The Top 40

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January 31, 2014

Ohio man's wish fulfilled as he is buried on motorcycle

Billy Standley's body was prepped by five embalmers with a metal back brace and straps, The Dayton Daily News reported. He was affixed on top of his bike – a 1967 Electra Glide cruiser-- which was then placed inside a Plexiglas casket. - - PhotoBlog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 PM | Your Say (7)

The tie is a declaration of intent.

A good tie announces your understanding of society and your place in it.

The tie maintains a cultural power even in its absence, that’s why you notice when somebody in a position of authority isn’t wearing one. Would you hire an accountant who wore a flannel shirt? Consider the downward spiral from Tom Landry to Bill Belichick: Both are brilliant coaches, one was dignified and natty, the other looks like he should be replacing used towels in the locker room. The Ongoing Power of The Tie. | A Continuous Lean.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:56 PM | Your Say (11)

The Super Bowl: 5 Years From Now

ANNOUNCER #1: He’s broken free, he sprints past the 30 yard line–-

ANNOUNCER #2 : 30 yard line sponsored by Arby’s!

ANNOUNCER #1: He’s to the 15–-

ANNOUNCER #2: Brought to you by FedEx!

ANNOUNCER #1: And into the end zone!

ANNOUNCER #2: Made possible by Doritos!

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

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

Every Time

Every time we have pulled the lid off the human desire to govern our own affairs, to be free of government - we've had a renaissance of some kind.

We've had a social -renaissance, we've had a political renaissance, an artistic renaissance. Every time in history we've unleashed this, we've gone forward by leaps and bounds. So I'm saying, "All right, this is what history says to me. So why don't we do it again?" -- FRANK HERBERT

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (8)

#ButtNazis

Steyn likes to say that the right way to react to people who try to de-normalize your dissent is to push back twice as hard.

I agree. So I give you my favorite Twitter hashtag of the day, to be applied to GLAAD any time it tries this kind of public bullying: #ButtNazis. Don’t let the #ButtNazis fuck your free speech up the ass while pretending they’re on a lofty mission of moral uplift. -- esr - De-normalizing dissent

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (2)

Why a prolate spheroid?

1967 Green Bay Packers The Duke Football

It turns out that the football was never truly designed, it just sort of happened. According to Henry Duffield, a man who witnessed a game between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869, largely considered to be the first intercollegiate game:

“The ball was not an oval but was supposed to be completely round. It never was, though — it was too hard to blow up right. The game was stopped several times that day while the teams called for a little key from the sidelines. They used it to unlock the small nozzle which was tucked into the ball, and then took turns blowing it up. The last man generally got tired and they put it back in play somewhat lopsided.” How Did the Pigskin Get Its Shape? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (4)

Apocalypse Now

America is a nation rooted in Apocalypse.

The very foundation of the nation is tied to the End Times. Apocalypse is in America’s DNA. When the Puritans stepped out into the bitter wilds of New England they brought with them the forecast of annihilation. These exiles came to America not to delight in religious freedom but to ring in the last of days. “The Judge draws nigh, exalted high upon a lofty Throne,” wrote Puritan poet Michael Wigglesworth. -- The Smart Set

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:01 AM | Your Say (6)

"Suicide, divorce, and promiscuity"

are not signs of contentment and happiness and joy.

They are the erratic distractions or vain and desperate lunges toward false pleasures are signs of discontent, unhappiness, self-hatred. The women have equality in every real sense of the word, and it is still bitter in their mouths. Vanity of vanities, they have found equality is vanity. - - Restless Heart of Darkness

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

January 30, 2014

Bill de Blasio,

is an Obama-like figure, inexperienced and inept but adored by the Manhattan militants.

He majored in Metropolitan Studies, held fundraisers for the Sandinistas, volunteered as a bandage-roller in revolutionary Nicaragua, organized community "outreaches", passed special privilege laws for the usual suspects and managed Hillary Clinton's senate campaign, more a favor than arduous duty. De Blasio's base consists of fern bar commandos, clueless second-languagers, campus activists, The Diversity and holders of taxi medallions who resent horse drawn tourist carriages. In realpolitik terms he's the near equivalent of a power vacuum. ol remus and the woodpile report

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

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 PM | Your Say (2)

"We body politick are, collectively, a fucking sexy thing. "

Ripe for the taking. We reek those peculiar political pheromones that make the progressive come turgid.

Wealth, opportunity, assets are aphrodisiacs to these fence railing bastards. They don't crave the assets, however. They crave the control. Velociworld: An Odor of Contempt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:54 PM | Your Say (3)

This Just In

Henry Waxman To Retire, Saying He Wants to Spend More Time With Children, Frightening Them With His Monsterface

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:30 PM | Your Say (9)

Who Is the Anti-Hillary?

It's as plain as the nose on Henry Waxman's face: Poll: Sarah Palin Has Highest Favorability Rating Among GOP Primary Voters

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:34 PM | Your Say (2)

Naked Lunch

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper

I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train .... Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me. I am evidently his idea of a character. You know the type: comes on with bartenders and cab drivers, talking about right hooks and the Dodgers, calls the counterman in Nedick's by his first name. A real asshole. -- William Burroughs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (2)

Twain Power

There's Twain inside this book, don't get me wrong. It's exactly, precisely what you always get from Twain.

His laundry list is a Dead Sea Scroll. His lunch order is a Rosetta Stone. He has more intellectual horsepower under his fingernail after a trip to his ear than Berkeley has in a building, and that's if the building is full of janitors. At least janitors know how the world works. The buildings full of these scholars need fumigating. Lock the doors, first, from the outside. - - Sippican CottageThe Autocoprophagy Of Mark Twain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (0)

"We're not open for business. We're just feeding people who are hungry."

Chick-fil-A Aids Drivers Stranded by Winter Weather: Some of the stranded drivers just abandoned their cars and ended up at the Chick-fil-A to take shelter.

From there, Meadows and his staff decided to lend a kindness to all those stranded motorists. They jumped to their stations and cooked up some 200 sandwiches, then threw on their cold weather gear, trudged out to the highway, and began to hand out food and water to the stranded motorists.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (7)

Another quiet day on Io

Io's surface is dotted with more than 100 mountains that have been pushed up

by extensive compression at the base of Io's silicate crust. Half of these peaks are taller than Mount Everest. Today was another relatively quiet day on this moon. The volcanoes Pele and Loki, in the southern hemisphere, let out plumes of sulphur dioxide 500 km high, as they've been doing for 30,000 years.Temperatures hovered at minus 130 degrees centigrade. No one noticed. The Philosophers' Mail

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (0)

Pete Seeger: A Mean-Spirited and Vengeful Recollection

Seeger’s (and Guthrie’s) notion of folk music had less to do with actual American sources than with a Communist-inspired Yankee version of Proletkult.

The highly personalized style of a Robert Johnson and other Delta bluesmen didn’t belong in the organizing handbook of the “folk” exponents who grew up in the Communist Party’s failed efforts to control the trade union movement of the 1940s. Seeger, the son of an academic musicologist and a classical violinist, was no mountain primitive, but a slick commercializer of “folk” themes with a nasty political agenda. His capacity to apologize for the brutalities of Communist regimes — including their repression of their own “folksingers” — remained undiminished with age, - - Spengler

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:24 AM | Your Say (19)

"Race relations. Another charred ruin."

Better than a half century into the Great Society, huge numbers of blacks live trapped in urban Bantustans,

Newark, Detroit, Birmingham, Philadelphia, barely literate if at all, unemployed and unemployable, bastardy almost universal, utterly dependent on federal charity, without the slightest hope that any of this will change. If Washington had deliberately tried to make a greater mess, it couldn’t have..... Open borders. Another train wreck started, stage-managed, and supported by Washington. Infinite Arrogance, Infinite Incompetence

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

January 29, 2014

"A business where the chauvinism and woman-hating runs so deep"

and is so ingrained in their culture, that women at this establishment make 13 percent less than their male counterparts. I know of a particular bastion of male domination where the women on staff would have to work an extra 8 weeks a year just to earn the same as their male coworkers. This place is called “the White House.” -- Matt Walsh

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:14 PM | Your Say (2)

Works for Me

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (4)

Power to "the People": Dune Author Frank Herbert in 1984

In all the marching in the streets in the '60s, the people who were shouting "Power to -the People" didn't mean power to the people.

They meant "power to me and I'll tell the people what to do." When you questioned them it was confirmed at every turn.... I don't think there's a fucking bit of difference between a bureaucracy that is instituted by a democratic regime, a state; socialist regime, a communist regime or a capitalist regime. Take a look at us right now. We have created a bureaucracy in this country which is completely out of the hands of the people. Your votes do not touch it. FUTURISTIC MEDITATIONS FROM DUNE FRANK HERBERT

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

The ‘Pause’ of Global Warming Risks Destroying The Reputation Of Science

The scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem

— or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem — in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society’s respect for scientific endeavour. Climate Change's Inherent Uncertainties — Quadrant Online

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

Casper Milquetoast AKA Mitt Romney AKA "Yes, it's true. The man has no dick."

And yet, when it came time to attack President Obama and his enablers in the media, Romney became Casper Milquetoast.

Apparently, he was afraid of the mainstream media and Barack Obama. The only people Romney and many other Republicans are not afraid to attack are ... their fellow Republicans. No other explanation makes any sense at all. Had Enough Therapy?: Milquetoast Mitt Romney

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (16)

Baby It's Cold Outside

Soviet Posters + American Pin-ups = 2014 Olympics Calendar

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

Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO

He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear;

survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a POW camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. Describing his experiences in World War I, he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."€ ... Never Yet Melted »

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 AM | Your Say (4)

"A lukewarm bubble bath of historical guilt"

Barbarians at the Mall Entrance: While Americans continue to slosh around in a lukewarm bubble bath of historical guilt,

few probably realize that roughly ten times as many African slaves were transported to Brazil than to what is now the United States. They also likely aren’t aware that Brazil actually came close to having a slave system for the oft-quoted timespan of 400 years, whereas Americans abandoned the whole shebang after a comparatively piddling two centuries.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (6)

The Eternal Japanese Fight Against Sagging

Oppai Taiso Breast Gymnastics Night Bra: Designed by celebrity bust expert Takiko Shindo, the Oppai Taiso Breast Gymnastics Night Bra will help keep your bust in a healthy position even when you sleep. Don't give up the fight against sagging even when you are off in dream land.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 AM | Your Say (3)

Yet as a matter of observable fact (a category apparently having no place in feminism),

we men—patriarchal, capitalistic, macho, immature, savage, testosterone- poisoned, et cetera—

seem to come up with everything important that comes up. For example: The transistor, William Shockley and his group. Microsoft, Bill Gates. Intel, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Dell Computer, Michael Dell. Public-key encryption, James Ellis, Clifford Cookis, and Malcom Williamson at GCHQ in England and later Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman of RSA Security. The World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, a Brit at CERN. Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Yahoo, Jerry Yang and David Filo. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. The list could go on for another yard or so. - - Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:42 AM | Your Say (9)

Political Correctness and its interlocking system of repression is visibly faltering.

Issues thought safely set aside are reappearing. Even the vaunted NSA can neither locate or avoid the pain.

PC pillories a victim or two and beats its chest, but looks silly doing it. Even its loyal cadre sees what's happening, and they suspect this is no minor setback. They smell an authentic consensus welling up beneath their feet. Notice the fencing-in of reader comments at news media websites, or their outright discontinuance. The trend is not their friend. Those with their ear closest to the ground "get it" and are edging toward the exits. - - ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 AM | Your Say (1)

January 28, 2014

Whatever happened to Obama's screwing-in-lightbulb plan of 2008?

December 7, 2008: "Today, I am announcing a few key parts of my plan.

First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work." -- Barack Obama Youtube address, 12/7/08 Steve Sailer: iSteve

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 PM | Your Say (6)

The Inner Banana

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:55 PM | Your Say (6)

English 2169: Jay-Z and Kanye West

MWF 11-11:50 This course looks at the career and work of Jay-Z and Kanye West from three perspectives:

(1) Where do they fit within, and how do they change, the history of hip-hop music? (2) How is what they do similar to and different from what poets do?, and (3) How does their rise to both celebrity and corporate power alter what we understand as the American dream? - - University of Missouri

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (5)

Don't Worry, the State of the State is Bigger and More Powerful than Ever!

We all know the state of the State is strong. Stronger than ever.

Ginormous. All-seeing. All-powerful. Intrusive. Coercive. Punitive. But rewarding for cronies, victims, and political insiders. Er, what about the union? Oh, that. Weak. Divisive. Fractured. Politically controlled but morally deregulated. The way it should be in order to create the conditions for leviathan. - - One Cʘsmos:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:13 PM | Your Say (0)

Tobacco-Wackery in Tempe

Yet another illustration of the lunacy of the contemporary liberal loon. There is no common sense on the Left, no wisdom,

nothing that could be called good judgment or reasonableness. What there is is extremism and misplaced moral enthusiasm. A liberal is the kind of moral and intellectual idiot who has no problem with the legalization of marijuana and partial-birth abortion, but gets his moral hackles up over a bit of highly diluted sidestream smoke in the vicinity of a -- wait for it -- SMOKE shop. - - Maverick Philosopher

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 AM | Your Say (3)

The Restless Heart of Darkness

This movement goes by many names, all of them misleading.

Any name that ceases to mislead is dropped, and another misleading name adopted, so no name is permanent. Liberal they call themselves, albeit they diminish liberty, and progressive they call themselves, but they retard or reverse progress. Political Correctness is the least misleading of the names, and hence the one least likely to be used or admitted. They call themselves freethinkers, but they think like slaves. – Part One | John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (1)

January 27, 2014

Dogs Are Not People

Callie, Gregory Berns's dog and test subject, practices sitting still in a model MRI scanner.

In the highly abnormal conditions of the MRI scanner—noise and constraint—Berns wants to prove that something that counts as “intelligence” is part of a dog’s everyday life.

Callie, his black terrier mix (also known as a feist), is eager to be part of the experiment: standing ready for her head to be wrapped, ears muffed, she walks into the coil of the MRI scanner and puts her head on the chin rest. She learns to trot up the stairs into the magnet and assume “the sphinx position in the head coil.” - - Boston Review

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 PM | Your Say (1)

Pussy Putdown

Woman Disowns Cat For Being Gay : The cat, named Bull, was alleged to be in the habit of making sexual advances only to other male cats in the house even though there are several other female cats.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:23 PM | Your Say (6)

Obama: "I can see Russia from my house."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:01 PM | Your Say (6)

The Ghost Rat Cannibal Ship Will Enrich the UK

The ghost rat cannibal ship approaching the shores of the United Kingdom is no different.

Yes it is a ghost ship and it may be full of cannibal rats who have been eating each other for so long that they have food critics (Hank was just too dry), foodie blogs and an ethical cannibalism movement to eat only locally sourced rats, but that is no reason to allow ourselves to be panicked by it or by them. Each culture brings with it its own practices and its own way of life that contributes to enriching our own. - - Sultan Knish

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

"Oh Blow Me!" News Story of the Day

File under "You can't insult a whore."Michelle Obama wants $10 donations to 'help protect Obamacare' "So before Barack gives his State of the Union address tomorrow, chip in $10 or more and help protect Obamacare. Michelle"

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

Greatly overrated women in Hollywood today, in terms of looks:

Word Around the Net: NOT BEAUTIFUL Cate Blanchett - Brad Pitt in drag.

Carmeon Diaz - She's a man, baby! Angelina Jolie - She is just odd looking. Sarah Jessica Parker - Seriously, she's not pretty. Julia Roberts - Again, not pretty. Maggie Gyllenhaal - She looks like she was pretty but then spent 10 years in the pen smoking crack.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (18)

If we believed in omens.... [Bumped]

Birds attack peace doves freed from pope's window: As tens of thousands of people watched in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, a seagull and a large black crow swept down on the doves right after they were set free from an open window of the Apostolic Palace.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (13)

Tintypes in the 21st Century

Using a 19th century photography process called wet-plate collodion,

Michael Shindler creates arresting tintype portraits of anyone who happens to wander into his studio Photobooth. Located on Valencia Street in San Francisco, Photobooth is the world's only tintype portrait studio.... Each tintype is prepared by hand to create a single exposure. The image is then processed immediately so the subject can walk out the door with their photograph. Each plate is unique and only one copy of the image exists, which makes sitting for a tintype portrait a very special and rewarding experience. - My Modern Metropolis

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (5)

Black holes? I don't got to show you no steenking black holes.

Stephen Hawking: 'There are no black holes' In a paper posted online, the physicist, based at the University of Cambridge, UK, and one of the creators of modern black-hole theory, does away with the notion of an event horizon, the invisible boundary thought to shroud every black hole, beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (8)

Your Milage May Vary

99 Interesting Facts About The World To Blow Your Mind

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (4)

Trinidad, Cuba

Castro did not take a bulldozer to Cuba — I mean it. It’s important.

He’s letting most of Havana collapse from decades of contemptuous neglect, weather, and entropy, but Trinidad, at least, is still a jewel. Not only does the city look like it did hundreds of years ago—it sounds the same as it did hundreds of years ago. A great and wonderful hush hangs over it always. - - Totten, The Lost World

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (2)

January 26, 2014

So-called liberals of the so-called progressive variety are now the status quo.

They’re the reactionaries, clinging to their outmoded economic theories, their debunked social models,

their blinkered opinions, and their unaffordable entitlements. They’re the ones who have sown resentment, envy and division, and made ambition and advancement dirty words. They want you to live for everyone but yourself. If that is the life you choose, so be it; but to force that preference on others is not compassion, it’s tyranny. We Are the Radicals Now - Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 PM | Your Say (4)

Eating Our Young

It is popular now to talk of race, class, and gender oppression.

But left out of this focus on supposed victim groups is the one truly targeted cohort — the young. Despite the Obama-era hype, we are not suffering new outbreaks of racism. Wendy Davis is not the poster girl for a resurgent misogyny. There is no epidemic of homophobia. Instead, if this administration’s policies are any guide, we are witnessing a pandemic of ephebiphobia — an utter disregard for young people. - -Works and Days

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

La Vitrina

La Vitrina | Magazines

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (4)

According to everyone from Charles Barkley to Bill Maher,

being surprised when blacks behave badly means we’re racists.

Well, Messrs. Barkley and Maher, I have news for you: You’re the racists and, to put it bluntly, you’re disgusting, low-down, dirty, thuggish, debased racists. ... You revolting race-mongers have made it painfully clear that you believe that color is destiny, and that the darker the skin color the more people are destined to behave badly. - - Bookworm

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:22 AM | Your Say (3)

Carmichael, 37 in 1974, claimed to be the widow of a NASA structural engineer,

a mother of five, and a farm girl from Indiana.

In reality, she was actually a transsexual undergoing sexual reassignment to become female. Her former, biological male identity, Jerry Dean Michael, had been wanted by the police since 1961 for alleged involvement in a counterfeiting operation. The company would ultimately prove to be fraudulent when Carmichael went into hiding with investors' money. - - 20th Century Motor Car Corporation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (8)

After decades of being effectively unopposed, Political Correctness is playing defense, but it has no experience with it.

The rising defiance to PC is causing genuine panic in their ranks. PC has been unconstrained by reality for decades, now it's far from sight of shore, held together by little more than cant and chants, its internal stresses incapable of withstanding any informed confrontation. It's buckling. The people know it. -- ol remus

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

January 25, 2014

The most important social justice project of the 21st Century is the War on Noticing,

because noticing can interfere with America's most important human rights issue: that conmen sorry, con artists be wholly unimpeded in getting away with their diversity-related cons. - - Time for a Bonfire of the Insensitivities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:03 PM | Your Say (0)

It's Never Too Late

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:53 PM | Your Say (17)

Reporters cover each other like Spandex pants, but

they barely glance at most of the government.

When did you last see coverage of HUD? The Bureau of Indian Affairs? The Department of Transportation? FAA? EPA? We get the occasional press release from these, but little else. No one knows what lurks in the bureaucratic shadows, but I promise it costs a lot. Fred On Everything

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Nobody knows the trouble I've seen / Nobody knows but Jesus

"They let yah see it. They let yah smell it. But they never let yah taste it!"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:25 PM | Your Say (1)

America to Obama: Shut the Fuck Up Already!

Nothing interesting was being said! Looking back on this presidency, it has from the beginning been a 17,000 word New Yorker piece in which,

calmly, sonorously, with his lovely intelligent voice, the president says nothing, or little that is helpful, insightful or believable. "I'm not a particularly ideological person." "It's hard to anticipate events over the next three years." "I don't really even need George Kennan right now." "I am comfortable with complexity." "Our capacity to do some good .... is unsurpassed, even if nobody is paying attention." Nobody is! Peggy Noonan: The Sleepiness of a Hollow Legend - WSJ.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:54 AM | Your Say (5)

[Bumped] “While I’ve been a good mother, it’s not a good time for me right now.”

Wendy Davis has no future in politics: The fact that she would either willingly give up custody

or that a judge would deem her unworthy of even joint custody raised alarm bells. Americans will forgive a lot in a politician. But a woman who leaves her kids is just beyond the pale.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (16)

In cold years like these, climate change deniers always ask a trick question,

"How come global warming can cause both heating and cooling?" The answer is actually quite simple.

We all know that sometimes it's hot as Hell*, and sometimes it's cold as Hell. Clearly, Hell can make it hotter or colder. The science is settled on the fact that global warming will be Hell on Earth, and since Hell can make it hotter or colder, global warming can, therefore, also make it hotter or colder. Global Warming-Cooling Explained

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (2)

Political Correctness is not a free-standing option,

nor is it an alternative code of happy-talk, it's the hard-wiring for a cult of coercion designed to negate free speech by setting non-negotiable margins on thought itself.

PC violators are fast-tracked to the leper colony , and there we see the nature of Political Correctness: opposing ideas are not just wrong, they're not just illegitimate, they're literally unspeakable. Even the "Intellectual Right" is embarrassed by the "non-PC Right." Ambitious political outfits want into the PC system. It's a handy, fingerprints-free star chamber. Notice how the global warming extremists, its persuasion being unpersuasive, strain for a piece of the action. No debates for you, it's straight to the Nuremberg docket. -- ol remus

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:15 AM | Your Say (1)

January 24, 2014

Civil Rights Leaders Appalled by Obama's Racism

In separate interviews with civil rights icons Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, both men called on President Obama to apologize for his "overtly racist" comments

in criticizing Rush Limbaugh and FOX News. "It's like we get the first African-American president," stated a visibly disappointed Jesse Jackson, "and he goes out spewing all this racist hatred about white people who disagree with him. It's like Selma all over again." Political commentator Juan Williams, who used to be black before joining FOX News, was also saddened. - - The People's Cube

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W.

W Magazine (New York, NY, USA)

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

Christie: Still a Glutton..... for Government

Christie wants NJ schools -- to serve dinner... One of the big education announcements that he made in Camden is plans for an after-school dinner program for kids in six of the city’s schools.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (8)

The World's First Web Site

Is still online at this link as @ The World Wide Web project. Notably Al Gore fails to make the original list of People involved in the WorldWideWeb project

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

"What each of us must do is cleave to what we find most beautiful in the human heritage — and pass it on....

"So that one day, one day when this endarkenment exhausts itself,

those precious things we’ve passed on will still be alive, stained perhaps but functional, still present in some form, and it will be possible for the people of that day to make use of them to construct a life that is a life — the life of freedom and variety and order and light and dark, in their proper proportions (whatever they may be). The life that we’d choose now if we could." — Michael Ventura, The Age of Endarkenment @ The Great Zero Gate

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (1)

The New Star

Crosshairs show the appearance of a supernova in the second of these two images of M82, taken on 10 December 2013 and 21 January 2014.

Supernova erupts in nearby galaxy : Last night,

light from a supernova explosion reached astronomers on Earth. Its origin: the nearby galaxy M82, some 3.5 megaparsecs away (11.4 million light years). It is one of the closest and brightest supernovae seen from Earth since the 1987 observation of a supernova just 168,000 light years away.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (4)

January 23, 2014

A Childhood in Athens

Although my father was a mathematician at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville

and perhaps entitled to social pretensions, he didn't have any. Consequently I lived as a half-wild disciple of Tom Sawyer. So did most of the town's boys. Come summer, we at first tentatively abandoned shoes. No one thought this odd, because it wasn'€™t. Soon our soles toughened to leather and we walked everywhere, even on gravel, without ill effect. And nobody cared. Oh sweet age of nobody cared. Foot-nekkid and fancy free, we went to the Limestone Drug Store on the town square, piled our ball gloves and BB guns inside the door, and read comic books for hours. - - Fred Reed

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:23 PM | Your Say (7)

"We wanted to wait until the children were dead."

The Captain And Tennille to Divorce - ABC News Tennille, 73, filed for divorce from Dragon, 71, in Arizona on Jan. 16. The couple had been married for nearly 40 years.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (13)

Who Says There's No Good News?

Hire Zucker, Be Proved a Sucker: CNN Hits Lowest Rated Week In Demo Since Jeff Zucker Took Over Looking back over the past 12 months, CNN has fallen hard since the week the former NBCUniversal exec officially took over as president of CNN Worldwide; year-over-year, CNN was down 33% in total day from the comparable week a year before (January 14 – 20, 2013) and down 39% in primetime. Fox News actually saw a 3% bump from the 212,000 it had in adults 25-54 a year ago, while MSNBC dipped 5% from the 155,000.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (4)

Projectile Vomiting Alert!

"Ladies and gentleman, the new Death Star."

Yes, it's butt-ugly. Then again, it's Hillary!

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

The Instructions: "Making fun of progressive women for the way they look is most certainly sexist." [Bumped]

Do NOT refer to Debbie as “Poodle Ears.” Michelle Obama's Mirror

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (15)

Amazon: "Something that can be personalized but is actually never really personal"

Why customer-obsessed Amazon is our most important business force: Since their launch 20 years ago (1994)

they have turned how business is done on its head. Who doesn’t know who they are? This is a company that has radically altered how business is done, how customers interact with business, what customers expect of business, how products are handled, how catalogs are created, how shipping is done, and how delivery is affected. They’ve transformed the experience of the customer into something that can be personalized but is actually never really personal.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:46 AM | Your Say (4)

The Worthless Islands That Lead to War

Many in China believe that China can accomplish its goals

— smacking down Japan, demonstrating its military superiority in the region, and establishing full control over the symbolic islands — with a surgical invasion. In other words, by sending troops onto the islands and planting the flag. The Chinese professional suggested that this limited strike could be effected without provoking a broader conflict. How China-Japan Conflict Could Lead To War - Business Insider

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:23 AM | Your Say (10)

The FrameUp? A Brief History of the Modern Backpack

In 1922, Lloyd F. Nelson patented the Trapper Nelson backpack.

It was based on earlier Native American pack frame designs, and clearly evolved separately from the Norwegian pack designs. .... The pack features a full frame with an attached bag, which could be removed. The curved waist piece that we see on the Bergans design is not present here, nor is any other device which would serve to transfer weight onto the hips. While the frame provides considerable rigidity, the weight of the pack is largely supported on the shoulders. Wood Trekker:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:40 AM | Your Say (1)

How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

As the big dog of desktop publishing in the '80s and '90s, QuarkXPress' hurried and steady decline is one of the greatest business failures in modern tech.

Quark's demise is truly the stuff of legend. In fact, the story reads like the fall of any empire: failed battles, growing discontent among the overtaxed masses, hungry and energized foes, hubris, greed, and... uh, CMYK PDFs. What did QuarkXPress do—or fail to do—that saw its complete dominance of desktop publishing wither in less than a decade? In short, it didn’t listen. | Ars Technica

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:42 AM | Your Say (0)

Metropolitan

| Magazines

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 AM | Your Say (3)

January 22, 2014

"He was the man of the house when I couldn’t be"

Mother supports son, 18, who was kicked out of high school for starring in gay porn to pay the family bills.

"He was the man of the house when I couldn’t be"

• single mother... check!
• sex perversion... check!
• government school... check!
• victimhood... check!

-- HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:47 PM | Your Say (9)

President Asshole. But I Repeat Myself.

Ever since he descended from the third heaven on a rainbow in 2008, Obama’s procrustean answer for all that ails America has been an unflinching dose of Keynesian strychnine poisoning.

And apparently, we have not suffered enough since he would now have us double down on an economic inhaler spiked with another stimulating dose of Zyklon B. Indeed, this president is in every way imaginable the ideological archetype of pulp-fiction’s second-rate single-minded villain: a Post-Modern Judas who is driven to redouble his perfidious efforts, even as he has forgotten the scope of his ill-conceived aims. Possessing little save the clumsy but calculated weapons of class warfare in his Lilliputian bag of tricks, Obama’s precarious vantage point atop the earth has earned him the demagogue’s dark augury: the unique understanding that he can prevail only by turning man against brother — even if such a contest sets the land aflame. “The Primal Bitch of Income Inequality” an esssay by Glenn Fairman | Asylum Watch

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 PM | Your Say (3)

The Big Bang: Herra Kuulapaa's High Speed Ballistics Photography

Firing the .357 magnum: Why did man invent this beast?

It's hard to say like it is hard to define whether this is a handgun or a rifle if you know what I mean. One thing is certain though. It was designed to be the most powerful handgun in the world and it's all that matters. Let's look into the numbers and put them in context. In Finland we can hunt moose with 10 g (154 gr) rifle cartridges if they have 2000 Joules of hit energy at 100 meters (110 yards) away. Bullets of this monster weight usually between 20-30 grams (300-500 gr).

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:41 PM | Your Say (11)

Farm Confessional: Secrets of a Supermarket Produce Buyer

Right in the center there, you’re going to have your top sale item from the front page of the flyer, say a 10-pound bag of Idaho potatoes.

Here’s the trick: we set up items on either side of the potatoes, what we call the wings. Customer stops to grab potatoes, and oh! Now they’re getting some vine-ripened grape tomatoes. Those customers make up the loss we’re taking on the potatoes. -- Modern Farmer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:57 PM | Your Say (0)

Sometimes You're the Windshield. Sometimes You're the Bug.

“Everything was in the car except for my knees and feet. I turned to him and said, ‘Hello, I’m the guy you hit on the bicycle,’” he said. “I had no idea at all why he wasn’t acknowledging me.” The driver continued east on Marshall Street, ran a stop sign at South 14th Street, crashed into a vehicle and kept going. - - Man stuck in windshield recalls bizarre crash

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:28 PM | Your Say (3)

"The reign of scientific intelligence,"

All that will demand an immense knowledge and many “heads overflowing with brains” in this government. It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and contemptuous of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and pretended scientists and scholars. - - neo-neocon Notes from Bakunin

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (0)

The Origin of the Expression "Open a Can of Worms"

Fisherman in the 1950s used to buy sealed metal cans of earthworms, as opposed to the plastic containers or Styrofoam cups of today.

After arriving at their fishing spot, they would set the metal can down and open it. What was inside was alive and if the top was left open for too long or the can was tipped over, well, your biggest problem would no longer be catching fish. It would be catching your bait that’s wriggling away. Today I Found Out

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (3)

Google (And Who Knows Who Else) Is Listening to Your Via Chrome

Chrome Bugs Let Sites Listen to Your Private Conversations Google’s engineers, who’ve proven themselves to be just as talented as I imagined, were able to identify the problem and fix it in less than 2 weeks from my initial report.

I was ecstatic. The system works. But then time passed, and the fix didn’t make it to users’ desktops. A month and a half later, I asked the team why the fix wasn’t released. Their answer was that there was an ongoing discussion within the Standards group, to agree on the correct behaviour - “Nothing is decided yet.”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (3)

From the Mouths of Babes:

I told my daughter that her children would probably not know what a land line is and she said, "What's a land line?" - - Comment @ New Republic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (2)

Post to Klein: Take Your Blog and Shove It

Why The Washington Post passed on Ezra Klein: For nearly five years, the Post has steered a bounty of financial resources to its star economics columnist and blogger.

It has allowed him to have a contributor deal with MSNBC, a column with Bloomberg View, and to write long-form for The New Yorker. It has provided him with eight staffers to keep Wonkblog, his popular policy vertical, flowing with up-to-the-minute charts and analysis. The PR department has promoted him in profile upon profile. But when Klein proposed the creation of an independent, explanatory journalism website — with more than three dozen staffers and a multiyear budget north of $10 million — the Post said enough is enough. Indeed, Jeff Bezos, the Post’s new owner, and Katharine Weymouth, its publisher, never even offered an alternative figure, sources familiar with the negotiations said.

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

January 21, 2014

Low Information Voters: adding faces to the voices

More at the People's Cube

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

Here's the World's Best Paper Plane Maker

Boeing can build a 777 in 50 days. Luca Iaconi-Stewart can build one too—in five years.

True, Iaconi- Stewart made his 1:60-scale jetliner out of manila folders and dabs of glue, but it’s almost as complicated as the real deal, down to the retractable landing gear. | Wired Design | Wired.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:05 PM | Your Say (2)

"The problem with wikipedia is "

it's a a vast sinkhole of information. You look up one thing and suddenly it's 4 hours later and you're reading an article on Antman. Posted by: Tom Delay at January 21, 2014 08:00 PM (hFL/3) -- ACE .... Ant-Man - Over the years a variety of characters have assumed the title of Ant-Man, most of whom have been connected with the Avengers.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:19 PM | Your Say (0)

In the future everyone can be with the famous for 15 seconds

Guy Continues to Photoshop Himself into Celebrity Photos - My Modern Metropolis He has managed to produce weekly shots of himself partying with the likes of Beyoncé and Jay-Z, vacationing with Rihanna, taking a texting break with LeBron James, and even getting into a tussle with Kanye West.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:32 PM | Your Say (1)

Obama announced his handlers have chosen John Podesta to lead a "comprehensive review" of the NSA.

Apparently Bill Ayers was unavailable. Podesta is the Chicago attorney who defended Clinton

at his impeachment and went on to become a major partisan player in DC. He founded the Center for American Progress with megabucks from George Soros and has his own hard left lobbyist outfit, the Podesta Group. Now he's The People's Man at the NSA. Could the corruption be any more in-your-face? -- ol remus and the woodpile report

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

There's a rabid raccoon circling your livestock

You go to your gun safe and enter your sixty-digit code, press the fingerprint-verification pad,

put your eye to the retina reader, wait for the Instant Background Check, open the safe and get out the .22 single shot rifle, unlock the child safety lock and remove it, install the bolt in the rifle, take two rounds of ammo from your legal nine round supply, chamber the legal maximum of one round, enter the serial numbers of both rounds and their removal time on your web-based log. You close the gun safe, reactivate all the security and run out the door. You dispatch said rabid raccoon. He was moving slow. - - ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:13 PM | Your Say (7)

File Under: "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"

When Meredith and his Merry Men realized how fast the emus could run, they had the idea to attach a machine gun on the back of a moving vehicle and chase after them.

Again, this tactic failed. The gunman was too busy attempting to hold on to shoot the gun. The emus raced to the relative safety of the trees, regrouped, and scattered. Even if the gunner had been able to shoot, the vehicle would only be able to chase after one bird at a time, making it impossible to kill off a large number of birds at once. Not a single bird was killed using this tactic. Emus vs. Humans: The Great Emu War of 1932

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

The Missing Third: "I Am Overwhelmed by 55 Million Babies Killed Since Roe v. Wade"

40 years ago today, seven men on the Supreme Court decided in favor

of a case presented to them from a 27 year-old, unknown, post-abortive lawyer, Sarah Weddington. That case was Roe v. Wade and, along with its companion Doe v. Bolton, it legalized abortion in all 9 months of pregnancy, for any reason, in the United States. Today, this 27 year-old is writing to you as a survivor of that decision. The undeniable fact is that nearly a third of my generation is missing. - - | LifeNews.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 AM | Your Say (8)

The Weiners Are Downsizing

Oh, the humanity! The suffering! Anthony Weiner & Huma hunt for cheaper digs Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, are looking to move out of their $12,000-a-month Park Avenue South rental to a cheaper place....

The couple toured a three-bedroom, 2¹/₂ -bathroom unit at 340 E. 23rd St., the Philippe Starck­designed building near Second Avenue dubbed Gramercy Starck. The apartment’s $8,000-per-month rent would significantly bring down Weiner and Abedin’s overhead.

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

Ezra Klein Is Leaving The Washington Post To Start Up His Own Venture.

"Wherever shall the Washington Post find a new leftwing blogger with no real world experience and a faux veneer of non-partisan expertise?" -- DrewM @ Ace of Spades

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (2)

Lobsters Not Guns: Cuban Checkpoints

The Cuban authorities aren’t worried about weapons. No one but the regime has anything deadlier than a baseball bat.

Castro’s checkpoints are there to ensure nobody has too much or the wrong kind of food. Police officers pull over cars and search the trunk for meat, lobsters, and shrimp. They also search passenger bags on city busses in Havana. Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote about it sarcastically in her book, Havana Real. “Buses are stopped in the middle of the street and bags inspected to see if we are carrying some cheese, a lobster, or some dangerous shrimp hidden among our personal belongings.” -- Michael Totten, The Lost World, Part I | World Affairs Journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (3)

January 20, 2014

Prunt-In-Chief

“It’s the little things.” Roger'€™s Rules » A Picture is Worth 1000 Words Dept. HT: NYM

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:17 PM | Your Say (4)

'Gun Control in the Third Reich'

In 1919, after repressing a communist uprising,

the government instructed citizens to surrender “any and all firearms and ammunition,” under penalty of five years in prison and a fine. Then, after an attack on a police station, Berlin officers began shooting citizens who were caught with firearms on the spot. The next year saw the Law on the Disarmament of the People, followed by house-to-house searches and confiscations. - - BOOK REVIEW: - Washington Times

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (4)

The Most Dangerous Profession: The Human Cannonball

Traveling upwards of 70 miles per hour (the world record is 74.6 mph or 120.057 km/hr),

these human missiles can be shot to as far 200 feet away and reach an altitude of upwards of 75 feet. It has even been reported that human cannonballs have been known to blackout in mid-air, due to the extreme G-force (as much as nine times normal gravity). And if all of this doesn’t quite meet your danger quota, landing is actually the most hazardous part of being a human cannonball. Today I Found Out

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (4)

Divorce Paint-Off: The Eyes Have It

In the 1960s, Margaret Keane's artwork was sold under the name of her husband, Walter Keane, who claimed credit for her work.

Conflict over that issue was cited as one of the reasons they divorced. The Keanes' divorce proceedings went all the way to federal court. At the hearing, Margaret challenged Walter to a "paint-off" and created a painting in front of the judge to prove that she was the artist. Walter declined to paint before the court, citing a sore shoulder. Margaret Keane - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (6)

The Royal Coachman

Probably the most familiar Brook Trout fly pattern there is.

Originally designed as a Coachman imitation, the red floss was wrapped around the body to make the fly more durable against the teeth of Maine brook trout. First designed in 1878 by John Hailey and named by L. C. Orvis, the brother of Orvis founder Charles F. Orvis. -- Orvis

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:55 AM | Your Say (6)

“Republicans need to ask what’s wrong with our business model.”

But just what is the current Republican business model? It really resembles the business model of the Washington Generals, an exhibition basketball team.

The job of the Generals is to play second fiddle to the Harlem Globetrotters. There is logic in this. The reason why the GOP business model is in crisis is that the audience is beginning to suspect the game is fixed. Nobody can plausibly run on “Republican principles” any more. Pledges to cut the bloated bureaucracy, close the borders to illegal immigration or put a stop to endless expansion have a ring of insincerity. Ticket sales are slumping. And the Trotters aren’t even pretending to take the Generals seriously. - - Belmont Club Juggernaut

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (6)

Classy Dame

Rapidly aging professional whore Madonna wound up apologizing profusely and denying she’s a “racist”

after she posted a picture of her 13-year-old son Rocco Ritchie on Instagram and appended it with the hashtag “#disnigga.” Persisting in the delusion that she’s black, the eternally lapsed Catholic then revised her photo comment and told all of the “haters” to get off her “dick.” - - The Week That Perished

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 AM | Your Say (0)

January 19, 2014

Keith Olbermann: "I’ve never fought the word genius when people have said that about me.

But what it is is instinct and a set of skills that are working so fast you don’t know they’re working." Keith also declared

"I have a leafy brain, according to the theory of the leafy brain. I associate things that many people never put together." This sounds like someone's brain on leaves...and a lighter. Olbermann to Esquire Magazine: 'I’ve Never Fought the Word Genius' Applied to Me | NewsBusters

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:26 PM | Your Say (16)

The Posterboy for Marijuana Prohibition

Hey kid, why do you think they call it "dope"?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:07 PM | Your Say (7)

"You'd better know Him, and know His name,"

and know how to call His name. You may not know philosophy.

You may not be able to say with Alfred North Whitehead that He's the Principle of Concretion. You may not be able to say with Hegel and Spinoza that He is the Absolute Whole. You may not be able to say with Plato that He's the Architectonic Good. You may not be able to say with Aristotle that He's the Unmoved Mover. But sometimes you can get poetic about it if you know Him. You begin to know that our brothers and sisters in distant days were right. Because they did know Him as a rock in a weary land, as a shelter in the time of starving, as my water when I'm thirsty, and then my bread in a starving land. - - Martin Luther King, Jr. - Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:54 PM | Your Say (4)

Who Says There's No Good News?

Good News! Men Can Now Wear Jeggings: They come in a variety of colors and fabrics, such as the subdued and classy metallic gold meggings pictured above. How many pairs can I sign you up for? -- Farrier

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (17)

"Academia is a magical world where nothing is truly fixed and everything exists on belief."

Academia has become an alternate world where human relations exist in a mechanical universe governed entirely by identity politics,

where the world is always on the verge of a Green Apocalypse and the only way to make anything work is to route it through the foundational theories of existence. This magical world continually changes in response to new theories bubbling up from trendy publications. The very laws of the universe can be gendered and every historical event can be rewritten by viewing it through the lens of class. Sultan Knish: Academics in Wonderland

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (2)

Because all men must do what I say....

Obama: 'I would not let my son play pro football'

UPDATE from the comments at the link:

"FUNNY: In Barry's world, an adolescent doesn't need her parents' permission to have an abortion, but a father can forbid his (imaginary) adult son from playing professional football."

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

January 18, 2014

This is a blood cell balanced on the head of a pin

This incredible image was captured using a scanning electron microscope. It's been colorized to provide contrast, but this is actually what it would look like if you balanced one red blood cell on a pin. - - io9 [Note the shadow cast.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 PM | Your Say (3)

Compare and contrast: can you even recall the name of Margaret Thatcher's husband?

Collecting Quotes

Feminists are mad that TIME depicted Hillary in a man-crushing-and-emasculating pose as she strides to power.

I agree that it's an inaccurate picture, that's for sure, because actually, a man pulled her along all the way.

Do you think anyone would know who Hillary was if she wasn't married to Bill Clinton?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:47 PM | Your Say (0)

Maybe the Redskins can change their name to the Foreskins?

Comcast accidentally airs Deadspin's version of Cubs Mascot, with penis.... [And with four you get eggroll.]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (3)

Red Planet Pebbles On the Move [Bumped]

Rock mysteriously appears in front of the Mars Opportunity rover | Left: a photo taken 3528 days after the Opportunity rover arrival to Mars. Right: the exact same spot 12 Mars days later. Notice the difference? NASA JPL scientists did too: "It's about the size of a jelly doughnut. It was a total surprise, we were like 'wait a second, that wasn't there before, it can't be right. Oh my god! It wasn't there before!' We were absolutely startled."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:37 AM | Your Say (15)

Taliban, don't let the sun set on you here.

Norwegian Soldiers’ War Chant / Afghanistan

You are the hunters!
You are the predators!
Taliban is the prey!

To Valhall!
To Valhall!
To Valhall!

-- Never Yet Melted

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (7)

Preysicle

There’s a heatwave in Melbourne right now and the zoo lions are being fed frozen blood…The Shirk Report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (3)

Obama is, for a politician,

"Strangers in the night, bromantic strangers...."

a relative loner who doesn’t want to be bugged by members of Congress. Of either Party.

He has no famous chums in Congress. He has few relationships of any sort with lawmakers. Really what he wants to do is make his decisions in the Oval Office, have a few meetings, give some speeches on college campuses and at high schools, and play golf. And then send Jay Carney out to talk about how Republicans are intransigent, politically motivated hacks who don’t even wear deodorant. - - White House Dossier

Illo via Michelle Obama's

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (6)

Breast Gymnastics Hand Massager Sagging bust shape reformer by Takiko Shindo

At the Japan Trend Shop, of course,

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (10)

The 10 Most Worthless College Majors

4. Communications

A communications degree exists to let the world know that you spent four years in a young adult holding cell and managed to attend class at least 40% of the time despite all of the Call of Duty to be played and weed to be smoked. If you ever talk to a communications major, and you ask them what they study, they respond with, "I'm a communications major with a focus in [insert B.S. here]." Real majors don't require this additional information. You don't often hear, "Oh, I'm a law student with a focus on..." Communications | Complex

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (3)

Esquire

Raquel Welch

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

There's text, and subtext, and now paratext....

One screen is plenty..... Increasingly, though, that is a minority opinion.

For many viewers, critics, and scholars, the second (and third, fourth, and fifth) screen is as good as the first. In some quarters, the decorative wraparound material—the term of art is "paratext"—is outshining the prize in the box. The irritating distractions have morphed into the main attractions. The Paratext's the Thing - The Chronicle Review

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (0)

In Washington, journalism is founded on diversity.

This is a good thing, the dangers of a homogeneous press corps being obvious.

Thus in the newsroom of the Washington Post, for example, you find white reporters who all think the same things, black reporters who all think the same things as the white reporters, Jewish, Asian, gay, lesbian, Hispanic, and undecided reporters, who all think the same things. Diversity is their strength. Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:51 AM | Your Say (1)

January 17, 2014

Obama Fans Aren't Even Pretending That Was a Good Speech

Obama gave a eulogy for the Fourth Amendment on Friday, and not even his fans are proclaiming victory.... More and more people seem to be slowly, agonizingly slowly, finally, finally, finally, recognizing what a complete huckster he is when it comes to pretty speeches about his crimes. - - Washington's Blog Party Time for PrezWife

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 PM | Your Say (5)

The Japanese. Nuked too much or not enough?

With its giant fembots, Japan is winning the go-go arms race

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (10)

January 16, 2014

Growing Up Clown by Brandon Ambrosino

I became set on becoming a clown in early childhood.

Although my mom wanted to be a circus clown, her early marriage to my father, and my birth one year later,

limited her clowning to children’s events and church functions. She might not have been a clown for Barnum, but she was certainly a clown for Jesus, committed to laughing her sinful audiences out of their damning stupor. At seven years old, I decided to follow her lead, although, at the time, it didn’t feel like much of a choice. Laughter cackled through my body the way I imagine Liberon wax slinks through the veins of a second-generation antiques dealer. So, following in the footsteps of my mom’s oversized clown shoes, I started attending clown ministry practice on Tuesday nights where, for one hour a week, I learned how best to use mime and slapstick to save someone’s soul from an eternity of damnation. - - Narratively: Human stories, boldly told.

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

Aitzaz Hasan

Aitzaz was a good student according to his family. He was rushing to school and encountered a stranger.

The person, wearing a similar school uniform as theirs, asked for directions. Aitzaz became suspicious, having never seen him at the school before. The stranger began to run and Aitzaz followed in pursuit, tackled the stranger wearing a suicide vest. This person detonated the vest, killing himself and the heroic boy. - - Tim OBrien - Aitzaz Hasan

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:21 PM | Your Say (2)

The postcard contained only two words: “Hurry up.”

John Archibald Wheeler, a 33-year-old physicist, was in Hanford, Wash., working on the nuclear reactor that was feeding plutonium to Los Alamos, when he received the postcard from his younger brother, Joe. It was late summer, 1944. Joe was fighting on the front lines of World War II in Italy. He had a good idea what his older brother was up to. Haunted by His Brother, He Revolutionized Physics - Issue 9: Time - Nautilus

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:20 PM | Your Say (3)

“Because I like it.”

I’m returning to a personal site, which flips everything on its head.

Rather than teasing things apart into silos, I can fuse together different kinds of content. Instead of having fewer sections to attend to distracted and busy individuals, I’ll add more (and hopefully introduce some friction, complexity, and depth) to reward those who want to invest their time. I won’t use analytics—actually, I won’t measure at all. What would I do with that data anyway? In this case, it’s just more noise. The singular thread that runs through everything is only “because I like it.”Frank Chimero On Homesteading 2014

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:03 PM | Your Say (0)

What I don’t get about the Christie scandal, beside almost everything else

“Retribution” and “punishment” must be seen to be retribution and punishment by their target, or else what’s the point. Unless his staffers changed the language on the highway signs to read WE’RE CLOSING THIS BRIDGE TO GET BACK AT JOE BLOW, how would anyone know they just weren’t experiencing a routine traffic tie up? - -- five feet of fury

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

Loafers

When life gives you lemons, make some frikkin lemon bars. or, when you’ve got a coupla day old big country loaves and it’s the day after Halloween, carve em out and make yourself a pair of honest to god LOAFERS. - - joseybakerbread

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (3)

Diamond Verses

Masaoka Shiki, the fourth of Japan’s great haiku masters, is a member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.

spring breeze
this grassy field makes me
want to play catch

like young cats
still ignorant of love
we play with a ball

the trick
to ball catching
the willow in a breeze

– Futility Closet

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

They transform a place, pull up stakes, head to the next territory and transform that.

From where does the passion come? Their vision is toward darkness, incompetence, fear.

On Planet Liberal, next to every nugget of information that could be learned so that some exciting new thing may become possible, there’s a rule saying you’re not allowed to repeat it, or write it down, or learn it in the first place. What drives this sense of commitment toward that, toward defeating human potential? Why this war against productivity? Crabs in a bucket, I suppose?House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (7)

January 15, 2014

Oh. Well, that settles it.

Snooki and JWoww Say Christie Shouldn't Be Impeached

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 PM | Your Say (8)

Cpl. Clifford Wooldridge

As he crouched back behind the wall to reload, he saw the barrel of an enemy machine gun appear from around the wall.

Without hesitation, he dropped his empty weapon and seized the machine gun barrel. He overwhelmed the enemy fighter in hand-to-hand combat, killing him with several blows to the head with the enemy’s own machine gun. | The Patriot Perspective

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:44 PM | Your Say (11)

"Weak men and disorderly women."

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike.

They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things – their occupations, their pleasures, their business. It may readily be conceived, that by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded; and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women. Democracy In America Alexis De Tocqueville

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 PM | Your Say (9)

What Happens When the President Sits Down Next to You at a Cafe

When the president arrived, 40 minutes later—stepping out of his SUV, smiling, with a little wave—the nerves subsided. The cafe is split into two long halves, and he first turned to visit its opposite half, smiling, shaking hands, shaking more hands.

And then—for the first time in nearly an hour—I could work. I found that I was so accustomed to his voice, how he holds his body, his aura, that ignoring him in person is as easy as ignoring a TV. Easier, in fact. He stops being the president and starts being That Guy Who You See In Tweets, That Guy Who Gives Speeches, That Guy. - Robinson Meyer - The Atlantic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 PM | Your Say (8)

Momentum machines

has a machine designed to replace fast food workers capable of serving 360 hamburgers per hour.

The sandwiches emerge fully assembled, with bun, relish, sauce and patty at “gourmet quality”. For it can grind and chop its ingredients fresh. It never forgets to wash up. Always adds the right amount of seasoning — or perhaps the customer would like to adjust it himself. It is designed to replace the armies of low paid workers, for whom a fast food job is an entry level position and — for some — a career. Founded by engineers from Berkeley, Stanford, UCSB, and USC, Momentum is looking to hire a few good people, namely: a mechatronics engineer and a machine vision specialist. Belmont Club » The Fearful Future

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:01 PM | Your Say (8)

"Dynasty, nepotism, simony, a small self-absorbed ruling class of no particular merit awarding itself crucial jobs for reasons of keeping itself in power."

We had Bush I, a mediocrity but no worse, and later Bush II, in whom mediocrity would have been a welcome astonishment.

We had Clinton the First, Bill, who was at least intelligent, then almost had Clinton II, who instead became Secretary of State, for which her only qualification was having been First Basilisk. Hillary lost the presidency to Barack Obama, whose only qualification was being black and reading a teleprompter well. Next we are likely to get Hillary anyway, and before that we almost had Kerry, whose only qualification was having married a pickle heiress. He is now Secretary of State, for no discernible reason.Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:49 PM | Your Say (7)

Wizdum

From: The 15 Most Unintentionally Profound Quotes Ever ｫTwistedSifter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (2)

"The American future will be a struggle between a dwindling minority of hardworking affluent taxpayers and an insurgent underclass of improvident tax-dependents. "

The two national parties seek only to satisfy the interests that put them into office,

which means, in effect, that a majority of American taxpaying citizens have been disenfranchised, and power is nominally transferred to a welfare-dependent underclass, whereas in reality it is the politicians and bureaucrats, working in tandem with the greatest business interests, who monopolize actual power. Even rather rich people are powerless.America: A Growing Servility

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (5)

This Just In

Tired of being known as a "Baldfaced Liar" Jay Carney grows a beard. Illustrations @ The Virginian

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 AM | Your Say (1)

January 14, 2014

The Surprisingly Fascinating History of : The T-Shirt

"In 1904, the Cooper Underwear Company ran a magazine ad announcing a new product for bachelors.

In the “before” photo, a man averts his eyes from the camera as if embarrassed; he has lost all the buttons on his undershirt and has safety-pinned its flaps together. In the “after” photo, a virile gentleman sports a handlebar mustache, smokes a cigar and wears a “bachelor undershirt” stretchy enough to be pulled over the head. 'No safety pins — no buttons — no needle — no thread,' ran the slogan aimed at men with no wives and no sewing skills."  | Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men | Keywords: t-shirt, fabric, history, style

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

Volksrant

Volkskrant Magazine (Amsterdam, Pays-Bas /...

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 PM | Your Say (3)

Elephant

Elephant (Amsterdam, Pays-Bas / The Netherlands) | Magazines

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 PM | Your Say (3)

The New Yorker

The New Yorker | Magazines

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 PM | Your Say (3)

First World Problem #32,676: "Colorado Pot Growers Struggle to Meet High Demand"

At The Clinic in South Denver, a sign greeted visitors reading: “We are currently out of recreational cannabis. Please check back tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience.” - Modern Farmer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:43 PM | Your Say (7)

First World Problem #32,675: "Wash. state faces prospect of too many pot growers " [Bumped]

More than 2,600 applications have been submitted to produce the marijuana that will be sold at state-licensed stores when Washington's legal marijuana industry opens for business around the middle of this year.

That's a problem because officials are, at least initially, capping total pot production at 2 million square feet, or about 46 acres. It remains to be seen how many applications are approved, but if it's even close to the number submitted, that could leave growers with less than 1,000 square feet apiece on average - not enough space for most to run an economically viable operation. - DC News FOX 5 DC WTTG

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:40 PM | Your Say (7)

This Scoop Just Breaking In Extra, Extra, Read All About It

Chris Christie's Staff Blames Bridge Closing on Anti-Islam Video

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I’m on the phone live with former Secretary of State Clinton. Thank you for calling, Madam Secretary.

HILLARY: Oh, my pleasure Chris.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Madam Secretary, what was your initial reaction when you heard the Christie people are blaming a YouTube video for the George Washington bridge lane closings?

HILLARY: Oh gosh, Chris. Not only is it shameful to blame a harmless video that nobody has seen for the massacre on that bridge, but to hide behind a lie in order to avoid responsibility is … well, it’s unconscionable.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Amazing isn’t it, Madam Secretary?

HILLARY: What kind of people are capable of such acts of cowardice, Chris? It’s deplorable, inexcusable and frankly, it’s un- American.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:30 PM | Your Say (1)

“Stoner Road Trip”

2 slices bread

1 spoonful smooth peanut butter

1 spoonful crunchy peanut butter

1 spoonful jam

1 spoonful apple butter

1 spoonful Nutella

1 spoonful Marshmallow Fluff

- -Sandwich #217 @ 300 Sandwiches

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (4)

Satellite bills can easily breach the $100 a month figure, or easily more than $1,200 a year

A ninety percentage penetration rate

means there is not going to be any growth in subscribing. Indeed the only way forward is down. Fewer subscribers, fewer viewers. And a yearly cost of $1,200 or more makes cutting cable or satellite attractive. Even for those with jobs, downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on necessities (courtesy of QE forever, thanks Mr. Fed!) will inexorably cause people to dump cable. The Return of Mass Media? | whiskeysplace

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (4)

As granny often said, "People in the desert want ice water."

Relax, it's a beach in the Balkans.

Comfort Zone by Tadao Cern:"During our everyday life we attempt to hide our deficiencies, both physical and psychological. But once we find ourselves on a beach, we forget about everything and start acting in an absolutely different manner. Is that because everyone else around is doing the same? If yes, I would love for the same rules to apply beyond the borders of the beach."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (4)

Backpack Cannon

Smith & Wesson Unveils Backpack Cannon | Kit Up! Revolvers have long been replaced by high-capacity semi-auto for self defense, but they still make nice companions if you like camping where the critters are big enough to eat you.

From the comments: "I did have to draw on a large bear only a few years ago. He saw me first."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (6)

And Away They Go.... [Bumped]

State leaders closely watch migrating millionaires - SF Chronicle Lee Schneider, a hedge fund salesman

who works from home, also cited Prop. 30 as the "deciding factor" for his move from Walnut Creek to Austin, Texas, in 2012. The California native had recently built a $2 million house at the foot of Mount Diablo and took a loss on the sale, but "I can make half of it back in one year of tax savings," hesays. Schneider's neighborhood in Texas, which has no state income tax, is full of cars with license-plate frames from California dealerships.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (15)

January 13, 2014

Our post-modern dildocracy, with all its hedonism, cannot deny its misery.

Though degeneracy has always existed, what we are witnessing today is something quite different.

We are actually living in a culture that worships downfall. The music industry glorifies hedonism. Television glorifies hedonism. Advertisements glorify hedonism. The young and stupid easily fall influence, and we now have come to an age where high-school twerk teams are a reality. Where gender is a “choice.” Where nirvana has been replaced by drug use. Where we have sex before we ask names. Where poverty is culture. Where ancestry means nothing. Life Absurd | The Right Stuff

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:17 PM | Your Say (5)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:37 PM | Your Say (3)

Another hard fact about government health care

Taxpayers Paid Nearly $175M for Penis Pumps Between 2006 and 2011: Taxpayers paid nearly $175 million for vacuum erection systems (VES), commonly known as “penis pumps,” from 2006 to 2011, according to an inspector general report released on Monday. The federal government paid more than double the retail price for VES, the Department of Health and Human Services IG found.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:54 PM | Your Say (10)

“Negotiated prices”

between mammoth pharmaceutical companies

and equally mammoth insurance companies and government agencies produce mammoth prices. The don’t produce itty-bitty prices. And since the prices are so gigantic, is Maryland is going to pay for fewer of them? Does this mean the X-Rays will be charged at seventy three bucks? Or are they simply going to order only 1/7th the number of $517 X-Rays to stay within the budget? Belmont Club ｻ Ersatz

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:11 PM | Your Say (4)

100,000 Stars

Is only the beginning; is only the very local neighborhood. Take the tour in the upper left.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:39 PM | Your Say (1)

Who Says There's No Good News?

Deaths from Airplane Crashes Are Lower Than They've Ever Been - The Wire Nervous flyers will be relieved to learn that last year was the safest ever in terms of airliner crash fatalities, with only 265 casualties out of roughly 31 million flights throughout the world, compared to a ten-year average of 720 annually. That's the fewest number of fatalities on record. It was also the second-safest year in terms of deadly plane crashes, 29 in 2013, compared to 32 on average.

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

"If you like your beard, you can keep her. Period."

From The Australian: "Rumors of marriage problems threaten to overshadow Michelle Obama's 50th birthday." Don Surber Scoreboard

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:11 PM | Your Say (6)

Tain't Funny McGee

Vox Popoli: Hollywood's favorite monster -- Ronan Farrow adds on Twitter: "Missed the Woody Allen tribute - did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?" Woody Allen isn't funny. He's grotesque. He's ugly. He's a whiny little sexually obsessed monster. His films are tedious, unimaginative, and narcissistic. And he's a child molester. The fact that Hollywood sees in him a man worthy of receiving its tribute tells you all you need to know about that depraved Gomorrah.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (6)

Nobody can ever be forced into having a party

Sorry, Google , We Still Won't Come to Your Party Every time I visit Google , sad to say,

there's an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I associate the service with accidentally clicking the wrong button in Gmail or Google Calendar or Google Maps, or being forced to sign in for some random reason. It's like going to the DMV. You can dress it up as nicely as you like, it's still the DMV.

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

Fish Sticks

It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry/ The sun so hot I froze to death; Susanna, don't you cry.

The sea froze so fast that it killed thousands of fish instantly

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

The overall trend line for the West is not positive.

Having just a few years ago defeated Soviet Communism, our greatest existential threat since, well, I don't know, the Golden Horde,

perhaps, we now find ourselves defeating ourselves. In an effort to "combat" Islamic crazies, for example, we have, for politically correct reasons, refused to focus our energies on the enemy, i.e., the Islamic crazies, and instead destroy our civil liberties and traditions of freedom. The DiploMad 2.0

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:04 AM | Your Say (3)

January 12, 2014

'My brother Toby,' quoth she, 'is going to be married to Mrs. Wadman.'

'Then he will never,' quoth my father, 'be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.' 'Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 PM | Your Say (3)

The Hunts Were Especially Exciting If Not Always Well Attended

The 'Nutcracker Man' Diet: Extinct Species Of Early Human Survived on 'Tiger Nuts,'

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

Ultimate Super Bowl Snack Stadium

| Incredible Things Heather may be A Lil Curious, but she’s A Lot Generous

— she’s provided a tutorial so you can make one yourself! There are tons of tasty snacks: corn dogs, pizza, wings, fried mozzerella sticks, jalapeno poppers, quesadillas, pigs in a blanket, taquitos, meats and cheeses, guac, salsa, bean dip, some candy for good measure, and more. I love how the broccoli has been banished to outside the stadium… WHERE IT BELONGS.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (4)

Native American Design

Horse mask probably Siksika Blackfoot (attributed) 1830-1860 Alberta; Canada (inferred) - Buffalo hide/skin, buffalo horn, glass bead/beads, glass pony beads, brass button/buttons, brass tacks/bosses, human hair, horsehair, porcupine quills, feather/feathers, silk ribbon, wool cloth, ermine skin/fur, cotton cloth, paint, sinew

More at Native American Design: Observatory: Design Observer

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (0)

Gender-Neutral Dating

“Trans*” I am reliably informed, is the new, more inclusive way of referring in writing to the phenomenon of transsexualism,

or as the ever-helpful FAQ at “Ask a Trans Woman” explains: “Trans, sans asterisk, has a tendency to mean gender-binary folk (trans men and trans women, often by the DSM-IV, GID definition of the words.) Trans* is more inclusive.” It is getting difficult to keep up. | National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (6)

Homeless man wanders into White House, gives press briefing

Via Doug Ross @ Journal:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (4)

January 11, 2014

Going for the Bronze

If he selects one of the four Bronze plans (whose average monthly premium is $453), Joe qualifies for $452 in average monthly subsidies

—meaning that, regardless of which Bronze plan he chooses, he will pay a monthly premium of exactly $1. You read that correctly. The very same healthcare plan that would cost you $453 per month, is available to Joe for $1 per month—i.e., the cost of three oatmeal-raisin cookies at your local Subway sandwich shop. Over the course of a year, you will pay a total of $5,436 in policy premiums, while Joe, who sadly failed to qualify for free healthcare through Medicaid, will pay his own fair share of $12. This is all in the interest of social justice, you understand. -- FrontPage Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 PM | Your Say (5)

Where Do Rich Black People Live?

1. View Park-Windsor Hills, California is the most affluent black community to date with an average income of $159, 168. The area is the single largest geographically middle and upper-class black community in the U.S. With a population of 11,075, over 9,000 of the residents are African American. | Your Black World

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 PM | Your Say (6)

The Pasta Theory of Memory & Your Personal Beginning of Time

Every one of us has a personal “beginning of time,” the first events we recall from our lives.

Some of them are happy, some traumatic, some associated with specific events, others more with sensations. One of my favorite examples was the story of a woman who remembered getting her legs caught in a railing when she was 2. Her mother tried greasing her legs with butter to get them out. When that didn’t work, a neighbor brought a saw to take out one of the rails. That scared her enough to wiggle out by herself. - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus

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

Legacy BY AMIRI BARAKA

(For Blues People)

In the south, sleeping against
the drugstore, growling under
the trucks and stoves, stumbling
through and over the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night. Frowning
drunk waving moving a hand or lash.
Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting
a hand rest in shadows. Squatting
to drink or pee. Stretching to climb
pulling themselves onto horses near
where there was sea (the old songs
lead you to believe). Riding out
from this town, to another, where
it is also black. Down a road
where people are asleep. Towards
the moon or the shadows of houses.
Towards the songs’ pretended sea.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (10)

Peter Shulman's Forever War

The battles on the new farm take place on wooded hills. One side defends the hills, the other attacks.

Moving the armies across the streams and up the hills is lots of fun and pausing to sit and just listen to the running stream and watch the animals is truly enjoyable. At the end of each day of war gaming, I record briefly what occurred in an after action report. At the end of each season I write a fairly detailed history of that summer's war. In this way, I have a record of who did what, which friends won or lost battles, which pilots scored kills, which were shot down. These records help generate promotion lists and have created over the years, histories of different officers' participation in the wars. The equipment levels of the two sides continue to grow. There are over twelve hundred (1400) jet aircraft in 1/48 scale and more than three thousand five hundred (3,700) vehicles in 1/35 and 1/32 scale. Every year about one hundred new pieces of equipment are added. At this time, in January, 2012, there are seven hundred and fifty two (752) named friends and acquaintances in my army and approximately sixty thousand (60,000) sculpted clay figures. The Story

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:14 AM | Your Say (2)

Interlude

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

The Tough Guy

Today, former PM Ariel Sharon passed away. He was a courageous leader & defender of Israel. May his memory be blessed IDF (IDFSpokesperson) on Twitter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (7)

The essential aspects of democracy

Mr Winston Churchill: The essential aspects of democracy are the freedom of the individual, within the framework of laws passed by Parliament, to order his life as he pleases, and the uniform enforcement of tribunals independent of the executive. The laws are based on Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the Petition of Right and others. Without this foundation there can be no freedom or civilisation, anyone being at the mercy of officials and liable to be spied upon and betrayed even in his own home. As long as these rights are defended, the foundations of freedom are secure. I see no reason why democracies should not be able to defend themselves without sacrificing these fundamental values. Churchill Interview from January 1939

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (1)

Signs of the Apocalypse: This vending machine makes burritos

The Shirk Report Volume 248

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (7)

Girl in a Lilac-Coloured Dress with Bouquet of Flowers Eugene de Blaas (1843-1932)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:52 AM | Your Say (0)

A Clear and Present Danger

President Obama is a frontman, a well selected salesman for an ideology that has never been successful anywhere in the world. He’s just another in the long list of Marxist/socialist “cool” sounding despots who have given us mass graves and national collapse. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, President Barack Hussein Obama represents a clear and present danger to this Constitutional Republic we call America. - - Allen B. West

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:18 AM | Your Say (7)

January 10, 2014

The purveyors of the utopian vision would have us believe they are doing us a favour

by facing down the monocled toffs, mega-bonus bankers and goose-stepping genocide enthusiasts who are out to get us.

But while we are free to snub these right-wing bogeymen, they give us no such choice. They are tolerant of everything, save dissent. And anyway, they’re the puppet masters now. Their anti-establishment poses are meaningless, because they are the establishment. They are not sticking it to the man, because they are the man. It’s cognitive dissonance gone ape. They sit on the bridge of the progressive Death Star and lecture us on peace, humility and free love, seemingly oblivious to the absurd juxtaposition. - - We Are the Radicals Now

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

The Fourth State of Matter

In the porch light the trees shiver, the squirrels turn over in their sleep.

The Milky Way is a long smear on the sky, like something erased on a blackboard. Over the neighbor’s house, Mars flashes white, then red, then white again. Jupiter is hidden among the anonymous blinks and glitterings. It has a moon with sulfur-spewing volcanoes and a beautiful name: Io. I learned it at work, from the group of men who surround me there. Space physicists, guys who spend days on end with their heads poked through the fabric of the sky, listening to the sounds of the universe. Guys whose own lives are ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us are aware of it yet. -- Jo Ann Beard: The Fourth State of Matter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 PM | Your Say (0)

Show No Enthusiasm; Don't Complain

Winter came like a postcard a long time ago.

The snow drifted down in slow motion, the big, fat flakes parachuting in and accumulating gently on the frosted earth. There was a lot, all at once, and in the morning the birdhouse wore a pope's hat, and the birdbath was a cheesecake. The sun shone and the trees wore their coat of flakes like ermine. Then the rain came. Sippican Cottage

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

Academia is better called Doomedemia…

everything leads to disaster… are these the people we really want making policy, rules, laws, and so on? has everyone not realized that these people are afraid of the implication of everything? they don't like the free market, that's chaos and can't be good… don't like guns… don't like kids thinking of guns… don't like religion, maybe god don't like them… don't like nature, it's going to kill them.. don't like living, it will also be the death of them… don't like food, its all toxic… don't like sex, too boring without perversion… and on it goes… on it goes.... Comment at neo-neocon Robert Frost on the science is settled

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

“Lots of health policy experts have always feared”, which sounds suspiciously like “and they knew all along”.

They knew all along that enrollees would take a number and wait.

But now that everyone is here, or will soon be cajoled and hornswoggled inside, listen to a recorded message from a mid-level professional on work-life balance while u-wait or until someone sees you “eventually”. But they’ll get quality care. Did you know for example, that among the essential features built into some Obamacare policies is acupuncture? Bet you didn’t have that in your old bare-bones policy.... Acupuncture, massage therapy, mid-level professionals, all at your beck and call. Doctors not so much. Belmont Club » Kinda Funny But Kinda Sad

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 PM | Your Say (3)

Crowdsourcing the End of Free Speech

The morality mob is attracted to pettiness. It rarely takes on big things because it knows its own weakness.

The morality mobs on the internet are mostly of the left. That is because the left is better at organization and rhetoric. It also holds the commanding heights of social morality dictating what behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Morality mobs crowdsource the left's values enforcement. While its activist groups concern themselves with Phil Robertson, its morality mobs band together to target ordinary people. Sultan Knish:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 PM | Your Say (1)

Word

HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 PM | Your Say (11)

An unaffiliated Christian

I have been a baptised and confirmed member of the Church of England, or an Anglican

- but have come to regard the CoE as gone over to the Dark Side so far and so fully that it would be counterproductive to maintain my erstwhile loyalty to the institution. In a sense I remain loyal to the best of the CoE and to the historical church - but that best is now so small and feeble a thing - compared with the size and dominance of the evil element - that in practice it means little. Bruce Charlton's Miscellany: What is the status of non-denominational/ unaffiliated Christians?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:01 PM | Your Say (6)

"Free from Fashionable Lies"

A Poet Reflects, Let me be plain with you, dear reader. I am an...

Let me be plain with you, dear reader.
I am an old-fashioned man. I like
the world of nature despite its mortal
dangers. I like the domestic world
of humans, so long as it pays its debts
to the natural world, and keeps its bounds.
I like the promise of Heaven. My purpose
is a language that can pay just thanks
and honor of those gifts, a tongue
set free from fashionable lies.
-- €”Wendell Berry, opening strophe to "€œSome Further Words"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:43 PM | Your Say (0)

Cover Story

Update from comments: "It's amazing (well, maybe not) how the MSM can pick up this story as the lead item at full volume, but cannot bring itself to break a sweat over the IRS scandal, ObamaCare, Benghazi, Fast & Furious, Obama's transcripts, Iran, Syria, etc, etc, ..." -- Darkwater

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (11)

Ink sessions

Roxx’s workstation occupies a back corner of the shop that can be partitioned off with sliding doors. She sits on the edge of her chair, elbows on her knees, talking with increasing animation as the late morning coffee kicks in. Soothing electronica fills the space, softening the buzz of machines wielded by two artists, Michael Bennett and Matt Matik, who chat amiably with their prone clients. – Margot Mifflin – Aeon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (0)

Hysteria by T. S. Eliot

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.

I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ...” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end. - - The Poetry Foundation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (0)

Obama's Uncle Probably Not Fed To Hungry Dogs

The story reported that Barack Obama was getting increasingly frustrated with his two feckless relatives,

who lived in the U.S. illegally, didn't pay taxes, sponged off America's housing, healthcare and welfare systems under multiple names, incessantly complained, got arrested repeatedly, and caused all kinds of trouble, thus tarnishing his otherwise impeccable reputation and stellar political career, which was why Obama decided to feed them to the dogs. That turns out to be not true: latest reports indicate that Uncle Omar and Auntie Zeituni are still receiving government assistance. People's Cube

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 AM | Your Say (1)

"Five Surprising Benefits From China's Haze."

Public square in Beijing

The report described five good things about the air pollution. In summary:

It's a unifier. Complaining about the smog has brought Chinese citizens together. It's egalitarian. Everyone, rich and poor alike, has to breathe the same filthy air. "With the whole world playing up the Chinese miracle, the pollution reminds us that China's status as 'the world's factory' is not without a price." It's generated some humor, making people laugh. It's made citizens more knowledgeable about meteorology, geography, physics, chemistry, and history. It's even improved their English, adding words like "haze" and "smog" to their vocabularies. Radio Derb Transcript

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

Abraham Lincoln's speech to 14 Indian chiefs:

Steve Sailer: iSteve: "We pale-faced people think that this world is a great round ball". " There is a great difference between this palefaced people and their red brethren, both as to numbers and the way in which they live."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (0)

“You own your own words.” Stewart Brand

Brand’s credo, which popped up on the opening screen, was “You own your own words.” In other words, you were accountable and responsible for what you posted.

That policy produced a more civilized discourse than exists now on most online sites. As Plato taught in his story about the Ring of Gyges that makes its wearer invisible, people may succumb to evil when they think they cannot be held responsible. It was a lesson that Scout, the young narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird, learned when the lynch mob arrived at the jail; when she recognized the ringleader and called him by name, the mob backed down. Jimmy Soni, the managing editor of the Huffington Post, cited that anecdote when it decided in 2013 to resurrect the model of The WELL and eliminate anonymity in its comment boards. The Birth of Online — Medium

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (0)

Can’t do mean things to a black guy who’s running something and fucking it up.

Ssssssh, don't be rude: "It seems our society lately is losing the ability to carry out a vision; to evaluate results. How did Clint Eastwood put it: “When somebody does not do the job, we got to let him go[.]“ That sentiment did not prevail in the last election. And yet Obama’s supporters were not saying, in large measure, “He is doing the job.” Their message was more like: He’s trying really, really, super hard, and it’s taking a long time because things are so, so, so very messed up. That is what carried the day." -- House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 AM | Your Say (3)

Like watching a clock tick

Can you imagine how bored those of us who saw through him 5 years ago are? HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:34 AM | Your Say (1)

"My Card"

Like A Boss: Chinese Tycoon Wants to Buy NYT, Hands Out Epic Business Card: "I'm very good at working with Jews."

Reminds me of ye olde ....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (3)

Winner and Losers

Winner: Jay Leno,'Now That Christie Is Denying Everything He Sounds Even More Presidential'

Loser: Piers Morgan & CNN: Christie Traffic Jam Scandal ‘Worse than Nixon and Watergate’

Loser: CNN Legal Analyst: 'It's All Over for Chris Christie' "Done. Over. Absolutely."

Loser:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (9)

January 9, 2014

Over 400 Million Served

7 years ago today Steve Jobs launched the 1st iPhone to the World. Since then over 400million iPhones have been sold.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 PM | Your Say (12)

20 Kids Who Are Totally Winning at the Game Of Hide And Seek

19 more right here at Bored Panda

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 PM | Your Say (3)

Crime of the Young Century

Okla. man accused of killing stepfather with 'atomic wedgie' - - Police said Brad Lee Davis got into a drunken family fight with his stepfather in which he grabbed the man’s underwear, pulled it over his head, and suffocated him with the waistband.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 PM | Your Say (1)

The dreams of readers

When we open a book, it seems that we really do enter, so far as our brains are concerned, a new world

— one conjured not just out of the author’s words but out of our own memories and desires — and it is our cognitive immersion in that world that gives reading its rich emotional force. Psychologists draw a distinction between two kinds of emotions that can be inspired by a work of art. There are the “aesthetic emotions” that we feel when we view art from a distance, as a spectator: a sense of beauty or of wonder, for instance, or a feeling of awe at the artist’s craft or the work’s unity. These are the emotions that Montaigne likely had in mind when he spoke of reading’s languid pleasure. - - | ROUGH TYPE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:42 PM | Your Say (1)

10 strange ways to stop you from overeating

3. Use tall glasses instead of short fat ones (ok, that's just physics, but good point.)

4. Place mirrors in your kitchen and fridge door (shame yourself, clever.)

5. Chew fruit-flavored gum when you feel hungry (mint flavor is not as good.) @ Sploid

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:38 PM | Your Say (3)

The Bone House

In 2010, the Austrian photographer Paul Kranzler began photographing at the beinhaus in the village of Hallstatt.

“A beinhaus (bone house), or charnel house, is the place at a church or graveyard where the bones of the deceased are kept after exhumation,” he explained. “As a child, I visited the ossuary, with its painted skulls, one of the strangest places I have ever been—a mystic and very silent place.” - - Paul Kranzler's Photographs of an Austrian Bone House

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (1)

The Week of Eating Celery (+ Soap Reflections)

The next seven days are called The Week of Eating Celery. So declares my wife.

All the leftover cookies, cake, and candy has disappeared. Seriously disappeared – as in gone with the garbage or out to feed birds. A careful mid-night search of hiding places made this clear to me. No sense asking my wife what’s going on or why. The irrational exuberance of holiday feasting is over. Celery it is. Robert Fulghum, Recent Entries

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (1)

How Cold Is It? Ladies and Gentlemen, Niagara [Doesn't] Falls

Niagara Falls FREEZES as polar vortex sees record-breaking temperatures

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 AM | Your Say (7)

Now Your Snowballs Have a Chance

This tingly cold pair of underwear will make your sperm swim better. The Snowballs underwear

is made from organic cotton and cools with freezable gel packs in a wedge shape made of Carboxymethyl Cellulose Sodium. Here's how Snowball describes it: They are designed with a central hinge that cleverly molds the SnowWedge™ around your body to reach maximum surface area and maximum cooling. Unlike normal icepacks, they won't get you wet, and you won't have to sit there holding ice for hours.

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

"Baby, it's [Global Warming] Outside"

"The Arctic is warming up because hot air rises. That hot air is displacing the cold air at the North Pole because cold hair is heavier and falls to the south." Via Jimmy J in comments

Continue to Remind the Alarmists that It’s Cold Out. They Deserve It : Without fail, every single global warming alarmist (and, thus, every single media outlet) screams GLOBAL WARMING at the top of their lungs

at every adverse weather event that doesn’t involve simple cold. A tornado touches down on top of a school? GLOBAL WARMING. (Never you mind that the total number of tornadoes hit record lows in 2013.) A hurricane demolishes New Orleans? GLOBAL WARMING. (Ignore that the hurricane in question was a mere category 3 when it made landfall and the city’s levees had been weakened by decades of incompetent management. Also ignore that the total number of hurricanes is way down.) Heat wave? GLOBAL WARMING. (Because before 1990 there was never a heat wave, ever.) Snowstorms? GLOBAL WARMING. (No. Seriously.) I assume someone somewhere is arguing that the polar vortex making everything really cold also proves that global warming is real. I don’t have the strength to Google it.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (8)

The Innocence of Liberals

Americans died in Benghazi for the same reason that American hostages

had been taken in Iran and for the same reason that Leon Klinghoffer had been murdered on the Achille Lauro and US Marines had died in Beirut. They died because their government had appeased Muslims, had given their terrorist groups hope that they could achieve their aims if they killed enough people, had saved them at the moment of their greatest weakness and had elevated them to power. The innocence of Obama is intertwined with the innocence of Muslims. - - Sultan Knish:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 AM | Your Say (3)

The Mania

Fran and Dan Keller freed: Two of the last victims of satanic ritual abuse panic. With coaxing from her mother and her therapist, Donna David-Campbell, whom Christy had been seeing to deal with acting-out issues,

an incident of spanking turned into something much worse—Dan Keller, the little girl said, had defecated on her head and raped her with a pen. From there, the stories Christy told David-Campbell became wilder: The Kellers “had everyone take off their clothes and had a parrot that pecked them in the pee-pee,” they made her smoke a cigarette, they “came to her house with a chainsaw and cut her dog Buffy in the vagina until it bled.” David-Campbell concluded not that Christy was an imaginative child having trouble with her parents’ divorce, but that she was the victim of ritual abuse.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 AM | Your Say (6)

The Japanese. Nuked too much or not enough?

A Visit to Japan's Bunny Cafes: You can see that the bunny area is populated with little, um, pellets.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:29 AM | Your Say (2)

NRA to Salute Obama as "The Greatest Gun Salesman of All Time!"

Obama backfires, gun sales in 2013 smash all records

Although he failed to get any of the gun bans or government registrations passed on the federal level, he was successful in one area. His actions convinced millions of Americans to buy more firearms than any time in history. The FBI reported that it performed an astounding 21,093,273 background checks for the year ending Dec. 31. In fact, eight of the top 10 highest weeks ever for National Instant Background Check System (NICS) checks were in 2013 (the other two were during Dec. 2012.)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:25 AM | Your Say (4)

Problems with Gaia

This just in from the vigilant folks at my fine host company:

The Gaia server is experiencing a variety of issues, leading to high loads, services failing, and general annoyances. Based on the logging, it appears to be a combination of hardware issues creating this storm, which is not of the temporary polar vortex variety. [SERVERS] Gaia emergency moves ← Hosting Matters Status Page

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:15 AM | Your Say (0)

January 8, 2014

No Cuntry for Old Men

Novelist's Ex In Bizarre Handgun Threat Arrest: Cormac McCarthy's former wife pulled weapon from her vagina. [Blame Rob]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:13 PM | Your Say (3)

Public Notice

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:11 PM | Your Say (10)

Questions We Never Tire of Asking

What roles might linguistic arbitrariness play in Krazy Kat?

This time, when Krazy throws the brick, it says Jazzzz. And when Brick hits Ignatz, the sound is MBOB.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:38 PM | Your Say (1)

The Dagwood

Cross-Sections of Sandwiches by Jon Chonko ｫTwistedSifter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:23 PM | Your Say (0)

Nice Little Town You Got. Wouldn't Want Any Traffic to Happen to It

You always suspected that inside Chris Christie was a fat asshole wanting to get out. Now you know: Top Christie aide to Port Authority: 'Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee' - NorthJersey.com

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Bridget Anne Kelly, one of three deputies on Christie’s senior staff, wrote to David Wildstein, a top Christie executive at the Port Authority, on Aug. 13, about three weeks before the closures. Wildstein, the official who ordered the closures and who resigned last month amid the escalating scandal, wrote back: “Got it.”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 AM | Your Say (13)

Call for Votes

polls

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (7)

You need this bacon saver

Emson 9212 Bacon Saver and Storage Container : Amazon.com : Home & Kitchen

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (7)

Details Please

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (6)

Come In by Robert Frost

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music -- hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went --
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.

"Grief and reason are language’s most efficient fuel—or, if you will, poetry’s indelible ink.

Frost’s reliance on them… almost gives you the sense that his dipping into this inkpot had to do with the hope of reducing the level of its contents; you detect a sort of vested interest on his part. Yet the more one dips into it, the more it brims with this black essence of existence, and the more one’s mind, like one’s fingers, gets soiled by this liquid. For the more there is of grief, the more there is of reason. -- Joseph Brodsky

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (0)

The ‘Trickle-Down’ Lie

Let’s do something completely unexpected: Let’s stop and think.

Why would anyone advocate that we “give” something to A in hopes that it would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not give it to B and cut out the middleman? But all this is moot, because there was no trickle-down theory about giving something to anybody in the first place. The “trickle-down” theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories — including J.A. Schumpeter’s monumental “History of Economic Analysis,” more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type. Thomas Sowell HT: Morgan

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

Not So Fast, Fido: Problems the Canine Poop Compass

Do Dogs Poop In Alignment With The Earth’s Magnetic Field? | William M. Briggs Then there were problems with the dogs.

What in the world happened with “M07″, a 40-kilogram 4-year-old male Borzoi, who during the course of this most scientific study peed 2,478 times? Why, “M63″, a 25-kg 5-year-old Husky-Australian Shepherd mix, didn’t pee at all—though he pooped 46 times. The average looks to be (I did this by eye) around 50, um, efforts. All the authors said about this was that, sometimes, M07 was “analyzed separately”.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:10 AM | Your Say (4)

Good Question

Woman pulled silver handgun from her genitals in row with boyfriend over space aliens:

McCarthy left the couple's home on Aventura Road in Santa Fe following the row but then returned, changed into her lingerie, before performing a sex act with the gun. He claims she then asked: 'Who is crazy, you or me?'

HT: rob

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (2)

January 7, 2014

That Wascally Wabbit, "Polar Vortex"

Ed Driscoll » Time Magazine Swings Both WaysIn 1974, Time Magazine blamed the cold polar vortex on global cooling.

‘Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world.’ Another Ice Age? – TIME

Forty years later, Time Magazine blames the cold polar vortex on global warming

‘But not only does the cold spell not disprove climate change, it may well be that global warming could be making the occasional bout of extreme cold weather in the U.S. even more likely. Right now much of the U.S. is in the grip of a polar vortex, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a whirlwind of extremely cold, extremely dense air that forms near the poles.’ Polar Vortex: Climate Change Could Be the Cause of Record Cold Weather | TIME.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 PM | Your Say (6)

Victim told to “shut the (expletive) up and mind his own business.”

Brother arrested in fight over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

The victim told police that his brother, Jerome Davis, “made three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ate them in the living room. Within the next hour, the suspect made another three of these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bringing his total consumption of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to six. This angered the victim…”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:28 PM | Your Say (3)

How Cold Was It? Ladies and Gentlemen, the Great Lakes

NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured a Midwestern wintertime "White Out" at 2015 UTC/3:15 p.m. EST on January 6, 2014.

Blowing snow and intensely cold air created dangerous white-out conditions over the Midwest, particularly around the Great Lakes, where daytime temperatures averaged -20F with a wind chill near -50F. Satellite Sees a Midwest White Out | NASA

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:11 PM | Your Say (3)

The fate of a crowd is the fate of all.

So-called "holding centers" are crowds. Depression-era resettlement co-ops were crowds.

Labor and extermination camps in occupied Europe and the Soviet Union were crowds. Also notice a police state believes it's entitled to disperse or even attack a peaceful crowd that resists "crowd control". The constitutional guarantee of 'freedom of assembly' is now freedom of closely watched and supervised assembly. ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Unwise Position for Taking Pictures of War

War Photographer, 1919 Second Lt. Paul Weir Cloud, still operator, photographic unit with 89th Division. Near Kyllburg, Germany, January 16, 1919.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (4)

Growing up unvaccinated:

A healthy lifestyle couldn’t prevent many childhood illnesses. As healthy as my lifestyle seemed,

I contracted measles, mumps, rubella, a type of viral meningitis, scarlatina, whooping cough, yearly tonsillitis, and chickenpox. In my 20s I got precancerous HPV and spent six months of my life wondering how I was going to tell my two children under the age of 7 that Mummy might have cancer before it was safely removed.

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

How Nutty Is Bill de Blasio?

Mayor De Blasio's Horse Policy Is a Pile of Manure:

If historians debate whether Caligula’s apocryphal attempt to make his horse a consul of Rome signified serious mental illness or was just the emperor’s idea of a joke, contemporary New Yorkers should have no doubt that their new mayor, Bill de Blasio, is nuttier than a squirrel’s turd.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (3)

The Brand New Warming Threat: The Polar Vortex[!]

Whatever it is that keeps the polar vortex vortexed in the Arctic Circle is vanishing,

and that cold air is coming to us. Normally it stays up there. But now it's down here. How did it get here? That's the deepening mystery. That is the crisis. That is what is man-made. Man is destroying the invisible boundaries that keeps that air up there. How did it get cold in previous winters? Well, it got cold in previous winters, but, see, as far as most people are concerned, this is as cold as it's ever been in their lives. Left Creates "Polar Vortex" to Make You Think Winter is Caused by Global Warming

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (6)

Sounds legit

Man claims to have the body of 'BIGFOOT' whom he lured with pork ribs from Walmart

[ "The excitement surrounding Mr Dyer's claims is tempered somewhat by the fact that he was involved in a Bigfoot hoax back in 2008. Back then, as now, he claimed he had the body of Bigfoot. But The National Geographic reported that, once the frozen body began to thaw, the body turned out to be nothing more than a rubber ape suit."]

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

What happens if instead of facing LEO and the military head-on,

one were to direct their efforts towards the bureaucracy,

which I can tell you, is a soft, soft target indeed? How long would it take to get those folks to quit showing up for work? As the gears of financial collections and stifling regulations ground to an abrupt halt, wouldn’t the leadership then be compelled to turn their spear point into a shield for their paper-pushing grunts? -- VolkStudio Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (2)

January 6, 2014

Finally, brethren,

whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Philippians 4:8 -- Motto @ Mme Scherzo

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:25 PM | Your Say (4)

"Legalize It, Don't Criticize It, Legalize It and I Will Advertise It"

Sensible on Weed | National Review Online Launching 17 million “Rocky Mountain High” jokes, Colorado has become the first state to make the prudent choice of legalizing the consumption and sale of marijuana, thus dispensing with the charade of medical restrictions and recognizing the fact that, while some people smoke marijuana to counter the effects of chemotherapy, most people smoke marijuana to get high — and that is not the worst thing in the world. Soon all world be dis, mon.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:32 PM | Your Say (4)

Who Says There's No Good News?

Powerful Supervolcano Beneath Yellowstone National Park Could Wipe Out Civilization

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:04 PM | Your Say (8)

"Yet dangerous crowds remain. Cities, for one."

All cities have absolute, no kidding no-go zones where the life expectancy of an ingenue is measured in parts of a city block.

No surprise, the top three are in Detroit. These places exist because, incredibly, the "victim class" has insisted it be disarmed through force of law, to protect the "thugga class" from unconscionable risk, apparently. It's politically incorrect to say this, but in matters of life or death, too bad: demographics are an obvious and reliable tip-off. It's what the phrase "being in the wrong place" means. And there is no "right time" to be in the wrong place. ol remus and the woodpile report

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 AM | Your Say (4)

Obamacare’s Stunning Redistribution of Wealth

As a resident of San Francisco, you can also choose from among four separate Silver plans, which each pay 70% of your medical costs (after a $2,000 annual deductible) and have an average monthly premium of $614.

For ObamaJoe, these same four plans are available for an average of $38 per month—thanks to the marvelous, magical subsidies that are built into Obamacare. In fact, one of the Silver plans in particular would cost Joe just twenty nickels per month—a darned fair deal for someone needing healthcare, wouldn’t you say? - - FrontPage Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (5)

Only 17% of the French believe that 2014 will be a good year, but in fact it started very well for France.

Only 1,064 cars were burned by youths in the banlieues this New Year’s Eve—about a hundred fewer than last year. Who says that there is no progress? The French Minister of the Interior congratulated the 57,000 policemen throughout the country who were on duty that night. The Street Keynesians - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:05 AM | Your Say (0)

January 5, 2014

Probably not a daily read

The blog is called “radical wind” and is subtitled “blowing through female outerspace,” and blow it does,

but not in the oppressive patriarchal sense that might properly be called “DIM,” or “dick in mouth.” The unnamed writer calls herself “witchwind,” and whether the wind is radical or witchy, I am certain I do not wish to stand downwind of it.PIV-negative - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 PM | Your Say (10)

High Society

We may well be social animals but our habitats are changing, and we haven’t yet adapted to them..... “Our moral brains evolved for co-operation within groups”, he says, but they “did not evolve for co-operation between groups”. The social animal - FT.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 PM | Your Say (2)

Hemingway, wary of distraction, focused on essentials: “fighting and eating and drinking and begging and stealing and living and dying”

“I have finished my novel — 85,000 words — and am very tired inside and out.”The Authentic Hemingway |

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 PM | Your Say (0)

It’s complicated

Human ingenuity has created a world that the mind cannot master. Have we finally reached our limits? Is our tech making the world indecipherable? – Samuel Arbesman – Aeon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 PM | Your Say (0)

She Said

HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:38 PM | Your Say (4)

TWO AND A HALF years after it began,

the revolution was widely considered a quagmire, even a disaster.

Rebels had made disappointingly little headway against the forces of the hated tyrant. The capital and the country’s second major city remained under his control. Foreign powers had provided sympathy, but very little real aid. And despite promising to respect human rights, rebel forces were committing widespread abuses, including murder, torture and destruction of property. In short, the bright hopes of an earlier spring were fading fast. Inglorious Revolutions | The National Interest

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (3)

Why Does Wayne Thiebaud Love Goop So Much?

“Canyon Mountains” (2011–12)

Whenever I think about those who assert that painting is dead, I am reminded of Wayne Thiebaud and other like-minded artists.

Their attachment to painting and the handmade may strike some as old-fashioned, unnecessary and obsolete. But then, one can also say that about love if one is so inclined. As the magnificent Italian sculptor and writer, Fausto Melotti, who also came to art rather late, stated: “Once he has found his language, the artist finds himself free of the drudgery of the avant-garde.” - - Hyperallergic

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

The eastern world, it is exploding.

Violence flaring and bullets loading. It’s hard to pinpoint just when, exactly, Barack Obama’s policy fell apart. But collapse it has, and many, many deaths later, the White House is now pinning its hopes on the belief that low information voters won’t notice. Of course they won’t, until they do. Belmont Club ｻ The Eve of Distraction

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:49 AM | Your Say (3)

January 4, 2014

Your Canine Compass

Dogs Poop Along North-South Magnetic Lines | Animals Magnetic Lines | LiveScience

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:07 PM | Your Say (7)

Marijuana Overdoses Kill 37 in Colorado On First Day of Legalization

"It's complete chaos here," says Dr. Jack Shepard, chief of surgery at St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver.

"I've put five college students in body bags since breakfast and more are arriving every minute. "We are seeing cardiac arrests, hypospadias, acquired trimethylaminuria and multiple organ failures. By next week the death toll could go as high as 200, maybe 300. Someone needs to step in and stop this madness. My god, why did we legalize marijuana? What were we thinking?" - The Daily Currant

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:07 PM | Your Say (16)

Let us send our daughters to die in battle for the sake of gender neutrality! [Bumped]

Here we have a horrible idea, stacked on top of a bewilderingly idiotic idea, poured over a collection of reckless, ideologically-fueled, irrational, liberal feminist ideas. Basically, an insane idea had sexual relations with a moronic idea and the two gave birth to this idea.... we are a shameful, cowardly country if we would send our daughters off to war for no reason other than to obey our New-Age Gender Creeds. - - | The Matt Walsh Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (26)

"Learned Helplessness:" Comment of the Month at the Turn of the Year [Bumped + 3]

As found in Side-Lines: How Come?

The "learned helplessness" is so deep it shows up even in our fantasy life. This is why I beg people to find ANY way to fight back. Stop looking for The One way to fight back. To make up for not fighting back we imagine we, or someone that will fight on our behalf, will find the one unguarded and vital target where we can attack and win in an instant. Politically, we fantasize about finding the weak spot in The Death Star and firing a kill shot.

The Left didn't bring the country under their control that way. The Left has published books on how to fight the system. They fought the system. They now own the system. The Left waged a Long March through the culture. We keep engaging in Short Retreats to the next "gated-community" that we hope will protect us from liberal domination.

Start fighting in small ways, anywhere, and it will give you confidence to fight more and the tide will turn IF liberals find they can't rely on never finding opposition. Use direct language. Call them communists, racists, sexist, traitors, etc. You don't gain respect by speaking in moderate language about the people that are setting fire to this country. This isn't Sunday School. This is a Civil War. The Left already knows it. They already fight like it's a Civil War. You might as well face up to it. Posted by: Scott M at December 31, 2013 1:14 PM

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (83)

867-5309

"When we'd first get calls at 2 or 3 in the morning, my husband would answer the phone.

He can't hear too well. They'd ask for Jenny, and he'd say 'Jimmy doesn't live here any more.'... Tommy Tutone was the one who had the record. I'd like to get hold of his neck and choke him." —Mrs. Lorene Burns, an Alabama householder formerly at 1-205-867-5309; she changed her number in 1982. -- La Wik

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (8)

The Jon Stewart Gambit

Clown nose off / clown nose on.

He wants to be hailed as some kind of courageous truth-teller, but doesn’t want to take any heat for misstatements, misunderstandings, or deliberate offense. So he’ll trial-balloon a “joke,” and if it passes muster he’ll claim this is hard-hitting analysis and brave truth-telling — clown nose off. But if it threatens his bottom line, or he’s caught spewing typical factless liberal spin, he retreats to “hey, it’s a joke! I’m just a tv comedian!” — clown nose on. - - Severian at ye olde House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (5)

January 3, 2014

Louis Armstrong’s ham hocks and red beans recipe:

"I thought her Creole gumbo was the finest in the world.

Her cabbage and rice was marvelous. As for red beans and rice, well, I don’t have to say anything about that. It is my birth mark." - -Dangerous Minds

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

Clause No. 12: No Disparagement.

“You agree,” it reads, “that you will never make any negative or disparaging statements (orally or in writing) about the Company

or its stockholders, directors, officers, employees, products, services or business practices, except as required by law.” If I don’t agree to this nondisparagement clause, I will not receive my severance — in this case, the equivalent of two weeks of pay. Two weeks? Must be hard times out in San Francisco, or otherwise why the dirt parachute — and by the way, is that the sort of remark I won’t be allowed to make if I sign clause No. 12? .... Because as quaint as this may seem, giving up the right to speak and write freely, even if that means speaking or writing negatively, strikes me as the unholiest of deals for a writer and an editor to accept. - - Fired? Speak No Evil

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (0)

Find the stupidest things Obama has said

and make a meme, and flood the net.

And when they push their meme at you, push right back. Just a sentence. No, it doesn’t need to be impeccably sourced, no it doesn’t need to make sense, even. It just needs to be catchy. Get Back In The Trenches | According To Hoyt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (5)

The only thing Matt Drudge loves more than Obama with a mouthful of crow is extreme weather....

.... because he does it so well.

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

Here’s the first person to ever purchase legal, non-medical marijuana in Colorado, USA

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (21)

To paraphrase an old Jewish line: This is not good for the gays.

Gays have gone from being the bullied to the bullies.

Yes, we know you used to be unfairly victimized. But being beaten up for being gay is simply not the same as having to endure hearing someone opine that anal sex isn't his cup of tea. The first time someone stands up to a bully and the sky doesn't fall, the tyranny is over. The gay mafia was out of control, drunk with power. This time, they got their wings clipped. - - Ann Coulter THE ANUS MONOLOGUES

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (3)

Hey, kids, let's go see grandpa!

After a 30-minute drive, Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia arrived at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Puowaina Punchbowl Crater. Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Dunham, is interred at the cemetery. … Four minutes after arriving, Obama and his daughters were back in the motorcade. -- TheBlaze.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (7)

Megyn Kelly to Janice Dean: 'Does That Mean You and I Are Having Another Night in Bed Together?'

Film at 11: Works for me.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (5)

The Global Warming Expedition That Isn't a Global Warming Expedition Continues to Be Frozen In

One Of The Rescue Ships In Antarctic May Now Be Stuck, Too : The Two-Way : NPR One day after helping to rescue 52 people from a ship stuck in Antarctic ice, a Chinese icebreaker is in danger of also being stranded for a while.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (2)

"The United States has labored to get a grip on what kind of leader Kim Jong Un will be, amid worries in Washington that he is more reckless than his father, Kim Jong Il"

Easy to see how a dog-eater like Obama could be confused.

"North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed his uncle and a handful of the man’s aides by feeding them to a horde of 120 starving dogs, according to a shocking account. Jang Song Thaek, the former No. 2 official in the secretive regime, was stripped naked and tossed into a cage along with his five closest aides."Kim Jong Un fed his uncle to 120 starving dogs: report - Yahoo News

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (2)

ee cummings

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:09 AM | Your Say (0)

January 2, 2014

Legal marijuana, day two: Colorado basically just one big Choom Gang now

Before

“Today, there will be people around the country buying marijuana. But only in Colorado will they be buying it in stores like this one.”

It’s still illegal under federal law, of course, but Eric Holder and his boss understand this is one form of federalism their lefty base doesn’t want to see quashed. « Hot Air

After

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 PM | Your Say (5)

The big power of the industrial media complex right now is the power to destroy.

It’s not very rational; it’s not very sane; they don’t even try to make it plausible.

Instead they tell a big huge whopper – Sarah Palin made rape victims pay for the rape kit, say – and then keep repeating it, making jokes about it, using it as a throw away line by late-night comedians you know “Oh, well, of course she’d have cut the deficit. The American people would need to pay for its own rape kit.” And suddenly it’s everywhere. Get Back In The Trenches | According To Hoyt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:14 PM | Your Say (1)

The Regretful Faces of New Year's Polar Bear Club Plungers

- The Wire

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:31 PM | Your Say (1)

And I do requests too....

AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment on Fire and Ice by Robert Frost "Drudge had a juxtaposition this morning that was priceless: the headline above was about Netanyahu having an intestinal polyp removed; the headline below it was about John Kerry. Missed it by that much."

---

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:15 PM | Your Say (0)

It is amazing to me that I know, I absolutely KNOW, the ethnic nature of the players in this sad little melodrama just by glancing at the headline. Amazing and depressing.

SEE IT: Customers walk over dead body after Michigan man killed in store doorway

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

"Another new look for Hillary? Former Secretary of State debuts bangs for 2014"

Bangs,schmangs. The real question is "How many acorns she can store in her cheeks at once?"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (14)

Daniel Daly before charging into battle: "For Christ's sake men—come on! Do you want to live forever?"

If you saw Daniel Daly's small frame behind a desk at the bank where he worked later in life,

you would never have imagined you were looking at one of the most ferocious Marines the American armed forces ever produced.... Daly died in 1937 with full military honors, not living to see the 1942 Destroyer, the USS Daly (DD-519), commissioned in his name. - - 5 of the Fiercest One-Liners in History | Mental Floss HT; Never Yet Melted

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (7)

"Those Antarctic global warming advocates stuck in the ice were finally rescued."

All 52 passengers rescued from ship trapped in Antarctic ice - CNN.com HT: Ace

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:14 AM | Your Say (6)

Hanauma dreaming / On such a winter's day....

SNORKELING: Obama and his family went to Hanauma Bay, a popular snorkeling area closed to the public on Tuesdays. As they arrived, about two dozen onlookers gathered along a highway turnoff to take pictures.

SHAVE ICE: In the afternoon, Obama went with his daughters to a local Kailua shop for shave ice. The president ordered cherry and lemon-lime flavors for his dessert, then shook hands with some of about two dozen people crowded in a roped-off area outside a nearby pizzeria in the tiny strip mall near the beach. President Barack Obama's Hawaii Vacation: Day 11 - ABC News

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (4)

The Year in Awful: Worst Columns of 2013

I watched in wonderment as serious magazines and newspapers hung

on every revolutionary word of actor and self-appointed pundit Russell Brand, who in 2013 decided he was the monster who has turned on his creator, attacking capitalism, celebrity culture, and corporate control of the media (while skillfully not rejecting the lucrative paydays they provide). - The Daily Beast

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:19 AM | Your Say (1)

January 1, 2014

Why Viral is fagalicious and autofellational.

4 Reasons 'Viral' Content Stopped Mattering in 2013

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:10 PM | Your Say (0)

On Poesy and the Literary Disease Known as "Angelou"

To satisfy those pedants who think poems have to rhyme to be poems.

Tell it to Maya Angelou, suckas.
If she were writing of her love for Suzanne Sena,
She would be writing crap like:
"The tree spirit
suckels the river spirits nipple
As mother Africa
births another boulder.
Tree.
River.
Rock.
Untamed spirit of feminine awareness!"

That crap doesn't rhyme.
And yet she is a poet.
I guess.
Ten Years of Nonsense: JackM's Epic Poems

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:20 PM | Your Say (1)

Saddest Sign There Is

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:17 PM | Your Say (14)