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February 28, 2014
Why Indeed?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 PM | Your Say (6)
Obama’s Own Flag
This administration has upgraded technology. They replaced a hammer and sickle with a pen and a phone. I can’t believe it’s not on a flag. — divadoll123 (@divadoll123) February 18, 2014 | Primordial Slack
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:20 PM | Your Say (1)
Planets, Planets Everywhere
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 AM | Your Say (3)
Adjust Your Point Of View: Watch a pelican flying from a camera on his beak
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (2)
Hillary-- Because Vagina! "What Difference At This Point Does It Make? "
Rumors persist that Hillary won’t run because health is worse than disclosed: Weeeelllll, it might make a smidgen of a jot of a difference.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 AM | Your Say (10)
Two men are in jail, one cow is dead and three cars are totaled.
Naked Man Covered In Jello CAUGHT Having Sex With Cow While Friend Recorded.who set up a video camera in his barn in an effort to determine why his cows were acting anxious and not producing milk as usual, police said. - Mirror Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (14)
Did You Know?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:04 AM | Your Say (3)
You can be sure this cheese stands alone.
It just so happened that the conditions at Small River Cemetery Number 5 in northwestern China—the site at which the cheese-covered mummies were discovered—created the perfect storm of prime cheese preservation.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (3)
'I call myself "*" and don't you forget it!'
for their own private I-dunno, from the quaint—“Androgynous,” “Intersex,” “Transsexual”—to the cutting edge: “Pangender,” “GenderQueer,” “CisFemale.” Today’s twisted narcissist who has everything (in a manner of speaking—or should that be a “cismale-er” of speaking?) can even pick a word that contains an asterisk, such as “Trans*Man.” - - 50 Shades of Faggotry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (7)
The origins of mayonnaise
The cook had been planning an egg- and cream-based sauce, but discovered he had no cream and had to improvise with oil. And voilà! The Dukeâs victory party was saved, and the city of Mahon was immortalized in sauce mahonnaise, later corrupted to mayonnaise. -- Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:26 AM | Your Say (4)
February 27, 2014
They Got Nothing Else
the progressive, statist, collectivist, utopian ideology is wholly illusory…it’s about nothing more than keeping a paycheck coming. period. period. NPR newsspinners, congressional staffers, welfare advocates, university professors, county commissioners, editorial writers, activists, “artists”, NGOs, foundations, social engineers, professional do-gooders.... busy busy busy busy, keeping themselves in a job ... i mean, they’re only liberal arts majors, what else can they do? Cui Bono | HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (10)
Then you have Willy Bill and his parole hearing.
Parole boards often consist of gullible citizens with no experience of criminal behavior.Further, Willy is a good con man. He does great repentance-speak. He is All Fixed Now. Nobody produces better sincerity than a psychopath who wants out. It’s forty-weight. You could lube a diesel with it. The parole board bites. Three months later he kills a woman. Sour Thoughts From the Police Beat - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:53 PM | Your Say (3)
Cheat Sheet for the Ukraine
The Vineyard of the Saker: Ukrainian nationalism - its roots and nature The Vineyard of the Saker: The Kremlin's response to the events in the Ukraine gradually becomes more apparent The Vineyard of the Saker: Follow up to my post about the roots and nature of Ukrainian nationalism The Vineyard of the Saker: Meet the (real) new authorities in the Ukraine, example #2Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (7)
Apple's Touchscreen "iPhone" Prototype from 1983
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (0)
"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (4)
"Here's the study about global warming and rape. It's scientific, so only 98% chance it's utter nonsense." -- Fleming
Study: Global Warming Will Cause 180,000 More Rapes by 2099 | Mother JonesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (8)
February 26, 2014
A country built on a Himalayan mountain of fallacies 2
Think about whether cold and snow in the winter will really stop purchases by individuals.If you need a new shirt for work or a pair of sneakers and it snows on Wednesday, you will wait until Saturday to make the purchase. Groceries will be consumed and replenished whether it is cold and snowy, or not. If an appliance or car breaks down, weather will be a non-factor in the new purchase decision. The proliferation of on-line retailing allows everyone to shop from the warmth of their homes. If anything, bad winter weather often spurs stocking up of groceries and the purchase of items needed to contend with winter weather (salt, shovels, coats, hats, gloves). -- Doug Ross @ Journal:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 PM | Your Say (2)
Say it LOUD! I'm ...... (what?) .... and I'm PROUD!
Let's get something straight:Black pride is always laudable and heroic. White pride is always horrific and racist. Celebrating black culture is diverse and cool. Celebrating white culture is lame, pathetic, suspicious. Whiteness is portrayed as a sign of shame: he's so white. White influences and culture are thought of as at best dull and probably destructive, oppressive, and awful. - - Word Around the Net: OUR MODERN TIMES
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (7)
How to Make the Perfect Meatball
Much like a good slab of slow-smoked ribs or a steaming hot bowl of seafood gumbo, meatball recipes vary greatly from family to family. As such, creating the perfect meatball is often a subject of much debate. My meatball recipe relies on a combination of tradition, technique, and simplicity. | The Art of Manliness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:21 PM | Your Say (14)
Ooooo Noes! Not the Ugandan Gays!
It's always something: RFK Jr: Locking Up Pro-Terrorist Drug Driving Sis Will Endanger Ugandan GaysPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:42 AM | Your Say (3)
Everyday sinning
The modern tactic, for dealing with sin, is more neurotic than psychotic.The guilt remains, but the sin is denied. It would be invidious to take any one of the Seven Deadlies for my example: let us just say they take all the time they could spend repenting, instead convincing themselves that it was not a sin. - - Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (0)
Thus doth the bullshit ever deepen in the dusk....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (2)
Albums We Never Tire of Not Hearing
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (7)
Right to Carry Now Nearly Universal in the USA
As of 1986, slightly less than 10% of the U.S. population lived in states where there were objective and fair procedures for the issuance of concealed handgun carry permits.About a third of the population lived in states where there was not even a process to apply for a permit. The majority of the population lived in states where issuance in permits was highly discretionary, and many issuing authorities refused to issue to ordinary law-abiding citizens. By 2014, the percentage of people living in the Red states, with no possibility of even applying for a permit, has declined to zero. Growth chart of right to carry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (2)
Uncle Larry was never asked to Babysit again.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (6)
Why a Duck?
Best Joke Ever: A Duck, a Professor, and the Greatest Cartoonist Ever. Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy?Professors are usually eviler than ducks, but the duck is the one cackling like a supervillain. This duck may have escaped from Jenkins’ lab. Both might have been in love with the same chicken. Perhaps both Jenkins and the duck have been battling each other since World War II, like Captain America and the Red Skull. Maybe they were lab partners who cooked meth together: the Walt and Jesse of the comics world.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (2)
How Do Hitmen Operate?
The murders did not occur in the cinematic locations of “smoky rooms, bars and casinos frequented by gangsters.”Instead, the victims were killed in drab suburbia, often “out in the open, on pavements, sometimes as the target was out walking their dog, or going shopping, with passers-by watching on in abject horror.” - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (2)
February 25, 2014
A country built on a Himalayan mountain of fallacies
The fallacy being flogged by government drones and the legacy mediaabout companies not hiring new employees because it has been cold and snowy during the winter is beyond absurd, except to someone who lives in the cocoon of Washington D.C. or regurgitates words processed on a teleprompter by paid minions of the ruling class. If you live in the real world, run a business, or manage employees, you understand weather has absolutely nothing to do with your decision to hire an employee. - -Doug Ross @ Journal:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 PM | Your Say (6)
And while we're on the subject, let's get something straight.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:17 PM | Your Say (6)
I tossed a good intention towards something.
I'm not really thinking of a wishing well at all.I'm thinking about how we spend our tiny tokens, how we may share our wealth (not money, but goodness) and how it comes about that we are nourished, healed even, by tiny things which become bigger in our lives. - -True North
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:39 PM | Your Say (0)
Hunting the Lynx with the Old Believers
This was the first Russian utopia: a mythical land the peasants believed existed out in Siberia down the rivers in the farthest east; a magical kingdom of plenty where the white Tsar ruled with true justice. - - | Standpoint
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:34 PM | Your Say (2)
File Under: Two Countries Separated by a Common Language
Police guard beach as 14 tons of fags wash up in DevonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 4:56 PM | Your Say (4)
Great Achievements of President Latrine
Remembering The Top 12 Moments From The Era Of Austerity
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:26 PM | Your Say (3)
Lo-Infos Imagine the Glory of President Latrine
Obama is what struggling-to-comfortable progressives think they'd do if they became rich."Why, if I were rich, I'd have swank parties with Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Wintour. I'd take $100 million family vacations to Africa, because Multicultural and Teachable Moment. I'd have Paul McCartney and Melissa Etheridge play songs for my birthday, and I'd hang out with Jay-Z and Beyonce. And, whenever I was in doubt, I'd hold a conclave with Oprah and fill my Soul Canteen from her Wisdom Well." -- - Ace
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:24 PM | Your Say (1)
"... of the Century" So Far.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:55 PM | Your Say (14)
You know what’s happening?
Multidirectional, multivariate, multicausal American decline.
Every metric, every signpost, every judicial fiat, every subversive narrative points to the same destination: The drain. The deviants and degenerates and destroyers are as close to the sun now as they’ve ever been. This is their moment. They can feel the warmth of validation. The radiant glow of coerced acceptance. The flare of triumph over human nature. Fat Pride, Femcunt Pride, Freak Pride, Furry Pride, Slut Pride, Anti-White Pride, Gay Pride and now Pantywaist Pride. Pride cometh before the fall. - - Obama’s America: Land Of The Twee, Home Of The Fey
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (2)
Reverend Al Sharpton Takes Time Off From Holy Duties To Make TV Appearance
“Given his professional obligations and personal devotion to spreading the Gospel,we were simply thrilled that the reverend was able to find time for us and come on our show,” television producer Sophie Josten said of the 59-year-old Baptist clergyman, who when not conducting a worship service, ministering to the sick, or teaching a seminar at a local divinity school reportedly prefers to spend his time sequestered in silent prayer. - - America's Finest News Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:39 PM | Your Say (2)
The Most Massive Object in the Universe—How Was It Created?
No other known object is as massive—this black hole by itself outweighs entire star clusters and small galaxies. Even compared to other huge black holes, such as the one at the heart of the Milky Way, the monster of M87 is immense. - - Nautilus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:22 PM | Your Say (2)
"The left does not accept laws it doesn't like. They just don't."
They want to be able to force the business to respect the desires of the customers that walk in the front door. Religious beliefs, as Allah knows, religious beliefs can't be used to stop anything the left wants to impose, unless they're Muslim religious beliefs, then we have to honor those. But any other religious beliefs, not permitted, the left will not allow them. Media Soap Opera Turns to Jan Brewer - The Rush Limbaugh Show
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:12 PM | Your Say (6)
Rome wasn't burned in a day
Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face.Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. - – The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (1871)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (6)
The Surprisingly Short History of the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
and produce a model ready to use in an actual bakery, soon to be advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped,” which later morphed into “the greatest/best thing since sliced bread” when describing various other products. Rohwedder got around part of the staleness problem by wrapping the thinly sliced loaves in wax paper directly after slicing was complete. - - TodayIfoundOut
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (1)
I'm weary of being ruled
-- not governed, mind you; governed is in the rear-view mirror, and fading-- ruled by a gaggle of metrosexual car salesmen, slovenly ward heelers, and soi-disant intellectuals that can't operate an apostrophe, never mind something substantial and commendable like a dry cleaners or a brothel. Sippican Cottage: Sippican's Greatest Hits: Welcome To The New Captain Tammany H. Plutocrat Seawater Economy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (6)
February 24, 2014
At the core level of Judaeo-Christian teaching — breaking the chains of fatalism —
we were freed from our bondage to ancient gods and goddesses, witches, goblins, spooks, and idols;and we were beckoned to rise and walk in a sunlight that provides, indeed confirms, the light of a reason also naturally endowed. The Catholic Christian teaching is self-consistent. Odd and peculiar as it may first appear, I believe it finally makes sense, in the course of providing the most articulate, and also moving account of human freedom and destiny. I wouldn’t have joined up if it didn’t. Endtiming : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 PM | Your Say (2)
Who? Me? Ah... mi-yow?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:17 PM | Your Say (8)
Concealed carry shorts
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:25 PM | Your Say (6)
Why You Should Envy, But Not Worship Sherlock Holmes
Besides besting bias, we should envy Sherlock because he is amazingly attentive.He does not just see, he observes. Famously, in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Sherlock asks Watson how many stairs lead up to their apartment. Even though Watson had seen the stairs a hundred times, he could not for the life of him recall how many steps there were–he did not truly observe something he saw every day. Neither do we. | But Not Simpler, Scientific American Blog Network
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:14 PM | Your Say (1)
The cold hard facts of freezing to death
As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow — First Chill — Then Stupor — Then the Letting Go: There's an adage about hypothermia: "You aren't dead until you're warm and dead."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:55 PM | Your Say (1)
“Old man, you should be ashamed. Drunk mantis grabs ass.”
He would have been dismembered limb by limb with surgical strikes, which would have really mucked up the tone of an otherwise lighthearted movie. Mantis shrimp can strike so quickly that they momentarily heat the water around their clubs to the temperature of the sun's surface, kindly giving their pray a nice tan before consuming them. Absurd Creature of the Week: Ferocious, Fearless - Wired Science
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:39 PM | Your Say (0)
It's not the initial cost, it's the maintenance.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (5)
The Physics of Flamingos
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (2)
The Jewish Anti-Israel left
These sons, daughters, stepdaughters, wives and nieces of famous people,fading Feminist writers, Wall Street millionaires trying to buy social relevance, hippie social scientists who hit it big with books about food, sex or childrearing, radical rabbis holding forth to congregations who believe in religion as little as their preachers, are a phantom establishment, community leaders without a community except their own mutual approbation. - - Sultan Knish: Letters from the Phantom Anti-Jewish Establishment
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:44 AM | Your Say (0)
“Drugs are not expensive because we are evil, they are expensive because we are stupid.”
The simple fact is that we still haven’t figured out the workings of biological systems– the human body in this case – to an extent that allows us to rationally and predictably modify, mitigate or cure their ills using small organic molecules. That we have been able to do so to an unusually successful degree is a tribute to both human ingenuity and plain good luck. But there’s still a very long way to go; there are very few diseases for which we truly have drugs that are almost always efficacious and have little to no side effects. -- The Curious Wavefunction
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 AM | Your Say (0)
Bonneville Speed Week
Each of them are essentially a straight line marked by black paint. For each, there is one starting line and no preset order to lineup, it’s a first-come, first-served system and the wait is usually an hour or more. - - (Storehouse)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (1)
Signs & wonders
Nature herself is consistently miraculous, to eyes not jaded or gauzed; and the student of history should also be aware that no human chronicle develops along predictable lines. Were it not for Grace, we would all long since have been annihilated. Or rather, we would never have been. - - Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (1)
Larry King Called. He Wants Piers Morgan's Time Slot Back.
After CNN Cancels Morgan, Larry King Says: I Could Come Back - - Zucker, sensing an opportunity for “sizzle and buzz,”according to an insider, had initially encouraged Morgan’s rants, including a town hall, in which he began to resemble the crazed Howard Beale from Paddy Chayefsky’s movie Network. “He never recovered from that,” the insider told The Daily Beast. “Even gun-control advocates were turned off. He became a stereotype of the condescending, supercilious Brit.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (4)
Lewis Farrakhan Wants His Own Water Fountain
Because we don’t have enough controversy these days. Because what the country needs is more racial animus. - - Michelle Obama's MirrorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (2)
Science Fair Project? We have a winner!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:17 AM | Your Say (5)
February 23, 2014
Dry Cleaning Alec Baldwin? Not a Chance.
One young man, an F-to-M tranny, said, “Are you here to get dry-cleaned, like Brett Ratner?”Meaning I could do some mea culpa, write them a six-figure check, go to a dinner, sob at the table, give a heartfelt speech, beg for forgiveness. I thought to myself: Beg for forgiveness for something I didn’t do? -- Alec Baldwin: Good-bye, Public Life -- Vulture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 PM | Your Say (7)
Door. Ass. Bang.
Piers Morgan and CNN Plan End to His Prime-Time Show: There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn’t seem to like America very much — and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favor.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:37 PM | Your Say (5)
Paul Newman in the Navy, 1943
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:17 PM | Your Say (3)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:17 PM | Your Say (2)
New Blood-Resistant Glue Mends Broken Hearts Without Sutures
it’s strong but flexible, and it’s made only from naturally-occurring substances already found in the body. It can be applied as a viscous gel, and then hardened into a strong adhesive with a burst of ultraviolet light. And, best of all, it works in flowing blood. – Phenomena: Not Exactly Rocket Science
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:36 PM | Your Say (1)
Pretty Much How It's Working Out
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:02 PM | Your Say (6)
WaterWorld: Enceladus
It was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. Enceladus seems to have liquid water under its icy surface. Cryovolcanoes at the south pole shoot large jets of water vapor, other volatiles, and some solid particles (e.g. ice crystals, NaCl particles, etc.) into space, totaling approximately 200 kg per second. Some of this water falls back onto the moon as "snow", some of it adds to Saturn's rings, and some of it reaches Saturn. = = - La Wik
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (1)
The headlines are grim,
... the pictures from Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine are blood-chilling,executions and demonstrations are mounting in Iran, and Obama doesn’t know what to do about anything. So he doesn’t do anything; he and his strategists just dither. And yet… And yet, our enemies may be on the verge of losing. Big time. - - Ledeen, What If We Were Winning But Nobody Noticed?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:07 AM | Your Say (7)
The Obamacare debacle may yet hand the Senate back to an astonished Republican Party.
They will be as surprised as anyone else, with the possible exception of Obama.Francis Fukuyama, who once wrote on the end of history, is now Tweeting about a possible new cold war. How did this reversal happen? Well, Ladies and Gentleman, I bring you Professor Arithmetic and Engineer Murphy. Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 AM | Your Say (6)
Your husband doesn't have to earn your respect
Every day on Facebook brings us another viral post excoriating men and supporting women.I’ve written a few of them myself. But I’ve noticed that the corollary – a message about the respect women must give men, a message challenging wives and encouraging husbands – isn’t quite so palatable for many people. Disrespect for men has become standard practice. | The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:34 AM | Your Say (5)
February 22, 2014
Winslow Homer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 PM | Your Say (1)
Life in America: My Mom
She loved her old CRV and, old-time Yankee that she was, she hated to spend money on anythingexcept her yacht and beach clubs, the Metropolitan Opera, her favorite charities - and on international travel. Dad, a Yale Prof and a cranky intellectual, was devoted to her happiness, and rightly so: she had spunky vitality and could fly airplanes, ski Killington, win horse-jumping championships, garden-club awards, and sailboat races. - - Bird Dog @ - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:23 PM | Your Say (1)
Jay by John J.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:52 PM | Your Say (0)
Dead Alive (aka Braindead)
The basic story is about how a Sumatran rat monkey causes zombism (makes sense)and how our hero's atrociously overbearing and horrible mother becomes the victim of this creature and then becomes an undead monster, spreading her undead disease all willy-nilly while her son tries to contain the problem and also date a local girl. It's charming, and it culminates in a lawnmower massacre the likes of which you've never seen. | Cracked.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:50 AM | Your Say (1)
5 Terrifying Uses of Sexual Symbolism in Horror Films
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:46 AM | Your Say (0)
Disturbing Reasons Not to Trust the News (From a Reporter)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (0)
When the Shiftless Unite
This unionism of the shiftless shapes society at all levels. Thus No Child Left Behind when clearly many children can’t possibly get ahead. Thus the drive to have all students in high school “college-ready” when a screaming maximum of twenty percent are smart enough for what used to be college work. Thus the feral grunting of rap. - - Soul of a CurmudgeonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (6)
Fatherhood
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (5)
"Frankly, we don't need guns to harass citizens."
Our tax authorities have become more threatening than mafia warlords. The plunder is so severethat record numbers of Americans are renouncing their citizenship and leaving the country. There are now dozens of federal, state, and local agencies and courts which have the power to confiscate your assets without any due process. In addition to your house, your business, and your savings, we also have the authority to take your children away from you as if they are property of the state. We are here to tell you what you can and cannot put in your own body, or whether you can collect rainwater that falls on own property. The "Real" State Of The Union In Just 889 Words...
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:25 AM | Your Say (2)
Et 2 Brute?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (2)
Fat Cities
Hundreds Of California Government Employees Are Paid Over $400,000 A Year - Forbes Consider Redwood City,where three fire captains and one firefighter made between $434,274 and $452,733 in total compensation in 2012. One police officer made $463,690 in total compensation. In all, nine employees made over $400,000 in total compensation with a total of 33, mostly police and fire department employees, making over $300,000 in total compensation in 2012.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:36 AM | Your Say (1)
February 21, 2014
Yet More (Not Photoshopped) Wisteria Bonsai
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:07 PM | Your Say (0)
The Progressive Racial Genocide Continues
Smarter than the Nazis' genocide, this one gets the target group to kill its own future by itself. Abortions Outnumber Live Births for Blacks in NYC: 31,328 abortions vs. 24,758 live births.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:00 PM | Your Say (13)
When Life Gives You Lemons....
Is there a merit badge for “Business Administration?” Give it to 13-year-old Girl Scout Danielle Lei. On Monday, Lei and her mom took off to a wildly popular San Francisco medical marijuana dispensary, The Green Cross, with thin mints, Dulce de Leches, and Tagalongs—in short, Girl Scout-approved munchies. In just two hours, they sold 117 boxes, 37 more than they sold the next day when parked outside a boring ol’ Safeway.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:03 PM | Your Say (6)
This is what happens when perverts write elementary school text books
I don’t know how many schools have this on their reading list. It doesn’t matter.Can’t we all just agree that elementary schools shouldn’t, in any way, be in the business of discussing, teaching, advocating for, instructing about, or otherwise mentioning masturbation, tingly feelings, or anything in that general ballpark? | The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (7)
HIgh Speed Ballistics
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (0)
No pain, no game
Why we need pain in the games we play: Pain and suffering are not just incidental elements of the sporting life: they are at the centre of every game.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:29 PM | Your Say (0)
Clown Extinction: An In-depth Look
Not unlike the Mexican wolf or Wyoming toad, clowns find themselves increasingly alone, partly because they’re are almost deliberately terrifying, and partly because this has never been an acceptable career path in the first place.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (3)
February 20, 2014
Wisteria Bonsai
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 PM | Your Say (4)
President John Tyler's grandsons are still alive!!
John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States.He was born in 1790 and took office in 1841. His son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, was born in 1853, when Tyler was 63 years old1. Lyon had six children with two different wives2, two of whom were Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr. (born 1924 when Lyon Sr. was 71) and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born 1928 when Lyon Sr. was 75). They are reportedly both still living in their 80s. -- Kottke
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 PM | Your Say (5)
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
will be aware that most of it was lived in spiritual desolation. As an intelligent and well-educated young woman she had a calling to become a nun and go abroad (at first from Albania to Ireland), was sceptical of its validity, sought advice from intelligent Catholic religious, and tested it very carefully. (She was an extremely intelligent woman, in the plainest worldly sense: I can report that at first hand.) Everything she did for the long remainder of her life was premised on that one personal revelation. Endtiming : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (0)
We don't have an economy, we have the wreckage of an economy.
The wreckage has been piling up for a very long time.Cities for one. They're sunk costs peopled with net consumers, an unjustifiable burden, as are their inhabitants, largely. There are no convincing arguments for the cities we have today. Even aside from wartime targeting, residents are less safe inside the cities than outside of them. When considering catastrophic collapse, who plans to bug out to Chicago? - - ol remus
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (8)
Consequences, Schmonsequences: Gelding In Chief Reminds World He Has a 2-Inch Penis
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (10)
"Stupid dead people's families are always ruining everything for everyone. It's getting so I can't even buy lawn darts at a yard sale anymore."
Yes, Virginia, There Was A Time Before "Oh Noes, Someone Might Get Hurt" | The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For BoysPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (0)
Good Question
Question of the day: Other than the meaningless, unmentioned and entirely made-up “wall of separation between church and science,” is there ANY reason why something called “Spiritual Starvation” should not be a diagnosable disorder, written up with an actual ICD code, list of symptoms, treatment recommendations, & everything else? - - House of EratosthenesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (1)
Life in the Nineties
Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice—they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here—to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. Roger Angell:: The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (0)
What is Putin?
given that verbiage without power is hardly moral or difficult. He is also a reminder about what is important in the most elemental sense. As we debate former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s remonstrances on oversized Cokes or Michelle Obama’s advocacy of celery sticks, Putin has dogs shot down to spruce up the Olympic grounds.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (5)
Modest Amusements for Shallow Minds
If you google "zerg rush" - Google Search will eat the results.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (3)
February 19, 2014
Those "anti-government people" get around, don't they?
The groups who perpetrate this violence come from a minority community - larger than the Jews but not yet larger than everyone else.They are telling you what they will do when they have the numbers to do it. But don't worry, the Dachau Gift Shop carries Woody Allen. Because one day we'll have a good laugh about all this, won't we? -- Hath Not a Jew Eyes? :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 PM | Your Say (4)
Wedding Day for the Hopes
Bob Hope and Dolores Reade wed on this day in 1934, just a year after Hope had divorced his first wife, Grace Troxell. Hope and Reade’s marriage endured almost 70 years until Hope’s death in 2003 at the age of 100. Dolores passed away in 2011 when she was 102. This Day in History: February 19th
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 PM | Your Say (9)
Pervy Professor Cops Plea In Voyeurism Case
The college professor who claimed that he secretly filmed under the clothing of two female students to determine whether they had improperly failed to wear undergarments to class has pleaded to a video voyeurism charge, records show. | The Smoking Gun
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:29 PM | Your Say (7)
Said Nobody Ever
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:52 PM | Your Say (4)
Occasionally a fit of Leftism possesses them,
and they accuse, and accuse, and accuse, and say that romance is sexist and dragon-slaying is ecologically unsoundand super-weapons are fascist and portraying invaders as vile is racist and saving space princesses is classist and lookist and sexist AND racist, especially if the space princess and the farmboy are both Caucasian. While the fit is on, they are lost to science fiction, and indeed lost to all literature, high and low, and all poetry and epic, vulgar or Latin. Hoyt Defies the Empire of Lies | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:51 PM | Your Say (2)
The Green Gulag
the Green Left is preparing to kill millions to deindustrialize North America, Europe and Australia. It's already doing it. While its activists are trying to peg the blame for fuel poverty fatalities on a government which is badly out of cash, it need look no further than its own activists and celebrities who preach the green life from their mansions. Clean energy has become the new Communism, an ideological program that can never be achieved, but for which we must all strive no matter how many die all along the way. -- Sultan Knish:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:20 PM | Your Say (3)
Everyone, including the present writer, is using apocalyptic language, rather casually.
The weather forecasters have been using it through this winter, on both sides of the Atlantic.Specific schemes, derived from or inspired by biblical prophesy, are a commonplace among the Catholic devotes with whom I pray; and right across the Christian spectrum from most Evangelical and farthest Western to most Orthodox and farthest Eastern, it presents as at least a mild fever. Endtiming : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:24 PM | Your Say (0)
A beautifully shambolic interview
Aniston, tank-topped and bob-coiffed, dazzled the crowd with her gold accent jewelry and borderline enviable lack of cogency. In the interest of imparting academic respect for her subject, she sported aviator glasses with clear lenses. Clutching index cards filled with questions she publicly acknowledged she had no hand in writing, she struggled with her duties as a moderator; after each question was asked, her face, both revealing and retaining nothing, reset and blankly moved on to the next. - - VICE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (4)
And worth every penny....
NYC pay toilet charges $8 a day - MarketWatch $24 for a three-day pass (or $8 a day), plus a mandatory $15 annual membership fee.The company envisions opening other locations throughout the city—lower Manhattan is next on the list—but warns that “only a limited number of memberships will be sold so as to provide the best possible experience.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:07 PM | Your Say (2)
The protected class
The protected class has a different view. The protected class is a dependent class— not economically dependent of course, but dependent on the state in perhaps a more fundamental way (for their very lives) – and like members of other dependent classes, they are terrified of flaws in the state’s protective apparatus. Why People Carry Guns: A Response to David Frum
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:38 PM | Your Say (3)
Is it just me or does Rush Limbaugh need to SHUT UP about his simple-minded kids book?
I (don't really) regret to say that the only thing his blather about "Rush Revere" does for me is to cause me to rush to shut him off. If this keeps up Limbaugh is going to become "The Lord of the BorRing."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (22)
Now, if we could just close the other 75%...
For federal employees, office closed 25% of fiscal year, so far - Washington Times The Federal Government. Why pay less?Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (0)
The Winner and Still Champion!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 AM | Your Say (6)
The penis-centric “intactivists”
continued their recent tradition of piggybacking on any and every San Francisco protest,injecting their off-topic grievance into settings where it isn’t always appreciated. They not only acted like typical aggressive men by physically dominating the protest-space, but they even hijacked the feminist language by characterizing circumcision as “gendered violence.” No fair! This event is about the power of women, and you’re testosteronizing up the place!Zombie » .00001 Billion Rising: Another Failed Mass Movement
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:05 AM | Your Say (5)
February 18, 2014
"It's Anti-Left, stupid!"
Do America a favor, drop the Willy Loman routine and unmask these leftists for what they really are:anti-child, anti-God, anti-business, anti-justice, anti-family, anti-male, anti-marriage, anti-Israel thugs, drunk from the vine of 1960's narcissism. ... You want to rally black voters to your cause? Tell each and every one of them the truth about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger whose organization's very mission statement was to annihilate blacks off the face of the earth. Sanger is admired still, to this day, by the likes of Hillary Clinton. Bois -- Truth Revolt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 PM | Your Say (3)
The greatest irony is that Gaga,
product of an affluent Manhattan home and a private-school education,had boasted that ArtPop would be the album of the millennium in fusing popular culture with art. She hired Jeff Koons to design the cover, which features a vacuous Koons sculpture of a spread-legged Gaga, backed by a crassly ripped strip of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. During a London TV interview, Gaga betrayed her limited art knowledge by bizarrely identifying that great Renaissance painting as the Venus de Milo, a notoriously armless late-Greek marble. Eminem's art beats Gaga's pop
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:52 PM | Your Say (1)
Debunking the New York Times myth of Kitty Genovese
Cook and others speculate that the story’s first paragraph was written by Rosenthal. One could argue that Genovese became a legend not on the day she was killed, but 10 days later, when New York City Police Commissioner Michael “Bull” Murphy had lunch with The New York Times’ new city editor — later to become the paper’s executive editor — Abe Rosenthal. | New York PostHT: neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:03 PM | Your Say (4)
What do we say after we've said we're sorry?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:34 PM | Your Say (6)
If Chris Christie would just tongue kiss Obama this little ship jam problem would melt away.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (12)
Clown Shortage? What Clown Shortage?
I would suspect this was another manufactured Republican scare story designed to destroy Big Guy’s policies if it weren’t such a perfect argument for letting more illegal aliens in to do the work Americans won’t do.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (3)
February 17, 2014
Current Seattle Beverage Option
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:50 PM | Your Say (37)
The Gospel According to Apostle Barack: In Search of a More Perfect Political Union as "Heaven Here on Earth"
Then, as I began to contemplate ways to assist Barack in his 2012 re-election bid something miraculous happened.I felt God’s (His) Spirit beckoning me in my dreams at night. Listening, cautiously, I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society, Martin (Luther King) walked the earth to create a more justified society, but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor. Amazon.com: eBook: Barbara A. Thompson: Kindle Store
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:25 PM | Your Say (12)
Yes, who was that Evil President who signed the anti-gay marriage DOMA into law?
"Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton said Sunday that the gay-rights cause made incredible progress on political and legal fronts in 2013, but progress should not be mistaken for success." Don SurberPosted by gerardvanderleun at 6:09 PM | Your Say (2)
Hope for Future Generations
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:52 PM | Your Say (7)
Skin (Keeps Him) In the Game
Coulter: Obama "Would Be Impeached If He Weren't America's First Black President" -- RealClearPoliticsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:04 PM | Your Say (11)
Our State of Police
And the people demanded it because liberal social policies made entire cities unlivable. The militarized police forces out of cities like Los Angeles filtered down to the suburbs and the rural areas as the same policies and populations that made cities unlivable began spreading outward. - - Sultan Knish:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (11)
Getting Cuddled by a Professional [Bumped]
Since November, clients have been paying to lie in bed with Ali (or rest their shoulder in the crook of her neck on the couch), who runs a one-woman “cuddle therapy” business, Cuddle U NYC, out of her studio apartment. | VICE United States
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (20)
Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (10)
“From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”
Because in modern political theology the have-nots — let us not say the weak — deserve the fruits of the haves.All property is theft, as Proudhon put it. So the only point to economics is to be the last thief in the string. Cuba has a claim to oil because it needs it. The Muslim rebels in the Philippines deserve whatever they demand because they demand it. Illegal aliens deserve a job in America because politicians will give it to them. In general you have because you can get. There is no linkage between the making and the benefiting. Belmont Club » Inheriting the Earth
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (1)
Har-De-Har-Har
“Although the show is lensed on film without a studio audience, there are chuckles and yucks dubbed in. Whether this induces a jovial mood in home viewers is still to be determined, but the practice may have unlimited possibilities if it’s spread to include canned peals of hilarity, thunderous ovations, and gasps of sympathy.” Wit, Whine, & Whimsy - Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (0)
February 16, 2014
We have become a delusional state
dependent upon fallacies to convince ourselves our foolhardy beliefs,ludicrous economic policies, corrupt captured political system, and preposterously fraudulent financial system are actually based on sound logic and reason. Some fallacies have been perpetrated intentionally by the ruling class to manipulate, sway and deceive the populace, while others have been willfully employed by millions of techno-narcissistic iGadget addicted zombies as a substitute for thinking, reasoning and taking responsibility for the course of our nation. Doug Ross @ Journal: A country built on a Himalayan mountain of fallacies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 PM | Your Say (2)
Who Will Hire the Hangman?
Belgium, it seems, is to offer children with fatal diseases the option of voluntary euthanasia, provided they have “discernment.”... In the case of children, who discerns the discernment? And will children be put up to asking, will it be suggested to them that they might prefer death to their current condition? It will save time and money if they do. - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:13 PM | Your Say (3)
Sure, it’s a lie, but it helps the gay rights agenda so let’s just go with it
Instances of fake gay bashing and fabricated homophobic ”hate crimes” are so common that I’d need to drag this on for 20 pages just to come close to listing all of the more recent cases. Here’s a good one.And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. I’m sure, as we speak, there’s yet another wannabe victim on some liberal arts campus somewhere busily planning a biased assault on themselves. - - The Matt Walsh Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:40 PM | Your Say (8)
Chinese Diaper Pirates
— so much so that authorities in Guangzhou, a major port city, busted a slew of diaper pirates earlier this month. Japan’s diaper makers aren’t assuaged, though. ”New [counterfeiters] keep popping up, no matter how many we may dig out,” a representative of Unicharm, Japan’s biggest diaper maker, told Asahi Shimbun. “There is no end to this game.” = - Quartz
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:11 PM | Your Say (2)
This is how a Protestant and Catholic couple were buried since neither could be buried in the other Church's graveyard.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (6)
Snow Stew
We put a big heavy pot filled with chipotle-and-salt-rubbed brisket and lots of sliced onions into a slow oven on Wednesday, the afternoon before the big snow storm. It kept the kitchen warm and its rich aroma lifted our spirits. When it finished cooking, we buried the pot in the snow. - - Canal HousePosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:52 AM | Your Say (2)
Executive Action?: You ain't see nothing yet. Remember....
THERE IS NO LIMIT ON THE PARDON POWER.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (12)
February 15, 2014
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:00 PM | Your Say (9)
Once Upon a Time Hating the Truth was not something a Christian nation did.
In my youth, which perhaps is not so far past, her kind of talk was everywhere.Everyone said one should defy the odds and defy the world to speak truthfully and think sanely. The whole idea of doublethink, political correctness, and self-imposed bafflegab was a matter of mockery: something done by lunatic Soviets in the East, or deliciously skewered by George Orwell in a brief novel of nightmarish gallows humor. Doublethink was not something Americans did. Hating the Truth was not something a Christian nation did. Those days are gone. -- Hoyt Defies the Empire of Lies | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:49 PM | Your Say (7)
As American as Peanut Butter
The nut spread—pick your camp: creamy or crunchy (or these days mix in the natural option)—appears in packed and cafeteria-prepped lunches across the country, surmounting regional and socioeconomic divides. It is consumed in nine out of 10 U.S. households and the average U.S. schoolchild today eats about 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the time high school graduation arrives. - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:20 PM | Your Say (15)
ADHD Does Not Exist
We’ve all encountered someone with severe attention or hyperactivity issues—the boy who is always daydreaming,the girl who gets out of her seat to run around the room while her classmates sit calmly, the woman who consistently asks questions that have just been answered. Surely at least some of these people have ADHD! Actually, not one of them does. Let me be clear: In my view, not a single individual—not even the person who finds it close to impossible to pay attention or sit still—is afflicted by the disorder called ADHD as we define it today. - - | New Republic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:37 PM | Your Say (3)
"I had a dance with death recently."
Not my first one but definitely my most memorable.At first, when I was closest to crossing over I had dreams, nightmares, dark visions.... I can't convey the feelings that attended. Death was a presence, vivid enough to have smells — horrible, a bit frightening and amplified by a sense of Evil. I struggled to stay on the narrow path of salvation and eventually broke through. Calling on God works for me. A significant step up was one day while wallowing in the darkness and having no positive thoughts beyond "hang on, it'll be OK", my wife came into the room and brought with her The Light. I realized I had turned the corner and indeed it would be OK. Posted by: chasmatic a
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (1)
Important Stuff
All this time he's been thinking their important stuff was more important than his important stuff.Then he got to thinking that their reality is highly dependent on time. He noticed that their amazing, world-shaking events are trite and forgotten if they happened a few weeks ago. On the other hand, the same trivial things happening tomorrow will be shocking and momentous and fraught with game-changing consequences. Their important stuff doesn't seem to have any shelf-life. - - ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (1)
The final stage of socialism isn’t Communism. It’s an empty shelf.
The end comes when even Maximum Socialist Efficiency can’t pay the salaries of the secret police or find enough newsprint on which to disseminate the latest edicts. Socialism ends when the janitor turns out the lights, even though the lights have worked in years. Belmont Club ｻ Gone With the Whine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (2)
As P.J. O'Rourke wrote over 20 years ago,
"Cuban cigars are rationed in Havana, you can't get good Chinese takeout in Beijing, and that tells you all you need to know about socialism". The premise still holds. - - Posted by: waltjPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (1)
February 14, 2014
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies,
"There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance."Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. A TIME FOR CHOOSING (The Speech – October 27, 1964)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 PM | Your Say (15)
Just another American town....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 PM | Your Say (14)
50 Reasons We're Living Through the Greatest Period in World History
5. The average American now retires at age 62.One hundred years ago, the average American died at age 51. Enjoy your golden years -- your ancestors didn't get any of them.16. Worldwidedeaths from battle have plunged from 300 per 100,000 people during World War II,
to the low teens during the 1970s, to less than 10 in the 1980s, to fewer than one in the 21st century, according to Harvard professor Steven Pinker. "War really is going out of style," he says. Sense of Events
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:49 PM | Your Say (10)
China's Sausage Surplus: Growing Up Gay or Growing Up Soldier? History Will Tell
Thanks to the one-child policy and preference for sons, there are an estimated 34 million ‘surplus men’ in China — a whole lot of lonely hearts. - - Hot Air HeadlinesPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:19 PM | Your Say (3)
Just when you think the food bullshit can't get any deeper....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:03 PM | Your Say (5)
Good Enough
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 PM | Your Say (4)
Well played, Ikea. Well played.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 PM | Your Say (3)
On this day in 1884,
a young Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and his mother over the span of a few hours. This is his journal entry for that day.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:30 PM | Your Say (2)
Think of not being able to buy soap, rice or toilet paper or order a cup of coffee,
where even the rich are feeling poor.“In the serene private clubs of Caracas, there is no milk, and the hiss of the cappuccino machine has fallen silent. In the slums, the lights go out every few days, or the water stops running. In the grocery stores, both state-run shops and expensive delicatessens, customers barter information: I saw soap here, that store has rice today. The oil engineers have emigrated to Calgary, the soap opera stars fled to Mexico and Colombia. And in the beauty parlours of this nation obsessed with elaborate grooming, women both rich and poor have cut back to just one blow-dry or manicure each week.” Belmont Club » Postmortem
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:54 PM | Your Say (10)
It’s Time to Build Schools, from the Ground Up
It was not grand, but only big, and big enough for musty corners of corruption to develop here and there.This is the room where the kids snorted coke. This is the closet where they stashed the porn. Here is the English teacher who hated great English literature. Here is the history teacher who taught no history. Here is the health class that spread confusion and disease. - - | Crisis Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (2)
Forget About Being Scared Of What’s Behind a Door
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:06 AM | Your Say (7)
February 13, 2014
The Harsh Truth About Truth
When people mumble and grumble that McDonalds is screwing their minimum wage employees, it may be true,but if you don't work at McDonalds and you're not a minimum wage employee, have the decency to admit that it doesn't hurt you. When Chinese peasants starve, you don't. When African babies die of Dengue, you don't. If those everyday commonplace tragedies dissuade you from studying your maths, you are not contributing to Progress by doing so. When the survey reveals that some ungodly percentage of Americans think astrology is a science, then let them suffer their ignorance. - Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:26 PM | Your Say (11)
"WOKE UP THIS MORNING AND ALL THAT LOVE HAD GONE"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:14 PM | Your Say (5)
How to Buy Jewelry Like a Jeweler
If a stone is large, you should ask to have it pulled so you can inspect it loose. Flaws are hidden under prongs. Pink gold can enhance pink stones. A common trick is to set a brownish diamond in yellow gold prongs to make it appear more like a canary. - - | VICE United States
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (1)
A Blogger's Tale: In Which the Protagonist Decides to Step Away from His Computer for a Day and Comes Seconds Away from Being Consumed by Wolves
(and apparently not bloggers from the way they were moving, Usain Bolt has nothing on them- I looked it up later and, in truth, he really doesn’t. Gray wolves can run in lengthy bursts as high as 31-37 mph [about 15-18 yards per second!]; Usain Bolt- 27.44 mph), I suspected the entry would have to be quick. Granted, at that point I was run-staggering on a flat, while they were ascending a steep hill, so I’m sure they weren’t at their maximum speed. But still, they were really moving the last time I looked and apparently wolves have biting power of about 400 pounds per square inch, not that much less than lions… - - Today I Found Out
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (6)
"A man's as faithful as his options...."
Monkey stud moved after making 50 babies - The Local "If we had a hundred females then there would be even more babies," said the monkey keeper at Halle Zoo near Leipzig.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:22 AM | Your Say (0)
Because there just aren't enough laws...
Bill legalizing rubber duck races in Wisconsin up for Assembly votePosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:20 AM | Your Say (3)
The Quickest Fix for Football
and very few fans or former players have ever seen or played games without this standard piece of equipment. If high school, college and professional football teams could forge a kind of anti-missile treaty, facemasks could be gone by the start of spring training. Observatory: Design Observer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (12)
The Green Socialists of Mars
Global Warming is the culmination of the Martian utopias. Either we become Socialist Martians or die on Venus. - - Sultan Knish:Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 AM | Your Say (1)
This Just In
Scientists Discover Men Enjoy Looking At Women’s Breasts. | "Although objectification theory suggests that women frequently experience the objectifying gaze with many adverse consequences, there is scant research examining the nature and causes of the objectifying gaze for perceivers."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (4)
February 12, 2014
Oldest Cave Paintings May Be Creations of Neandertals, Not Modern Humans
ancient artists decorated a stretch of limestone wall with dozens of depictions of human hands. They seem to have made the images by pressing a hand to the wall and then blowing red pigment on it, creating a sort of stencil.... the new results reveal one of the images at El Castillo—a large red disk on the Panel de las Manos—is at minimum 40,800 years old, making it some 4,000 years older than the Chauvet paintings, which were previously thought to be the oldest in the world. | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:17 PM | Your Say (14)
Best in Show: The Case for Westminster
Then head backstage where all dogs competing that day are lined up relaxing next to their kennels. The owners and trainers and admirers are all wandering around, it’s an incredible cross-section of the country. There’s a blow-drying platform for the toy dogs, there’s a pile of sawdust in the corner for them to do their business, you might even come across Triumph, the insult comic dog—what more could you want? . | A Continuous Lean.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:19 PM | Your Say (9)
Like the man who made it...
‘ObamaCare both sucks and blows’
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (2)
Danish Zoo Kills Healthy Giraffe And Feeds It To Tigers [Bumped]
Then, with television cameras rolling and dozens of families watching, the giraffe’s body was skinned and carved up for tiger meat. A staff veterinarian anesthetized the animal, before shooting it through the head with a bolt-action rifle. Marius died instantly.... "neutering the young giraffe would have diminished his quality of life," says Holst. | TIME.comAs opposed to shooting it in the head with a bolt-action rifle and feeding the parts to carnivores? Let's try that again with the zoo’s scientific director, Bengt Holst.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:10 PM | Your Say (40)
The Eyes Have It
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (2)
It’s almost Valentine’s Day, so naturally our thoughts turn to divorce.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (2)
Fashion-Week Diary
many sporting fierce face paint and headpieces made from of wig-shop ponytails, showed off the designer Shayne Oliver’s great leather coats embellished with straps, buckles, and zippers. There were also T-shirts imprinted with the number “69” (this house’s jejune equivalent of that et); eyelets treated likes studs; and terrific blue velvet sneaker-boots. Amid the bleeps and booms on the soundtrack,a female voice intoned, “Ten thousand screaming faggots!” The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 AM | Your Say (4)
After Afghanistan
We are now in the Afghanistanization stage, hanging around a country for no particular purpose,except that we aren't very good at departures and the men who made this mess still think that Karzai and his crew can make this work if we provide them with some more training and air support without being shot in the back. And when we have finally left and Karzai's cobbled together government collapses, its ministers absconding to Paris and Pakistan with suitcases full of stolen aid dollars, what comes after the war? Sultan Knish:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:45 AM | Your Say (4)
Satan Called. He'd Like His Blue Devil Back.
— were on loan from General Motors. The other cars damaged were a 1962 black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette and a 2009 white 1.5 Millionth Corvette, the museum said.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (5)
More Bilge Served at White House:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (1)
Joan Rivers
I said Justin Bieber looked like a little lesbian—and I stand by it: he’s the daughter Cher wishes she’d had. You can tune me out, you can click me off, it’s okay. I am not going to bow to political correctness. But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can’t be part of the party. Meaning, you can’t go horseback riding with Jackie O in Central Park if you’re going to make a joke about her that night. - - Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (2)
“Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”
Coleman with his jumping frog—bet stranger $50—stranger had no frog, & C got him one—in the meantime stranger filled C’s frog full of shot & he couldn’t jump—the stranger’s frog won. - - Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (1)
The Government Took the Time to Prove that Americans Really Love Pizza
"Time for the federal government to start taxing or banning pizza! First, we need junk science studies showing how harmful even one pizza slice is. Step two, a study which shows how eating a pizza is harmful to children. Step three, form a bogus public interest group: Citizens United for Sane Pizza Consumption. Step Four, have said interest group push for a federal ban of pizzas and a national registry of pizza makers. Step Five, a special tax on all pizza dough, grated cheese and pizza slicers. Step Six, return to Step One with new item that someone likes." - - TIME.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (1)
February 11, 2014
"It’s a big country and one fallacy doesn’t fit all."
Some fallacies are committed purposefully by evil men with evil intent.The Wall Street financial elite, big corporations, big media and their politician puppets fall into this category. Other fallacies are executed by people whose salary depends upon the fallacies being believed by the masses. Middle level bankers, managers, journalists, and bureaucrats fall into this category. And lastly you have the willfully ignorant masses who would rather believe fallacies than look up from their iGadgets, Facebook, and Twitter and think. - - Doug Ross @ Journal: A country built on a Himalayan mountain of fallacies
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:24 PM | Your Say (1)
Why do we assume the future will be short?
A billion years at least is needed to get you all the way from the first stirrings of human philosophy, science, and religion, about 50,000 years ago, through the immensities of time that lie ahead for species on our planet, before the Sun’s unbearable drying heat causes the evolution of life on Earth to grind to a halt. So think about that billion years of evolution, that 20ft line. How much of it have we traversed? – John Schellenberg – Aeon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:12 PM | Your Say (0)
On today’s Russia
The Soviet Union changed its name and dropped its façade of Marxism, but it remained the same samoderzhaviye, the historical Russian form of autocracy in which a tsar is running the country with the help of his political police…Russia today is the first intelligence dictatorship in history. It is a brand new form of totalitarianism, which we are not yet familiar with." - - TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:46 PM | Your Say (7)
"Hey liberals, have fun when President Palin suspends the whole stupid law on January 20, 2017."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:24 PM | Your Say (4)
The Supernatural Bunnymother of Surrey
The men from London arrived just in time to see Mary Toft give birth to her fifteenth rabbit. - - Damn Interesting
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (4)
At 85 Shirley Temple Sets Sail On the Good Ship Lollipop
Temple started dancing at Mrs Meglin's Dance Studio in Los Angeles aged three. It was here, in 1931, that she was signed up a series of shorts that parodied famous films with all-child casts. She was paid $10 a day. Stand Up and Cheer was her first feature film in 1934. A year later, aged six, she was the first recipient of a special juvenile Oscar. She holds the record as the youngest ever Oscar winner. Her mother Gertrude did her hair for each movie. Every hairstyle had exactly 56 curls. Temple made 14 short films and 43 features during her acting career.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:44 AM | Your Say (4)
Which is more likely in Obama's world after work?
The new golden age of poetry and music foreseen by Nancy Pelosi?Or more heroin, more obesity, more diabetes, more crime, more children raised in transient households that make even elementary character formation all but impossible... And, if you're one of those who works in the "knowledge economy", how confident are you that you can insulate your life from the pathologies beyond the Green Zone? America Takes Early Retirement :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (2)
The Truth About Che Guevara
Cubans “love” him the same way Romanians “loved” Nicolae Ceausescu and East Germans “loved” Berlin Wall architect Erich Honecker. You know what happens to Cubans who display open hated of Che? They get arrested. When he was still alive, they were executed or herded into slave-labor camps. So yeah, everyone “loves” him. It’s required by law. Woe to those who disobey State Security. - - Michael Totten, World Affairs Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (4)
"If a coin-sized black hole were placed at Earth's center, what would happen?"
The good news is: "Not all of the Earth would simply be sucked into the black hole." But that's the end of the good news. - - SLATE
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (2)
Training Proofreaders Didn't Make the List
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (10)
"On the road five miles south of town"
We get strong west winds that will close highways, local roads, even the interstate (I-10)and bring us a lot of Arizona real estate (airborne). The dust storms are enough to make grown men cry, women tremble, children run and hide, dogs to bark and horses to bolt in sheer panic. An old joke: one day the wind stopped blowing and all the chickens fell over. Spillers of Soup: DOWN BY ME
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (1)
February 10, 2014
The Weight of Rain
Two procedures to determine the weight of one inch of rain on one acre of land .... which comes to .... 113.3053382 tons of water/acre per 1 inch rain.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:46 PM | Your Say (5)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Iraq: Militants set off own car bomb, 21 dead: A police officer said the militants were attending a lesson on making car bombs and explosive belts when a glitch set off one of the devices.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:17 PM | Your Say (10)
"Everybody loves Obamacare, it is just that they dislike what it does."
Unfortunately the diner who actually enters the premises and samples the fare is presented with a meager plate of disgusting mystery food. When the more burly customers complain to the manager he drags out the short order cook and with a great show forces him to dish out the special reserved cutlets and chops to the irate diners. But as for the customers too timid or powerless to remonstrate, they must content themselves with the same slop as ever. - - Belmont Club ｻ The Profiteer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (2)
And now, competing in the hippo class....
Janet Napolitano Would Like to Figure Skate at the Sochi Olympics "Women's figure skates in size 12. $ 250.00. Airfare and lodging to Sochi to participate in the Olympic Games $ 15,000.00. Seeing Janet Napolitano attempt to do a double axel... priceless"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:26 AM | Your Say (4)
She'd Know
First Lady: Gay Football Player Is 'Inspiration'Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (9)
April Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism
when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables. Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night. - - WSJ.com[ "The biggest nightmare for the feds, those pesky tax funded snipers the military has trained over several decades. But Nah, just a bunch of pesky unemployed teens." ]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 AM | Your Say (8)
February 9, 2014
Valentine's Day? The gift that keeps on giving....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:34 PM | Your Say (6)
Woody Allen on Crime and Non-Punishment
"I feel that is true — that one can commit a crime, do unspeakable things, and get away with it.There are people who commit all sorts of crimes and get away with it, and some of them are plagued with all sorts of guilt for the rest of their lives and others aren’t. They commit terrible crimes and they have wonderful lives, wonderful, happy lives, with families and children, and they have done unspeakably terrible things. There is no justice, there is no rational structure to it." -- Interview with Woody Allen, Commonweal Magazine, 2010
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:38 PM | Your Say (3)
On Winters That Linger
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (6)
South of the Border. Down Mexico Way.
Paracuáro has been the scene of several firefights in recent weeks, mostly consisting of vigilantes firing wildly into the bushes at enemy gunmen they can’t see.In early January they shot dead a Knights Templar fighter who confronted them with a bazooka during a street battle. The gangster was killed before he could unleash the rocket, his limp finger still poised on the trigger. The American Vigilante Versus the Mexican Cartel | Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 AM | Your Say (7)
Soon....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:06 AM | Your Say (3)
February 8, 2014
Woody Allen and Dylan Farrow: did he or didn't he?
"Even prior to the abuse allegations, Farrow had noticed Allen behaving inappropriately with their (Mia and Woody’s) adopted daughter Dylan.This behavior had been going on for years and had been reported years earlier, beginning when Dylan was two or three, and had been witnessed by other people, some of whom testified during the trial. Farrow and Allen had been in couple’s therapy for years in order to deal with the problem of his inappropriate behavior with Dylan. These allegations of inappropriate touching occurred years before the Soon Yi affair was exposed, and the work of the couples therapy was to set limits on what was even then seen as an excess of physical affection of an inappropriate type (although not frank abuse such as was alleged to have later occurred)." " -- Read the definitive review at neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 PM | Your Say (19)
The Bright Are Too White
Another jewel of degradation gleaming in the wan light of witlessness:A school (should I say “school”?) in Brooklyn, more than two-thirds of whose students are black or Hispanic, has abolished its (I mean “it’s”) advanced courses for the intelligent. Why this salubrious excision? Why, because too many of the students therein are white. That is, classes for the intelligent contain the intelligent. My god. This cancer must be corrected lest it spread. Fred Reed -- The Soul of a Curmudgeon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:13 PM | Your Say (8)
Is that a cold front coming in or are you just glad to see me?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:27 AM | Your Say (3)
H. L. Mencken on Balder and Dash
That is to say, the thing is always a stump speech; it is conceived as a stump speech and written as a stump speech. More, it is a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that the speaker has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small-town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters. - - Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:45 AM | Your Say (7)
"To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains." [Bumped]
when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. - - An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow - NYTimes.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:27 AM | Your Say (54)
February 7, 2014
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 PM | Your Say (0)
"Progressives would rather die than admit their beliefs are dogmas. "
They each pretend they are all fearless and independent thinkers,who have all come to the same fashionable conclusions because the matters are so clear and obvious — too, too obvious to bother discussing — that no other opinion is possible, or need to be explored. In other words, they are conformists pretending to be nonconformists, they are stupid people pretending to be smart, and they are cowards pretending to be brave. One wonder whom they think they are fooling. Restless Heart of Darkness — Part Two | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 PM | Your Say (7)
"The great selling point of the Left, the great promise of PC, "
is that all issues are orthodox and settled, and the great debate of the human condition, all the mysteries of life, no longer are open to discussion.
The matter is closed. Talk must stop. Correct thinking is true; incorrect thinking is heresy. You must shut up. You must shut up. You must shut up. And the burden of human reasoning, the torment of the paradoxes of life, the need for learning, education, or curiosity is done away with. Everything the faithful need know can be printed on a bumper sticker, and chanted as a mantra or a mob-slogan at a rally. Restless Heart of Darkness — Part Two | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 PM | Your Say (0)
Hop in! No time to explain
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (10)
Obama's “smart diplomacy”
The irony is that Obama campaigned on the platform of “smart diplomacy”.But as things have turned out he was smart only in his own mind. Under his watch the 70 year old Pax Americana has fallen apart. Al-Qaeda has flourished. President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines caught the tone of rising concern when he warned, in an interview with the New York Times that China was doing to Southeast Asia what Nazi Germany did to Central Europe in the late 1930s. “At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’? Well, the world has to say it — remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.” Belmont Club » The Emperor Has No Clothes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (4)
This is God's Country
The country was founded on a belief in a creator God and has OFFICIALLY endorsed the concept from the very beginning. That is the reality. It is not really up for debate. You may wish to turn America into something else, but do not pretend that you are turning it into what it was always designed to be. Have the courage of your convictions. Make your case for an Atheist America, but do not stand there and tell me that America has always been atheist. The evidence against you is staggering.... - - The Matt Walsh BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (2)
Hate is the Force that Gives the Left Meaning
It isn't hope that animates its leaders and thinkers, but the darker side of human nature that calls on them to destroy and to kill.That dark side is why the left's victories end in tragedies, why the red flags are painted with blood and when its followers have run out of enemies to kill, they turn on each other and destroy their own movements with firing squads, gulags and guillotines. - - Sultan Knish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (8)
February 6, 2014
Who Says There's No Good News?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:05 PM | Your Say (6)
Sherlock Holmes Speaks for Me
"The point I’m trying to make is that I am the most unpleasant, rude, ignorant, and all-around obnoxious arsehole that anyone could possibly have the misfortune to meet.I am dismissive of the virtuous, unaware of the beautiful, and uncomprehending in the face of the happy. So if I didn’t understand I was being asked to be the best man, it is because I never expected to be anybody’s best friend, and certainly not the best friend of the bravest and kindest and wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune of knowing." Steven Moffat on Sherlock’s Best-Man Speech -- Vulture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:17 PM | Your Say (3)
THE REAL AFGHANISTAN - A MARINE'S VIEW
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:13 PM | Your Say (16)
"If only, if only, if only Stalin knew!!"
File under -- Tough Shit, Sherlock:When she went to her oncologist’s office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted. “I’m a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can’t sleep at night,” Nelson said. “I can’t imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen.” -- neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (13)
Why more Americans are getting high -- and overdosing -- on heroin
A very deep black market developed in which these pills now cost a dollar a milligram. Most of these pills come in 30, 40, 80 milligram doses. That means you are having to pay 30, 40, 80 bucks a pill, and a lot of people getting addicted. Their tolerance rises. They end up using three, four, five of these pills. I have met people who had $300-, $400-a-day addictions. Heroin comes in and it is a fifth to a 10th cheaper than that. - - PBS NewshourPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:17 PM | Your Say (4)
Moonbat Progressives at Home
It is not as if they talk to each other in a rational fashion in the faculty lounge or news bullpen,and then only assume a demeanor of barking moonbat lunacy when they talk to us. They talk to each other in the same way, like loyal party members in George Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR, exchanging meaningless and soothing slogans and nonsense words, lulled to sleep by the perfect agreement in the perfectly empty word-noises, unless someone jars the serenity by disagreeing on some small point. Immediately the barking moonbats close in, screeching and caterwauling, until the deviant offers servile apologies and self-flagellation. Restless Heart of Darkness — Part Four | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (3)
Dark Art: Spectacular Illusions from the Golden Age of Magic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (0)
Coke Adds Life
became vital in helping to install the 64 military bottling plants and distributing the 10 billion drinks required to stock the various US bases and fleet throughout the war. As such these company conscripts or Coca-Cola Colonels as they became known were granted Technical Observer status, equal to that of qualified military technicians, and never saw front line action. A sweet posting by more than one definition. Coca-Cola Revealed: Part 1 - Santa, Playboy and Nazis
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:52 AM | Your Say (1)
"He writes the worst English I have even encountered. "
It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line;it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. But I grow lyrical. H. L. Mencken on Balder and Dash - Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 AM | Your Say (3)
February 5, 2014
Head Hand Bag (Yael Mer)
What’s the point of going through all the trouble of seducing and decapitating your oppressor if you’re just going to conceal your victory in a Coach weekender? Let everyone know what’s really going in your overhead rack on the Hamptons Jitney. - - Design and Violence
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:57 PM | Your Say (2)
Woody Allen / People Magazine / 1976
"I'm open-minded about sex. I'm not above reproach; if anything, I'm below reproach.I mean, if I was caught in a love nest with 15 12-year-old girls tomorrow, people would think, yeah, I always knew that about him." Allen pauses. "Nothing I could come up with would surprise anyone," he ventures helplessly. "I admit to it all." Angst-Ridden Humorist - Famous Comedians, Woody Allen : People.com October 04, 1976 [HT: Lileks, James & Joan of Argghh!]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:42 PM | Your Say (2)
Charlie Chaplin Invents Himself
However, on the way to the wardrobe, I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane, and a derby hat. I wanted everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight; the hat small, and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look old or young, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small mustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. - - Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (7)
Heroin and the Algebra of Need
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:06 AM | Your Say (2)
The Atheist's Prayer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (15)
February 4, 2014
"And he always was a very good dog."
Whatever you have asked him to bear, he bears it. You’re surprised to realize that’s what you’ve done. You’ve been waiting for a signal. He’s been waiting for permission. LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2014Update: Don't miss the comments here.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 PM | Your Say (26)
Joan Rivers:
When you get older, who cares? I don’t mince words, I don’t hold back.I said Justin Bieber looked like a little lesbian—and I stand by it: he’s the daughter Cher wishes she’d had. You can tune me out, you can click me off, it’s okay. I am not going to bow to political correctness. But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can’t be part of the party. Meaning, you can’t go horseback riding with Jackie O in Central Park if you’re going to make a joke about her that night. Quintilian & - Lapham’s Quarterly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:01 PM | Your Say (0)
Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it.
What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers.It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. - - Slate
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 AM | Your Say (35)
About Time
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (4)
Aw, Shucks!
I can picture Ernest Hemingway with a cigar dangling out of his mouth and his sleeves rolled up, oyster knife glinting in the afternoon sun, dominating a couple dozen Belons on some pre-war Parisian terrace. Any man worth his salt can open an oyster.” An Oyster Primer
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 AM | Your Say (6)
February 3, 2014
Drug Overdoses Are Killing More People Than Cars, Guns
According to the latest available data from the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdoses were responsible for 38,329 deaths in 2010,30,006 of which were unintentional. That's a rate of 105 every day, and that number doesn't take into account the 6,748 people treated every day for the misuse or abuse of drugs. In comparison, traffic accidents were responsible for 33,687 deaths in 2010. Firearms killed 31,672 people, and 26,852 died as a result of falling. America, It's Time For An Intervention
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:10 PM | Your Say (22)
Hilary Hahn Resting with Violin
She won her first Grammy in 2001 with a recording of Brahms and Stravinsky concertos with Neville Marriner and Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Another Grammy followed in 2008 with Schoenberg and Sibelius concertos with the Swedish Radio Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. - - Books and Art
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (14)
Crushing "Common Core" with One Headline
Common Core Prepares Students For Lucrative Future In Fields That Require Sitting On The Floor And Expressing Your Opinion About Addition | The Rumford MeteorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:19 PM | Your Say (4)
Excuse Me But I'm Not Getting the Outpouring of Grief for Hoffman, Actor and Junkie
I'm sorry, but I'm really not getting it. Especially the endless blather out of those who worship the great pretenders of Hollywood. Let's review. You have it all and.... you blow it up. Intentionally. And after having been through addiction before? I'm sorry he's dead but I am not surprised, nor do I blame the heroin. Junkies: "Once the needle goes in, it never comes out."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:14 PM | Your Say (21)
Here's a Man to Mourn
Begone to the faux-remorse for junkie-actors of no significance. Mourn instead the passing of men like Leonard Mason Smith:He was married to Penelope Self Dec. 4, 1953, in Asheville, N.C. They were married for 58 years until her death in 2012. They raised five children together, living in New Rochelle and Greenwich, Conn. He enjoyed sailing and served as commodore of the Shenorock Shore Club in Rye, N.Y. They also raised show and field Gordon Setters, of which he was very proud. After retirement, they resided in Asheville and Pine Island, where they were active with local church groups and charities. ...He hated pointless bureaucracy, thoughtless inefficiency and bad ideas born of good intentions. He loved his wife, admired and respected his children and liked just about every dog he ever met.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 AM | Your Say (4)
"Mount up. It's time."
Many states are remembering they're states, not administrative subdivisions. Yes, others still cling to their vassalage, staving off their Hindenberg moment with hysterical decrees, but still others are breaking up like slave ships on the rocks. The worm is turning, the last ditch holdouts are faltering. A historic era is beginning. For citizen journalists and bloggers who've grown accustomed to life under siege: mount up. It's time. ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (2)
Journalism Today
The job is about two things: minting clicks for slave wages, and feeling important.(You might say that journalists are paid both in money and in power.) Anything that can produce a good Two Minutes' Hate punches both buttons. If one Mr. Jones misses it, the next won't. I've seen the future of journalism in America. It's called Upworthy. It's exactly what Pontus both demands and deserves. Fortunately, the Pontic mob has both the attention and the testicles of a gnat, and its bite-to-bark ratio is really difficult to understate. - - Unqualified Reservations: Mr. Jones is rather concerned
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (0)
Liberty is winning. DC is losing. DC knows it and DC fears it.
With their street barricades and check points and retread military equipment, the place looks like Berlin in the Reich's last days of 1945.They're violating and assaulting and even murdering people for petty or imagined offenses, or for no reason at all. Then there's the steady drip-drip of purges and unexplained deaths and puzzling resignations, the conflicting laws and regulations enforced by dozens of overlapping agencies. Some write their own warrants as they swing through the doors and windows. The place ought to be tested for rabies. ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:21 AM | Your Say (2)
February 2, 2014
Ghost psychiatry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:48 PM | Your Say (4)
Health guardians from the 7th sector said the disturbances began spontaneously
when two guardians attempted to take a pre-diabetic into rehabilitative custody Sunday.
Two patrolling guardians had gotten an app alert that 27-year-old Tara Newkirk was ordering pancakes and a breakfast steak at a non-approved food outlet. They received permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to take her to the Center for Health Integration for a week-long fast to be followed by an indefinite period of food consumption therapy. Downgrade Diary: When Will the Revolt Start?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:25 PM | Your Say (4)
The Robe to Hell
After many years in America, I have never felt so foreign as reading the pile-up of commentaryfrom supposedly sophisticated persons tutting about how my "assailing" the judge will not be "helpful" to the case. This absurd prostration before the bench is one of the biggest structural defects in this country. So it's "human nature" for a judge to go into a big queeny huff because one of his supplicants is doing insufficient robe-kissing? :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:10 PM | Your Say (1)
You Know We're Living in the Computer Age? / History According to Law & Order
At first they were oddities too (characters using computers in funny ways, interesting-looking fake applications or websites), but as many obsessive projects start, the more screenshots I took, the more I noticed computers. - - Rhizome |
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:29 PM | Your Say (1)
Woman of the Year
My wife turns into a different person when she watches a football game and after all this time I still have not come to terms with it.Not really. I just avoid it. Normally, she is quiet, polite, and unassuming - the perfect wife and life companion. In front of a game she curses, she climbs the back of the couch, she screams, the cats hide, she talks on 2 phones at the same time while typing on the notebook computer, she drinks nothing and eats nothing, all focus is on *the game* and when it is finally over it's like someone let the air out of a beach ball, and I'm glad things are back to normal.....til next year. The key to a long (30 years), happy marriage is a detached garage. Posted by: ghostsniper OK this is getting out of hand.... @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:16 PM | Your Say (6)
Neo Posts for Me
I figure I may as well post something about the Superbowl. And this is it. That’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about it. neo-neocon ｻ Blog Archive ｻ A little something about the SuperbowlPosted by gerardvanderleun at 2:44 PM | Your Say (3)
'If I Had A Hammer'? Well, what's stopping you?
The legacy of this period is less musical than political: half-a-century back, the self-consciously childlike "folk song" met the civil rights movement and helped permanently infantilize the left.I caught an "anti-war" protest in Vermont a few years ago and the entire repertoire was from the Sixties, starting with "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?", which as a poignant comment on soldiering was relevant in the Great War but has no useful contribution to make in a discussion on Iraq. And, as I observed of Pete Seeger's visit to the "mass" protest movement of our own time, the more pertinent question with the Occupy Wall Street crowd is "Where have all the showers gone?" - - A Mighty Wind :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (5)
You're Lying
If you tell me you've never put yourself on one of the teams, you're lying.If you're telling me you've never named the offensive linemen after fat guys you know, you're lying. If you tell me you've never tried to make an entire Madden team out of nothing but white guys, you're lying. If you tell me you succeeded in making an entire Madden team out of white guys, and didn't have to use really bad safeties as your cornerbacks, too, you're lying. - - The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (10)
February 1, 2014
This is the world of egalitarianism,
leftism’s bitter warriors will not halt until all advantages are vanquished from society.Screeds decrying racism, prejudice, sexism, ableism, and all of natural man’s maladies will continue to be published until we are all sniveling, crippled shells of ourselves and anything more than a blind hunchback is considered a privileged elite. This is the world of egalitarianism, where the only success allowed is taking everyone else down a few pegs. Salon…and On and On - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (0)
"Some people eat cereal for breakfast."
Zero nutrition. Breakfast cereal is a fraud and a scam, unless it's plain grits or cream of wheat or oatmeal. The crunchy granola stuff? Well, I thought the guy who discovered that you could sell people plain water was a genius, but the people who decided to sell guinea pig food to humans was his creative equal. - - El Bird Dog's All-White Winter Breakfasts - Maggie's Farm
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 AM | Your Say (20)