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October 31, 2013

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 PM | Your Say (7)

October 30, 2013

Facebook Might Soon Track Your Cursor On The Screen

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The social network may start collecting data on minute user interactions with its content, such as how long a user’s cursor hovers over a certain part of its website, or whether a user’s newsfeed is visible at a given moment on the screen of his or her mobile phone, Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin said Tuesday during an interview. Facebook Considers Vast Increase in Data Collection - The CIO Report - WSJ

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (9)

Celebrate, Celebrate! Today is Happy National Candy Corn Day!

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October 30th is National Candy Corn Day, as if we didn't have a candy holiday already scheduled for the next day. National Candy Corn Day is a creation of the National Confectioners Association, as a way of reminding everyone to go buy some. - - Details and Links at the ever popular Neatorama

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (2)

Sickest B&NoB Ever

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The Villisca Ax Murder House in Iowa (above). In 1912, Josiah B. Moore bludgeoned his wife, four children and two guests to death with an ax. And now, their spirits run the house. You and a crew of friends (up to 6), can stay a night for a mere $428 (most expensive stay in Iowa?). - - Huckberry | Halloween Special

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (1)

New Jersey Memorial for Chris Christie

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Chicken Nugget (Right)

World's largest chicken nugget on display in Secaucus: Empire Kosher Poultry has set the Guinness World Records mark for the world's largest chicken nugget weighing in at 51.1 pounds and measuring 3.25 feet long and two feet wide.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (4)

Blast Frozen Fish

Naomichi Yasuda was certainly the first acclaimed sushi chef I know of who not only admitted, but proudly boasted of freezing some of his fish,
(much of the fish you eat in sushi bars is, in fact, at one point, frozen), giving the dates or “vintage” of each fish he’d blast frozen in a medical freezer to “cure” it in a desirable way. Many varieties of fish, Yasuda taught me, are in fact, improved by freezing. Anthony Bourdain, Parental Advisory. This Program is for Mature Adults. NOT for kiddies!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (2)

There's Something About Mary

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According to Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Democrats had only promised that Americans could keep their insurance if it was "good insurance."
"We said when we passed that, 'If you had insurance that was good insurance that you wanted to keep it, you could keep it,'" Landrieu said. She declined to say if she would support a measure to let Americans keep the plans they had in 2013. "I haven't looked at it specifically," Landrieu said. Senate Democrats Struggle to Defend Health Insurance Promises | The Weekly Standard

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (2)

"Death Cab for Cutie:" Not Soon Enough and Not Real Enough

Kathleen Sebelius, welcome to an unwelcome Washington tradition: The deathwatch. It’s Kathleen Sebelius’s turn now. On the Hill, they’re calling for her resignation and tossing around words like “subpoena.”
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (7)

Replacing Armageddon with Armageddon 2.0

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Replacing the Boomers & Naval Soul-Searching: I The Navy’s plan is to replace its current fleet of 14 ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) with 12 new submarines, beginning in 2021. It won’t be cheap.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the research and acquisition costs for the fleet could total over $100 billion through the mid-2030s. This expense threatens the rest of the Navy’s long-term shipbuilding plan. Viewing the SSBN fleet as a national strategic asset and not merely another line of Navy ships, the Navy has requested that the Pentagon and Congress top up its shipbuilding account with an extra $60 billion over 15 years to pay for the new SSBNs.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (10)

Calvity n. baldness

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“A method of concealing partial baldness,” patented by Donald and Frank Smith in 1977. The hair is grown to a length of 3 or 4 inches, divided into equal portions, and brushed over the bald area, using hair spray to hold it in place. In a Word – Futility Closet

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:25 AM | Your Say (6)

October 29, 2013

Top of the Pops in 200 AD: Hear only complete surviving ancient song sung

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Dating to the first or second century A.D., the stele announces its function clearly in the inscription.
“I am a tombstone, an image. Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance.” The last line is damaged, reputedly by Anglo-Irish railway engineer Edward Purser who was on site building the Smyrna-Aidin Ottoman Railway when the stele was discovered and who sawed off the base so his wife could use it as a flower display, but it appears to be a dedication from Seikilos to a Euterpe, perhaps his wife? It’s the song that ensured the stele would truly be an everlasting memorial because he didn’t just have the lyrics engraved, but rather also included the melody in ancient Greek musical notation. = = The History Blog

These are the lyrics in transliterated Greek and in an English translation: Hoson zes, phainou Meden holos su lupou; Pros oligon esti to zen To telos ho chronos apaitei

While you live, shine Have no grief at all; Life exists only a short while And time demands its toll

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 PM | Your Say (7)

Imagine

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Obama supporter, Tavis Smiley, recently admitted the truth, saying ,
“The data is going to indicate, sadly, that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category. At some point, this group may realize that this man is not good for them. At some point, reality may overpower the imagined significance of half-blackness. The Battered Public Syndrome | Reality Bats Last

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 PM | Your Say (11)

The Old Man Next Door

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Saddam had his spider hole. Manson had Barker Ranch. For James “Whitey” Bulger, the anonymity of advanced age provided ample cover for him to hide out 16 years in Santa Monica, a stash of blood money stuffed in the walls and guns at the ready. The last days of America’s most wanted mobster. - - Los Angeles Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:45 PM | Your Say (1)

The Secret Life of Everything: Where Your Stuff Comes From

It’s easy to find out how things move—in the air, on the ground, across the seas.

It’s far harder, if not downright impossible, to find the source. This is what I learned: At this stage of the early 21st century, we know where everything goes to, but not where it comes from. - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:57 PM | Your Say (1)

What do we know about manipulating Earth’s climate?

Well, it would seem we know jack or know shit or know a combination of both:
The research is still in the early stages, and there is quite a lot we don’t yet know about these techniques. Their effectiveness is uncertain, their side effects are very uncertain, and the practicality of these ideas is extremely uncertain. Geoengineering, through the eyes of the IPCC | Ars Technica

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:53 PM | Your Say (4)

Andrea Kowch: Dream Fields

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Andrea Kowch Studio
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (0)

Human brain boiled in its skull lasted 4000 years

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SHAKEN, scorched and boiled in its own juices, this 4000-year-old human brain has been through a lot.
It may look like nothing more than a bit of burnt log, but it is one of the oldest brains ever found.... The skeletons were found burnt in a layer of sediment that also contained charred wooden objects. Given that the region is tectonically active, Altinoz speculates that an earthquake flattened the settlement and buried the people before fire spread through the rubble. The flames would have consumed any oxygen in the rubble and boiled the brains in their own fluids. - - October 2013 - New Scientist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:44 PM | Your Say (2)

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Putin, China, and the Islamic world recognize an inexperienced poseur when they see one.
Just as Khrushchev took the measure of Jack Kennedy, and tested him to the brink of oblivion, a whole mess of bad guys are lining up for Obama. The ongoing Mumbai massacre, where Islamo Mofos are targeting Americans and Brits, is a sign of things to come as I see it. Pent up frustration, after nearly eight years of getting their asses kicked by the Bush anti-terrorist initiatives, will give way to explosions of get-evenism. Obama can play dress-up all he wants, but as anyone who's payed attention knows, the guy is all air. Anyway, as I read the script, his real usefulness will be as a martyred president, ala JFK. There's your Camelot. Most likely at the hands of some right-wing fanatic, like Chuck Hagel. -- Rodger, Real King of France @ Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (4)

Have We Reached Peak Pumpkin Spice?

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In the future, I predict that people will talk about 2013 the same way people in the 1400s talked about the Black Death
— only it won’t be the plague that half of us died from. Instead we’ll all be killed by Pumpkin Spice Fatigue (PSF). Imagine it: our entire society destroyed, all because Mars, Inc. couldn’t restrain themselves from releasing a pumpkin spice-flavored M&M. - - Modern Farmer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (2)

Not "Just the facts, ma'am."

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We best remember Joe Friday imploring female informants to provide “Just the facts, ma’am.” But, in actual fact, he never uttered precisely those words. “All we want are the facts” is what he really said. Free: Listen to 298 Episodes of the Vintage Crime Radio Series, Dragnet | Open Culture

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 AM | Your Say (6)

October 28, 2013

So has everyone finally recovered from United Nations Day?

October 24th seems to roll around faster every year. I almost forgot to order the “blue helmet”-shaped cake with cholera-shaped sprinkles and was late mailing out the novelty parking tickets with the comically huge fines you don’t really have to pay. Costco started selling chocolate landmines right after Labor Day. The whole thing’s become way too commercial. - - United Negations

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 PM | Your Say (1)

"Well, don't get mad at Obama. He didn't know about the NSA spying." Oh, he didn't? "No. No. And that's why you shouldn't be mad. He didn't know."

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Obama Doesn't Know Jack: Obama doesn't know anything about Benghazi.
He doesn't know anything about Fast and Furious. He didn't know anything about Syria. He didn't know anything about Obamacare. Didn't know anything about the NSA. He didn't know anything about Solyndra. He didn't know anything about how the stimulus was gonna go wrong. He didn't know diddly-squat. Congress had no idea that it would be this bad. They didn't know. The conservative talking heads in Washington, they didn't know for five weeks how bad it was gonna be. The political consultants, Republicans and Democrats, they didn't know. Nobody had any idea.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:38 PM | Your Say (23)

Hank's Grocery

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The animals he has killed (all of which are on display in the store) are from healthy populations, free roaming, and hunted with bow and arrow. Surprisingly all legal. No matter how you feel about it, you have to admit you’ve never seen anything like it. Hank’s Harvest Food since 1975, Twisp, Washington. -- Messy Nessy Chic Messy Nessy Chic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:04 PM | Your Say (4)

Dutch Santa’s Little Black Helper

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Thankfully, mercifully, and quite refreshingly, the Dutch populace has told the world to go fuck itself.
A “Pete-ition” in support of Black Pete on Facebook gathered over two million likes in the matter of a few days. And according to a poll of nearly 10,000 Netherlanders, 96% said the debate shouldn’t even be occurring. It’s almost as if the entire Dutch nation has applied blackface to its posterior and is mooning the world. - - Jim Goad
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 AM | Your Say (11)

Banksy in Neverland: The curious appeal of a marginal artist

Only in his manner of proceeding is Banksy truly original.

In other respects, his work seems that of a clever adolescent—one who is now approaching middle age..... The enormous interest his work arouses, disproportionate to its artistic merit, shows not that there is fashion in art, but that an adolescent sensibility is firmly entrenched in our culture. - - Theodore Dalrymple

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (4)

All Washed Up: The American Laundromat

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New York City has 2,654 laundries -- self-service ones like Clean Rite and dry cleaners who take in bags for fluff "n"€™ fold. That is one for every 3,151 people. » D. Foy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (0)

At Cross Purposes

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Maine Hunting Sock | LLBean As stated in the 1941 LLBean catalog, "The red top is protection against accidental shooting and the black stripe below makes it unusually attractive."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 AM | Your Say (2)

"Chinese prosperity is dependent on us, like a suburb’s on a big city."

As much as they hate us, we’ve been pulling the engine of civilization a long time and there simply isn’t anyone credible to take our place.
(No, this is not American triumphalism, either. The reason we are the engine of this train is that the other countries swallowed the spider of socialism earlier, and faster. Even in the “best case scenario” – the Scandinavian countries – the socialist model kills small business and individual experimentation and reduces the incentives for success. Which in turn kills innovation.) They don’t dare admit we’re running on thin air Merry Melodies fashion. They are, rather, holding their breath, and hoping we don’t look down. But sooner or later either it becomes obvious we’re no longer pulling the train, or we realize it ourselves. And then— Oh, Buck Up! | According To Hoyt

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

October 27, 2013

Waterpetals

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 PM | Your Say (0)

"Our technocracy is detached it is from competence. "

It's not the technocracy of engineers, but of "thinkers" who read Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman
and watch TED talks and savor the flavor of competence, without ever imbibing its substance. These are the people who love Freakonomics, who enjoy all sorts of mental puzzles, who like to see an idea turned on its head, but who couldn't fix a toaster. Sultan Knish: Government is Magic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 PM | Your Say (2)

The Man Who Knew Too Little

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The chief of the US spy agency NSA has not discussed the alleged bugging of German chancellor’s phone with President Barack Obama, officials say.
Gen Keith Alexander never discussed alleged operations involving Chancellor Angela Merkel, an NSA spokeswoman said. German media say the US has been tapping the chancellor’s phone since 2002, and Mr Obama was told in 2010. A report in German tabloid Bild am Sonntag claimed that Gen Alexander had told the president about the bugging himself. An NSA source told the paper that Obama had not stopped the operation, and had wanted to know all about Mrs Merkel as “he did not trust her”. - - iOwnTheWorld.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 PM | Your Say (9)

Enemy of the State! Beware!

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:35 PM | Your Say (6)

In 1876’s Suggestions for the Sickroom,

several cookbooks have multiple beef tea recipes.
Suggestions for the Sick Room has seven — plus three more recipes for beef juice. The most common method for making beef tea calls for letting raw beef soak in a jar of water. Then you put the jar in a saucepan of water and slowly heat it. Filter it, and make sure all the fat has been skimmed out. Serve that beefy broth hot. - - The Smart Set: Hot Hamburger Water
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:01 PM | Your Say (0)

Perhaps the president should deliver this speech.

“I could not have done it,” he should say, and thrusting his finger into the air for emphasis deliver the punchline.
“And you know why. I am only capable of incompetence or putting competent systems to incompetent uses. For I can ruin a screwdriver by using it is a chisel, but I am incapable of contriving a screwdriver in the first place. Belmont Club » The Last Time I Called Paris

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:06 PM | Your Say (1)

From August 2010 and TechCrunch’s delirious preview of Healthcare.gov:

“We were working in a very very nimble hyper-consumer-focused way,” explained Todd Park, the chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all-nighters . . . and, you know, idealism. That kind of led to the magic that was produced.” Obamacare's Magical Thinkers | National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:59 PM | Your Say (2)

"If this hell’s-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen?

If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people still go on buying more soap,

eating more apples, giving their children more vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more languages by gramophone, hearing more virtuosos by radio, re-decorating their houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers, cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease?" — DOROTHY SAYERS, MURDER MUST ADVERTISE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:12 PM | Your Say (5)

VOCABULARY: BILIOUS BRANGLOMANE EDITION

atrabilious: morose, melancholy, or in a like way ill-tempered (from the latin for ‘black bile’)
jonquil: corruption of the bird ‘junco,’ revised to refer to an associated type of narcissus
sough: a rustling or sighing noise; or, to speak or preach whinily; or, a ditch or marsh
mythomane: abbreviation of mythomaniac, similarly graphomane, monomane, etc
imbrangle: also embrangle, to involve in a brangle, a noisy fuss or squabble
afflatus: divine or otherwise miraculous creative inspiration or knowledge
posset: an old cold remedy, spiced milk curdled with beer or wine
bistre: a brownish-yellow pigment derived from wood soot
petroliferous: capable of yielding petroleum, e.g. oil shale
palter: to act or talk carelessly or deceitfully, or to haggle
parclose: a rail or screen dividing parts of a church
cark: care or worry; to carken is to burden

- - Coldewey.cc

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:08 PM | Your Say (7)

Elvis Presley's Pound Cake

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He could afford filet mignon but preferred well-done burgers. Instead of champagne, he drank Pepsi. For dessert, he favored Deep South diner classics. One of Elvis's favorite sweets was the pound cake made by his childhood friend Janelle McComb. She gave us her recipe in 1987, on the 10th anniversary of Elvis's death. Every year at Christmas, she'd bake two loaves and bring them to Graceland. Elvis could eat one all by himself. | SAVEUR

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

Recessional

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

- - by Rudyard Kipling

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

Will Americans ever grow tired of "It"?

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Although anyone is capable of producing “it” and shoveling “it” in great quantities, the most prodigious and consistent producers and shovelers of “it” are politicians.
Every time they open their mouths “it” comes out. They write laws that are full of “it” and then turn them over to bureaucrats, who then write regulations that multiply “it” a hundred fold. They then open the flood gates and “it” starts rolling down-hill. Politicians don’t like “it” for themselves. So, they write other laws protecting them from the “it” they produce for the rest of us. - - Asylum Watch

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

October 26, 2013

"Remain Calm. All Is Well."

"One of the strangest things about the President is his inability to back down even when he’s dead wrong. No one is getting fired and his lackeys continue to pretend all is well.
It makes sense to simply put off the start of the individual mandate for a year, even six months, but allow people to enroll voluntarily for that time. But he’s so fixated on appearing infallible that he’s making the rollout of Obamacare into the train wreck some of his allies predicted. And since he fought the Republicans on this very point, he had to dig his heels in and take a massive political drubbing while the bad news continues to pile in, even being reported by his fawning press." neo-neocon サ Blog Archive サ Mandate: to delay or not to delay

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (1)

"Laugh While You Can Monkey Boys"

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After which we get to....

1 And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.

2 And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

3 And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. Revelation 16 KJV - And I heard a great voice out of the - Bible Gateway

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (14)

Gaststättenneueröffnungsuntergangsgewissheit

Total confidence that a newly opened restaurant is doomed to fail. (Inn-New-Opening-Downfall-Certitude) The Word For... : The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (1)

"The GOP has to deal with the problem posed by a hostile media. It’s like trying to mount an invasion when the enemy has air superiority."

There are scores, if not hundreds of variables at play on the modern battlefield – but there is only one essential element: only one. You can still lose if you have it, but without it you simply do not have a chance. And that one variable is not just air superiority – the ability to fight and win in the skies over the battlespace – but air supremacy: you must own the skies. - - Bamboo Spears | Bill Whittle

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (3)

Scary-Ass Chart of the Day

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Found at VodkaPundit サ

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (0)

Healthcare.Gov: Dead on Arrival

I’m ready to call it: the website, as a functioning health exchange, is dead.
I no longer believe it can be fixed (though I was always a bit dubious). I think you’ll have to throw it away and start over. Note that “start over” isn’t starting from scratch — there is a tremendous amount of analysis, requirements, and regulations, not to mention existing interfaces to various systems, as well as all the nifty graphic design work for the website. But at this point, i’m pretty sure that the architecture, design, and implementation are sufficiently septic that it will be faster and cheaper to start over than to salvage any significant amount of the code base. Obamacare and the Project of Doom : And Still I Persist…

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (6)

October 25, 2013

Comment of the Month

By JB remarking on:Side-Lines: "As a white American, I think that African Americans and Indians should pay us royalties for the use of our civilization."
There's probably more wealth bound up in one single LandSat image than was destroyed by us in the West's romp around the world. Any conceivable amount of money in reparations for the damage we did to everyone, times a thousand, has been amply repaid. We have collectively created whole worlds and put them in the hands of the entire Human Race, either for free or for a tinytiny fraction of the cost of making them. We've actually altered the way the human race does things. We created the sky and then built ships to travel it. History will never again be the same for our existing, and the options available now to even the smallest person alive boggle the mind. There is no more moral component to these claims; they're simply power politics and should be treated as such. Don't get heated up about them; stay cool and organize to fight. Propaganda is a very old game.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 PM | Your Say (8)

Modern art cannot exist in the same world as traditional art.

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There is a reason that during the Renaissance you didn’t have celebrated artists making random splatters of paint on a canvas in the Uffizi - that is because it is stupid.
It is patently on it’s face idiotic. Because a child really could do it. Turner or Rembrandt did not have to compete in the creative arena with a Tracy Emin type character who traipses around confidently arranging mannequins or unmade beds and touting it as art because it is ‘pushing boundaries’. That is because it takes a society existing, as we do, at a sustained level of luxurious stupidity to even imagine philosophizing such obvious lies. Modern Art: An Artful Swindle

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

"As a white American, I think that African Americans and Indians should pay us royalties for the use of our civilization."

I do not propose a great exaction, but only a reasonable fee for enjoyment of contributions that whites have made and that others use.
I mean things such as telephones, air conditioning, flush toilets, democracy, civil rights, antibiotics, running shoes, and the machines that read EBT cards. Also paved roads. Cars. Computers. Electricity. Clean water. Those sorts of things. Fred Reed, Ideas for a Better Nation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (6)

You gotta love "Techno-Turd Taco." Describes Obamacare and Obama in one handy phrase.

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

A new river on Saturn’s moon Titan named Vid Flumina (right) resembles a shorter version of Earth’s own Nile.

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Like our own Nile, Titan’s giant river slices through slanted and rough terrain.
Tributaries flow into it, and it flows out toward a massive sea. Radebaugh determined that the new Nile must be draining rainfall and subsurface liquids from the area and carrying them toward the moon’s ocean. “There appears to be liquid flowing through that river right now,” she says. - - | DiscoverMagazine.com

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (1)

And I Quote...

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Samuel Johnson:

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in parliament, who is not a patriot. No other man will protect our rights: no other man can merit our confidence.

Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (1)

The [Bumped] First Day of Creation (illustration from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle)

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And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:59 AM | Your Say (30)

October 24, 2013

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." -- Ephesians 6:12

The politician must appeal to the vanity of low human nature, through the flattery implicit in all demagogic speech.
The class resentment, that is unambiguously at the heart of Marxism, is also at the heart of democracy in its less violent forms; the demand for equality because, “I’m as good as you are.” Finally it pulls down not only the rich from their stations — the landed, the responsible, the high-born — but with them every noble aspiration the natural hierarchy existed to serve. In its place, & to assuage their iconic longings, the crass are provided with a theatre of “celebrities” instead; of the morally worthless, “famous for being famous.” Monarchy, where it survives, itself descends to the Hollywood level, in the vagrant hope of appeasing this mob. - - Three horsemen : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 PM | Your Say (1)

“Baggatory:”

“The limbo-like precincts of an airport baggage claim, where groggy travellers gather around the motionless treads of empty conveyor belts.” The Word For... : The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 PM | Your Say (0)

In which we endorse Surber's motives.

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From Agence France Presse:
"A court ruling in Italy this week has put an end to a 39-year legal dispute between Oscar-winning film star Sophia Loren and Italian tax authorities, Italian media reported on Thursday."

This item is just an excuse to run her picture. - - Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:12 PM | Your Say (7)

HOW many highways workers does it take to change a light bulb? Seven according to this photo taken on a dual carriageway.

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-- | Daily Express

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:52 PM | Your Say (2)

Because Obama. That's Why.

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Do you know what we could use about now? Either a nice, fresh, racial incident to heal over or a new squirrel - maybe both! We could have another beer summit or something. Michelle Obama's Mirror: Obamacare: We’re Committed to Better Mistakes Tomorrow

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (1)

"One of the reasons for being glad to be as old as I am is that I may be spared living to see a race war in America."

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Initial skirmishes in that race war have already begun,
and have in fact been going on for some years. But public officials pretend that it is not happening, and the mainstream media seldom publish it at all, except in ways that conceal what is really taking place. - - Thomas Sowell, Race-Hustling

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (8)

As Democracy Is Perfected

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"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." — H L Mencken: Bayard vs. Lionheart

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (5)

I know my views are antiquated, perhaps novel, but I am an antique in an ever-feminized world.

"What today’s kids need is a good slap across the mouth from time to time.
They should be beat constantly until they realize that they can’t get away and have to fight back to survive. Beat until they lose their narcissistic attitude and accept that weakness is never an option. Beat until she loses weight and he stops playing with Barbie dolls. Beat until they realize that their opinions don’t matter. Only corporal punishment directed at their lamentable selves will cure this degenerative malaise corrupting society." - - Why You Should Beat Your Kids

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (10)

October 23, 2013

"You can't handle the truth.

We live in a world of decline and chaos. Some men will have to stand for order. Who's going to do that? You? >looks at Boomer aunt< You Alinsky-Marxist?
I have a greater responsibility of providing tax dollars for your government checks and producing children who won't be fucking psychos than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Trayvon and curse the successful businessman! You have that luxury. You have that luxury of being brainwashed to believe lies. You don't know what I know. While that future career criminal's death is tragic, it probably saved lives, and my existence while grotesque and incomprehensible to your Starbucks sipping ass, produces order and security. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at '80s dance parties you WANT me to be successful, you NEED me to be successful." - - 28 Sherman: My Col. Jessup Routine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 PM | Your Say (4)

Who Says There's No Good News? BillWhittle.Com Goes Live

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Sharp and smart. Check it out at Bill Whittle | Smart Conservative Thinking
So that’s why we launched BillWhittle.com: to get more rhetorical intelligence deployed for the team that has practical intelligence in abundance. One way to do that is through making political points not only with statistics, logic, reason and facts, but with the essential element that trumps them all: story. So with your help, we will be doing a lot of political work here for a long time to come.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:15 PM | Your Say (3)

Further proof that Mrs. FDR would be viewed as a extremist, arsonistic, anarchist, racist, homophobic, terroristic wingnut Tea-Bagger in today's political atmosphere.

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"Here is Eleanor Roosevelt's license to carry pistol --used by her to avoid necessity of bodyguards." - - Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard: October 23, 2013

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:47 PM | Your Say (4)

"When I was in hospital I kept on telling them that the tablets weren't going to do me any good 'cause my brain was dead."

I lost my sense of smell and taste. I didn't need to eat, or speak, or do anything. I ended up spending time in the graveyard because that was the closest I could get to death."
Nine years ago, Graham woke up and discovered he was dead. He was in the grip of Cotard's syndrome. People with this rare condition believe that they, or parts of their body, no longer exist. Mindscapes: First interview with a dead man

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:53 PM | Your Say (1)

“I categorize from 2007 until now as the decline phase of Wikipedia”

The Decline of Wikipedia: Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It, Fewer People Create It Since 2007, when the new controls began to bite,
the likelihood of a new participant’s edit being immediately deleted has steadily climbed. Over the same period, the proportion of those deletions made by automated tools rather than humans grew. Unsurprisingly, the data also indicate that well-intentioned newcomers are far less likely to still be editing Wikipedia two months after their first try.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (10)

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (1)

Imagine

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (2)

Gay Parenting: The Early Years

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (5)

[Really] Beware of Dog

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

The Rat Hunters of New York

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“Rats move in pre-determined pathways,” he explains.
“They know where they’re going to run. In an alley, you figure out their escape routes and you put your biggest set of jaws there. You catch more rats that way.” The point of the rat hunts, he says, is to allow the dogs do what they naturally do: hunt and kill vermin. - - | Roads & Kingdoms

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (4)

Time is Running Out for Juneau

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Juneau’s processed poop is going to start piling up come Jan. 1, unless a new disposal arrangement comes together soon. The search for the latest stopgap to get rid of the capital city’s sewage sludge comes after municipal officials abandoned a new disposal contract. - - | KTOO

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (2)

"I came not to send peace, but a sword." World Council of Churches Stands By As Christians Perish, Churches Wither

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The World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva claims to represent and serve 345 churches worldwide.
What has it done to help the persecuted churches in Iraq, Syria and Egypt? Or the flood of Syrian refugees into Jordan and Lebanon? Answer: it has devoted the whole of 2013 to promoting a World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel (September 22-28). That is, it has poured its Swiss francs into stirring up the one corner of the area that is currently almost calm. = = :: Gatestone Institute
HT: Maggie's Farm

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (4)

The Slob

Even as the debate about arming the [Syrian] rebels took on a new urgency, Mr. Obama rarely voiced strong opinions during senior staff meetings. But current and former officials said his body language was telling: he often appeared impatient or disengaged while listening to the debate, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum. -- Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (0)

In my overalls I remain "the glass of fashion and the mould of form"

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Last year, for some reason, I bought four pairs of overalls, and now I find that they are trending.... Bib Overalls: From Farmwear to Fashion Icon
So while fashionistas shout “Overalls Are Back!” and “Buckle Up: How to Wear Overalls Right,” a group of true devotees will celebrate their affinity for ovies next month at the International Overalls Weekend in New Orleans. Attended by bib fans from around the globe, the festival is the brainchild of Niels Windfeld of Thyholm, Denmark who writes a blog called The Bib Professor. A former university professor who bought his first pair of overalls from a Mission District thrift store while on sabbatical at the University of California, Berkeley in 2001, Windfeld posts about life in overalls.

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

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:00 AM | Your Say (0)

The Stalled Record

The Science of Winning Leaps at the Calaveras County Frog Jumping Competition The rules dictate
that each competitor’s frog is allowed three jumps in a row, and the distance of each jump is combined for the total score. The current record, set in 1986 by “Rosie the Ribiter” and jockey Lee Giudici, is 21 feet, 5 3/4 inches: 7.16 feet per jump. On average, the scientists observed that at the recent Jubilee, the jockeys’ frogs jumped nearly 5 feet per attempt.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:03 AM | Your Say (1)

Big Mike Speaks

How Mike Tyson Became Mike Tyson "A lot of people assume that Muhammad Ali was my favorite boxer. But I have to say it was Roberto Duran. I always looked at Ali as being handsome and articulate. And I was short and ugly and I had a speech impediment."
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:18 AM | Your Say (0)

October 22, 2013

The International Monetary Fund Lays The Groundwork For Global Wealth Confiscation

The report itself says:
"The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy”— a one-off tax on private wealth—as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair)." - - Forbes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:13 PM | Your Say (7)

Fecundophobia: The Growing Fear Of Children And Fertile Women

How “intensely weird” it is for an NFL player to be having his seventh kid.

Except that it isn’t weird at all for an NFL player to have his seventh kid. It’s only weird for an NFL player to have seven kids with his one wife. Take former Charger and current New York Jet Antonio Cromartie. He’s fathered at least 12 children with eight different women. -- the federalist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:03 PM | Your Say (5)

[Bumped] "Craziness and the District of Columbia go hand-in-hand. Meaning, there’s more to come. Trust me; I have that on the Highest authority."

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”Do not be deceived. God shall not be mocked. A House divided cannot stand.”
Then, in the hallway as others crowded around her, urgently trying to silence her as she was hustled onto an elevator, Reidy continued: ”He will not be mocked; He will not be mocked… don’t touch me… He will not be mocked. The greatest deception here is that this is not one nation under God. It never was. Had it been… it would not have been… No. It would not have been… the Constitution would not have been written by Free Masons… they go against God. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve two masters. Praise be to God, Lord Jesus Christ.” Clash DailyD.C. Weirdness Update: Tirade Was The Fruit of the Holy Spirit, House Stenographer Says - Clash Daily

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:30 PM | Your Say (12)

Obamacare Tracking: Counting Coup

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Tracking by Enroll-Maven *This is a running estimate of the number of people enrolled in paid Obamacare plans calculated using enrollment statistics reported by governmental entities. It is not a measure of web hits, user registrations, applications started, applications completed or any other pre-enrollment parameter, does not include enrollments in jurisdictions which have not yet reported enrollment statistics (except confirmed registrations in states on the federal exchange) and does not count new Medicaid enrollees.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (1)

"If Only Obama Knew...."

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And the DC wonk crew rushes in to cry, Obama was blindsided!
Yes, how could anybody expect the president to know what was going to happen? It was those techies who covered up the mess. It was their managers hiding the truth from their managers. It was anybody, anybody but Dear Leader’s fault. In a lesser way* it reminds me of the excuses made for Josef Stalin’s misrule. The failures and famines? All the fault of wreckers and saboteurs. The brutality? Underlings exceeding their authority. Living Freedom » Blog Archive » Schadenfreude and the Dear Leader
Illo by Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (1)

"The greatest mystery in the world is whatever possesses so many people to choose decency."

It can’t be because they hope for justice from the European Court of Human Rights. Fat chance of that.
The only explanation is that some residual stubbornness or unquenchable hope condemns humanity to refuse to buckle under, so that there are always enough fools in each generation of the world to say, ‘hey carbon man, the hell with you’. And that keeps the world from going under. Not that it takes it to perfection, but it forces the match to another round, in a bout whose scorecard no one can predict. As Tolkien wrote of his mythical everyman: ‘We will bear the Ring, though we do not know the way.’ - - Belmont Club » Nobody But Us

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (3)

If at first you don't succeed do the same thing only different.

Somewhere a Portuguese village is missing its idiot:
For Fernando Mariano, a 26-year-old student from Porto, the situation is quite simply "scary". Mariano completed a course in acting at Portugal's leading drama school in 2008 and was initially able to find work. When the crisis hit in 2010, however, it all dried up. "It was all very sudden. The situation with culture in Portugal is very much based on subsidised companies and with the recession the government has cut them all. All my friends who are actors in Portugal are unemployed."

Mariano moved to the UK two years ago, and made the decision to go back into education to improve his chances of finding employment here in the future. He is currently studying dance and musical theatre at the The University of East London's Urdang Academy. A PhD with your coffee? Barista serving your drink might be better educated than you are

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

So chill, you shrill shredders of Christianity.

Listen, 21st century truth reconstructors … you’ve gotta relax. Please do us all a favor and go get healed from your bad Sunday school experience and lay down your church-grinding axe.
Thinking people aren’t buying the “Christianity = Islam” smack. Get real, Goofy. You and I both know that regardless of what a few loopy CINOs (Christians in name only) have done via violence in the name of the Father, it’s not in the body of Christian doctrine to hack off the noggin of the obstreperous. RELIGION OF PEACE MY @SS: The Media Hates Gracious Christianity and Loves Violent Islam

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (2)

"(06:30 PM) swallow capsules, after effect, protect metals, wait for mask signal."

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The two males were lying next to each other, slightly covered by grass.
Each wore a formal suit, a lead eye mask, and a water-proof coat. There were no signs of trauma and no evidence of a struggle in the surrounding area. Next to the bodies, police found an empty bottle of water and a packet containing two wet towels. = = The Lead Masks Case

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (5)

The spot had moved toward the front of his mouth again. He realized could remove the worm himself.

Of course, he needed help. No surgeon can work alone.
He woke up his wife (Margaret Pizer, a communications specialist for Virginia Sea Grant) so that she could shine a flashlight in his mouth. With those #5 super fine tip Roboz Surgical Instrument forceps, he gently scraped the lining of his mouth until he was able to pull out the nematode. It came coiling out, a little less than an inch in length. It was not a happy parasite. “It was writhing.” (About That Researcher With a Nematode in His Mouth)

OP. CIT. Gongylonema pulchrum Infection in a Resident of Williamsburg, Virginia, Verified by Genetic Analysis

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (0)

October 21, 2013

ScamWow

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You'll be saying 'Wow!' every time.

HT: I Own the World

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 PM | Your Say (5)

We Fact-Checked Snapple's 'Real Facts'

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Credit where credit’s due: Not all of Snapple’s “Real Facts” are bogus. Many of them are legit. Flamingoes really do turn pink from eating shrimp (#11). Human brains do in fact weigh about three pounds (#55). And the Hawaiian alphabet really has 12 letters (#26) — that is, if you don't count the ‘okina. - Adrienne LaFrance - The Atlantic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:00 PM | Your Say (0)

"We lurch towards and away from the Welfare Nanny State."

These days towards. And I think about the political agitation towards 'equality'. At the movies tonight during 45 minutes of propaganda 'previews' we were reminded about how not to think of our paraplegic friends as disabled.
Except of course that they get public service announcements at the movie, but they're all the same right? Every curb in California is cut for the wheelchairs. Every parking lot has the blue striped stalls. The city makes it easy for everyone. And if you have no job skills, then the minimum wage should be raised to a 'living wage' and 'affordable housing' should be made available as well. At some point, a point our public fails to assess with anything resembling scientific accuracy, it will become too expensive to insure all pre-existing dysfunctions. But that is the kind of discrimination the idiot-proof, no-fault city seeks to eliminate. The Idiot-Proof City - Cobb

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

A Great Take On A Classic Peter Pan Costume

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"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed."

- Neatorama

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

The Hyena Cure is simple.

The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 Somalis are mentally ill due to their country's constant violence and abuse of the Khat narcotic.
Somali science however came up with a surefire cure for the crazies. Lock the patient up in a room with a hyena and wait for the ugly beast to see the demons causing the madness and drive them out. - - Sultan Knish: The Hyena Cure

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:05 AM | Your Say (3)

Schizophrenics used to see demons and spirits.

Now they talk about actors and hidden cameras – and make a lot of sense.
In one case, the subject travelled to New York, demanding to see the ‘director’ of the film of his life, and wishing to check whether the World Trade Centre had been destroyed in reality or merely in the movie that was being assembled for his benefit.
- - How reality caught up with paranoid delusions

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

Myth 5: Gluten-Free Foods Are Healthier

10 Health Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked by Science

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

33-Year-Old Song Writer Spends Nearly $100,000 for Plastic Surgery to Look Like Justin Bieber

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He'll earn it all back in a month in his new career: Gay whore.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (4)

October 20, 2013

Reserved parking: where will it end?

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"I’m just wondering, what’s next? Parking for deaf people, who need to be closer because they can’t hear traffic (as I’m sure the argument will run)? Sexually-segregated parking for Muslims’ sensitivities?" - - | Patriactionary

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:45 PM | Your Say (8)

Obamacare Is Either The Product Of Mentally Retarded Criminals Or A Conspiracy To Destroy The American Healthcare System

What if the government required every individual in America to purchase a battery operated masturbation device in order to subsidize dildo manufacturers?
Besides dildo manufacturers and mentally ill perverts, would anybody really be happy about this? It is the same concept with Obamacare as the only people who are happy with this law are insurance providers and mentally ill people. Whether or not they are also perverts could be debated but it would not be surprising if that were indeed the case. - - BlackListedNews.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:11 PM | Your Say (6)

Road King: 1959 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Racer Concept

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Developed by GM design chief Bill Mitchell (Harley Earl’s successor in 1958), stylist Larry Shinoda, and the engineering help of the “godfather” of the Corvette, Zora Arkus-Duntov, the Stingray was fitted with a high-compression, fuel injected 283 cubic-inch V8 engine that produced 315 horsepower and entered into SCCA C-Class competition. - - Mid-Century Modern Freak

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

"Calling all cars. Calling all cars. Be on the look out for...."

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

“Some Observations on the Diseases of Brunus edwardii.”

Acute traumatic conditions were characterized by loss of appendages, often the result of disputed ownership,
and emotional disturbances seemed to be related to neglect. “Few adults (except perhaps the present authors) have any real affection for the species,” and as children mature, they tend to relegate these animals to an attic or cupboard, “where severe emotional disturbances develop.” Bear Facts – Futility Closet

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (0)

"Let us examine how to put together a unified Russian-Saudi strategy on the subject of oil."

The Kingdom’s way of defending its interests has been by getting others to do it.
It hires help. Given that track record, what is more probable is that Saudi Arabia will cast around for another patron or geopolitical partner in the Middle East to replace Obama. The Saudi refusal to take a seat in the UNSC is equivalent of his pink slip, the House of Saud’s way of announcing it is now hiring. Belmont Club サ Wanted: Patron For Hire

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (0)

October 19, 2013

One Ton Pumpkin Plus a Two Inch Hole = No Record

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Beni Meier, your pumpkin is 2,321 pounds with all previous record contender in the shadows - the world record holder in America who weighs 911 pounds. Nevertheless, for you to contact to nowhere. Why?

Meier: He has a big hole two inches. I may therefore participate not in any official weighing. The pumpkin is allowed to carry no recognized world record. "These pumpkins are like Formula 1 cars" - News Zurich: Region - tagesanzeiger.ch

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 PM | Your Say (0)

You - "Look out! Here comes a train!"

Liberal - "Yeah, but I feel that the train isn't coming." - - Liberalism Really is a Mental Disorder

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 PM | Your Say (3)

I wonder whether anyone except the right remembers

— ah, it was so long ago — that part of the original argument for Obamacare and how it would be funded was that waste would be trimmed from other programs.
Yes, you may laugh, but that was the drill. Now that we know about the huge waste of money that was the rollout itself, I wonder whether many of those who believed such savings would happen have managed to hold on to those ideas? I’m not talking about the bureaucrats and officials and pundits who either believed their own projections or were lying to cynically exploit what used to be called The Masses, but those ordinary voters who accepted what they were saying and thought it plausible. Do most of those voters still believe? = = neo-neocon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:14 PM | Your Say (3)

Meet the Graphene Supercapacitor

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It is going to be a while before we see these beauties on the market, but when they are introduced people would be able to charge their phones fully in just ten minutes and would not have to change their laptop batteries once every three years. This is because the graphene-based supercapacitor charges 100,000 times faster than regular batteries. Say Hello to the Future of Technology

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (8)

Lileks for Stronger Fingers Across America!

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No idea what the machine is, but I can hear the clacking of the keys, and remember how much it took to work those keyboards. People had stronger fingers back then, I think. All this swiping and pinching has weakened us, and made us vulnerable to takeover by foreign elements. I don't care how weird your trick is. | Lileks @ Lunch

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (5)

'We shall give-up in the end. We shall surrender.

We shall surrender in the House and the Senate, we shall surrender with growing insecurity and growing weakness in the air,
we shall not defend the Constitution, as long as we get earmarks and positions of power. We shall surrender on the issues, we shall surrender our principles on liberty and freedom, we shall surrender in the fields and in the streets, we shall surrender in the hills; we shall never stand and fight!'" --Brad - - Doug Ross @ Journal
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (2)

Victory is to be treated as failure, and failure is to be treated as victory.

Two men come across undiscovered land, stake their claims, and get busy building their houses before the cold winter rolls in. One man succeeds at this and the other fails.
Normal people like you and me might say, the man who succeeded at exactly the same problem in exactly the same conditions, using the same tools, with the same supplies at his disposal, might have some good information to share with the man who failed. Not so to our friends the liberals, from the opposite-ravaged planet. To them, “true” wisdom comes from the sad sack who had to move in to his friend’s abode for the winter. House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:41 AM | Your Say (0)

October 18, 2013

The Truth About College Today

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 PM | Your Say (7)

What Not to Wear This Halloween

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 PM | Your Say (0)

Many Media Moron Minds With But One Tiny Thought

Because, ah, group think isn't a problem, it's a pollution.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 PM | Your Say (3)

Fun dayn moyl in gots oyern.

Is NBC Going to be the First Network to Die? There was a time when NBC owned Thursday night. That was a long time ago. Now it’s seventh.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 PM | Your Say (4)

“Russia will arise from her age-old sleep, and our names will be inscribed on the wreckage of despotism.” -- Pushkin

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Consider the traffic police officers in Dagestan, who, when Mr. Chertkov refused to pay a 3,000-ruble bribe (about $92), twisted his arms behind his back and made him breathe into a funnel they had fashioned out of paper towels. “The Breathalyzer shows that you have been drinking,” he was told. “The fine is 3,000 rubles.” Mr. Chertkov has begun to crave order, something he imagines existed under Stalin. The Russia Left Behind

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 PM | Your Say (3)

Liberals are just like a roaring house fire.

I have other things I have to get done that don’t have anything to do with studying liberals.
But, at the same time, if I attend to those things and ignore the liberals, they’ll flare up and fucking consume whatever I manage to put together anyway. And, I’m picking up the vibe, generally, that I’m not alone in this. Those of us who build things, or want to build things, are conflicted. There is only so much time in the day, and we can spend a lot of it ignoring the liberals — but if we never pay attention to the damage they’re doing, they’ll destroy all our stuff and everything we manage to get done will be for nothing. - - House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:38 PM | Your Say (0)

Sippican Cottage: How I Became The Most Famous Anonymous Person In Contemporary European Football: I Wrote The Feed The Monkey Joke

He wuz robbed!: "I don't know if Roy Hodgson, the the coach of the English national football team, actually used the joke I wrote on April 25th of 2012 verbatim. This blog seems like an obscure place to find something unless you're already looking for it. But I do know that every one of those newspapers I mentioned copied it directly from my Sippican Cottage blogpost, and not one of them offered any attribution, or a link." - - Sippican Cottage

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Egyptian Drive-By

The Party’s Already Started in Egypt We’re starting to see the stylings of international jihad show up in Egypt.
This video, showing a series of successful drive-by attacks on Egyptian army officers including a colonel, is classic jihadi propaganda, marked by the black-and-white raya al ‘uqab style flag and nasheed music. It was posted by a group called Liwa al Furqan (Brigade of Severance), which has also posted similar videos showing attacks on ships in the Suez Canal and against state television’s satellite dish.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:02 PM | Your Say (0)

All real knowledge is dangerous.

We’ve managed to disremember that. But if the last century’s atomic bomb has not convinced us
then the even the greater discoveries coming thick and fast in this one must. We could be the bunny and the hawk behind the next door. And yet we are curiously unwilling to look either scientific or spiritual reality in the face, stuck as it were between the Scylla of inevitable knowledge the Charybdis of fear; wishing we could uninvent the Bomb, nerve gas, the ubiquitous wire tap, the killer robot … and yet unable to do. Wishing we could not have children to spare them this; wishing we weren’t here. But we are here.... - - A Woman in Calcutta

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 AM | Your Say (0)

October 17, 2013

The Octopus That Almost Ate Seattle

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Dylan Mayer holding the giant Pacific octopus

He lunged at the octopus, grabbing one of its eight arms.
It slipped slimily between his fingers, its suckers feeling and tasting his hand. He reached for it again, and again it retreated. Able to squeeze its body through a space as small as a lemon, the octopus was unlikely to succumb to his grip. He poked it with his finger and watched it turn brighter shades of red, until finally, it sprang forward and revealed itself to be a nine-foot wheel charging through the water.

The octopus grabbed Mayer where it could, encircling his thigh, spiraling his torso,
its some 1,600 suckers — varying in size from a peppercorn to a pepper mill — latching onto his wet suit and face. It pulled Mayer’s regulator out of his mouth. His adrenaline rising, he punched the creature, and began a wrestling match that would last 25 minutes. - - - NYTimes.com
HT Steve Sailer: iSteve

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:42 PM | Your Say (10)

It’s the cheese that matters.

Galston’s argues that the conservative insurgency is rooted in some kind of atavism;
that it arises from a nostalgic hankering after an America long past in the face of new demography. Nothing could be further from the truth. The hell with demography. People would be just fine with changes in demography if only times were good. When times are bad homogeneity is irrelevant. Rats of the exact same breed will fight to the death over the last piece of cheese.

It’s the cheese that matters. The conservative insurgency
is rooted in a lack of money. And so will the coming liberal one. The unrest is not driven by a desire to return to the past. On the contrary it is propelled almost entirely by the growing belief that there is no future. - - Belmont Club サ The Third Party
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:42 PM | Your Say (4)

After emerging from a hole in the street,

the men closed down a Manhattan intersection, holding back impatient pedestrians. Then, shouting “Fire in the hole!,” they pushed down on a T-shaped lever:
There was a great roar, a percussive rumble that grew louder and louder. The sidewalk and fences began to tremble, along with the ground beneath our feet. The crane that was suspended above the hole rattled from side to side. One bystander looked up at the sky, then down at the ground, not sure what was happening. “Is it a bomb?” another asked. A plume of dust rose out of the shaft. Then everything fell silent. The tunnel had advanced another nine feet. “All right, hogs!” the foreman yelled. And before anyone noticed, Ryan and the other men vanished into the hole. Building Water Tunnel No. 3 : The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (0)

Fleur

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (1)

World's Largest Prunt says, "All of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists, and the bloggers, "

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We will ignore the irony of a president talking about "profiting from conflict"
when less than two months ago the world was on the verge of World War III over a fabricated, false flag-driven invasion "confirmed" by YouTube clips, and designed entirely by this administration to further (and profit) its Saudi and Qatari interests, and which was halted in the last minute thanks to none other than the Russian president, and ask: instead of stopping to "focus on bloggers" who merely do the math in a world in which math is long forgotten, let's for one month, week or day, simply halt the Federal Reserve's circular monetary authority which now purchases virtually all issued US Treasurys that carry any duration risk. Obama: "Stop Focusing On The Bloggers" | Zero Hedge

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (7)

Fly the Friendly Vermin Infested Skies

Air India said Tuesday an investigation was underway after a passenger found worms in his sandwich mid-flight.... Meanwhile, a family of live rats has been found in the business class cabin of a plane at Xiamen Airport. The flight had come from Hong Kong. - - Sidney Herald

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:40 AM | Your Say (1)

Life After Death? New Techniques Halt Dying Process

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Studies [and personal experience] have provided evidence that hypothermia improves patient's survival and recovery, and professional societies such as the American Heart Association recommend considering hypothermia after patient's blood circulation is restored. Nevertheless, not all hospitals have implemented hypothermia as part of their critical care protocol. -- | LiveScience

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (0)

Burgers.....

lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of ..... Burgers. And after lots of Burgers there's lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of ..... Burgers, all courtesy of Guthrie Lonergan

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (0)

Hume: Tea Party pushed budget stand-off because GOP 'utterly failed' to restrain bloated gov't

Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms.
They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left. Entitlement spending never stopped growing. The regulatory state continued to expand. The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded. They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew. And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated bureaucracy. They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they'll try anything to bring that about. And if some of those things turn out to be reckless and doomed, well so be it. - - Brit Hume | Fox News

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (5)

How It's Made

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"This is a thrown porcelain pot. I am going to create an sculpture to express how I feel about my country...." - - A Painful Pot | Artworks of Johnson Tsang [ Johnson Cheung-shing TSANG is a Hong Kong sculptor specializing in ceramics, stainless steel sculpture and public art work. ]
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (0)

“Clear your mind of cant...”

“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, ‘Sir, I am your most humble servant.’
You are not his most humble servant….You tell a man, ‘I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet.’ You don’t care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in society: but don’t think foolishly.” Dr. Johnson

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (0)

Formerly the Washington Redskins,

they had changed their name under political pressure from those who found the name offensive to Indians.
This did not include the Indians, who were uninterested in the matter. The lefties of Washington were going to protect the Native Peoples from being insulted, even though nobody was insulting them and the Indians themselves had other things on their minds. You can’t be too careful about these matters. - - Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (1)

October 16, 2013

Where to live in the SHTF times

So ideally, you want to be in a lightly populated area, an agricultural area, an area with plentiful water, preferably with shallow well depth – or even better, spring water, where you gravity-flow water to a house – and again, a power-exporting area. Homesteading, Relocation & Resilience: James Wesley Rawles | Peak Prosperity

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 PM | Your Say (7)

Think of progressives as a species of religious fundamentalists planning a redemption.

Like fundamentalists they look at the world as fallen – a place corrupted by racism, sexism and class division. But the truly religious understand that we are the source of corruption and that redemption is only possible through the work of a Divinity.
In contrast, progressives see themselves as the redeemers, which is why they are so dangerous. Because they regard those who oppose them as the eternally damned. Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone’s life. They want to control what you do, and who you are, and even what you eat. For your own good, of course. The Threat We Face | FrontPage Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:20 PM | Your Say (2)

Special Delivery

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:04 PM | Your Say (3)

Concealed Carry Crushes Crime

In the United States, if states without concealed carry gun laws had adopted them in 1992,
about 1570 murders, 4177 rapes, and 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided annually. Moreover, when concealed carry gun laws went into effect in a given county, murders fell by 8%, rapes by 5%, and aggravated assaults by 7%. America, guns, and freedom.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:51 PM | Your Say (0)

Works for Me

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (3)

Reality Bites: "Sequester is tentatively in place; amnesty is derailed; gun control is on the run; American forces are not involved in Syria’s civil war."

They all said: "The tea party was over and Washington, D.C. was Obama’s oyster.
But then a strange thing happened. As one by one, impossible victories were won, observers saw the policy agenda of the president — a man who won a resounding victory just months ago — stagnate and stall: He hasn’t won a single victory since his re-election. How Cruz, Lee and Paul shut down Obama's agenda | The Daily Caller

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (2)

Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience.

They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel.
It is what the progressive bible — Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties’ radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always power. David Horowitz: what the newer left learned from the older left

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 AM | Your Say (1)

October 15, 2013

Checked but Never Claimed

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Why Americans Love Guns

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 PM | Your Say (5)

“I don’t mind the food stamp program, but I DON’T THINK THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO BUY JUNK FOOD!”

That’s a pretty odd place to draw your ethical line. That’s like if you came home one day to find a burglar in your bedroom stealing jewelry, and you proceeded to have this conversation:

“HEY! You can’t take that! That doesn’t belong to you! You’re going to just go pawn that for drugs, aren’t you?!”

“No, I was thinking of trading it for a treadmill.”

“Oh. OK. Well that’s healthy and constructive. Carry on, sir.” - -The Matt Walsh Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:42 PM | Your Say (9)

Rachel Beiber or Megyn: We Report, You Decide

So Last Week... .FOX News debuted a new program featuring Megyn Kelly called “The Kelly File” In it’s first two days of broadcast, The Kelly Files destroyed the competition in ratings.
In fact, Megyn pretty much slaughtered them. In response, being the typical whiny ass whiners that they are, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin cried and demanded an investigation into the rating numbers. He claimed that it was “impossible” that Megyn Kelly’s show could completely annihilate “The Rachel Maddow Show”, which was Megyn’s MSNBC ‘competitor’ in that time slot. The Nielson people obligingly conducted an investigation and found that the numbers were 100% accurate.

[But.... but.... how can that be!? What's Kelly got that Maddow doesn't?]
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 PM | Your Say (15)

It seems to me that there can be only one answer:

It’s OK because the government is doing it. This is America now. This is what it’s come to.
It’s OK because the government is doing it. And how far can that principle be stretched? And how many horrendous atrocities can be justified by this logic? If the government can erase any concept of private property on a whim, and defy every moral law against theft by simply calling it a “program,” what else can it do? If you’ve ever read a history book, you already know the answer. The Matt Walsh Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:13 PM | Your Say (0)

How the World's Best Whiskey Got Its Start

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To this day, around 80 of the 120 counties in Kentucky are dry or moist.
(The term moist describes a county that falls somewhere between wet, which allows the sale of alcohol in liquor stores and bars, and dry, which prohibits the sale of alcohol everywhere. Many dry counties are moving in this direction to sell booze in restaurants and other venues to take advantage of tax opportunities, though residents still won’t be able to head down to the corner shop for a bottle.) The other 40 wet counties in the state have the most amazing drive-through liquor stores I've ever seen. The Book of Bourbon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (3)

Mitt Romney, Prophet

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (6)

Enchiladas de Chile Ajo (Oaxacan Red Chile Enchiladas)

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These classic Oaxacan-style enchiladas, stuffed with chicken and doused in a sweet chile-and-garlic sauce, come from Iliana de la Vega, chef-owner of El Naranjo in Austin, Texas. Recipe @ | SAVEUR

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (1)

October 14, 2013

“What Papa says is true; people with no moral inhibitions exude a strange odor. I can now pick out these people, and many of them really do smell like blood.”

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields One of Lower’s subjects, a secretary-turned-SS-mistress,
had the “nasty habit”, as one eyewitness put it, of killing Jewish children in the ghetto, whom she would lure with the promise of sweets before shooting them in the mouth with a pistol.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:58 PM | Your Say (4)

"The ongoing repudiation of Constitutional governance may yet trip an unseen wire."

The complication for an invading force is the changing makeup of the survivalist's warrior class.
No longer are they merely hunters and hikers with a liking for playing soldier, although the least among these can reliably hit a man-size target at up to 600 yards. Now they're as likely to be combat veterans and their proteges. The ordinary civilian has been changed too, by hardship and continuous war and nonstop emergencies. = = ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:58 PM | Your Say (8)

Humans Trump Robots at the Grocery Store [Bumped]

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The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way.
The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being. - - WSJ.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (21)

More on the avuncular, pleasant Jon Jarvis, gute Amerikaner and head NPS Dick

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He's not your typical Obamacrat. Far from it: a career National Parks employee who worked his way up from ranger status straight to the top.
Yet at the same time he is diligently and obediently, without protest as far as we know, carrying out the most obnoxious, detestable, and perhaps even illegal orders ever given a man in his position, exactly as if he was a swag-bellied, unqualified precinct captain dragged out of some Southside Chicago ward.

But that's the way it is with career bureaucrats --
like Lois Lerner, John Brennan, Keith Alexander and ten thousand others. We know from the historical record that bureaucrats will avidly commit the most horrendous crimes if ordered by the people at the top of the heap. There's a clear and distinct selection process in operation in bureaucracy. People who progress are those who will do what they're told without blinking. and Jarvis is perfect example. Jon Jarvis, Gute Amerikaner

Obama and his minions have effectively declared all Americans the enemy
in an attempt to make the impact of the government shutdown artificially painful. This could not succeed without the assistance of a corps of facilitators, Little Eichmanns, if you will, who are willing to abuse their fellow citizens in order to better serve their master. The most prominent of these is a yob named Jonathan Jarvis who runs the National Park Service. The Little Eichmanns of the Government Shutdown | RedState

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (4)

The Mouthpiece of Redistribution

In his flattering foreword to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, Paul Krugman reveals the source of his dictatorship fantasies.
He writes: I didn’t grow up wanting to be a square-jawed individualist or join a heroic quest; I grew up wanting to be Hari Seldon, using my understanding of the mathematics of human behavior to save civilization.

Translation: I spent my childhood wishing that one day I could use large computer models to govern humanity. “Saving civilization” is always a euphemism for stomping on its neck. Krugman became an economist so he could advise political prima donnas on how to best shove around the serfs. - - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (5)

The Coffee Colored Compromise

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In which future names sound like dog breeds:
“On playgrounds and college campuses, you’ll find such homespun terms as Blackanese, Filatino, Chicanese, and Korgentinian. When Joshua Ahsoak, 34, attended college, his heritage of Inupiat (Eskimo) and midwestern Jewish earned him the moniker Juskimo, a term he still uses to describe himself (a practicing Jew who breaks kosher dietary laws not for bacon but for walrus and seal meat).” an excerpt form the magazine. America’s Melting Pot | Clutch Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (15)

How Does The Shutdown Relate To Me?

Everyone knows ads are propaganda, but what happens when you have an ad for propaganda?
While you sip your first Guinness and try to figure out why China's government can only ever shut down once, you can ponder this ad:
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The only reason you haven't spit nitrogen bubbles on your screen is I haven't shown you the other half of this outstandingly accurate abomination. You should get yourself a towel and another drink. - - The Last Psychiatrist:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (3)

EBT card food stamp recipients ransack Wal-Mart stores, stealing carts full of food during federal computer glitch

As this small EBT card glitch clearly demonstrates, if given half a chance, many EBT card holders will immediately engage in the mass looting of food and supplies as long as they can get away with it....
This is exactly the same way these people will behave when the federal government goes into default and nearly 50 million EBT cards stop working nationwide. Fifty million. Consider that for a moment. Most of those 50 million people live in high-density cities. Many are proud owners of Obama phones, Obama food stamps, Obama unemployment checks and Obama subsidized housing.... - - Natural News

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (1)

Stephen King, Bestselling Dumb as Dirt Author of Month

Stephen King and the One-Nine-One-One Fully-Automatic Pistol
"All respect to you, Mr. Freeman,” Dave said, “but you’re a little old for bodyguard duty, and this is my daughter we’re talking about.” Billy raised his shirttails and revealed an automatic pistol in a battered black holster. “One-nine-one-one Colt,” he said. “Full auto. World War II vintage This is old, too, but it’ll do the job."

And the gun literate reader goes right up the wall.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (9)

We'd better find the one who keeps punching these blacks and put him in jail.

As Public Sector Sheds Jobs, Black Americans Are Hit Hard - NYTimes.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:02 AM | Your Say (5)

October 13, 2013

Faces of the American Revolution:

Amazing early photographs which document some of the heroes of the War for Independence in their later years
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Alexander Millner

Enlisted as a drummer boy who served in Gen. Washington’s Life Guard unit. He was a favorite of Washington’s, often playing at his personal request. Was at the British surrender at Yorktown: 'The British soldiers looked down-hearted. When the order came to "ground arms," one of them exclaimed, with an oath, "You are not going to have my gun!" and threw it violently on the ground, and smashed it.'

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (1)

Spitfire "Tipping-off" a V1 Over England

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At first V1's were shot down by gunfire.
With the high risk of being blown up, some of the best pilots started tipping the V1's wing, because of damage to wing tips they later developed a tactic of disrupting the airflow by placing their wing very close to the V1's wing, causing it to topple. Not every pilot did this. At night this was not possible, the flame from the V1 blinded the pilot to everything else, though some Mossie pilots flew past closely in front of the V1, again causing it to topple. The thought of doing this at 450mph, 4,000 feet above the ground, at night, and being blinded gives me the willies.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (9)

Hearth

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well below zero

the heat from a trillion stars

modern primitive

= = Hearth | Motel Zero

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 AM | Your Say (2)

Come See Our Home Equity!

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That giant pit in the backyard of our mansion in this gated exurban community two hours from the city? No, my husband and I aren’t installing a swimming pool; that’s our home equity!
And you, our longtime family banker, won’t believe what’s living in that hole now. It started in 2007 at our housewarming party. You had just approved our ultra-super-mega-jumbo home loan. Our 75 guests were enjoying artisanal salami and sage ice cream when a small hole appeared in the newly laid backyard sod. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:37 AM | Your Say (0)

Head National Park Service Goon Is, Natch, an Obamoron

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"Befehl ist Befehl" ("Orders are Orders")

Jonathan B. Jarvis (born June 26, 1953) is the 18th Director of the United States National Park Service, confirmed by the United States Senate on September 25, 2009. He was serving as regional director for the Pacific West Region when, on July 10, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Jarvis for the directorship following the resignation of Mary A. Bomar on January 20, 2009, the day of President Obama's inauguration.

He faces many challenges, not least rebuilding morale among park service staff members. He must recruit a new generation of committed young employees and begin to deal with the effects of climate change on plant and animal species. He will need to clear up the backlog of maintenance projects and address the sad fact that it is now legal to carry guns in parks. Editorial July 13, 2009 - A New Voice for the National Parks - NYTimes.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (10)

"Mr.Obama, tear down this wall!"

Crowd storms World War II Memorial Thousands of people converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall on Sunday morning and tore down the barricades blocking it off, protesting the closure of the memorial during the federal government shutdown.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 AM | Your Say (5)

From Obamacare to Obamafood

Only the beginning, folks. Only the beginning....
Computer Glitch Blamed For Nationwide EBT System Shutdown On Saturday People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (4)

Signups to Obamacare to Date? Try 5,000.

How Many People Have Signed Up For Health Insurance on the Federal Health Insurance Exchanges? "Based upon my survey of a large number of health plans accounting for substantial market share in the 36 states the federal insurance exchange is operating in, not more than about 5,000 individuals and families signed-up for health insurance in the 36 states run by the Obama administration through Monday."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (1)

The Illustrated Journals of a Dairy Farmer in 1941

In the early 1940s William George Pope, and his wife Mildred “Moodie” Pope, left Utica, NY and bought a farm. They named it High Acres, and started raising Ayeshire Cattle. Pope had been an engineering teacher up to this point in his life, but his passion for High Acres is made clear in the daily journals he kept. W.G. Pope Archives - Modern Farmer
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (0)

October 12, 2013

"A strong academic bias against studying possible negative outcomes of empathy.

The left derives its sense of moral authority from the supposition that its intentions are altruistic and its opponents' are selfish.
That sense of moral superiority makes it easy to justify immoral behavior, like slandering critics of President Obama as racist--or using the power of the Internal Revenue Service to suppress them. It seems entirely plausible that the Internal Revenue Service officials who targeted and harassed conservative groups thought they were doing their patriotic duty. If so, what a perfect example of pathological altruism. Pathological Altruism - WSJ.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:55 PM | Your Say (3)

What Stephen King Isn't :

“Doctor Sleep” underscores an interesting fact about King: he’s not really, or not exclusively, a horror writer.
If there were a Stephen King Plot Generator somewhere out there on the Web, it would work, most of the time, by mashing up ideas from all of what used to be called speculative fiction—including sci-fi, horror, fantasy, historical (and alternate-history) fiction, superhero comic books, post-apocalyptic tales, and so on—before dropping the results into small-town Maine. - - The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:46 PM | Your Say (3)

My money is on 'spite and malice.'

It’s an open question whether the cartwheels that American diplomacy is performing in the region are intentional or simply the result of incompetence and ignorance.

The administration has been reluctant to admit any mistakes. The latest disasters will be spun as simply the result of a video or the subtle machinations of a policy too brilliant for anyone but the President to understand.... As I wrote in an earlier post, Obama’s blunders are approaching the tipping point. He will smash something big soon at the rate he is going. “Playing with fire” was the phrase an Israeli official used. Somebody’s going to get burned. The only question is when. Belmont Club » The Abduction of the Libyan Prime Minister

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (8)

Petrichor

is the scent of rain on dry earth, or the scent of dust after rain.
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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (2)

"There are three compelling reasons why we need to reexamine the role of government in the arts."

First and most importantly it is failing. Less and less people go to theater even though the federal dollars keep rolling in.
Second, these government dollars are not expanding the base of arts attendees, but rather subsidizing the entertainment of wealthy, white people. Thirdly, government dollars are not content neutral, a cultural ground game is being executed by the progressive Non Profit community to ensure that culture remains the sole preserve of leftist ideology. Taking Back The Arts | The Federalist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (5)

azlibertarian recalls. "It's been many years since my service, but a wise old colonel once told me,"

"It doesn't matter what the General or the Colonel or the Captain wants to do. If you can't convince the Master Sergeant of the wisdom of a course of action, it ain't happening." - - comment at Side-Lines

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

October 11, 2013

Come See Cal Worthington ... and His Dog Spot!

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“I can beat or match any deal that guy out in the Valley can offer you,” boasted Worthington.
And then, gesturing to the ape: “What’s more, my dog can lick his dog!” His business tripled. By the eighties, he was spending up to half a million per month on advertising. “You’d think you could coast and not do them for a while,” he said, “but the next day after you don’t have a commercial on, business drops.” Paris Review – Death of a Salesman, Sam Sweet

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 PM | Your Say (4)

“If a man were in that chamber, unprotected, he would first ‘boil,’ then ‘explode,’

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reported C. B. Palmer. The article went on to demonstrate the Air Force’s efforts to grapple with the biological limitations of human flight.
“If they didn’t have to fit a man into a cockpit, and make it possible for him to see and move,” wrote Mr. Palmer, “if they didn’t have to provide for oxygen and air conditioning and such auxiliary gimmicks, they could build far more punch into their planes.” The Lively Morgue
HT: davidthompson: Friday Ephemera

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:25 PM | Your Say (6)

The World’s First Hunk: Why We’re Obsessed with Muscle Men

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Collectors Weekly: How did you discover Sandow?

Chapman: My first Sandow piece was a cigar-box label made to promote his appearance in America. The cigar-box labels were made in 1894 and 1895, when he was traveling around the country. By putting himself on a cigar box, he was clearly marketing himself to men. - - | Collectors Weekly

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 PM | Your Say (0)

[Bumped] Dem Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Says “Martial Law” Is Needed To Reopen The Government…

You may think "Nobody in Congress can be this stupid," but then you see this cretin slobbering into her drool cup and....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:32 PM | Your Say (25)

Thomas Friedman Writes for the International House of Pancakes Menu

For a gender-oppressed child working as a ship breaker in Alang you can bet a Toyota Camry might as well be the Space Shuttle,
but that's changing as more and more AIDS children with rickets and no arms also learn to download apps to their jailbreaked iPhone castoffs. America's garbage is India's gold. So if a Bentley is too expensive, then you don't have to go to Philly to have a great cheese steak. Try the Philly Cheese Steak Stacker, with cheese and grilled steak and onions. It's adequate.Something Awful

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:54 AM | Your Say (1)

When life hands you dirty lemons, freeze them.

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One of my friends keeps nice clean thickly sliced lemon wheels in her freezer. Great idea ... delicious in my little glass of Tullamore Dew in place of ice. True North: ordinary life ... and lemonade

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (1)

October 10, 2013

Where's a drone strike when you really need one?

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:18 PM | Your Say (5)

Seattle Police to Stephen Colbert: "You, sir. Shut the fuck up, sir."

You also claimed our department has not done enough to keep “medical-grade dispensary dank away from kids,” and has failed to address the serious side effects of marijuana, such as short-term memory loss.
We simply cannot remember a time we were more incensed by such a blatant mischaracterization of our department. We continue to investigate the sale of marijuana to minors, and we certainly do not encourage the use of silly branding like “Bubba Kush” and “Alien Dog.” If it were up to us, pot brands would have names like “Remember to Call Your Mother” and “You Don’t Want to Grow Up to Be a Drummer, Do You?” - - An Open Letter to Stephen Colbert and Colbert Nation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (1)

"He is survived by Margaret and his sons."

Mark 'Chopper' Read obituary With matters getting out of hand, Read requested a transfer to another wing of the prison.
When he was refused, Read asked a fellow inmate to cut both his ears off. He wrote: “They said there was no way I would be getting a transfer, so I made the simple decision that ears off = transfer. Believe me, it works.” According to some accounts, the name “Chopper” stemmed from this episode, though others attributed it to his habit of cutting off his victims’ toes using boltcutters. Others said it was an earlier, childhood nickname.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:12 PM | Your Say (1)

“This tastes like New York”

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Sandwich #185–”Craving New York” Pastrami and Provolone on Rye It took all of the might in my bones to not tear through the bag
and eat the entire pound of pastrami on the subway. But the meat made it home in tact, still warm when I unwrapped it. I made E a small sammie with provolone cheese and mayonnaise kicked it up with horseradish and honey mustard as an appetizer before he finished cooking dinner (duck breast with parsnip puree). I warmed it all in a skillet so the cheese melted, and served it up. “This tastes like New York,” he said. The sandwich quickly disappeared.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:05 PM | Your Say (2)

Nothing Can Kill Danny Trejo

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The Machete Kills star has lived a million lives — from prisoner to boxer to addict to day player to leading man — and come back stronger every time:
Danny Trejo has been stabbed, shot, maimed, crushed, hung, choked, decapitated, and blown to bits. He's had hypodermic needles jabbed into his neck. He's had a power drill run through his brain. He's had an immolating crucifix speared into his vampire heart. Charles Bronson and Robert De Niro have killed him. Stone Cold Steve Austin and 50 Cent have killed him. Mickey Rourke has killed him twice. The life and career of 'Machete Kills' star Danny Trejo - Grantland

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

If a person has a million-seller,

you can be sure some intellectual holding down a chair and a sinecure at a university or a magazine will invest that success with the veneer of seriousness.
Lady Gaga's meat dress means something, I can assure you. It wouldn't mean something if she was playing Debbie Boone covers at the Ramada Inn, but a vapor trail of zeroes makes Goofy into Laika. Sippican Cottage: I've Seen Supreme Evil, And It's As Cute As A Puppy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (1)

"?" Signed jeff@amazon.com

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Header of the original Amazon web page
Jeff Bezos has a public e-mail address, jeff@amazon.com. Not only does he read many customer complaints, he forwards them to the relevant Amazon employees, with a one-character addition: a question mark.
When Amazon employees get a Bezos question mark e-mail, they react as though they’ve discovered a ticking bomb. They’ve typically got a few hours to solve whatever issue the CEO has flagged and prepare a thorough explanation for how it occurred, a response that will be reviewed by a succession of managers before the answer is presented to Bezos himself. Such escalations, as these e-mails are known, are Bezos’s way of ensuring that the customer’s voice is constantly heard inside the company. Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (2)

Why It's Illegal to Use Milk Crates for Anything Besides Milk

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Theft of milk crates, as it turns out, is an issue taken very, very seriously by the dairy industry.
The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), which runs a whole website devoted to public education on the issues of milk crate misuse, estimates that dairy companies lose 20 million milk crates a year to theft. At about $4 per crate, that’s an $80 million loss per year. - - Modern Farmer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 AM | Your Say (11)

[Bumped] America's Secretest Weapon: The .22 Long Rifle

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The historically important fact about the humble .22 Long Rifle is that Americans shoot two billion rounds of the stuff every year.
That's 11 million pounds of lead -- 5700 tons -- poured downrange every year, 40 grains at a time. A grain (Avoirdupois) is 1/7000 of a pound.... Two billion rounds.

What sort of fool would deliberately get into a dust-up against a population with that kind of firepower and hands-on experience?
Who would contemplate sending minions into what amounts to a solid lead wall, moving at a thousand feet per second? Apparently, the fools at the United Nations and their hangers-on and enablers, who mistakenly believe they won't be the poor slobs sent out there to the downrange side of 80 or 100 million American shooters, grimly determined to preserve their political independence, individual freedom, and their guns.

Two billion rounds.
And every one, if we make it so, a shot heard 'round the world. America's Secretest Weapon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 AM | Your Say (13)

One of the worst places in the world to get a cup of coffee is on a coffee farm.

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Pedro Echavarria: The crappiest coffee you drink is on coffee farm, it’s true:

99 percent of the time if you’re offered coffee, they give you a sugarcane beverage called agua panela with Nescafe added to it. My brothers and I have coffee in our blood. We have lots of respect for how hard it is to grow coffee. But growing up I had no respect for the final beverage. As coffee growers, we never tasted what we were producing. There was no way to taste it, really, beause there was no way to roast it, except maybe on the kitchen stove. That is standard in our industry. - - Modern Farmer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:36 AM | Your Say (2)

An open letter to President Obama

I find you to be a very small man, Mr. President. Far from larger than life, you are petty, frivolous, pathetic; sneering and pompous but also trifling and narrow.
I don’t mean to dismiss or underestimate the damage you have done to this nation — it has certainly been profound and lasting — but I want you to know that your legacy will not be one of grandeur and brilliance; it will be the legacy of a shameless, desperate bully.... You govern like a coddled toddler; it’s inappropriate to pejoratively refer to you as a “dictator,” but only because it lends you a certain unwarranted credibility. I think you wish to be a dictator, but instead you’re just a bumbling bureaucrat; easily replaced and even more easily forgotten. - - | The Matt Walsh Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:25 AM | Your Say (1)

October 9, 2013

Bend Over, Cough, and Be Obama404ed

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Welcome to 404-Care, Citizen!

Doug Ross @ Journal: Obama's fundraising websites flawlessly processed millions in questionable donations; his Obamacare sites, not so much: The federal government's red-faced CTO Todd Park says the exchange websites work fine as long as no one is using them. Yes, he really said that. "These bugs were functions of volume,'' Park said. "Take away the volume and it works.''

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:19 PM | Your Say (3)

The IPCC is 95% sure

humans are responsible for the global warming that isn't happening. ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:11 PM | Your Say (0)

Worst Muffin in History

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"Why I have trust issues."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:06 PM | Your Say (6)

Trolls and shills didn't work so they're going all China...

Desperate to cling onto their ability to dictate reality, the crumbling mainstream media is beginning to kill off article comment sections in a cynical bid to silence dissenting voices, says Paul Watson in this article, Panicked MSM Begins Killing Off Comment Sections. [Warning: Autoplay]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:01 PM | Your Say (1)

Bitter Clinger: At this point the only thing keeping Obama from sinking to the level of congress is his race.

AP Poll: Congress at 5% Job Approval, Obama at 37% | Mediaite Why? Because our long, long experiment cannot be allowed or be seen to have failed.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:15 AM | Your Say (6)

Lee Harvey Oswald in Minsk

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It was evening when Oswald stepped off the train in Minsk on January 7, 1960. He did not know where he was, except that it was called Minsk....
“The arkatecual [sic] planning may be any thing but modern but it is the manner of almost all Russian citys [sic] with the airport serving as its…eastern boundry [sic] we find a large spread out township in appearance, city. Only the skyline [illegible] with factory looms and chimmies [sic] betrays its industrial background.” - - | Roads & Kingdoms

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (3)

This is How We'€™ll Defeat Al-Qaeda

The seeming implication of the “we’ll-never-give-up” message,
that these actions might dissuade other terrorists from sowing violence that threatens regional stability or international security, is false. The raids, like drone strikes, are effective not because they might have such an effect. They won’t. Rather, they are effective simply because they take senior leaders off of the battlefield. - - War On the Rocks

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (2)

Brainsteam Bullshit

I had thought Gladwell was inadvertently misunderstanding the science he was writing about and making sincere mistakes in the service of coming up with ever more "Gladwellian" insights to serve his audience.

But according to his own account, he knows exactly what he is doing, and not only that, he thinks it is the right thing to do. Is there no sense of ethics that requires more fidelity to truth, especially when your audience is so vast—and, by your own suggestion, so benighted—as to require oversimplification and to be unmoved by consistency and coherence? Malcolm Gladwell critique: David and Goliath misrepresents the science.

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

But... but.... your flying car's been patented for 50 years!

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Air Traffic – Futility Closet In 1963, New York inventor Einar Einarsson quietly patented a flying car. The patent abstract is only two pages long.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (1)

Ugly Apples:

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It’s apple season right now and most of the apples we’re eating come straight off a tree we’ve found on a quiet country road. (See: Free apples.) I’m not used to eating fruit this damaged looking, but I swear, the uglier the apple, the better it tastes. -- SECRET FORTS

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (6)

Halfway through the show,

the little one made the entire audience stand up.

He's uncanny that one. He tells people to do things, and they do. Then he told everyone that wasn't his mother to sit down. Then he told them how much he loved her. I've heard that mothers like that sort of thing, but I really can't imagine why. - - Sippican Cottage: The Fair Boys

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (0)

October 8, 2013

Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?

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The relationship between popcorn and the movies has changed more than the smell of a theater lobby or the at-home movie night:
it’s changed the popcorn industry itself. Before the Great Depression, most popcorn sold was a white corn variety–yellow corn wasn’t widely commercially grown, and cost twice as much as the white variety. Movie vendors, however, preferred yellow corn, which expanded more when it popped (creating more volume for less product) and had a yellowish tint that belied a coating of butter. | Food & Think

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

Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by William Andrew Loomis

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Figure Drawing, a book intended for beginning commercial artists, was in every way more ambitious than Fun with a Pencil.
Loomis’ approach to geometry, proportion and perspective as well as balance, rhythm and movement was as lucid and essential as anything ever published on the subject. It was a classic of illustration. The American Academy of Art even called it “one of the most brilliant contributions that figure drawing has ever received.” - - via Codex

{As a boy, I studied this book very, very carefully. }

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:54 PM | Your Say (0)

“Unbelievable,” Allahpundit says, that the White House press corps is so servile:

Why Is @Allahpundit Surprised?: Try this, Allah:
Watch MSNBC all day long and keep in mind that, for the vast majority of the reporters covering politics in Washington, MSNBC is the Gospel Truth. Realize that the ambitious younger journalists in the White House press corps dream of the day when they’ll have their own regular spot on MSNBC or, perhaps, they will be appointed to a job in the Obama administration itself, like their hero and mentor, Jay Carney.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:42 PM | Your Say (3)

Petal Light

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:05 PM | Your Say (3)

This is why Molotov made cocktails.

Park Service OKs immigration reform rally on 'closed' National Mall: About 30 members of Congress are expected to attend the rally, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:47 PM | Your Say (4)

We've got a little list....

25 Ridiculous Things Obama Shut Down @ Never Yet Melted

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (3)

"Today, we live in a value transference economy."

More than enough value is created to adequately feed and clothe everyone, with only a minimal percentage of the workforce.
When people lose their jobs today, especially if it’s a job in the United States, it’s mostly about people losing value transference jobs. There is more than an adequate supply of basic necessities still being created, all that’s needed is for the government to transfer those necessities, or the money needed to buy those necessities, from the haves to the have-nots. Conservative-libertarian types hate, hate, hate “redistribution of wealth,” but nevertheless I conclude that such redistribution is what prevented another Great Depression and continues to prevent that. About the current invisible depression | Lion of the Blogosphere

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 AM | Your Say (4)

Who Says There's No Good News?

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Blonde road kill

State Sen. Davis, who filibustered her way into liberal media hearts everywhere, trying to block an abortion bill she pronounced too stringent, enjoys slightly better odds of winning the governorship of Texas than might be accorded an armadillo lumbering across an interstate highway during rush hour. - - Sorry, Wendy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (3)

"Your question is full of misstatements. However you put it, in the end a lie is a lie."

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SPIEGEL: Through the deployment of chemical weapons against your own people, you have definitively lost the legitimacy to hold your office.

Assad: We did not use chemical weapons. This is a misstatement.
So is the picture you paint of me as a man who kills his own people. Who isn't against me? You've got the United States, the West, the richest countries in the Arab world and Turkey. All this and I am killing my people and they still support me! Am I a Superman? No. So how can I still stay in power after two and a half years? Because a big part of the Syrian people support me, the government and the state. - - SPIEGEL Interview with Syrian President Bashar Assad

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (2)

The Exorcist and the South’s love of “devil movies”

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I avoided William Friedkin’s 1973 movie until the extended “version you never saw” was released in theaters in fall 2000,
but about an hour into that, I started to feel mildly panicked, and left the theater. When I finally watched the revised Exorcist on DVD a year later, I did so during the daytime, with bright lights on and curtains open. All the while, I felt like I was doing something I shouldn’t—as though at any moment, the ground was going to open up and I was going to be consumed by the fires of hell. - - / The Dissolve

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (4)

October 7, 2013

My mama

She lost her husband five years ago (& I my father at the same time). They were a very successful couple, perfectly complementary, with nothing whatever in common.
Wit I absorbed from the example of my father, but the dark Gaelic humour from mama. It was she, for instance, who taught me on leave-taking to say, “Now don’t you kill anyone!” … Then add, “Unless they are on the List.” : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (2)

Soon

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 PM | Your Say (5)

The Price of Science

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The problem is, people take science with the same level of seriousness and unquestioned trust that they did religious topics in the past.
Oat bran will save you from cancer! Oat bran will kill you! That's what the paper said and scientists are better than ordinary people, they don't cheat, lie, or have bias, they are above political considerations! When you strap on that lab coat, you are lifted up to transcend human pettiness. So its easy to manipulate people, especially for a cause or idea that appeals to journalists. This proves evolution! This shows Republicans are idiots/insane/monsters! This demonstrates we're destroying the planet!Word Around the Net: THE PRICE OF SCIENCE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:42 PM | Your Say (3)

Decoding: "Investing in the Future".

As with Wimpy of Thimble Theatre, the investment part means now, the future part means never.

Investment is invoked where maintenance would suffice, in education for instance. It isn't as if effective teaching is an elusive, secret skill. It's more a case of "you can't find what you're not looking for." Western education has roughly a thousand years of experience to draw upon. Not coincidentally, its success peaked at about the same time Progressive Education began to take hold. And education's been in an every-other-Monday crisis mode ever since. - -ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:26 PM | Your Say (2)

On Ping Pong

The Metaphysics of Ping-Pong by Guido Mina di Sospiro: Table tennis, for Mina di Sospiro, is all about spin.
You might think you're a strong player because you can belt the ball reliably back and forth, but you won't get it back because Mina di Sospiro will have put so much spin on it. Spin makes it hard to tell how and where the ball will bounce, makes everything Heisenbergianly unpredictable.

Then again ping-pong might all be about knife placement....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:49 PM | Your Say (2)

In case you've ever wondered what those seafood doohickeys were called...

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:43 PM | Your Say (5)

Living Off The Land: Delusions and Misconceptions About Hunting and Gathering

Assume a scenario where a person will be going into the wilderness with the intention of living off the land.
He will practice wilderness self reliance, he will thrive in nature, and whatever other cliché you want to insert here. Let'€™s also assume for the moment that there are no hunting or fishing regulations that we have to comply with, and let'€™s assume that the person has all necessary equipment, including hunting and fishing tools. What would the person need to procure each day in order to live in a sustainable manner for a prolonged period of time? - - Wood Trekker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:35 PM | Your Say (2)

The Internet is a teaching medium.

What it teaches, we might want to discuss. We might actually be appalled by what it teaches.
The idea that teaching anything is good, is yet another of those strange, indefensible notions, necessary to the sustenance of the progressive mind, & to the general emancipation from reason. The older notion, which survives in parody, was that teaching requires moral intelligence; that right & wrong must be carefully distinguished; that character & good habits should be instilled. On this view, the essential education is “home schooling”; classroom instruction is supplementary, specialized. Thanks to “democracy,” this is now reversed, & it is the task of public education to instil the new “public values,” such as self-expression through sex, & the need for violence to be sublimated. Moreover, to overwrite any “private virtues” that may have been contracted from old-fashioned parents, or by reading non-approved highbrow literature. Lust, anger, values : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:14 PM | Your Say (0)

Memo

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:03 PM | Your Say (4)

October 6, 2013

Giraffe Houses of the Ozarks

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Giraffe houses are generally thought to have first appeared around 1910, but their acceptance grew during the 1930s by Missouri agricultural extension bulletins, which described how to build a house from indigenous stone. Often used as a veneer over standard frame houses, the thick slabs could be structural as well. Accidental Mysteries, Design Observer

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

“More than nine out of every ten employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are considered ‘non-essential.’”

Since the oink sector sets its own salaries, the same people will award themselves backpay on the backs of the workers who carry their dead weight.

Of that you can be sure. So listen up furloughed f-cks and do us all a favor. Get a real job so we don’t have to carry the weight of your hefty salaries (on average double that of the average wage in the country), the liability of your healthcare and retirement benefits the likes of which we can only dream of, and your general sanctimony about your value. BarelyABlog by ilana mercer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:00 PM | Your Say (3)

Other than that we stand by our story and our sources....

3LD Has Used Its Technology to Create a Revenue Stream - NYTimes.com Correction: September 27, 2013
An earlier version of this article, based on information from the company, misstated 3LD’s annual budget. It is $3.5 million, not $2.5 million. The article also misstated part of Aaron Louis’s title when he was with 3LD. He was producing director, not managing director. The article also misstated the Joyce Theater’s role in the dance-performance piece “Deepest Man,” by James Scruggs. The Joyce is not a co-producer on the piece, though it will run there. And the article misquoted one word in a quote by Kevin Cunningham, 3-Legged Dog’s executive artistic director, about Sid, the three-legged pit bull who inspired the company’s name. He said Sid “became a symbol of persistence of vision in the face of adversity” — not a “perception” of vision.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:44 AM | Your Say (3)

October 5, 2013

Equality was a ranging shot,

then a pose, now a marker for crypto racism, somehow. The middle class wasn't so much enlisted as borrowed.
Now, step by step, the true intent of this particular swindle becomes clear. Who will claim we recovered more civil rights than we lost? Who will claim America is better off for it? For the beneficiaries, and there are beneficiaries, the down side is profound but not obvious. There is no surer way to create an enduring, transgenerational enemy than to betray the trust and good will of the middle class. Faithlessness has consequences proportional to the cause, it shapes events far into the future. The middle class can be defrauded, belittled and beaten down but it endures and it remembers. ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 PM | Your Say (0)

Buy Historical Documents

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"People are paying immense prices for contemporary artists who have no demonstrated staying power," says Grant.
In contrast, "Important American documents are really cheap. For $500,000, for example, you could win at an auction one of the original broadside printings of the American Declaration of independence or you could pay $30 or $40 million dollars for a slab of blue paint." Jim Grant’s Top 3 “Undervalued” Assets ... And then there's Russian oil companies? HT: Enough Therapy?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 PM | Your Say (1)

Feminist Catchphrase Translator

“WOW, JUST WOW”, exclamation 1. emotional response to hurtful facts. 2. a resounding admission of defeat in the marketplace of ideas.

War on Women, proper noun 1. a make-believe land dreamed up by feminists and their male enablers to explain away the natural consequences of sex dimorphism. More at Chateau Heartiste

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (4)

'Phetamina Goodbye

Walter White's Swan Song, Parody Song Lyrics of Marty Robbins, "El Paso" So let me now give you Walt's full confession in his final song:

Out in New Mexican town of Alb 'Querque
I fell in love with the methedrine world
Daytime would find me in Gustavo's meth lab
I'd start a batch and ingredients would swirl
Blue as the sky was my brand, 'Phetamina
Purer than snow with a ninety six grade
Great was the take from this methedrine poison
Buried in barrels till I was betrayed

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (2)

Snow Job: Global Warming Starting Early

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A statue of Bill Clinton is covered in snow after a blizzard that swept into Rapid City, S.D. on Friday, Oct. 4, 2013, while local resident Gary Lester walks down a deserted downtown main street. Great Plains storm brings both snow, tornadoes - CBS Atlanta News

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:29 AM | Your Say (7)

Global Warming News from Washington State

Crystal Mountain POWfest Oct. 1, 2013 An unbelievable day of shredding fresh powder for a select group of lucky Facebook fans. This is the earliest opening at Crystal ever. — at Crystal Mountain Washington.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 AM | Your Say (0)

The Pimp Fascism of Rihanna

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Everything you see is either hole or moolah.
We see Chanel jewelry, mink coats trailed in the sewage, golden thrones, and plenty of confetti from the Federal Reserve (conFeddy?), and then we see poor little Rihanna showing how many tricks she can turn by presenting us with a variety of poses and lip licks that suggest she is merely three orifices held together by an intermediate biomorphic mass.  - - Alternative Right - A Magazine of Radical Traditionalism

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:02 AM | Your Say (5)

October 4, 2013

A tenacious, implacable enemy

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Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, Who Ousted U.S. From Vietnam, Is Dead: He was believed to be 102.... In his later years, he was a living reminder of a war that was mostly old history to the Vietnamese, many of whom were born after it had ended. But he had not faded away.
He was regarded as an elder statesman whose hard-line views had softened with the cessation of the war that unified Vietnam. He supported economic reform and closer relations with the United States while publicly warning of the spread of Chinese influence and the environmental costs of industrialization. To his American adversaries, however, from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, he was perhaps second only to his mentor, Ho Chi Minh, as the face of a tenacious, implacable enemy.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 PM | Your Say (7)

Letters from the Dead

neo-neocon: The Jews of Germany and Europe: why didn't they leave in time?

"Our situation here grows worse from day to day. A Jew here is worse off than a dog that runs about the streets…The burden of taxes is unbearable. Not a week goes by that there isn’t something new. And it is always on the Jew. It is truly indescribable. You Jew, you have money for everything. And on the other hand, the Jew is persecuted as a Communist. The whole story of the Middle Ages is being repeated."

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 PM | Your Say (3)

A Nation Mourns

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And I, for one, am grateful that the endless and limitless spew about this episode is over and well.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:19 PM | Your Say (7)

Blue Ribbon Beards

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Them thar's a bushel of photos from this year’s National Beard and Mustache Championships @ Huckberry |

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (2)

Lifetime Achievement Award

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"My favorite part is ' We hope he has gone to rest.' " Never Yet Melted » 99 Bears

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:22 AM | Your Say (7)

Children and Guns: The Hidden Dads

Gavin McInnes : On Sunday, the front page of The New York Times featured a dad holding a .22 with his kid under the headline, “Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll.” What a bunch of disingenuous cocksuckers. The story paints a picture of white, middle-class Americans leaving guns lying around the house so little kids can blow their heads off. Here in New York, the map of single-parent households looks exactly like the map of gun deaths:
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The Times loves single moms and hates guns, and it’s never occurred to them that the two are correlated. While The New York Times scares us into hating negligent white dads, the numbers point to the black single moms the Times glorifies.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:42 AM | Your Say (0)

This Just In

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (0)

The Prophecy

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (4)

Odilon Redon ~ Begonia in a Pot

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:47 AM | Your Say (2)

The Current "Crisis"

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 AM | Your Say (0)

Note to Self:

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (1)

Old Mythic Heroes: Then and Now

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 AM | Your Say (2)

Our first postmodern president

One Cʘsmos: Obama, Messiah of False Slack Presidents Clinton and Bush were ivy league educated, but this was when it still meant something

-- before the leftist takeover of higher education. Also, the fact that Obama was a benefactor of the "diversity" fraud, means that he had even less cognitive equipment than the typical student to resist the neo-Marxist indoctrination he was about to receive. By the time Obama attended college in the 1980s, it was possible -- even likely -- that one could pass through the university without once encountering any serious opposition to leftist indoctrination

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (4)

October 3, 2013

10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class

Little Clara's tetranitratoxycarbon is brand new and explosive:
Clara Lazen, 10, randomly arranged a unique combination of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon atoms. The result was a molecule that Boehr had never seen before. So he emailed longtime friend and HSU Chemistry Professor Robert Zoellner, a computational chemist who uses computer software to mathematically model the properties of molecules. Zoellner ran the molecular makeup of the molecule through a few scientific article databases and did his own digging, and has “determined” that Clara’s molecule is totally unique. Zoellner dug a little deeper and determined that not only was Lazen’s molecule unique, it had the potential to store energy. It contains the same combination of atoms as nitroglycerin, a powerful explosive. If a synthetic chemist succeeded at creating the molecule—dubbed tetranitratoxycarbon for short—it could store energy, create a large explosion, or do something in between, Zoellner says: “Who knows?”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:24 PM | Your Say (6)

"To Make You See"

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"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask." - - Joseph Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:48 PM | Your Say (5)

Skippity-Doo-Dah

How to Enable a Hidden Commercial-Skipping Button on Any DVR You're welcome.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (1)

I'm all for the democratization of athletics....

Your friends might, oh, I don't know, ride their bikes off cliffs while looped on Red Bull on Saturday, and be unavailable to run the hook and ladder with you on Sunday.
So the ability to turn a paper route that doesn't deliver papers into a sport is good for the soul, I think. Especially when you do that Roadrunner/Coyote thing, hanging in midair for a few seconds before the scintillating gravel pizza finish. I'm Not Sure How To Tell If These Turned Out Badly | The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (1)

I am Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park, and This Government Shutdown is My Time to Shine.

My 14,000 some-odd acres pale in comparison to the two million-plus (!) of a behemoth like Yellowstone.
But you know what I’ve got over the big boys? I’m open. And here’s what I have to offer: 79 campsites. Hiking trails. Beaches. Picnic areas. Scenic areas. A nature center with environmental exhibits. I’ve got it all, baby. - - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (0)

Listening to Mr. Buffett’s trains and thinking about Mr. Obama’s tirades against inequality and about the need for the rich to pay more taxes.

Of course, he surrounds himself with the richest of New York finance and Hollywood billionaires and Chicago slumlords.
He takes in the huge bulk of money contributed in million-dollar or more chunks in his elections. And, he’s now on record (gossip record) as saying he wants to be the first billionaire ex-president. His adorable daughters go to one of the most elite, expensive private schools in D.C. There are no poor people around him. Not any. The American Spectator : Bees on Vacation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:19 AM | Your Say (0)

October 2, 2013

He Is the Very Model of a European Penis Man

Belgian killed by euthanasia after a botched sex change operation - Telegraph

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 PM | Your Say (26)

Steve McQueen's Carbine

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“Mare’s Laig” Model 1892 Carbine, serial number 468096, manufactured by Winchester Repeating Arms Company, 1908. Used by actor Steve McQueen. Designed by Kenny “Von Dutch” Howard. Donated in part by Mr. Douglas L. Boyer. Autry National Center; 88.279.1. Gun belt manufactured by Andy Anderson, circa 1960. Exhibition Detail: Western Frontiers: Stories Of Fact And Fiction | Autry National Center

Wanted Dead or Alive: Opening of Episode 1 with a very bad Little Joe, aka Michael Landon.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 PM | Your Say (11)

Let us applaud sheer genius in those United States.

With concealed but effective bipartisan consensus, the President & Congressmen have succeeded in the ultimate patriotic act: shutting down most of their counter-productive Government.
True, there are messy bits in the arrangement. Obamacare has not been completely annihilated, & there is some confusion over national parks. But the attention to detail is otherwise superb. For instance, an arrangement was found to continue paying the military. This is wise, because unpaid soldiers can be trouble; as Harry Truman used to say, “Read your history.” And you may need them to discourage zeal in those less well armed.... Democrats generously credit the Republicans, Republicans generously credit the Democrats, for this impressive accomplishment. Slimming plan : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:08 PM | Your Say (2)

The Great Silence

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Just then the quake, with a sound as of a snarl, rose to its climax of rage, and the back wall of my building for three stories above me fell.
I saw the mass pass across my vision swift as a shadow. It struck some little wooden houses in the alley below. I saw them crash in like emptied eggs and the bricks pass through the roof as through tissue paper.

The vibrations ceased and I began to dress. Then I noted the great silence.
Throughout the long quaking, in this great house full of people I had not heard a cry, not a sound, not a sob, not a whisper. And now, when the roar of crumbling buildings was over and only a brick was falling here and there like the trickle of a spent rain, this silence continued, and it was an awful thing. But now in the alley someone began to groan. It was a woman’s groan, soft and low.... San Francisco reporter James Hopper April 18, 1906

Image The Wall Slid Down Again via Neatorama

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:53 PM | Your Say (0)

Clancy

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Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:17 PM | Your Say (2)

From the Earliest Times

From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fire still spreads." -- W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:57 PM | Your Say (1)

Sandwich #180–”Wanderlust” Ham and Pineapple on Pretzel Roll

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“WANDERLUST” HAM AND PINEAPPLE ON PRETZEL ROLL | 1 6-inch pretzel roll | 2 slices pineapple, cut into halves | 6-8 slices smoked ham | 2 tablespoons honey mustard | 4-5 slices soft white cheese (I had Comte left over, so I used it) | 1/4 cup macadamia nuts, crushed

Spread mustard onto inside of pretzel roll. Sprinkle on macadamia nuts. Layer on cheese, ham and pineapple. Pop into the oven long enough for cheese to melt. Cut in half and serve. - - » 300 Sandwiches

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (6)

Woe is Them!

Bureaucrats are persons who read and write memoranda. That's a skill made valuable solely by government;
therefore, once government is gone, there will be no niche for them. Except for the ones that pack guns, of course, but I'm sure the private sector can deal with them...one way or another. However, I can't think of any portion of the private economy that has a grinding need for officious, self-important bastards consumed by a lust for power but are incapable of anything but vilifying one another. Can you, Gentle Reader? - - Liberty's Torch: Shutting Them Down

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (5)

You may be cool,

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but you’ll never be “Frank Sinatra stepping out of a helicopter with a drink in his hand” cool. - - | Messy Nessy Chic Messy Nessy Chic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (8)

"This “government shutdown” is nothing new"

and neither is all the frustration that goes with it. Decade after decade, generation after generation,
we’ve been putting up with it in one form or another: “blank,” usually management, sat down at a table with “blank,” usually a union, and “failed to reach an agreement before midnight.” And so, the garbage has to keep piling up with no one clearing it away. And so, the Boeing workers have to continue to stay home driving their wives nuts. And so, the baseball game has to be canceled. The many have to stop living, because the few sat down at the table & couldn’t or wouldn’t reach a deal. - - House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (0)

Poor Barry Makes His Own Bed

The government shutdown has forced Obama to make do with only a quarter of his 1,701 person staff. That would leave 436 “vital” employees. The 90 people who look after his living quarters would be slashed to 15 to “provide minimum maintenance an support”.
Buckingham Palace, which is twelve times the size of the White House and has its own clockmaker, only has an 800 person staff. King Harald V of Norway and his court make do with 152 staffers. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden gets by with 203. - -Sultan Knish: The Sun Sets on Washington D.C.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (0)

October 1, 2013

Collections Worth Building: Tall Tale Postcards

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More @ Encyclopedia Homeschoolica

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:56 PM | Your Say (1)

The Perfect Nazi Bride

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Nazi ideology held that women belonged to the home sphere; it barred them from medicine, law, and civil service.
The party awarded a state-and-civil decoration—a brilliant cross presented with a ribbon to wear around the neck—called the Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter, or Cross of Honor of the German mother. Bronze went to eligible mothers with four or five children, silver for those with six or seven, and gold to those with eight or more Kinder. - - The New Yorker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:31 PM | Your Say (7)

The Beltway Media Shuck-Down

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The central ploy in this well-worn narrative is to summon the will-o’-the-wisp of reasonable centrism.
In this fantasy of the pundit class, lawmakers are shaken out of their ideological stupors by a crisis, like a pending government shutdown. Then, much like a superhero SWAT team in the final reel of an action film, the newly awakened lawmakers set aside their core philosophical differences and strike a bargain that neither faction is satisfied with, but that, like Adam Smith’s fabled Invisible Hand, serves the greater public good. - - News | The Baffler

Question of the day: What is the opposite of shut down?

Answer of the day: Shut up! Had Enough Therapy?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (2)

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers

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I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table.
That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 AM | Your Say (10)

"Unlike brick-and-mortar prisons, one can live one's entire life without awareness of being imprisoned, so long as one doesn't breach the invisible walls. Touch one of the walls, however, and the snipers begin firing from the parapets. "

"For example, in this prison it is permissible to smear a non-leftist president with the most vile and over-the-top epithets -- nazi, mass murderer, racist, war criminal -- but if you happen to notice that the current occupant is, you know, kind of a dick, you'll be spending time in the gulag for re-education." -- One Cʘsmos: Socialism is the Only Surefire Cure for Socialism

Posted by Vanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (0)

Government Shuts Down, Nation Descends into Riots, Looting and Cannibalism

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The United States of America (1787-2013) came to a swift and sudden end last night as the government shut down.
The nation which had survived Pearl Harbor, the War of 1812 and Jimmy Carter ceased to exist. The victims were many. In Chuckolod County, Colorado, a transgender person was denied access to the Ladies Room. Frantic calls to the Justice Department were forwarded to an answering service in Depar, India, instead of Doneparre City, Indiana. In Brooklyn, New York, an overweight Senegalese woman was unable to obtain a sign language interpreter while waiting on line to collect her free Obamaphone. In Olegon Falls, Florida, the National Museum of Native American Yarn was forced to shut down depriving schoolchildren of an educational experience and three hours throwing bits of yarn at each other. - - Sultan Knish

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

Pets or Meat? "Rare Giant Salamanders Bred in Captivity"

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Being nocturnal and mostly aquatic, these super-salamanders are rarely seen. They lurk in cool streams in mountains and foothills. Though once caught for food, they’re now protected as a national treasure in Japan.
Rare Giant Salamanders Bred in Captivity
– News Watch

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (4)

Against all odds: Technology in the America's Cup

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Crunching the vast amount of data collected during races (about 3,000 variables are recorded ten times a second), closely analyzing the performance of the rival boat and testing the effectiveness of apparently tiny adjustments on virtual models run through a supercomputer, mathematicians and designers had been working night and day to make the boat faster. And they had. - - The Economist

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:19 AM | Your Say (2)