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September 30, 2013
Mind Over Madder
Utah woman pleads guilty in "telepathic rape" case On Oct. 30, 2011, Selleneit’s husband, Michael Selleneit, shot neighbor Tony Pierce in the back two times with a handgun. Meloney Selleneit had convinced her husband that Pierce had telepathically raped her on many occasions.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 PM | Your Say (12)
“The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee” by Honore de Balzac
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:22 PM | Your Say (4)
Our new timeline looks something like this:
Phase 1: Birth, childhood. Phase 2: Extended childhood. Phase 3: Teenage adolescence. Phase 4: Early twenties adolescence. Phase 5: Late twenties adolescence. Phase 6: Adult adolescence. Phase 7: Adulthood. Phase 8: Adolescence again, adulthood didn’t work out. Phase 9: Death. - - Adolescence: A modern plague, but there is a cure | The Matt Walsh BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:34 PM | Your Say (3)
White Guilt and Racist Movies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:20 PM | Your Say (0)
Puh-lease! I'm Beggin' EVERYBODY!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:11 PM | Your Say (2)
Train kept-a-rollin' all night long....
Train Runs Over Couple Having Sex on Tracks The woman died at the location while the man was hospitalized after losing both his legs.The victims' names were not released, but it was reported that the man was 41 and the woman appeared to be around 30. The surviving victim said that he and his girlfriend “failed to overcome their natural passion when walking home… and wanted to experience an extreme sensation near the railroad tracks.”Chances that alcohol was involved approach 100%.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 AM | Your Say (9)
Seedpods
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 AM | Your Say (1)
"I was not surprised that the courageous efforts of Ted Cruz and Mike Lee were all for naught."
It will outlive its usefulness as an alternative to the progressive Democrats. If conservatives are to be ignored and unable to achieve anything through the electoral process, why should they bother to be involved with their opponents? Why should we compromise principle when defeat is pre-determined?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 AM | Your Say (4)
Ideally, a recreational drug
shouldn’t make your flesh fall off your bones. Nor should it cause you to overheat and drop dead onto the dance floor. But we don’t live in a perfect world, now, do we? - - High Enough to DiePosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:46 AM | Your Say (4)
Barbie is one hot Mountie.
currently worn by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or Mounties, as they are widely known.“ Her scarlet tunic is accented with the cross strap and belt, navy and yellow breeches and tall Strathcona boots while her Stetson can be removed to reveal her bright red hair.” - - Meet RCMP Barbie (She always gets her man)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:32 AM | Your Say (1)
September 29, 2013
U.S. popularity is no higher in the Middle East than under George Bush.
Violence is greater. Christian cleansing is far more prevalent.Iran is closer to the bomb. Bashar Assad never before had so embarrassed a U.S. president. Israel is never more isolated. The Arab Spring is a disaster. Coups, revolutions, mass killings, chaos, and upheaval are the veneer of greater poverty and misery on the Arab Street. There is no such thing anymore as Middle East tourism. U.S. prestige is at all time low. The idea that Assad might surrender his WMD in the manner that a terrified Kaddafi did is absurd. Putin, not an American president, exercises the most influence in the Middle East. - - Works and Days ｻ Overseas Contingency Operations and Such
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 PM | Your Say (2)
Questiones of the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologica
An apprehension of celestial war, & of the necessity of angels, has been among men of all religious doctrines & traditions, since time out of mind.Yet it would go without saying today, that the slaves of empirical reason deny the possibility of such persons as angels & devils, & of the events in which they participate. The very idea of an angel is mocked, as well as thoroughly misrepresented, in the “demythologizing” school that flourishes even within the Church. Yet we know the angels; we know which to obey. No angel nor devil can compel the least action on our part. The former may inspire, the latter tempt, but we, under God, are the captains of our souls. Notwithstanding, it is war. Winged victory : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 PM | Your Say (1)
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees...
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. — Michael Crichton on the myth of global warming- A lecture at the California Institute of Technology
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:54 PM | Your Say (6)
Michaelmas
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (2)
At Sea In the Dataverse
Kraus was merely prognosticating when he envisioned a day when people had forgotten how to add and subtract; now it's hard to get through a meal with friends without somebody reaching for an iPhone to retrieve the kind of fact it used to be the brain's responsibility to remember. The techno-boosters, of course, see nothing wrong here. They point out that human beings have always outsourced memory -- to poets, historians, spouses, books. But I'm enough of a child of the 60s to see a difference between letting your spouse remember your nieces' birthdays and handing over basic memory function to a global corporate system of control. Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world | Books | The Guardian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (0)
Information Fratricide
The same fratricidal effect can be observed in the way we remember — or don’t even recollect — the war in the Congo.It is by far the “the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II”, having killed almost 6 million people if you stop the count in year 2008. It’s was bigger than Korea and Vietnam put together and multiplied by nearly 60. By comparison the 100,000 people who have died in Syria are loose change. Who doesn’t know about the Six Day War (16,000 dead), yet who the hell has heard about the war in the Congo? Where is the Congo? Wherever it is it can’t be important or it would have been featured on Oprah. The reason the Congo is forgotten is dense pack. It’s information fratricide. Belmont Club » The Dense Pack Defense
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (1)
Regime-Speak
You're about to be lied to when they say: a hand up a new study shows a poll by the highly respected at-risk communities broader implications climate change cycle of poverty cycle of violence economically disadvantaged fair share greater diversity growing support for gun violence hater history shows marginalized off our streets oppressed minorities our nation's children.... And many others from the sidebar @ ol remus and the woodpile reportPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (3)
September 28, 2013
“Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 PM | Your Say (3)
Cutaway of a Fragmentation Grenade
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 PM | Your Say (0)
Happy Days Are Here Again. The Skies Above Are Clear Again.
To those of us who have been following the climate debate for decades,the next few years will be electrifying. There is a high probability we will witness the crackup of one of the most influential scientific paradigms of the 20th century, and the implications for policy and global politics could be staggering. IPCC models getting mushy | Financial Post
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:25 PM | Your Say (4)
Look where trust in DC has gotten us.
We fight wars they have no intention of winning, and say so.Their agents interrogate and search us before granting us permission to travel. NASA and the Library of Congress and the Department of Education, et al, have their own military-style armed agents. We're smeared and prosecuted for defending our lives. They'll come through the windows and doors if we annoy them, even unknowingly. But if we're physically attacked we're expected to cower and allow ourselves be maimed or murdered. ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (0)
Charlie the Tuna
except he’s also dyslexic so he gets ‘good taste’ mixed up with ‘taste good,’ but it’s worse than that! Far, far worse! Charlie really has this, like, obsessive death wish! Yes! he, he wants to be caught, processed, put in a can, not just any can, you dig, it has to be StarKist! suicidal brand loyalty, man, deep parable of consumer capitalism, they won’t be happy with anything less than drift-netting us all, chopping us up and stacking us on the shelves of Supermarket Amerika, and subconsciously the horrible thing is, is we want them to do it.” -- Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (0)
The Future Isn't What It Used to Be
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (1)
World's Strangest Motorcycles
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (4)
Thirty Basics for the American Man
1. A WatchNot just any old watch, but one that speaks to your personality. A watch indicates that you value your time and that you make the most of it. Unless you're retired, you should be wearing one.2. The Truth
If it's the Bible or the Koran or the Constitution, somewhere in your possession you have to have a representation of the highest truths you believe. Not having that is almost as bad as not knowing what time it is. Thirty Basics for the American Man - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (9)
Worse Is the New Normal
The West assumes it can endure as a kind of upscale boutique unaffected by the changes beyond. Like, say, the frozen-yogurt shop at the Westgate mall in Nairobi — until last weekend. - - Mark SteynPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (0)
North Korea, Korea: "The leaders are a really big fucking deal there."
Their side-by-side portraits are not only in every public place possible, it's required that they are on the wall in every single home in the country, and there are random spot checks by the government to check on this. Each family is also given a special towel, the only alloweduse of which is to shine the portraits clean every morning. wait but why: 20 Things I Learned While I Was in North Korea
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (0)
North Korea, USA
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (1)
Another Fine Citizen Heard From
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (4)
Misteakz Wur Maid
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (1)
September 27, 2013
Equality = Death
Imagine you can snap your fingers, and all throughout the universe the voltage in every material thing is instantly equal.That necessarily means nothing runs; the lights go dark, the fans stop turning, and your car doesn’t start. If you can hand-crank it to get it going, like a biplane pilot from a century ago, it won’t run. Nothing works. Equalize the temperature, PH level or pressure, life forms go extinct. Equalize the wealth, we’re all poor. Equalize the heat and the life-energy, we all die. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:11 PM | Your Say (1)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca Unleashes New Virus w/ 65% Fatality Rate: That’s the second threat to the entire world to come out of Mecca.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (6)
"Faith is always a kind of unKnowing,"
because it's not just blind stupidity or flat ignorance, but an irreplaceable mode in the search for meaning, guided -- or lured -- by an invisible gradient of deepening coherence. Faith points and we follow -- it's analogous to our natural compass that points us toward foodsexgrog, but on a higher plane. It's a supernatural compass. One Cʘsmos: Man's Faith in God's Faith in ManPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:15 AM | Your Say (4)
“I have to go,” he said. “I have to go do crimes.”
He strolled out the door, where he met his cool best friend. They nodded at each other. It was totally cool. Then when they walked together toward wherever it was they worked, the sun totally backlit them, so it looked crazy epic. He had on like sixteen skinny ties... A Day In the Life of a TV AntiheroPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (1)
“‘Equality,’ I spoke the words, as if a wedding vow, / Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
It’s great to talk about equality, but hardly any of us really wants to be just “equal.”The blacks want preferences in schools and jobs and they get them. The poor want to be rich. The rich want to stay rich. “Equality” is a code word for “take away something from someone else and give it to me.” The American Spectator : Bees on Vacation
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (2)
The internet stopped being an experiment a while back.
It's a finished product. And like television, the product is your time. Getting it is a science.The professional website, like a casino, is expert at the science of wasting your time while giving you as little value as possible. It knows exactly what people will click on and how to get them to keep clicking in the loop that leads to affiliates and the best way to cash in on all that. And yet outside all that noise and clamor, revolution is possible. Steve Jobs didn't make the iPhone what it is. The apps did. To see what the iPhone would have been like today without them, pick up a Windows Phone. It would be a slick device with some decent functions, but no room to grow. Sultan Knish: Shiny Metal Box
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (0)
“Crime by the underclass is racial, predatory, and very much targeted against whites.
The motive is hatred more often than economic gain.
. . . The media carefully, systematically, by deliberate policy, hide these truths. . . . During the Cincinnati riots, I heard through police back-channels of blacks pulling white women from cars and beating them. I didn’t write about it. If I had quoted my sources, they would have been fired for talking. Without sources, I’d have been dismissed as engaging in racist fantasy.” Fred Reed | Foseti
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (0)
Handicapped Weapon
They are smart, thoughtful, and skilled—the proverbial tip of the spear. But I also wondered: Where’s the rest of the spear? Why, almost two decades after the Pentagon initially bid out the program, in 1996, are they flying an aircraft whose handicaps outweigh its proven—as opposed to promised—capabilities?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 AM | Your Say (8)
Yet more "norming" of the abnormal
Why do people want to eat babies? Scientists explain. - CSMonitor.com "If you're like most normal people, you've briefly considered eating a baby or two."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:42 AM | Your Say (3)
September 26, 2013
Who Says There's No Good News? There's Water on Mars
from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Leshin. "About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically." The sample also released significant carbon dioxide, oxygen, and sulfur compounds when heated.It is still amazing to realize that we have a robot.... on Mars.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 PM | Your Say (0)
I really want to buy one of these grocery checkout dividers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:28 PM | Your Say (7)
“In the world it is called Tolerance,”
writes Dorothy Sayers, “but in hell it is called Despair …the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” An Unapologetic Defense of the Virtue of Intolerance
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (0)
'The good news about Anthony Weiner is that he lost,'
'The bad news is that he just got an iPhone 5s.' -- Heather HigginsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (3)
The Continuing Crisis
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 AM | Your Say (0)
"Viable:" The Buckley Rule
In other words, the key word in Buckley’s original rule was the word “viable” — not the word “electable.” The word “electable” was in fact not in the Buckley Rule at all. The American Spectator : Ted Cruz Extends the Buckley Rule
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (3)
"We all knew what “viable” meant in Bill’s lexicon."
It meant somebody who saw the world as we did. Somebody who would bring credit to our cause.Somebody who, win or lose, would conservatize the Republican party and the country. It meant somebody like Barry Goldwater. (And so it came to pass. For the next 40 years, the GOP nominated and elected men from the West and the South. Nixon won twice, Reagan twice, the Bushes thrice. Only in recent cycles has the GOP reverted to its habit of nominating “moderates” favored by the establishment. Dole, McCain, Romney — all of them were admired by the fashionable media until they won the GOP nomination, at which point they were abandoned in favor of the liberal nominated by the Democrats.) Buckley Rule — According to Bill, not Karl | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (0)
For a man making such a small, insignificant gesture
Ted Cruz certainly got a large amount of notice from the Obamadrones and their little Rovian Republican helpers. A [very] small sampling:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:53 AM | Your Say (10)
September 25, 2013
[UPDATE: Victory!] After Comeback for the Ages, a Last Dash for America's Cup
bankrolled by the American billionaire Larry Ellison, trailed by eight races to one and was just one defeat from losing the most prestigious prize in yachting to the challenger, Emirates Team New Zealand. But by winning seven races in succession, including two on Tuesday, Oracle has tied the series at 8-8. Winds permitting, the rivals from different hemispheres will contest one final race Wednesday, winner take all. - - NYTimes.com [ Photo by CaptMonroe ]UPDATE: Victory!Ellison’s Oracle Team USA Keeps His America’s Cup Vision Alive - Bloomberg Larry Ellison said his Oracle Team USA completed the biggest comeback in the 162-year-old America’s Cup after cracking the code to the catamaran. Oracle yesterday won the deciding race of the regatta by 44 seconds for its eighth straight victory, capping a 9-8 defeat of Emirates Team New Zealand on San Francisco Bay.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 PM | Your Say (20)
The Old Fashioned
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (14)
The Best and Worst Red Carpet Looks at the Emmys — According to a 7-Year-Old
I wasn’t so interested on what E! or Vogue had to say; I wanted to hear what the fashion critic closest to my heart had to say: my 7-year-old daughter. My pint-sized fashionista and I watched the red carpet together while she gave her opinion of what the stars wore. - - | Babble [HT: NEONEOCON ]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (2)
They claim that Obamacare will raise taxes, but this has been PROVEN false so many times.
You know it’s been proven because I capitalized “proven.” Sure, there might be a few minor billion dollar taxes,
like the individual mandate tax and the employer mandate tax, the Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans, the Tax on Health Insurers, the Tax on Innovator Drug Companies, the High Medical Bills Tax, the Medicine Cabinet Tax, the Tax on Indoor Tanning Services, and the Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals. And, yeah, there might be a small number of multi-billion dollar tax hikes on things like the Medicare Payroll tax and the “black liquor” tax and the HSA Withdrawal tax. And, OK fine, we’ll even see some tax deduction eliminations, like the deduction for employer-provided retirement prescription drug coverage. But besides, like, 20 new taxes and tax hikes totaling, like, hundreds of billions of dollars, there aren’t ANY tax increases attached to Obamacare. None. NONE. See? I did the capital letter thing again. Pretty convincing stuff. - - Right Wing Obamacare Myths DEBUNKED | The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (4)
“Honey, you’re 300 sandwiches away from an engagement ring!”
Maybe I needed to show him I could cook to prove that I am wife material. If he wanted 300 sandwiches, I’d give him 300 sandwiches....See 175 more at 300 Sandwiches The way to a man's heart is through his stomach
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (6)
What's for Lunch?
We seared the steak in a cast-iron skillet to a nice pink medium-rare, then piled on sautéed zucchini tossed with really good olive oil, and chopped fresh tarragon and parsley. - - Canal House
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (4)
The Moon Is 100 Million Years Younger Than Thought
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (5)
The World's Highest-Paid DJs 2013
— and claimed electronic dance music’s cash crown for the first time in his career. In February he signed on to play more than 70 shows over a two-year period at Las Vegas megaclub Hakkasan, and pulls in additional cash from songwriting and producing for pop stars like Rihanna. “The rise of dance music has been astronomical in the last three years,” he tells FORBES. “I happened to be in the right place at the right time.” - - ForbesWhen Afrojack played his most popular song, “Take Over Control,” a column of waitresses appeared, carrying a thirty-lire bottle of Armand de Brignac champagne that a customer had just bought for a hundred thousand dollars. The 10 Most Depressing Parts of The New Yorker's E.D.M. Article Ranked
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (2)
September 24, 2013
Bummer
Volkswagen Brazil is turning the final few into special editions. They'll come in sort of robin's egg blue with white trim. Inside: "Special vinyl upholstery" with those colors and blue curtains on the windows.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 PM | Your Say (10)
Islam = Violence
Sultan Knish: The Gang Religion of Islam Islamic violence we are told is an aberration.But it isn't. To the extent that Islam is anything, it is violence. Islam may have become a religion, but it began as a code. Like the Pirate Code or the Thieves Law of Russia, it was a set of rules that allowed a select group of bandits to choose leaders, plan attacks and divide the loot.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 PM | Your Say (1)
Tweets of the day:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:10 PM | Your Say (1)
My Favorite Garageless Band
I encourage everyone to make your own humans. Making a human involves much, much more than fifteen minutes in the back seat of a car. You've got to raise 'em up. Like the charming kids in the video, they'll help you raise themselves properly, if you'll just let them. Micromanagement won't produce a viable adult. Don't forget to sprinkle some Laissez faire in there, dudes and dudettes."Sippican Cottage: Go there and support this band.... or else!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:54 PM | Your Say (5)
World’s Largest Cheesecake Leaves No Ass Unfattened
, and created by Philadelphia Cream Cheese. It was 90.25 inches in diameter and nearly 31 inches deep. It turned out about that’s about 24,533 servings. -- | Incredible Things
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:15 PM | Your Say (2)
Marilyn Monroe “working out”, Bel Air Hotel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (3)
Science, strictly speaking, explains everything but creativity.
Not only that, but in its reductionist mania, it generally attempts to explain the creative via the uncreative, the intelligent via the mindless, freedom via necessity, and the living via the lifeless. It just waves a magic wand over the ontological discontinuities and pretends this is an explanation.I noticed this yesterday while thumbing through a recent Scientific American in the orthopedist's office. No matter what subject they touched -- the Big Bang, the origin of life, the intersection of ideology and science -- every author had the same adolescent tone of smug superiority to go along with their dull absence of style and their one-dimensional shallowness of thought. The magazine seems to exert a heavy editorial hand that banishes seriousness of thought; or that affirms a frivolous certainty. One Cʘsmos: Socialism Would Be Easy If Not for Fucking <i>Creativity</i>
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (3)
Parlier, California, Makes Everyone Pay Back Bills for Something They Forgot to Charge
The central California town of Parlier put such a policy into practice (without the shooting) when, after only a few days of notice, they raised their water bills for every business in the area ... by 300 percent. Stores paying 90 bucks were suddenly paying $280, while businesses found themselves in debt for thousands of dollars -- but the real steamer on the chest was the fact that the city admits that this is all because they made a clerical error in 2007. 4 U.S. Cities That Are Sadistically Screwing With Residents | Cracked.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:42 AM | Your Say (0)
The role of journalists has changed.
Now, most of the people that I know who became journalists weren't the sharpest tools in the shed,and given their limited cognitive powers it's to be expected that some of them would get things wrong. However, the systemic nature of their misrepresentation is not an act of isolated stupidity but of systemic disinformation. i.e. they're lying. The same could be said for discussion on issues such as gay marriage, immigration and crime.For too many people confronted with IQ issues, emotion trumps reason.
Some are even angry that I never apologized for my work. I find that sentiment baffling. Apologize for stating empirical facts relevant to public policy? I could never be so craven. And apologize to whom -- people who don't like those facts? The demands for an apology illustrate the emotionalism that often governs our political discourse.Here we come to the crux of the matter.
As Ortega y Gasset argued most professionals are really noting more than mass-men, i.e cognitive misers. The liberal cognitive miser has a mind hermetically sealed to facts or opinions which contradicts their world view.[Ed: As does the conservative cognitive miser] Emotion, rather than logic, is the method of discourse amongst the hive mind. Nice and good are conflated as are uncomfortable and evil. The Social Pathologist: Commissar
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (5)
The Evidence of the Earth
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (2)
Has Alien Life Been Found In Earth's Atmosphere? I'm Gonna Go With "No".
In other words, if they can’t figure it out, it must be aliens. This “god of the gaps” argument leaves me underwhelmed.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (8)
Save the world by all means, but please do so in private.
Yesterday I was on a flight on an airline that claimedto be deeply anxious to preserve the environment, though not quite anxious enough, obviously, to go out of business. This kind of self-righteous sanctimony, a commercial reflection in the mirror of political correctness, ever more prevalent, irritates me greatly, and would irritate me just as much if the claimed virtue were real rather than false. - - UNICEF’s Chemical Weapon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (1)
September 23, 2013
Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharif: “Targeting innocent people is against the teachings of Islam”.
Really? Based on bitter experience, I would say that the mass murder of random innocents is the essence of the “teachings of Islam.”We have seen such mass murder over and over, more times than we can count. Does Islam have something to offer other than crazed, sadistic violence, committed to perpetuate the crudest forms of ignorance? If so, I haven’t seen it. Whether we talk about Africa (Nairobi), Asia (Peshawar) or any place else, the fruit of Islam appears to be the same. - - Two Muslim Outrages | Power Line [HT: Fat Man]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 PM | Your Say (5)
One handgun in Kenya saved 100 lives
The soldier was having coffee at the Westgate mall when it was attacked by Islamists on Saturday. With a gun tucked into his waistband, he was pictured helping two women from the complex. He is said to have returned to the building on a dozen occasions, despite intense gunfire. - - | Mail Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:26 PM | Your Say (3)
The Tough Gun Laws of Kenya
From Wikipedia: "It is illegal in Kenya to own any type of firearm without a valid gun ownership license as spelled out under the Firearms Act Laws of Kenya."
This gun control foolishness is why the United States would never elect a Kenyan president. Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard: September 23, 2013
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:15 PM | Your Say (0)
The Enemy [Bumped]
"Only when the troops forced their way through did they realize that dead bodies, as many as 20, had been piled against the entryway to slow the soldiers’ access."Lovely touch that. Killing civilians and using them as doorstops. That little vignette describes the earnestness of war, the dead seriousness of it; the kind of all-encompassing condition that it is.
To the Shabaabs, people — someone’s wife, child or husband — were just so many sandbags to be used in a tactical situation. Their attitude exemplifies the total commitment, the mental difference between a man at peace and stone killers at war — with us. Yes with us and make no mistake about it.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:10 PM | Your Say (15)
The Impulse of Power
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:57 PM | Your Say (1)
"I’m really getting quite sick of this new American pastime"
where we troll business owners and force them to “have a position” on the divisive issues of the day,then promptly punish them no matter what they say. Some businesses choose to wade into ideological waters, but many are pushed into it. It’s ridiculous. Why can’t coffee and chicken be apolitical? Why does everything have to be a controversy? I’m a liberal because I think Starbucks has private property rights | The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:14 PM | Your Say (8)
"I continue to wonder why any company, like a manufacturer, remains in California."
Sell there yes, but produce anything you can out of state and ship it in.Even as a service business we do a bit of this, no longer stick-building anything but having all our buildings, cabins, stores, etc built in Arizona as modular buildings and then shipped to California. Even our labor force is partially "imported", as we hire folks who live in their RV's to come from all over the country to live and work at our campgrounds. - -Regulatory Suffocation | Coyote Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:57 PM | Your Say (2)
This complex and tragic event supports my own view
It is clear that the main cause of this shooting was the thing I disliked before the mass shooting happened.
I want to disingenuously imply that if my ideas were more widely accepted, this tragedy could have been averted. Do we want more young people to die because other people don’t agree with me? - - Mind Hacks
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:51 PM | Your Say (0)
The Palinization of Ted Cruz continues apace
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:42 PM | Your Say (1)
The Left's "Protected Religion" Unmasked: "If they found me, I'm white... so I'm dead"
Terror in Kenya: Survivors reveal how gunman executed non-MuslimsSurvivors reveal how gunman executed non-Muslims - after asking them to name Prophet Mohammed's mother. Survivors said they saw fellow shoppers mercilessly executed after being singled out as non-Muslim. Shoppers said people were lined up and gunned down for failing to recite passages from the Koran.[Coming soon to a mall near you. Yes, you.] HT Kathy Shaidle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (7)
Korean Artist’s Hyper-Realistic Oil Paintings Look Like Photographs (14 pics)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (0)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (0)
The Central Planning Solution to Evil
This isn't really about stopping shootings; it's about the belief that the problem isn't evil, but agency, that if we make sure that everyone who has guns is following government orders, then control will be asserted and the problem will stop.It's the central planning solution to evil. We'll never know the full number of people who were killed by Fast and Furious. We'll never know how many were killed by Obama's regime change operation in Libya, with repercussions in Mali and Syria. But everyone involved in that was following orders. There was no individual agency, just agencies. There were orders to run guns to Mexico and the cartel gunmen who killed people had orders to shoot. There was nothing random or unpredictable about it. Greenfield @ Sultan Knish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (1)
Why? Because Everything Has to Be Turned into a Geek and Freak Show.
2013 National Beard and Moustache Championships at the House of Blues in New Orleans
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:49 AM | Your Say (2)
September 22, 2013
Nasturtiums in a Blue Ginger Jar by Jan Voerman, Sr.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:22 PM | Your Say (1)
"Do Ya Think?" Lame Analysis of the Day
Analysis: Nairobi attack may trigger tighter security at malls worldwide| "The deadly attack on a high-end Nairobi shopping mall on Saturday put the safety of malls around the world into the spotlight and could trigger moves to improve security and make it more visible." [And will change absolutely nothing.]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:54 PM | Your Say (8)
"A nation can survive its fools"
An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. A traitor is the plague. -- Cicero
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (3)
The Mark of Caincer: If True It Would Be Greatest Lifestyle Irony of the Century So Far
Could your tattoo give you cancer? Scientists fear toxins from ink could enter the blood and accumulate in your major organs | Mail OnlinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:10 PM | Your Say (3)
You Get What You Vote For
It’s fair. It’s just. People should get what they voted for. It feels right that most of those who are suffering from the Obama administration’s policies should be those who voted for their Savior. - - Had Enough Therapy?Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (3)
Tiptoeing past the graveyard
Belmont Club » First the Mall, Now the Church The Narrative avoids the word “Jihad” or Islamic terrorismin relation to these violent events, not because they are sensitive to the religious sensibilities of Muslims, though they are but because their primary goal is to make the public unaware the danger facing them is organized and purposeful, based on definite organizations, in hostile states and funded by billions.... The existence of organized aggression will be painted over for as long as possible and ridicule of the “tinfoil hat brigade” will be encouraged. There’s nothing to see out there in the dark, we will be told. Even if you can hear its approach and feel its heated breath.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:52 AM | Your Say (1)
September 21, 2013
How You Know You're In the Deep End of the BS Pool
When a novelist who I believe ought to have known better, Salman Rushdie, succumbs to Twitter.Or when a politically committed print magazine that I respect, N 1, denigrates print magazines as terminally "male," celebrates the internet as "female," and somehow neglects to consider the internet's accelerating pauperisation of freelance writers. Or when good lefty professors who once resisted alienation -- who criticised capitalism for its restless assault on every tradition and every community that gets in its way -- start calling the corporatised internet "revolutionary." Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world | Books | The Guardian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:26 PM | Your Say (5)
Throws Like A Girl [Bumped]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (17)
Hamster Economy
We keep running to make the wheel turn, but we are going nowhere. Don SurberPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (1)
Stereotype Me. Please!
but if you were walking down an inadequately lit alleyway and a young man in a hoodie came toward you, it is likely that you would experience a greater frisson of fear than if he were dressed in a tweed jacket. And that may be precisely what he wants, even if he has no intention of attacking anyone. He wants you to stereotype him. Types of Stereotypes | The Skeptical Doctor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (4)
I suppose a drone strike with a couple of Hellfire missiles is out of the question
Political bigs expected at George Soros wedding | Billionaire investor George Soros, 83, will marry 42-year-old Tamiko Bolton today, followed by a huge party at his Caramoor Estate in Bedford, with 500 guests.Those expected include World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia; and Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania. Also there will be Paul Tudor Jones II and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (8)
Reason number 3,478
@CrossfireCNN may want to rethink Stephanie Cutter as a host... Bryan Jacoutot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (5)
My Weiner Did It To Me!
Anthony Weiner Blames Election Loss on His Last NamePosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 AM | Your Say (7)
First Fool
Some iPhone fans, like Brian Ceballo, pictured, waited outside the Fifth Avenue Apple store for two weeks. He was the first person in New York City to buy the iPhone 5S | Mail OnlineAnd that's pretty much it for Brian's lifetime achievements.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:26 AM | Your Say (1)
September 20, 2013
ELIZABETH’S BEDFELLOWS An intimate history of the Queen’s court
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 PM | Your Say (0)
"Should it really be harder to get a tattoo than it is to get an abortion? "
At first glance the law appears to apply to women and men equally, but surely this can't be the case. After all, we know that a woman has the right to do to her body whatever she chooses without any infringement. Washington DC Proposes 24-Hour Waiting Period For TattoosPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:32 PM | Your Say (4)
America in 2013 is a similarly special case: another weakened empire telling itself stories of its exceptionalism while it drifts towards apocalypse of some sort, fiscal or epidemiological, climatic-environmental or thermonuclear.
Our far left may hate religion and think we coddle Israel, our far rightmay hate illegal immigrants and think we coddle black people,and nobody may know how the economy issupposed to work now that markets have gone global, but the actual substance of our daily lives is total distraction. We can't face the real problems; we spent a trillion dollars not really solving a problem in Iraq thatwasn't really a problem; we can't even agree on how to keep healthcare costs from devouring the GNP. Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:28 PM | Your Say (3)
The Roman Army Knife: Or how the ingenuity of the Swiss was beaten by 1,800 years
An intricately designed Roman implement, which dates back to 200AD, it is made from silver but has an iron blade. It features a spoon, fork as well as a retractable spike, spatula and small tooth-pick. Experts believe the spike may have been used by the Romans to extract meat from snails. | Mail Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:00 PM | Your Say (1)
" I’m not xenophobic. Who’s scared of xenos? I just think other cultures are gay. "
In Russia, they think death is funny. I’d say, “Kill ‘em all. Let God sort ‘em out” but I don’t want to bore her with the extra work. I don’t care enough about Russia to want them to die. I’ve been around the world and it sucks. If two thirds of it died in an earthquake, I would yawn so loud, it would cause another earthquake. FTWI’m not xenophobic. I’m a Western Chauvinist. I know other cultures and I can tell you first-hand, the West is the best. - - STREET CARNAGE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (2)
These are the people are in charge of choosing America’s ideal woman.
What was so repugnant it made Stephen Colbert “totally lose it”?Once again, the answer is: nothing. Without exception, the outrage was related to Tweets. That’s right. Twitter. The place in cyberland where adolescents tell their 13 followers how tired they are and say, “Fuck you faggot” to their friend who refuses to root for Green Bay. You know you’re desperate to find a villain when you have to mine the flippant comments of 500 million users to locate examples. - - The Myth America Pageant
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (0)
Kids Today
Teens attack mom with sword, threaten to eat her liver: The 13-year-old admitted he told his 14-year-old friend to try to kill his mother because he had been taking "blue pills.” The 14-year-old suspect also admitted to attempting to kill his friend's mother and that they were going to leave town afterwards. [Well, at least they had a plan.]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (1)
The Serious and the Smirk: The Smile in Portraiture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (3)
We have reached a point of diminishing returns in our public life. Hardly anything actually needs doing.
We are so short of real discontents nowadays, we have to make problems up. There aren’t any hungry children. There aren’t any people dying because they can’t afford an operation. There aren’t any Joad families on the road desperately seeking work and homes. The Lost Art of Stasis - Taki's MagazinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:44 AM | Your Say (0)
September 19, 2013
“The genius of television is that,
to shape a people as you want, you don’t need unrestrained governmental authority, nor do you need to tell people what you want of them.
Indeed, if you told them what to do, they would be likely to refuse. . . . No. You merely have to show them, over and over, day after day, the behavior you wish to instill. Show them enough mothers of illegitimate children heartwarmingly portrayed. Endlessly broadcast story lines suggesting that excellence is elitist. Constantly air ghetto values and moiling back-alley mobs grunting and thrusting their faces at the camera—and slowly, unconsciously, people will come to accept and then imitate them. Patience is everything. . . . Few call this imperialism. It is, with a vengeance.” - - Foseti
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 PM | Your Say (6)
"The Syrian crisis over the past few weeks has thrust President Obama into a role in which at times he has seemed uneasy: that of commander in chief."
He's also uncomfortable with his role of running the government. Working with Congress. Leading the nation. But he does like the golf. And he's not good at that, either. Don Surber: Daily ScoreboardPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:46 PM | Your Say (2)
I’m a liberal because I think Starbucks has private property rights
Some gun rights activists and gun owners (note, I said “some”) responded by marching into their neighborhood Starbucks toting ARs, AKs, and shotguns.They gathered in large groups, all packing heat as openly and visibly as possible, and took pictures to post on Twitter and Facebook..... This is like if I permit you to wear shoes in my house, so you, rejoicing my leniency, celebrate by jumping into a mud puddle, stomping on my carpet and putting your feet up on my coffee table. Congratulations, I’ve just amended my shoe policy, and it’s all your fault. | The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:12 PM | Your Say (11)
The tip of a tail of a very, very large dinosaur skeleton,
[T]hey nurse in their black little hearts the hope of not just making women equal but reversing society and having women do all the masculine jobs and men do the feminine ones. It’s nuttiness… House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:10 PM | Your Say (0)
Kiev Man Finds Dog That Looks Like Putin
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 AM | Your Say (2)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Lots of Talk. No Walk. Developed countries pledged $100 billion a year to the fund in 2011 to help poor countries cut their emissions and cope with climate change. So far donors have contributed $7.5 million to the GCF, which will be established over the next several years. Tom Nelson: LinksPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (0)
Rising Sea Level Report: Maldives To Build Five More Underwater Airports
Early Spring 2012:In March and April 2012 the previous President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed stated: "If carbon emissions continue at the rate they are climbing today, my country will be underwater in seven years." He called for more climate change mitigation action while on the American television shows. Maldives - Wikipedia Summer 2012: Maldives To Build Five More Underwater Airports | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT Ministry of Transport and Communication has said that the delayed works on five regional airports are now underway.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (0)
Why such a pathetic recovery?
Because Obama.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (0)
A [Bogus] Rose Among Thorns [Corrected and Bumped]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (2)
Who says there's no good news?
Hannity Wins: Liberals HumiliatedPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:08 AM | Your Say (4)
There's NO people like WHITE people.....
Like NO people I know!Saints preserve us, it's "Talk like a pirate day." Again! ARRRRRGH!Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 AM | Your Say (1)
GoogleTranslate, did you have to be THAT GOOD?
It is better to walk in the shales in Europe, you wash your boots in the Indian Ocean The "what" and "when" is just two innocuous words, but if you put them together, you get a question that will haunt you for life. What if now, using the power of social networks and mobile communications, we go straight to the historically peculiar to us, democracy?Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (2)
"There's been another mass shooting by a crazy person,
and liberals still refuse to consider institutionalizing the dangerous mentally ill." Ann CoulterPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 AM | Your Say (1)
Next I see the gluten-free section
filled with crackers and bread made from various wheat-substitutessuch as cardboard and sawdust. I skip this aisle because I'm not rich enough to have dietary restrictions. Ever notice that you don't meet poor people with special diet needs? A gluten intolerant house cleaner? A cab driver with Candida? Surviving Whole Foods | Kelly MacLean
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 AM | Your Say (0)
"I've got a little list...."
A gun-control agendaist seeks to disarm us peones because he thinks it will make him happy to have done so. You cannot persuade him otherwise. Agendaists are like that.... Liberty's Torch: There Is No DefensePosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 AM | Your Say (0)
Swearing can be fun:
Roll up, roll up all you ‘mangie rascals, shiteabed scoundrels, drunken roysters, slie knaves, drowsie loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubbardly lowts … fondling fops, base lowns, saucie coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing Braggards, noddie meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddi-poljolt-heads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, slutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninnie-hammer flycatchers, noddiepeak simpletons, turdie gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike .... Colin Burrow reviews Holy Shit: A Brief History of SwearingPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:37 AM | Your Say (0)
September 18, 2013
Dodge Tomahawk...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (2)
The great Scorekeeper supplies 13 ear worms in one post.
From Gawker: "Police in South Carolina arrested a North Charleston woman Monday night after she allegedly stabbed her roommate multiple times for refusing to stop playing music by the classic rock band The Eagles."Welcome new kid in town to the Hotel California, where there's a peaceful easy feeling and a tequila sunrise, but take it easy. The roommate said he wants to give "the best of my love." Trust him, because those ain't lyin' eyes. Don't take it to the limit and cause heartache tonight. You'll become a desperado or a witchy woman in the long run.Twelve.
Yup, it's one of these nights.
Thirteen. - - Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard: September 18, 2013Now some people might think they can beat the Scorekeeper at summing up the day, but they all find out sooner or later that when they get to where they think he is, he is.....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:42 PM | Your Say (5)
In the past, the race of criminals simply wasn't divulged.
Then some television stations, though still saying nothing of race, played the surveillance footage while talking of “teens,” a word suggesting fun-loving striplings.Many papers now publish photos, and others often mention in graff fifteen that the assailants were “young black males” (though often girls are also involved).... What now? Television will continue to control the idiot demographic, but as more and more of the sentient realize what is happening, and that they can talk about it, things will change. Just how I donｴt know. But we had better do some thinking. The racial divide is the worst danger this country has faced, or refused to face. If we donｴt think of something to do about it, itｴs going to wreck the joint, and nobody will like it. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:50 PM | Your Say (7)
How convenient that all homicidal maniacs who feel the need to unwind with a small shooting spree have been assured by the CEO that every Starbucks is a now a gun free, and hence target rich, zone.
Starbucks asks customers to leave guns at home | The Daily CallerPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (3)
Yahoo News: "US wakes up to a Miss America of Indian descent' "
must be something that the majority of people in the US are affected by and/or give a minimal fuck about – such as “US wakes up to a World at War” or “US wakes up to a New Post at Unleash The Beef.” You know what? Fuck it, I’ll lower the bar: How about just three percent of people in the US have to give a fuck about whatever it is you’re wasting text on to justify use of that phrase? Let’s go to the numbers. The Miss America pageant drew 8.4 million viewers out of a population of 314 million people. Oh! Just missed that 3% mark with 2.7% of the US Government’s tax slaves breathing through their mouths in front of televisions tuned to the Miss America pageant. This just in: Nobody gives a fuck about the Miss America pageant. - - Indolence + Diversity = Journalism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 AM | Your Say (9)
The Mother of All Likely Stories
A Parting Kiss @ Futility Closet In December 1912 Hungarian tinsmith Béla Kiss told his neighbors that his wife had run off with another man. At the same time he began collecting large metal drums, telling the town constable that he planned to stockpile gasoline against the approaching war in Europe....Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (4)
Background Checks? Check and Double Check.
Navy Yard Shooting: Stuck on Stupid First, he was a former member of the military and passed those background checks.Second, he has a concealed carry permit, and made it through those checks. He had just recently gotten clearance to be on the Navy Yard as a civilian contractor. As with enlisted, civilian contractors also have to be background checked. Just LAST WEEK he purchased a shot gun in Virginia and passed the Federal background checks for that purchase. This man was background checked to the nth degree. Even after his arrests for gun issues, and psychiatric issues, he was given the civilian contractor clearance and gun permit.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 AM | Your Say (17)
Break Out the Vomit Bags
Susan Rice and Vogue were in party mood: "It's a warm evening in June,
and guests are assembling for a party she's throwing in honor of LGBT Pride Month at the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers, the official residence of the U.N. Ambassador. Actress turned humanitarian activist Mia Farrow, wearing blue tinted glasses, is one of the first to arrive. Within minutes she's joined by The New York Times's executive editor, Jill Abramson . . ." And soon things are swinging: "They mingle and sip sparkling wine in the elegant living room next to a framed portrait of Oprah Winfrey and First Lady Michelle Obama resting their heads on Rice's shoulders . . ." Party Politics :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:15 AM | Your Say (4)
Aaron Alexis: Another 'Good Boy' Who Killed a Lot of People
How the hell did those closest to him not see it?When he shot out the tires of a car owned by men he felt “disrespected him”, were you surprised? When he shot into the ceiling of his apartment because his upstairs neighbor was too loud for his taste, were you shocked? When he was booted from the Navy for a “history of misconduct”, were you confused? Were you completely unaware of his arrest record? About as unaware as the geniuses that gave this guy a government security clearance, apparently. -- Clash Daily
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:36 AM | Your Say (4)
I can see I'm not the only one disappointed by the return of Twinkies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:29 AM | Your Say (4)
How to Find Everything That Moved in iOS 7. You're Welcome.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 AM | Your Say (1)
September 17, 2013
Poor kids. When it comes to "cool," the impossible cool, all they've got is Miley Cyrus. We have Grace Kelly. [Bumped]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 PM | Your Say (21)
Navy Yard Shootings Scuttlebutt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:09 PM | Your Say (6)
Obama is the now become the Black Knight and Tokyo Rose of politics.
His injuries however severe are dismissed with the “’tis only a flesh wound” remark.
And as for his foreign setbacks, the media is reprising that hoary Imperial Japanese Navy bulletin about sinking the entire Third Fleet — totalling 31 aircraft carriers, 57 battleships, 133 cruisers and 516 destroyers — then announcing that the pitiful USN remainder was withdrawing in the direction of Japan. Belmont Club ｻ When Summers is Gone
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:00 PM | Your Say (0)
Bad Thoughts
"The real tragedy of the shooting in DC is that the killer hit all the wrong targets."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (1)
We could realistically stop violence by imposing more gun control, IF
we can figure out a way to eradicate all guns everywhere from everyone,
and get rid of all other forms of weaponry, and abolish the malice in the hearts of men, and effectively outlaw hate, anger, greed and mental disorders, and require all people to be peaceful, kind and trustworthy. We merely have to establish a Disney fairy tale Utopia on Earth and all of a sudden the gun control argument becomes really quite cogent. Military members: trusted to fight wars, not trusted to carry weapons at work | The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:18 PM | Your Say (0)
"Beatles or Stones"
is a debate that will likely rage among rock fans for as long the NSA allows such displays of open thinking among the general populace. It's pointless, though, because we've had an answer for a long time now. In the half-century-long war that pitted England's biggest hit makers against each other ... there was no winner. Like almost everything else, I blame this on the 1980s.
If everything Beatles- and Stones-related ended in the 1970s like it should have, Mick and Co. could have claimed a clear and easy victory. The Beatles imploded almost as soon as the decade started, while the Stones can count a number of their '70s albums among their best. For example, if you don't love Some Girls, you're an asshole. 5 Subtle Clues Your Favorite Band Secretly Sucks | Cracked.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (14)
And while we're on the subject.... Henry Rollins.
Talk all the shit you want about teen pop stars,but if you're looking for a fine example of a career built mostly on personality and attitude as opposed to good music, look no further. Henry Rollins's been coasting on the "success" of having inaudibly screamed his way through a couple of decent-ish Black Flag albums for decades, and now people revere him like some kind of punk rock Abe Lincoln. 5 Subtle Clues Your Favorite Band Secretly Suck
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (1)
But where does the light go when it goes out?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (1)
To adapt the common phrase, “chemical weapons don’t slaughter people, mass murderers slaughter people.”
And the question we face is not whether this or that weapon should be banned, but what should we do about mass murderers,& the men who do their bidding — the regimes that sustain & can usually replace them should an assassination happen to succeed. This is to look at the whole vexed problem, & not at one corner of it. The question, as I think any mediaeval political philosopher would immediately see, is can we overthrow that regime, at a cost not greater in unwanted consequences? David Warren -- Taking war seriously : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 AM | Your Say (2)
"There are valuable reasons for telling certain stories in a certain way at pivotal times, but that doesn’t mean we have to hold on to them once they’ve outlived their usefulness."
Take a moment and read that quote again, because it’s one of the clearest statements ever written on how the left sees “the narrative.”It is moral relativism applied to epistemology and metaphysics. There is no such thing as truth to the left. There are “certain stories” that can be told “a certain way.” The story tellers, whether they are artists or journalists, simply pick and choose which story they will tell which way depending upon whether it’s a “pivotal time.” - - LIE BIG OR GO HOME: Matthew Shepard, Trayvon Martin, Brandon Darby and the Power of Leftist Mythmaking
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (1)
"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable / Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table."
Argument About Philosopher Kant Ends With Russian Shot in Head | RIA NovostiPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (3)
In the realm of the WAS: The Wrongly Attributed Statement
The WAS is not just a thing, you see, it's an experience.A quote floats in your head for years, resting in cloistered obscurity. One day you decide to use it in a book or an article. You look it up to get the exact wording and to cite the original source. But you find multiple wordings and no credible source. You keep looking, only to find that no one ever said it (at least not that anyone knows of). Who Really Said That? - The Chronicle Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (0)
The Supertasters: Hi-Impact WebShots
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:49 AM | Your Say (0)
Racial preferences are not just ill advised, they are positively sadistic.
Only the preening self-regard of University of California administrators and faculty is served by such an admissions travesty.Preference practitioners are willing to set their “beneficiaries” up to fail and to subject them to possible emotional distress, simply so that the preference dispensers can look out upon their “diverse” realm and know that they are morally superior to the rest of society. A Devastating Affirmative-Action Failure | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 AM | Your Say (4)
September 16, 2013
1936: Size of the Universe
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:55 PM
Headline of the Week (Only Monday but Still the Winner)
Father who crashed car wearing prosthetic breasts at 160kmph while high on meth with 2 daughters in the back of the car jailed for 29 months | Mail Online [HT: Rob]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:44 PM | Your Say (7)
Early theory:
Well planned and executed attack against a military target inside of the nation’s capital.
Bold statement. Underestimating or trivializing the motives of the attackers will be to our detriment. This is a major security breach inside of DC. The planning necessary to carry out this attack likely took several months, especially to learn the routines of the police, site security, and working personnel. Navy Yard Shooting - Early Analysis - Clash Daily
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:56 PM | Your Say (7)
Round Up the "Credible" Witness!
Searching for a credible racial element on which to hang a racial description in "At least 12 dead in Navy Yard shooting; possible suspect at large," The Washington Post has taken to injecting race into racial descriptions when they can find a describer of the right race.... As inTwo Navy yard employees interviewed on CNN said they were fired on in a hallway by a gunman they described as a tall black man. A woman who gave her name as Terry Durham said that as she and co-workers were evacuating, she saw a man down the hall raise a rifle and fire toward them, hitting a wall. “He was tall. He appeared to be dark-skinned,” she said. “He was a tall black guy,” said her co-worker, Todd Brundage, who is black. “He didn’t say a word.”That last sentence, for no notable reason other than chagrin, was later changed to: "'He was a tall black guy,” said her co-worker, Todd Brundage. “He didn’t say a word.' "
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (2)
Mission Impossible in Syria
Let’s say, though, just for the sake of discussion, that the process [of destroying chemical weapons] goes just as smoothly in Syria as it did in Oregon,that it will take precisely the same amount of time to destroy Assad’s arsenal, and that they (whoever they are) can get started tomorrow. They won’t finish until 2021. Because that’s how long it took down the road from my house. Michael Totten | World Affairs Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (0)
Obama as Anagram: As Vile as Carter and Twice as Evil
Do not underestimate the rhetorical skills and political demagoguery of Barack Obama.He is as incompetent and delusional as Jimmy Carter, but he has far better sophistic skills, far better advisers, and is far more ruthless. Almost half of America does not pay federal income taxes; almost half receive some sort of government assistance. They are as loyal as the captive media to what Obama represents and delivers. Putin will not let the Syria debacle fade entirely—aided by John Kerry’s sanctimonious efforts to be remembered as Nelson Mandela with Tomahawks, and to freelance while Barack Obama is incommunicado on the golf links. Yet even this ongoing Syrian tragedy will not yet end Obama’s influence and power, which has been damaged but has not been lost. Brace for more. Works and Days ｻ Syria in the Age of Myth
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (2)
Edmund Callis Berkeley writing about "Giant Brains" in 1949
Suppose that you go into the library of the future and wish to look up ways for making biscuits. You will be able to dial into the catalogue machine ‘making biscuits.’ There will be a flutter of movie film in the machine. Soon it will stop, and, in front of you on the screen, will be projected the part of the catalogue which shows the names of three or four books containing recipes for biscuits. If you are satisfied, you will press a button; a copy of what you saw will be made for you and come out of the machine. Things to Come – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (1)
Time Has Timed Out
the job of running the department’s public diplomacy mission, according to Politico. Months later, the appointment was leaked to two media outlets. Throughout the summer, Stengel remained editor of Time while it covered U.S. politics.... This is not the first time the magazine has downplayed stories that might not put Stengel’s new boss — Obama — in a good light.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (1)
Gone But Not Forgotten
Deer follow traditional trails, which are taught to each generation by its forebears. Now that the fence is gone, red deer range on both sides of the border but refuse to cross it. Us and Them – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (1)
September 15, 2013
“Writers always use too damn many adverbs.
On one page, recently, I found eleven modifying the verb ‘said’: ‘He said morosely, violently, eloquently,’ and so on.Editorial theory should probably be that a writer who can’t make his context indicate the way his character is talking ought to be in another line of work. Anyway, it is impossible for a character to go through all these emotional states one after the other. Lon Chaney might be able to do it, but he is dead.” Nota Bene – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:41 PM | Your Say (7)
A Boston Cabbie's Rant
So we have state troopers retiring at age 52 with $180,000-a-year lifetime pensions!And then they get government jobs and continue working. They got a word for that in the papers here, double-dipping, but no one ever does anything about it. So they're getting $180 grand pensions, maybe an $80 grand salary from another government job, and they get another pension! Excerpted from Doug Ross @ Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:44 PM | Your Say (2)
William Freddie McCullough: "He hated vegetables and hypocrites."
A few of the more colorful ones were Momma Margie, Crazy Pam, Big Tittie Wanda, Spacy Stacy and Sweet Melissa. He attracted more women than a shoe sale at Macy's..... Freddie was killed when he rushed into a burning orphanage to save a group of adorable children. Or maybe not. We all know how he liked to tell stories.William McCullough Obituary Savannah Morning NewsI never met Freddie but I still knew Freddie. Didn't you?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (1)
Are You Not Entertained?
only the ultra-rich (usually liberal Democrats), and of course those on the opposite end of the scale, living in "poverty" -- that is, anywhere up to 150% of the so-called poverty line; they can probably get free tickets, and free bongs, if they prove they're reliable Democrat voters. Big Lizards “These Aren't Your Grandpappy's Movies”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (0)
Finally, a pen that really is mightier than the sword!
Junior Tommy Gat – the gun that looks like a fountain penPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (0)
Regarding the End of the World: Misteakz Wur Maid
Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (2)
Giradora: Foot-powered Washer And Dryer
Nice to have when your world turns into the third world. - - Bored PandaPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 AM | Your Say (3)
How Long Has This Been Going On?
@ Sippican Cottage's tasty, understated music video collection.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (0)
September 14, 2013
"How did the American people react when their Arab experiment didn't go so well? I'll tell you exactly how they reacted. 'Oh well, at least we tried.' "
"I'll tell you what the real emotion behind the Arab Spring was.Actually, Beavis can tell you better. "Fire is cool," said Beavis. Fire is indeed cool. Americans were bored and needed some better CNN. They wanted to see shit burn. Shit indeed burned, and is still burning. Which was cool. So they got what they wanted. Not too different from the crowd in the Colosseum, just less honest about how they satisfy their very simple chimp/human needs. Unqualified Reservations: Technology, communism and the Brown Scare
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:42 PM | Your Say (6)
Everyone at Burning Man, with hardly an exception, is highly altruistic toward African-Americans.
But, to within an epsilon, there are no African-Americans at Burning Man.But wait, why is this wrong? ... Loved or not, they're still helped - right?.... Heck, for the last 50 years, one of the central purposes of American political life has been advancing the African-American community. And over the last four decades, what has happened to the African-American community? I'll tell you one thing - in every major city in America, there's a burnt-out feral ghetto which, 50-years ago, was a thriving black business district. On the other hand, there's a street in that ghetto named for Dr. King. So, there's that. And since we mentioned Mrs. Jellyby, what exactly has a century of telescopic philanthropy done for Africa? Unqualified Reservations: Technology, communism and the Brown Scare
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:38 PM | Your Say (7)
“The best kind of ruler
accepts the people as they are; the next best leads the people to what is beneficial; the next gives them moral instruction; the next forces them to obey it; & the very worst kind of ruler enters into competition with them.” -- Ssu-ma Ch’ienPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:24 PM | Your Say (0)
Ethics of the Democrats
"Some of these people were not easy to reelect -- alcoholism, ethics issues, bad votes. Some didn't collect enough signatures [to get on the ballot] and had to run write-in campaigns. We were determined to reelect every single one. Some of those people are now in prison, but we got them reelected." Marc Solomon, campaign director for Freedom to MarryPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:59 PM | Your Say (2)
Today, as for the last century, & at intervals since time out of mind, we share our world with regimes of monstrous will & intention.
Beyond the parameters of the state, though seldom very far beyond, we have ideologically motivated “terrorists” themselves able to commit impressive atrocities.We have “globalization” & the technological means to “project power” at a distance, with many competitors engaged in the projecting. I have never liked large standing armies, but it is understandable why even the lesser sinners would wish to maintain them. -- David Warren
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (0)
Michelle Obama Wants You to Drink Water (and yes you can still tell her to big butt out)
Simple words from the simple mind of a moral simpleton: "Since we started the 'Let's Move' initiative, I've been looking for as many ways as possible to help families and kids lead healthier lives. I've realized if we want to take just one step, the best thing is to simply drink more water.” - - Big GovernmentPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:40 AM | Your Say (8)
When I Buy A Sofa, I Want Some Upholstery On It
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (3)
Work
My day tends to be taken up with a lot of sitting. Lately I have taken to playing online poker for most of the day and it’s costing me a fortune, but it’s money well spent since it relieves the boredom.My boss sits behind me in the corner of a rather large room from where he has the option of scanning all of his staff’s monitors. I have long since ceased to care that he can witness my online poker antics and live in hope that he will eventually pluck up the courage to fire me for it. I often look around at the other people in that room we all share and wonder whether they are actually ‘working’. Personally I have long since forgotten what it is that my own position actually entails, I lazily ponder whether the others there genuinely believe in what they’re doing or whether they are simply better at pretending than I am. Harry's Place » Work?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (2)
When Progressives Attack: "Don't play the fool.
"What is attacking you, though it seems like a frivolous phenomenon, is anything but. This is an active volcano which has claimed hundreds of millions of lives. Just firing you is a small, small thing for it.Just destroying your life - very easy. Don't mess with it. If you can avoid a fight with it, do. And if you can't, don't be defensive. Attack. If possible, attack in depth and preemptively. (What do you think I'm doing here?) One of the things that this evil machine is capable of, for example, is covering up hatefacts - realities that embarrass it or contradict its narrative. Your goal in attacking it is to embarrass and contradict it, creating a counter-narrative that it cannot incorporate into its own entertainment product. If you succeed, you will be covered up as well - which is exactly what you want. So the purpose of your attack is not to draw attention, but to avoid attention.Unqualified Reservations: Technology, communism and the Brown Scare
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (0)
"America is a communist country."
No one at Gawker is shooting anyone in the nape of the neck.On the other hand, no one at Gawker has the option to shoot anyone in the nape of the neck. So we can't really know whether they would or they wouldn't, can we? There sure does seem to be quite a bit of hate out there, however. My guess is that most wouldn't, but some would. And isn't some all it takes?Unqualified Reservations: Technology, communism and the Brown Scare
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (0)
Putin: Obama's “bored kid at the back of the classroom”
He became extremely accomplished in the sport -- competing with distinction at the regional and national levels. Putin frequently underscores how much he benefitted from the qualities of judo. Naturally hotheaded and scrappy, the young Putin learned discipline through studying judo; it taught him self-restraint. His training focused on how to leverage his opponents’ strengths against them, and how to wait for the right moment to capitalize on their missteps. The real skill in judo is keeping the opponent perpetually off balance, not roughly pushing him down to the mat. Finesse, not force, earns points with the judges. Fiona Hill | Putin Has the Upper Hand on Syria | Foreign Affairs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:20 AM | Your Say (6)
September 13, 2013
“You should have been killed”
For two hours they were kept at gunpoint there, as the screams of the tortured bounced down the concrete walkways. They were told not to talk, not to look around. But David remembers one thing more than any: a single drop of sweat, forming on the crown of Sherman’s head, forming and then slowly sliding down his forehead, across his brow, down his nose, and then falling free. “You should have been killed,” says Campaña to this story, and she’s right. Foreigners were not immune to the violence and murder of the coup. David and Daniel | Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:10 PM | Your Say (4)
"Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain / So all the boys will know I died standing pat."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (4)
Come away with me Lucille in my merry Popemobile
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 AM | Your Say (10)
September 12, 2013
The Mother of All Wishful Thinking
"He put this proposal forward and he’s now invested in it. That’s good. That’s the best possible reaction. He’s fully invested in Syria’s CW disarmament and that’s potentially better than a military strike – which would deter and degrade but wouldn’t get rid of all the chemical weapons. He now owns this. He has fully asserted ownership of it and he needs to deliver.”I guess the White House is under the impression that Putin, like some affirmative-action freshman at a state college, is actually impressed by our current dent, instead of using him, as Putin has for over a week, as his personal hand puppet over a latex glove.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 PM | Your Say (14)
Trouble in Nerdvana
High price of iPhone 5c spooks investors, Apple shares slide - Firstpost
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 PM | Your Say (3)
Mommie Dearest
While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit.... Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick Obituary Paints Ugly Picture Of Deceased Mother Of 8
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 PM | Your Say (10)
The media is not that concerned with suppressing incidents. It is concerned with suppressing pattern awareness.
Real patterns are replaced with false patterns. Every Muslim terrorist attack is met with media chatter about an Islamophobic backlash. The backlash never materializes, but it doesn't need to.The mere repetition of it does the trick and sets the pattern. It tells readers that the attack is the incident, but the backlash is the pattern. The attack is only an incident and not characteristic of Muslims while the backlash is a pattern and characteristic of our bigotry and intolerance. - - Sultan Knish: Patterns and Incidents
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 PM | Your Say (3)
Guess Who
Who is behind efforts to ban big sodas or sue hairdressers for charging women more than men?Who harasses little kids for making toy guns out of sticks, Pop Tarts, or their own fingers? Who wants to regulate the air you breathe, the food you eat, and the beverages you drink? Who wants to control your thermostat? Take your guns? Your cigarettes? Heck, your candy cigarettes? Who’s in favor of speech codes on campuses and “hate crime” laws everywhere? The Myth of Live-and-Let-Live Liberalism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:07 PM | Your Say (4)
So They Kind of Over-Stated That ‘Million Muslim March’ Thing, Eh?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (2)
ZAP!
And thanks to our spies spread across scientific organizations, we now have the energy required to turn a human into an atomic soup, to break all the atomic bonds in a body. According to the captured study, it takes around three gigajoules of death-ray to entirely vaporize a person — enough to completely melt 5,000 pounds of steel or simulate a lightning bolt. ZAP! - - So You're Ready to Vaporize a Human
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (3)
"The same people demanding their Bull Connors put the dogs"
on every black guy wandering into Manhattan scream about Paula Deen and George Zimmerman. None of this is shocking as liberalism is a religion with many bogeymen. The result is a stunning lack of self-awareness. Liberals, almost always, reserve their harshest venom for the crimes they routinely commit. That’s how cults work. - - The Z Blog › National Review is a JokePosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (2)
The thing about bad dudes,
whether they are Arab dictators or the president of the local Hell’s Angels chapter, is they have no illusions about the human condition.They trust no one and expect everything. They also know their limits. Sonny at the biker bar knows he is not talking you out of your interests. The House of Saud knows the only way to stay in power is to use it. Talking about it does nothing. They are not beheading homosexuals in Riyadh because they have nothing better to do. - - The Z Blog › Why Obumbles Lost
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (1)
Putin Didn't Save Obama, He Beat Him
Obama ignored Putin’s slights and held his head high. This revealed to Putin Obama’s real liability, his vanity.
Obama always needs to look good. He will embrace defeat so long as he can still imagine himself a handsome princeling. After pushing Obama around for five years, now Putin escorts him out of the Middle East. Here, friend, take my hand. Let me help you to the sidelines. - - The Weekly Standard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (1)
An unfortunate frog at the launch of LADEE from the Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia on September 6, 2013.
A still camera on a sound trigger captured this intriguing photo of an airborne frog as NASA's LADEE spacecraft lifts off
from Pad 0B at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The photo team confirms the frog is real and was captured in a single frame by one of the remote cameras used to photograph the launch. The condition of the frog, however, is uncertain. NASA: LADEE Frog Photobomb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (10)
Table Stakes
Think of it this way, with Putin’s big coup, what does he win?Upper Silesia, the Rhineland, Livonia, the Karelian Isthmus? Also, think of it this way, if Putin had done nothing and left Assad to the “tender mercenaries” of the Drone keepers, what would America have gained? The Panama Canal? A year's subscription to Soldier of Fortune? Cheese? Playing for Matchsticks
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (0)
A 1,185-letter word
Here's the word. Brownie points for reading the whole thing. Extra credit for doing so out loud. Quadruple bonus points for singing it amidst a crowd of colleagues to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner":acetylseryltyrosylseryliso- leucylthreonylserylproly lserylglutaminyl- phenylalanylvalylphenylalanylleucyl- serylserylvalyl tryptophylalanyl- aspartylprolylisoleucylglutamyl- leucylleucylasparag inylvalylcysteinyl- threonylserylserylleucylglycyl- asparaginylglutaminy lphenylalanyl- glutaminylthreonylglutaminyl- glutaminylalanylarginy lthreonylthreonyl- glutaminylvalylglutaminylg- lutaminylphenylalanylser ylglutaminylvalyl- tryptophyllysylprolylphenyl- alanylprolylglutaminyls erylthreonylvalyl- arginylphenylalanylprolyl- glycylaspartylvalyltyrosy llysylvalyltyrosyl- arginyltyrosylasparaginyl- alanylvalylleucylaspartyl prolylleucylisoleucyl- threonylalanylleucylleucyl- glycylthreonylphenylalan- ylaspartylthreonyl- arginylasparaginylarginylisoleucyl- isoleucylglutamylvalylglutamyl- asparaginylglutaminylglutaminyl- serylprolylthreonyl - threonylalanylglutamyl- threonylleucylaspartylalanyl- threonylarginylarginyl - valylaspartylaspartyl- alanylthreonylvalylalany- lisoleucylarginylserylalan - ylasparaginylisoleucyl- asparaginylleucylvalylasparaginyl- glutamylleucylval ylarginylglycyl- threonylglycylleucyltyrosylasparaginyl- glutaminylas paraginylthreonyl- phenylalanylglutamylserylmethion- ylserylglycylleucy lvalyltryptophyl- threonylserylalanylprolylalanylserine-- The Longest Words Belong to Science - Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:02 AM | Your Say (6)
"The sad facts are plain enough."
Maureen Dowd has even started calling him “Barry”.He’s the man who bought his political life from Putin at a staggering price. The Wall Street Journal observes that”Obama Rescues Assad” by offering him a deal “that could leave Assad in power for years” according to the Times of London. The Washington Examiner says that Obama’s miscues “handed Russia the driver’s seat”, an assessment in which Foreign Affairs concurs. Perhaps the most painful characterization of Obama’s incoherence was from the New York Times which characterized his Syria address as while “planned as a call to act, Obama’s speech became a plea to wait”. - - Belmont Club » Olympus Has Fallen
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (2)
September 11, 2013
The Official Poster of the Syrian-American War of 2013.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:00 PM | Your Say (1)
"The War on Poverty has its war profiteers;
if we cured poverty, every Democrat in the country would go broke." - - Don SurberPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (3)
Why don't we die the way we say we want to die?
In part because advanced lifesaving technologies have erased the once-bright line between saving a life and prolonging a dying. In part because saying "Just shoot me" is not a plan. Above all, we've forgotten what our ancestors knew: that preparing for a "good death" is not a quickie process to save for the panicked ambulance ride to the emergency room. The decisions we make and refuse to make long before we die help determine our pathway to the final reckoning. In the movie "Little Big Man," the Indian chief Old Lodge Skins says, as he goes into battle, "Today is a good day to die." My mother lived the last six months of her life that way, and it allowed her to claim a version of the good death our ancestors prized. The Ultimate End-of-Life Plan - WSJ.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (3)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Never Yet Melted ｻ Colorado: Two Democrat Senators Recalled As the Result of Gun Control BillPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (0)
Obama is turning his blunder into another power grab.
He doesn’t know whether he will order the steak or the lobster. How about the waiter brings him both?
He wants the blank check and surely Congress would not be so churlish as to deny him that. You’ve got to give it to him. Obama never lets a crisis go to waste. Its someone elses’s fault if he can’t defend his Red Line, which he only drew to send a Message.... In the end nothing has changed. He’s placing the onus on Congress without acknowledging its authority for a military act that isn’t war, in pursuit of a goal he doesn’t explain, over a duration that is not short but not long, which will be no more than pinprick but less, one assumes, than a shaving cut, to install no knows who and which in the end Obama may decide not undertake at all. Buy this used car and you will deserve it. Belmont Club ｻ The Speech
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (0)
“A stereotype is
the aggregate observation of many people over time, which is why stereotypes are almost always accurate. . . .Stereotyping means recognizing the obvious. In an academic context, or in the public schools, it means noticing that the wrong groups are better at things. This we must never, ever do.” Fred Reed | Foseti
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:43 AM | Your Say (1)
Bikers En Route to DC: "Far as the eye can see...."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (1)
September 10, 2013
Weiner's Going Down
With 35% reporting de Blasio at 38.8%, Bill Thompson 25.8%, Christine Quinn 15.7%, John Lui 8.2%, Penis Guy™
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:42 PM | Your Say (4)
“Get ready for a leak war between Kerry’s staff and Hillary Clinton’s”.
This says it all, doesn’t it? Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat demands a DNA paternity test.Those of you who think the American political establishment has come to the last stage of shamelessness and degradation and who can’t top the last act are wrong. We will soon be treated to the showstopper: the spectacle of so-called “statesmen” trying to pin the rap for this debacle on each other.Belmont Club » Before the Speech
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:24 PM | Your Say (3)
"The Speech" "like gas."
in the middle of a conflict so bitter and severe that his forces this morning reportedly bombed parts of Damascus, the city in which he lives. In such conditions his weapons could not be fully accounted for, packed up, transported or relinquished, even if he wanted to. But it will take time—weeks, months—for the absurdity to become obvious. And it is time the president wants. Because with time, with a series of statements, negotiations, ultimatums, promises and proposals, the Syria crisis can pass. It can dissipate into the air, like gas. The president will keep the possibility of force on the table, but really he’s lunging for a lifeline he was lucky to be thrown.... A serious foreign-policy intellectual said recently that Putin’s problem is that he’s a Russian leader in search of a Nixon, a U.S. president he can really negotiate with, a stone player who can talk grand strategy and the needs of his nation, someone with whom he can thrash it through and work it out. Instead he has Obama, a self-besotted charismatic who can’t tell the difference between showbiz and strategy, and who enjoys unburdening himself of moral insights to his peers. Making Sense of Syria - Peggy Noonan's Blog - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:51 PM | Your Say (8)
Rare Photos of Migaloo the Albino Humpback Whale
In fact, the documented whale has been given the name Migaloo (an Aboriginal word meaning "white fella") and is protected under Australian law. Thought to be the only albino humpback whale since his discovery back in 1991, Migaloo has gained a following with people eagerly sharing any photos or video footage they capture of the marine mammal as it makes its journey from Antarctarica to Australia and back. More at - - My Modern Metropolis
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (1)
I don't know about you but I'm going to be sleeping much better
now that Vladimir Putin has been made US Secretary of State.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (10)
The Japanese: "Nuked too much or not enough?"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (0)
What is that?
How many Maggie's readers know what the triangle to the left of the gas pump symbol means?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (17)
The New Ole Fishing Hole
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 AM | Your Say (0)
The most venomous creature on Earth: the box jellyfish, Chironex fleckeri.
Even sober scientists are now talking of the jellification of the oceans. And the term is more than a mere turn of phrase. Off southern Africa, jellyfish have become so abundant that they have formed a sort of curtain of death, “a stingy-slimy killing field,” as Gershwin puts it, that covers over 30,000 square miles.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (3)
Obama as Captain Queeg
the “beer summit” first showed, like cutting the tow-line, a disturbing oddity of behavior. This was followed by the betrayal of Poland and the Czech Republic over missile defenses, the ludicrous claim that the Benghazi massacres were provoked by a video on YouTube; the vow, made a year ago with all the sincerity of the utterances of a ventriloquist’s dummy, to bring the Benghazi killers to justice; the IRS scandal — a direct affront to the whole spirit of the Republic; his role in the Martin-Zimmerman affair, the destruction of American prestige in Egypt and almost every part of the Middle East and to a degree in Europe, the golf and safaris in the midst of crises… - - The American Spectator
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (3)
There's text and then there's subtext.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (6)
And when even your former friends no longer trust you....
Germans Conduct Helicopter Flyover of US Consulate: The flight appears to be connected to the revelations of vast US surveillancemade by former intelligence service contractor Edward Snowden. According to the American whistleblower, the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance service has established secret eavesdropping posts at 80 US embassies and consulates around the world.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (0)
September 9, 2013
If only the victim of this racist attack looked like Barack Obama's imaginary son.
From News Busters: "National Media Completely Ignore NY Man Left Brain Dead By Attacker Shouting 'I Hate White People'." Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard: September 9, 2013 [Update: Union Square beating victim Jeffrey Babbitt dies at Bellevue Hospital ]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 PM | Your Say (1)
The .22 Rimfire: A Meditation
For the subsonics part he's standardized on the Aguila—english: Eagle—.22 LR Sniper Subsonic made by TECNOS of Mexico.It's a .22 short that launches a 60 grain solid bullet at a stately 950 feet per second. Don't sound all that promising, and they look downright weird, but Remus had two occasions to use 'em on fair size varmints—it was righteous, they were raiding—and it put 'em down then and there with no unseemly thrashing around. - - ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (1)
Global Warming To Cause New Crisis. What Will It Be?
Seems the Arctic ice sheet has refused to do what it was told by computer models. The models “conservatively” insisted the ice would be gone entirely by 2013, yet the darn stuff is back. - - | William M. BriggsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (4)
Cheerios? Cheerios? What? WHAT? Say What!? But... But... What About Fruit Loops?
Attempting to describe the scope of possible American action in Syria to “degrade” the regime’s chemical weapons capacity, an official told USA Today, “If Assad is eating Cheerios, we’re going to take away his spoon and give him a fork. Will that degrade his ability to eat Cheerios? Yes. Will it deter him? Maybe. But he’ll still be able to eat Cheerios.” - - Breitbart. Big PeacePosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (5)
In even better news Weiner is now polling in the single digits
Weiner: Huma’s only crime is ‘standing by my side’ "SNIP: Yeah that and the whole muslim brotherhood thing…Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (2)
Everything you need to know about being a man can be found in the 1953 western Shane.
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool ... a gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that," Shane says -- 'Shane' on Blu-ray
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (3)
California Prison Academy—Better Than a Harvard Degree
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts thatit "has been called 'the greatest entry-level job in California'—and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can't find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy." That's right—instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy. - - Allysia Finley: - WSJ.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (3)
Acceptable Cheese Steak Cheeses
American cheese, white, is an acceptable alternative but only with a convincing story involving duress or deprivation. Some folks admit to using cheddar, also acceptable if just barely. Like roller skating on the guardrails of a high bridge, it can be done but there seems no compelling reason for it. Predictably, cheddar fans claim connoisseurdom. Yeah. What we don't need with no steenking connoisseurdom. The one cheese that is never acceptable is Swiss. John Kerry learned this the hard way when he visited Pat's. It made the headlines. The only question was whether this gross disrespect was accidental or intentional. Don't misunderstand, Swiss is a noble creation anywhere other than on a steak sandwich. Some things jes' won't do, like John Kerry, now that his name's come up. - - ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (6)
Poster of the Day
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (3)
“There’s nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster.” [Bumped]
Bashar al Assad poses no security threat to the United States and is, in fact, holding down the truly dangerous Islamists in his own country – and these same peacenik hipsters suddenly sound trumpets like Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. One would think, if one was truly a peaceful person and believed all of the tired clichés like “Make Love Not War” and the fatigued chants like “Hey Hey LBJ how many kids have you killed today”, that they’d be consistently against war. Apparently they are not. And people wonder why the word phony gets tossed at them.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (11)
Fixing the fast-food strike
The national chains don’t control employee wages; how much to pay their people is in the hands of local franchise owners.Therefore, if you are one of the concerned, caring, and vastly indignant activists behind this strike, I’m here to tell you that your social-justice problem has a simple solution. Take out a loan (or put together the money from your like-minded activist friends), buy a franchise from one of the chains, and hire workers at $15 an hour. -- Eric Raymond
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (1)
Why America Is Saying 'No' [Bumped]
There is something going on here, a new distance between Washington and America that the Syria debate has forced into focus.The Syria debate isn't, really, a struggle between libertarians and neoconservatives, or left and right, or Democrats and Republicans. That's not its shape. It looks more like a fight between the country and Washington, between the broad American public and Washington's central governing assumptions. Peggy Noonan: - WSJ.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (24)
"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people,
and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in,which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object." The God of the Machine (Library of Conservative Thought)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (2)
September 8, 2013
Global cooling: Arctic ice caps grows by 60% against global warming predictions
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:59 PM | Your Say (2)
"There is no explaining I Am that I Am."
Empirical science cannot provide a theology, nor an infallible cosmology. The best it can do is provide descriptions of the Creation, to be contemplated by the faithful, as icons are contemplated. It can expound some modest aspects of the Mystery, but not explain the Mystery away. Lip service : Essays in IdlenessPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:42 AM | Your Say (1)
"The Japanese. Nuked too much or not enough?"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (3)
Bureaucracies are what they are --
faceless instruments of coercion beyond redress by any lawful mechanism -- by design.They function as they do because their scam serves both the interests of the political class, the interests of the bureaucrats themselves, and the interests of the many nominally private institutions that profit from the existence and function of the bureaucracy. Consider as a trivial example the symbiosis between the Internal Revenue Service and the legions of tax lawyers, tax accountants, and tax return preparation specialists; were the IRS to fall, it would drive some 200,000 of those parasites into penury. - - Liberty's Torch
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (0)
September 7, 2013
Syria is the major crisis of modern geopolitical history.
In Russia one person decides about war and peace.In the USA Obama is more a type of bureaucratic administrator. Obama is much more predictable. He is not acting on his behalf; he simply follows the middle line of US-American foreign politics. We have to realize that Obama doesn't decide anything at all. He is merely the figurehead of a political system that makes the really important decisions. The political elite makes the decisions, Obama follows the scenario written for him. To say it clearly, Obama is nothing, Putin is everything. - - What Will Russia Do?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (1)
Ed Asner Explains Hollywood Silence on Obama, Syria: They 'Don't Want to Feel Anti-Black'
. There were online petitions signed by Ed Asner; letters to President George W. Bush pleading for peace were signed by Matt Damon, Tim Robbins, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin; former M*A*S*H star Mike Farrell fronted multiple press conferences where celebrities denounced war. In interviews, Janeane Garofalo stopped identifying herself as an actor -- she preferred to be called a member of the U.S. anti-war movement. - - Syria: Why Hollywood's Anti-War Voices Are Quiet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (12)
What to wear to Davy Jones' Locker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 AM | Your Say (0)
“Big waste country, the U.S.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:08 AM | Your Say (1)
September 7, 2013: A Day Of Prayer And Fasting For Peace
"May the plea for peace rise up and touch the heart of everyone so that they may lay down their weapons and be let themselves be led by the desire for peace.To this end, brothers and sisters, I have decided to proclaim for the whole Church on 7 September next, the vigil of the birth of Mary, Queen of Peace, a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world, and I also invite each person, including our fellow Christians, followers of other religions and all men of good will, to participate, in whatever way they can, in this initiative." -- POPE FRANCIS | The Last Refuge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 AM | Your Say (3)
September 6, 2013
The Bantam President Fades: "Is this trip really necessary?"
And to begin a war when in all appearances at a low ebb is to court disaster. You should ideally be in possession of all your marbles at the start of something like that. But Obama has reached the sorry stage of dejection that only the most soundly defeated generals experience when they looked down at a shrunken position. He is whupped. He’s Gamelin before Rundstedt. He’s Perceval marching in his shorts in a toothbrush mustache to a grinning Yamashita in his two-toned Imperial Japanese Army uniform. Obama’s all out of confidence. He hardly seems to believe the things he says himself, as if whistling past the graveyard, making noises to make it seem as if he had company. It seems an absurdity to forge ahead under these circumstances, to start a war — or whatever you want to call it — when Obama himself has declared an utter disinterest in its outcome, regime change, or even in taking sides. - - Belmont Club » End Game
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 PM | Your Say (1)
My New Failsafe Fashion Filosophy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:14 PM | Your Say (1)
My New Failsafe Foreign Policy in One Sentence
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:08 PM | Your Say (8)
"Westerners like to flirt with trendy politics"
and love soothing language of "rights," "equality," "freedom," "compassion," and "justice."These benign goals are all opposed by "right wingers," "tea baggers, "corporations," "fascists," "conservatives," "fundamentalist Christians," "militias," "gun nuts," "corporations," "racists," "homophobes," "islamaphobes," "vets," "bigots," "birthers," and people who won't eat their vegetables. Which airy fairy pantheon of evil the press and low-information voters (i.e., morons) lap up like spilled Jack Daniels on the kitchen floor. -- Liberty's Torch: The true "progressive" agenda.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:52 PM | Your Say (0)
Hatefacts
Things that are true but must never be spoken for fear of penalty: Some other hatefacts - things that are true but must never be spoken for fear of penalty:- Native Americans were not living in peace and oneness with the environment before Europeans arrived in America.
- Men are raped more often than women in America - in prison; the Justice Department estimated that over 200,000 rapes of men happened in 2008 alone.
- Gun ownership has skyrocketed in America, but gun crimes dropped - and the tougher the gun laws, the more gun crime an area suffers.
- On average, men test 5 points higher on IQ than women.
- Groups of young black men are attacking whites due to racial hatred, and the incidents of this have exploded in frequency and number since Obama became president.
- For the last fifteen or more years, the average warming on the planet has been .05 degrees per decade... plus or minus .08 degrees. As in no warming, or even cooling.
- On average men are better than women at mathematical skills.
- Homosexuals are much m ore likely to suffer from and transmit sexually transmitted diseases than normal people.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (3)
Poll: Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria
The New York Times/CBS News poll showed that though just 1 in 4 Americans believe that the United States has a responsibility to intervene in the Syrian conflict,more than 90 percent of the public is convinced that putting all 535 representatives of the United States Congress on the ground in Syria—including Senate pro tempore Patrick Leahy, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and, in fact, all current members of the House and Senate—is the best course of action at this time. - - America's Finest News Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (4)
Rep Tom Marino: "Why I'm Voting Against Attacking Syria"
Secretary Hagel could not tell lawmakers who the U.S. could trust among the Syrian opposition, stating "that’s not my business to trust." .... To make matters worse, Secretary Kerry explicitly stated that the current proposal for unilateral U.S. military action is to "assert a principle." It is not to halt the killing of innocent Syrians, it is not to end the evil and tyrannical rule of Assad, and it is not to protect the US or our allies from an imminent attack. - - Business Insider
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (1)
I had such fun the other evening.
My dear friend Koko the sign-language gorilla was there, ice-dancing with Ryan Gosling, who is always good for a laugh. Afterward, we all got hot chocolate and ran into Lady Gaga and Freeman Dyson, who had just flown in from Cabo. Koko and Ryan had a hilarious arm-wrestling contest (we called it a draw). Things got even crazier when we went to get sushi and met up with Hilary Clinton, Justin Bieber, and Lucy the Australophithecus. Eventually, we all wound up at Hil’s apartment, where we played Twister half the night. What fun. On the Origin of Celebrity - Issue 5: Fame - Nautilus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (0)
September 5, 2013
Where are all the hippies with paper-mache puppets, and signs saying “War is never the answer”?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (1)
What's My Lines?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (2)
Coalition of the Clueless
Debbie Wasserman-Test Schultz says 'dozens' of countries stand with US on Syria, can't name them.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:10 AM | Your Say (1)
"The problem with the American way of war is that, technologically, it can’t lose, but, in every other sense, it can’t win. "
The object of war is not to destroy the enemy’s tanks (or Russian helicopters) but his will.
And on that front America loses, always. The “unmatched” superpower cannot impose its will on Kabul kleptocrats, Pashtun goatherds, Egyptian generals, or Benghazi militia. There is no reason to believe Syria would be an exception to this rule. America’s inability to win ought to be a burning national question, but it’s not even being asked. -- Mark Steyn
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (0)
France Surrenders
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (0)
September 4, 2013
"To go to war under these leaders would be like undertaking to climb K2 with a carload of clowns."
which the US might find itself in and provides a strategic framework for winning. It shows more strategy than the administration is capable of. It is the way the administration should be thinking if it were capable of thinking for itself; if it were capable of perceiving its own self interest. It is the unfortunate case that they cannot. What is disturbing is that the administration has no strategy other than to act like Pavlov’s dogs and salivate at the sight of money. They will do the bidding of whatever lobbyist feeds them and brag to Congress about it. Obama allegedly made his decision during a 45 minute walk in the White House garden. “At the Last Minute, Obama Alone Made Call to Seek Congressional Approval,” says the Wall Street Journal. Did they mean he was alone with his phone? Is that how he makes up his mind? Belmont Club » Being Your Own Man
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 PM | Your Say (0)
September 3, 2013
Artists give pretty signs to the homeless instead of something useful
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (0)
Barack Obama doesn’t have just a streak of the feminine in him; he seems to be a woman, and a feminist one at that, with a streak of man in him.
Self-reliance. Obama is a poster child for affirmative action. Rather than relying on his own wit or intelligence, he gamed the system, getting into schools and getting jobs – including the one he has now – that he is clearly unqualified for. He may be the only president who has never run a business or been in the military or had a private sector job. Honor. There is no greater test of honor than how a person reacts in the heat of battle when his fellow countrymen are in danger. In the Benghazi debacle, President Obama has been AWOL since the night of the attack, when no one knows where he was. To say nothing of the lies that have followed from the administration to provide political cover. Barack Obama: the first female president | The Daily CallerPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (0)
The Tower by István Orosz
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (0)
The Very Bad Seeds
Objectively speaking, Kerouac and his pals were little more than a bunch of unprepossessing misfits.And yet—with their glib contempt for capitalism and mainstream society, their romanticization of criminality, drug abuse, and the tragedy of mental illness, and their narcissistic rebranding as virtues of their own shiftlessness and dissolution—they would turn out to be, to an amazing extent, the seed of pretty much everything that was rotten about the American 1960s and their aftermath.... It’s hard to decide which is more of a miracle—that all these self-regarding pseudo-intellectuals managed to find one another, or that they then managed to spark a cultural revolution that transformed the Western world. Ore or ordure? by Bruce Bawer - The New Criterion
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (0)
September 2, 2013
Next challenge: Swimming from Cuba to Florida with a sucking chest wound.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:37 PM | Your Say (0)
The ordinary man is luminously clear,
The ordinary man is luminously clear,
I alone seem confused.
The ordinary man is searchingly exact,
I alone am vague and uncertain.
How nebulous!
as the ocean;
How blurred!
as though without boundary.
The masses all have a purpose,
I alone am stubborn and uncouth.
- - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. by Victor H. Mair
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (0)
Har-de-har-har!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (0)
Seamus Heaney, the Nelson Mandela of Irish poetry, just wasn't that good. Sorry
So what is this brilliant poetry that has seduced “millions of people”? Can anyone spontaneously remember a single line of Seamus Heaney? When I asked this same question of Twitter my laptop screen filled with tumbleweed, until someone eventually suggested that Heaney’s memorable talent was, arguably, proven by this line: “Between my finger and thumb, the squat pen rests, I’ll dig with it.” .... But the younger Heaney was also Irish, republican, Left-wing and hairy when all this was à la mode. And once the literary world decided Heaney was the Mandela of Irish Poetry, he became irreproachable. - – Telegraph BlogsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (0)
September 1, 2013
Drunks Gone Wild
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:34 PM | Your Say (4)
QOTD: “So we’re bombing Syria because Syria is bombing Syria? And I’m the idiot?” - Sarah Palin
- Sarah Palin/ Facebook
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (0)
Twice Cooked Pork is No Longer Part of My Diet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 AM | Your Say (1)
“What do you think of a ‘boy band’ made up entirely of gay boys?” My first “thought” was — aren’t they all?
The thing that makes “boy bands” so creepy
is that they’re all contrived — nothing about them is true or natural, they lack both the soul and the swagger of Motown and they’re assembled like those little girls for a beauty pageant, as if Milli Vanilli had quintuplets. I’d prefer a Daltrey vs Townsend fist-fight to the grab-ass and snuggles of One Dimension. Mailbag: Gay 'Boy Bands', Miley Cyrus and Bombing Syria
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:19 AM | Your Say (0)