The Top 40

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January 31, 2015

Consider How It Would Feel

Really consider how it would feel to live in a communist country and hate it so much that you traveled 90 miles on a floating door to escape, and then 40 years later, have your children and grandchildren tell you that you just hate poor people and that the country you fled to should be more like the country you fled from. -- Anarchy in Black

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 AM | Your Say (5)

Robert Frost: The Black Cottage

As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
So desert it would have to be, so walled
By mountain ranges half in summer snow,
No one would covet it or think it worth
The pains of conquering to force change on.
Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly
Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk
Blown over and over themselves in idleness.

-- Excerpt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (0)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (2)

Lefty governments always have walls around them;

their ideas are “so good, they have to be forced,” as the saying goes.

In America, the wall is a wall of expense, debt, and financial dependence. Just like communists, which is what they are — they don’t want anyone scrambling over that wall. So they make things more expensive. Don’t believe me, go and look at their positions on domestic issues. Each and every single one. Ask yourself: Does this make products and services cheaper, or more expensive? I’m sure you’ll find a lot where they make things “affordable,” but that just means they’re forcing taxpayers to buy it for people who don’t want to pay for it. When they have an effect on the cost of something, the effect, consistently, is to raise the cost. They’ve been doing it for a hundred years solid with no let-up. They don’t want you to make it, they want you dependent.

House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 AM | Your Say (3)

California’s Scrambled Eggs [Bumped]

The state’s latest animal-rights march is levying a punishing new food tax on the nation’s poor.

Egg prices are soaring in California, where the USDA says the average price for a dozen jumbo eggs is $3.16, up from $1.18 a dozen a year ago, and in some parts of the state it’s more than $5. The Iowa State University Egg Industry Center says retail egg prices in California are 66% higher than in other parts of the West. National wholesale egg prices also climbed nearly 35% over the 2014 holiday period, before retreating. The cause of these price gyrations is an initiative passed by California voters in 2008 that required the state’s poultry farmers to house their hens in significantly larger cages. The state legislature realized this would put home-state farmers at a disadvantage, so in 2010 it compounded the problem by requiring that eggs imported from other states come from farms meeting the same cage standards, effective Jan. 1, 2015.

California’s Scrambled Eggs - WSJ

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (15)

Syriza promised what Greek voters wanted: the impossible.

The party is run by unreconstructed Marxists nostalgic for the Soviet era.

But it won, and won big, chiefly on a platform of negation and repudiation. Syriza stands firmly against the European Union, the euro, austere budgets, debt payments, capitalism, the Germans, the banks, “the rich, the markets, the super-rich, the top 10 percent.” The status quo became the enemy. Those who promised to smash it with the most destructive zeal have become saviors.

The crisis of European democracy | the fifth wave

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (3)

“Liberation theology”

“Liberation theology” was from its beginning in the spirit of the Great Lie.

It is a vicious and an ugly lie, this nonsense about “Christ’s preferential option for the poor,” to the stench of which we have been too long subjected. It still reeks, through almost all “engaged” contemporary journalism, and poisons every clarion call for “equality.” It dishonours the poor. There should be no surprise that there are few vocations, and that the Church withers wherever it is taught (as it has done throughout Latin America). For it is not to make the rich poorer, nor the poor richer, in any worldly sense, that Christ came to us. It was instead to teach the rich and poor alike, from that first Beatitude, how to be poor in spirit. Unless this teaching is made clear, our Christian leaders turn their backs on Our Lord, and defraud us of our true heritage — giving their children who want the bread of Heaven, the stone of a very earthly avarice and resentment.

Of halcyon nests : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (1)

January 30, 2015

"Those who today smash in our faces with knuckle-dusters will tomorrow be firing at us with rocket-propelled grenades."

A week ago, a friend of mine was savagely mugged by two Somalis who took it upon themselves to smash him in the face with knuckle-dusters, break his nose, and rob him.

Whether illegal immigrants or asylum seekers, they would have come to Britain in search of an easier life or richer pickings. They have found both. For we are the ones who pay taxes to house and clothe them, who must do battle to be understood, who must accept their presence without so much as a murmur or a protest. The political elite presented mass immigration as a fait accompli and diversity as a good thing. To question the orthodoxy was to be unenlightened and beyond the pale, to be irredeemably right-wing. Look about you. That mass immigration has not enriched us, and diversity has not ensured we are an easier and more comfortable nation, is clear. Instead we see our values corroded, our patience tested, our basic tolerance and sense of fair play taken advantage of and mocked.

Multicultural Meltdown

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:02 PM | Your Say (2)

Hoo Dat?

It’s not easy to get owls to mug for the camera. Who's Who | Audubon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 PM | Your Say (0)

Warning! These 1950s Movie Gimmicks Will Shock You

Perhaps the crowning achievement of Castle’s gag-filled oeuvre was his 1959 film “The Tingler.”

Posters for the film included a guarantee that the monster would break loose during your screening, but that you’d be given instructions on “how to guard yourself against attack.” Castle encouraged audiences to react by creating a climax that takes place in a darkened theater and using a single sequence of blood-curdling color for maximum effect.

On top of all this, Castle also rigged certain theater seats with electric buzzers. “I don’t know how he talked these independent theaters into letting him shock the audience’s butts,” says Terry. “It was a fairly simple device, but he had to work hard to get the studio’s marketing department to buy off on it, and also to persuade the exhibitors to do the gimmick. I can’t imagine that working today.”

| Collectors Weekly

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:30 PM | Your Say (4)

HALO

"If you're in a car driving down the road and you close your eyes, you have no idea what your speed is. It's the same thing if you're free falling from space. There are no signposts. You know you are going very fast, but you don't feel it. You don't have a 614-mph wind blowing on you. I could only hear myself breathing in the helmet." - Colonel Kittinger High Altitude Low Opening | Huckberry

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:47 AM | Your Say (3)

The Saudi Monarchy as a Family Firm

The family, like many a successful political party (or mafia),

has a very hierarchical culture (deference to older members is strictly enforced), effective private dispute-resolution mechanisms (including special jails for misbehaving princes, apparently), and fora where princes are expected to speak candidly and honestly about what they learn from their contacts with non-royals (princes who develop reputations as liars are not likely to go very far). And in return for lifetime submission and service, all royals receive an allowance and a state job, calibrated to their seniority and political importance, from the enormous oil revenues the Saudi state produces. (Firm figures are hard to find, for obvious reasons, but Herb cites estimates that suggest that at the height of the oil boom, in the 1970s, the al Sauds received at least 12% of all government revenue - an utterly fantastic sum).

Abandoned Footnotes:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:30 AM | Your Say (1)

Just Call This Submachine Gun 'The Annihilator'

Facing at least 100 German soldiers, Funk pretended to give up.

Then he whipped his Tommy Gun into firing position, emptied his magazine into the officer, reloaded, and continued to fire while the American soldiers grabbed what weapons they could. When it was over, Funk and his men killed 21 Germans and wounded 24 more. For his actions, Funk later received the Medal of Honor. His bravery was undeniable. But his weapon’s firepower was flat-out devastating.

Despite the popular assumption, the Thompson was not the first submachine gun.

But many will argue it was the best submachine gun—one rightly adored by soldiers, gangsters, commandos and Chinese warlords. Well-made, robust, capable of firing more than 800 rounds a minute—in some models—and chambered for the man-stopping .45-caliber ACP round, the gun lived up to one of its original names, the Annihilator.

-- War Is Boring @ Medium

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (6)

January 29, 2015

Lines for Winter

BY MARK STRAND

for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Poetry Foundation

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 PM | Your Say (0)

In 1901, the average "urban wage earner"

spent about 46 percent of their household budget on food and another 15 percent on apparel -- that's 61 percent of their annual income just to feed and clothe the family.

That does not include shelter, or fuel to heat your home and cook your food. By 1987, that same household spent less than 20 percent on food and a little over 5 percent of their budget on apparel. Since then, these numbers have fallen even further: Today, families with incomes of less than $5,000 a year still spend only 16 percent of the family budget on food and 3.5 percent on apparel. And that's not because we're eating less and wearing fewer clothes; in fact, it's the reverse.

When Bread Bags Weren't Funny - Bloomberg View

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 PM | Your Say (3)

If you let Bergdahl walk

— it’s not about this pathetic little creep, Bergdahl, it’s about the principle —

if you let him walk with full pay and benefits and a promotion despite overwhelming evidence that he deserted his post in wartime, you make it virtually impossible to prosecute future deserters. Now, in the Army, I’m sure — the Army’s not perfect. You’ve got some people craven enough and ambitious enough to save to the White House, and I’m sure they are arguing the White House’s point, but so far you’ve got some generals that are showing backbone and saying, no, for the good of the Army, for the good of the military, he has to go through the Article 32 and into court-martial. And the White House is fighting it tooth and nail because they don’t give a damn about our military, they just care about this pathetic Puss in Boots president’s reputation.

The Bergdahl decision | Power Line

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:22 AM | Your Say (5)

“Snow Day” is civilization suspended.

When I was two years old, or maybe four years old, it snowed in Las Vegas.

The snow covered the concrete and the sand, and the alleyways between the casinos downtown. Even though I’m sure the snow was only an inch or so deep, it made a big impression on the citizens of the city, who cancelled work and daily life and left their cars right in the street just to behold the sight. At least, this is how I remember it. I remember that everything felt stopped and strange, like it must when miracles occur — thrilling but inexplicable, everybody making shallow angels on the sidewalk and lobbing small, powdery snowballs at each other that would fall apart in mid-air.

== The Smart Set

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

January 28, 2015

The Blizzard of Oz. (Good test run for martial law.)

We have become a soft people. Kids once might walk great distances to school, men marched a hundred miles to fight bloody battles, and,

believe it or not, for most of history, no one had modern medical care. Now a winter storm means we hunker down as if a Viking raid is nigh. An even larger issue here is the safety-freak mentality sweeping our secular society and dominating the craniums of callow neo-communists coast to coast. It's reflected in Michelle Obama's food-Nazi agenda, the banning of trans fats and big sodas, child-seat and helmet laws, and the new commandment, "Thou shalt ensconce thy progeny in bubble wrap." .... Let's get something straight: in a supposedly free country, you don't tell people they can't travel because of some snow. (Good test run for martial law, though.)

-- American Thinker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (10)

Let's look around the world, and ask "Who is not an Islamophobe?"

The world is full to the rafters with Islamophobes.

I wonder if the people slaughtered at Charlie Hebdo and in the kosher market had a bout of Islamophobia just before the AK rounds put an end to those thoughts? What the about people in the Westgate Mall in Nairobi or in the villages of Nigeria? Guess what? Huge numbers of Islamophobes live lives of utter misery and horror in the Islamic world. I lived for years in Muslim countries, and met countless Muslims terrified of Islam, especially women and budding intellectuals. Let us not forget that in the long and bloody history of the Religion of Peace, the greatest number, by far, of Islam's victims have come from the ranks of Muslims. Nobody massacres Muslims as frequently and as copiously as do other Muslims following the dictates of Islam.

The question, however, and in truth, that we should be examining is not "Who fears Islam?" Everybody does. Yes, everybody, or at least any person who has the capacity for rational thought. It is not whether we fear Islam, but what are going to do about the threat that it poses.

The DiploMad 2.0: Islamophobia

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (5)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (5)

Flip Your Steaks Multiple Times For Better Results

Flipping your steak often during grilling or pan-searing will result in the best, most evenly cooked meat.

Okay, it's probably not a big spoiler to anyone around here anymore. But it's the why that really make the statement interesting. We multi-flippers are a sad, often-marginalized lot. Mocked at backyard cookouts. Disparaged on internet forums. Made fun of to our faces when we express our belief that nervously flipping your meat as often as every 30 seconds will not only NOT ruin it, but will actually improve it.

-- Serious Eats

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:49 AM | Your Say (5)

January 27, 2015

Leftists of the Right

The conservative may be friendly and kind.

He may support a progressive shibboleth or two like “gay marriage” or legalized abortion. He may even be speaking as a black, homosexual, or Jewish conservative. No matter to the leftist — anything short of total memetic submission is unacceptable. Until the conservative walks, talks and thinks like the leftist, he is holding back the cause of progress, and must be destroyed. In frank terms, the leftist wants the conservative assimilated — or dead.

| Ara Maxima

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 PM | Your Say (3)

The day they took the Cheese out of Cheez Whiz

Southworth had been part of the team that created Cheez Whiz in the early 1950s.

The mission had been to come up with a speedy alternative to the cheese sauce used in making Welsh rarebit, a popular but laborious dish that required a half-hour or more of cooking before it could be poured over toast. It took them a year and a half of sustained effort to get the flavor right, but when they did, they succeeded in creating one of the first megahits in convenience foods. Southworth and his wife, Betty, became lifelong fans and made it part of their daily routine. “We used it on toast, muffins, baked potatoes,” he told me. “It was a nice spreadable, with a nice flavor. And it went well at night with crackers and a little martini. It went down very, very nicely, if you wanted to be civilized.”

So it was with considerable alarm that he turned to his wife one evening in 2001, having just sampled a jar of Cheez Whiz he’d picked up at the local Winn-Dixie supermarket. “I said, ‘Holy God, it tastes like axle grease.’ I looked at the label and I said, ‘What the hell did they do?’ I called up Kraft, using the 800 number for consumer complaints, and I told them, ‘You are putting out a goddamn axle grease!’ ”

| National Post

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:05 PM | Your Say (7)

The Japanese: "Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?"

And now the skirt with lights underneath to illuminate the thighs. The "Hikaru Skirt"Absolutely region expansion plan "shiny skirt" "By light, from the inside of the skirt, In light the absolute area, Emphasizes the mysterious space, Whatever is leap to Sunlight area."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:40 PM | Your Say (13)

Davos Man Needs to Be Extinctified

Convening to ring the alarm about global warming, our putative betters and would-be rulers gathered in Davos, Switzerland, filling the local general-aviation hangars with some 1,700 private jets.

Taking an international commercial flight is one of the most carbon-intensive things the typical person does in his life, but if you’re comparing carbon footprints between your average traveler squeezed into coach on American and Davos Man quaffing Pol Roger in his cashmere-carpeted intercontinental air limousine, you’re talking Smurfette vs. Sasquatch. The Bombardier’s Global 6000 may be a technical marvel, but it still runs on antique plankton juice. The emissions from heating all those sprawling hotel suites in the Alps in winter surely makes baby polar bears weep bitter and copious baby-polar-bear tears.

Davos’s Destructive Elites

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:35 PM | Your Say (4)

The Temperature at Which Global Warming Freezes

And walking along a path in the Ramble, I heard a woman lecturing her children on the dangers of what else, but Global Warming.

There is a madness to walking through a blizzard and discussing Global Warming. A theory according to which we should be sliding toward the tropics, awash in fleeing polar bears and Florida style temperatures, instead of frantically shoveling our driveways. To believe in Global Warming while stamping the snow off your boots is not a matter of science. It is a matter of faith. The scientist sees what is, while the believer has faith in what he cannot see. The scientist does not see Global Warming in a blizzard. The Warmist does. To see Global Warming while walking through a blizzard, is itself an act of faith.

Sultan Knish:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (3)

World’s Largest Barbecue Is 76-Feet-Long, Can Cook Four Tonnes of Meat at a Time

“It has 24 doors – 12 on this side, 12 on the other,”

said owner Terry Folsom, proudly describing his prized possession. The pit can cook four tons of meat at a time, and also has a walk-in cooler with space for kegs attached to beer taps on the outside. Surprisingly, the heat that powers the beauty comes from a small fire that burns only a couple of cords of wood. A tube carries the heat along the length of the entire pit.

- Collecting Oddities

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 AM | Your Say (6)

The Doobie Underground

Medical marijuana is currently imported from the Netherlands,

and tax and transport costs have driven the price up to nearly double what it originally sells for. A gram can go for 38 euros ($49). Depending on how much is needed, a patient can easily pay up to 1,000 euros ($1,200) a month for treatment. As a result, only about 60 patients have signed up for the program. For those who want cheap and easy access to weed to alleviate their medical symptoms, the restrictions put in place by the government are at best a nuisance and at worst, dehumanizing.

| Roads & Kingdoms

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (1)

I am the Fucking Managing Editor of the Weather.com Homepage.

I can’t help but notice that you seem to be staring in bemused wonderment at my most spectacular creation: the homepage of weather.com. I assume you went to a website with only one word, WEATHER, because you are interested in how the aforementioned subject will relate to your day. You are shit out of luck. Now, please excuse Daddy while he snorts a bump of cocaine. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Monologue

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (1)

January 26, 2015

26 January 1945: Audie Muphy’s single handed battle, kills 50, holds the line

I seize my carbine and start sniping. The advance wave of infantrymen is within two hundred yards of my position.

The telephone rings. “How close are they?” “50 over. Keep it coming.” Dropping the receiver, I grab the carbine and fire until I give out of ammunition. As I turn to run, I notice the burning tank destroyer. On its turret is a perfectly good machine gun and several cases of ammunition. The German tanks have suddenly veered to the left.

WW2 Today

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:28 AM | Your Say (14)

January 25, 2015

Not by acts but by faith

20 And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: 21 For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. 22But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour. Matthew 9

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:39 PM | Your Say (3)

Escape!

If the door is locked, smash the window and try to open it from the outside.

Or make your escape out of the window (like a luge champion). Otherwise, open the door and, as you leave, push out just enough to clear the car. You need to exit with your back facing the direction you’re travelling. Jump out with your right shoulder (remember, we’re on the left-hand side of the car) closest to the ground, and roll over your left shoulder.

How To Escape From A Moving Car

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

Tastes like piña coladas”, he quipped. “That’s got do with global warming for sure.”

A Record-Setting Winter on Lake Superior Sprung hull plates, mangled propeller blades, and the sight of an axe-wielding deckhand sent out to hack at the hundreds of tons of ice thrown on deck by freezing spray were commonplace until April. Massive delays persisted until the end of May. Icebergs could be spotted floating in Marquette Harbor on Memorial Day weekend.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:27 PM | Your Say (1)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, IT'S A WONDERFUL TOWN! CRIPPLING AND POTENTIALLY HISTORIC BLIZZARD TO IMPACT THE AREA FROM LATE MONDAY INTO TUESDAY

New York City: National Weather Service Watch Warning Advisory Summary

* LOCATIONS...NEW YORK CITY AND SURROUNDING IMMEDIATE SUBURBS...LONG ISLAND...AND MOST OF SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT. * HAZARD TYPES...HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW...WITH BLIZZARD CONDITIONS. * ACCUMULATIONS...SNOW ACCUMULATION OF 20 TO 30 INCHES...WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE. SNOWFALL RATES OF 2 TO 4 INCHES PER HOUR EXPECTED LATE MONDAY NIGHT INTO TUESDAY MORNING. * WINDS...NORTH 30 TO 40 MPH WITH GUSTS 55 TO 65 MPH...STRONGEST ACROSS EASTERN LONG ISLAND. * VISIBILITIES...ONE QUARTER MILE OR LESS AT TIMES. * TEMPERATURES...IN THE LOWER 20S. * IMPACTS...LIFE-THREATENING CONDITIONS AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TRAVEL DUE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL AND STRONG WINDS...WITH WHITEOUT CONDITIONS. SECONDARY AND TERTIARY ROADS MAY BECOME IMPASSABLE. STRONG WINDS MAY DOWN POWER LINES AND TREE LIMBS.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:42 PM | Your Say (11)

A full on tyrant?

This is unlikely for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that the man behind the “Arab Spring” is totally incapable of any such effort.

Obama is simply too incompetent to bring it off. His admiration for tyrants is well known, and he has no doubt reflected on the career of his largely overlooked political hero, Suharto, who obtained office in exactly that way. As generalissimo of Indonesia, Suharto loomed over Barry Soetero’s boyhood like a colossus. Much of Obama’s practical politics -- cronyism, government by decree, turning one ethnicity against another -- is derived directly from Suharto. But looking closely at Obama -- at his record, his personality, the way he walks -- we see that this man is clearly not one to embark on a coup d’etat. He can’t even throw a baseball right.

Articles: The President as Pest

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

January 24, 2015

To any Open Carriers reading this: this ain’t no tyranny.

You can own tons of guns, including military weapons suitable for resisting government forces.

You can criticize anything you want in public or online. You can travel as you wish. You can spout ridiculous, nonsensical accusations (“The Sandy Hook Massacre was faked by the government! The Boston Bombing was a false flag operation!”). And until you idiots f**ked it up, you could have carried a weapon into Washington’s state capitol. That’s not tyranny. That’s life in free-as-hell America. You think this is tyranny, try walking into a restaurant with an AK in some of the places I’ve served. Around two seconds after walking in, right around the time you’d get shot, you’d probably realize America isn’t such a dictatorship after all.

Saved from “Tyrants”, by Open Carry Douchebags | chrishernandezauthor

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

And I Quote....

• King Tut's beard 'hastily glued back on with epoxy' - Telegraph Another museum conservator, who was present at the time of the repair, said that epoxy had dried on the face of the boy king’s mask and that a colleague used a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches.
• “I find that offensive…or, I’ve managed to cook up a scenario in which some person, who may or may not exist, could be offended…so you have to go.” House of Eratosthenes
• “Hello #France: POTUS trip to #Saudi suggests WH figured out how to make quick trips to foreign capitals.”
• They want power. They behead infidels, rape little girls, crucify Christians, and toss homosexuals off buildings. And what is John Kerry's response? To cluck his tongue about "shamelessly deceptive advertising." Don Surber: John Kerry says Muslim terrorism isn't Muslim. EVIL
• Iran has built a 27-meter-long missile, capable of delivering a warhead “far beyond Europe,” and placed it on a launch pad at a site close to Tehran, an Israeli television report said Wednesday. Michelle Obama's Mirror: Protocol? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Protocol
• An 8.5” knife was discovered in an enchilada at the Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport (STS). The TSA Blog: TSA 2014 Year in Review
• There were 644 new measles cases in 27 states last year, according to the CDC. That's the biggest annual number we've seen in nearly a quarter-century.The devastating impact of vaccine deniers, in one measles chart - The Washington Post
• The Cheese in Cheez Whiz Cheez Whiz sold in the United States does not explicitly list cheese in the ingredients anymore.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:22 PM | Your Say (0)

January 23, 2015

Sigh. It's Come to This.

"Fear no more the heat o' the sun;
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust."

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

Who killed the Enlightenment? We did.

To hold Islamism, and the Western fools who apologize for it, responsible for the moral and spiritual disarray of the West is to ignore the funk our societies had sunk into long before 9/11.

In fact, it gets things the wrong way round. The medieval death-wishers with planes and bombs are not the authors of the Enlightenment’s demise—they are the beneficiaries of it, coming after it, and from it. Who killed the Enlightenment? We did. Universities did. Relativists did. Multiculturalists did. Environmentalists did. Schools did. Politicians did. No external cancer was needed to pollute the Western body; it was already sick.

Who Killed the Enlightenment? - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 PM | Your Say (4)

"Obambulate"

To walk about. "During our vacation, my wife and I would wake up early and obambulate around the empty beach." Word Warriors' 2015 top 10

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:23 PM | Your Say (3)

We begin with the “hottest year ever” absurdity.

How does anyone know? We are talking about tenths of a degree F, over centuries.

From all the historical records it was warmer in the Northern hemisphere in the Viking time, but of course we don’t KNOW, nor do we know how much warmer – or cooler — it was then. But it is absurd to say we know the average temperature of the Earth in 1900. Ocean temperatures then were taken with a bucket and a mercury thermometer and were no more than 1 degree of accuracy if that. Remember when we were young with mercury thermometers under the tongue? No one worried about tenths of a degree. It would be pointless. Even in space program days with anal probe thermisters which we calibrated daily we could be sure of 1 degree accuracy, and this of body temperature of a single subject. So now suddenly it is warmer on all Earth than it was in dust bowl times – and we know with certainty.  

Mail: Climate, solidarity, humor, etc. - Chaos Manor - Jerry Pournelle

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 PM | Your Say (4)

"To an ever-greater degree the “free man” of the West is an unarmed, frightened, policed and browbeaten cipher whose first reaction to any crisis is to ‘shelter in place’."

-- The Part of Yourself You Used to Own | Belmont Club

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 PM | Your Say (2)

Tens of Thousands of Invisible Men March In DC

My question for the reader is this: why can the Morlocks not even admit the size and vehemence of the opposition here?

What is gained by pretending we do not exist? Or, to ask a more precise question, would not striking the pose that they are opposing such a large and bold movement allow them to portray themselves as heroes, and gain them more? They cower before the weather, and before the Koch Brothers, which do not threaten them at all, but these marches display the strength of a society that bids fair to abolish abortion in our lifetimes.

The young and highly motivated survivors of the antinatal holocaust are gathering, and they see the economic disaster overpopulation scaremongers have done them, they can see the demographic disaster of Europe. Why do the Left pretend real threats to their hellish hegemony do not exist, but flaunt in comical excesses of emotion their pantomimes gestures of exaggerated opposition to utterly unreal and imaginary dangers?

| John C. Wright's Journal

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:20 PM | Your Say (2)

Forty-two years after Roe v. Wade, it is imagined that Americans are still “having a debate."

But this is nonsense. There never has been a debate, and in the nature of the case, there never could be.

Perhaps a debate is possible over capital punishment. But you cannot debate about killing babies. Either one grasps that this is invariably morally abhorent, or one does not. That only three in five should be opposed to abortion — instead of five in five — is a national scandal. (The scandal up here in Canada is worse.) That many even of those against abortion would consider exceptions, let alone make them sticking points, reveals a society depraved.

Marching to nowhere : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:59 PM | Your Say (5)

A New Rallying Cry For Men: “Who Bitch This Is?”

During a recent video gaming tournament, one of the competitors, a man known as Shinblade, celebrated a tough win.

A particularly dumpy female in attendance took offense to his victory dance, and attempted to physically push him back down into his chair. He resisted, then realized he was being assaulted by a woman and addressed the crowd with four mighty words that shall echo through history: “WHO BITCH THIS IS?”

-- Chateau Heartiste

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (10)

Always a King

Not only is there always a state religion, but there is always a king of some sort, a father of the country.

Likewise there is always a class of priests and judges, always a class of warrior nobles, always a class of merchants, always monastics and hermits, a market, a language, families, patriarchs, prophets, sex roles, etc. These things are built into man. They can be suppressed for a while, or injured, but not permanently eliminated from the constitution of human society. You can’t get rid of them, any more than you can get rid of the pancreas or the spleen. The functions they mediate must be mediated, and one way or another they will be mediated.

Homeostasis & Cultural Health | The Orthosphere

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (1)

The Edinburgh Fairy Coffins

In early July 1836, three boys searching for rabbits’ burrows near Edinburgh came upon some thin sheets of slate set into the side of a cliff. On removing them, they discovered the entrance to a little cave, where they found 17 tiny coffins containing miniature wooden figures. – Futility Closet

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:18 AM | Your Say (2)

January 22, 2015

Eyewitness Account of Queen Elizabeth I

“Next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age,

as we were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar); she had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops; she wore false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table; her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry; and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither tall nor low; her air was stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging.

- - Never Yet Melted

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

“To misname things is to add to the world’s unhappiness.”

Let us call things by their rightful names, since the French government seems reluctant to do so.

France, land of human rights and freedoms, was attacked on its own soil by a totalitarian ideology: Islamic fundamentalism. It is only by refusing to be in denial, by looking the enemy in the eye, that one can avoid conflating issues. Muslims themselves need to hear this message. They need the distinction between Islamist terrorism and their faith to be made clearly. Yet this distinction can only be made if one is willing to identify the threat. It does our Muslim compatriots no favors to fuel suspicions and leave things unspoken. Islamist terrorism is a cancer on Islam, and Muslims themselves must fight it at our side.

Marine Le Pen: France Was Attacked by Islamic Fundamentalism - NYTimes.com

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 PM | Your Say (4)

Enslaved by Technology and the Internet of Things

By 2018, it is estimated there will be 112 million wearable devices such as smartwatches, keeping users connected it real time to their phones, emails, text messages and the Internet.

By 2020, there will be 152 million cars connected to the Internet and 100 million Internet-connected bulbs and lamps. By 2022, there will be 1.1 billion smart meters installed in homes, reporting real-time usage to utility companies and other interested parties. This “connected” industry—estimated to add more than $14 trillion to the economy by 2020—is about to be the next big thing in terms of societal transformations, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture.

The Rutherford Institute :: Welcome to the Matrix:

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:35 PM | Your Say (5)

A simple question...

I honestly, really want to know. The question is this:

my African American/black/etc fellow Americans, why don't you speak like the rest of us? I know you can, because every black person I know of has an official American voice they speak with, even if they shift to a race-based dialect at other times. There's nothing stopping you.

Word Around the Net

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

Beyond that is the Oort cloud, an astonishing 100,000 AU distant

— two thousand times further than Pluto.

We don’t really have much data yet on what’s out there, nor will we for some time. A spacecraft like Voyager might reach it after some thousand of years yet still be in the Solar System; it will be coasting uphill out of Sol’s gravity well for 126,000 AU before it begins to slide downhill into the gravity of Proxima Centauri. However, despite the physical insignificance of the arrival of the tiny probe in the Kuiper Belt, its little mass of computers, sensors and propulsors will in informational terms be the most complex and powerful object in the outer solar system. After billions of years this vast region will be drawn into the flow of human history, its paradisal state ended forever, permanently changed by the advent of complexity, in the shape of a human artifact, several orders of magnitude greater in information processing capability than anything in that region of rocks and ice.

The Coming of the Serpent | Belmont Club

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (8)

And I Quote....

• "Like pedophiles, Progressives like ‘em young."
• "Anyone who has paid any attention to the series of bogus charges of racism by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People knew this would end up a justified homicide."
• "Great numbers of citizens, including many intelligent ones, have zero appetite for book-learning."
• "The mutaween circulate among us endlessly, looking at the third page of the paper you’re perusing, checking the spread of your legs as you ride the subway, parsing your words for forbidden phrases, investigating suspicious Greek fraternities, ensuring the requisite Wellness, retaining all the data passing through your ISP to be sure you have had no impure thoughts recently, even as they remind you that “yes means no” — all the while denying that there is an ultimate meaning to anything. Why all this busyness? Well that’s the irony. They don’t even know why."
• "Most of the British Jews now concerned with growing antisemitism probably voted for Labour, because they thought it was progressive and caring."
• "And that was it until the 21st century, when for the first time soldiers were beheaded on the London streets in broad daylight, and octogenarian widows in the privacy of their gardens, and now unfortunate ladies with intemperate husbands. Unless you're prepared to do something about your immigration policy, get used to more decapitation. It's 2015, and beheading is just one strand in the vibrant tapestry of the multicultural utopia."
• "When it comes to “people of color,” you can be sure that the Reverend Jackson has a favorite crayon in his diversity pack."
• "Although Mr. Corrigan had not flown since 1972, the organizers found it prudent to station guards on the plane's wings during his appearance at the exhibition and even discussed anchoring the tail of the plane by rope to a police car."
• "Road tripping is a quintessential facet of the American experience. Like so many before me, I was captivated by the idea of driving with no other aim than to explore––to be surrounded by the new yet strangely familiar. With this concept in mind, between May 28th and August 17th, 2014 I drove 19,748.7 miles around the United States."
• "Nobody lives here: The nearly 5 million Census Blocks with zero population."
• "It truly takes a weird world for lesbian feminist cultural critic Camille Paglia to sound a touch on the traditionalist side."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:11 AM | Your Say (0)

The Sequence of Civilizations

'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage'

Posted by: chasmatic The Top 40: Six Conundrums

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (0)

“Against the trend of current scholarship.”

“Documents” mean little to me, unless they can decisively clinch a point, as they now seem to be doing.

Even so, people will continue to believe what they want to believe. In Wiki and like sources one will often find the most telling research dismissed, without examination, with a remark such as, “Against the trend of current scholarship.” That “trend” consists of “scholars” who are not acquainted with the Bible (to which Shakespeare alludes on every page); have no knowledge of the religious controversies of the age, or what was at stake in them; show only a superficial comprehension of the Shakespearian “texts” they pretend to expound; assume the playwright is an agnostic because they are; and suffer from other debilities incumbent upon being all-round drooling malicious idiots. Perhaps I could have put that more charitably. But I think it describes “the trend of current scholarship” well enough.

Teaching Shakespeare : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (2)

January 21, 2015

The Near-Death Experience that Inspired the First Patented Down Jacket

Bauer took his new outerwear—which he called the Blizzard-Proof Jacket—to his friend Ome Daiber, “a well-known climber at the time, who had also developed some climbing gear,” Berg says.

“As a mountaineer himself, he immediately knew the importance and value of it.” Daiber, who had a small manufacturing operation, created the first generation of the jackets for Bauer, who continued to tinker with the design. Then, in 1936, he released a new version of the jacket—he called it the Skyliner—and began to advertise in Field & Stream, American Rifleman, and other hunting and fishing magazines. “He didn’t have a catalog at that point,” Berg says, “so sales happened through mail order and in his shop.” The jacket proved to be a hit right away, and in 1939, Bauer filed for a patent on his jacket, which he received in 1940.

| Mental Floss

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:57 PM | Your Say (5)

If you needed another reason to nuke Portland, OR from orbit...

Meow! Portland gets its first ever cat lounge Purringtons Lounge will hold its grand opening this Saturday at noon in Northeast Portland.

Owner Kristen Castillo hopes café fare and the opportunity to lounge around in the company of 8-10 cats will entice consumers to give Purringtons a shot. Like a regular café, you can go in and order food and drinks, but you also have the option of paying $8 to go into the cat area to enjoy your fare.

For $8 more male patrons can be deballed before leaving.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 AM | Your Say (9)

The one form of civilization they oppose is Christendom.

The Movement favors the rights of the poor, the needy, and the oppressed except when and where a Church is running a free hospital or an orphanage.

Then, if the hospital refuses to perform abortions or distribute condoms or the orphanage refuses to place orphans with two men living together practicing sodomy, the Movement urges the state to shut down those institutions, and poor and the orphan can be hanged. The Movement wants the state, and not the Church, to care for the poor, and greets the idea of “faith-based” charities with frantic scorn and hate.

Most damning of all, the Movement favors whoever and whatever is the enemy de jour. The Movement favored slavery in the South. The Movement favored the Nazis until the day and hour of Hitler’s betrayal of the pact with Stalin, whereupon, with admirable party discipline, they performed an abrupt about-face. During the Cold War, the Movement was firmly on the side of the atheist Communists; during the Jihad War, on the side of the Jihad.

Defining Leftist: Naming the Nameless Christian and Heathen

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:08 AM | Your Say (1)

"Oh the country's in the very best of hands...."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:33 AM | Your Say (1)

Day 16: They Still Suspect Nothing

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 AM | Your Say (1)

January 20, 2015

• You've got turnips. We've got targets. Turnips Fly at the Jarramplas Festival - The Atlantic
• 20 Stupid Things the Federal Government Spends Money On "$615,000 the federal government blew digitizing “photographs, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
• Does innovation arc toward decadence? | ROUGH TYPE
• More on Parachuting Beavers Into Idaho's Wilderness? Yes, It Really Happened | Boise State Public Radio
• Never Yet Melted ｻ Gay Marriage & the Death of Freedom
• World War P Beckons | Free Northerner "These poor-me articles are just the first step to the normalization of pedophilia."
• 6 Nobodies Who Turned Into Action Heroes Without Warning | Cracked.com
• 28 Sherman: ABC's Feminist Disconnect Agent Carter-The Bachelor
• Rote Learning Rocks, Critical Thinking Sucks | Ara Maxima
• How the Muslim world is being left behind - Why each new terror attack only further marginalizes the Muslim world
• 39 Digits, Pi, and the Size of the Observable Universe

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 PM | Your Say (1)

When arts die, they turn into hobbies.

Poetry in the twenty-first century is like pottery, woodworking, or the making of carrot carnations.

Sophisticated verse was never a major art, and having lost even a small non-practitioner audience, it has lost its status as a minor art. At hobbyist conventions, celebrated practitioners of a craft address an audience made up of other practitioners of the craft, who will then go home and work at the art themselves. Poetry has more residual cultural prestige than carrot carnation making and other hobbies, but that is only because most of the poet-hobbyists are professors with MFAs, while there are no professors of table-setting.

The Smart Set: From Poesy to Carrot Carnations

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:07 PM | Your Say (2)

A Potent Punch Indeed!

Recipe: Fire Cider — As a folk remedy there are countless variations,

but most fire cider recipes include ingredients like fresh horseradish, garlic, onion, ginger, and chile pepper. These are infused in apple cider vinegar (vinegar draws out many plant constituents), which is then strained and sweetened with honey. My recipe is based on the one popularized by herbalist Rosemary Gladstar (see her video and recipe here). In addition to the ingredients mentioned above, I like to add turmeric, citrus, and herbs like parsley, rosemary, and thyme. Together they form a potent punch that is immune-boosting, antibacterial, antiviral, congestion clearing, and warming.

If you've got that very bad cold that's going around this concoction might not cure you, but it will at least distract you.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (5)

I will not watch Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) message to Congress.

For a very long time I have found watching our pretend President unbearable: the upturned nose;

the arrogant stance and poking of the finger in the air; the empty words and unkept promises; the refusal to deal with real issues and the introduction of nonsensical ones; his complete lack of knowledge of American history; and, of course, the lies and the lies and--did I mention the lies?--the lies. Can't do it. Won't do it. I don't want to hear about "free" community college; embracing the "dreams" of undocumented, i.e., illegal, aliens; and the need for the "rich" to pay more to address social and economic inequality, etc. Meanwhile, of course, our country, our allies, and our very civilization is under increasing attack from the purveyors of an ancient totalitarian ideology which we must respect, must welcome into our homes and are not even allowed to name--Psst! Just among us, it's Islam.

The DiploMad 2.0

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 AM | Your Say (6)

January 19, 2015

• Time To Rethink Martin Luther King Day | VDARE.COM
• Reclaiming Beauty: Atheist Parasites
• Did the 1960s Really Happen? (Part Two) | PJ Lifestyle
• How To Fix the State of Illinois
• It’s Sofa King famous! – Strong Language
• The art of the 50-character job posting - Quartz
• Mathematically Precise Kinetic Sculptures and Transformable Objects by John Edmark | Colossal
• The Rubber Band: Holding It Together Since 1820
• Dark Roasted Blend: Videophones from the Future Past
• Unorthodoxy: After Polygamy Comes Pedophilia and Incest
• It's the End of Google Glass, and Glassholes Are Taking It Hard | Motherboard
• Data Visualization 101: Area Charts
• Sinister Architecture Constructed from Archival Library of Congress Images by Jim Kazanjian | Colossal
• Meditations On Moloch | Slate Star Codex
• Never Yet Melted -- Nietzsche's Typewriter

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:28 PM | Your Say (4)

Suppose Islam Had a Holocaust and No One Noticed

What if the Islamic State killers in Nigeria

who shout “Allahu Akbar” during their massacres share a motive with the 9/11 hijackers who were told to “shout 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers”?

What if a common bloody thread of Koran verses

runs through the massacres of non-Muslims in the Philippines and Kenya, in Israel and Australia, in France and China, in Thailand and Syria?

What if the acts of terror

on the evening news are not random events, workplace violence, mental illness and political extremism, but the beginning of another global Islamic genocide?

Sultan Knish:

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

"Everywhere gay marriage has been introduced it has battered freedom"

Gay marriage and the death of freedom » The Spectator In the words of the author Damon Linker, a supporter of gay marriage,

Americans who raise even a peep of criticism of gay marriage face ‘ostracism from public life’. We saw this with the medieval hounding of Brendan Eich out of his job at Mozilla after it was revealed that — oh, the humanity! — he isn’t a massive fan of gays getting married. Linker says the gay-marriage brigade has created a menacing climate, where the aim seems to be to ‘stamp out rival visions’. Americans who fail to bow at the altar of same-sex hitching, from wedding photographers to cake-makers, are harassed and boycotted and sometimes put out of business. The ‘freedom to marry’ clearly trumps the freedom of conscience.

Consider Britain. One of the first things gay campaigners here did when they won the right to marry was demand Catholic schools be forced to teach that gay marriage is as good as straight; even though they don’t believe this. Screw you, freedom of religion. Perhaps Catholic schools should bring back ‘priest holes’ to discuss their beliefs free from the watchful stare of the gay-marriage lobby, which, in Linker’s words, demands ‘psychological acceptance’ of gay marriage from all.

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

How To Become and Stay Speaker: Friends close. Enemies closer. Convert enemies to friends without driving friends into enemy camp by annoying them too much.

Remember all those articles about Boehner taking revenge on those who’d opposed his Speakership? “Boehner Foes Get Gavels, Not Punishment,” and subtitled “The speaker’s allies are annoyed that GOP rebels are getting top subcommittee slots.”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:41 PM | Your Say (3)

That “1-in-27 Million Chance That Earth’s Record Hot Streak Is Natural” Is Preposterous

Do we have a full causal model for temperature?

We do not. If we did, then meteorologists and climatologists would not make mistaken forecasts. Because they often do (especially climatologists), it must be that their models are incomplete. We do not know all the causes of temperature. But because we do not, it does not—it absolutely does not with liberty bells on—mean that we do know the cause is man-made global warming.

This is the sense that the 1 in 27 million is wrong.

It’s the right answer to a question nobody asked based on a model no sane person believes. Its answer is useless utterly in discovering whether global warming is true or false. If this is not now obvious to you, you are lost, lost.

| William M. Briggs

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:19 AM | Your Say (6)

The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur

Before we thought of artists as geniuses, we thought of them as artisans.

The words, by no coincidence, are virtually the same. Art itself derives from a root that means to “join” or “fit together”—that is, to make or craft, a sense that survives in phrases like the art of cooking and words like artful, in the sense of “crafty.” We may think of Bach as a genius, but he thought of himself as an artisan, a maker. Shakespeare wasn’t an artist, he was a poet, a denotation that is rooted in another word for make. He was also a playwright, a term worth pausing over. A playwright isn’t someone who writes plays; he is someone who fashions them, like a wheelwright or shipwright.

- The Atlantic

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (1)

The Relic Hunters Who Saved American History

Early visitors to Plymouth Rock were given hammers to chip off souvenirs for themselves, like the fragment at left, but the stone was protected in a gated memorial by 1880, as shown on the postcard at right. | Collectors Weekly

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (1)

Not being spotted was what the maps were all about

“Frontier guards usually go alone and seldom in more than pairs.

If pursued on open mountains, make for loose rocks which can be rolled and avoid solid rock. Besides the cover, one near-miss with a 10lb rock will often scare off a man. Roll five small rocks rather than one large one. Approach to the frontier along a spur is harder going but far less likely to be spotted.”

ESCAPE FROM BEHIND ENEMY LINES | More Intelligent Life

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:47 AM | Your Say (0)

Great Moments in Foreign Policy

The spectacle of the Obama administration’s dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to “share a big hug with Paris” as James Taylor — who still exists – crooned “You’ve Got a Friend” is the perfect objective correlative for American decline:

The pathetic self-regard of John Kerry and James Taylor’s Baby Boomers meets the cynical, self-serving, going-through-the-motions style of Barack Obama’s Generation X as disenchanted Millennials in parental basements across the fruited plains no doubt injured their thumbs typing “WTF?” It is the substitution of celebrity for power, of sentiment for analysis, of sloppy gesture for clear-headed commitment.

Brigadier General James Taylor? | National Review Online

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 AM | Your Say (3)

January 18, 2015

Six Conundrums

The word conundrum is defined as a complex problem that is often puzzling or confusing. Here are six conundrums of our contemporary United States of America:
1. America is capitalist and greedy – yet almost half of the population is subsidized.
2. Half of the population is subsidized – yet they think they are victims.
3. They think they are victims – yet their representatives run the government.
4. Their representatives run the government – yet the poor keep getting poorer.
5. The poor keep getting poorer – yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about – yet politicians (mostly progressive socialists) claim they want America to become more like those other countries.

House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:00 PM | Your Say (6)

2 of 35 Things Wrong With America [Bumped]

23. Having to constantly be exposed to Spanish announcements, signs, and advertisements because immigrants are too lazy to learn English.

24. Welfare state that redistributes money from hard-working provider men to a growing population of single mothers who are subservient to the state instead of husbands. -- Three Kings

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:03 PM | Your Say (17)

“You’re on the wrong side of history.”

Liberals and leftists love to proclaim this to rightists of any kind, or even insufficiently leftist left-wingers.

A veiled threat — you don’t want to piss off history, do you? Huh? Huh? Punk. Sign this petition for gay rights, bigot. Yeah, that’s right. Unfortunately for liberals, this little sentence proves nothing beyond the liberal leftists’ own total illiteracy. They’ve clearly never read a history book if they think history’s side involves gay marriage, voting women, and mass immigration.

The Side of History | Ara Maxima

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:38 AM | Your Say (0)

January 17, 2015

Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me

Pig, lamb and chicken blood offered as a sacrifice to a bronze statue of Mao. Regarding the GodMan I share a birthday with..... LOOK: People sacrificing animals, worshipping statues of Mao on the 121st anniversary of his birth: December 26th was the 121st anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong, Chinese Communist revolutionary and founding father of the People's Republic of China. To commemorate his birthday, massive celebrations were held at Mao Zedong Square in Shaoshan, Mao's hometown in Hunan.

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

“Even with all the mistakes we made,

we still managed to drag humanity out of mysticism, ignorance, illness, despotism and poverty –

albeit, kicking and screaming all the way. We shall never be heroes to our debtors. However, we should never apologize for what we have done for man. So, that said, Sorry, no, we’re not sorry. We are sorry that we didn’t save mankind for mysticism, ignorance, illness, despotism, and poverty, earlier, faster, or better. But I am not, we are not, sorry for having done so, and reaping the benefits of doing it, and continuing to do it.”—Curt Doolittle

[You Are Welcome To Your Privilege |]

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:01 PM | Your Say (1)

All these leaders are wrong.

'Religion of peace' is not a harmless platitude. In private, they and their senior advisers often concede that they are telling a lie.

The most sympathetic explanation is that they are telling a ‘noble lie’, provoked by a fear that we — the general public — are a lynch mob in waiting. ‘Noble’ or not, this lie is a mistake. First, because the general public do not rely on politicians for their information and can perfectly well read articles and books about Islam for themselves. Secondly, because the lie helps no one understand the threat we face. Thirdly, because it takes any heat off Muslims to deal with the bad traditions in their own religion. And fourthly, because unless mainstream politicians address these matters then one day perhaps the public will overtake their politicians to a truly alarming extent.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 AM | Your Say (3)

“The Clearest Historical Window…”

The left, for the most part, represents those who have the incentive

and the resources to get the final word in about what “history” has to say. They have the time to make sure they get to win all the arguments. Their opposition is busy living in that history, providing products and services to other people, which frees up the lefties to write up their essays and get them published as documents of record. Whatever might make lefties look good, is not only true, but “history.” Whatever might make lefties look bad, not-never-happened. Down the memory hole it goes.

House of Eratosthenes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (0)

Beyond Oprah

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:27 AM | Your Say (1)

January 16, 2015

If we're going to have an emperor, let's at least have one who looks the part.

Today in History, January 16th, 27 BC, Gaius Octavius accepts the title of Augustus and becomes the first Emperor of the Roman Empire. Via Ego is a rat on the sinking ship of being.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:46 PM | Your Say (7)

Regarding the unsurprising slaughter in Paris:

Diversity is a disaster. Why people cannot see this is a mystery.

A country can ignore an unfortunate reality, but it cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring it. Why governments allow and even encourage immigration of incompatible populations is a greater mystery. Few things cause more misery, hatred, death, and destruction than does diversity. One may wish it were not so, but it is so.

Fred On Everything: Diversity: Koom. Bah. Humbug

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:17 PM | Your Say (2)

9 Things You Should Know About Boko Haram

9. During an attack that started January 3 and continued through January 11, Boko Haram opened fire on 16 northern Nigerian villages.

The death toll estimates range from 200 to as many 2,000 people. Another 10,000 people who managed to escape have fled to neighboring Chad. Many Nigerians drowned in an attempt to cross Lake Chad to escape what is now described as the "deadliest massacre"€ in the history of Boko Haram. Over the past six months, the militant group has taken control of more than two dozen towns in northeast Nigeria, most of them in Borno State, and launched attacks into Chad and Cameroon. The territory controlled by Boko Haram now nearly equals the Islamic State'€™s in Iraq and Syria.

| TGC | The Gospel Coalition

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 AM | Your Say (4)

We are now among people who are better and worse than savages.

They are, in most places, and for the time being, less likely to break the crockery, as Chesterton put it, than were the savages of old.

They will cut babies to pieces in the womb, more than a million a year, but only rarely out of it; and they will be roused to the height of righteous wrath should they see someone leave a dog in a hot car in the summer. They watch filth all the time and let it soak their souls, but they will not roll in mud, because it is not good for the complexion. They judge by the flights of feeling and mass sentiment. They know what sluts are: women whose sexual immorality is a degree or two more degraded or more consistent than theirs. They are the more ruthless and severe in their condemnations as they are incapable of telling exactly what is to be condemned and why.

Touchstone Archives: Mission Nary Impossible

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:49 AM | Your Say (3)

“Two die in Belgian anti-terror raid.”

Gentle reader must have been wondering, who is it this time? The Buddhists, perhaps? (Mahayana or Theravada?)

Jains? Angry rampaging Hindu swamis? Prim Confucians? Taoist anarchists? What about the Zoroastrians, we haven’t heard from them in a while. But it might be the Lutherans, no? Or the Presbyterians? Pentecostals more likely, or Fundamentalist Christians from Allah-bama. Hey wait, Belgium used to be a Catholic country, perhaps they were Latin Mass traditionalists? SSPiXies? Dominican monks? Third Order Franciscans? On the other hand, Secular Humanists would be statistically more likely. Wiccans? Druids? Nudists? Maybe we should bet long-shot on Animists of some sort, from the former Belgian Congo. Or from New Guinea: could be, you never know these days. Well, the answer caught everyone by surprise. Turned out they were Muslims.

Religio pacis : Essays in Idleness

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:57 AM | Your Say (3)

The Richest Family in the World

> The wealthiest private entity in the 19th century was actually not a person – but a family.

The Rothschild family, descendants of Mayer A. Rothschild, is still around today and is believed to be worth over a trillion dollars combined, thought to be the largest private fortunate in the history of the world. Who are the Rothschilds exactly and how did they amass this tremendous fortune?

TIFO

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (0)

The great conflict within Islam is the fact their religion is a cultural dead end.

A Europe dominated by Islam will be just as backward and materially impoverish as every other Muslim society.

The Arabs flooding European cities go there for the material benefits. A Muslim version of Dresden will simply be a much colder version of Ankara. The great conflict within Islam is the fact their religion is a cultural dead end. You can be Muslim and have an Iron Age society or you can have a modern society without Islam or a radically different version of Islam. Just as the palace system proved to be inadequate for managing global trade and growing populations, multiculturalism is proving inadequate to address the clash of peoples brought on my globalism. No one has an alternative that the ruling class can stomach so they stick with multiculturalism, growing ever more fanatical trying to make it work. The people so fond of saying they are on the side of history may very be about to be swept away by the tide of history.

The Cult at War at The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (0)

Don't Worry. Be Happy.

1 million tons of pressurised CO2 stored beneath Decatur, Illinois | Watts Up With That? In Africa, in 1986, an abrupt release of an estimated 100,000 -- 300,000 tons of CO2 killed 2,500 people up to 25km (15.5  miles) from the source of the release. A similar release near a major city would kill a sizeable fraction of the city'€™s population.

The region of devestation was comparable to the loss of life which would be caused by a large nuclear explosion --€“ the only reason a lot more people didn'€™t die, was Lake Nyos is a sparsely inhabited rural region. The Lake Nyos CO2 release was so deadly, because CO2 is heavier than air -- when the huge CO2 cloud boiled out of lake Nyos, it hugged the ground, displacing all breathable air to an elevation 10s of ft above ground level, suffocating almost everyone in its path.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:52 AM | Your Say (2)

January 15, 2015

Mug Shot

These mugs originally were made without handles for use on Navy ships, so outside lookouts could wrap their hand around one to warm up and drink coffee, too. Also, they are hard to knock over or break. Coffee mugs - Maggie's Farm

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (5)

The Turtleneck Comes Back Out of Its Shell

Thanks to our obsession with these black-and-white photos from fifty years ago when “all men dressed well” (or at least enough that we can comfortably fool ourselves into actually believing that platitude), the McQueen/Caine style of turtleneck, best worn under a sportcoat or paired with wool trousers, is now prevalent once again. -- A Continuous Lean.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:24 PM | Your Say (6)

This Day in History: January 15th- The Black Dahlia

One of the chief suspects was Dr. George Hill Hodel. Author and former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel believes his father, Dr. Hodel, was the Black Dahlia killer. Among other things, Steve recently searched his father’s former basement accompanied by retired police Sgt. Paul Dostie and Buster, a Labrador retriever specially trained to detect traces of human decomposition. Buster did indeed find markers consistent with human decomposition in Dr. Hodel’s residence, even after all these years. TIFO

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:13 PM | Your Say (2)

Colonization

They aren't taking a strong stance on speech and expression but on fear and shock at the killings.

So the core idea of multiculturalism and social justice held by the left is unchallenged and unchanged, just this particular specific aspect of it.Yet there's an aspect to this that someone at Ace of Spades HQ brought up I think is worth repeating and considering. Posting under the name "Wheatie" she noted: Let's call those 'No-Go Zones' what they are...they're Colonies. It's not immigration if you are ceding them territory. It's Colonization. And that's a key point here. See, in parts of Paris, as well as parts of different cities in England (Primarily London) and its getting that way in places such as Dearborn Michigan in the USA as well as elsewhere, Muslims are creating colonies.

Word Around the Net: COLONIZING

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:09 PM | Your Say (2)

Hair of the Presidents

Varden presented his first hair display at the Patent Office in 1853, assembled from donations that he personally solicited, purchased, or may have repurposed from existing collections.

The presidential locks are now missing from the 1853 collection; Varden moved them to a separate display in 1855. The remaining “Persons of Distinction” include Samuel F. B. Morse, sculptor Clark Mills, Generals Winfield Scott and Sam Houston, Senators Henry Clay and Jefferson Davis, and other luminaries. Varden’s inscription makes a public appeal: “Those having hair of Distinguished Persons, will confere [sic] a Favor by adding to this Collection.” The 1855 display features the hair of presidents from George Washington to Franklin Pierce.

John Varden’s Washington Museum

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

Heard a great Jimmy Carter joke the other day.

Someone says to Carter: “You’re going to die on a Jewish holiday.” Carter asks: Which one? Answer: Doesn’t matter: whatever day you die on will be a Jewish holiday. The crazy revisited | Power Line

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:16 AM | Your Say (0)

Major media could copy & paste local media but it doesn’t fit their narrative.

From local media reports:

• Dead are four black males, in stolen car
  
• Locals thought gunfire was construction noise or firecrackers (implies small calibers)
  
• Two calibers of about fifteen spent cartridges found around scene, implies semi-auto pistols
  
• Shots probably fired from another vehicle
  
• Incoming rounds came in side windows
  
• Downrange buildings took hits, at least one round inside a home
  
• Homes / businesses in the area have many security cameras
  
• Police think it’s gang related, expecting retaliation attack
  
• Police helo on scene immediately

Another Mystery! at The Z Blog

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

Remember the #bringbackourgirls campaign

Don't hear much about that from this these days, do we?

The only thing worse than the global community’s collective amnesia about the once-viral #bringbackourgirls campaign and the indifference to the latest bloodshed is the detachment shown by the Nigerian government, which still has not made a formal comment on the latest atrocities. Nigeria Is Letting Boko Haram Get Away With Murder

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 AM | Your Say (2)

The massive French police deployments were meant to send a message to the public. We can still protect you. But not everyone is convinced.

And the reason why Islam enjoys a “special kind of protection” is really rather embarrassing. Fear.

Unlike the Christians, Islam shoots back. Intimidation, if truth be told, and not fine tolerance, is behind the liberal good manners towards Islam. Nothing so civilizes a man’s behavior as the knowledge that a mislaid word will result in a missing tooth — or a missing head. The contrast between the derision shown toward Judaeo-Christianity and the reverence for Islam has grown too noticeable to miss, to the point where events in Europe have caused European Jewry to remember an old insight. Douglas Murray wrote in the Spectator that “the siege in a kosher shop in Paris proves why Israel needs to exist.”

The Right Reverend Rambo | Belmont Club

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:55 AM | Your Say (5)

January 14, 2015

French polymath Ernest Renan’s 1883 Sorbonne lecture on Islam:

Those liberals who defend Islam do not know Islam.

Islam is the seamless union of the spiritual and the temporal, it is the reign of dogma, it is the heaviest chain mankind has ever borne. In the early Middle Ages, Islam tolerated philosophy, because it could not stop it. It could not stop it because it was as yet disorganized, and poorly armed for terror….But as soon as Islam had a mass of ardent believers at its disposal, it destroyed everything in its path. Religious terror and hypocrisy were the order of the day. Islam has been liberal when weak, and violent when strong. Let us not give it credit for what it was merely unable to suppress.

Caldwell’s reflections, cont’d | Power Line

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:58 PM | Your Say (1)

It’s a little strange when you think about it:

Just about every American ninth-grader has never lived a moment without astronauts soaring overhead, living in space.

But chances are, most ninth-graders don’t know the name of a single active astronaut—many don’t even know that Americans are up there. We’ve got a permanent space colony, inaugurated a year before the setting of the iconic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a stunning achievement, and it’s completely ignored.

-- 5,200 Days in Space

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (3)

The Failure of the Cultural Death Camps

The internationalist Leftist elites that have ruled Europe since World War II have failed.

They have failed not just by our high and exacting standards, but by their own low and sloppy ones. They have created the very world that they most feared, and generated a situation that even they are now coming to realize is unsustainable and impossible. If they don’t realize now, then it won’t take too many more years to enlighten them. All that they hold dear – gay rights, women’s lib, abortion-on-demand, the moral free-for-all, welfarism, gender equality, and even racial equality – now hangs by a thread, all because their great game plan is coming unstuck.

Alternative Right: THE FAILURE OF THE CULTURAL DEATH CAMPS

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 AM | Your Say (0)

"Made It Ma!"

HappyAcres on Twitter: "VDH's image for a recent essay captures the Left's ideal; this character is the pinnacle in the Left's hierarchy."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (0)

First we kill the clerics.

Islamic nations that observe sharia law have no real civic institutions.

The clerics rule all, and the warrior caste are their enforcers. Rule of law, property rights, due process, and social behavior are all administered by the imams and ayatollahs. The mufti determine what is Islam, who are blasphemers and apostates, and what punishment is ordained. The clerics incite the warrior caste, creating shock troops that enforce prescribed behavior among the population, and wage terror against the rest of the world. The clerics are just as guilty of conspiracy to commit murder as Charles Manson, and this is why they must be confined or killed. They are the head of the serpent. This is neither cruel nor barbaric; it is merely the acknowledgement that crimes carry penalties, and punishment must to served to preserve the scales of justice.

Velociworld: What Is To Be Done

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (1)

These Islamic terrorists are sending us a message:

In the post-Christian West, Christians may turn the other check at insults to their God and faith.

We are not turn-the-other cheek people. Insult our faith, mock the Prophet, and we kill you. An awakening and rising Islamic world—a more militant faith than Christianity or secularism—is saying to the West: We want you out of our part of the world, and we are coming to your part of the world, and you cannot stop us.

A Triumph of Terrorism

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

Killing Off the Left

Alternative Right: THE FAILURE OF THE CULTURAL DEATH CAMPS If they don’t realize now, then it won’t take too many more years to enlighten them.

All that they hold dear – gay rights, women’s lib, abortion-on-demand, the moral free-for-all, welfarism, gender equality, and even racial equality – now hangs by a thread, all because their great game plan is coming unstuck.

They thought that the way to win total victory in the great cultural and ideological war with the old conservative order was to destroy it with multiculturalism, a perfect strategy because it was something that could only be fought against with racism, parochialism, and a rejection of the global economy – all things that had been stigmatized beforehand. The old order was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The more they fought back the more the Left could screech the dreaded R-word and their other incantations and intimidate their naive and befuddled opponents. Fish being shot in a barrel would have put up stiffer resistance.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:06 AM | Your Say (0)

January 13, 2015

The Derelict

What none of the crew realized right away was that the fire was being fanned by one of Morro Castle's oft-touted amenities:

a rudimentary air conditioning system that used vents at the front of the vessel to draw in cool, refreshing sea air which was then funneled into inner passenger compartments via gaps behind the wall paneling. The Morro Castle was steaming at near-top-speed into a headwind, consequently the captive breeze was brisk. Furthermore, much of the luxury liner's wood-paneled interior was glazed in layers of luxurious flammable varnish and fastened with comprehensively combustible adhesives. The fire feasted, spreading at an astonishing rate unlike any in the onlookers' experience. Soon it was roaring, feeling its way upwards and sideways toward adjacent rooms with little regard for the crewmembers' interventions.

• Damn Interesting

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 PM | Your Say (1)

Land of Opportunity

Auguste Bartholdi patented the Statue of Liberty. In 1879, seven years before its dedication in New York Harbor, the French sculptor filed a one-page abstract describing his “design for a sculpture”:

The statue is that of a female figure standing erect upon a pedestal or block, the body being thrown slightly over to the left, so as to gravitate upon the left leg, the whole figure being thus in equilibrium, and symmetrically arranged with respect to a perpendicular line or axis passing through the head and left foot. The right leg, with its lower limb thrown back, is bent, resting upon the bent toe, thus giving grace to the general attitude of the figure. The body is clothed in the classical drapery, being a stola, or mantle gathered in upon the left shoulder and thrown over the skirt or tunic or under-garment, which drops in voluminous folds upon the feet. The right arm is thrown up and stretched out, with a flamboyant torch grasped in the hand.

– Futility Closet

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 PM | Your Say (4)

“Gnostic societies and their leaders will recognize dangers to their existence when they develop,

“but such dangers will not be met by appropriate actions in the world of reality.

They will rather be met by magic operations in the dream world, such as disapproval, moral condemnation, declarations of intentions, resolutions, appeals to the opinion of mankind, branding of enemies as aggressors, outlawing of war, propaganda for world peace and world government, etc. The intellectual and moral corruption which expresses itself in the aggregate of such magic operations may pervade a society with the weird, ghostly atmosphere of a lunatic asylum, as we experience it in our time in the Western crisis.” Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics

-- HappyAcres

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 PM | Your Say (2)

Fog

On the ground it was low, stayed low, deviating occasionally from thick to thicker.

I observed that the iPhone camera app could see farther and more clearly then what my eyes could collect studying the same view. Neat right? Filters. I can't see stuff that I know beyond any doubt is there. My inability to see it doesn't make it less there or not there at all. I love that. The strength of my faith does not distort the object of my faith.

True North: Fog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:04 PM | Your Say (0)

Conservatives have been saying for quite some time that jihadis are at war with Western civilization

and/or the Enlightenment, although liberals and the left have often scoffed at that claim.

However, one of the pillars of the West is freedom of speech, so when Muslim terrorists murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for exercising that right in France, a Western country, the act gave credence to the idea that the terrorists are in fact out to destroy our civilization and our liberties. That could be a harder threat to ignore than previous ones, especially coupled with the ISIS beheadings of members of the Western press that have become frequent in the past year.

neo-neocon -- Dan Hannan thinks something in Europe has fundamentally changed

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:55 PM | Your Say (2)

Meanwhile....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:00 AM | Your Say (2)

Meanwhile...

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (0)

Meanwhile....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 AM | Your Say (0)

Site of "Michelle Obama Library" Being Selected

LINCOLN, Neb. – There’s one group of eaters that will gladly chow down on Michelle Obama’s “healthy” school lunches: worms.

The Nebraska Farmers Union is seeking to partner with Lincoln-area schools by taking their lunch leftovers to fuel its worm farm, the Journal Star reports. The group creates compost by using worms in a process called vermiculture.

School’s ‘healthy’ lunch leftovers to feed worm farm - EAGnews.org

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (2)

This is CNNyet

"CNN will not show you the new cover, which depicts the Prophet Muhammad, because it is our policy not to show potentially offensive images of the prophet," the host declared this morning. The Weekly Standard

Here's the image CNN (and others!) refuse to show you:

After all, what gutsy, global, trustworthy, and uncompromising news organization wants to take the chance that Islamic insects might take it into their pedophile worshipping brains to shoot up one of your offices?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:03 AM | Your Say (4)

January 12, 2015

It's half a joke that football players

are allowed anywhere near schoolchildren to lecture them on "fitness,"

and character. They are, almost to man, physical freaks who abuse drugs to cheat. They have nothing to offer the average person in the way of advice. They would be valuable if they were willing to participate in the school of rules, but they're not interested. The purpose of sports in general is to train people to compete with one another under a set of rules that apply equally to everyone. You're supposed to learn that the desired outcome does not dictate the rules. You're not supposed to work backwards from desired outcomes to determine the rules, either. You learn that if you are unable to get the outcome you desire, you're not supposed to resort to violence, cheat, or much more importantly, say you were cheated when you were not.

Sippican Cottage: Play Is the School of Rules

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:39 PM | Your Say (4)

The "Creative" Artist

The anachronism I mentioned is that we are fascinated by the figure of the creative artist, the figure inspired to make a great creative masterpiece.

This is quite a late preoccupation in our culture, and dates only from the 18th century Romantic movement. Oddly enough, great artists themselves don’t subscribe to it. They often refer to the writing coming from outside themselves, as they as mere transcribers. In the time of Homer, and for much later, the artist was relatively unimportant compared to the work he created. ... For all we know Homer might be a generic term, or the name of an untalented ancient performer which happened to be preserved. But we want it to be the name of a great poet, and so, in Jackson Knight’s books and in countless others, we pursue him in the poems he left behind.But we can’t pin him down. He may have lived in the lands of Sumer, been a Hurrian or a man of Thessaly, born before the time of cities or of the generation immediately before that of Eratosthenes. We can’t know, because we can’t tell when the excellence of the poems began. And we don’t know if ‘Homer’ was the source of it. The author may have been composite, as the author of a play or film is today. The poems though still tell a good story.

The last minstrel | BestQuest

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:23 PM | Your Say (4)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (1)

January 11, 2015

Why do traffic jams sometimes form for no reason?

"These traffic waves

arise from small perturbations in a uniform traffic flow, like a bump in the road, or a driver braking after a moment of inattention," says Benjamin Seibold, a mathematician at Temple University who's worked with colleagues on understanding the phenomenon.

- Vox

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (11)

January 10, 2015

Amnesty International now use satellite photographs

to estimate death tolls from Boko Harum’s ministrations in rural Christian districts;

the Guardian today cites an estimate of two thousand dead at Baga, once a quiet fishing village on the western shore of Lake Chad. (The lake has been shrinking.) Most of these were women, children, and the elderly, according to reports: unable to run fast enough.

La guerre, yes sir : Essays in Idleness

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

Let's Laugh at Islam

The way to defeat Islam is never to coddle it, to enable its rages or its conquest of our lands.

It is to stand up to it over and over again. It's to laugh at it. Yes laugh it and ridicule it. America is a collection of immigrants with the humorous traditions of dozens of cultures, Irish, Jews, Italians, Scots, Russians, Asians. We're not just the reservoir of the world's talent but its humor too and humor is the ultimate weapon against the balloon that is Islam. Islam can only expand by force. It can't leverage any real military force against us. Instead it expands by intimidation, by conformity, by deception, by political correctness. It has no defense against laughter. Men who are so insecure they would kill over a stray word here or there, can't stand up to being laughed at, to being ridiculed, to have their cherished values transformed into a laughingstock.

Sultan Knish Let's Laugh at Islam

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:08 AM | Your Say (4)

January 9, 2015

Whites Who Make Whites Ashamed to Be White

Sit down with the most radical white-hating activist fro-packing African American in the world and watch Blazing Saddles. He'll laugh until he passes out, and the white people in the room will fall all over themselves in horror apologizing and pretending outrage.

White people with pursed lips, raised noses, and disapproving glares sit in judgment over all of US culture trying to show which of them is the least racist and most enlightened on the topic. They find offense and shriek like a cartoon housewife spotting a mouse at things blacks simply don't care about. Even people who on other topics shrug at the social justice warriors and giggle at the antics of other leftist groups like feminists freak out when it comes to this topic.

Word Around the Net: THE BLACK BAN

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 AM | Your Say (4)

The Left's Base Motive: Vengeance

American leftism has always been about magnifying trivial complaints to serve as excuses for revolutionary action.

The U.S. has never had a feudal system, nor a proletariat, nor any other conceivable reason for revolution. (German Marxist Werner Sombart pointed out in 1903 that the American masses already possessed what the left was promising them. His comrades badgered him mercilessly for this insight.) Instead we see trivia blown up to apocalyptic proportions -- and nowhere less than in feminism. Betty Friedan hated the suburbs. Gloria Steinem served as a Playboy bunny and never got over the humiliation. They therefore set out to upend Western civilization by inflating these slights while millions of other women fastened on atrocities such as “the male gaze,” having doors opened for them, “manspreading,” and attempted pickups -- or lack of the same.

--American Thinker

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:22 AM | Your Say (1)

The issue here is islam, and the fault,

blame and culpability for these murders lies squarely in the lap of islam and nowhere else.

No excuses can be made, no justification can be fabricated, no quarter can be given. Islam cares not a whit about our arguments amongst ourselves regarding freedom of speech or anything else. All islam cares about is complete earthly submission to islam, and it will happily let us argue amongst ourselves while it slaughters us where we sit.

Cut the Crap: The problem is islam, and it has to be exterminated. Period. | Barnhardt

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:28 AM | Your Say (8)

January 8, 2015

Do Not Submit! Republish the Mohammed Cartoons Everywhere. Here's How.

The way to overcome them in this instance is to overwhelm them with disrespect and mockery.

They can silence one magazine, but they can't silence the entire Internet. Every blogger, of every political stripe, be it left, right, and everywhere in between, needs to realize that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are the two keystones of your ideology, whatever it may be. You need to make a stand. You need to make these terrorists lose the ideological battle.

And the way to do that is to republish the Mohammed cartoons yourselves. Today. Right now. Fill the world with images of Mohammed so that the terrorists realize they can never expunge them all. But where to get the pictures? Easy. GO HERE-->

-- @ ｷ zomblog

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

Tweeting Themselves to Death

When Muslims get their feelings hurt, they manage to have mass rallies and mass killings. After something like this, they can only muster some mild rebukes on twitter. --Not in Anyone’s Name at The Z Blog

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:28 AM | Your Say (0)

Australia’s Brothel Boomtown

Langtrees, which has branches across Australia, prides itself on its lounge atmosphere.

Girls in skimpy clothes and sky-high heels still do-line ups for clients to take their pick. They all have profiles online with vital statistics listed: age, bust size, hair colour, and height (some show their faces; some don’t). But more often men come in with their mates, have a drink, play some pool, and chat to the girls before heading upstairs. “It’s the whole experience,” Sue, the madam in charge, notes. “It’s not just a, ‘wham bam thank you mam.’ [The bar and lounge] gives the guys the opportunity to relax.”

| Roads & Kingdoms

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:52 AM | Your Say (1)

January 7, 2015

This Strange Earth

The Ball’s Pyramid is an erosional remnant of a shield volcano and caldera

that formed about 7 million years ago, according to potassium-argon dating. It has a height of 562 meters (1,844 ft), a length of 1,100 meters (3,600 ft) and width of 300 meters (980 ft). The pyramid is made up of horizontally-bedded basalt lava flows, which came from a volcanic plug formed in a former volcano vent. Basalt, a common rock formed from the Earth’s molten mantle, can be found also on the Earth’s Moon, Mars, Venus, and the asteroid Vesta. Climbing over Ball’s Pyramid surely sounds like roaming around the moon and other planets’ surfaces minus the space suit, the gravitational pull and other factors.

Ball's Pyramid: The World's Tallest Volcanic Stack | WOE

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:53 AM | Your Say (9)

Correction of the Year

This New York Times correction combines Kimye, butts and a writer treating a fake news website and a fake radio station as real. Bravo:

An earlier version of this column was published in error. That version included what purported to be an interview that Kanye West gave to a Chicago radio station in which he compared his own derrière to that of his wife, Kim Kardashian. Mr. West’s quotes were taken, without attribution, from the satirical website The Daily Currant. There is no radio station WGYN in Chicago; the interview was fictitious, and should not have been included in the column.

The year in media errors and corrections 2014 | Poynter.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (2)

Gore the prophet predicts hotter weather just ahead...

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (9)

Her Majesty Hillary Rodham Clinton serves up a triple paradox, simultaneously:

The only one with the depth of experience needed to un-frack the Impatient Nonprotection & Unaffordable Carelessness Act, The victim of #OccupyResoluteDesk’s foreign policy Hamlet impression during her tenure as Secretary of State, and...

This totally reborn, fresh grandmotherly face whose you’d cheerfully vote for you if you appreciate your private property and wouldn’t it be a shame if something tragic were to occur to yours so just keep that in mind next year you wretched little peasant scum you know she’s been scheming since Watergate to be the first woman president and if you think that she’s isn’t cashing in her chips after letting that little creep from Hawaii win in 2008 then it may be time for a little “Foster” care for you if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Seven 2015 Predictions : The Other McCain

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:44 AM | Your Say (1)

You're Never Too Old to Kill the Planet!

84-Year-Old Grandpa Welds a Death Star Fire Pit for Christmas Apparently this very cool grandpa doesn’t know much about Star Wars, or exactly how awesome it is, but when Jennifer asked if he could make a Death Star, he popped it together like it was nothing. The Force is strong with this one…

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:47 AM | Your Say (5)

The "Nine familial exterminations"

In which the punishment more than fits the crime: The punishment involved the execution of close and extended family members.[3][20] These included:
The criminal's living parents
The criminal's living grandparents
Any children the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Any grandchildren the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Siblings and siblings-in-law (the siblings of the criminal and that of his or her spouse, in the case where he or she is married)
Uncles of the criminal, as well as their spouses
The criminal himself. - La Wik

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:33 AM | Your Say (3)

January 6, 2015

“Microaggressions”, “Trigger Warnings”, and the New Meaning of “Trauma”

Yes, fuck your trauma. My sympathy for your suffering, whether that suffering was real or imaginary, ended when you demanded I change my life to avoid bringing up your bad memories.

You don’t seem to have figured this out, but there is no “I must never be reminded of a negative experience” expectation in any culture anywhere on earth. If your psyche is so fragile you fall apart when someone inadvertently reminds you of “trauma”, especially if that trauma consisted of you overreacting to a self-interpreted racial slur, you need therapy. You belong on a psychiatrist’s couch, not in college dictating what the rest of society can’t do, say or think. Get your own head right before you start trying to run other people’s lives. If you expect everyone around you to cater to your neurosis, forever, you’re what I’d call a “failure at life”. And you’re doomed to perpetual disappointment.

| chris hernandez

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (7)

Barbie, The Variations

According to Mattel, every three seconds, a Barbie doll is sold somewhere in the world. Developed in 1959, the iconic doll has as had roughly 150 careers, represented about 40 nationalities, and, this year, even gave an interview to People about her Sports Illustrated swimsuit photo shoot. Hamid Blad: Barbie Blad uses Barbie dolls to examine the idea of beauty and identity (PHOTOS).

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:26 AM | Your Say (0)

If They Don't Want to be Policed, Don't Police Them

It is obvious, is it not, that all of the recent problems with the police have occurred because cops keep meddling with people.

If the fuzz had left Rodney King alone, Los Angeles would not have burned. If the cop in Ferguson had not stopped Michael Brown after he robbed the store, the town would not have burned. If a New York cop had not tried to keep from selling illegal cigarettes, there would be no protests. If OJ Simpson had not been prosecuted for murdering his wife, racial tension would have been less. On and on.

Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:53 AM | Your Say (9)

January 5, 2015

Bad to the Bone

The only thing worse than a man is a white man, am I right?

They start off as violent little bastards, biting Pop-Tarts into guns, and before you know it, they’re raping their way through college. The very privileged end up running corporations that pay women 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, and the less fortunate end up as cops who shoot black men in the head just because.

2014: The Year the Liberal Narrative Exploded - Taki's Magazine

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (4)

When I see street protestors lying down I think....

"Mmmmmm, speed bumps!"

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (4)

No Lawfare = Warfare

Terrorism uses obfuscation to defuse lawfare knowing that the West will not turn to the alternative form of warfare.

The danger of course is that a “pitiful, helpless giant” sooner or later loses the the legitimacy to govern. A sufficiently enraged public will demand something more than impotence. Collective punishment is what happens when individual justice is seen to fail. When lawfare collapses then warfare eventually ensues, a point which I made in the Three Conjectures. Maybe not immediately, but inevitably, with all the tragedy that implies.

It is therefore in the public interest to create effective methods of retaliation between the extremes of Mirandizing terrorists and implementing the “nine familial exterminations” of ancient China. A form of conflict which requires more information than warfare but less than lawfare. In order to avoid the horrors of war The King’s Justice cannot afford to be seen as totally impotent. The best way to forestall private revenge is for the King to act against those who would disturb his realm, if not strictly according to the law then at least in the spirit of justice.

If the Obama administration simply stands impotently to one side as American firms are hacked, sooner or later someone will revenge himself on the usual suspects. That is human nature. Every king worth his throne must defend his subjects or they will defend themselves.

The Future of Collective Punishment | Belmont Club

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

January 4, 2015

Progressives and Disorder

The final two years of the Obama Presidency will thus be the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War as the world’s rogues calculate how far they can go before a successor enters the White House in 2017. A bipartisan coalition in Congress may be able to limit some of the damage, but the first step toward serious repair is understanding how Mr. Obama’s progressive foreign policy has contributed to the growing world disorder. - WSJ

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

"Believed that..." Exact Cause Remains a Puzzlement

Most Dangerous Cities In The World New Orleans is the first American city to make it onto the list of the most dangerous cities in the world. There were a reported 93 homicides per 343,829 inhabitants. It is believed that many of the deaths are due to a high rate of gun crime, as well as gang warfare and drug lords.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:40 PM | Your Say (13)

January 3, 2015

No Offense! [BUMPED]

Do laws requiring identification to vote threaten to end multiple voting? The laws must go.

Do blacks not like Confederate flags? Adieu, flags. Does Huckleberry Finn go down the Mississippi with the Nigger Jim, or Conrad write The Nigger of the Narcissus? These must be banned or expurgated to please blacks who haven’t read them or, usually, heard of them. Do we want to prevent people coming from regions infested with Ebola from entering the United States? We cannot. It would offend blacks.

Fred On Everything

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:48 PM | Your Say (34)

The Japanese: "Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?"

Got a useless baby lying around? Now you can put it to work.

Babies are notoriously lazy. But this inventor said "No More. Let's put all of that crawling around to work." If your baby just lays there, crying for love and affection, he may need motivation. We suggest dangling a bottle in front of him and making him crawl for it. He should have to work for his dinner. Everyone else in the house does. It's never too early to learn that there's no such thing as a free ride.

Ridiculous Japanese Products

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

How much does it cost to look good? Perfect strangers unveil their clothing costs

These pictures are bound to have you asking a lot of questions. Questions like ‘You paid $2,800 for that?’ and ‘What the hell is fashion in Spanglish?’, oh and of course, ‘Why are you paying so much for a handbag?’ » Lost At E Minor: For creative people

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:32 AM | Your Say (15)

And today's earworm is....

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 AM | Your Say (4)

January 2, 2015

This Just In

Evi L. Bloggerlady

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:52 PM | Your Say (1)

Here's the main problem with feminism. Bat shit crazy broads:

They hate men but they want to appear mannish.

So men set their standards. They hate the feminine and motherhood so they mutilate themselves and murder their children. They aren't natural to any life form in existence. They have to create feminists since no woman would truly want to be one. Being feminist means being perpetually angry and sexually disoriented. Outside of the realm of the modern university there is no place for them. Posted by: Jewel at January 2, 2015 5:51 PM

Everything Wrong with Feminism in 8 Minutes

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:51 PM | Your Say (11)

Your people are bad because your economy sustains idiots.

These parasites bleed the society dry.

They also lower social standards wherever they go because any standard higher than mediocre is personally offensive to them. This means that soon you have an angry mob of fools who become “useful idiots” for any totalitarian, left-leaning or otherwise control-oriented power. The Potemkin economy

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:46 PM | Your Say (0)

January 1, 2015

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 PM | Your Say (0)

Outlet

Ever have a problem fitting all your plugs into one unit? This 360-degree electrical outlet will solve that. -- Quantrel

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:32 PM | Your Say (7)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:06 PM | Your Say (1)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:06 PM | Your Say (2)

"These people could snap at any minute...."

A Denver newspaper columnist is arrested for stalking a story subject. In Cincinnati, a television reporter is arrested on charges of child molestation.

A North Carolina newspaper reporter is arrested for harassing a local woman. A drunken Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member is arrested for wife beating. A Baltimore newspaper editor is arrested for threatening neighbors with a shotgun. In Florida, one TV reporter is arrested for DUI, while another is charged with carrying a gun into a high school. A Philadelphia news anchorwoman goes on a violent drunken rampage, assaulting a police officer. In England, a newspaper columnist is arrested for killing her elderly aunt. Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence of that America's newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters? Answers are elusive, but the ever-increasing toll of violent crimes committed by journalists has led some experts to warn that without programs for intensive mental health care, the nation faces a potential bloodbath at the hands of psychopathic media vets.

- - Vintage iowahawk: Bylines of Brutality

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (3)

Bo Diddley

I goin' back down, To Kansas to Bring back the second cousin, Little John the conqueroo. Born Ellas Bates on December 30, 1928 in McComb, Mississippi, Bo’s family moved to Chicago when he was seven years old. He first became interested in music through his local Baptist church, where he became part of the small orchestra there. The first instrument he played was the violin, but when he heard John Lee Hooker play, he picked up a guitar. - -TIFO

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (2)

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 AM | Your Say (2)

My New Year's Resolution: Tryin' Real Hard to Be the Shepherd

Jules: There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17.

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper... and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass.

I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9 mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin, Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:33 AM | Your Say (5)

“In great deeds, something abides.

On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate the ground for the vision-place of the soul. And reverent men and women from afar and generations that know us not and that we know not of, shall come here to ponder and to dream and the power of the vision shall pass into their souls." ~ Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain1828-1914 Via True North

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:59 AM | Your Say (4)

The Extraordinary Life of Barack Obama's Imaginary Son

The President of the United States seems more comfortable citing the struggles of his imaginary son than the privileged successes of his real daughters.

In truth, Obama’s son would have attended private schools in Chicago, just like his daughters. He would then be attending Sidwell Private School in DC, just like his real daughters. Obama’s imaginary son would get his pick of any college in the world, just like his real daughters. His imaginary son would then go on to any career he chose, in medicine, law, Hollywood, or Wall Street, just like his real daughters. But that doesn’t fit the divisive racial narrative — so his son lives the hard-knock life.

| Ricochet

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:53 AM | Your Say (2)

If 2014 had a grand theme, it was testicular absence.

The United States of Anxiety In science fiction, corporations are deathless juggernauts

imposing their will on governments and galaxies, but in the real world Sony, one of the most powerful business entities in the world, got cowed into submission by the release of some embarrassing e-mails and threats from hackers acting on behalf of the Evil Kingdom of the Hermit Midgets. Hollywood is forever congratulating itself on its courage for banging on, e.g., the American suburban bourgeoisie, because bourgeois American suburbanites don’t generally resolve disagreements by sawing off heads. But let Kim Jung-un take offense at your dopey Seth Rogen movie and Sony is suddenly a wounded kitten.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:42 AM | Your Say (0)

2014 Man of the Year: Hillary’s Service Dog

This nameless beast, who was secretly photographed while servicing his master on the exclusive shores of the Hamptons, did not seek out the spotlight. Clinton Service Dog was simply doing its job by being on the other end of a leash and providing much-needed stability to an old person. Navigating sandy terrain can be challenging task, even in a stylish muumuu. | Washington Free Beacon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:20 AM | Your Say (3)

If it is so very unreasonable to submit to the word of authority,

how comes it that hundreds of millions of our fellow-beings, quite as intellectually gifted as we are, and quite as devoted to truth and liberty, find no such opposition between Faith and Reason as we fancy we have discovered ?

Surely these rationalists, who pride themselves on their unbelief, can scarcely delude themselves into imagining that they have the monopoly of Reason and freedom. They can hardly venture to persuade themselves that their forefathers, who formed their language, framed their laws, founded their universities, faced their enemies, and fought their battles, were of so mean an intellectual make that for more than a thousand years they bowed before the tyrannical rule of Faith, and meekly submitted to have its fetters placed upon their Reason ?

from Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth, The Thinking Housewife › On Faith and Reason

Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:08 AM | Your Say (3)