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October 31, 2014
Why Google wants to replace Gmail
I'm predicting that Google will end Gmail within the next five years. The company hasn't announced such a move -- nor would it. But whether we like it or not, and whether even Google knows it or not, Gmail is doomed. -- Mike Elgen | ComputerworldPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 PM | Your Say (8)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 PM | Your Say (1)
There is no sculpting of meat into swans, bowling balls, angels, or any other shape.
The 6 Weirdest Rules in Professional Barbecue: As for scoring: There is no perfect 10. The scale goes from 2 (inedible) to 9 (excellent). Submissions get a 1 if they're disqualified for any reason.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 PM | Your Say (0)
Things We Aren’t Allowed to Say:
What is taught as “history” in the government education system is, in fact, a propaganda narrative indistinguishable from the liberal orthodoxy of the Democrat Party.
This orthodoxy extends privilege (yeah, I speak academese quite fluently) to the descendants of Catholics, Jews and other non-WASP immigrants, a sort of “Get Out of Whiteness Free” card, so they can exonerate themselves from the genocidal atrocity narrative of the American founding: “We didn’t exterminate the Native Americans! We did not enslave African-Americans! My great-great grandfather was [insert Immigrant Nationality here] who came here with nothing! My ancestors were victims of the Evil Hate Machine, too!” You’re welcome, non-WASP Americans. My WASP ancestors did all that for you, so you could feel superior to me. Glad to help.Racism, Classism and Catcalling (or, #Feminism Is for Rich White Lesbians) : The Other McCain
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (8)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (3)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:00 AM | Your Say (5)
This is the epitome of intolerance and hatred of the other.
Whether Palin is done for politics or not, she's representative of the left's approach toward anyone who dares defy their order of things.
If you happen to belong to one of their favored groups and won't go along with their ideology, they hate you more than the white male. Whether you're hispanic or black or homosexual or female or any other protected group, if you won't go along with the left politically, you're worse than an enemy. You're a traitor who loses the right to be even called part of that group. You're not black, you're a conservative Uncle Tom. You're not a woman, you're a Republic**t.- - Word Around the Net: BEATING ON PALIN
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (2)
October 30, 2014
Are blacks in Chicago killing each other in large numbers?
The solution might be to stop doing it, might it not?While I do not wish these young dead, I can do nothing to stop them, and it is not my problem. Are black children growing up illiterate? This gives me no pleasure, and I have various reasons both selfish and moral to wish it were not so. But perhaps the solution is for their parents, or parent, to see that they do their homework, or even to teach them. I cannot do this for them, and it isn’t my problem.Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 PM | Your Say (8)
The word “unbelievable” has lost all force.
Things that ought to be unbelievable, and once were, have become routine. Still, there it was: Don’t expect a junior-high teacher to have the level of literacy I had in the fourth grade. Instead, make it dangerous to notice her stupidity. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 PM | Your Say (5)
"In a moment you're going to see a terrible thing...."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 PM | Your Say (3)
Chicken Fried Double-Double
Yo want a good amount of caramelization on them and they’ll cook hella fast. 2) Right when the chicken fried steaks come out of the hot oil, as per the recipe above, throw a slice of American cheese food on each so it melts. 3) Slice a brioche bun in half and toast that sum’bitch. Assemble your sandwich in this order. Botton bun, sausage thousand island, chicken fried steaks, grilled onions, tomato, lettuce, and a whole lot more sausage gravy thousand island. The goal is to make it look exactly like a double-double, but, like, way better because it’s chicken fried.- - Culinary Bro-Down
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 PM | Your Say (4)
During a moment in the checkout line at Costco,
it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be the worst time for the apocalypse to strike. There might have been two hundred souls in the building, and if we were suddenly thrust into a survival situation by nuclear attack or zombie outbreak, we would have hundreds of tons of food, along with plenty of pharmaceuticals, first aid supplies, and toilet paper on hand. How to Be a Good StrangerPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 PM | Your Say (5)
Anyway, the tactics used by the rainbow party have always been dishonest.
They were one of the first to bully advertisers to pull ads from people the rainbow party disliked.They organized boycotts aimed at liberal nitwits who would then join in and force normals to go along with whatever the gays were demanding. The harassment of Christian bakers is the most recent example of the petty and nasty habits of the “gay rights” crowd. Seeing the tables tuned on them and their fellow travelers in the anti-humanism wing of the Cult of Modern Liberalism is just too funny.The End Of The Homo-Verse at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:50 PM | Your Say (4)
Antler Farm
can be so thick and bulbous that they look like patches of mushrooms sprouting out of the deer’s head or like thick growths of coral, surfaced from the sea. Sometimes the antlers will have errant branches that drip towards the ground like candlewax. Sometimes they’re just huge.... The largest of these, on wild deer, come in over 300 inches. The antlers that are being produced on deer farms grow much, much larger. In the past five years, farmers have produced non-typical antlers with scores of more than 500 — even more than 600 — inches.— re:form — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 PM | Your Say (5)
Remember,kids, have an unsafe and insane Halloween!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (5)
The man who has spent his presidency dismantling the American military should not call anyone chickenshit.
Of course, American Jews have not noticed. Since they happily voted Jeremiah Wright’s protégé into the White House, they have a vested interest in blinding themselves to the obvious.Had Enough Therapy?: Who's Really Chickenshit?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (4)
Justice? We're Playing Way Past Justice
They've all gone home for the day. Stop calling. If you go out behind the dumpster at the Justice Office Building, there's a small door. That's where you should go. That's where Comeuppance keeps his office. You're dealing with him now. He has friends all over. Even bus drivers.- - The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (3)
Lena Dunham is fond of lists.
growing up in a $6.25 million Tribeca apartment; attending a selection of elite private schools; renting a home in Hollywood Hills well before having anything quite resembling a job and complaining that the home is insufficiently “chic”; the habitual education of the men in her family at Andover; the services of a string of foreign nannies; being referred to a homework therapist when she refused to do her homework and being referred to a relationship therapist when she fought with her mother; constant visits to homeopathic doctors, and visits to child psychologists three times a week; having a summer home on a lake in Connecticut, and complaining about it; writing a “voice of her generation” memoir in which ordinary life events among members of her generation, such as making student-loan payments or worrying about the rent or health insurance, never come up; making casual trips to Malibu; her grandparents’ having taken seven-week trips to Europe during her mother’s childhood; spending a summer at a camp at which the costs can total almost as much as the median American family’s annual rent; being histrionically miserable at said camp and demanding to be brought home early; demanding to be sent back to the same expensive camp the next year.Pathetic Privilege | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 AM | Your Say (6)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:42 AM | Your Say (2)
Secret Service Agents Pay a Visit to Anti-Obama Artist Sabo â and the Entire Exchange Is Seemingly Captured on Video
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 AM | Your Say (2)
It's probably nothing....
NATO says Russian jets, bombers circle Europe in unusual incidents:That incident took place around 3:00 a.m. in Western Europe on Wednesday, when four Tu-95 long-range strategic nuclear bombers and four Il-78 tanker aircraft flew over the Norwegian Sea. Norwegian F-16 fighter jets scrambled to intercept them. Six of the planes returned to Russia, but two of the bombers skirted the Norwegian coast, flew past Britain — sending Typhoon fighter jets to scramble in response — and then finally looped west of Spain and Portugal, attracting Portuguese F-16s. Then the two bombers appeared to return to Russia, Janzen said.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:16 AM | Your Say (4)
How can we cure bureaucratic bloat and managerial takeover in an institution?
The simple answer is that we can't. When there has been bureaucratic bloat and managerial takeover, there can only be destruction and replacement, because reform is (in practise) impossible.And the replacement process must, in practise, be quick and dirty; crude and complete. If the process is strung out, powerful bureaucrats (and by definition these bureaucrats are powerful, or there would not be a problem) will entrench, will mobilize mass media opinion, will employ legal and procedural delays, will recruit the support of political parties (who will always welcome any powerful interest group).Bruce Charlton's Miscellany: Introducing The teacher-free college
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:03 AM | Your Say (2)
And, just like that, human trafficking was a thing of the past!
Gen Shimizu tackled it on a mountain unicycle! With a mission to raise money for Polaris Project and bring awareness to the modern day slavery that is human trafficking, he spent 88 days on the trail and documented his journal entries each night on his blog.On his blog? Wowser, Gen!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 AM | Your Say (4)
Why Nerdy White Guys Who Love the Blues Are Obsessed With a Wisconsin Chair Factory
Petrusich: Paramount is this incredible label that was born from a company called the Wisconsin Chair Company, which was making chairs, obviously. The company had started building phonograph cabinets to contain turntables, which they also were licensing. And they developed, like many furniture companies, an arm that was a record label so that they could make records to sell with the cabinets. This was before a time in which record stores existed. People bought their records at the furniture store, because they were things you needed to make your furniture work. So the Wisconsin Chair Company, based in the Grafton-Port Washington area of Wisconsin, started the Paramount label. And they accidentally ended up recording whom I believe to be some of the most incredible performers in American musical history.- - - Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:28 AM | Your Say (3)
October 29, 2014
The people who need to face up to sober reality here
should be that vast array of highly qualified Blacks and Latinos who are not quite able to get hired at Google or Oracle.They should take a page from Michael Jackson’s book,** and take a look at the Man in the Mirror. That would really take place in an unprecedented climate of transparency. But this won’t happen. Instead, the hi-tech industry will be loaded down with the intestinal parasites of Rainbow-Push, Feminist Frequency and any other colony of loathesome loafing liver-flukes who feel the world owes them a living for things that transpired years and decades before they were ever born. This is how excellence in America dies....How the Worm Crawls Into the Apple | RedState
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:17 PM | Your Say (2)
One evening on Oasis, I joined a dozen other passengers at the ship’s Chef’s Table, in a private dining room on Deck 12.
micro-lettuce leaves, shaved beetroot, and Parmesan tuiles, all floating or semi-submerged in a cucumber-basil Martini and served in a Martini glass. (Kanvinde made a modified version, with boneless chicken breast, for a guest from Arkansas who had a shellfish allergy.) That course was followed by three soups served in small teacups, and Kanvinde explained that a key to preparing one of them—a “lemon-scented pea soup with Alaskan crab-leg meat”—was to grate just the very outermost layer of the lemon peel for the zest that provided the first note in its aroma.Floating Feasts
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:21 PM | Your Say (14)
Oasis, like other very large cruise ships,
feels less like a nautical object than like a shopping-mall food court with swimming pools on the roof.Yet something about being at sea must weaken the inhibitions that normally prevent people from topping off a huge restaurant meal by sprawling on their bed and calling room service. A person who, on land, can walk past an auction of Thomas Kinkade prints without regret may be helplessly drawn to one in the Boleros Lounge, on Deck 5, across from Starbuck’s. Maybe oceans exert a powerful transformative force that affects you even when you can’t see or feel or smell the water, and makes you hungry.- - Floating Feasts
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:19 PM | Your Say (2)
Fools say, “If you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”
This might be true, or partly true, or sometimes true, or occasionally plausible, if government were benevolent.It isn’t.The feds—whatever the intention of individuals—are setting up the machinery of a totalitarianism beyond anything yet known on the earth. It falls rapidly into place. You can argue, if you are optimistic enough to make Pollyanna look like a Schopenhaurian gloom-monger, that they would never use such powers. They already do. The only question is how far they will push. What cannot be argued is that they have the powers.- - Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:14 PM | Your Say (1)
“Promulgation Planet”
{Progressives} do not live on Earth, with the rest of us, because when they say “X” they don’t mean to say “We stake our reputation and our credibility on X.”What they’re doing is showing us the moves to a sort of dance. Put your left foot here, put your right foot there, ObamaCare is working great, the Washington quote is spurious, the border is secure. It is the message itself, not the content of it or the support for it, that matters. It is the kind of warped thinking that arises, in a naturally consequential way, from valuing consensus as proof. The next step in the fallacious thinking is to try to shape reality by shaping the consensus.House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:09 PM | Your Say (1)
Which reminds me that chocolate is on my diet....
Compound in cocoa found to reverse age-related memory loss - The Washington PostPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (1)
There are many difficulties in talk of memes,
including how they are to be identified.Is Romanticism a meme? Is the idea of evolution itself a meme, jumping unbidden from brain to brain? My suspicion is that the entire “theory” amounts to not much more than a misplaced metaphor.An Appetite for Wonder Review: The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (2)
Clown Terrorism: It's On, Baby
where police on Saturday night arrested 14 teenagers dressed as the pranksters, carrying pistols, knives and baseball bats. A police source said the teens were arrested in the parking lot of a secondary school in the port town of Agde, as several other complaints poured in over "armed clowns" in the region over the weekend. In the Mediterranean city of Montpellier a man disguised as a clown was arrested after beating up a pedestrian with an iron bar, while three motorists in different towns complained about "scary clowns" threatening them.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (10)
October 28, 2014
Liberian American Cities to Avoid
Liberian American organizations estimate there are between 250,000 and 500,000 Liberians living in the United States.This figure includes Liberian residents that have a temporary status, and American of Liberian descent. The metropolitan areas with the largest Liberian immigrant populations are New York and Washington, D.C.; other cities with significant numbers of Liberians include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston and Fort Worth (Texas), Hartford (Connecticut), Los Angeles and Oakland (California), Miami, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. So, as states such as Rhode Island and New Jersey.- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:45 PM | Your Say (6)
Social media have become overwhelmingly opposed to quarantining of the Ebola outbreak.
At one time, quarantines were considered a progressive measure, the sort of thing you would support as a thinking man or woman.If you didn’t, people would assume you were a fool who knew nothing about modern science. So what makes the Ebola outbreak different? The difference is simple. Quarantining means that light-skinned people will be detaining dark-skinned people. So we just can’t do it. Because? Because.The White Man’s Burden - The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:44 PM | Your Say (10)
Salt Of The Earth
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
-- Rolling Stones
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (2)
Pipino: Gentleman Thief
leaving the bricks pockmarked and brittle. It was easy to avoid the most damaged masonry, but sometimes even solid-looking stonework was unreliable. As he neared the roofline forty feet up, the pressure from his foot disintegrated a brick almost instantly. He fumbled for a moment — a fall at this height would be deadly. Brick shards plummeted to the cobblestones below and echoed in the alley. But Pipino had been scaling the sides of Venice’s palazzos for more than three decades. He’d hung from rusted rainspouts and rotted wooden shutters. By now, he was accustomed to the risk. He took a breath, regained his balance, looked up, and started climbing again.— EPIC MAGAZINE — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:25 AM | Your Say (1)
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase: "Happy Hour Hotpot"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (7)
The Affirmative Action Figure
schooled in Islam in his youth, tutored in his teen years by a revolutionary Marxist and convicted pedophile, an adoring student of a black supremacy cult in adulthood, whose political career was kick started by a violent extremist with Final Solution ambitions for tens of millions of us, and whose administration features suspiciously large numbers of covert jihadists, race warriors and other deranged extremists. These enterovirus D68 outbreaks aren't accidental, they're the equivalent of a broad front biological attack, coordinated and carried out by agencies in DC best equipped to predict the results of what they've done. DC is taking multiculturalism to insane, homicidal levels. If there's an explanation that better fits the facts than intentional ethnic attrition, it hasn't appeared yet.ol remus and the woodpile report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:17 AM | Your Say (2)
Mortado
He had holes bored through both his hands and feet, and, when seated in a specially constructed chair, copper tubes were fed through the wounds. Water flowed through them at a high pressure, making Mortado a “human fountain”. When he was not performing, he plugged his wounds with corks to keep them from healing. He occasionally also performed in biblical Crucifixion reenactments, placing small “blood bags” in his wounds for realism, which his assistant would puncture when he nailed him. He is pictured here at Coney Island’s Dreamland Circus in 1930.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:00 AM | Your Say (4)
October 27, 2014
A New Low
I think I have just seen a new low in the thinking of my fellow conservatives.
The people who refuse to vote are going to give this election to the liberals for no other reason than their refusal to vote in a "corrupt system" (most likely), thereby corrupting the system they are against. I use to think people who said they wouldn't vote if there wasn't a perfect conservative candidate running for office were grandstanding. Now I know that they really aren't voting, and thereby allowing the liberals to take over their vote by default. In my book, if you don't vote for or against a candidate, you allowed another person to vote in your stead. It makes me sick to think that zero won because those who apposed him decided that their best course of action was to sit out the vote for no other reason that they were throwing a hissy fit over their choice of candidates.Mike comment at [Bumped] Bill Whittle -- Make Him Own It: Why You Must Vote in the Midterms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:50 PM | Your Say (19)
Today's Hot Hashtag: #ThingsYoungerThanHillaryClinton
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 PM | Your Say (6)
Weimar America is not stable.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 PM | Your Say (2)
Vladimir Putin Is the Leader of the Moral World
Vladimir Putin’s remarks at the 11th meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Clubare worth more than a link in my latest column. These are the remarks of a humanitarian political leader, the like of which the world has not seen in my lifetime. Compare Putin to the corrupt war criminal in the White House or to his puppets in office in Germany, UK, France, Japan, Canada, Australia, and you will see the difference between a criminal clique and a leader striving for a humane and livable world in which the interests of all peoples are respected.-- Paul Roberts- The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:14 PM | Your Say (10)
Eruptions of racial desperation have occurred all across Dixie:
in Detroit, Ferguson, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Washington DC, Watts, St. Louis, Cincinnati.Yes. Though I am a son of the Southland, I will not lie. The truth is the truth. I bow my head in shame. And I am further forced to own that, while the black population of the North prospers, and mingles easily with its white brethren in casual but sincere amity, in the South the Negro huddles in the slums, denied schooling, and living on the meager charity of whites. Should you doubt this, look to Newark, Trenton, Camden, Detroit, Chicago, Flint, Gary. The flowering of blacks in the North a century and a half after the end of the Civil War, the rise in scholarly achievement, the frequent and accepted intermarriage of the races—here we have irrefutable proof of the superior moral culture of the North.Fred Reed: A Southerner Repents
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 PM | Your Say (8)
Obama or Bust
We often hear liberals claim how their latest power grab is All About the Children -- which it usually is, in a perverse and destructive way --but they are nevertheless what Chesterton calls "psychological Christians" even when they aren't "theological ones." They are the form without the content, the intelligence without the wisdom, and especially the sentiment without the substance. I mean, consider our children's Soup Nazi, Michelle Obama. ( I just knew that if I googled it, it would be there waiting for me --> )One Cʘsmos:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:17 PM | Your Say (1)
Eliminate the family and you can have a nice two-tier system of State and subject.
Thus, not only do women vote Democrat because they are single mothers, but they are single mothers because they are Democrat -- or at least because they have assimilated its dysfunctional ethos and "ordered" their disordered lives to it. One Cʘsmos: On the Centrality and Triviality of PoliticsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:09 PM | Your Say (2)
The Meat Prophet of Peru
This is where Garibaldi is moving the traditional grill master role into unchartered territory. They start at 30 days, then increase to 45 and 60. You can taste the collagen breaking down a little bit more with each cut, resulting in more nuanced flavors. Each is muskier and funkier than the last. He finishes some by holding them directly over the flames. Others he sits right in the charcoal and covers in ash. He moves on to a steak aged 120 days, and then, for the grand finale, a 160-day-old piece of Wagyu. Over the course of nearly six months of aging, natural enzymes in the protein break down and the carbohydrates are converted into sugar, so the flavors are richer and more concentrated. The sizzling beef smells like buttered popcorn. Every bite tastes of pure umami.| Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:04 PM | Your Say (2)
My initial reaction was Michael Brown deserved to die and I was right.
His death was a justifiable homicide. I knew this just as I knew Tawana Brawley was lying, and Crystal Magnum was lying.They were never held accountable for their lies because to do so would mean the media would have to rebuke the "civil rights leaders," a euphemism for tax-exempt leeches. The last thing the Al Sharptons of American politics want is racial equality because that would put these millionaires out of business. The libertarian calls for not letting police have military surplus are equally troubling. Apparently they think everyone can handle a gun. Who the hell is going to protect my 90-year-old mother? If Ferguson proved anything, it is that police indeed need riot gear, including grenade launchers to shoot tear gas cannisters. I want the guys who are willing to take a bullet for me to be armed. Well armed. No lack of a nail, OK?Don Surber: Why I stop listening when you say, "police brutality"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:49 PM | Your Say (5)
This is how a tree is used
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:35 PM | Your Say (3)
If we couldn’t get expertise or honesty from the authorities, could they at least demonstrate common sense?
Apparently not; some of the most simple and seemingly obvious approaches, such as keeping the number of hospital workers interacting with Duncan to the minimum necessary, were never implemented.Nor did the hospital or the CDC appear to have considered something as obvious as sending Duncan to a facility where the personnel were already experienced in dealing with Ebola, as had happened with previous American Ebola patients who had been flown back from Africa for treatment. Instead, the CDC apparently thought it would be a fine idea to let an inexperienced local hospital get on-the-job training with the very first Ebola patient to be diagnosed here: Initially the CDC’s plan was to let patients be treated in place at major hospitals. The idea was that these institutions would gain experience that would be essential in the event of a larger outbreak.-- Breaching our Maginot Line: Ebola in U.S. Was Clearly Preventable
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (0)
I’ve always contended that atheism is just another secular religion.
Unlike the Rousseau-ist cults, it has no Utopian aspects to it. There have been some atheists who preached about how the end of religion, by which they mean Christianity, will make the world a better place, but they always seemed to get tripped up by their hatred of Christianity. That’s the peculiar aspect to atheism. Other religions seek to crowd out the all other religions, but atheists just have it in for Christianity. In that regard it is similar to the lesser mass movements like MAAD and the boob cancer people. The Atheist’s God at The Z BlogPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:17 AM | Your Say (6)
They once sponsored Islamic extremist movements to fight the Soviet Union.
Those groups got their battle experience in Afghanistan and later gave birth to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.The West if not supported, at least closed its eyes, and, I would say, gave information, political and financial support to international terrorists’ invasion of Russia (we have not forgotten this) and the Central Asian region’s countries. Only after horrific terrorist attacks were committed on US soil itself did the United States wake up to the common threat of terrorism. Let me remind you that we were the first country to support the American people back then, the first to react as friends and partners to the terrible tragedy of September 11.Vladimir Putin - The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (0)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:52 AM | Your Say (0)
October 26, 2014
Coming to Terms
Antoni Zygmund once asked if the World Series shouldn’t be called the World Sequence? And shouldn’t a combination lock be called a permutation lock? John Von Neumann once had a dog called Inverse. It would sit when told to stand and go when it was told to come. Von Neumann pronounced the term infinite series as infinite serious. — Michael Stueben, Twenty Years Before the Blackboard, 1998 – Futility ClosetPosted by gerardvanderleun at 4:13 PM | Your Say (1)
Yes, I am awesome at frisbee throwing and catching (especially for a man of my portly stature),
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:44 PM | Your Say (5)
In The Future, Everyone Will Be Famous To Fifteen People
Problem the first – human population is starting to stabilize,and will probably reach a maximum at less than double its current level. But this is a function of our location here on Earth. Once we start colonizing space effectively, we can expect populations to balloon again. The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society estimates the carrying capacity of the solar system at forty trillion people; Nick Bostrom estimates the carrying capacity of the Virgo Supercluster at 10^23 human-like-digitized entities.| Slate Star Codex
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:27 PM | Your Say (2)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (0)
Tolerance is definitely considered a virtue, but it suffers the same sort of dimished expectations forgiveness does.
The Emperor summons before him Bodhidharma and asks: “Master, I have been tolerant of innumerable gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, transgender people, and Jews. How many Tolerance Points have I earned for my meritorious deeds?” Bodhidharma answers: “None at all”. The Emperor, somewhat put out, demands to know why not. Bodhidharma asks: “Well, what do you think of gay people?” The Emperor answers: “What do you think I am, some kind of homophobic bigot? Of course I have nothing against gay people!” And Bodhidharma answers: “Thus do you gain no merit by tolerating them!” - - I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup | Slate Star CodexPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (4)
October 25, 2014
By the 21st century, America had become a country of many universities and little education.
Her colleges were mostly diploma mills crossed with asylums for the politically insane: howling Bluestockings, inventors of “Afrocentric history,” mewling “advocates” for the blind, the botched, and the bewildered.Frequently, these defectives pooled their neuroses and formed a coalition that took over the campus, turning it into a small, ivy covered North Korea. Any student who dared dispute their ideology of cultural Marxism swiftly felt the hand of “revolutionary justice.” Students still arrived, despite appalling tuition bills, because they needed the sheepskin. America had come to value credentials over performance, so anyone without a college degree remained a bottom-feeder for life. Universities were a classic socialist set-up: a monopoly that produced crap at high prices. Many were little more than vending machines; insert your $250,000, pull the lever, and get your diploma.- - Victoria: Chapter 31
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:32 PM | Your Say (5)
I’m just so damned tired of catering to these savages.
Instead of spending millions to make sure the gentle little snowflakes rioting in the streets don’t get their “rights” violated,how about we stand up for civilization for a change. Let everyone in Ferguson know that their little slice of heaven will be sealed off before the announcement. You can riot your brains out, but no one is coming in or out. No one will come in to put out fires, tend to the injured, deliver food, fix a broken pipe, etc. Once the rioting ends, the siege will be lifted.-- I’m So Damned Tired Of This at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:22 AM | Your Say (10)
“To navigate, you must be brave and you must remember.” —Mau Piailug, Micronesian navigator
“Remember everything.” The only way to find your way back home is to remember how you got to where you are in the first place—every course adjustment, every wind change, every constellation. On each boat crew, a designated navigator sits, foregoing any type of distraction—even sleep—in order to interpret and memorize all external conditions such as wind and sea current, changes in boat direction, etc.Dragons, Memory & Navigating the Globe Using Only Your Wits
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (9)
The illusion of Islam has, like the banking system, become too big to fail.
Most insidiously, the left likes the imaginary world that that it has created.The multicultural utopia with jolly Pakistanis adding spice to London, Saudis putting up little mosques on the Canadian prairie and sassy Shiites bringing diversity to Dearborn, isn’t just propaganda—it’s the imaginary world that they want to live in. The new world order that they have imagined of a friendly multicultural democratic is their idea of the world as it should be-- a utopia created and maintained at our expense, and in the face of all reality and reason.Sultan Knish: A Nigerian Prince Called Islam
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (2)
Let Africa Sink
Among old Africa hands, we have a saying, usually accompanied by a shrug: "Africa wins again."This is usually said after an incident such as: a beloved missionary is butchered by his congregation, for no apparent reason, a tribal chief prefers to let his tribe starve to death rather than accepting food from the Red Cross (would mean he wasn't all-powerful, you see), an entire nation starves to death, while its ruler accumulates wealth in foreign banks, a new government comes into power, promising democracy, free elections etc., provided that the freedom doesn't extend to the other tribe, the other tribe comes to power in a bloody coup, then promptly sets about slaughtering the first tribe etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. The prognosis is bleak, because none of this mayhem shows any sign of ending. The conclusions are equally bleak, because, quite frankly, there is no answer to Africa's problems, no solution that hasn't been tried before, and failed.-- Kim Du Toit
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (8)
Man’s Whole Job Undoing Handiwork Of Self-Checkout Machine
“My whole shift is pretty much spent asking people to step aside
as I swipe my employee card and clean up whatever mess the machine’s gotten itself into,” said Berenson, acknowledging that he is paid solely to assist frustrated shoppers whose items won’t scan correctly or fail to trigger the machine’s electronic scale, or whose rewards cards don’t register with the system. "-- America's Finest News Source
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (6)
Inside the Ebola Wars
There are two distinct ways a virus can travel in the air.In what’s known as droplet infection, the virus can travel inside droplets of fluid released into the air when, for example, a person coughs. The droplets travel only a few feet and soon fall to the ground. The other way a virus can go into the air is through what is called airborne transmission. In this mode, the virus is carried aloft in tiny droplets that dry out, leaving dust motes, which can float long distances, can remain infective for hours or days, and can be inhaled into the lungs. Particles of measles virus can do this, and have been observed to travel half the length of an enclosed football stadium.-- The New Yorker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 AM | Your Say (2)
Democrats are like pedophiles.
Obama would give up golf before he would ever relinquish the spotlight. And this Megalomaniacal Albatross will not, for all the money in the world, fly away and leave the Democrats alone. He is their personal narcissistic millstone permanently fused around their neck, dragging them down all because he’s too much of an egotistical prick to make himself scarce.-- Dianny Rants
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:16 AM | Your Say (4)
October 24, 2014
Assad Ups Chemical Weapons Attacks
The costs of the Administration’s confused policy on Syria have been sky-high:the rise of ISIS, the irritation of our allies (Turkey, the Sunni Arab states, Israel), and the butchery of civilians on a massive scale. On its one supposed triumph, the Administration appears to have been conned, and it’s getting harder and harder to deny that fact.-- Walter Mead
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 AM | Your Say (4)
AN EPIDEMIC OF CIRCLE HEADS
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:56 AM | Your Say (1)
October 23, 2014
And of course Islam and Allah's got nothing, nothing at all, to do with it.
today could be linked to terrorism. Suspect Zale Thompson, 32, pictured in surveillance footage, was shot dead on the scene after slashing one cop in the arm and the other in the head at around without warning about 2pm. The officer struck in the head was critically injured.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 PM | Your Say (4)
Men have for millennia destroyed each other,
but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath:the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years—these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters, but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.- - Isaiah Berlin quoted at Had Enough Therapy?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 PM | Your Say (4)
Hemingway's Bacon-Wrapped Trout
After preparing the fish with corn meal, thyme and thinly sliced bacon, I introduced them to the heat of the pan where they sizzled and spat. After five minutes, I turned them. The eyes had become opaque. Five more minutes passed, and I took the pan off the fire and ate the fish with my fingers. The sun was at its peak and a grey jay took the stripped skeletons to the top of a nearby fir tree. A raven made a croaking sound and the wind swirled the last of the campfire smoke in my direction.- - Provisions / Huckberry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 AM | Your Say (7)
Debuting at #1 on the New York Times Worst Sellers List!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (8)
Without white ethnomasochism the whole diversity racket collapses.
No more staffing up police and fire departments with incompetents and crooks so the quota numbers come out right;no more wafting of magic negroes into high office on thermals of sentimental guilt; no more front-page sob stories in the New York Times about illiterate Guatemalan welfare moochers “seeking a better life”; no more tolerance of black mobs looting stores to protest imaginary wrongs. If whites stop hating themselves, it all goes away.-- Derb, The Optimistic Column
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 AM | Your Say (1)
Not every Muslim wants to chop your head off.
But these pathologies nest within Islam, and thrive at the intersection of Islam and the west. As long as Islam is your biggest source of population growth - to the point where Mohammed is now the most popular boy's name in Oslo - you're not "tackling" the issue, and certainly not "head on". In a bizarre column even for the post-Conrad National Post, Afsun Qureshi suggests the best thing you could do to lessen the likelihood of being set upon by Muslims is to learn to recite the shahadah, "a testimony to the identity of Allah as the one true God, and Muhammad as his prophet". She might be right. Wearing a burqa might help, too. Or the shalwar kameez. On the other hand, most of those Syrian men paraded through the desert in their BVDs to their rendezvous with death knew the shahadah, and a fat lot of good it did.The Reformation of Manners :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (6)
Despite its ferocity in humans, Ebola is a life-form of mysterious simplicity.
A particle of Ebola is made of only six structural proteins, locked together to become an object that resembles a strand of cooked spaghetti.An Ebola particle is only around eighty nanometres wide and a thousand nanometres long. If it were the size of a piece of spaghetti, then a human hair would be about twelve feet in diameter and would resemble the trunk of a giant redwood tree. Once an Ebola particle enters the bloodstream, it drifts until it sticks to a cell. The particle is pulled inside the cell, where it takes control of the cell’s machinery and causes the cell to start making copies of it. Most viruses use the cells of specific tissues to copy themselves. For example, many cold viruses replicate in the sinuses and the throat. Ebola attacks many of the tissues of the body at once, except for the skeletal muscles and the bones. It has a special affinity for the cells lining the blood vessels, particularly in the liver.- - Inside the Ebola Wars
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 AM | Your Say (2)
October 22, 2014
World's oldest art found in Indonesian cave
Even after a technology that could test that assumption, uranium-thorium dating, became available, no one thought to apply it to the Indonesian cave — until now. Though the paint itself cannot be dated, uranium-thorium dating can estimate the age of the bumpy layers of calcium carbonate (known as ‘cave popcorn’) that formed on the surface of the paintings. As mineral layers are deposited, they draw in uranium. Because uranium decays into thorium at a known rate, the ratio of uranium to thorium isotopes in a sample indicates how old it is.- - Nature News & Comment
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 PM | Your Say (4)
"Lewinsky, now 41, said she was “the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet."
No. She had no reputation, none that counted in the world she blundered into and that was the point.Monica Lewinsky never belonged. Men in politics have often had mistresses, but unlike the well publicized paramours of European leaders, she could not take care of herself. Those women had the angles figured. They gave no pity and deserved none. Lewinsky didn’t even know what the game was. In the loveless, pitiless, strangely sexless world of power politics, the only reputation that counts is how you do as a player. Monica wasn’t even in the running.Belmont Club サ In Memory of Beautiful Women
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 PM | Your Say (11)
Jumper just got off a plane from Liberia. Was dying to meet Obama.
Another man jumped the White House fence on Wednesday, but he was ultimately stopped with the help of a U.S. Secret Service K-9. “Dog got him,” the spokesman said.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:14 PM | Your Say (2)
And, of course, Islam and Allah's got nothing -- nothing, niente, nada, rien -- to do with this latest animal.
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot dead after opening fire at Parliament Hill in Ottawa A Muslim convert shot dead a Canadian soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa todaybefore exchanging dozens of shots with guards inside Parliament in a terrifying attack that left the nation's capital on lockdown. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau fatally shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a 24-year-old father, as he stood guard at the War Memorial on Wednesday morning. Zehaf-Bibeau then ran inside the Parliament, where he opened fire before he was shot dead by the House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms. Zehaf-Bibeau, who had a criminal history for drug trafficking in Montreal and robbery in Vancouver, was born in Quebec as Michael Joseph Hall but recently converted to Islam,CBS reported. ....Witnesses also told the Citizen that they saw a man wearing an 'Arabic scarf' and carrying a long rifle, while others said the suspect looked South American.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:11 PM | Your Say (8)
The Bumped "As I was saying.... Pablo Picasso painted this when he was 15 years old"
I rest my case. -- 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:33 PM | Your Say (33)
Hippies will tell you they ended the Vietnam War.
What they leave out or don't even realize is that, when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, the communists took over and killed millions of people. Those poor Vietnamese were the people the hippies insisted they wanted to save and help and so forth. But they let them die and then pretend that never happened -- just ask Noam Chomsky, their guru! -- because otherwise, their "hero's journey" narrative and the groovy soundtrack they made for it would all turn to ashes in their mouths. And that would be a bummer, man.- - 4 Ways Hippies Are (Still) Trying to Kill Us
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (9)
Thomas Friedman is a wellspring of ignorance that never stops flowing.
"I can’t think of a better way to understand ISIS. It is a coalition."I can’t think of a better way to understand Thomas Friedman except brain damage. He thinks that the best possible way to understand an Islamic terrorist group is not through Islam but through ecology.Thomas Friedman Desperately Running Out of Non-Islamic Metaphors for ISIS
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (2)
Stuka
extended the hydraulic speed brakes shortly before the target, then making the target move into the bottom window in the cockpit below our feet. When it disappeared at the back edge, we turned the plane down at a dive angle of 70 degrees. With the gas shut off, the plane quickly gained speed by its own weight, whilst the diving brakes kept it at a steady pace of 450 kms/hr. We aimed through a reflector sight keeping the whole plane in the center of the target and allowing for velocity and direction of the wind, with the aid of the right lead angles. A continuously adjustable red marking arrow was mounted on the altimeter, set to local altitude above mean sea level, whereby the required bomb releasing altitude could be set. When passing that altitude in the dive, a loud and clear horn signal was sounded, warning the pilot to press the bomb releasing button on the control stick and to pull out the plane.-- Memories of a Stuka Pilot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (3)
Elizabeth Warren still fakes left, but she seems to know her limitations.
2018’s midterm election without a president on the ballot and a different demographic makeup for the electorate could easily topple her.If she tried for the big chair, she would be run over by harder Democrat candidates faking centrist. And without Warren, all that’s left are clown acts like Bernie Sanders and Seattle Socialist Kshama Sawant.Sultan Knish: The Progressive Pajama Boy Era is Over
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:52 AM | Your Say (4)
I don't know where we go from here, but I suspect that it is bad.
I continue to believe I have a moral obligation to behave in a lawful way,but I no longer consider myself bound in loyalty to a government that has has moved beyond the powers granted to it. Morality, decency, and legitimate freedom will not be restored to Americans through election, it will take other means. I believe the world will undergo a crisis incomprehensible to most and what will emerge from the other side is a different people. That different people will choose a different government. Until then, we have chosen tyranny and tyranny is what we will get.Creative Minority Report: The U.S. Is Over, Get Used To It
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:13 AM | Your Say (5)
October 21, 2014
When You've Lost Bloomberg Politics....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:13 PM | Your Say (0)
The (Still) Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe
and who appears in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you, he is in need of immediate assistance." Was the famous author killed from a beating? From carbon monoxide poisoning? From alcohol withdrawal? Here are the top nine theories.- - Smithsonian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 PM | Your Say (1)
There is a rule in place that says something like:
“‘Freedom’ is for democrats” or “‘Freedom’ is for people who don’t work.”People who pay, aren’t supposed to choose, and people who don’t pay, get to choose. Yet more strange, surreal “rights” being imagined and cobbled-together, but never ever defined, by our political party of graft, dependency, obfuscation and “Fuck you I want my num nums.”House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:43 PM | Your Say (4)
After every public health disaster, CDC bureaucrats play the money card
while expanding their regulatory and research reach into anti-gun screeds, anti-smoking propaganda, anti-bullying lessons,gender inequity studies and unlimited behavior modification programs that treat individual vices–personal lifestyle choices–as germs to be eradicated.... At $7 billion, the Centers for Disease Control 2014 budget is nearly 200 percent bigger now than it was in 2000. Those evil, stingy Republicans actually approved CDC funding increases in January larger than what President Obama requested.Michelle Malkin | サ The Centers for Everything But Disease Control
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:23 PM | Your Say (3)
American Masters
American Masters is a yearly exhibit organized by the Salmagundi Club in NYC.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:37 PM | Your Say (9)
These people are our enemies.
They don't use guns, yet, but they are just as dangerous, determined, and duplicitous as the communists we faced in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and bush wars across the globe, and the Nazis we faced in World War II.It is time we fully internalized and digested this fact, with all its ugly ramifications. These people have violated countless laws and could be prosecuted, had we the political power. Not only are their policies unconstitutional, but deliberately so -- the goal being to make the Constitution irrelevant. Their spending is off the charts and will drive us into hyperinflation, but it could be rescinded, had we the political power. These policies are toxic, but they could be stopped and reversed, had we the political power. Their ideologies are poisonous, but they could be exposed for what they are, with long jail sentences as an object lesson, had we the political power.- - : Cloward-Piven Government
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (4)
When I see some of these young people running their game I want to say:
“Kid, I ran with bikers, shot junk, robbed banks; my hands have taken lives and saved lives when I was active military; I worked with the Billy Graham Crusade; I got a million miles of highway under my ass, slept with dogs, danced with angels, I got screwdrivers older than you … what ya gonna show me, uh? Spillers of Soup: MEMORY LANEPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:13 AM | Your Say (1)
Lest we forget...
“One can’t be angry with one’s own time without damage to oneself.” Robert Musil in The Man without Qualities
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:04 AM | Your Say (4)
October 20, 2014
Why Are We Letting In Immigrants Who Don’t Know What A Germ Is?
The real problem is that they’re in America at all– because America’s lawmakers have no more concept of “keeping out people from primitive societies” then the primitive societies do of germs. They believe that diversity in immigration is an unmixed good. And that’s almost as superstitious as the belief that Ebola is caused by a curse.The Fulford File | Invincible Ignorance And Ebola / VDARE.COM
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 PM | Your Say (7)
So, why don’t people remember the facts?
I can think of plenty of reasons. They reject facts that don’t conform with their political viewpoints.And/or they probably didn’t follow the details closely in the first place: BOR-ING. Or, if they did follow them closely at the time, they don’t remember much, like the content of a course they took years ago. Maybe they even crammed for the final, but they forgot almost all of it when the final was over and they didn’t need to know it anymore. And then, ever since that final, imagine that they’ve also been crammed full of information that contradicted what they originally had learned for the test. Then they would be even less likely to remember correctly. In fact, the later information would probably crowd out the earlier.neo-neocon Correcting the record on the Iraq War: why it's preaching to the choir
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:42 PM | Your Say (5)
The lie can hold 90% of the ideological ground, and this will never be sufficient,
Truth must be burned from our midst and its ground salted in order to kill it, but even then, you can't, because truth isn't ours to create or destroy (see the Resurrection for details). Or, at the other end, see the Soviet Union for details.One Cʘsmos: Sudden, Like a Word
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 PM | Your Say (1)
Building the Largest Ship In the World, South Korea
(there were 8 other Triple E’s at different stages of production at the shipyard at the same time). After the champagne smashing ceremony I was expecting a tour of the ship from someone who knew it inside and out – instead I was just told “here it is – off you go!”. “Er OK … do you have a map?”. “No. The engine is that way, the bridge is that way. Have fun, and make sure you aren’t on board in 5 hours because the ship will be leaving for Russia.” So off I went …-- Photographer Alastair Philip Wiper
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:50 PM | Your Say (2)
Rules to Live By
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:13 PM | Your Say (1)
The 31 Most Important Mullets That Ever Existed
Featuring: 1. This classy, elegant mullet.
and14. This superb jean short/hip phone/mullet combo.
-- 29 more @ BuzzFed
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:03 PM | Your Say (4)
Life continues in the bubble,
where the apparatchiks master useless #HashtagGovernance in the vacuous deadspace of social media,where ADD-addled, id-driven, narcissism rules, and the number of “likes” and retweets of the progressive outrage / rah-rah phrase-of-the-day are substitutes for effective action. Swarms of administrative law commissars crawl the country sniffing out any violation of the most ridiculous regulations by the smallest entity so they can be extorted into ideological compliance with the thinkers in the bubble. Statistics are created and corrupted to fit a narrative that stands reality on its head, and the gullible populace is expected to swallow it.Psychosis | Ivy Mike Cafe
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:42 AM | Your Say (2)
To suppose that science can liberate humankind from ignorance requires considerable credulity.
We know how science has been used in the past—not only to alleviate the human lot, but equally to serve tyranny and oppression.The notion that things might be fundamentally different in the future is an act of faith—one as gratuitous as any of the claims of religion, if not more so. Consider Pascal. One of the founders of modern probability theory and the designer of the world’s first mass-transit system, he was far too intelligent to imagine that human reason could resolve perennial questions.An Appetite for Wonder Review: The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins | New Republic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (3)
A smart politician on the Right would be wise to champion a la carte cable.
I love how the Times tries to equate Fox News with MSNBC, like they are mirrors. That’s insane, of course. Fox is pretty much straight news with a prime time of infotainment shows. O’Reilly, Hannity and the others are entertainers. They generate the big ratings and that’s how you pay the bills, usually. MSNBC is just a parade of screaming lunatics. Rachel Madow looks and sounds like a woman struggling with her sanity. A generation ago, these people would never been allowed to be on television.Subsidizing The Crazy at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (3)
The Columbian Man. Don't Be That Guy.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 AM | Your Say (3)
What a despicable group of tyrants the freewheeling leftists of the early 1960s have become.
Those who rose up against the “machine” back then are still working from the old operator’s manual.
Miraculously, they still manage to convince themselves that they have not become the machine against which they once railed. And somewhere along the line they concocted the screwball idea of “hate speech”—I doubt such a concept so much as existed in 1964—and began fallaciously arguing that it was a fundamentally different thing from free speech. They spun a magical illusory world where “civil rights” and “civil liberties” are somehow at odds with one another.How the Free Speech Movement Stopped Moving - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:02 AM | Your Say (11)
October 19, 2014
We have arrived at a moment with our elite institutions where it is impossible to distinguish incompetence from willful misdirection.
Frieden was asked during a press conference if you could contract Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus— a question prompted by a statement from President Obama the week before, when he declared that you can’t get Ebola “through casual contact, like sitting next to someone on a bus.” Frieden answered: “I think there are two different parts of that equation. The first is, if you’re a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone? And the answer is no. Second, if you are sick and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus? And the answer to that is also no. You might become ill, you might have a problem that exposes someone around you.”Six Reasons to Panic | The Weekly Standard [Time for someone to give Frieden an ISIS haircut, pour encourger les autres. ]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:58 PM | Your Say (2)
I had the idea that narrative in crisis goes through 3 phases:
denial, overconfident half measures to restore normalcy and when that fails, panic.What follows the panic is probably a paradigm shift. It’s time for one. The current PC paradigm has been failing for some time. The rise in terrorism and Ebola have highlighted its shortcomings, although the old players are still trying to force the new situation into the same old tired talking points with ever more absurd results.Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 PM | Your Say (1)
Pope Paul was dead right in Humanae Vitae; that if we did not draw the line at contraception, we would be on the “slippery slope” to real, murderous barbarism.
Everything that has happened in Western society in the forty-six years since, has borne this out.
Moreover, every Christian denomination that has abandoned that front line — on sexual morality — is now in advanced stages of collapse, from one thing that led to another. This is demonstrable fact, not rhetorical posture; just as the emptying of Catholic churches by the innovations of the 1960s is demonstrable fact.David Warren, Saving grace? : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 PM | Your Say (0)
October 16, 2014
“In North America, in the year 2013, there are three classes of people,”
“H,” for baseline Human—clean of mutant genes, allowed to breed. “A,” for Anamolous [sic.] Human—a normal person possessing mutant genetic potential … … Forbidden to breed. “M,” for Mutant. The bottom of the heap, made pariahs and outcasts by the Mutant Control Act of 1988. Hunted down and—with a few rare exceptions—killed without mercy. In the quarter-century since the act’s passage, millions have died. They were the lucky ones.Marvel Comics and “the Most Intricate Fictional Narrative in the History of the World”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:46 AM | Your Say (13)
October 15, 2014
After his encounter with the gelding knife....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 PM | Your Say (16)
I expected a more pussified version of Clinton
maybe raise taxes a bit, get out of the Bush wars and that’s about it. I never imagined he would be so clownishly incompetent. I fully assumed the adults would keep him from breaking anything important for fear he would be a one term president. Boy was I wrong.... He will be remembered as President Ebola, the man who willingly imported a plague into the United States.President Ebola at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:07 PM | Your Say (12)
Historic Man and Person of the Year
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (9)
October 14, 2014
Tough as Old Moss
Although they may seem soft and tufty, moss plants are so tough that they can survive freezing for as many as 1,530 years..... This year, British Antarctic Survey researchers reported that they had regrown mosstrapped in Antarctic ice for a millennium and a half. The American Scholar: - Josie GlausiuszPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 PM | Your Say (3)
Ladies and Gentlemen, Presenting that which is currently pretending to be the first lady....
Michelle O Does Something Weird With a Turnip | Truth Revolt Warning: Watching this vine may cause a sudden urge to vomit or throw your computer out a window.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 PM | Your Say (10)
Threat Assessment In Our Schools…I’m So Confused
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:42 AM | Your Say (3)
Sippican's Two Sons
Sippican Cottage: From Hornets To Ladybugs The roof over this room was open to the air when we moved here,
and while we got rid of the squirrels when I climbed up there and fixed it, the hornets stayed. The windows in the dormer were in such bad shape that the hornets passed in and out through the defunct weight pockets and the window frames. My Heir and I got some old, salvaged windows from a neighbor's remodel, and some boards from another neighbor who was cleaning out his garage, and we installed the windows in place of the old ones, and trimmed it out with the free boards. Now the room is filled with ladybugs. I hope my boys' lives will go from hornets to ladybugs in the same way -- with patient, unyielding effort. I am filled with doubts. How much better do they need to be before anyone notices that they're extraordinary?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:59 AM | Your Say (2)
A Light Unto the Ages
One of them is hanging from an electrical wire in Livermore. At Livermore Fire Station No. 6 is a lightbulb that has not burned out inLivermore's Centennial Light Bulb110[113] years. Nobody, even in this golden age of technology, knows why. And no one wants to unscrew the bulb to find out."It still gives that warm, comfy glow," said retired Livermore fire Division Chief Lynn Owens. "In this transient modern world, this lightbulb is really something you can trust. And nobody knows the mystery of it." The bulb's page is
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:47 AM | Your Say (5)
Little Hitlers
Dictatorship, or the urge toward it, is not confined to heads of government, indeed it probably lies lurking in all or most of us; nor is the worst stupidity the most obvious stupidity. If anything, the stupidity of the bright and well-educated is the worst, because the most self-confident. - - Dalrymple, The Despot WithinPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:11 AM | Your Say (5)
October 13, 2014
And a gay old time was had by all....
File under "Two roosters don't make a chicken:"Japan Zoo Discovers How Not to Breed HyenasStaff at Maruyama Zoo in the northern city of Sapporo spent years trying to get two spotted hyenas to reproduce with zero success only to find that both animals were male. Hyenas Kami and Kamutori arrived as “a couple” at the zoo from South Korea in October 2010 and were put in the same cage for breeding in 2012. The zoo said in a statement that the two animals never showed any breeding behavior and were very often fighting. “They remained confrontational, leaving bite marks on each other,” one of the zookeepers told Japan Real Time.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:52 PM | Your Say (6)
The Scablands: A scarred landscape as strange as fiction
It's a land seemingly starved of rain in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains. But the dry landscape known as the “Scablands” actually tells a story about excess—excess of water, water that was torrential and sudden. The Scablands are essentially wounds, still unhealed by time and erosion. They cut through the land and down into the rock after a series of unfathomably large floods unleashed by the catastrophic draining of great glacial lakes—half the volume of Lake Michigan splashed onto the land in less than a week. If you can imagine that, you’ve got us beat. The story recorded in this landscape is so incredible, it took one geologist decades to convince his colleagues that he was reading it correctly.-- | Ars Technica
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:28 PM | Your Say (3)
This week in Nonstop Pumpkinization of Things, Traders Joe edition, we have:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:38 PM | Your Say (6)
Time Waits For No One
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:31 PM | Your Say (3)
What It’s Like to Carry Your Nobel Prize through Airport Security
“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’ I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’ They said, ‘What’s in the box?’ I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does. So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’ I said, ‘gold.’ And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’ ‘The King of Sweden.’ ‘Why did he give this to you?’ ‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?’” | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:40 AM | Your Say (2)
The Man Who Was Buried Twice
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:22 AM | Your Say (1)
October 12, 2014
47 Years Ago Today: The Fastest Manned Aircraft Flight Ever.
Pete Knight’s X-15A-2 begins to melt. The leading edge of the wings glow at over a thousand degrees. Even at high altitude the air molecules can’t get out of the way fast enough to dissipate heat. So chunks of Knight’s X-15 begin to burn and fall off. Big chunks. During flight, shock waves burn through the leading edge of the lower ventral fin igniting a series of small fires in the engine housing. Near the explosive nitrogen tanks.Mach 6.
Knight already has the throttle advanced to the forward stop. One of two things will happen; he will complete his fuel burn and set a new speed record by a massive margin…He passes through Mach 6.5.
Or, he will disintegrate as the accumulation of heat causes a massive structural failure of his airframe that will result in an instantaneous explosion of any unburned fuel. It’s unlikely much wreckage will be found.Mach 6.6.A big part of the X-15A-2’s ventral fin ignites and burns completely through. It flies off the aircraft, tracing a bright, burning arc to the desert floor.Mach 6.7..... | ALERT 5
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:23 PM | Your Say (3)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Fox ratings lap lesbian: Rachel Maddow, the biggest star on the MSNBC cable network, just posted her lowest quarterly ratings results ever.“Morning Joe,” MSNBC’s signature morning program, scored its second-lowest quarterly ratings, reaching an average of just 87,000 viewers in the key news demographic group. And “Ronan Farrow Daily,” the network’s heavily promoted new afternoon show, which stars a 26-year-old Rhodes Scholar with a high-profile Hollywood lineage, has been largely a dud.Leaning Forward, MSNBC Loses Ground to Rival CNN - NYTimes.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 PM | Your Say (6)
Don’t let Obama, his mainstream media running dogs or the permanently pessimistic fool you.
Obama does not want to come out of midterms without the Dems, who are his major moral support.You can only get so much of that from Valerie Jarrett, Michelle, your mother-in-law and coddled daughters. For all of Obama’s blustering bravado, his kissing up to ISIS, his laying out the welcome mat for a bevy of diseases passed on to Americans by illegal aliens with contagious diseases flooding the southern border, Obama disappears rather than faces up to his critics. Imagine how naked this emperor will feel without his clapping seal Dems who have been with him since inauguration and even before.First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 PM | Your Say (2)
The Twelve-Angled Stone of the Inca
In order to receive the new block, bedding planes were carved into those stones below or to the side of the block to be added. This is how the Twelve-Angled Stone took on its busy upper outline; the upper portions of the block were recarved several times over as five blocks—set in a left to right sequence—were fitted along the course above. Other blocks in the wall were similarly shaped, then reshaped as new blocks were added to the masonry mass. As stones of irregular size and degree of finish were inserted into the mural fabric with fastidious technical consistency, the wall went up as tectonic sculpture.-- Critical Inquiry, (Autumn 2010)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 PM | Your Say (3)
Might Need Some Fixin'
Crow Gun - $75 (chico) Last used this guy about 10 years ago, crows have had a feast. worked ok when put away, but might need some fixin.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (2)
An MIT linguistics professor
was lecturing his class the other day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. … But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative.” A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:49 AM | Your Say (6)
White Feather: The Marine who crawled behind enemy lines for four days to take a single shot
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 AM | Your Say (7)
Organic Food and Vegetarianism:
Liberals feel guilty because of their human status. They desire to flee the filth of the world. “Why did I burn those backyard leaves and cause climate change? How can I have a barbecue with tofu? Obama, help me, please.” Liberals want to be purified and free from their guilt, especially the guilt associated with eating meat. The goal for some liberals, like medieval ascetics, is to live off only cabbages that have been certified to have died a natural death.from -- The Seven Sacraments of Liberalism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 AM | Your Say (10)
New York City: Hell with Good Restaurants
Police: Man Climbs Out Of Grate, Throws Smoke Bombs In Restaurant: The suspect emerged from the grate that leads up from the subway system and threw the device, police said.The bomb emitted red smoke when a suspect wearing an American flag T-shirt hurled it, police said. The manager at Bar Pitti said an employee grabbed the smoking device and tossed it back outside, at which point the suspect ducked back underground and disappeared.... It was not known whether the smoke bomb incident was a statement, a warning, or something to do with the restaurant business. Police said it was not related to terrorism. The suspect remained on the loose late Friday night.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:57 AM | Your Say (3)
October 11, 2014
An open letter to bearded hipsters
You have your mountain man scruff, but you maintain it. You groom it. With products. A quick google search of “beard grooming products” turns up literally thousands of articles explaining how to have the most lustrous beard possible. Take this one from Philadelphia Magazine, where they tested TWENTY DIFFERENT VARIETIES of beard oil. The result of this intrepid testing? “I’m talking softer, more manageable whiskers that hold their shape better and smell nice, besides. Doesn’t sound so bad put that way, does it?” Yes. Yes it does, you GIANT PUSSY. Am I reading “Cosmo”? What the fuck is going on here? Betty White has bigger balls than you.« The Nicki Daniels Interview
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:31 PM | Your Say (6)
Seeking and/or holding office, especially national-level office, is, in and of itself, proof that a given person is psychologically and morally unfit to hold public office.
that he was going to join the Nazi Party and so that he could âimprove it and correct its problems from the inside outâ, youâd know he was full of poop up to his eyebrows, right? No decent human being could join the Nazi Party in ARSH 1944 because A.) it was clear that it was evil and B.) such a system of pure evil could never be "fixed" -- the only solution is to destroy it.Giblets | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:58 AM | Your Say (1)
1 of 12 periscope rifles
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:15 AM | Your Say (1)
Escaped. Believed Dead
On the night of June 11, 1962, the attempt went ahead. The group placed the dummies in their beds, escaped through the vents at the back of their cells and into the utility corridor. They then proceeded onto the roof and down to the bay. There they boarded the raft they had constructed and disappeared into the night. The following morning prison officers found dummies lying in the beds and the prisoners missing. The raft and 2 of the life preservers were later found in the bay together with a waterproof bag containing personal effects of the Anglins. The authorities were certain the men had drowned.... The U.S. Marshal’s office is still investigating this case, which will remain open on all three escapees until their 100th birthdays.Frank Morris (prisoner)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:54 AM | Your Say (4)
Auster on the Totalist Media
The totalist media control over the American mind is not, of course, limited to issues of race.But whatever the issue, the media exercises this all-embracing control in promoting the alienist view of the world, in presenting facts that support that view, and suppressing facts that contradict it. To sum up: (1) The media, the most powerful institution in American life, systematically broadcasts lies, mainly about white “oppressors." (2) The media uses quasi-totalitarian methods to promote those lies. (3) Those lies and that method are aimed at further destroying America’s European-based culture. (4) Conservatives believe that this campaign of cultural destruction is nothing more than a matter of “bias,” which they imagine can be fixed by adding more “balance” and “fairness” to the proceedings.
The conservatives don’t see, and don’t want to see (because that would mean recognizing that America is no longer a free country worth “conserving”), that the media bias, and the dominant culture of which it is a part, is totalitarian.The Thinking Housewife
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:18 AM | Your Say (2)
October 10, 2014
Under the sea
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 PM | Your Say (0)
The Cult of Fake Nerdism
who possess that innocent, Eloi quality so popular with the fake nerd crowd. The one on the left is slightly Oriental, while the one of the right is Occidental. Maybe they are boys or maybe they are girls. We’re not supposed to know. If someone used this picture for a NAMBLA campaign, no one would be surprised. That’s the creepy part of the glorious future. It’s primary appeal seems to be to men who really like boys.The Z Blog ›
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 PM | Your Say (3)
For a Muslim, jihad is a sacrament.
If [some] Muslims behave reasonably and peacefully, as they do (thank God), it is not because they are orthodox but because they have fallen away from orthodoxy.Islam is a direct revelation from God, and it is immutable. So as the discussion of Islam’s doctrines is shoved underground, the public view of Islam gets darker and darker, while the chattering classes re-assure each other of their baseless confidence that Islam is not what they fear it is, a bananarama totalitarian ideology, whose idea of God is of an immeasurably distant, irrational force, where both theology and science is impossible.Why an adult conversation about Islam is nearly impossible - Barrel Strength
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (10)
There are many theories of what drives elite madness.
Moldbug thinks it’s Puritanism evolved, getting ever more virulent. There also other theories: bureaucratic religion, mass-media induced cognitive failure. Choose your favorite one. Whatever the cause, the disease is increasing and getting worse. It seems to be getting close to the terminal phase, when it goes berserk and kills the patient. See the Ebola crisis. A quite easily controlled tropical virus is growing out there because people would rather use it to compete for holiness rather than try to stop people from dying.Black herrings | Bloody shovel
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (2)
Obama Seeks To Calm Public Fear Of Ebola
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (0)
“Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.”
The worst product of the Tea Party movement, and I say this as someone active in it consistently since it began in 2009, has been a myopic focus on the ideology of particular candidates without consideration of the context in which they are running. For instance, in my state of Minnesota, it has become fashionable to object to the Republican candidacy of Mike McFadden for U.S. Senate because he’s a moderate. Nevermind that Minnesota is a decisively blue state. Nevermind that the failure to elect Mike McFadden will effectively re-elect Al Franken. Nevermind that the same intransigence in 2008 regarding then Republican candidate Norm Coleman resulted in Franken’s first election, providing the 60th vote for Obamacare. None of that matters, because “principles” or something.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (10)
You keep trying to think through this logically, when human logic outside of a math course is not vulcan logic.
Comment at neo-neocon / Spain: it was the nurse's fault... how about my watching a guy use a lighter to see if he had gas in his tank? .... you think most fingers get cut off by the application of logical sane methods? ... i had to once collect body parts of a man and woman who slammed into the trees in a $200k car at over 180 miles an hour late at night .... anthony weiner sends photos? .... actresses put nudie photos on the cloud .... people die every year taking a swim off their boat and not putting the ladder down so they cant get back on it.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (1)
October 9, 2014
"The family was not present during the conflagration..."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (3)
All of this completely ignores the people who WANT to bring Ebola here.
Anybody willing to strap 40 pounds of Semtex and hardware parts to his chest, walk into a pizzeria or schoolyard, and be a not-so-smart bomb for Allah,will have no compunction whatsoever about deliberately infecting themselves with Ebola, waiting until they turn symptomatic, and then going for daily walks at malls, movie theatres, swap meets, shows, conventions, amusement parks, sports events, concerts, or just ride all day on a commuter train, and anything else they can manage, and lying about all their contacts and visits after they collapse, because 72 virgins. That's just how they roll.The gist of the entire asinine "Ebola isn't that big a deal" mindsetdepends entirely on honest and accurate contact tracing from the infected. When those who bring it here don't give a damn about helping, and actually lie about their whereabouts, it's too late for some governmental jackass Inspector Clousseauto slap his forehead and exclaim "Aha! We never thought of that clever gambit!!"Raconteur Report: What's Coming Next
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:51 PM | Your Say (5)
Five for Today
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:24 PM | Your Say (0)
The Double Helix of Lunacy
The double helix of the fanatic is composed of a desire to obliterate their self by swapping their identity with that of the group.The other side is the desire to get to the promised land by destroying the present, which is seen as the cage that holds the followers from reaching their goal. The nucleotides are the various fads that we see bubbling up from time time like racism, minoritism, various economic lunacies and so forth. The result is a movement that seeks to pull the roof down on human civilization.That, paradoxically, makes it reactionary.
The modern Progressive looks out at the world for that which is embraced by civilization and attacks it. They also embrace those who attack these things. Homosexuals, for example, are despised by Progressives, but they make a useful weapon against those pesky recalcitrant Christians in the hinterlands. Similarly, blacks have been a useful weapon in the assault on traditional Anglo-Saxon organizational traditions.The Z Blog ›
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (0)
Instruments of War [Bumped]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (25)
We live in an age of bad, stupid ideas.
Mass immigration of Muslims into non-Muslim nations may be the baddest and stupidest. - - Derbyshire, Quarterly PotpourriPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:09 AM | Your Say (1)
"Rightful liberty
is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” -- Thomas JeffersonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:51 AM | Your Say (2)
October 8, 2014
"The Bell Curve" knew what was happining
As I’ve joked before, when I became interested in the quantitative literature on educational achievement in ninth grade in 1972, the racial rankings went:
1. Orientals
2. Caucasians
3. Chicanos
4. Blacks
Today, the order is:
1. Asians
2. Whites
3. Hispanics
4. African-Americans
A New Caste Society - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 PM | Your Say (4)
"The pain was ten out of ten." - says man with 17 hour erection
Jason first woke up with the condition last Friday morning and initially didn’t worry about it.However by lunchtime he was beginning to get concerned and tried to address the situation by taking an ice bath and then going for a jog. He went to the hospital where his condition was diagnosed and doctors drew off two pints of blood to try and reduce the pressure. They also had to inject medication 24 times to restrict the blood flow.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:52 PM | Your Say (2)
It’s as if they suffer from a Irish Alzheimer’s. They only remember the grudges.
Living in a country whose prevailing religion treats the past as a far away planet can be exasperating,like when the people who have been in charge of race relations pretend they have just stumbled upon a social problem needing their attention. When you point out that they have been bitching about the problem for 70 years and they have been in charge of fixing it for 50 of those years, they call you a racist.The Z Blog › “They” Are Always Losers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 AM | Your Say (0)
Just. That. Cold.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (3)
October 7, 2014
Top Dog:
Redbook Dedicates Entire Issue to Female Vets, Puts Michelle O on the Cover "Woof!"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 PM | Your Say (3)
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves
that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change.A whole belief system must first be supplanted. And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.-- Matthew Parris: As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (14)
“Their Hate for Her Just Eats Away at Them”
And “We still hate her” is a weekly thing, even now?.... The consensus, in fact, can be as disconnected from the problem as all-agreeing-to-hate-so-and-so. From there, they go literally years waking up each morning to find the problem the same as it was before, in fact, deteriorated. And their solution to that is to go back to the hatey-hate thing. I just don’t entirely understand it, although I suspect it starts with not seeing themselves as possessing any influence — the deteriorating conditions have to be someone else’s fault, maybe the fault of the object of their hatey-hate.House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (4)
Q: Could Ebola have spread on the airplane?
A: No, it is only spread to medical workers wearing protective biohazard suits. (Zero Hedge)Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (1)
12 absurd olympic events
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:26 AM | Your Say (1)
October 6, 2014
The Man Who Knew Nothing
“The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.” And it only took him 6 years to figure that out. Talk about an intelligence failure.... And now after running for office as the “Smartest guy in the room”, the Nobel Prize winner has chosen to become a born-again idiot.Sultan Knish:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 PM | Your Say (3)
Who Says There's No Good News?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:58 PM | Your Say (2)
Would you mind terribly if “it” showers with your child?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:52 PM | Your Say (6)
A dog ponders the eternal question.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:04 PM | Your Say (8)
One of the things fairly well known in black America is that abortion and “family planning” is about reducing the number of black babies.
This should come as no surprise as liberal whites have been quite explicit about it since Roe.Abortion Inc has been targeting black neighborhoods for a long time. It’s a pretty good business for rackets like Planned Parenthood. They get paid to round up the customers and then they get paid for the service. That’s why the Left is obsessed with state funded abortion. It’s eugenics with a smiley face. The Left gets to pretend it is about health and safety, but it’s really about ethnic cleansing and eugenics.The Z Blog › Liberal Eugenics
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (8)
Ebola Yes, Bagpipes No
To function, institutions have to be able to prioritize - even big, bloated, money-no-object SWAT-teams-for-every-penpusher institutions like the US Government.You can't crack down on Kinder eggs, bagpipes and Ebola: At a certain point, you have to choose. My line with the Homeland Security guys is a simple one: every 20 minutes you spend on me, or my kids' chocolate eggs, or Cameron Webster's bagpipe is 20 minutes you're not spending on the guy with Ebola, or Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The price of bagpipe scrutiny is a big hole blown in the lives of American families attending the Boston Marathon, or a bunch of schoolkids in Dallas having to be quarantined for a vicious, ravaging disease with a high fatality rate. But, of course, giving additional attention to West African visitors would be racist. Not like terrorizing Scotsmen over their bagpipes.:: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (1)
An Ode to the Polo Coat
afternoons where seven layers weren’t quite enough, and evenings in which the prospect of building a fire right on the floor of the living room didn’t really seem that insane. This winter experience has us thinking of the weather ahead and considering the purchase of the ultimate overcoat: The Polo Coat. Long. Tan. Double-breasted. Turn-back cuffs. Cinch in the back. Peak Lapels.-- A Continuous Lean.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (1)
We're finally up to the canto we've all been waiting for, in which Deepak Chopra gets his just desserts.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (1)
The Secret History Of The Michelin Man
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:44 AM | Your Say (2)
Another answer to Fermi's paradox
Sense of Events: Then there is the calculation that even a 14 billion year-old universe simply has not been around long enough to result in planets teeming with intelligent life, and that therefore homo sapiensis the first species to have developed the capability of even rudimentary space flight. After all, someone has to be first and there is no scientific reason it wasn't us.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:42 AM | Your Say (11)
Press silence, black privilege, and unintended consequences
Reporters and editors are nervous about being thought racist, or (worse) having “anti-racist” pressure groups demonstrating on their doorsteps. The easy route to avoiding this is a bit of suppressio veri – not lying, exactly, but not uttering facts that might be thought racially inflammatory.The pattern of suppression is neatly explained by the following premises:
Any association of black people with criminality is inflammatory. Any suggestion that black criminals are motivated by racism to prey on white victims is super-inflammatory. And above all, we must not inflame. Better to be silent.I believe this silence is a dangerous mistake with long-term consequences that are bad for everyone, and perhaps worst of all for black people. --- Eric Raymond
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:22 AM | Your Say (11)
October 5, 2014
Envoi
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-- Matthew Arnold/Dover Beach
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 PM | Your Say (1)
What's the riddle behind Ebola?
In other words, what is its reservoir host? What kind of creature living in the African forest harbors this virus in a chronic, inconspicuous, but permanent way? Viruses have to live somewhere. They can only replicate in living creatures. So, when the Ebola virus disappears between outbreaks, it has to be living in some reservoir host, presumably some species of animal. But after 38 years since the first outbreak, scientists have yet to identify for certain what the reservoir host of Ebola is. It is suspected that at least one of its reservoir hosts is a fruit bat. Antibodies to Ebola have been found, but no one has ever isolated live Ebola virus from a fruit bat or from any other creature. So we still don't know where this thing lives.Every Newly Emerging Disease Like Ebola Begins With a Mystery
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:18 PM | Your Say (10)
Dallas Newspaper Picks the Wrong Week for its "Taste of Africa Comes to Dallas!" Cover
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:59 PM | Your Say (1)
Will Ebola Be Death Knell for Democrats? [Bumped]
It is on American soil, it is effecting ordinary people like them, it is a human interest story, and it is scary. It also shows government as it is - lying, incompetent, and not even aiming at the basic job of national security and safety. How many voters will decide they disagree with Democrats who say it’s best to import Ebola here and then quarantine exposed and dying Americans?American Thinker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:23 AM | Your Say (16)
October 4, 2014
The King is Dead Meat but the Bitch Is Back
First Lady Urges Everyone That Hasn't Died Of Ebola Or Been Beheaded Yet To Vote Democrat - The Rumford MeteorSell my soul by dropping names
I don't like those, my God, what's that
Oh it's full of nasty habits when the bitch gets back
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 PM | Your Say (2)
What on earth is an ohbee-guynee?
For the president’s benefit, let me specify that means a doctor who delivers babies and takes care of the lady parts. When President Obama announced the departure of Eric Holder from his position as attorney general, he also mentioned his “good friend,” the AG’s wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, and he called her an “ohbee-guynee.” This is such a downright strange phenomenon, it almost seems as though someone raised in a fantasized USSR training camp for deep cover agents was inserted into the identity of Barack Obama and loosed upon America, a highly trained faux American. But they forgot to teach him the pronunciation of OB/GYN. Like those WW II movies where the German spy is caught because he doesn't know who Babe Ruth is. Okay that’s ridiculous, the stuff of spy novels. Couldn’t possibly happen./But how ridiculous is being the father of two girls and not knowing the pronunciation of the kind of doctor who delivered your children?Blog: Another weird Obama pronunciation
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 PM | Your Say (8)
Drooling Science Hustler vs Genius
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 PM | Your Say (3)
The hilarious thing about the Cult’s elevation of Obama to the top spot
is how little they know about the man.In his two autobiographies, he went on at length about being lazy. He has said this in interviews. He has gone into detail about how he gets bored with all sorts of things like showing up for work and listening to advisors. Yet, the Left is always surprised that Obama is what he says he is. it’s almost as if they really don’t care about Obama the man and just see the black guy. Like they can’t get past his skin color…The Z Blog › I Thought That Was Racist
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 PM | Your Say (2)
They also knew right from the start what type of narcissistic, thin skinned baby they were selecting.
Obama has such a desperate need for validation and adulation that there was no way he was going to reject that Nobel Peace Prize.A wise man would have given the "I'm humbled" speech and rejected the award out of the insanity of it being given to him. Everyone knew it was a joke, and even the progressives were framing it as and award "that he will grow into and earn". Like a parent defending the contest they rigged, they will grab at any reason to defend Barry. How much better would it look had he said "No thanks" back in 2009. The press would have lavished even more praise on him. He could not do it though. His ego needed that rush. He needed another award to feel good. This is his mode of operation, his life story and "they" knew it right at the start.28 Sherman: The Nobel Puppet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:25 PM | Your Say (4)
At the end of his life, John Keynes, an immensely talented man who's vision was ruined by self-love, saw himself clearly:
and only maintained by rules and conventions skillfully put across and guilefully preserved. We had no respect for traditional wisdom or the restraints of custom...As cause and consequence of our general state of mind we completely misunderstood human nature, including our own."Posted by: james wilson in a comment to The Top 40: Will Ebola Be Death Knell for Democrats?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:07 PM | Your Say (1)
October 3, 2014
Astronomer by Candlelight, Gerrit Dou
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 PM | Your Say (2)
1. Talking about Ebola (Salon)
2. Describing the Hong Kong protests as “clean and orderly” (Vox)
3. Pointing out that white people use heroin (Salon)
4. #BringBackOurGirls (Salon)
5. Describing Obama as “angry” (MSNBC)
6. The American Revolution (Salon)
7. Children’s books with white characters (Salon)
8. Criticizing the IRS (MSNBC)
9. Donating to the United Negro College Fund
10. Being half-white (Salon)
11. Supporting Herman Cain (MSNBC)
12. Opposing Obama (MSNBC)
13. Rocky III (Vox)
14. When black conservatives disagree with black liberals (Salon)
15. Noting that Obama has an Ivy League education (MSNBC)
16. Saying Obama likes to play golf (MSNBC)
17. Saying “Obamacare” (MSNBC)
18. Living in the suburbs (Salon)
19. Calling Obama “Obama” (MSNBC)
20. Criticizing liberals for constantly accusing people of racism (Salon)
22. Cupcakes
23. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
All via HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 PM | Your Say (4)
It's not a "race." It's a "rout."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 PM | Your Say (3)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 PM | Your Say (6)
Omersa Ottomans | Put Your Feet Up
but in the mid-century the store (and really the brand at large) began to shift away from outdoor pursuits towards home goods as a way of courting a younger audience that had no interest in A&F’s hunting heritage. It was around this time that they introduced Omersa’s leather ottomans to the shop. Abercrombie & Fitch was an Omersa stockist from the sixties through the eighties, but the brand’s story starts back in 1927, when “Old Bill,” a luggage maker for Liberty of London crafted a pig shaped footrest from his leftover pigskin.| A Continuous Lean.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 PM | Your Say (2)
86
Meaning: Either the restaurant has run out of something...
Origins: It also could have to do with bartenders cutting overserved patrons from 100 proof whiskey to 86 proof. An unusually morbid (but entirely plausible, considering the general attitudes of people working in the restaurant industry) theory is that it comes from graves — eight feet long, six feet deep.Here's What All Those Nonsensical Restaurant Terms Mean
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 PM | Your Say (3)
The DumbthMan Cometh
He gave NO THOUGHT whatsoever to the consequences of his actions or to other human beings, nor did any of his family members, because people who are dim-witted think only about themselves and the immediate gratification of their immediate needs and wants.Important Ebola Note | Barnhardt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (4)
“Girls” creator Lena Dunham writes in her new memoir that she was raped as a 19-year-old college student.
Ms. Dunham was never raped, of course. I’d put the odds of any of this happening pretty low.Ms. Dunham is a professional fabulist and making stuff up is what she does well, relative to her other talents. The give away is when she says, “come to terms with what happened and to be able to talk about the complexities of her experience in a way that felt truthful to her.” The reporter and Ms. Dunham may not realize it, in fact I bet they don’t, but this is just another way of saying it took her two years to dream up this tale so that it sounded believable.... Her parents, according to her biography were attention whores who made a nice living off modest talents. Ms. Dunham seems to have inherited those gifts. I suppose if your desire is to be the sand in the nation’s vagina, conjuring up PG-13 rape fantasies is oddly relevant.The Z Blog › Transitive Mercerism
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:58 AM | Your Say (11)
October 2, 2014
An Idiot’s Guide to the Right
This is what I find so confusing about the left.How can you have such a visceral hatred of something you know nothing about? I know what they’re about. I used to be one. I was mad at my dad for being smarter than me. Then I grew up. Is their entire political dogma still based on daddy issues? If so, it should be kept between the patient and his overpaid therapist. We are getting sick of explaining the basics of the non-liberal world every Thanksgiving.- Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 PM | Your Say (2)
Nobody needs more than seven rounds.
I responded to a burglary in progress.A teenager on PCP picked a random house and started kicking the sun room door in. The homeowner stood by the door with his 9mm pistol, called 911 and warned the teenager he was armed. The teenager kicked the door in. The homeowner shot him in the leg, then retreated into the house. The teenager forced his way into the kitchen. The homeowner shot him in the stomach. When we arrived, we had to wrestle the teenager into handcuffs. Had the teenager been armed, he still could have fired a weapon..... But nobody needs more than seven rounds.Seven rounds | chrishernandezauthor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 PM | Your Say (20)
The Last Days of an Ancient Sword
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:01 PM | Your Say (1)
"I was told attendance was optional. And that we’d be marked on the curve."
Just because Barry skips 60% of the briefings doesn’t mean that he misses anything important: “You see Mr. President, the Ambassador is under attack, security in Benghazi is very weak and the compound is being attacked by an organized mob armed with rocket launchers. Maybe we could send some backup air support to save our men, sir? Sir?” Michelle Obama's Mirror:Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:32 PM | Your Say (1)
Tim Comments on "Plague Doctor on the Green River"
Packing up orders this morning, my mind drifting during the menial task
thinking about the story on Drudge about Louis Farrakan going off, as he’s prone to, about Ebola being the work of the CIA. And I thought isn’t strange how he, and others in that demented, conspiracy mindset, had once leveled the same charge regarding another deadly virus - AIDS. And also how strange it is that these viruses originate from the Dark Continent, which makes the Farrakan charge even more bizarre and insulting. And I also thought…yup, need more boxes, better call Uline. Now I might have to add an item…AMERICAN DIGEST: Comment
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:33 AM | Your Say (3)
Shocked! Shocked! "The New York Times "Opinion" didn't attract enough paying subscribers"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (1)
Charming News from Darkest Africa
It was gathered that the late Osamame and his friend decided to test the efficacy of the charm with live bullets after incising it on their body. The deceased was said to have first shot at his friend but the bullet did not penetrate, but when the friend shot at Osamame on the chest, the charm failed and bullets pierced through his body, resulting to his death.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (6)
Take two aspirin and don't call us in the morning....
Man Infected with Ebola Initially Sent Home by HospitalPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 AM | Your Say (0)
In other news....
WH: No Travel Restrictions into US to Control Ebola SpreadPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 AM | Your Say (3)
October 1, 2014
Free Expression of Views
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 PM | Your Say (8)
“All Michael Brown did was shoplift cigars.”
No, he didn’t “shoplift” anything.He committed a robbery. Shoplifting is a nonviolent crime, usually committed by people desperate to avoid confrontation. Robbery is violent. When someone uses or threatens force to take anything, no matter how unimportant or inexpensive, that’s robbery. If someone grabs you by the collar, reaches into your pocket and takes a single piece of chewing gum, the problem isn’t the lost gum. The problem is that someone used force to take your property.A Dose of Reality for Ferguson, Missouri | chrishernandezauthor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 PM | Your Say (0)
Say six times swiftly: Kim Yo-jong is Not Kim Jong-un.
First, to give special and extended medical treatment to Kim Jong-un in order to quickly restore his health. Second, all North Korean high level officials and party members should be responsible in following Kim’s previous orders. Third, the party and army should be on wartime-like alert while Kim Jong-un is out of commission. Lastly, all the important matters related to government administration should be reported to Kim Yo-jong, so that Kim Jong-un can concentrate on getting better.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:50 PM | Your Say (7)
The royal invalids – the president, his wife, and the vice president
Unbridled profligacy is on full display when a royal invalid rolls into town. Just pondering the security entourage, per diem per entourage member, operational cost of the tricked-out jet, operational cost of the supporting military jet that carries the motorcade, and the operational cost of the motorcade itself, it's easy to conjure a lot of money spent, and it's likely more than you conjure. American Thinker's When a Royal Invalid Comes to TownPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:56 PM | Your Say (0)
Chinatown
It’s rare to have the title of a movie serve as its final word, but here it does and feels right(the ending was rewritten by director Roman Polanski and actor Jack Nicholson the night before it was filmed). The moment Jake and his associates are walking away, the story has ended. One of his associates says to him, for his own sanity sake, “Forget Jake, it’s Chinatown.” It’s unnecessary to the story and indispensable to it all at once. It places the events of the story on a universal scale: this isn’t about some power grab in Los Angeles, it’s about all those things in this universe you can’t control.moviemorlocks.com â Titleology 101
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 PM | Your Say (0)
1. Girls suck at tackle football. 2. The Secret Service secretly doesn't really give a shit about Barry.
Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, is resigning in the wake of several security breaches.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:28 PM | Your Say (2)
The sheeple of the GOP insist the dissenters are being unreasonable.
They always claim the dissenters are looking for perfection and that’s the dissenters are being childish. That’s obnoxiously stupid, which reinforces the sense amongst the dissenters that the hod carriers simply don’t respect the opinions of the dissenters. Frankly, it is the only reasonable conclusion. If every time you raise an objection you’re told to shut up and sit down, what other conclusion can you draw?What’s irritating about the “perfection” claims is they are easily disproved by recent elections
. Conservatives of all stripes, even paleos, came out in force for the GOP is 1994, 2000, 2004 and 2010. The latter election was fueled by the populist uprising called the Tea Party. Their aim was to reform the GOP, not embrace it. Ever since, the GOP has made war on these people, driving out of the Tea Party wherever possible. Telling these people that perfection is the enemy of the good enough, when they have been living that life and got nothing but abuse for it, is a kick in the teeth.The Z Blog › Why The GOP Is Toast
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:22 PM | Your Say (2)
Racist Sperm
Well, what family doesn't have problems? Suit: Black donor's sperm sent to white woman - - A white Ohio woman is suing a Downers Grove-based sperm bank, alleging that the company mistakenly gave her vials from an African-American donor,a fact that she said has made it difficult for her and her same-sex partner to raise their now 2-year-old daughter in an all-white community. Jennifer Cramblett, of Uniontown, Ohio, alleges in the lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court that Midwest Sperm Bank sent her the vials of an African-American donor's sperm in September 2011 instead of those of a white donor that she and her white partner had ordered.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:10 PM | Your Say (4)
Barring a tsunami of common sense, I predict that Islam, the brand,
will remain separate in the public mind from the violence and repression it causes and has caused for more than a millennium.That's certainly the direction leaders from both political parties have been relentlessly herding us in for over a decade, insisting against all reason -- against all sacred Islamic texts -- that "Islam is peace." Thus, while contending with this cycle of expansionist jihad -- a recurrence that should be familiar from Islamic history were it, too, not subject to whitewash -- we must simultaneously withstand a campaign of lies designed to subvert our understanding of how Islam, in fact, has everything to do with beheadings and other violence both in the Islamic world and now in the West – and, why more than a decade of “nation-building” “counterinsurgencies” in Afghanistan and Iraq were doomed from the start.Diana West > Home - Whitewashing Communism Plus Whitewashing Islam Equals Curtains for the West
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 AM | Your Say (2)