is it's probably the homocidal psychotic's fault. --Twitter / rsmccain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (0)

The New National Motto

As they track down the story of Adam Lanza, and all standard parts fall into place

-- the weak absent father, the dingbat single mother, the liberal, well-meaning psychologist who was “working” with Adam, the shallow friends who found him “edgy” and “different,” Adam’s cultural life which consisted of an addiction to violent imagery, music, and movies supplied by the same media-political complex that is now feigning shock. As all of America is brought before the microphones blinking, crying, totally uncomprehending, we will notice one repeated phrase, a phrase so universal, so emblematic of Liberal America and its mounting catastrophes that I am proposing it become the new national motto, or rather the epitaph to be engraved on the tombstone of the Republic: “HOW COULD IT HAVE HAPPENED?” -- Our false innocence, our real guilt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 AM | Your Say (0)

This Just In

Shopping malls to stay open 24 hours over Mayan apocalypse weekend:

Several stores have arranged special end of the world savings for last minute shoppers.
[Better yet, just charge it!]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (0)

The Idea of Angels

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The idea of angels taking care of everything for those of the superior heart

is a recurrent theme in the novels of one of the most popular liberals of all time – Charles Dickens. It always amused me reading his heroes, how often characters like Oliver Twist, Pip and Esther – those who had the correct conscience – invariably relied on the easy money flowing from wealthy benefactors and inheritances. Somehow he had trouble connecting purity of thought with the practical business of housing and feeding oneself. -- - RobCase | 09/07/2008 @ House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (0)

Shooting Sprees: "The clear and obvious solution is just too sensible."

“If a bad man is coming after you with an assault rifle and a 30-round clip, would you rather use the law

to break his magazine into three 10-round clips, or would you rather grab a pistol to defend yourself?” Well, they’re not interested in any of that. It’s an emotion-based argument but it still relies on common sense. They want something different, something goofy, so the angels will interfere. -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:08 AM | Your Say (4)

December 14, 2012

New and Popular in Washington and Colorado

So, you want to be "cool" but can't stand to be stoned? No problem: Wait What?: Marijuana Scented Incense | Incredible Things

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:37 PM | Your Say (4)

In Mexico vs Chicago, Mexico is Winning!

Ciudad Juarez, once a byword for narco-violence, suffered 33 homicides in October, less than Chicago, with 36. --Financial Times

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:58 PM | Your Say (4)

The Source of the River Cool Discovered

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That would have to be Sitting Crow aka Crow-Kah-Re-Eo-Tah-Ke, a Blackfeet Lakota Sioux man in 1872.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (3)

Suffocation by the State

“The State extends its arms over society as a whole;

it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (1)

Fine Art and Fascinating Images

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Nearly 50,000 well-curated choices by Mme Scherzo. You can get lost in the stream here.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (4)

Advertising Signs That Con

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (4)

Certified Kosher!

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:49 AM | Your Say (3)

The Government Welfare Class

There are businesses in the welfare neighborhood, but they aren't really independent businesses.

The bodegas, cheap corner groceries stores lined with ads for cigarettes, or government ads against them, with malt liquor ads and posters for a local performance by a rap group, Hong Kong crooner or Latin singer, get most of their business from food stamps. The bodegas, despite their name, are usually run by Indians, Koreans, Arabs or Bangladeshis. The few things they sell for real money are, in order, lottery tickets, beer and the occasional magazine. --Sultan Knish: How the Government Class Lives

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (0)

The Government Middle Class

The government middle class is not all that different from the population of the welfare neighborhoods and some of them have never bothered moving out.

The government middle class is not Detroit. It's the people who run Detroit. It's the people who make places like Detroit happen. For every welfare neighborhood, there are hundreds of members of the government middle class teaching their children, processing their forms and running their clinics. The money isn't great, but their skills are generally poor and the benefits are spectacular. --Sultan Knish: How the Government Class Lives

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (0)

The Government Upper Class

The bosses and their bosses who don't just live in suburbs, but lived in gated communities.

Racially they tend to be whiter than just about any other group that you can think of. And their neighborhoods of choice tend to be even whiter than that. Imagine the place furthest away, conceptually, though not geographically, from the welfare hood, and you arrive at the places where the consultants, the top administrators and bosses of the government class reside. --Sultan Knish: How the Government Class Lives

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (0)

Mock Them Continuously

Hit ‘em where they live. Liberals are desperate to think of themselves as independent-minded deep thinking nonconformists.

That’s why their first reaction to any unexpected stimulus is to run to their blogs and JournoLists, to see what all the other independent-minded deep thinking nonconformists have to say about it (see, for instance, this fascinating article from Mother Jones straight up instructing liberals how to think). Mock them: "Oh, it'€™s because I'€™m a racist, is it?  Was it The Nation or Daily Kos who said that?"  "€œAh, so that'€™s the newest directive from Democratic Underground, eh?"€  "€œYes, yes, I know -- I get email updates from Organizing for America, too."  "€œWow, I wonder how many F4 keys the New York Times has worn out with that macro."  &c. -- Check-Box Thinking | Rotten Chestnuts

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (0)

December 13, 2012

Ross Perot

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"Big taxes means big income." -- Ross Perot

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 PM | Your Say (11)

TTYL: Chat Lingo Is 25+ Years Old

Btw, gr8 pic frm ur gf on msn, tlk 2 u l8r m8 lol.

As seen at The Big Internet Museum

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (5)

The Cliff at the Edge of the Bottomless Pit

If the two parties fail to come to a deal by Jan. 1, taxes on the average middle-income family would rise about $2,000 over the next year.

That would follow a 12-year period in which median inflation-adjusted income dropped 8.9 percent, from $54,932 in 1999 to $50,054 in 2011. --Middle Class Malaise Complicates Democrats’ Fiscal Stance

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:18 PM | Your Say (6)

Presidential Turd Wrangler

The president has one pooch, a photo-op accessory called Bo.... The presidential dog-walker is one of 226 White House staff earning over $100,000 a year.

For many centuries, the King had a courtier whose somewhat intimate duties were reflected in his title: the Groom of the Stool, a position abolished in 1559. Now, after two and a third centuries, the American presidency has evolved to the point that it has a full-time six-figure Groom of the Canine Stool. -- The Royal Presidency - Mark Steyn

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (2)

"Gather together, O nation not desired"

1 Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired;

2 Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger come upon you. 3 Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger. --Zephaniah 2

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:45 AM | Your Say (0)

Red Carpet Countdown

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"Christina Hendricks wore a brothel keeper’s sofa."

More, if you can bear it, at Best Worst Red Carpet Looks of 2012.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (11)

[Bumped] Blaming Whitey: Michael Explains Black People to White People

"The Klu Klux Klan is not wearing sheets. The Klan is wearing Air Jordans."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 AM | Your Say (17)

December 12, 2012

Hail Mockery!

I personally reserve the right to mock anyone, on any issue I choose, and if you choose to take offense I truly do not care.

I don't care what your one-drop count is, or if you embrace anal sodomy, or if you worship a paedopheliac butcher. I'm going to mock you. Just as I mock my own cracker brethren. This is called humor, and it is the safety valve of over-pressurized societies. You don't get a pass from me. There is no Get Out of the Bath House Free card. There is no Fear of Fatwah card. There is no indolent reparations bullshit card that will ever sway me. You? You? You were born to be mocked. We all are. Get over yourselves. You are all Scut Farkus, long overdue for a punch in your damned noses. -- Velociworld: The Malignancy Spreads

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:25 PM | Your Say (8)

New Obama Vacation Destination Discovered!

Sort of redundant, I know. But still.... CasAnus - A Weird Hotel Shaped as a Human Colon:

Hotel CasAnus, located on a small island halfway between Antwerp and Ghent in Flanders, Belgium. The place is just as horrendous as it sounds, at least as far as exteriors are concerned. Shaped and designed like an enormous human intestine, the hotel is the creation of Dutch designer Joep Van Lieshout. The place is one large human colon, and the finishing touch is the rear – a giant replica of an anus.
Even though there's a bit of The Purloined Letter / hide in plain sight element to this, I still think that under such conditions security would be tight.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:01 PM | Your Say (6)

GOP: The Next Generation

[Spoiler: there isn't a next generation.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (0)

Not for 88 years and a month

Donald Sensing takes a snapshot of one moment in time: "The next time we will see a sextuplet repeated time and date such as that on the image of my computer's clock, below, is at 1:01:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2101."

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:22 AM | Your Say (2)

The Future Ain't What It Used to Be

"When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened." -- John M. Richardson

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (0)

Government officials are quietly installing sophisticated audio surveillance systems on public buses across the country to eavesdrop on passengers....

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"Suppose you were living in 1917 Russia, or 1932 Germany -- but with a clairvoyant knowledge of everything that would happen over the next dozen years? What would you have done? Do that now." -- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (9)

December 11, 2012

Yup, long past time for the Muslims to kill off the English and take over the UK

Londoners in Need of a Hug Attend Cuddle Workshops Now we'€™ve found out about an entire workshop that'€™s dedicated to the act of cuddling, this time in London.

Organized by 36-year-old Anna Nathan and 42-year-old Neil Urquhart, the workshop takes place twice a month on Sundays and costs £29 (about $46). Participants at the cuddle workshop get to do just that -€“ hold each other.
["White people. They thirst for death."]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (4)

Studies Have Shown

The Muslim says, “If Allah wills it.” The Christian says, “In Jesus’ name.”

The liberal says, “Studies have shown.” These are the sacred words that establish the authoritative truth of whatever ruinous mischief the liberal is about to propose.“Studies” are one of the principal means by which the liberal regime maintains and extends its power. The Thinking Housewife | Why You Should Ignore Studies of Same-Sex Households

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (1)

[Bumped] Sunday: Spam Tsunami Suspends Comments

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Of late there has been a tsunami of spam comments striking the site to the tune of several thousand a day. I've disabled commenting for a bit to see if the filtering mechanisms can catch up. Back soon.... (Testing.... testing... Nope. Not yet. )

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 AM | Your Say (0)

Someday I Just Might Try It

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"You could write an in-depth analysis of mankind, using this photo as source material." -- sloth unleashed

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 AM | Your Say (4)

Advanced Vocabulary Training 4

FRUIT OF FORFEIT & DECLINING DECREPITUDE EDITION

dehiscence: the release of juices or fluids by the rupture of a tissue, in botany or biology

mouldwarp: archaic term for a mole, from the German mouldeworpon, “earth-thrower”

climacteric: in fruit, the ripening period; in humans, a period of declining sexual activity

deodand: an animal or object that has caused a death and is forfeit to crown purposes

spavined: decrepit or broken down, or in a horse, afflicted by a certain joint disease

linstock: a pole to which a match was attached, with which a cannon would be lit

birdlime: a sticky plant-based material smeared on branches to catch small birds

antimacassar: a cloth placed on the arms and backs of furniture to prevent wear

trituration: a finely powdered medicine, sometimes mixed with sugar of milk

eleusinian: related to the mythological “mysteries” celebrated in Eleusis

peculate: to steal or embezzle, especially public or entrusted property

ptisan: a drink with medicinal qualities originally made from barley

immiscible: incapable of being mixed together, e.g. oil and water

argot: a group’s jargon or slang - originally that of criminals

sistrum: an ancient Egyptian instrument like a metal rattle

bantling: a young child (from the German for “bastard”)

quean: a prostitute, or poorly-behaved girl or woman

invigilate: to watch over ones who are taking a test

rubicund: having a red or ruddy complexion

cicatrize: to heal by the formation of a scar

sedulous: diligent; persistent; assiduous

quondam: former or erstwhile

-- Coldewey's Curiosities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 AM | Your Say (1)

December 10, 2012

"The progressives have few children of their own."

"Your children are their children. If they can corrupt your children, then they have a future. If they cannot, then they will go off and die in a corner." -- Sultan Knish

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 PM | Your Say (1)

"If politicians had any sense decency they wouldn’t be politicians. "

There'€™s nothing unusual in a failed administration being proud of its accomplishments.

Daniel Harper at the Weekly Standard notes that Obama is still running for re-election, even after having been re-elected. "€œBarack Obama's reelection campaign sent an email today asking supporters to call Congress to help gather support for the president'€™s "fiscal cliff" proposal. Then, the campaign asks supporters to donate -- even though the election ended over a month ago."€ -- Belmont Club » Repeat Defender

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 PM | Your Say (11)

December 9, 2012

"How we burned in the camps later"

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” -- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Quotes (Author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 PM | Your Say (9)

The Rodents of Amsterdam

As Pastor Martin Niemöller famously wrote:
First they came for the loud, obnoxious, drunken neighbors who defecated on my front lawn, tossed their beer bottles through my window, harassed my children, raped my sister, shot my dog, set my car on fire, and spit in my face, but I did not speak out, because I was not one of them. -- - - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:34 PM | Your Say (0)

QOTD

"The Four Horsemen have started a rodeo down in the Middle East and the Hope and Change Ringmaster can't seem to find a way to get them out of the arena." -- Belmont Club サ Bleeding From Behind

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (0)

Noted. Next.

"All of you right-handed people make me sick. You all act like there’s no such thing as handedness privilege. I’ve been discriminated against since birth. The world is built around you right-handed oppressors."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (6)

Today's Question

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Bitter Pachyderm Philtrum Swashbuckling Drinker Teen Whale | Bizarro Blog!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (0)

December 8, 2012

You've Got Questions, SDA's got answers!

In the item atsmall dead animals: Let Them Eat The Rich one commenter asks:

I would like to know how Obama can take his dog to Hawaii when the rest of the world's dogs (including the rest of the U.S.A.) are required to go into quarantine. One rule for the ONE and one for the rest of the population...
And another commenter answers:
He can take his dog because he's married to her.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (6)

They're gonna have to raise taxes to pay for all the people in charge of raising taxes

73% of Jobs Created In Last Five Months are Government Jobs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (0)

Blue Woman with a Guitar

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-- Tamara de Lempicka, 1929

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (3)

In the background of American films from the 1940s or ’50s

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Try Dark Passage (1947). If you can do it without crying, watch the background scenery of San Francisco in mid 20th century.
Notice how magnificent the city seems, how clean, how broad and sunlit the horizon. This is film noir but even the induced murk fails to cut off the sense of unbounded promise that exists just beyond the camera’s focus. Watch the pace of the city that appears in the background, the people walking down the street, the way they interact, the way they dress. Look at how an unspoken code of manners is guiding every person in the background. See how the man in the suit opens the door for the lady in the dress. Notice the assured masculinity of the men, the charming femininity of the women as they get off the train. -- Phone Call from a Stranger

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (7)

Carmel Point

As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

-- by Robinson Jeffers

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (0)

Open Kettle

I had taken the lid off the kettle so the money in it could be seen. And I had taped this message over the Salvation Army sign:
IF YOU CAN’T GIVE ANYTHING,
TAKE SOMETHING.
HELP OTHERS,
OR HELP YOURSELF.
GOD BLESS YOU.

-- Robert Fulghum, The Kettle Simmers

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 AM | Your Say (1)

Burning Orchid

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (0)

December 7, 2012

"I wanted to make the whole thing for a change."

Creation is the whole thing, as I said. I set up my lathe again. I like the lathe. It's quiet.

I don't have to put a vise on my head to use it. It's not a rote operation, ever, even when making the same leg over again. My little son said, "Daddy is sculpting again." I adored that. I was. But more, I was thinking. I was trying. I was striving to make something, the whole thing. What to do with flame birch? -- Sippican Cottage: Something Special: The Evangeline Table

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 PM | Your Say (1)

"The system isn't thinking short term, it needs this to work long term,"

those hipsters are going to be getting food stamps forever, or do you think if the economy rebounds,

old liberal arts majors will suddenly become appealing? Like a woman who squandered her youth on fun but disreputable men, she will find herself at 45 wanting to marry, but alone. "That is such a disgusting, sexist, archaic thing to say." I feel your rage, and you are right. Alone nevertheless. -- The Last Psychiatrist: Hipsters On Food Stamps, Part 2

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:27 PM | Your Say (2)

"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small."

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda

was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. -- -- Dr. Theodore Dalrymple

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 PM | Your Say (3)

The Myth of Northern Innocence

The American psyche has increasingly become driven by feminine emotion rather than masculine logic.

Comforted snugly inside their fake moral cocoons, most Americans are therefore more likely to view history through the prism of guilt-projection and shaming rather than the pragmatic notion that history is essentially a power struggle over land and resources. Almost all individuals and societies appear able to function only when they can project their guilt onto others. -- - Jim Goad, Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 PM | Your Say (0)

December 7

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Pearl Harbor Day is the day Americans shot their cuffs, hiked their britches, snapped their suspenders, and decided to rule the world.
The day before we were isolationist goobers. Half-starved sweet potato gnawers, vendors of wormholed apples. The day after we were a mighty juggernaut in the making. Builders of battleships and tanks and aeroplanes, slaughterers of livestock, creators of steel and aluminium. We planted Victory gardens in our backyards, and bayonets in the bad guys' bellies. We were never the same people again. -- Velociworld: Tora! Tora! Tora!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 PM | Your Say (1)

The conventional theory of politics

is that people figure out by themselves what their views are on various issues, and then they decide what political party to belong to based on their views.

This conventional theory is wrong. It works the other way around. People know what team they belong to (Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, etc.) and then they adopt the views of their team. -- Half Sigma: Brief political thought

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:02 PM | Your Say (2)

"Nowadays, we seem to be living in opposite-land."

Some terrorist attacking our country must be some kind of freedom-fighter, let’s find out what he has to say;

those rich people who start businesses that hire people, have to pay enough in taxes that they know how awful the rest of us think they are; that boss guy who tells me what to do all the time is so mean, we need a union to stand up to him and then I’ll just do whatever the union tells me to do; racial discrimination is so awful so we need an institutionalized system of discrimination in the opposite direction, and it should last forever and ever. Legalize pot because government has no business telling people what to put in their bodies, but size restrictions on sodas, “ya know I think that’s actually a good thing.” -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (0)

"Good thing Pearl Harbor didn’t happen today

"or else the left would have us apologizing to the Japanese for not being tolerant of their desire for domination. We’d be called “Japaphobes” or something." -- TalkStraight

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (0)

Dead Website Walking

Newsweek/Daily Beast Co., the media company founded by Tina Brown and backed by billionaire Barry Diller, is considering charging readers for access to its Daily Beast website for the first time...

[Before shutting it down] Newsweek was on track to lose $22 million in 2012. -- - - Bloomberg
"I like Newsweek, the coverage is great, it covers my whole rear end and the ink doesn't come off, save alot of money on toilet paper, most people will convert to Newsweek once Obama's taxes kick in."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (3)

December 6, 2012

The Intolerable Disparity in Spiritual Wealth

I can't think of a time in history when there has been such a disparity in spiritual wealth, with so many Americans living in the undignified hovels

constructed in the public education system prick by prick, others living in grand mansions not built by hands over the centuries. This should be intolerable in a democracy. The problem begins with a deeply anti-intellectual school system that, instead of nurturing the intellect, denies and extinguishes it. Afterwards, upon attaining chronological adulthood, the only task that remains is getting these ciphers to their polling places in order to ratify their masters and wait for their goody bag from the state. --One Cʘsmos: The Intolerable Disparity in Spiritual Wealth

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:25 PM | Your Say (9)

In Which Our Coverage of the Continuing Triumph of Kate Upton Continues....

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“She’s like a Page 3 Girl,” said the creative director of Victoria’s Secret, Sophia Neophytou, of the Sports Illustrated cover girl, when asked if she would ever be cast for the swimwear giant. British Vogue evidently did not agree, giving her the kudos of their very prestigious December cover. -- Kate Upton scoops her first British Vogue cover.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (2)

Yippie! "Here are two of the great accomplishments of the 60s: "

Women can do men’s work but if they want to go in for old-fashioned maternity, it’s out of their pocket. Schools aren’t segregated, they’re devastated. -- Talking Turkey | Dispatch International

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (0)

"I like squares."

I think I'm a square, although that's not for me to say. It must be said about you.
I think squares accomplish most everything notable in the world. The hipsters crib from the work the squares do, to achieve their ill-deserved notoriety. The squares invent the moldboard plow, turn the earth deeply, and feed the world with their crops. The hipsters later keep windowboxes full of plastic flowers. No one will remember Lady Gaga in a hundred years. My grandchildren will play Dave Brubeck records. -- Sippican Cottage: The Very Square Dance

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (1)

No Ace. No Sleeve.

An ace up your sleeve. We keep believing the GOP has one. We keep thinking the GOP is as smart as its base. It is not.

It is monocultural to the point of being ingrown, intellectually incestuous as the media pundits require them to be, and fecklessly driven to populism over substance. It doesn’t matter how many people you put under the GOP “Big Tent” if the anchoring pegs have been carelessly eased out of the ground. The first big gust of resistance imperils the entire assembly. -- Bill Kristol, GOP, and Big Tents | Primordial Slack

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (4)

“Politics is downstream from culture.”

Just how downstream we saw in this year'€™s election.

Virtually every accusation made by the left toward Republicans and conservatives (sexism, racism, greed, etc.) was prepared and nurtured in the realm of culture. That was the earth in which the lies grew and prospered. And those lies, more than any facts or policies, were responsible for a liberal victory in a year -- with unemployment at 8 percent and a deficit at 16 trillion — that should have been a Republican rout. Put simply, give up on the culture and you lose forever. -- Roger L. Simon » Reclaiming the Culture

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (0)

December 5, 2012

Switzerland is at the top, Nigeria at the bottom.... Obviously

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: Economist: Where to be born in 2013

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 PM | Your Say (5)

DroneBug: “Right now, I still think the software is not good.”

In March 2011, a Predator parked at the camp started its engine without any human direction,

even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed. Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the “brains” of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem. “After that whole starting-itself incident, we were fairly wary of the aircraft and watched it pretty closely,” an unnamed Air Force squadron commander testified to an investigative board, according to a transcript. “Right now, I still think the software is not good.” -- Remote U.S. base at core of secret operations - The Washington Post

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (3)

Advanced Vocabulary Training 3

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shagreen: skin of sharks or rays used as an abrasive; also, a coarse, granular leather

macumba: a Brazilian cult that combined Christianity with occult practices

argolic: pertaining to Argolis, a southeastern district of ancient Greece

bolection: a raised molding surrounding a door, panel, window, etc

furbelow: a ruffle or showy bit of trimming, as on a woman’s dress

catoptric: the study of optics as created by or related to mirrors

conchologize: to take part in the collection and study of shells

polyantheon: undefined, but presumably “many-flowered”

garzoon: corruption of an oath, probably “God’s wounds”

cachinnation: a loud, improper, or uncontrolled laugh

impecunious: having (or yielding) little or no money

trivant: archaic version of “truant”

quillet: a subtlety or quibble

-- Coldewey's Curiosities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (1)

Nice Guys Finish Last Fucked Over

A final take on the election: Mitt Romney was a glittering Sir Galahad who,

given his impressive horse, armor, and lance, along with his decency and piety, assumed that he could win a joust in a fair charge against the other team's knight. Instead he waded into a sudden fray where he was swarmed, mobbed, cut off, pulled off his magnificent steed, had his matchless armor yanked away by a mob of foot soldiers, and then, once stripped clean, was clubbed and maced beyond recognition. --Works and Days サ Learning from the Election

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (3)

December 4, 2012

"Pravda as the ne plus ultra of the profession."

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If you haven't figured it out yet, if it's not sports or old movies, every new thing on TV, and every visual in the print media, is a deliberate malicious lie.

And it's been that way for a long time. And if Costas and his ilk would have their way, sports too would be part of the lie. We used to laugh at the Sovs and their goofy Pravda and Tass and Izvestia, and how it all was a bunch of hoo-ha, and all the important bits were buried on p. 37 in small type. Who knew that our supposedly patriotic American Fourth Estate saw Pravda as the ne plus ultra of the profession? The Russians never had a chance. We still do, as long as we force our governments to secure our freedom of speech in all media. Not only is the truth out there, but we can find it. Never give that up, or we are irretrievably lost to tyranny. -- John Fleming's Comment on The Endless 2-Minute Hate and the Long Lie

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:03 PM | Your Say (5)

"We are now in the magical phase of Western diplomacy.

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"Like a shaman without any real cures they are now resorting to mumbo-jumbo.
Unable to affect events in the Levant, helpless in North Africa, powerless even in Mali Paris and London now want the world to believe that by withdrawing their ambassadors from Israel some purpose is served. What will it do in Damascus? In Libya? In Iran? In Mali? What will it do about Assad's chemical weapons. Nothing and nothing and nothing. And nothing. These shambolic incantations are the last gasp of a failed policy. It's the Three Card Monte of international affairs. --Belmont Club Let It Burn

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (0)

Hugh Hefner's Quest for Death on the Downstroke Continues

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Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris are reportedly headed down the aisle once again

— though technically they'd be hitting it for the first time, after she pulled the runaway-bride thing on him five days before their planned wedding in June 2011. The 86-year-old and the 26-year-old are allegedly engaged again and aiming to say their vows on New Year's Eve. [Hefner's funeral laid on for January 3. His epitaph? "He came and he went."]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (12)

Fisculcliph

I’ve had a very nice day consisting of not giving a fig for anything, even the fisculcliph. You have to stop your ears now and then to Nero and the rest of the capital claque plucking the lyre and caterwauling over the fire. -- LILEKS (James) :: the BLEAT

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (0)

Voyager 1 Nears Interstellar Space

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35 years after it was launched Voyager 1 is still sending back data and we are able to receive its signal even though it is nearing interstellar space where the sun's heliosphere stops.

So where does Voyager get the electricity to send a signal back to Earth? Plutonium-238 nuclear power. The US stopped producing it in 1992. But this has been restarted to use in future space probes. -- FuturePundit:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (1)

December 3, 2012

I.... love a PARADE!

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 PM | Your Say (4)

An open letter to Bob Costas and Jason Whitlock

Let us not beat around the bush, you want to sacrifice my life on the altar of your political beliefs.

How dare you? Honestly, who do the two of you think you are to demand that my blood be shed so that you may preen about what wonderful people you are? Why, precisely, are you removing the responsibility for Kasandra Perkins'€™ murder from Jovan Belcher and placing it on an inanimate object? That is what you are doing, after all. Your position is that absent the gun, Jovan Belcher would not have murdered Kasandra Perkins. What utter rot. It'€™s not as if, to pick something at random, he could have picked up a knife and slit her throat so violently that she was nearly decapitated. Oh no, that would never ever happen. -- Alexandria @ doubleplusundead

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 PM | Your Say (3)

You won't be interested in watching 56 seconds of Kate Upton dancing at her swimsuit issue photoshoot

After all, she can't dance. So just don't click it. Okay?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 PM | Your Say (5)

Earth to Members of the 'Werdenfelser Alphornblaeserinnen, "Blow Me."

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Bavarian women challenging a male tradition -- Members of the 'Werdenfelser Alphornblaeserinnen,' an all-female Bavarian Alphorn band,

prepare their instruments for a concert near Muensing at Lake Starnberg in Germany on Nov. 30. Despite being a male-dominated tradition, the band regularly tours the surrounding southern Bavarian towns playing this traditional Alpine instrument.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:17 PM | Your Say (2)

Sign of the Times

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:58 PM | Your Say (0)

Sign of the Times

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:58 PM | Your Say (2)

"She was demure about what she did. What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them."

A coarse, formidable woman strode into the waiting room on spike heels. Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag and overseas cap were all purple, the purple the painter called "the color of grapes on Judgment Day."

The medallion on her purple musette bag was the seal of the Service Division of the Federal Bureau of Termination, an eagle perched on a turnstile. The woman had a lot of facial hair—an unmistakable mustache, in fact. A curious thing about gas-chamber hostesses was that, no matter how lovely and feminine they were when recruited, they all sprouted mustaches within five years or so. -- 2 B R 0 2 B, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Published 1962

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (0)

“If Ted Bundy were alive today, how would he stalk his prey?”

MeetYourDeath.com: Psychopathic Killers Now Have Internet Access, You Know : The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (0)

You Asked for It. You Got It.

Egyptians fear decades of Muslim Brotherhood rule TAHRIR SQUARE, CAIRO -- This was the place where the revolution began:

the roundish square where Egyptians celebrated Mubarak's fall. This is where they are shouting on bullhorns again, outraged because they say the Muslim Brotherhood has stolen the revolution and is railroading though a constitution that could lock in Muslim Brotherhood rule for 50 years, bringing more Islamic law.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (7)

The Disease

In the elite liberal mind, there is instead a sort of progressive Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Gasoline comes right out of the ground through the nozzle into the car. Redwood 2x4s sprout from the ground like trees. Apples fall like hail from the sky; stainless steel refrigerator doors are mined inches from the surface. Tap water comes from some enormous cistern that traps rain water. Finished granite counter tops materialize on the show room floor. Why, then, would we need Neanderthal things like federal gas and oil leases, icky dams and canals, yucky power plants, and gross chain saws — and especially those who would dare make and use them? -- VDH's Private Papers:: Why Liberals Think What They Do

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (1)

December 2, 2012

Sign of the Times

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-- Essam Attia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:23 PM | Your Say (6)

"The whispers of angels and demons"

It's too bad that the public cares so little about the workings of the world.

Beneath the superficial currents of the news narrative a remarkably complex set of memes is in constant interplay. They are the spirits of the modern world. Hatreds, greeds, dreams are perhaps the real drivers of world. In days past the public called them the whispers of angels and demons. Nowadays we refer to them as "€˜talking points". But maybe they are the same thing. -- Belmont Club » Deliver Us From Evil

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:46 PM | Your Say (0)

"Rich people are so hungry."

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Damien Hirst and The Olsens launch a $55 000 backpack upon the rich and ready ”Available for purchase from 12/12/12.

Exclusive to Just One Eye and only one in a rare, limited edition of 12, this incredible piece features multiple small painted gold spots, specially created by Damien Hirst. This one-of-a-kind wearable art work features original art by Hirst, meticulously applied to front, back, and straps, of The Row’s beautifully crafted backpack, the centerpiece design of their 2012 collection. Using traditional techniques, this stunning backpack was crafted in Italy and made with specially sourced materials. Created of black patent leather Nile crocodile, the backpack’s many features include internal detachable handle, adjustable canvas straps, internal zip-fastening, slit pockets, and small gold-plated brass feet at base. Each backpack is fully lined in the highest quality leather and comes with metal mirror plate and case, as well as designer-stamped gold-plated brass hardware. Signed by Damien Hirst. ”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (4)

QOTD

"The men's voices are an octave higher than in 1950, and the women sound like kazoos." -- Oh Help by Fred Reed [HT: KH ]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (9)

"We know that the Left is suicidal."

They wish the destruction of the civilization that sustains them,

or, at least, they work for the destruction while claiming to work for the foundation of a utopia. This has always been their motive and their method. Leftists regret not having had been aborted; they look forward to being euthanized, preferably by being left to starve, Schiavo-style, slowly to death by indifferent nurses in their helpless old age, dying while crying for water. -- The Knife and the Pony | John C. Wright

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (2)

December 1, 2012

Drive-Bye

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Miss Cellania notes wisely, "Every editor needs a proofreader." Editor - Neatorama

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 PM | Your Say (3)

Snidely Whiplash comes in from the cold. Shaves mustache.

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Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, Suspected Ecoterrorist, Turns Herself In

Rubin was arrested after spending a decade as an international fugitive from the largest ecoterrorism investigation in U.S. history, the U.S. attorney's office said. The former wildlife researcher was part of a cell of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front known as The Family, based in Eugene, Ore.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 PM | Your Say (12)

“Mashed peanuts on bread?”

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Shipped off to boarding school in England during the Great Depression, the twelve-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr.,

was sustained by regular care packages from his father. The biweekly deliveries contained a case of grapefruit and a large jar of peanut butter. Buckley recalled that his British schoolmates “grabbed instinctively for the grapefruit—but one after another actually spit out the peanut butter.” No wonder, he sneered, “they needed help to win the war.” -- "Creamy & Crunchy," A History of Peanut Butter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Hamas Bumper Stickers on Twitter

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Honk if you've been followed by the same helicopter for the last 10 minutes

I just lost 200 lbs instantly - ask me how

My other car is a bomb
-- started by @ThePeoplesCube

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:55 PM | Your Say (0)

Original Batmobile for sale for the first time

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The car features a 390-in 1956 Lincoln V-8 engine and a B&M Hydro Automatic transmission.

Gadgets include a nose-mounted aluminum Cable Cutter Blade, Bat Ray Projector, Anti-Theft Device, Detect-a-scope, Batscope, Bat Eye Switch, Antenna Activator, Police Band Cut-In Switch, Automatic Tire Inflation Device, Remote Batcomputer, the Batphone, Emergency Bat Turn Lever, Anti-Fire Activator, Bat Smoke, Bat Photoscope, and many other Bat gadgets. If needed, the Batmobile was capable of a quick 180° "€œbat-turn"€ thanks to two rear-mounted ten-foot Deist parachutes. -- The History Blog » Blog Archive »

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (2)