« November 2013 | Main | January 2014 »
December 31, 2013
Thought for the Turn of the Year
to live in a country as rich, diverse, and beautiful as ours. One that allows the Robertson family and Ellen DeGeneres to live their lives freely, and to make a living without fear of reprisal for simply being who they are, and for believing what they believe.And as some among us seek to cleanse the world of sound bites and speech that hurt our feelings and sensitivities,
maybe we can reflect on Thomas Jefferson’s great words on the subject: “It does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my legs.” - - Lee Habeeb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 PM | Your Say (2)
“The Great Virtue Shift.”
Almost every act regarded in the mid-20th century as a vice was, by the opening of the 21st century, considered a virtue. As gambling, obscenity, pornography, drugs, divorce, homosexuality, abortion and sneering disaffection became The New Virtue, government at all levels began to move in on the action, starting with casinos and currently involving, in several states and the District of Columbia, an officially approved and bureaucratically managed narcotics trade. - - On DecadencePosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:38 PM | Your Say (2)
This Just In: AmericanDigest Gets A Bright and Shining Award
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (6)
Away by Robert Frost
Now I out walking
The world desert,
And my shoe and my stocking
Do me no hurt.
I leave behind
Good friends in town.
Let them get well-wined
And go lie down.
Don’t think I leave
For the outer dark
Like Adam and Eve
Put out of the Park
Forget the myth
There is no one I
Am put out with
Or put out by.
Unless I’m wrong
I but obey
The urge of a song:
“I’m—bound-away!”
And I may return
If dissatisfied
With what I learn
From having died.
As quoted at neo-neocon » Blog Archive » The art of age
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:57 PM | Your Say (0)
Why did the MSNBC panel feel free…
…to mock the Romneys for having a black grandchild?The main reason: their audience is so tiny and leftophile that the panel members forgot they were on TV and thought they were talking amongst themselves. Although they’ve now issued apologies and semi-apologies, it probably wasn’t until liberal CNN criticized them that they realized they might have done anything that could be considered even the least bit objectionable. -- neo-neocon[Reason #2: They are assholes who need to be horsewhipped in the public square and have their backs washed down with salt water.]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:11 PM | Your Say (12)
And lo, the Earth shall rock on....
The Madness of the Planets:“Things are not as simple as they were supposed to be,with the planets staying quiet forever,” says Alessandro Morbidelli, a planetary dynamics expert at the Nice Observatory in France. “When the planets form they don’t know they have to form on good orbits to be stable for billions of years! So they are stable temporarily, but are not stable for the lifetime of the star.” Translation: Earth was forged in chaos, lives in chaos, and may well end in chaos.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (2)
Out with a Bang! White House Ends A Lying Year With a Final Whopper
White House Now Claims 7 Million Was Never an Obamacare Signup Target | Truth RevoltSecretary Sebelius gave the seven million figure in an interview with NBC News on September 30, the day before Obamacare's launch: “I think success looks like at least seven million people having signed up by the end of March 2014."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (1)
Imagine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:36 PM | Your Say (1)
How Come?
Why don’t those heavily armed kids in The Hunger Games just assassinate the tyrants?Why doesn’t All Powerful Wheelchair Guy in the X-Men just cure his own paralysis? Television isn’t much better. Somehow, millions of supposedly intelligent viewers bought into Breaking Bad, a show about the only public-school teacher in the Western world who didn’t have health insurance. 2013: Reminiscences and Prognostications - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (6)
The unfortunate side effects of labiaplastie. [Bumped]
Designer Vaginas Are Ruining Your Idea of What Real Vaginas Look Like.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (20)
Would “take anyone as long as they were kind respectful. Around my income level and were fit.”
We laugh at a woman like this sometimes and make fun of her and say, “Didn’t she know that she’d end up like this?”No, she didn’t know that. That’s because when you are 17 years old, you don’t know much, especially in this culture of extended adolescence. And when you have been told from a very young age that, as a girl, it is your destiny to Have It All exactly When You Want It, I’m sure it is very baffling to find yourself in your thirties with no husband and none in sight, with the dawning realization that your job and lonely apartment are not nearly as fulfilling as being a wife and mother would have been. The baffled spinster. | Sunshine Mary
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (3)
Why the Passenger Pigeon Became Extinct
the hum increased to a mighty throbbing. Now everyone was out of the houses and stores, looking apprehensively at the growing cloud, which was blotting out the rays of the sun. Children screamed and ran for home. Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped on their knees and prayed. Jonathan Rosen: : The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:42 AM | Your Say (1)
Tribes? What Tribes?
Why does the American MSM almost never mention tribes, except occasionally as an afterthought, and never speak about how countries like Libya are organized socially, and how that affects their politics?.... That kind of appellation is considered just this side of racist in the higher etiquette of American Enlightenment liberalism, deeply dented, as it has been, by the nonsense of anti-“Orientalism” regnant now for more than a generation in academe. Of Photo-Opportunism and Hazmat Garbage Collection - The American InterestPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 AM | Your Say (5)
December 30, 2013
The 13 Most Annoying People of 2013 #3
Failing to ever publicly acknowledge that she is astronomically fatter and richer in Evil Racist America than if her ample rump had been reared in Mother Africa, the wealthiest black woman in the history of black womanhood spent most of the year wheezing like a punctured accordion about how tough it is to be black. - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:11 PM | Your Say (2)
"You, sitting right there in your chair, watching these words move across your screen, are the problem."
A problem 311,591,917 human souls strong. You eat too much or you don’t pay enough taxes, you drive your car too often, you haven’t bought solar panels for your roof, you browse extremist websites when you should be browsing government informational sites for tips on how to do or not do all of the above. But most of all… you still don’t understand what a great problem you are for the people running this country into the ground between the Atlantic and the Pacific. They keep trying to solve you, but you don’t go away. Dan Greenfield, There Ain’t No More Middle-GroundPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:27 PM | Your Say (3)
The 13 Most Annoying People of 2013 #2
5. RACHEL JEANTELThis petulant chocolate toadstool was the defense’s star witness in the George Zimmerman murder trial, but hers is a star that burns very dimly indeed. Watching her barely conscious bulk crammed into the witness stand as she grunted her answers, half of America said, “Wow, she’s stupid” while the other half of America thought, “Wow, she’s stupid” without saying anything. Which leads me to my next selection…4. PIERS MORGAN
This fey, pompous, snooty, lime-farting Enemy of All Things American had the gall and fundamental lack of honesty to call Rachel Jeantel a “smart cookie” after an appearance on his show that revealed Jeantel to be dumber than a hippo basking in an African mud pond. All year long, Morgan railed against guns, racism, Americans, American guns, American racists, and American racists with guns. Here’s hoping that some meth-addled gun nuts somewhere in the American heartland devise a gun big enough to shoot Piers Morgan all the way back to England. - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:13 PM | Your Say (5)
The 13 Most Annoying People of 2013
snuggled up in red PJs as he blithely sips a mug of cocoa is easily the most objectionable human being to enter my field of consciousness over the past twelve months. A poster boy for the unspooling disaster known as Obamacare, Krupp is also emblematic of American culture’s systemic devaluation of all things manly. Doris Day had more male hormones than he does. I’ve seen baby guppies that could kick this kid’s ass. Ethan Krupp’s face is the most persuasive evidence I’ve ever seen that society would benefit if it were to open its mind once again to the virtues of bullying. - - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:12 PM | Your Say (12)
Records We Never Tire of Seeing Broken
Magnetic man: Georgian man breaks record for sticking spoons to his body.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:54 PM | Your Say (1)
Records We Always Fear Being Broken
Chicago Woman,'My bottom measures 7 FEET round and I'm proud of it!' Despite being proud of her record-breaking rear end, 32-stone Ms Massey admits that living with a super-sized bottom isn’t always easy and receives $1,500 in disability benefits each month as a result of having limited mobility. [You will click on the link and you will be sorry.]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:51 PM | Your Say (5)
The chocolate-chip cookie celebrated its seventy-fifth birthday this year.
Unlike the anonymous inventors of such American staples as the hot dog,the grilled-cheese sandwich, and the milkshake, the creator of the chocolate-chip cookie has always been known to us. Ruth Wakefield, who ran the popular Toll House restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts, with her husband, Kenneth, from 1930 to 1967, brought the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie into being in the late nineteen-thirties. -- A History of the Chocolate-Chip Cookie
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (1)
December 29, 2013
The Detritus of a Culture
I don’t want to hear any more from Anderson Cooper that his 85-year old mom bragged of great cunnilingus— nor to read that Cosmopolitan magazine sent one of its bloggers to masturbate publicly on the New York Subway. Life is sick enough without all that. I’d rather read about the heroism of Depression-era farmers, or the ordeal of those who fought on Okinawa to ensure that Mr. Anderson can editorialize about octogenarian oral sex. Works and Days » Crashing and Burning in 2013[Well, at least we learn from Anderson Cooper that sometimes mothers do actually drive their sons to homosexuality after all. And who could blame him?]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 PM | Your Say (4)
Five Resolutions for Christians and Patriots
5. Refine your skills! Put the soccer ball down and pick up the Mossberg 500.Hunt, teach your kids to hunt. When the Shih-tzu hits the fan, their six years in youth soccer won’t pass the time in the prison yard for political prisoners. And 4 more on Clash Daily
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:21 PM | Your Say (2)
Meet Mr Chicken
In the past Kentucky usually have a little logo, a little slogan, “American Recipe,” people used to copy that. I mean a lot of people still try, and we say, “Oh that’s old fashioned, people not using that again.” Because they try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, you get your Dallas, it’s American, you get your California, it’s American, you get your Mississippi, it’s American, and people just use those names to link with America. You hardly ever see a sign saying English Fried Chicken. Creative Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (5)
Following instructions to the letter.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (3)
December 28, 2013
Despite their grimly statist ways, the utopians continue to pass themselves off as well-meaning hipsters.
The people responsible for hate crimes, speech codes, the smoking ban, debilitating taxes, and a soul-sucking state bureaucracywould have us believe that they are chilled-out hepcats, who totally dig your scene. If you think what they think, do what they say, and accept the terms of their ‘generosity’, it might be possible to enjoy their simulacrum of freedom as though it’s the real thing. But wander too far from the coop and soon you’ll soon collide with the chicken wire. - - We Are the Radicals Now - Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 PM | Your Say (1)
Her Majesty the Queen
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 PM | Your Say (7)
The Apotheosis of 2013's Food Porn
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:14 PM | Your Say (0)
“Read not The Times, read the The Eternities.” -- Thoreau
The morning is to the night as virtue is to vice.
It follows that one should so arrange one’s life as to secure the maximum quantity of morning. Arise early, before the birds. The true lover of silence finds even the birds too noisy. In the morning all is cool, clean, and quiet. The worldlings are asleep, the universe is yours. Now read something worth reading, something that inspires, improves, ennobles, challenges. Maverick Philosopher: How Not to Begin the Day
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:16 PM | Your Say (4)
Were there any new trends in 2013?
Yes, but they were not good. Kale, for example.Suddenly this year restaurants started putting kale into everything, despite the fact that it is an unappetizing form of plant life that until recently was used primarily for insulation. Even goats will not eat it. Goats, when presented with kale, are like, “No, thanks, we’ll just chew on used seat cushions.” Dave Barry’s Review of 2013, the Year of the Zombies - The Washington Post
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (11)
"If winter is too much for you"
I see a great number of people talking about how they're going to deal with a coming apocalypse.They're going to hoard this and grow that. They're going to be the Omega Man crossed with Johnny Appleseed. Forgive me, but life is plenty hard here, and I can't help but notice you're not moving in next door to me before the apocalypse. I doubt you will the day after. If winter is too much for you, I doubt you're prepared for an army of zombie Robespierres or whatever it is you're planning for. Sippican Cottage: The Vioet Days Are Here (A Month Early)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (1)
December 27, 2013
Mind Monkey
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 PM | Your Say (0)
Second Alternate Robertson Headline
Duck Hunters 1 – Dick Hunters 0Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 PM | Your Say (0)
Alternate Robertsons Headline
"GLAAD really blew it this time." [Ducks]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:28 PM | Your Say (0)
"…favorited a tweet you were mentioned in."
No one has ever wanted to know this.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:15 PM | Your Say (1)
Who Says There's No Good News?
There Were Zero Somali Pirate Hijackings This Year: In all of 2013, only nine vessels were attacked by pirates off the Horn of Africa, four in the final two months of the year. None were successfully hijacked.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:21 PM | Your Say (8)
A New Thing Learned About World War II
The phrase was also used in World War II by the 8th Air Force, U.S. Army Air Forces B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator crew members. Each bomb group employed a nearly worn-out bomber known as a formation, lead, or assembly ship. These aircraft were brightly painted with group-specific high-contrast patterns in stripes, checkers, or polka dots, enabling easy recognition by their flock of bombers to form up from various airbases over England and fly strategic bombing missions over Europe. After guiding their own combat bombers into the appropriate formation groups the assembly ships would return home --thus their poor condition and lack of camouflage and of weapons mattered little.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:09 PM | Your Say (0)
"Duck Dynasty" Flies On. A&E Eats Crow.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:30 PM | Your Say (4)
Once a man is hooked on Tasers, there's no cure.
Ore. man on meth fights off 12 cops while masturbating in bar: It took a Taser and more than a dozen officers on Sunday to finally subdue Andrew Frey inside Iggy's Bar & Grill on Portland Road Northeast, the Marion County Sheriff's office said.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:48 PM | Your Say (7)
Idiot Plot
In Top Hat, Ginger Rogers shuns the ardent Fred Astairebecause she thinks he’s her best friend’s husband. How she could persist in this belief for any length of time is never explained — the misunderstanding drives the whole story. This is an “idiot plot,” defined by Roger Ebert as “a plot which is kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot.” Fools’ Play – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (12)
Three-Penis Liquor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (5)
Remarkable Hobo Nickels Carved from Clad Coins by Paolo Curcio
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (0)
"Nice little insurance company you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it."
Obamacare Escapes the Chains of Law No more rules!Now insurance companies are being “encouraged” and “strongly encouraged” to extend deadlines, accept late payments, pay for some out-of-network doctors and out of plan prescriptions. Many of these things violate the formal terms of the deal the government had made with insurers and will cost the latter money. “They’re asking insurers to pay for the mistakes” the administration made in the launch of the program, complains Avik Roy. The key word is “asking.” But, as Roy notes, there’s a club HHS is holding behind its back–the threat that if insurers don’t play along HHS will be “considering” that factor in the “renewal process.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:42 AM | Your Say (7)
The Parachuting Dogs of the British Army in World War II
In order to make it easier to get the dogs to jump out of the aircraft, they weren't given anything to drink or eat beforehand. On April 2, 1944, Bailey wrote in his notebook about the first jump with the female Alsatian Ranee. He notes that he carried with him a 2-pound piece of meat, and that the dog sat at his heels eagerly watching as the men at the front of the line jumped out of the plane. - - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:24 AM | Your Say (1)
Phil Robertson Duck Dynasty Flap Stings A&E
In the days after the Duck Dynasty patriarch was benched A&E experienced a significant downturn in its deliveries. In the week of Dec. 16-22, A&E averaged 1.51 million viewers in prime time, down 13 percent from 1.73 million in the year-ago period. The target demos took a bigger hit, as adults 25-54 dropped 22 percent to 678,000, while members of the 18-49 set fell 18 percent to 646,000. | AdweekPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:51 AM | Your Say (3)
Liberal intelligence exists on the illusion of its self-worth.
"WE'RE SMART AND WE'RE RIGHT. WE'RE RIGHT BECAUSE WE'RE SMART. WE'RE SMART BECAUSE WE'RE RIGHT." Now imagine that these marching morons dominate academia, the government bureaucracy and the entertainment industry allowing them to spend billions yelling their idiot message until it outshouts everyone else while ignoring the disasters in their wake because they are too smart to fail. - - Greenfield aka Sultan Knish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:45 AM | Your Say (6)
Just When You Thought It Was Safe.... Weiner Pops Up: "What's next? I'll keep you posted on my plans. But I hope we keep the band together,"
....says Anthony Weiner. Ah, that would be "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Parts Club Band," right?Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 AM | Your Say (1)
December 26, 2013
They Say That the Wasps Are Finished. Maybe We Are Just Being Discreet.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (4)
The Late, Great American WASP
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:35 PM | Your Say (14)
The Fallible Pope: Like Most Men of God and God Himself, He Just Can't Handle Money.
Sense of Events: What the Pope got wrong The pope’s argument, fundamentally, is that we can have capitalism on the condition that we feed the poor. This is exactly backward:We can feed the poor if we have capitalism. To give away wealth presumes the existence of that wealth, whether it is an annual tithe or Jesus’ more radical stance of giving away all that one owns. Giving away all that you own does not do the poor an iota of good if you don’t have anything. You can’t spread the wealth without wealth.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:28 PM | Your Say (3)
Obamacare: Why Pay Less!?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:31 PM | Your Say (2)
Stop the Lies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:21 PM | Your Say (4)
4 Sale
Of questionable pedigree. Does not appear to have ever been worked hard. Apparently, it was pampered by various owners over the years. It doesn't work very often, but when it does it can sling shit for amazing distances. I really don't want it hanging around getting in the way. I would prefer a foreign buyer to relocate the manure spreader out of the country. I would be willing to trade it for a nicely framed copy of the United States Constitution. Location: Currently being stored in a big white house in Washington , D.C. - - Craig's List Ad | My Underwood Typewriter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (3)
Why It's Nearly Impossible to Castrate a Hippo
Even after finding the sneaky organs, the procedure wasn't simple.The depth of the testes' hiding places varied by as much as 16 inches from one hippo to the next. Everything had to be done deep inside the animal's body, making it hard to see what was going on. "Grasping the testicle with forceps proved laborious" in most of the animals, the authors write. They also mention using a "two-handed technique" and"moderate traction." The whole hour-and-a-half procedure, based on a method for castrating horses, isdescribed in detail for anyone who wants to try it themselves. - - Inkfish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (3)
Man Bites Dog
The man was on all fours when the words ‘Let go’ were uttered, and, making accurate allowance for the length of the dog’s chain, he arched his back, cat wise, so as just to escape its fangs, and fetched it a blow on the crown of its head that brought it almost to its knees. The dog’s recovery, however, was instantaneous; and before the dwarf could draw back, Physic made a second dart forward, and this time its teeth grazed, the biped’s arm, causing a slight red trickling. – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 AM | Your Say (0)
Obama as Pajama Boy
cooling the planet and lowering the seas, hope and change, Forward!, “Yes, we can!”, the Nate Silver infatuation, Barbara Walters’ “messiah,” David Brooks’ crease, Chris Matthews’ tingle, and the army of Silicon techies who can mobilize for Obama but not for Obamacare. These are the elites without identities who feed on the latest fad. They are the upper-crust versions of those who once mobbed stores to buy the last Cabbage Patch Kids doll, or had to have a pet rock on their dresser. Obama, after all, was the lava lamp and Chia Pet of the young urban progressive. Works and Days » Pajama Boy Nation
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:22 AM | Your Say (4)
December 25, 2013
Well, that's it for me and The Big Bang Theory [Bumped]
Too bad. They were funny about three years ago.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 PM | Your Say (20)
Aftermath
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 PM | Your Say (0)
The real question is this:
As between one of two possible worlds --one in which freedom of thought and expression is generously and broadly encouraged not only by the state but by other powerful institutions, such as corporate employers, permitting a wide latitude in speech and respecting large zone of personal autonomy, or one in which freedom of thought and expression is sharply curtailed and discouraged by the threat of economic coercion against anyone dissenting against this week's folly -- which world would we prefer to live in? Althouse: What the Hell Happened to the Left and Free Speech?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:46 PM | Your Say (5)
My Work Here Is Done
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:53 PM | Your Say (0)
Funny Thing about Christmas
Nowhere—nowhere—in the Bible are Christians commanded to observe Christ’s birthday. It is almost as if God said to man, “Make of this event what you will.”And the result has been a spontaneous celebration, heartfelt and lasting; an expression of joy—a peculiarly infectious joy—that has echoed down through the centuries. History has judged the event astounding and the implications profound—God’s entry into human history for the purpose of delivering his most loved creation from the consequences of their own behavior. This birthday, fixed by tradition at the close of the year, has literally brought joy to the world, changed the way man keeps track of time, and inspired some of the greatest and most beautiful music, art, and literature of all time.— The American Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (0)
"The thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:58 AM | Your Say (2)
The Windhover
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:15 AM | Your Say (1)
December 24, 2013
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man's distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one—
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.
Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:57 PM | Your Say (2)
When the gift you are giving is Legos....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:32 PM | Your Say (1)
Is Maureen Dowd Obsolete? The Evidence Speaks, Loudly
Listen, Corn Flower. Let’s think over this business of obsolete men. Reflect.You live in New York, in which every building was designed and built by men. You perhaps use the subway, designed, built, and maintained by men. You travel at in a car, invented, designed, and built by men—a vehicle that you don’t understand (what is a cam lobe?) and couldn’t maintain (have you ever changed a tire? Could you even find the tires?), and you do this on roads designed, built, and maintained by men. You fly in aircraft designed, built, and maintained by men, which you do not understand (what, Moon Pie, is a high-bypass turbofan?) == Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:39 AM | Your Say (15)
December 23, 2013
Make That "The Commercial-Nosed Reindeer"
as, according to the popular song and television special, his nose lights the way for Santa Claus’ sleigh. As warm and fuzzy his story may be, Rudolph was actually created as a marketing gimmick for a department store in 1939. History By Zim
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 PM | Your Say (1)
These Days.... Who Are the Brain Police?
What will you do if we let you go home, And the plastic's all melted, And so is the chrome? WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?What will you do when the label comes off,
And the plastic's all melted,
And the chrome is too soft?What will you do if the people you knew
Were the plastic that melted,
And the chromium too?
WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE?
FRANK ZAPPA LYRICS - Who Are The Brain Police?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 PM | Your Say (8)
Meet The Spanish Peas That Sell for $350 Per Pound
Enter the guisante lágrima.When Jaime hit on this pea varietal, preserved by his grandfather and adapted by him, he knew he had something special. These peas are best eaten raw, which is how they are served (albeit with a generous spoonful of caviar) at Mugaritz, the number four restaurant in the world according to the 2013 San Pellegrinoâs Worldâs 50 Best Restaurants. The peasâ flavor is surprising: A crunchy burst at first bite gives way to an herbaceous sweetness. âExquisite,â says Iñigo Galatas, the food critic for San Sebastiánâs local newspaper. âTheir freshness is pure springtime. What is most fascinating is the sweetness when they explode in your mouth. Itâs truly like caviar from the ground, substituting sweetness for the salt.â - Modern Farmer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:39 PM | Your Say (1)
Of Freedom of Speech: That the same is inseparable from publick Liberty.
Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as publick liberty, without freedom of speech:Which is the right of every man, as far as by it he does not hurt and control the right of another; and this is the only check which it ought to suffer, the only bounds which it ought to know. This sacred privilege is so essential to free government, that the security of property; and the freedom of speech, always go together; and in those wretched countries where a man can not call his tongue his own, he can scarce call any thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of the nation, must begin by subduing the freedom of speech; a thing terrible to publick traitors. Cato's Letters: No. 15
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:29 PM | Your Say (0)
Get Off the Stage Before the Lights Dim
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:00 PM | Your Say (5)
What makes Vladimir Putin "succeed at everything he does"?
The fact that the former KGB man now "seems to be succeeding at everything he does"has nothing to do with conservatism. No, it is wholly a result of the fact that the US now has the probably weakest and most incompetent president ever. With a strong leader in charge in the US, Putin would never have been able assert himself. And the weakness of the other western "leaders", Hollande, Cameron and Merkel above all, is making it even easier for Putin to "succeed." - - The New Nostradamus of the North
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:33 AM | Your Say (9)
The Spam Museum, Yes, the Spam Museum
Referred to by some meat historians as The Guggenham, Porkopolis or M.O.M.A. (Museum Of Meat-Themed Awesomeness), the SPAM® Museum is home to the world's most comprehensive collection of spiced pork artifacts. It's all happening at The SPAM Museum of Austin, Minnesota.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 AM | Your Say (6)
December 22, 2013
"I can’t explain why we shouldn’t murder disabled children."
Believe it or not, even politically incorrect comments about homosexuality have to be excused if we are to believe that baby killing is a moral act.I’m often told that I need to be more understanding on this topic, but this is an unfair request. There are people — millions of them, in fact — who think it should be legal to murder babies, but then illegal to, say, pay a fast food worker less than minimum wage, or refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. How could I possibly understand this mentality? How could I wrap my head around the thought process that leads one to conclude that the latter cases are so atrocious — so dehumanizing — that they ought to be outlawed, but the former case is so acceptable that it ought to be vigorously defended, and even funded, by the federal government? Understanding? No. I do not understand. I do not. And I hope that I never do. - - The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:32 PM | Your Say (2)
Healthcare "Help" from the State of Californication
The state of my residence, California, is one of these, and their site is Covered California (which is littered, as you might guess, with images of all kinds of “diverse” families – - I’m just waiting to hit the page where the family represented is a white man, a black guy, and they’re both in wheelchairs). I used the site, and although it didn’t bomb the way I’ve heard the federal site does, it’s far from perfect; here’s just one little tidbit from a help page:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:54 PM | Your Say (3)
The Trickiest Tongue Twister To Date
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:33 PM | Your Say (4)
I guess this means the problem of taking desktops and laptops into the bathroom has been solved.
The US now watches the majority of its online porn on mobile phones.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:08 PM | Your Say (2)
Obama’s America: Land Of The Twee, Home Of The Fey
If Obama’s supporters and media messengers are all mental and sexual onesies — and evidence accrues that that is indeed the case — then these ad creators would have no clue that they’re broadcasting prime mockery material to their enemies. It’s hard to believe that could be true, what with all those 130 IQ neoCalvinists comprising the Obama cult machine, but accelerated social sorting by ideology can easily blind a person to how they’re perceived by those not like him. | Chateau Heartiste
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (14)
The 2013 Darwin Awards Are Out!
Here Is The Glorious Winner:1. When his .38 caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked. | My Underwood Typewriter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (8)
Mark Steyn: ‘I am sorry my editor at NR does not grasp the stakes’
Indeed, he seems inclined to “normalize” what GLAAD is doing.But, if he truly finds my “derogatory language” offensive, I’d rather he just indefinitely suspend me than twist himself into a soggy pretzel of ambivalent inertia trying to avoid the central point – that a society where lives are ruined over an aside because some identity-group don decides it must be so is ugly and profoundly illiberal. As to his kind but belated and conditional pledge to join me on the barricades, I had enough of that level of passionate support up in Canada to know that, when the call to arms comes, there will always be some “derogatory” or “puerile” expression that it will be more important to tut over. So thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’d be much use, would you? - - Re-Education Camp | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (12)
A Kind of Magic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (0)
A Christmas Miracle
Finally, one day that December, I had to tell her. Medically, we were beaten. The decision lay with God.She took it quietly, lying there, wasting away, only 23 and the mother of a year-old child. Eleanor Munro (her name has been disguised) was a devout, courageous woman. She had red hair and had probably been rather pretty, but it was hard to tell anymore, she was so near to death from tuberculosis. She knew it now, she accepted it, and she asked for just one thing. “If I’m still alive on Christmas Eve,” she said slowly, “I would like your promise that I can go home for Christmas.” - - continued at Primordial Slack
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:04 AM | Your Say (0)
They don't make 'em like this anymore.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:19 AM | Your Say (0)
How the Hot Tamale Conquered the American South
“Like mashed potatoes, it can be dressed in any number of appealing guises. You get tamales stuffed with pulled pork, oysters, venison, bacon, quail, shrimp, beef, lamb, salsa, blueberries, raisins—and plenty of pepper. They’re not just a meal, they’re an adventure.” Stomach calming, I pried my tamale-greased hand loose and determinedly peeled the parchment from my next victim. Grimacing directly at my mother, I shoved it, whole, into my mouth. I distinctly heard her mutter, “I don’t know how many more of these I can watch.” - - Smithsonian Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:12 AM | Your Say (2)
December 21, 2013
The End of the World, See Page 126
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:43 PM | Your Say (1)
Rockwell Kent's Christmas Card, 1928
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:45 PM | Your Say (2)
Packaging of the Year
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:41 PM | Your Say (0)
Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:
“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.” - - The Age of IntolerancePosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:34 PM | Your Say (3)
Is this the face that launched a thousand clips?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:09 PM | Your Say (5)
Comment on "Reality" TV
"Almost all "reality" tv is the result of so-called liberal conformists holding ordinary people up to ridicule.The pretext for each show may differ, but the ultimate intent is identical---to laugh at someone else's frailty and enjoy a catharsis of social superiority. Look how funny these peoples' values are! Look how absurd they are! How ridiculous! Don't you feel superior? (That's one of the reasons I hate the Walmart shoppers photographs---they're just unkind. Funny, maybe, but unkind.) Journalistically, there'a big difference between the Charles Kuralt-style delight in human eccentricity and the frankly condescending and spiritually immature worldview of today's media. In truth, most people are pretty humble in their abilities, interests and aspirations. They are also capable of deep sincerity, generosity and kindness. The left media has no understanding or respect for any of these virtues---which just demonstrates the depth of their moral sickness." -- Posted by: ahem responding to Side-Lines: Duck Dynasty: The Show That Got Away
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (3)
December 20, 2013
Duck Dynasty: The Show That Got Away
The whole idea of the show was to parade these nouveau riche Christian hillbillies around so that we could laugh at them. "Look at them," we were supposed to say. "Look how backward they are! Look what they believe! Can you believe they really live this way and believe this stuff? See how they don't fit in? HAHAHA"When the producers saw the way the show was shaping up, different than they envisioned it, they tried to change course. They tried to get the Robertson's to tone down their Christianity, but to their eternal credit they refused. They tried to add fake cussin' to the show by inserting bleeps where no cussword was uttered. At best, they wanted to make the Robertson's look like crass buffoons. At worst they wanted them to look like hypocrites. They desperately wanted us to laugh at the Robertsons. Instead, we loved them. |- - NCRegister.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:52 PM | Your Say (21)
The Merry Christmas Family Robertson
As the future of their show lies in doubt, the Duck Dynasty clan are still making millions thanks to their megabucks Walmart merchandising deal. The Robertson family has a merchandise empire that is estimated by Forbes to be worth about $400million - and their deal with Walmart makes up around half of this. And today, as Walmart refused to comment on the future of their relationship with the TV family, just one glimpse at the chainstore's website shows fans are flocking to buy Duck Dynasty merchandise.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:11 PM | Your Say (5)
I Bred Mice for Medical Testing
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (1)
Harry Reid Is Hospitalized
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:42 AM | Your Say (24)
The Great War’s Ominous Echoes
Lulling ourselves into a false sense of safety, we say that countries that have McDonald’s will never fight one another. Yet the extraordinary growth in trade and investment between China and the United States since the 1980s has not served to allay mutual suspicions. At a time when the two countries are competing for markets, resources and influence from the Caribbean to Central Asia, China has become increasingly ready to translate its economic strength into military power. - - NYTimes.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:05 AM | Your Say (6)
Coming Up: The Diet of Worms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:12 AM | Your Say (21)
December 19, 2013
Money Bin For Sale: Original Swiss Bank Deposit Safe - Money Swimming Pool
This is the original bank safe from the former "Schweizer Volksbank" and known to be one of the finest Swiss piece of craftwork in the early 20th Century. It is in very good shape and still usable as a bank deposit safe. It will be removed from it's original location and be replaced anywhere in the world. You'll freely decide what happens with it.Features
- 8 Million pieces of Swiss 5 cent coins ("Rappen")
- 15 tons of "liquid" money
- Dimension of the money: 6m3
- Alloy: Copper 92% / Aluminium 6% / Nickel 2%
- Caliber: 17,15 mm, Weight: 1,80 g, Thickness: 1,25 mm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 PM | Your Say (2)
Meet PajamaBoy AKA Ethan Krupp AKA "If Obama Had a Twink.... "
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 PM | Your Say (13)
The Young Turks
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:20 PM | Your Say (6)
Correction of the Day: Screwed Either Way
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:01 AM | Your Say (0)
Bugging out in a live-aboard sailboat
Anyone who takes this option should not be criticized for 'cutting and running'.At the end of the day, we are about liberty, and that is the exercise of such. Much as it would be great if there was a battle line of freedom to join, there isn't. There is a mass of overweight selfish entitled citizenry, the statists/tyrannists, some selfish preppers, and small groups of actual liberty minded warriors. So it's not as if you are deserting something, other than the ideal of America, because there is no network or army, or group, to actually desert. It's just a bunch of bickering people on the internet. I wish it were otherwise. ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (5)
The man with the football—the military aide who carries the U.S. nuclear codes, and who travels with the president—is carrying the wrong code.
He’s carrying last month’s code, or the one from December 2012.And there’s a crisis—a series of dots on a radar screen traveling toward the continental U.S.—and the president is alerted. He’s in the holding room at a fundraiser out west. The man with the football is called in and he fumbles around in his briefcase and gets the code but wait, the date on the code is wrong. He scrambles, remembers there’s a file on his phone, but the phone ran out on the plane and he thought he could recharge in the holding room but there’s no electrical outlet. All eyes turn to him. “Wait—wait. No—uh—I don’t think that’s the code we use to launch against incoming from North Korea, I think that one takes out Paris!” Incompetence - Peggy Noonan's Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (13)
Dear A&E: Duck, you suckers!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (9)
Communism as a ruthless conspiracy -
"It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed." - - Pres. John Kennedy, 1961
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (3)
F.Q. -- The Fantasy Quotient
A good software-testing engineer has an F.Q. approaching zero. A healthy F.Q. might be somewhere in the twenties, maybe down in the teens. I
f your F.Q. is a hundred, you’re pretty much incapable of ever learning a damn thing, and that’s a widespread problem we have now. Pavlov’s bell rings, people slobber, and their minds are made up at that p Nelson Mandela is a saint, or something. Barack Obama is a holy prophet, or Messiah, or something. Raising the minimum wage will actually raise wages. Gun control will stop gun violence. Trees must be saved. But babies are nothing more than “tissue.” We must be suffering because of something called “unfettered capitalism.” Everybody has ADD (hat tip to Maggie’s Farm). We can condition and shame men into not looking at pretty women anymore. And, my personal favorite, everyone who sees a problem in Barack Obama must be motivated by skin color. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:00 AM | Your Say (3)
Haters Gonna Hate
Anti-cilantro hate forum has been going strong for nearly a decade
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:01 AM | Your Say (8)
Empire of Madness: Caligula in Pyongyang
The mysterious, baby-faced monster Kim Jong-un has unleashed a Stalin-style onslaught on his own acolytes.It is like a re-enactment of the Soviet Great Purge when Stalin got rid of the whole Bolshevik Old Guard. It is not an exaggeration to predict more bloodshed to follow. No doubt the North Korean nomenklatura is now frightened and humiliated. No one is safe in this universe of paranoid delusions and rampant suspicions. - - FrontPage Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:28 AM | Your Say (0)
December 18, 2013
Caligula in Pyongyang
He definitely has the titles: “Supreme Leader,” “Great Successor,” “Sun of the 21st Century,” and a raft of others.... Consider North Korea’s gulag, for example, some components of which are frank extermination camps: “An estimated 30,000 inmates have simply vanished from the notorious Camp 22.” This is not the flyblown squalid horror of Africa, which one can regard with calm detachment, Africans being too backward and dysfunctional to present any real threat to the civilized world. This is high-IQ craziness, calculating and devious—Caligula with nukes and missiles. Are you scared? You should be. - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:37 PM | Your Say (1)
MSNBC Message of the Day: Barack Obama Is Benevolent and Gay
Religious cable network MSNBC rallied the faithful with a pair of heartworming messages.Toure reads a verse from The Audacity of Hope and declares that whatever color Santa Claus is doesn’t matter. Saint Nick is merely the forerunner to one who is greater.On a different show on the same religious cable network,
host Thomas Roberts.... opined, “How do you think the president can balance all the delicate foreign-policy issues, but take a decisive stand on human rights, because so many people consider President Obama to be the first gay president?” The PJ Tatler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 PM | Your Say (5)
"They Know"
Barbara Walters recently told Piers Morgan that she was disappointed in Barack Obama.“We thought he was going to be the next messiah”, she said. Both host and guest were presumably crestfallen, though it is difficult to see why either was surprised, given Obama’s lack of a substantial track record. He self-admittedly failed at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, wrote nothing either at the Harvard Law review or during his time as a law professor, voted “present” during his legislative career and even called himself a “blank screen” on which others — presumably he had Walters in mind — could project their fantasies.Belmont Club » Hitting the Snooze ButtonAs I was saying just the other day.... "THEY KNOW"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:49 PM | Your Say (8)
Yes, but that Fokker was a Messerschmitt!
"The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, designed by Alexander Lippisch, was a German rocket-powered fighter aircraft. It is the only rocket-powered fighter aircraft ever to have been operational. Its design was revolutionary, and the Me 163 was capable of performance unrivaled at the time. German test pilot Heini Dittmar in early July 1944 reached 1,130 km/h (700 mph), not broken in terms of absolute speed until November 1947.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:19 PM | Your Say (7)
And it’s all going to continue
One reason this scandal isn’t Katrina is that Katrina had a beginning and an end.The storm came, the storm left, the cleanup commenced and failed and then continued and succeeded. At some point it was over. ObamaCare will never be over. It’s going to poison the rest of the administration. It’s the story that won’t go away because it will continue to produce disorder. Incompetence - Peggy Noonan's Blog - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (8)
Same Woman. Different Shoes.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (12)
Black Sheep, Black Sheep, Have You Any Poodle?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (2)
Re: Pajama Twink In Obama Ad
When are you libs gonna get it? It's gone way past just ObamaCare. It's gone way past their selection of models for their internet ads. The whole thing's is just so freakin' ridiculous, we're going to laugh at whatever you post. It's such a colossal epic failure, possibly the most epic of failures in all of history! To think that you spent 3 1/2 years forcing this POS down our throats....think of all the political capital you squandered, think of all the people you're hurting, think of they way all of you are in such deep denial about it... my God, not only is Obama a joke, not only is ObamaCare a joke, but your entire statist leftwing wet dream is like the biggest fattest joke in mankind's history. What else can we do, but laugh? It's not like we can stop it! - Business Insider [HT: Happy Acres]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:07 AM | Your Say (4)
Master of Robbing Trains and Going On The Lam
In July 1965, he escaped from Wandsworth prison, "the hate factory" in south-west London, through the ingenious use of a rope ladder and a furniture lorry with a specially constructed turret that had been parked outside the jail. Two getaway cars were stationed nearby, and before the police realised what had happened, Biggs was in Paris. There, he had not entirely successful plastic surgery, costing ｣40,000, to change his appearance and then fled to Australia, first to Adelaide and then to Melbourne.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:40 AM | Your Say (0)
December 17, 2013
Happy 70th Birthday, Keith
"I was traveling with the Rolling Stones, watching from the sidelines, when I noticed the sign. I called Keith over and took two quick snaps. The Customs officer threatened to confiscate the film, so I retired quickly. I knew what I had." -- Ethan Russell
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 PM | Your Say (0)
New Obamacare Pitch Slightly Sadder and Weirder Than Previous Efforts
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 PM | Your Say (14)
Sorry. I just couldn't help myself.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (4)
One of these things is not like the others....
- Ed Schultz: employee-stiffing, tax-dodging man of the people
- Race to the bottom: Obama's polling support drops to level with House GOP
- Six Important Take-Aways From Yesterday's Decision Striking Down The Contraception Mandate in New York 6. The Obama administration thinks it has a general exception from complying with the Constitution.
- The Giant Horse Conch is the Death Star of the Mollusk World
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (3)
The 300 million yen robbery
On the morning of December 10, 1968, four Kokubunji branch employees of the Nihon Shintaku Ginko (bank) transported 294,307,500 yen (about $817,520 US Dollars at 1968 exchange rates) in the trunk of a company car.The metal boxes contained bonuses for the employees of Toshiba's Fuchu factory. They were stopped in the street next to Tokyo Fuchu prison by a young uniformed officer on a police motorcycle. The policeman informed them that their branch manager's house had been blown up, and they had received a warning that dynamite had been planted in the transport car. The four employees exited the vehicle while the officer crawled under the car to locate the bomb. Moments later, the employees noticed smoke and flames under the car as the officer rolled out, shouting that it was about to explode. When the employees retreated to the prison walls, the policeman got into the car and drove away. The crime remains unsolved. - - La Wik
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 AM | Your Say (1)
Oh we're waiting, oh we're waiting / All year, all year / Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere
See it come along and
Don't know where it's from
Oh, yes you will find out
Well, it happens all the time
It's censored from our minds
You'll find out
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 AM | Your Say (1)
December 16, 2013
It’s a Man’s World
Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered, and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role—but women were not its author. -- Camille Paglia,TimePosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:05 PM | Your Say (9)
Takoyaki – Japan
The mixture is poured onto a specially designed hotplate with shallow indentations, like ping-pong balls hewn in half. A few spring onions might be thrown on top, then the whole thing cooks until golden. Once done, it’s dusted with aonori (green seaweed powder), sprinkled with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) or doused in mayonnaise or takoyaki sauce, similar to a thick Worcestershire sauce. The shell is firm and chewy, bursting open to reveal a scalding hot, creamy and not-quite-set mass of batter. The fat chunk of octopus is the final treat, something to chew on while you attack the next. - - Lonely Planet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:43 PM | Your Say (6)
Because Their Day to Day Life Is Just, You Know, So Very, Very Hard!
"President Obama and his family will leave Washington Dec. 20 for a 17-day holiday vacation in Hawaii." - - Don SurberPosted by gerardvanderleun at 4:35 PM | Your Say (7)
The other half of the looming catastrophe concerns who is going to buy all the junk.
It used to be that “production” meant making stuff that people needed.You know: food, clothes, hovels, corn whiskey. There was more demand than supply. Then production in these things, agriculture for example, caught up and everybody had enough to eat. Consequently production went into things people didn’t so much need as want: refrigerators, telephones, Model Ts. Pretty soon they came to think that they needed the things they wanted, but never mind. Still, there was more demand than supply. For a while. -- Rust on the Iron Law of Wages
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:20 PM | Your Say (2)
"I just never liked my trachea"
Having recently undergone surgery to remove a cancerous mass from his nose, Jenner, no stranger to cosmic electives, said he was paying his plastic surgeon a consultation visit to discuss fixing a post-op scar when the Laryngeal Shave came up. "I just never liked my trachea," he told TMZ.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (24)
Sorry. I just couldn't help myself.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (16)
Russia: If Asked, Don't Tell
This came after Putin had appointed pro-Putin news anchor Dmitry Kiselyov the head of a new bureau that will presumably be kinder to Putin and harsher toward sodomites.In 2010 Kiselyov allegedly said homosexuals should be forbidden from donating sperm or blood. In 2012 he said they should also be banned from donating organs and that authorities should “burn or bury the hearts of gays” who die in vehicular accidents.... Joining in the homo-hatin’ hootenanny last week was Russian sitcom star Ivan Okhlobystin, who slammed “gay fascism,” labeled homosexuality a “psychical anomaly,” and said he wants to burn gays alive in an oven because they represent “a living danger” to his children.The Week That Perished - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:55 AM | Your Say (2)
December 15, 2013
247 CENTRAL PARK WEST $32,750,000 -- Or Best Offer
Built in 1887 by William Noble, a prominent developer, for his private residence. Today with over 12,000 /- sq ft, this magnificent architectural masterpiece juxtaposes historic prewar details with contemporary splendor. The parlor floor boasts a double height ceiling and a glass and steel staircase crowned by a domed skylight flooding the home with light. After the 3rd floor the staircase follows a “Guggenheim” sweep allowing the Owner added walls for displaying art. This unique home has 6 levels, which can also be accessed by elevator, plus a finished lower level with a 60' fresh water pool and home gym. There are 5 large bedrooms, 6 baths, 2 half baths, 2 offices, a master bedroom floor with Central park views wonderfully large dressing area, spa like bathroom and terrace. The professional chef’s kitchen and dining room open onto a Zen-like bamboo garden. The roof terrace has sweeping park views. - - JamesEdition
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:20 PM | Your Say (12)
Closer..... Closer....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:45 PM | Your Say (2)
"Don't Be Evil"
Yeah, right.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:57 PM | Your Say (7)
Walked Into That One
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:44 PM | Your Say (7)
Get over it, Morons: Jesus & Santa are White
Anthropologists generally define only three, and sometimes four, races. They are Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid (Asian) — and Australoid would be the fourth. And especially relevant here are Caucasoid’s subgroups: Aryans, Hamites and Semites. So as far as Jesus goes, the answer should already be clear. Assuming He was Semitic — which isn’t disputed too much — He was white. And, yes, Arabs and Persians are technically white as well. As for Santa, it’s also a slam dunk, as all the possible sources of his tradition involve white figures, whether real or fictional. Intellectual ConservativeHT + ILLO: HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (10)
Comment of the Week
"A crazy man, hallucinating, gesticulates, while the former foreign student Resident of the United States eulogizes a terrorist murderer who betrayed his wife and children. The ancient Greeks could not have come up with the story line." - - Posted by rkv to Side-Lines: The unctuous pseudo-griefPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 AM | Your Say (1)
Why life could not have emerged without God.
This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” – - Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, as quoted in his autobiography. - GodEvidence.com HT: Sense of Events
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:49 AM | Your Say (11)
The unctuous pseudo-grief in the West after Nelson Mandela’s death at the good age of 95 was to me nauseating in the extreme;
it was so overdone that, though I am no Freudian, it raised suspicions in my mind of reaction formation,the psychological defense mechanism against unwanted thoughts described by Freud that leads to exaggerated expressions of precisely opposite thoughts.... The event that saved his historical reputation was not under his control. It was the downfall of the Soviet Union, for it was surely not a coincidence that the un-banning of the African National Congress and the release of Mandela himself happened only after the implosion of the Soviet bloc. South Africa’s Dubious Liberation by Theodore Dalrymple
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:43 AM | Your Say (14)
December 14, 2013
Toupet Tit
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:39 PM | Your Say (3)
13 Things Mentally Tough People (Like Me) Avoid
Number one:They do not waste time feeling sorry for themselves. "You don’t see mentally strong people feeling sorry for their circumstances or dwelling on the way they’ve been mistreated. They have learned to take responsibility for their actions and outcomes, and they have an inherent understanding of the fact that frequently life is not fair," and they don't get bogged down in the unfairness of life.Number two: Mentally tough people do not give away their power.
And that is part and parcel of not being offended all the time. - The Rush Limbaugh Show
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:38 PM | Your Say (3)
Retreat
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (3)
Now if they could just put D.C. on their to-do list.
CHINA SUCCESSFULLY SOFT-LANDS PROBE ON THE MOONPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (3)
FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY… Al Gore Predicted the North Pole Will Be Ice Free in 5 Years
Today Cairo had its first snowfall in 100 years. - - The Gateway PunditPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:01 AM | Your Say (8)
HAVE WE REACHED PEAK SCHADENFREUDE YET?
“Many in New York’s professional and cultural elitehave long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.” = = Instapundit
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (6)
Overheard by Lip Readers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (6)
"Trouble is, there isn’t enough work to go around—not real work that does something that actually needs doing."
When you can’t produce even semi-jobs, pretend jobs, or forthrightly silly jobs, you get open unemployment.Since the United States thinks it unbecoming to let droves of people starve to death, the country has turned to massive charity. The most intractable example is the urban underclass. Here we have millions of people for whom there is no work, who couldn’t do it if there were, and who will remain as they are until the planets grow weary and stop in space. Rust on the Iron Law of Wages -Fred Reed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (4)
Internet In a Box
while perusing a vintage shop in Amsterdam. Hill believes the radio, sold by the British firm Internet Radio Product Ltd., is from the late 1960s or 1970 at the latest—the term “internet” was first used in reference to the emerging technologies which became the Internet back in 1974. = = iOwnTheWorld.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:47 AM | Your Say (2)
Skin Deep
“an instinctive segregation on the set. Not only would the apes eat together, but the chimpanzees ate with the chimpanzees, the gorillas ate with the gorillas, the orangutans ate with the orangutans, and the humans would eat off by themselves. It was quite spooky.” – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:11 AM | Your Say (1)
The Finest Security Money Can Buy!
Live for the bullshit, die from the bullshit:"How heartening, as one watches the viral video of Obama droning on while a mere foot and a half away Mr. Jantjie rubs his belly and tickles his ear, to think that the White House’s usual money-no-object security operation went to the trouble of flying in Air Force One, plus the “decoy” Air Force One, plus support aircraft, plus the 120-vehicle motorcade or whatever it’s up to by now, plus a bazillion Secret Service agents with reflector shades and telephone wire dangling from their ears, to shepherd POTUS into the secured venue and then stand him onstage next to an $85-a-day violent schizophrenic. In the movie version—In the Sign of Fire—grizzled maverick Clint Eastwood will be the only guy to figure it out at the last minute and hurl himself at John Malkovich, as they roll into the orchestra pit with Malkovich furiously signing “Ow!” and “Eek!” But in real life I expect they’ll just double the motorcade to 240 vehicles and order up even more expensive reflector shades." - - Funeral Spice | Mark Steyn
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:52 AM | Your Say (3)
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas / Everywhere you go..."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:01 AM | Your Say (0)
Snow, 1936, M.C. Escher
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:57 AM | Your Say (1)
December 13, 2013
Surf's Up
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 PM | Your Say (2)
The "Get Off My Lawn" Chronicles
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 PM | Your Say (4)
Jerusalem Now.... stranded vehicles today nothing is operating
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 PM | Your Say (1)
"A chainsaw-wielding man wearing fishnet stockings chased a Mr Whippy van down the street after a stag party got out of hand."
The stunt failed to amuse Mr Whippy, who feared for his safety and phoned police. - - Stuff.co.nzPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:03 PM | Your Say (0)
Girl in a Lilac-Coloured Dress with Bouquet of Flowers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:42 PM | Your Say (2)
Good thing they changed their "global warming" to "climate change..."
.... otherwise like Lucy they might have some 'splaining to do.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (3)
Here's Lookin' at You, Kid.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:20 AM | Your Say (3)
Having to Do With the Price of Onions
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:59 AM | Your Say (1)
The noise stopped, when I, this angel of death, entered the room.
She had died just a few minutes before my arrival, almost as if she timed her death in her typically considerate manner. It had been six days from the beginning to the end of this, our last journey together.Everyone seemed relieved when I “confirmed” Jane's death, but why do we need doctors to confirm deaths? Even Lulu knew, and she was lying on the pillow next to Jane, whimpering a little. With surprise, I observed that although Jane's eyes were as closed and her lips as sealed as yesterday, somehow, in the freshness of death, her skin was less drawn, more yielding and more alive. The Art of Dying by Gayatri Devi - Roundtable | Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:51 AM | Your Say (3)
December 12, 2013
North Korea executes ‘traitor’ Uncle Jang Song Thaek
And does so with some vintage propaganda:"Every sentence of the decision served as sledge-hammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.... However, despicable human scum Jang, who was worse than a dog, perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him." | NK News – North Korea News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:53 PM | Your Say (12)
We have grown altogether too casual about the truth;
far too inclined to ascribe virtue to vice and enshrine vice as virtue.The 20th century was perhaps the first time in human history when men felt entitled set aside the facts in order to serve the vanity of self-righteousness. Albert Camus, wondering how European civilization collapsed in a smoking ruin thought that perhaps it had not only lost the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, but actually exchanged their places. In the past even evil men knew they were evil; and in their depravity felt a sense of transgression. Today we shout our inversions from the housetops. Belmont Club -- The Honorable Mister Bad Guy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:06 PM | Your Say (1)
The Big Brain in 1932
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:27 PM | Your Say (5)
Further to Roger Simon's Question....
What if It’s All True?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:12 PM | Your Say (12)
"True Wit is Nature to Advantage dressed, / What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Expressed," -- Pope
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (4)
This morning many ask how that schizophrenic so-called interpreter for the deaf who was "hearing voices" could get within feet of Obama.
The bad answer is that the Secret Service really isn't that good. The worse answer is that the Secret Service no longer gives a shit.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:11 AM | Your Say (20)
You're Welcome In Advance
Detailed instructions: How to Beat a Photo-Enforced Speeding Ticket (or Red Light Ticket)Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (6)
"Please DO NOT ASSUME you are covered unless you have seen the Confirmation Letter from the Disbursing Office!"
D.C. Congressional staffers told not to trust ObamaCare site infoPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:38 AM | Your Say (1)
"It takes someone like Michelle Obama..."
"to make me feel sorry for Barack Obama." -- Bill Whittle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:36 AM | Your Say (15)
"Good dog. Very, very, very good dog."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:28 AM | Your Say (4)
The Affairs of Appalachia
The so-called Appalachian Redoubt is probably a fiction, on the other hand, nobody's up in "them thar hills" accidently. A cautious person can enter in one place, travel without much risk of detection for hundreds of miles north or south, and come out another place altogether. Doomer writers get it right, as a homeland for an insurgency—fictional of course—or for bugging out and getting lost on purpose, it doesn't get much better. ol remus and the woodpile reportPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:16 AM | Your Say (2)
This Just In
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:12 AM | Your Say (9)
Obamacare..... and the hits just keep on comin'
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:08 AM | Your Say (4)
"Nelson Mandela led his people to freedom."
MARCH 18, 2010 This sentence, which though willfully egregious is not at all atypical, can be divided into four fragments:"Nelson Mandela," "led," "his people," and "to freedom." The first fragment is phrased in historical terms: "Nelson Mandela." The other three are entirely magical.... Nelson Mandela is not really a historical figure to him; Nelson Mandela is simply a saint in his TV-age religion, which like all major religions practices magical thinking. I urge you to cease and desist from this practice. It is detrimental to the neurons. You will feel much better when you are all done with it. - - Unqualified Reservations: Divine-right monarchy for the modern secular intellectual
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:02 AM | Your Say (0)
December 11, 2013
"Hearing Voices" is sort of what the job is, what?
Mandela memorial sign language 'fake' blames schizophrenia for his nonsense interpretation- Interpreter at memorial said he may have suffered episode on stage
- Thamsanqa Jantjie said he started hearing voices in his head during event
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 PM | Your Say (4)
Poet Be Like God
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:08 PM | Your Say (0)
Rimshot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:57 PM | Your Say (0)
“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny.
When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”- Robert Heinlein
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:24 PM | Your Say (2)
The Longest March
Obamacare Is Supposed To Sign Up 7 Million By March - 365,000 So Far Anyone who really wants Obamacare has already signed up.The first two months should generate the biggest numbers. When you have only achieved 5% of your goal after two months, you’ve failed miserably. Obamacare is a disaster before it even gets off the ground and bankrupts the country. Young healthy people will never sign up for Obamacare. They know it’s a scam. They also know that Obama and his IRS minions are so incompetent, they’ll never figure out how to collect the fines from people who don’t sign up. Have you ever met an IRS employee?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (2)
Only 37? Surely you jest.
37 Reasons Why "The Economic Recovery Of 2013" Is A Giant Lie If you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.There has been absolutely no employment recovery. The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row. But most Americans don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (0)
"And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 PM | Your Say (0)
It's been more than three days and yet.... Tomorrow's News Today!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:42 AM | Your Say (7)
Mommie Dearest
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (9)
“Being an economist has got to be the most depressing job in the world.
Because, you go your whole life trying to teach some basic principles, over and over and over you teach these principles: you teach them in the classroom, in newspapers, on television, on the internet—teach ‘em, teach ‘em, teach ‘em. And then, you’re sitting there on your deathbed, and your nurse comes in and says, ‘You know, I really think it would boost the economy if we raised the minimum wage.’ And you just think, what was it all for?” — Tom Woods [Anti-Government Extremist]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (2)
The Hot Tamales of Issaquena County
These are perfect specimen. Though each maker has his own variation, the typical Delta tamale is made with pork and corn meal, which provides a grittier texture than the traditional Mexican masa. It is smaller than the Mexican version (which, in the singular, is properly called a tamal). But it is mighty—the spiciness is punched up, and the tamales are simmered, rather than steamed, creating that fragrant red juice. -- Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (0)
Sounds like an accurate translation to me.
Mandela ceremony interpreter called a 'fake' A man who appeared to provide sign language interpretation on stage for Nelson Mandela's memorial servicewas a "fake," the national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa said on Wednesday. The unidentified man seen around the world on television next to leaders including United States President Barack Obama "was moving his hands around but there was no meaning in what he used his hands for."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:25 AM | Your Say (8)
December 10, 2013
Perverted American Priorities
It isn’t just their ethical standards. They seem to reflect the perverted, bizarre priorities of many average Americans.They speak to the legions of moms and dads who wouldn’t dream of letting little Johnny play with a plastic toy pistol (think of the message it sends!) but also wouldn’t dream of telling little Susie she can’t wear makeup and bikinis (she has to express herself!). We brag of our enlightened and “realistic” attitudes when we teach 10 year olds about “safe sex,” but then recoil in horror when someone suggests that we ought to teach them how to safely handle a firearm. The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 PM | Your Say (1)
Why do people regard the big steam locomotives of days gone by with fondness?
They were civilization's phantom of the opera, prompting approving grins on boys and men, and thousands of country tunes with home spun lyrics of travel and tragedy, preferably by dark of night. Towns reproved them not merely because steam was intrusive and loud, which it most satisfyingly was, but because steam was a fire-and-brimstone colossus that, alarmingly, moved of its own accord, a perpetually impending but useful disaster, a Frankenstein's monster, unnatural life beyond appeal or persuasion, a necessary neighbor that crushed hapless haywains caught out at crossings.ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:27 PM | Your Say (10)
Chernobyl’s Hot Mess,
made it into a steam corridor beneath failed reactor Number 4. Inside this chamber they found black lava that had oozed straight from the core. The most famous formation was a solid flow that their radiation sensors firmly told them not to approach. With cameras pushed in from around a corner, the workers dubbed the dimly lit mass “the Elephant’s Foot.” According to readings taken at the time, the still hot portion of molten core put out enough radiation to give a lethal dose in 300 seconds.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:50 PM | Your Say (4)
Oh, Bam!
- President's approval rating plummets to 38 per cent overall, just 34 per cent on health care and 40 per cent on Iran
- Obama's support among young voters has disappeared, with 49 per cent now saying they disapprove of his job performance
- Hispanics' historic preference for the president shows signs of evaporating, with 43 per cent opposing him
- 52 per cent of the voting public now says Obama is not 'honest and trustworthy' and 51 per cent say he lacks 'strong leadership qualities'
- Americans who want Republicans to control both houses of Congress now outnumber those who fear one-party control
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:30 PM | Your Say (1)
Watch A Transgender Talk Show Host Become A Legend With One Word.
Upworthy Generator - Instantly create Upworthy-style articlesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:56 PM | Your Say (5)
Cigarette cards life hacks
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (8)
We've got the Chimu empire on the line.
The marvel of acoustic engineering—cunningly constructed of two resin-coated gourd receivers, each three-and-one-half inches long; stretched-hide membranes stitched around the bases of the receivers; and cotton-twine cord extending 75 feet when pulled taut—arose out of the Chimu empire at its height.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (1)
26 years of growth, showing Shanghai then and now.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (6)
I think we're now clearly well overdue for the Rapture or the planet killing asteroid strike....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:07 PM | Your Say (3)
Obama Shakes Raúl Castro's Hand
I was reading about this:Obama Shakes Raúl Castro's Hand | The Weekly Standard December 9, 2013, when I came across this:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:15 AM | Your Say (8)
December 9, 2013
Have We Found the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island?
What happened to the lost colonists of North Carolina's Roanoke Island? The settlers, who arrived in 1587, disappeared in 1590, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" carved into a fort's gatepost and "Cro" etched into a tree. -- National Geographic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 PM | Your Say (2)
Love Child in Lolita Glasses
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 PM | Your Say (5)
Swarming the gold mines,
a skilled rabble of impoverished men and women siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth of ore.Abetted by criminal gangs, they occupy vacant mining tunnels, sometimes inside working gold mines. Because South Africa's leading mines have elaborate security, invaders can't move in and out easily. Once they penetrate a mine, they may stay down for months. Deprived of sunlight, their skin turns gray. The wives and prostitutes who live with them turn gray. In South Africa they call them ghost miners. They inhabit an underground metropolis that in some gold- fields can extend for forty miles, a suffocating labyrinth in which the only glitter is the dream of gold.Gold : NPR
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:30 PM | Your Say (1)
Cassandra didn’t get half the beating she deserved
What we’re faced with here is that most of their ranks are “third generation stupid.” This always happens in a totalitarian system, which leftism has been in the US in all the fields they took over. It comes from the fact that they select not for competency, intelligence or innovation, but for ideological purity. This is how we get a Hollywood establishment that is unable to make anything new and is now mining thirty year old comic books for their best work. Cassandra's Fate | According To HoytPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:36 PM | Your Say (3)
Baby It's Cold Outside
Try 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit below zero; that's 93.2 degrees below zero Celsius, which sounds only slightly toastier. Better yet, don't try it. That's so cold scientists say it hurts to breathe. Ice scientist Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said the new record is "50 degrees colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska or Siberia or certainly North Dakota." "It's more like you'd see on Mars on a nice summer day in the poles," Scambos said, from the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco Monday, where he announced the data. "I'm confident that these pockets are the coldest places on Earth." Cold dis-comfort: Antarctica set record of -135.8
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:14 PM | Your Say (2)
Don't Everyone Answer at Once
What’s everybody doing with their $2500 in healthcare savings next year? - -HappyAcresPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:58 PM | Your Say (4)
After a year's loan to the US, Michelangelo's David returns to Italy.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:44 PM | Your Say (6)
Ancient Music
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm.
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
-- Ezra Pound
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:08 PM | Your Say (9)
6 Seconds and a Sheep: Welcome to the World of Mutton Busting
the thumping crowd-pleasing music and the sounds of livestock recede as they prepare themselves for a ride that will last only seconds and almost surely end with them being hurled to the ground with force. On the other end of those seconds there is either a trophy or disappointment. It’s a familiar scene at any rodeo, but in this case the rider is a child between the ages of 4 and 7 and the bronco is a wooly, white sheep. -- Modern Farmer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (6)
For the first time in human history, a fragment of the planet Mercury has been identified.
there just aren’t many verified planetary meteorites. Scientists know of about 70 from Mars and, until now, none from any of the other planets in Earth’s solar system. There are about 180 known meteorites from the moon. NWA 7325 is the first believed to be from Mercury.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (6)
The Left Wants You to Just Kill Yourself
There is, in other words, no great virtue in constantly talking down America,
in constantly complaining about it, in failing to emphasize what is good and even great about the country. Making people feel that their nation is an organized criminal conspiracy, that it has exploited people, places and things is not going to make them want to live happy and productive lives. Had Enough Therapy?: David Brooks on Suicide
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (5)
Which lozenge is darker: The one on top, or the one on bottom?
Don’t believe me? Good! It’s always best to check things like this out for yourself. One way is to put your finger across the middle, blocking the part where they meet. - - Optical illusion: Shades of grey.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (5)
The Most Expensive American Prayer [Updated]
Illustrators who worked for Stuart complained that he leaned on them to "donate" their original art to his personal collection, in order to stay on his good side when he handed out new assignments. Illustrations that Stuart didn't want to keep, he sometimes donated to museums to get the tax deduction. ILLUSTRATION ART: WARRING WITH TROLLS, part 5
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (3)
The Obama Drama. Act 78
Seymour Hersh’s expose in the London Review of Books, which the Washington Post allegedly refused to publish accuses Barack Obama of lying about the Syrian chemical weapons attack which nearly triggered a US attack on Assad. Hersh makes two key assertions:First, Obama retroactively cooked up the narrative that the Assad regime was responsible for the infamous sarin attack on civilians in Eastern Ghouta. Second, that the rebel al-Nusra Front, a jihadi faction of the rebel alliance, might plausibly have been the real culprits.Obama altered the sequence of what he knew and when he knew it, making it appear as if he was following an unfolding atrocity instead of reconstructing it from hindsight, in order to add to the drama.... If the past is any guide, Hersh’s accusations will be overtaken by whatever new scandal is waiting in the wings. The president seems to have an endless supply of them. -- Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (3)
December 8, 2013
A disgraced ex-LAPD officer swore revenge on those he blamed for his firing. He vowed to kill them all … and their families.
The Manhunt for Christopher Dorner @ Los Angeles Times First of a five part series. The second is due this Tuesday.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:51 PM | Your Say (1)
Sign of the Times
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:26 AM | Your Say (2)
Door. Ass. Bang.
Gay Fraud Sacked: Lesbian waitress accused of duping well-wishers into giving her money after claiming couple didn't tip her because she's gay is fired Dayna Morales, 22, was let go from her job at Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater, New Jersey, nearly a month after she made national headlines over what’s likely a hoax. UPDATE: Ms. Morales was a Marine. (Well, a reservist. Who was dishonorably discharged for failing to show up for drills.)She survived a plane crash in Afghanistan that wiped out her whole platoon. (She never served there, but whatever.) She’s a Hurricane Sandy survivor. (Who was never in any danger.) And she’s a brain cancer survivor! (Okay, maybe not.) Fine. Forget all that, then. The fact remains: She’s gay. The Daily Caller
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:36 AM | Your Say (8)
Libertarian Jesus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:08 AM | Your Say (11)
December 7, 2013
Harbingers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 PM | Your Say (5)
American Enemies of American Freedom #76
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 PM | Your Say (2)
Premodern Values: Work. Fight. Sacrifice.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:35 PM | Your Say (14)
Postmodern Problems
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:20 PM | Your Say (3)
Live That Fantasy!
by pointing out the deteriorating conditions for blacks in South Africa since the ANC has come to power, with skyrocketing levels of murder, rape and AIDS. (It goes without saying that pointing out the deteriorating conditions for whites is not going win any sympathy from liberal whites.) This is of course all true, but it misses the point. No one is listening. The man Mandela matters little. The reality of South Africa matters little. White progressives want the fantasy.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:59 PM | Your Say (9)
Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:40 PM | Your Say (1)
Mr. Peanut goes to the Smithsonian
by 29-year-old Amedeo Obici, an immigrant who had left his hometown of Oderzo, 40 miles northeast of Venice, when he was just 11 years old to join his uncle in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He worked at a cigar factory making 80 cents a week while he learned English going to night school. A year later he moved to Wilkes-Barre where he worked at a fruit stand that also sold roasted peanuts.The History Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:32 PM | Your Say (0)
"I discovered a new species up my nose "
I knew I had to remove the tick with great care.
If any part of it was left behind, I might end up with a very nasty infection. I also needed to avoid killing the creature as I removed it, in case I caused it to release potentially disease-ridden saliva into my bloodstream. I had all the tools I needed right there in the lab. Despite having to work at a contorted angle, I was able to use a pair of forceps to grasp the tick's mouth parts, which were buried deep in my flesh.... [Youmight want to think twice before clicking this link to] The Guardian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:14 PM | Your Say (4)
A Nation Mourns
Porn Industry Shut Down Again After Actor Tests HIV Positive | Radar OnlinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (0)
Lesson from December 7, 1941:
Bureaucracy doesn’t bring out the best in human behavior, it brings out the worst. It causes lack of foresight. It causes lashing out, rushed exuberance and eagerness to assign blame, it elevates process over outcome, and it tends to elevate persons of low character over their colleagues with better character. The crisis that follows tends to do the opposite of all these things. But it’s a mistake to place faith in bureaucracy just by default, and then hope it’ll all work out. Real people get hurt. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (3)
"Media Feeding Panic Over The So-Called ‘Knockout Game’ That Might Not Even Exist, at Think Progress."
What's up with their "move along folks, nothing to see here"? Easy.
The aging game of paying the feral to mimic normal life isn't working. The younger perps have discovered they're entitled to money-fo-nuthin either way. Now they're playing their own games. The left is too entranced by their received truth to notice they're being bitten by their own dog. A few understand even a little wakefulness would unzip the whole farcical contraption. There'd be no do-over. So they trot out the "truthiness" routine, a sort of rhetorical duct tape, what we used to call "everybody knows" as kids. Pathetic, but it's all they have. ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (0)
“What if it’s all true?”
It means the bias of our mainstream media is mind-bendingly colossal.
It also means we are paying these media folks, in a voluntary market-based situation, to retail lies to us. We hear lie after lie, and still we listen, as if the next report won’t be a lie, or at least as if it won’t be a biased interpretation of an event we would characterize differently, if we were doing the reporting. Stalin would have marveled at the beauty of it; he had to beat people to a pulp and execute them in mass to get the survivors to do out of terror what we have come to do reflexively, out of habit. Mordor falling? | Theoptimisticconservative's Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (1)
That Was the Week That Went
The King of the Weekly Roundups has to be: Sultan Knish's Friday Afternoon Roundup. Where else can you find winks from and links to....
So what we have is a Lysenkoist website that promises to transform my weak bourgeois private-sector health insurance into sturdy winter collectivist health insurance through the magic of Marxist/Leninist agronomy.
"Someone asked "how could we make benghazi better?" My first thought: fewer Libyans."
Somali Muslim Who Raped Dead Swedish Woman Won’t Be Deported
Hillary Clinton Partied While Benghazi Mission Begged for Helpand....
Student Paper Editor Claims Mustaches are Racist - “How are people who do not have a prostate supposed to partake in this cause?”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (2)
December 6, 2013
The Eternal Curse of "Obama"care
As for Obama, he's not Jay-Z, nor even Justin Bieber:He can't sing, or dance, or create a government bureaucracy that functions any more efficiently than a Soviet supermarket. He broke the lifelong rule that had served him so well — "Don't just do something. Stand there" — and for the first time in his life did something, terribly. It will bear his name forever. Those Who Can't, Govern :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:56 PM | Your Say (2)
“I can remember when Americans weren’t afraid of everything.”
Just so. Don’t run on the playground because you might fall.Don’t roughhouse because you might get a bruise. Don’t go outside at high noon because you might get skin cancer. Don’t swim after eating because you might get a cramp. If a child draws a soldier, call a SWAT team because he is a murderous psychopath. Don’t ride a bicycle without a helmet. Fill in the deep end of the pool because someone might drown. Supervise everything. Control everything. Fear everything. If these are not the neurotic fears of women and capons, please tell me what they are. Such run the schools. They make policy. No Child Allowed Ahead - Fred Reed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:27 AM | Your Say (10)
Mrs Wilkes's Dining Room
Our destination: Savannah, and more specifically Mrs Wilkes's Dining Room. The restaurant is strictly first-come, first-served, and so, even at 10am, we hastily parked the car and raced through the town's impossibly pretty streets, mottled sunlight illuminating their 19th-century mansions. A huge queue of mostly blue-rinsed women lined the front of Mrs Wilkes's and wound past a line of antique shops around the corner. Two hours later we were put on a table of ten with those closest to us in the queue, most of whom seemed to be called Betty. We were presented with what could be the best home cooking I'll ever have. This is Soul Food: fried chicken, meat stew, barbecued brisket, collard greens, mash, mac and cheese, rutabaga, pickled beets, butterbeans, red rice and candied yams. And those are just the things I can remember. The vegetables were outstanding, and the brisket deep and treacly, its layers of fat bursting with flavour. It was all washed down with sweet tea and finished with banana puddin -- no "g" -- and blackberry cobbler. Stupefied, we thought it best to take a stroll before getting back in the car. True Grits | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 AM | Your Say (9)
Obit for "The world's greatest man" (And, no, it's not who you think)
He went off to college in Ashland where he formalized his education in ancient aliens and lover to all women.After college, he set off on his sailboat for a journey to be forever known as "Noah's Ark in reverse" where he endeavored to eat one of every animal. His only regret in life is that he was not able to complete this task.... He found he yearned for a more settled down life and filled his days with friends, cats, drinks, motorcycle rides, wine yelling at dinosaurs and inappropriate comments. - See more at: John Judy Obituary @ The Oregonian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (2)
Unclear on the Concept
Italian Newspapers Call Mandela "The Father Of Apartheid"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (0)
Advertisement placed by Shackleton prior to Endurance expedition
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (5)
H.L. Mencken laid it out, 93 years ago
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 occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.” — H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920. Via Sipsey Street Irregulars
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:12 AM | Your Say (5)
December 5, 2013
Why Hillary Will Lose Again
What does Hillary stand for? After eight years in the senate, the only memorable thing about her tenure was her vote on Iraq. If Hillary had not accidentally taken a controversial position, while trying to cast a safe vote, all that anyone would remember is that she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame for “opening new pathways for women in leadership”. That was quite an accomplishment considering that she was the 32nd female senator. | FrontPage Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:41 PM | Your Say (10)
Durango, Colorado
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:33 PM | Your Say (5)
As the old saying goes, you get what you vote for.
So, dear friends, millennial voters have discovered that they have been played like suckers.When they thought that they were receiving an education, they were being softened up; they had no defense against the siren song of demagogues who only want their votes. They voted for hope and change and they got despair and regression. They see the Obamafied future and they don’t see anything good coming to them. Had Enough Therapy?: A Great Awakening?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:39 PM | Your Say (2)
John Kerry Enters Rehab After White House Stages Botox Intervention
“His instantaneous excitement for Botox was startling,” a former staff member quipped. “He was like Michael Moore discovering head cheese.” A former housekeeper claims John Kerry began hiding bottles of Botox in the nooks and crannies of his five multimillion-dollar estates. “Senator John would wander around his houses in the middle of the night injecting Botox into his face. He kept bottles hidden so Senator Lady would not find out. One night he became enraged when he couldn’t remember where he’d hidden his stash. He threw dishes and food against the walls until Mrs. Senator came down and threatened to withhold his weekly allowance.” -- TheDaily Rash
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:01 PM | Your Say (6)
"Made sweeter by the recent frosts."
They seemed just the right thing for today’s lunch on this mild, mysterious foggy day. So it’s poached turnips, carrots, and parsnips, along with fennel bulb, a few slices of corned beef, and lots of Irish butter. Be good to yourself. The Canal House
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:25 PM | Your Say (4)
Radiant Orchid -- Also known as 18-3224
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (4)
Door. Ass. Bang. [Bumped]
Martin Bashir Out at MSNBC - TVNewser Update: Sarah Palin Hopes Bashir's Attack Won't Stop People From Getting into the Arena...Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:12 PM | Your Say (15)
Dolphin Rescues
They continued some further distance through the mist,the dolphins continuing to force the prow to the left, and presently they just missed some further rocks — again on the right. “I was getting a strange feeling that we ought to leave our destiny to the dolphins,” Stander said, “since it was clear they had twice prevented us from running on to the rocks.” – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (0)
The history of mankind has been to rule and to be ruled.
For reasons that you and I will never understand,there exists in some people an insatiable desire to tell other people what to do; to bend others to their will. I suspect that every single one of those hearts is filled with a dread, a genuine horror, at the wasteland of their own emptiness, and so the bombast and the narcissism and the arrogance; the legions of fainting faithful and the roar of the applause; the reflections, the logos, the insertion of themselves into every event in history; the mind-numbing obsession with power – all of these, I think, are just shovels full of coal being pitched into the bottomless furnace of their own self-hatred. From Shards | Bill Whittle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (8)
December 4, 2013
There'll Always Be An England
UK and China agree $73 million pig semen export dealPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 PM | Your Say (2)
Getting It Over With
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 PM | Your Say (1)
Peggy, You Miserable Slut!
a man who, after his drug-addled youth hung out with domestic terrorists, academic (and activist) anti-Semites, and got his religious counsel from a man steeped in hatred of Whites and Jews, as head of the free world — while simultaneously turning down her nose at figures like Sarah Palin, who has proven over the course of time to be every bit as prescient as Ms Noonan was bamboozed, hoodwinked, and gloriously conned — is now writing to tell us the President is not who he promised he’d be. - - Per Jim Geraghty… | protein wisdom
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:26 PM | Your Say (13)
1957 description of today's Detroit
Everything that could move, had moved away; but some human beings had remained. The empty structures were vertical rubble; they had been eaten, not by time, but by men: boards torn out at random, missing patches of roofs, holes left in gutted cellars. It looked as if blind hands had seized whatever fitted the need of the moment, with no concept of remaining in existence the next morning. The inhabited houses were scattered at random among the ruins; the smoke of their chimneys was the only movement visible in town. A shell of concrete, which had been a schoolhouse, stood on the outskirts; it looked like a skull, with the empty sockets of glassless windows, with a few strands of hair still clinging to it, in the shape of broken wires." - - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 AM | Your Say (3)
You've seen the videos.
A six foot four, 225 pound, 17-year-old ninth-grader drops some white dude or dudette to the pavement with one surprise punch, to the cheers of his bruthus. The perps in the videos are not of Norwegian ancestry.A pattern suggests itself. But all is well. The crime fighters of the left have the answer. The "knockout game" doesn't exist. It's not allowed. It's a sick fantasy. Serial assaults on random whites can't exist outside the tiny but hyperactive minds of unredeemed bigots. Their evidence? It's as obvious as the heartbreak of melanin deficiency: another Racist-Nazi conspiracy is afoot. Even emergency medical folks are in on it. Have they no shame? ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (8)
How to be a feminist according to stock photography [Bumped]
Stand on Cliffs in Business Attire…
"So the ultimate is... Woman crushing a tiny tiny man in the heel of her business suit she's wearing while looking at X-rays she holds in her many many arms while she's passed out on her MacBook while wandering around on the top of a cliff climbing a ladder measuring her waist painting a room smiling while eating a salad and a banana awkwardly holding power tools and file folders with boxing gloves while lifting weights looking through binoculars at the big big sky."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (10)
Mponeng mine, the deepest man-made hole on earth
Mponeng mine would fill the grid between 59th Street and 110th Street, its tunnels and shafts exposed like a giant ant colony. The half-lit streets would tower into the sky before you, block upon block, to an altitude of almost three miles. You could stack ten empire State Buildings on top of each other in the distance from the bottom of the mine to the surface. This gargantuan warren devours as much electricity as a city of 400,000.... The mine's target is a thirty-inch-wide strip of ore. Considered against the immensity of the mine, as thin as a hair. Gold : NPR
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (0)
"The diver acknowledged that he had seen the hand and then, when he went to grab the hand, the hand grabbed him!"
So when a hand appeared on the TV screen Walker was monitoring in the rescue boat, showing what the diver in the Jascon saw, everybody assumed it was another corpse. "The diver acknowledged that he had seen the hand and then, when he went to grab the hand, the hand grabbed him! It was frightening for everybody. For the guy that was trapped because he didn't know what was happening. It was a shock for the diver while he was down there looking for bodies, and we (in the control room) shot back when the hand grabbed him on the screen."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (5)
December 3, 2013
Are 41% of Americans big dumb dogs?
41% of Americans consider Barack Obama "personally likeable" | Who the hell are these people?!Remember that old Looney Toons cartoon of the two dogs — one big and dumb and the other small and sinister? The big dumb dog chases after the tiny one, who of course is named Spike. “What are we gonna do today, Spike?! Huh? Huh?” Spike treats the big dumb dog terribly — smacking him, telling him to “Shaddup!” And the big dumb dog, after getting smacked in the face by Spike, looks at us and says, “Spike is my friend.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:50 PM | Your Say (9)
WINNING!
Poof: Public says America's world leadership has tumbled to 40-year low | For the first time in nearly 40 years, a majority of Americans believe the United States is less important around the worldand that it should mind its own business, a stunning rejection of President Obama’s foreign policy just four years after he received the Nobel Prize. Worse: 70 percent said that the U.S. is respected less than in the past, almost matching the high reached under former President George W. Bush, whose foreign policy Obama pledged to reverse.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:29 PM | Your Say (2)
Frisky Whiskey
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (6)
"Stopped mid-motion in the middle / Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky— / Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost."
— to discover suddenly that all ways of moving are closed off—is equivalent to a kind of death (“death is hardly more bitter,” Dante declares). Anyone who has experienced even mild forms of depression knows what the state of paralysis in Inferno 1 is all about. Depression brings things to an oppressive standstill; its objective correlative is a dark room and a bed, which can easily take on the feel of an alien forest. - - Dante: The Most Vivid Version by Robert Pogue Harrison
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (3)
Art has not shocked, provoked or otherwise challenged for years now.
The belief that it does, should or could is almost endearingly quaint when one hears it voiced.Certainly the words used to describe creative activity, such as those above, are a product of the general hyperbolic drift in many aspects of our everyday language. And, rather like racism, the more the arts diminish in relevance in relation to both our personal and national life, the more overblown and indiscriminate are the claims made of it. Off-Limits: Subjects Artists Won't Tackle | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (3)
Politics Is Not a Soap Opera
Politics is our reality. It only seems like soap opera because of the way it is covered:Right into your living room, day-in-day-out, celebrity journalists present the adventures of their fellow dramatis personae, celebrity pols.... No longer is the story that millions of people are losing health insurance that President Obama guaranteed they would be able to keep. For the mainstream press, it is about how cleverly Obama can rationalize his lies, how adroitly can he revise what he’s previously said, how deftly can he turn the page . . . shifting the audience’s attention to the next episode — maybe immigration, maybe Iran, maybe the debt ceiling . . . = = National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (1)
Israeli Scientists Patent Process For Curing Alzheimers, Parkinson’s.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:52 AM | Your Say (1)
December 2, 2013
Scientists “baffled” by the planet’s stubborn refusal to submit to their climate models.
As with so many other doomsday predictions by warmists, the results turn out to be quite the opposite. Blog: Arctic ice cap grows 29% in one year
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 PM | Your Say (10)
“Vote for Hillary: She Won’t Do Anything as President Either.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:02 PM | Your Say (10)
The First Six Books of The Elements of Euclid in Which Coloured Diagrams and Symbols are Used Instead of Letters for the Greater Ease of Learners, by Oliver Byrne, 1847.
Make them from coloured paper or colour in the pieces yourself. Cut along the solid lines, fold along the dotted lines, glue together and you're done!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:18 PM | Your Say (2)
The Secret of that Capitol Studios Sound
The sparse concrete chambers, each with there own unique characteristics, have speakers on one side and microphones on the other. Sound engineers working in the studios above can pipe audio into the reverb chambers and re-record the sound, adding as much as a five second delay, giving singers a booming vocal quality that makes it sound more like the track was recorded in a cathedral, not a sound studio in L.A. The difference is huge. | A Continuous Lean.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (1)
No Smoking: The Curious Case of the Exploding Pig Farms
Around 2007, farmers began noticing pig poop acting funny.The normally liquid mixture started producing foamy bubbles, rising up and up, past the slats, right to the pigs’ cloven hooves. Then it got worse. Among the gases in the bubbling in the foam are two of special note: methane and hydrogen sulfide—both highly flammable. All it takes is a small spark and Kaboom! In September 2011, a barn explosion killed 1,500 pigs and seriously injured one worker. - - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (2)
Africa's Aid Mess:Why the Africa Aid of Bono, Gates & Clinton Fails
Never have so many people, so many agencies, so many stratagems, so much money been deployed to improve Africa-- and yet the majority of the movers are part-timers, merely dropping in, setting up a scheme in the much-mocked "the-safari-that-does-good" manner, then returning to their real lives, as hard-charging businessmen, Hollywood actors, benevolent billionaires, atoning ex-politicians, MacArthur geniuses, or rock stars in funny hats. It's not hard to imagine the future tombstones of the Clintons and Bono and Gates, and many others bitten by the eleemosynary itch, chiseled with the words, Telescopic Philanthropist. The farther away the donors are, the shorter their visits ("Chelsea Clinton took time out of her 10-day humanitarian trip in Africa to meet some of the kids that her AIDS work is benefiting…"), and the more passionate their feelings. Paul Theroux Critiques Philanthropy in Africa
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (10)
Amazon Goes from Amazing to Annoying
Hand me the skeet shooting shotgun: Delivery drones are coming: Jeff Bezos promises half-hour shipping with Amazon Prime Air. Really? Bezos needs to spend more time on his yacht with some bimbo eruptions. He was once an interesting fellow. Now he grows dull.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (8)
December 1, 2013
"White Privilege."
Aside from it being a disgustingly offensive farce and an insult to common civility, it's hard to even begin describing the psychopathic race-hate cult called White Privilege.For one, it's not just another shin-kicking tantrum wrapped around just another smarmy ripoff, it's the deck from which race cards are dealt, an evil perversion of good will, a candy-coated curriculum for self-induced moral collapse, a Goebbels-level big lie, the mother ship of intolerance, case hardened and serrated edged..... It says there can be no peace as long as whites exist, in short, it says racial cleansing is fitting and honorable. The surge in attacks on random whites in public places may trace to this notion. Some black intellectuals, Walter Williams among them, say they haven't thought this through, and they're right. Society is continually disconnecting and reconnecting in new, often surprising arrangements, and the word minority has a demographic meaning apart from its sociological freight. Serbia-style direct action isn't a realistic option for thirteen per cent of this or any other population. - - ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 PM | Your Say (9)
Portrait of William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) taken in Brooklyn, 1894
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:36 PM | Your Say (7)
The six contradictions of socialism in the United States of America
- America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
- Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
- They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
- Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
- The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
- They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:15 PM | Your Say (0)
"Now the American baby boom is the world's future."
Unless, of course, extravagant freedom, scant responsibility, plenty of money and a modicum of peace lead to such a high rate of carbon emissions that we all fry or drown. But you can't have everything. And you can have a profusion of opportunity and, at the same time, a collapse of traditional social standards. Just look at Western Europe and the wealthiest parts of Asia and Latin America. They're almost as useless as we are—with abundant disposable income and ample leisure time to devote to pointless activities that don't harm anybody much except ourselves. - - P.J. O'Rourke on the Baby Boom: the Aftermath
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:10 PM | Your Say (0)
"You find liberals saying anyone can raise a child"
and that they’re all for good parenting, and then you find absolutely no distinctionbetween what they’d do as adults and what they’d let their children do. Between seeing a picture of two boys , likely not even preteens, kissing while wearing shirts that said “Fuck h8” and a woman who smiled beside what was presumably her child holding a large sign with the words “My mom’s a SLUT” on it, I’m not entirely sure liberals grasp the idea of parenting well enough to export it to any and all couples and formations of “consenting adults.” - - Semper spes est.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:28 PM | Your Say (1)
Tru dat
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:19 PM | Your Say (0)
Awwwwwwwwwww..... This Is The Cutest Baby Bird You Will Ever See
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (0)
December 1963: Smiley face
The firm had purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio the previous year to work with Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company, a State Mutual subsidiary. Low employee morale in the merged companies prompted State Mutual Vice President John Adam Jr. to suggest a "friendship campaign." He asked Joy Young, Assistant Director of Sales and Marketing, to develop something. Young turned to Worcester freelance artist Harvey Ball, requesting he create a little smile to be used on buttons, desk cards and posters. Ball drew a smile but, not satisfied with the result, added two eyes, making a smiley face. The whole drawing, he recalled later, took ten minutes. The '60s at 50
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (1)
"To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:"
50 Ways to Talk to GodRead Psalm 136, which describes everything God has ever done as being done because of his love. Go through your life from the very beginning and list everything that’s happened to you. Follow each event–good or bad– with “for his love endures forever.” Let him show you how he used every single thing for your good.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:41 AM | Your Say (4)