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February 28, 2015
Is scientism defensible?
The Folly of Scientism @ The New AtlantisIs it really true that natural science provides a satisfying and reasonably complete account of everything we see, experience, and seek to understand — of every phenomenon in the universe? And is it true that science is more capable, even singularly capable, of answering the questions that once were addressed by philosophy? This subject is too large to tackle all at once. But by looking briefly at the modern understandings of science and philosophy on which scientism rests, and examining a few case studies of the attempt to supplant philosophy entirely with science, we might get a sense of how the reach of scientism exceeds its grasp.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 PM | Your Say (7)
"Who is gonna make it? We'll find out in the long run / I know we can take it if our love is a strong one "
Veillard starts his day at 5 a.m. and does five to seven pushups. For breakfast, he has a cup of tea, oatmeal and fresh fruit. Lunch and dinner consist of fish and fresh vegetables. The centenarians nap early and often. The couple do not leave their house except to see the doctor. Neither walks without assistance. But both are looking forward to celebrating another landmark in their life. Veillard also let The Journal News in on his secret for living a long and healthy life: “That’s God,” he said in French Creole.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:55 AM | Your Say (2)
Rock On
and many miles from the nearest traffic light or roadside diner lies a single boulder in the Mojave Desert claimed to be the largest rock in the world—at least until 2000, when a large chunk broke off, neatly and without provocation. Now split in two, it is still called Giant Rock. Graffiti blackens the lower surface and ATVs roar nearby. There is an occasional tourist. CABINET // Mass Effect
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:59 AM | Your Say (3)
We are a silly people ... a foolish people ...
A badly lit photograph of a $77 off-the-rack dress broke the Internet Friday, spawning arguments, memes and half-baked pseudo-scientific explanations over the viral frock's real colors. By some reckonings, Buzzfeed invented "viral," but its deputy news director, Jon Passatino, appeared truly surprised by just how many clicks the dress generated. He tweeted that it broke the site's traffic records, with more than 670,000 people viewing the post simultaneously at one point and garnering 16 million hits in six hours.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (4)
Here’s the job description:
Needed, a U.S. president able to confront a world in chaos,rebuild shattered alliances, revive the country’s demoralized intelligence services and senior officer corps, manage foreign and domestic demands with a budget that will be drained for years by fantastically expensive debt servicing, and along the way restore public faith in an array of deeply politicized federal bureaucracies—Justice, HHS, EPA, Labor, Internal Revenue, the NLRB, FCC, EEOC, even the Federal Reserve. -- Captain America Won’t Save Us - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:30 AM | Your Say (7)
Bring On Your Censorship
- First of all, censorship is an admission that the official ideas are weak, and unable to survive scrutiny and opposition.
- Second, it radicalizes moderates.
- Third, it makes the official opinion organs less trustworthy, and less able to get accurate information about public opinion (because the information gathering methods are then impeded).
- Fourth, it adds more risk and more reward to routing around the censorship.
- Fifth, it creates an appearance of hypocrisy among liberals who have argued for untrammeled free speech for centuries.
- Sixth, it creates a black market in samizdata, even for ordinary information.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:21 AM | Your Say (2)
February 27, 2015
A Nokia 3310 if you must know. Pervert.
Woman gets mobile phone stuck in her vagina The 27-year-old had been using her Nokia 3310 to pleasure herself. But it slipped too far inside her and she was unable to remove it. When she realised it was stuck she had no choice but call her gynaecologist and say she had an emergency. While sat in the doctor's waiting room the woman's phone began to RING.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 PM | Your Say (11)
A serious invasion of Lebanon by ISIS
could unleash a bloodbath that makes the civil war in Syria look like a bar fight with pool sticks and beer mugs.It would be tantamount to a Nazi invasion. Every family in Lebanon is armed to the gills thanks to the state being too weak and divided to provide basic security, but people anywhere in the world facing psychopathic mass-murderers will fight with kitchen knives and even their fingernails and teeth if they have to. ISIS' Next Target | World Affairs Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:35 PM | Your Say (1)
There is no arguing with the Culture of Death
beyond showing it is a form of psychopathology.There can be no debate, and really it’s just a question of who has the power to get his way. Wolves eat sheep when there are no shepherds, and as Thomas More observed, sheep eat men when the atheists are in power. Pray for a slow death
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 AM | Your Say (3)
Public schools and academia produce zombies
America today is increasingly anti-freedom, anti-truth, anti-ideas, anti-capitalsim – anti-reason.A nation built on a morality of reason has all but abandoned its foundational principles. Public schools and academia produce zombies – goose-steppers like the Hitler Youth – who are militant and violent in their imposition of the leftist/Islamic agenda. And when they do it, they congratulate themselves about how they have stood up against “fascism” and “intolerance,” when the intolerant fascists are they themselves. Intellectually, young Americans are the most docile conformists, no matter how vocally and self-righteously they declare themselves free. They have accepted as dogma all the philosophical beliefs of their elders of the hard left without question or exploration. A continuing negation of life and self. Articles: The Poo Generation
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:37 AM | Your Say (3)
You are watching entropy at work, witnessing the destruction of information and seeing disorder take over the world.
Since order and knowledge are expensive, what we call civilization essentially advances by remembering which wires go where. The innovation of political correctness however, holds that since all jumperconnections are equally valid, anything goes and one can even rearrange older wiring to suit aesthetic impulses. By declaring all cultures equal we open the doors to entropy. We may not notice the effect at first, because — to continue the computer example — there is still enough residual functionality in your machine to carry on.
By and by we disable the CD drive, the USB ports, then some of the keys in the keyboard. Then one day we pull out a really important jumper and the hard disk stops. But by then we cannot acknowledge the damage we’ve done since according to our progressive thinking we ought to have improved things. And this thought will still be in our minds as the blade of the machete slices off the hand we put out to ward the blow. The Trouble With Entropy | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:23 AM | Your Say (1)
Even Madonna understands
Muslims are crucifying Christians, lopping the hands off thieves, beheading Coptic Christians, tossing homosexuals off rooftops, burning people alive, gang-raping children, and worse -- and all our president can say is that Christians weren't nice in the Crusades a thousand years ago? Don Surber: Even Madonna understandsPosted by gerardvanderleun at 8:16 AM | Your Say (1)
February 25, 2015
Frito Pie
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 PM | Your Say (8)
Groupies, FanGirls, War Brides, Manson Chicks, Who Cares?: The ‘ISIS brides’ knew what they were doing. That’s the problem.
Yet to suggest, as Mr. Cameron also did, that these young women were “duped by a poisonous ideology” downplays the extent to which they likely were active participants in their own radicalization. By all accounts they got good grades—so much for the State Department’s plan to combat terrorism with better education—and one shouldn’t assume they’re stupid. They schemed effectively to raise the money for their journey. They also appear to have studied up on how to avoid looking suspicious during the trip. Britain’s Lost Girls - WSJPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (10)
February 24, 2015
Unfortunately, a more brutal, cruel, and anti-human government won World War II — the Soviet Union.
The United States at the time, and for a long time afterward, was substantially honeycombed with people who were either sympathetic to or reporting directly to the Soviet government.One of the main effects of this is that the Western world, despite the collapse of the USSR and the implosion of its sphere of influence, came to resemble what conservatives of the earlier 20th century would readily recognize as a secular socialist state, with Christianity relegated to vestigial or subordinated status, the living faith reduced to a way to spend a Sunday, with sincere Christians repeatedly harried and legally attacked when trying to practice their beliefs in a sincere way. Better Dead Than Red - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:32 PM | Your Say (4)
The Open House of (LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM)
The Stupid. It Burns! 154 Church Street Open House is a safe space forLesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Flexual, Asexual, Genderfuck, Polyamourous, Bondage/Disciple, Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism (LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM) communities and for people of sexually or gender dissident communities. The goals of Open House include generating interest in a celebration of queer life from the social to the political to the academic. Open House works to create a Wesleyan community that appreciates the variety and vivacity of gender, sex and sexuality. Housing at Weslyan
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:41 PM | Your Say (8)
Pediatrician Mike Ginsberg has had enough of the vaccine skeptics.
This Viral Pediatrician’s Anti-Vaxxer Rant is the Smackdown of the Year | John Hawkins' Right Wing News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:36 PM | Your Say (11)
The Japanese: "Nuked Too Much or Not Enough?"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (3)
Why did the Romans choose to entrust their health, wealth, and well-being to disembodied penises?
The word “fascinate” derives from his name. In ancient times, it was believed that by distracting the Evil Eye with sexually explicit imagery, it would become “fascinated” and forget to look your way. Plutarch recorded that “the strange look of (amulets) attracts the gaze, so (the Eye) exerts less pressure upon its victim.” In other words, the Evil Eye is a dick, so the best way to fight it is with more dicks. Apotropaic Boners; or, How to Avoid the Evil Eye | The Hairpin
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:43 AM | Your Say (2)
Australia's deadliest sniper, Ian Robertson, 'never did the arithmetic'
Robertson ran up to the enemy position he'd been shooting at earlier that day, and saw something he never forgot. Where he had been firing, there were 30 bodies. One morning's bloody work. "Just one morning," he repeats, shaking his head. "And I'd been there all week. I got a feeling of horror. I never did the arithmetic. I still don't want to." via reddit.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (2)
"When I was young I wanted to prove"
"When I was young I wanted to prove that I was tougher than life. I was, but not, as it turns out, as relentless." -- mushroom's Comment on Random Kayak KarnagePosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (0)
"Then it is all mystery surrounded by yet more mystery...."
After his Kenyan father abandoned the family, his mother (apparently, a rather strange drifter and a leftist) remarried to another Muslim--I don't know if she did, but she probably had to convert to Islam or at least pretend to do so. The new family moved from Hawaii to Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. There Barrack Hussein Obama spent his formative years in a Muslim school, engaging in Muslim prayer rituals and learning about the religion, before returning to a highly dysfunctional leftist-tinged family situation that awaited him in Hawaii. Then it is all mystery surrounded by yet more mystery. As I noted over two years ago, We are not allowed to ask how this self-admittedly mediocre, drug-using student from a highly dysfunctional family, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, managed to attend exclusive and expensive schools. The DiploMad 2.0: Obama, a Muslim Hater of America?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (5)
For Grateful Dead’s Final Shows, Long, Strange Trip Ends in Sea of Mail
flooding the band’s ticket service here with handcrafted requests rather than clicking online. Since the shows were announced a month ago more than 60,000 envelopes—many painstakingly adorned with the Dead’s typical psychedelic skulls and skeletons—have poured into a post office box in this picturesque Marin County spot a half-hour from the Golden Gate Bridge. The post office usually receives 7,000 letters a week. “It was a big shock to us,” Jim Harvey, the Stinson Beach postmaster, said of the vivid No. 10 envelopes festooned with Magic Marker sketches and fanciful lettering. “It indicated that the Grateful Dead culture is alive and well.” - -- WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:27 AM | Your Say (3)
The Conqueror Worm
—an Egyptology of urban infrastructure with its own secret chambers and traps. And, incredibly, they actually do it: they actually find the machine, realizing that the rumors were both true and strangely inaccurate. That is, the machine is even larger and more extraordinary than they'd been led to believe. It is a sprawling and tentacular presence that blocks the tunnel with the dark bulk of its old valves and pipework, like some ancient engine that wanted to hide itself in a cocoon of its own making. - - BLDGBLOG:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (1)
The administration’s plan to create a “free and open Internet”
means, as usual, the opposite of what it says.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:16 AM | Your Say (6)
February 23, 2015
Islam has no ethnicity;
it is not an Arab movement; it is a new people, but a people defined first of all by militancy.The individual Muslim does not submit to traditional society as such, no matter how many elements of traditional society might be incorporated into Muslim doctrine; he submits to the movement of the tribes. That is why jihad is the most authentic form of Muslim religious activity, and why the blood rituals of Ashura the most authentic form of Muslim worship. Jihad and Self-Sacrifice in Islam | Spengler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:57 PM | Your Say (2)
If a politician and asked "Is Obama a Christian" answer like this:
Do I think Obama is a Christian? Do I look like his biographer?Why not ask me his shoe size next? Maybe his preferred Sleep Number setting? Truly, sir, this line of questioning is the dumbest thing I’ve encountered since the last time I encountered a reporter from the Washington Post. Why in the name of all that is holy are you quizzing me about the president’s religion? Why don’t you quiz him? Oh, that’s right, you’re a groveling coward and a pathetic excuse for a journalist. You forget that you’re job is to get to the truth and enlighten the people, not to seek out Republicans for cheap gotcha moments. You, sir, are a fraud, a disgrace, and an embarrassment to what’s left of your dying profession. This president has prosecuted, spied on, and stifled the media, yet you still carry his water like a spineless vassal. Why don’t you shine his shoes while you’re at it? You should be questioning authority, not shielding it from scrutiny, you shameless hack. I will not legitimize you by answering this question. Instead, I will pray that the Holy Spirit sees fit to endow you with even a shred of integrity and courage, so that you might one day decide to do something that in some way resembles journalism. Until then, please leave my presence before I become physically ill. Thank you, sir, good night.Scott Walker Was Too Nice. It’s Incredibly Obvious That Barack Obama Isn’t a Christian. Matt Walsh @ TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:23 PM | Your Say (6)
How do you say, "Cthulhu"
I referred to this story one day, pronouncing the strange word as though it were spelled K-Thool-Hoo. Lovecraft looked blank for an instant, then corrected me firmly, informing me that the word was pronounced, as nearly as I can put it down in print, K-Lütl-Lütl. I was surprised, and asked why he didn’t spell it that way if such was the pronunciation. He replied in all seriousness that the word was originated by the denizens of his story and that he had only recorded their own way of spelling it. Lovecraft’s own invention had assumed an actual reality in his mind. — Donald Wandrei, “Lovecraft in Providence,” When in Rome ⦠â Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:48 PM | Your Say (3)
How Slim Pickens replaced Peter Sellers as Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove
The writer cheerfully cracked open a bottle of Wild Turkey to set the mood, and asked Pickens if he had settled into his hotel okay, and if everything was fine and dandy. Slim took a big slurp of his drink, wiped the back of his hand against and mouth and replied: “Wal, it’s like this ole friend of mine from Oklahoma says: Jest gimme a pair of loose-fittin’ shoes, some tight pussy, and a warm place to shit, an’ ah’ll be all right.” Too pinko for Dan or | Flashbak
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:30 PM | Your Say (3)
Using a typewriter at times feels more like playing piano than jotting down notes,
Generations of thinkers have made typewriters their frenemies, and long before there were Gmail inboxes, print correspondence stacked up, some hastily written and impulsive on the steel gadgets. The QWERTY keyboard arrangement was supposedly developed to help alleviate the jamming of frequently conflicting keys. Later, a “shift” key was added, which earned its name by literally shifting a basket of keys to allow not just one, but two sets of letters to be utilized, and paving the way for digital shouting matches and accidentally endearing notes from relatives who still grapple with the dance between lower and upper cases. The Last of the Typewriter Men — Backchannel — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:47 PM | Your Say (2)
KKK Wednesday was not to be
After the Krispy Kreme outlet advertised the event [“Krispy Kreme Klub Wednesday”] on Facebook, the blowback was fierce and shrill.Krispy Kreme officials—including the visibly black Lafeea Watson—apologized “unreservedly” for the mishap, assuring customers that their donuts in no way endorse hooded terrorism, mob lynchings, or racial discrimination, and that people of all races, creeds, colors, sexual orientations, gender identities, and species identities are free to purchase their donuts and eat them at their convenience in the designated safe spaces of their choosing. The Week That Perished - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:29 PM | Your Say (2)
Where the Word "Jumbo" Came From
Jumbo’s massive size and gentle temperament eventually led to him being bought by legendary circus owner, P.T Barnum in 1882. The sale of Jumbo caused a considerable stir in England and the London Zoo was heavily criticised by the public for daring to sell him. You see, during his time at the London Zoo, Jumbo had become quite a celebrity and boasted such high-profile fans as Queen Victoria, who personally petitioned the zoo not to sell him. The zoo, however, were worried about Jumbo entering what is known as “musth“, a condition that can affect bull elephants resulting in an increased production of testosterone and unpredictable, violent behaviour. Jumbo’s sheer size meant that if he entered musth, he could have quite literally destroyed the entire zoo if he felt like it. -- TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (2)
The Global Flight From the Family It’s not only in the West or prosperous nations—the decline in marriage and drop in birth rates is rampant, with potentially dire fallout.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (3)
"I do not believe that the President loves America" -- Rudy Giuliani
It was like pushing an ordinary button in the wall and watching the skyscrapers out the window suddenly crumble in dust down into the ground. What Giuliani had done was undermine Obama’s legitimacy. Because so much of Obama’s “power” comes from his special-ness that to question his patriotism is to strike at the basis for his governance. It was, as in a monarchy, tantamount to rebellion. The reason that similar remarks by Obama about George Bush’s patriotism evoked simple shrugs was because Bush was just an ordinary president, the latest in a line of politicians to occupy the office since George Washington.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:41 AM | Your Say (3)
February 22, 2015
She'd be more attractive if she wasn't constantly running around with her pants on fire.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 PM | Your Say (7)
Shooting the Thief
“Thursday, February 19th, John 10, 7 to 18, ‘A thief comes only to steal and to kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.’ That’s verse 10,” Radcliff said. “Abundance isn’t God’s provision for me to live in luxury; it’s his provision for me to help others live.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:12 PM | Your Say (2)
This Just In
The Climate Officially Announces It's a Climate Denier - The Rumford MeteorPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:08 PM | Your Say (0)
At last. An Obama Speech I Can Stomach
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:43 PM | Your Say (3)
Never has true leadership been needed more, and rarely has it been so lacking.
Concluding a report in 1990 that was picked up by the Guardian newspaper, I wrote that anyone who believed in the concept of a post-Cold War peace dividend, or imagined a fragmented world order presented a safer option, was a sheer fantasist.Wind on a quarter-century and the threats have multiplied and mutated, and the wishful thinking and willful negligence of politicians remain. The Danes still do not prosecute jihadists returning from playing their monstrous games in Syria and Iraq.They are pussies. A Firmer Hand - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:06 AM | Your Say (2)
February 21, 2015
When people say ‘militant atheist’ today, they usually mean a guy in a fedora who posts a lot on reddit.
In the earlier 20th century, they meant a man who used rifles and whatever else he had on hand to kill religious believers, deprive them of their property, torture their priests, rape their women, criminalize worship, and scourge religious influence from the culture at large. So, the militant atheists of the time were members of militaries or guerrilla groups, with a mandate from their superiors in the international Communist conspiracy to do what needed to be done. Better Dead Than Red - Henry DampierPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 PM | Your Say (1)
Saturn Earth Moon
The Earth, which is 1.44 billions kilometers away in this image, appears as a blue dot in center right; the Moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. The Khooll[For a very large "You Are Here" version GO HERE. ]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 PM | Your Say (0)
Onward Christian Soldiers: "I'm not going back until the fight is finished and ISIS is crippled"
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:42 PM | Your Say (4)
The Evil Children of the White House
There is about the White House staff something of the lying mischievousness of a coven of evil children.White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the former mayor of New York can never live down the shame of criticizing president Obama, a downfall Earnest sincerely regrets. “I can tell you that it’s sad to see when somebody who has attained a certain stature and even admiration tarnishes that legacy so thoroughly,” he intoned. “There is no element of schadenfreude that people are feeling around here.”No schadenfreude , but there might be a savage glee. The sort a brat might feel when he has successfully framed the school janitor by planting property in the old man’s lunch pail and accusing him of theft, causing him to lose his job. The kind of thrill an amoral youngster might get from a leaving a thumb tack on a classmates seat or dipping the pigtails of the girl sitting ahead of him in a bottle of ink. It is the careless, cruel, one-upsmanship of juveniles who have never been denied anything in their life and never stopped at anything for a laugh.
And by such nasty pranks they think they can run rings around the befuddled old ex-mayor. The Faithless Men | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:59 AM | Your Say (4)
"500 well wishers give dead Copenhagen gunman a big send off to his celestial 72 virgin orgy" -- iowahawk
Copenhagen shootings: hundreds attend funeral of gunman | World news | The Guardian"A handful of those who were there he recognized as members of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, but there were also many “normal Muslims,” the man said.Memo to File: There are no "normal" Muslims.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:51 AM | Your Say (5)
Australia’s Temple of Weird
Deep down in the museum’s cavernous underbelly—inside that mirrored box building—sits Wim Delvoye’s cloaca machine, otherwise known as “the shit machine.” The Belgium artist’s vast array of whirring tubes and bags mimic the workings of the human digestive system. The apparatus is fed food and produces excrement. Isn’t modern art, Delvoye seems to say, just a load of crap? - Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (0)
Dog Fights in Kabul
Somehow everyone just knew where. There were 15 or 20 dogs scattered throughout the crowd held with chains or heavy duty leads. A big crowd would form a ring, which became the boundary of the fight and then there would be a referee. It was always the same guy, this wild extravagant man, who wore capes and had a staff, which he whacked people in the crowd with if they got too close. He was almost like a matador in a bull fight. It was all very theatrical, but for me the dog fight itself was almost like a sideshow to the people watching it. And they were always in spectacular places, like at the base of a mountain or a snow-covered empty lot or something. - Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:46 AM | Your Say (0)
February 20, 2015
"Be not angry
that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. –Thomas a Kempis
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 PM | Your Say (1)
On Obama negotiating with Iran:
"This is like playing poker with a guy who cheated you twice before. You know who does that? A moron!" Celestial JunkPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:40 PM | Your Say (2)
One of these things is not like the other:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:32 PM | Your Say (3)
People are fond of saying that Harf or Psaki are airheaded, for example.
at keeping their stories and talking points straight, firing off a flurry of glib words to get those points across, and sticking relentlessly to message in the face of some difficult questions and no small amount of mockery and potential embarrassment. You might say that they are shameless. Perhaps. However, they are buoyed and driven not only by personal ambition, but also by their dedication to whatever they think their party and their boss stand for, so much so that they believe that telling lies and manufacturing spin is a noble calling. This accounts for their triumph over any lingering shame they might feel. As with Winston Smith’s interlocutor O’Brien, they not only say that 2 + 2 = 5, but they come to actually believe that on a certain level it’s true as soon as they say it. -- not easy being a spokesperson
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:33 PM | Your Say (5)
“Violence has no place in civilized society!”
Except that violence is already an integral part of society, civilized or otherwise.In his essay “Violence Is Golden”, author Jack Donovan outlines how we have collectively handed over the authority to use aggressive force to the agents of the state. Every police officer is authorized to use violence against you if you don’t follow the law. This is the thread that holds the tapestry of society together. You can sleep at night secure in the knowledge that if some criminal tries to enter your house and do violent things to you, you can call an armed band of state sponsored strong-men to do violence to that criminal, in your name. If you pay taxes, you pay men and women to enforce Order through the use of violence, when it’s necessary. People are quite content with this deal, until they are on the receiving end of it. -- Unchaining The Titan.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (4)
One of the reasons why you know conservatives have limited political authority
is that taking a public stand on key conservative issues will sometimesdamage your economic standing, whereas taking anodyne stands on certain key progressive points will improve your economic standing and access to key networks of financing and influence. The Striver Progressive - Henry DampierPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (0)
Unlike al Qaeda ISIS cannot fade into invisibility:
you are not Caliph if you do not have territory in which to impose Islamic law, including slavery, beheadings, and cutting off hands.If you do not impose these things you are not, according to the Caliphate Muslims, a Muslim, and can and indeed must be corrected or deposed. So it goes. Which means, just now, that a division of US regulars and all the warthogs, with some Marine air, and USAF anti-missile air superiority planes, could in a year destroy the Caliphate. We give North Iraq to the Kurds. Central Iraq to whomever we select among the factions. Syria – not clear, but possibly to the dictatorship, with what conditions we choose to impose. It doesn’t matter because it’s fantasy: Obama will do no such thing. But we could do it if we had a President. - Jerry Pournelle
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:27 AM | Your Say (0)
You can’t study men, you can only get to know them,
which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything that makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors.” -- That Hideous Strength, by C S LewisPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (0)
February 19, 2015
My guess is that about 2070,
African-Americans will think back in astonishment at the amazing places where their ancestors had once lived—the heart of Los Angeles; Manhattan, San Francisco and Oakland; the Chicago lakefront; the nation’s capital—and wonder how they let it all slip away. Wasted Advantages - Taki's MagazinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:03 AM | Your Say (5)
February 18, 2015
A good rule of thumb:
if the income from your trust fund isn’t enough to cover your grad school costs while allowing a comfortable lifestyle with vacations and a nice car, then enrolling in a second-tier grad school in the humanities and social sciences is not a smart choice for you. Blue Civil War Hits Academia - The American InterestPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:59 PM | Your Say (1)
Europeans pay out millions to ransom their citizens from radical Islamic hostage-beheaders.
Americans handed over terrorist kingpins to get back an Army deserter. - Victor HansonPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:56 PM | Your Say (2)
The Writer for the Atlantic's
“What Isis really wants” by Graeme Wood. He says what I have been saying, that- The Islamic state is Islamic, not some perversion of Islam;
- They engage in mass killings of Muslims and non-Muslims as a policy to rid the world of apostates and disbelievers;
- Muslims are killed for such things as voting for secular governments, or wearing western clothes;
- They believe in the strictest possible application of the whole of Shari’a;
- The Islamic state has not distorted the sacred texts of Islam; it has enacted them;
- Slavery and crucifixion are embraced without apology, as ordained by Islamic law;
- With the establishment of the Caliphate, Islam is now justified in waging aggressive war to expand its territories.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:51 PM | Your Say (4)
February 17, 2015
If the Jihadists captured Marie Harf, or John Stewart,
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:51 PM | Your Say (13)
“…we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war.”
Harf does not even seem to understand what war is, and how wars are won.But this isn’t about Harf, really. It is about the administration for which she is a spokesperson, and its attitudes and policies towards this war. Her remarks reflect a larger attitude on their part, which is that war is not an activity in which you kill them before they can kill you (or others), it is a metaphor. And that idea ties into the administration’s overemphasis on the power of words. neo-neocon| Marie Harf: on how to fight ISIS
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (15)
"Take that in, O we of little faith, in our fey and emasculated culture."
I believe these Copts, like many hundreds before them in the last few years mostly in Egypt itself, were genuine martyrs.They were slain in the knowledge that they could escape their fate by publicly converting to Islam. Of twenty-one captives, it appears twenty-one refused. It is the more remarkable that even little Christian boys captured by the Jihadis in Iraq refused to deny Christ, directly in sight of the butchery that awaited them. Take that in, O we of little faith, in our fey and emasculated culture. This is an aspect of the case that Western journalists overlook — often do not even bother to report — because they find anything but cowardice incomprehensible. Martyrdom revolved : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:31 AM | Your Say (6)
We do not want to believe that anyone elected president would act against the nation's best interests. But he has.
- He stopped calling it the Global War On terrorism.
- He tried to close Gitmo, Medal of Honor recipient Dan Inouye stopped him.
- He refused to reach a Status of Forces agreement in Iraq.
- He outed the killers of Osama bin Laden.
- He changed the subject to the Crusades when the Islamic State burned a pilot alive.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (3)
Dignity of office? How quaint.
Dignity of office? How quaint. In this most self-infatuated of presidencies, the D-word is at best an accessory and more often an impediment to everything Barry has ever wanted to be: Cool. Chill. Connected. So it was that, hours after the U.S. confirmed the murder of Kayla Jean Mueller at the hands of Islamic State, Mr. Obama filmed a short video for BuzzFeed, striking poses in a mirror, donning aviator shades, filming himself with a selfie stick and otherwise inhabiting a role that a chaster version of Miley Cyrus might have played had Hannah Montana been stuck in the White House after a sleepover with the Obama girls. Bret Stephens: President BuzzFeed - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 AM | Your Say (2)
Hood by Air celebrates extremity in self-expression.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:13 AM | Your Say (3)
At last, a wrist mounted display of the time from your iPhone!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:57 AM | Your Say (4)
Inside RadioShack's Slow-Motion Collapse
None of them thought that RadioShack’s ruin was inevitable. When asked to pinpoint when everything went wrong, they fell into two main groups: those who argue that it happened right after they left, and those who say the damage had already been done when they arrived. - Bloomberg Business
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:48 AM | Your Say (7)
February 16, 2015
Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State
adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. -- What ISIS Really Wants
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:06 PM | Your Say (5)
There was once a city called Crocodilopolis, where they worshiped the crocodile god Sobek.
Crocodilopolis was established on the Nile, southwest of Memphis, about 4,000BC.
The Egyptians called it Shedet (it was the Greeks who, wise to the city’s USP, gave it its snappy name), and it was possibly the most ancient city in ancient Egypt. It is now part of the modern city of Faiyum – which makes Faiyum possibly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. But only possibly. What is the oldest city in the world?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:07 PM | Your Say (4)
What ISIS Really Wants
The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it. What ISIS Really Wants - The Atlantic
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:41 PM | Your Say (2)
This is the extremely long game, gentlemen.
It's why families and legacies matter: because you probably won't live to see victory. Brick of Tower (@SurvivingBabel)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:30 PM | Your Say (1)
Every hero reminds a coward of his nature.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:57 PM | Your Say (1)
The description of Islam as anti-American has nothing to do with the Muslim date of arrival.
Instead it refers to Islam’s theocratic erosion of the line between mosque and state, its theological doctrines of violence against non-Muslims and women, as well as the belief of a succession of killers crying “Allahu Akbar” that they can achieve a paradise full of virgins by killing Americans. Sultan Knish
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 AM | Your Say (2)
Tru' Dat
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (0)
Don't worry about old age. It doesn't last that long!
Don't worry about the driftin'. Just hoist more sail and kick in hard right rudder. -- Vermont Woodchuck
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (0)
Today we honor a holiday called Washington's Birthday.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (2)
What’s old is new again.
Lately we get a new snuff film for each day of the week from a bunch of masked guys we don’t even want to name. The Odds Against | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:03 AM | Your Say (1)
February 15, 2015
Who Made That Tabasco Sauce?
His method was a laborious one that involved crushing the peppers with a potato masher and mixing them with rock salt from the island’s own salt mines, then aging the mash twice, adding vinegar in between. After straining the resulting mixture through a series of sieves, he decanted it into castoff cologne bottles. - NYTimes.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 PM | Your Say (2)
What kind of people are "people like Obama" exactly?
Moreover, while openly racial candidates like Mr. Sharpton or Jesse Jackson helped instigate white racial consciousness—if they can be black, why can`t whites be white?—Mr. Obama works against it: If he`s neither white nor black, why should you be white? By Sam Francis on August 16, 2004
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:01 PM | Your Say (5)
Two years ago today, Feb 15, 2013, Earth got slammed by a 12,000 ton asteroid traveling 40,000 mph:
The Chelyabinsk Meteor - Feb 15, 2013
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:02 PM | Your Say (5)
Not so long ago the peerless intellectuals of the West
accepted the victory of the Cold War and the union of Europe with a kind of resentful churlishness; a legacy from the imbecile Ronald Reagan who came into a strategic fortune through sheer good luck. He did not deserve it. They even rewrote history to make it appear that the European project really won the peace. But now they know the truth. They won nothing and threw away everything. Rotten in Denmark | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:36 AM | Your Say (11)
Despite the substantial drop in wealth and work among
the vast majority of the population, the images on television and in magazines become more hysterically aspirational. - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (6)
February 14, 2015
Live, Freeze, and Die
The town of Alton, New Hampshire called off its annual ice carnival due to a forecast calling for more snow and brutal cold. The Rumford Meteor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 PM | Your Say (0)
“Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them;
either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.” Liberal Anchor: “Our Rights Do Not Come From God”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 PM | Your Say (5)
Will you thumb through the pictures when I am gone?
Will my face, made careworn and tired, be restored in your mind's eye? I cannot know what it was you ever saw in me. I cannot understand how you could know that when I said those things all people say to one another, almost without thinking, that I would really mean them. Sippican Cottage: The Festival of the Kiss
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:51 PM | Your Say (1)
Will liberals ever forgive Daniel Patrick Moynihan for being right?
“The evidence—not final but powerfully persuasive—is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.” - - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:45 PM | Your Say (2)
American wit is in very good form, and it can be lethal.
It wasn’t only investigative work that shaped the outcome of the Brian Williams story, it was the number of people laughing. -- Declarations
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 PM | Your Say (2)
China is not planning to take over the world.
It doesn’t want the world. It doesn’t like the world – that is, the world outside of China. Unlike Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and European imperialists, it does not want to plant its flag outside its borders. Michael Pillsbury and Fu-Manchu (Cross-Posted from Asia Times Online) | Spengler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:32 PM | Your Say (9)
“We’re sensors, human sensors, and that’s the magic of the SOWTs.”
They are essential in combat, dealing death from above, but they can also save lives, coordinating rescues and re-supply drops — all while keeping an eye on the unfriendly skies. Send in The Weathermen
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 PM | Your Say (1)
"The pink cloud is harmless, but you are unconscious,"
"If you get to the surface and breathe, you are fine. If you don't, then ... ..." He pauses. "Then it is not good." Learning to Freedive
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 PM | Your Say (0)
This Partly Explains Why Education Is Such A Mess:
"A trained educator facilitating the actualization of inherent learnabilities"| William M. Briggs
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 PM | Your Say (2)
RadioShack has spent the last 20 years trying on a number of identities,
none of which has been a convincing fit, and testing the patience of investors, employees, , and, most markedly, customers.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 PM | Your Say (2)
Winter Redwood Harvest
But there isn't a scent in Juniper Ridge's collection that can be replicated even from one year to the next. Each one varies annually depending on the level of rainfall, how much sunshine an area gets, or how well a certain kind of wildflower blooms that season.Their fragarances are meant to be a reflection of the very micro-environments where they're harvested. That's why Juniper Ridge works so hard to preserve the wilderness where they gather their ingredients -- if the natural species and scents are allowed to die out, so does the unique personality of that wild place.Huckberry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (1)
February 13, 2015
Poor Little Rich Girl
Inside the Deserted Mansions of an American Heiress She had three sprawling luxury homes at her disposal,
but Huguette Clark chose to spend the last 20 years of her life holed up in a New York hospital room. Her father became as rich as Rockefeller from mining copper and founded the city of Las Vegas, but Huguette wasn’t your average American heiress. No one had seen a photograph of Huguette for decades when she died at the age of 104– not even the caretakers who had been meticulously maintaining her three residences over the years knew what their employer looked like anymore.
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:54 PM | Your Say (2)
13 February 1945: Operation Thunderclap – RAF start firestorm in Dresden
The meteorological forecast had been correct. There was no cloud over the city. Six miles from the target, other Lancasters were clearly visible; their silhouettes black in the rosy glow. The streets of the city were a fantastic latticework of fire. It was as though one was looking down at the fiery outlines of a crossword puzzle; blazing streets stretched from east to east, from north to south, in a gigantic saturation of flame. I was completely awed by the spectacle.Operation Thunderclap – RAF start firestorm in Dresden
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:03 PM | Your Say (1)
China’s popular mobile execution chambers.
h. Better yet, even before leaving the nursing home parking lot they can harvest granny’s organs, pack and refrigerate, then compact the leftovers for cremation. The van then races to a state hospital to drop off the organs, and deliver the “bio-hazard” to the same incinerator as the aborted babies go into. Alternatively, as I was told by a researcher for the Falun Gong, the latter package can be recycled as a valuable high-protein ingredient in Chinese pet food, thus completing a perfect environmental recycling loop. Not only do you save estate money on granny’s funeral home expenses and cemetery plot (a modest memorial service will help with “closure”), but as her assigned heir you might be entitled to a cut from that lucrative organ trade, which has proved a big revenue earner in China itself. Ailing but wealthy “organ tourists” fly in from all over to benefit from the country’s reliable supply of human body parts.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:01 PM | Your Say (6)
A Near Miss
During the drive on Washington city in July 1863, Confederate sharpshooters were unknowingly presented with a particularly high-value target.
Captain Robert E. Park wrote: ‘The sharpshooters and the Fifth Alabama, which supported them, were hotly engaged; some of this enemy, seen behind their breastworks, were dressed in civilians’ clothes, and a few had on linen coats. I suppose they were “Home Guards” composed of Treasury, Post Office and other Department clerks.’ Park’s ‘Home Guards’ were in fact President Abraham Lincoln and his retinue, who had left the White House to inspect the defences around Washington. A doctor standing a few feet away from Lincoln was hit, and only prompt action by a nearby Union officer in throwing the president to the ground prevented a sudden and dramatic change in the course of Civil War history.— John Anderson Morrow, The Confederate Whitworth Sharpshooters, 2002
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:54 PM | Your Say (4)
“Throw me on my back in the dark room with the microfiche,”
“Throw me on my back in the dark room with the microfiche,” says the narrator of “Checking Out,” the final story of 2011’s Nympho Librarian. “Fuck me amidst the relics of a world that progress threw away.” And in the eyes of the next generation, whose view isn’t sweetened by nostalgia, things look even bleaker. In another story from Nympho we overhear the devastating comment of a brash young paramour—a boy with no memory of a world before Google—as he pinions his elder librarian mistress to a shelf of Russian lit (“not a section of the library that received many visitors”). “I like your hair down like that,” he says, “it makes you look abandoned.”Checking Out
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (2)
Google and Mattel update View-Master for the VR generation
Well it's back and Mattel has Google to thank for helping drag the classic toy into the 21st century. The main piece is an update to the iconic red-bodied View-Master that looks a little bit like a Fisher-Price take on the Oculus Rift. The orange lever is still there, albeit in a more compact form, and the front is dominated by a black, branded piece of plastic. But rather than stationary slide, you insert a smartphone into the plastic body which, when paired with the View-Master app and a View-Master "experience reel," lets you experience 360-degree worlds,photosphere and educational "field trips." -- Engadget
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:20 AM | Your Say (0)
February 12, 2015
It does not matter what the odds are in a revolution for freedom.
When all is said and done, you will probably be confronted with two choices in the face of tyranny: fight and possibly die; or surrender, become a slave and probably still die.
Those who argue against self-defense are in most cases trying to avoid the inevitability of this choice by creating non-options and non-solutions out of thin air. This is the opposite of realism. Physical revolution requires a methodology of adaptivity and courage. Fear has no place in the mind of a freedom fighter, and nihilism is just as foreign to him. The goal of liberty will be accomplished. Totalitarians will be defeated. The size of the movement is not a factor. We expect that we will be in the minority. There is no other outcome but victory because we will allow no other outcome. Period. If we are proven wrong, then we are proven wrong; but it will not be due to a lack of trying.Understanding The Fear Of Self-Defense And Revolution @ Zero Hedge
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 PM | Your Say (8)
10 Benefits Of Vaginal Weightlifting
to physically and emotionally reconnect to their vaginas, so they become more in tune with their sexual energy. It's like yoga. For your vagina. By inserting a jade egg into the vagina and attaching a string to it, I "lift" any number of things: tropical fruits, gluten-free organic donuts, cold-pressed juices.BY KIM ANAMI
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:16 PM | Your Say (13)
When the student is ready, the teacher appears....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:59 PM | Your Say (3)
"It's the Water:" Icelandic Beer Made From Smoked Whale Testicles
How, exactly, do you brew with whale testicles?
We get the testicles frozen from the whaling company, and we have a licensed butcher chop it up for us to use. The testicles are cured according to an old Icelandic tradition. The testicles are salted, and then smoked with sheep dung. A whole testicle is used in every brewing cycle, and then the beer is filtered and pasteurized. We put a lot of effort into this, and it’s a long process.Never Yet Melted ｻ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:21 AM | Your Say (4)
"You'll like OUR veggie dogs"
Whoever invented this abomination should be shot. If you don't want to eat a real hot dog, get a salad. A real hot dog is made from real meat. Beef. Pork. Veal. Buffalo. Or any combination. Anything made from poultry, fish, or whatever the hell they put in veggie dogs is not a hot dog. I don't care what the label calls it.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:19 AM | Your Say (0)
Prayer Nuts
These tiny wooden spheres were intricately carved boxes filled with religious scenes like the Crucifixion. Worn around the neck attached to a rosary or on the owners belt, it has been theorized that the outer carvings were inserted with aromatic plants and oils to add to the experience of owning one.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (3)
February 11, 2015
"Lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. " From Thomas Jefferson to William Smith, 1787
"The people can not be all, and always, well informed.
The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 PM | Your Say (0)
The Williams at Home: Sick People -- Sick Family
Brian Williams on Daughter's Televised Anal-Oral Sex During the interview, Williams was asked how he felt about his daughter’s performance in the scene, which aired while Sunday evening’s Golden Globe awards were being hosted in Los Angeles. “She’s always been an actress. For us, watching her is the family occupation and everybody has to remember it’s acting, no animals were harmed during the filming, and ideally nobody gets hurt,” he explained.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 PM | Your Say (7)
“’Why don’t you put a chocolate-malted drink in a candy bar?’”
Nougat had been invented in Italy in the 15th century (see: What Nougat is Made Of), but a variation of whipped egg whites and sugar syrup (instead of the normal honey) was invented by the Pendergast Candy Company in the early 20th century. They were based in, yes, Minneapolis and the nougat became known as “Minneapolis Nougat.” Frank Mars had started using nougat in his candies in 1920. In fact, he called his company “the Nougat House” for a time. But this time, in 1923, he mixed it with chocolate and put caramel on top of it. Using his cosmic name as inspiration, he called it a “Milky Way.” It was introduced in that same year. Within a year, Mars’ sales jumped by ten-fold, grossing about $800,000 (about $11 million today). Said Forrest later, “that damn thing sold with no advertising.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 PM | Your Say (1)
The Glamor of Evil
As Kyle Smith points out, the video of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh's death is an extremely sophisticated and professional production.
US news media have declined to run it, because it's too disturbing, as opposed to, say, Brian Williams' ripping yarns of derring-do about being shot out of the sky by an RPG. There are really two parallel media structures now: Consumers of Brian Williams-delivered "news" aren't even aware of the metastasizing of evil. Meanwhile, out there on Twitter and Facebook it's the hottest recruiting tool on the planet. You'll recall Hannah Arendt's tired and misleading coinage "the banality of evil", derived from her observation of Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem.:: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:09 PM | Your Say (1)
Are They Really Journalists? No, They are Progressives and Must Lie
As it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, [Williams] has lied about saving puppies from a fire;
about being robbed as a teen while working for a charity by a gun-wielding mugger on the "mean streets" of 1970s small-town Indiana; about braving Hezbollah rockets in Israel; about watching bodies float down the Mississippi River during Katrina; about seeing a man jump to his death in a football stadium; and, of course, most famously, about being aboard a chopper that got shot down in Iraq in 2003. Aside from being a serial liar, naturally, he has been one of the most fawning, outright boot-licking fans and promoters of the disaster known as President Obama. He also is a regular on progressive TV shows, where he plays the part of the wise, humorous, Hemmingway-esque man of the world, who has seen it all, and with a smirk or a wink can put down and dismiss all the deluded right-wing nuts out there. In other words, he is a hero of the Hollywood-University-Media complex which has done so much irreparable damage to our nation and to Western civilization, in general.The DiploMad 2.0
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:50 PM | Your Say (1)
End of the Fake/Real News -or- Why Drudge Rules the News Cycle in One Image
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (7)
February 10, 2015
“The conclusion, whether we like it or not, is obvious: energy in the universe is not conserved,”
What’s curious about this expansion is that space, and the vacuum associated with it, must somehow be created in this process.
And yet how this can occur is not at all clear. “The creation of space is a new cosmological phenomenon, which has not been tested yet in physical laboratory,” says Baryshev. What’s more, there is an energy associated with any given volume of the universe. If that volume increases, the inescapable conclusion is that this energy must increase as well. And yet physicists generally think that energy creation is forbidden.The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 PM | Your Say (8)
The Invention of the Cardboard Box
instead of creasing them, ruining them all before production was stopped and the problem fixed. Gair looked at this and realized if sharp cutting blades were set a tad higher than creasing blades, they could crease and cut in the same step on the press. While this may seem like an obvious thing, it’s not something any package maker had thought of before.-- TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (3)
When the media attacks,
the issue should never be the credibility of a Republican candidate.
The issue must always be the credibility of the media. It must be the credibility of the politicians being protected by the press. If Christie and Paul had based all of their replies around the fact that their positions are basically the same as those of Obama and Hillary, the media’s entire story would have collapsed. The media would have been unable to move forward with the story without quoting the candidates, relegating the whole thing to the backwaters of the left in places like Salon and Slate. Instead the story is everywhere. And the only people who can kill it are the Republican targets of the smear campaign.Sultan Knish: Beat the Media, Win the White House
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:39 AM | Your Say (7)
February 9, 2015
We have become ignorant and narcissistic,
obsessed with the child of a drug-addled dead singer and her wife-beating husband over the greatest threat to humanity since the rise of Nazism.
More Americans care about what a former Olympian may or may not be doing surgically to his genitals than the slaughter to innocent people in the name of the plague of the 21st century. World, I wish we didn’t find ourselves in this position, but this is where we are. Just know that while you are alone in the fight currently, the vast majority of Americans are with you in spirit. That’s of little comfort, I know. But until those of us who believe in liberty over the state reclaim our heritage from those who empathize and make moral equivalence with our collective enemy, I’m afraid it’s the best we can do. Sorry about that.Dear World, We’re Sorry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:02 PM | Your Say (3)
35-yr-old man says witches instructed him to cut off his manhood
"Prior to the incident, I had a dream in which three unidentified women appeared to me and ordered that I drink battery acid, which I did the following morning without the knowledge of anyone. Three days after, I had another dream where the same women ordered me to wake up and cut off my manhood. It was after cutting it off that I regained consciousness. So I rushed home for immediate remedy."Manipulation @ Pulse: Nigeria's Number 1 News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:48 PM | Your Say (3)
The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever
When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.
Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming. This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.- Telegraph
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:15 PM | Your Say (0)
All I ever did as a volunteer fireman was once save two puppies."
"My firehouse was a modest engine company — three engines, three garage doors and about 30 of the best men I’ve ever known. We fought all the usual fires that break out in the suburbs: brush fires, car fires, dumpsters, dryers, light fixtures — and worst of all, the occasional house, already in flames when we arrived. I remember one such house fire — the structure was fully involved with flames and smoke. I was wearing a breathing apparatus, conducting a search on my hands and knees, when I felt something warm, squishy and furry on the floor of a closet. I instinctively tucked it in my coat. When I got outside, I saw two small eyes staring up at me, and I returned the 3-week-old (and very scared) puppy to its grateful owners."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:19 PM | Your Say (0)
New ’super-steel’ alloy is as strong as titanium, but 10 times cheaper
"The nickel reacts with some of the aluminium to create B2 crystals a few nanometres across.
These crystals form both between and within the steel’s grains when it is annealed (a form of heat treatment). B2 crystals are resistant to shearing, so when a force is applied to the new material, they do not break. This stops tiny cracks propagating through the stuff, which gives it strength. That strength, allied with the lightness brought by the aluminium, is what Kim was after.”- ScienceAlert
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:19 PM | Your Say (4)
And so the cyber apocalypse begins: robot vacuum cleaner attacks South Korean housewife's hair
Robot vacuum cleaner 'attacks' South Korea housewife's hair - Telegraph A robotic vacuum cleaner "attacked" a South Korean woman while she slept by attempting to suck up the hair on her head The woman, a 52-year-old resident of Changwon who has not been named, was awoken by the pain and, unable to extricate herself from the robot, called the fire department for help.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:52 AM | Your Say (2)
Early Flight Powered by Wind, Fishing Line, and Boys (1897)
and Mr Pilcher gradually left the ground and soared gracefully into the air attaining a maximum height of about 70 feet... A safe and graceful landing was made at a distance of 250 yards from the starting point. The photographs illustrate that part of the flight previous to the attainment of the greatest height...if the machine had been fitted with a small engine or motor to give (this) amount of thrust by means of a screw or otherwise perhaps an equal or further distance would have been covered."JF Ptak Science Books:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (1)
"Obama is the Brian Williams of Presidents"
Noah Wehrman (@NoahWehrman) | Twitter
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:15 AM | Your Say (0)
Talk about an epidemic!
California, which is the center of the story, reports just over a hundred cases.
The second-most reported cases are in Arizona, with seven children who have the disease. New York and Utah each have up to three infected children, and Illinois around five. Talk about an epidemic! An epidemic of such apocalyptic proportions that it threatens an infinitesimally small portion of the population. I don’t mean to discount the health of those affected by measles; but let’s use proportionality in these matters. The media loves scaremongering over diseases because it boosts ratings. Remember Ebola?The Almighty Measle - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:54 AM | Your Say (1)
The City of Words
In his rendition, Martin said Brodie wore a steel collar and inserted a silver tube into his throat to save himself. Some say he died, others say he escaped. Another story, told in Ian Rankin’s novel A Good Hanging, is that criminals who had been sentenced to hang were often given the chance to run the distance of the Royal Mile, a blood-thirsty crowd in pursuit. If the criminal reached the Royal Park before he was caught, he would be allowed to remain in safety, so long as he did not step outside the park’s confines.- Roads & KingdomsRoads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (1)
Vote Early and Vote Often
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:31 AM | Your Say (3)
February 8, 2015
It's probably nothing....
…“There was a mushroom cloud over Donetsk,” one of the rebels told Ukrainian news website ZN.ua, adding that “dozens of homes were left without windows.” A mushroom cloud can be produced by conventional explosives and even volcanic eruptions–not just nuclear bombs. | John Hawkins' Right Wing News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:57 PM | Your Say (4)
American Empire On the Brink?
The US is in a difficult situation: financially, morally, militarily, and diplomatically.
The reckless wars, the international spying scandal, and more have made the US a more unreliable international partner. After World War II, Europe embraced the US as a necessary counterweight to the USSR. After 1991, the US tried to dominate both Eastern Europe and Russia in the same way that it had done further west. That policy is unraveling quickly due to over-reach, and forgetting that diplomacy has to go both ways. The additionally silly thing is that the US is not even behaving like a rational power, in that most of its interventions do not serve any reasonable definition of the ‘American national interest.’ This is because the US has a corrupt government which alternately panders to factions of oligarchs and the masses of hungry people, while mollifying the productive minority with television and other forms of trash media.American Empire On the Brink? - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:53 PM | Your Say (5)
Dead center bullseye, right there.
Attributing shame to Obama for some connection to distantly past Islamic influences is frankly guesswork.
What is not guesswork is his clear identification with all nonwestern, nonwhite, noncapitalist, nondemocratic people, cultures and systems. He is a small minded, testy, twisted little man with an inferiority complex masked by narcissistic acting out and a confused, incoherent ideology. An abandoned child raised by communists, mentored by a pimp, marinated in college dorm radicalism and Alinskian mischief. A profoundly defective mind and character, elected by a weak, lazy, gullible culture not worthy of its heritage.You guys beginning to get it yet? You're Americans ｻ Cold Fury
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:19 PM | Your Say (4)
From a Sarajevo War Survivor:
After awhile, even gold can lose its luster.
But there is no luxury in war quite like toilet paper. Its surplus value is greater than gold's. If you had to go without one utility, lose electricity - it's the easiest to do without. Canned foods are awesome, especially if their contents are tasty without heating. One of the best things to stockpile is canned gravy - it makes a lot of the dry unappetizing things you find to eat in war somewhat edible.Sean Linnane: 100 ITEMS TO DISAPPEAR FIRST
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:31 PM | Your Say (11)
Flower in the Crannied Wall
-- Tennyson
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (1)
February 6, 2015
The success of evil breeds darker evil.
For many of its beneficiaries, modern western life is bland, undemanding and vaguely unsatisfying. Some seek a greater cause, and turn to climate change or LGBTQWERTY rights.
But others want something with a little more red meat to it. Jihad is primal in a way that the stodgy multiculti relativist mush peddled by Obama isn't. And what the Islamic State is offering is Jihad 2.0, cranking up the blood-lust and rape and sex slavery and head-chopping and depravity in ways that make Osama-era al-Qaeda look like a bunch of pantywaists. Success breeds success. The success of evil breeds darker evil. And the glamorization of evil breeds ever more of those "recent Muslim converts" and "lone wolves" and "self-radicalized extremists" in the news. That's a Big Idea - a bigger idea, indeed, than Communism or Nazism. Islam, as we know, means "submission". But Xtreme-Sports Hyper-Islam, blood-soaked and baying, is also wonderfully liberating, offering the chance for dull-witted, repressed young men to slip free of even the most basic societal restraints. And, when the charms of the open road in Headchoppistan wear thin, your British and Canadian and Australian and European welfare checks will still be waiting for you on the doormat back home.The Glamor of Evil :: SteynOnline
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:11 PM | Your Say (2)
DeathHacks
The system was controlled by a laptop. The laptop died.
I removed the hard drive to get at the config files. This project went on a lengthy To Do list and never rose to the top. The lights kept turning on and off. Over time their schedules got out of sync. The driveway lights would stay on for days. The porch lights would never come on, or turn on at 6:15 pm and then off at 6:27. Sometimes they’d just blink on and off and we’d be all “Did you see that?” My sister and I kept lists, tried to discern patterns. I pulled the switches off the walls, only to find that they were just stuck on with tape, with no actual wires underneath. Somewhere in some wall there was a transmitter sending out signals that only the lights could hear.DeathHacks — The Message — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 AM | Your Say (3)
February 5, 2015
Why did people lose their minds over Beanie Babies?
They were a mania, an obsession that ensnared not just gullible children but also otherwise responsible adults who lost all sense of perspective over these plush playthings. People sold—and bought—some rare Beanie Babies for $5,000 each and expected others to skyrocket in value within a decade. (Collectors were careful to keep each toy’s tag attached and protected by a plastic case; a Beanie Baby’s worth was said to fall by 50 percent once the tag was removed.) Looking back, it’s clear that the Beanie Baby craze was an economic bubble, fueled by frenzied speculation and blatantly baseless optimism. Bubbles are quite common, but bubbles over toys are not. Why did America lose its mind over stuffed animals?Beanie Babies bubble: Economics and psychology of a plush toy investment craze.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 PM | Your Say (5)
Google Earth Pro, Once $300, is Now Free
You can get it by going to this location and noting the download link and the license key: Google Earth Pro Account Self-Service
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:09 PM | Your Say (1)
Previously Unknown Use for Your Beard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:20 AM | Your Say (4)
Brian Williams IS "Il Capitano"
Williams’ lie is no ordinary one. But it is of a surprisingly common type, and it even has a name: il Capitano, or the braggart soldier, one of the stock figures in commedia dell’arte, as Roger Simon referenced years ago in connection with John Kerry.-- What's up with Brian Williams? Or... as was put perfectly by ACE:
Let me help you out here, Brian. You conflated one aircraft -- one you were in -- with another aircraft -- one you were not in -- not due to a "mistake" but due to an age-old reportorial practice called lying to advance an agenda. The agenda here was dressing up a soft, delicate little boy into a the sort of iron-stubbled man who looks like he belongs on a battlefield. So you lied. You claimed you were on one of the helicopters that took fire; no human being could ever confuse "Me" or "Not Me."So you lied, and over the years you've lied and lied again.Ace of Spades HQ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (4)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (5)
February 4, 2015
How Islam--and the ever-present threat it poses to humanity--could be brought to an end in one, simple step
Today, the entire world would know in the same hour that Mecca had been destroyed.
This would destroy Islam as surely as the Aztec and Inca religions and empires were destroyed when the Spanish conquistadors captured and executed the “living Gods” at the center of the Aztec and Inca belief systems. If there is no Mecca, there is no Islam. I have no expectation that any American president would order the destruction of Mecca, even if American cities had been destroyed with nuclear bombs sent from a Muslim country with a clear return address. However, not all nations are as hamstrung by self-doubt and political correctness as we are. Russia, India, and Israel, I am sure, have Mecca on their target list. If Moscow, New Delhi, or Tel Aviv were destroyed by an Islamic bomb, I believe that Mecca would be wiped off the planet Earth the same day, even the same hour. And that would spell the end of Islam, after its unparalleled 1,400-year reign of terror.-- Amnation.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 PM | Your Say (17)
Cambridge would make the Klan blush.
Cambridge Mass is basically a city owned and managed by two elite universities, Harvard and MIT.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the ghetto so getting off a plane and driving to Cambridge Mass was like a guy from Detroit getting dropped into Reykjavik. That’s the thing about New England, in general, and cities like Cambridge in particular. It’s the stunning whiteness. Not wholesome Midwestern white or Scots-Irish white like West Virginia. It is a creepy Potemkin white. Central Square is now populated with fashionable young people sporting well cultivated beards and bohemian outfits. The older people all have the aging hippie vibe. The near total lack of diversity is what’s unsettling. Cambridge would make the Klan blush.Travelogue: Cambridge Mass at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (7)
“Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I’m not only gonna kill him, but I’m gonna kill his wife, all his friends, and burn his damn house down."
Jordan's King Quotes Clint Eastwood and Hangs Two ISIS Prisoners Hunter would not say which part of "Unforgiven" the king quoted, but noted it was where Eastwood's character describes how he is going to deliver his retribution.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (4)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:41 AM | Your Say (1)
American Sniper As Reviewed by a Soldier
It’s vitally important that we Americans don’t rape, murder and pillage; to emphasize that importance, I wrote a long series on American soldiers who committed a horrible rape and multiple murders in Iraq.
But Maher and his buddies who think we should never happily kill enemy just don’t understand us. They’d handicap us by having us dread the fight, when we should leave the wire eager for combat. Soldiers who hope to avoid contact are at an automatic disadvantage when a contact starts, but soldiers who want combat come alive when the first shot is fired. I’d much rather have troops who embrace war, like Kyle, covering my back than “soldiers” who dread it. Or brave Twitter warriors like Michael Moore who I believe would shed his uniform, drop his rifle and abandon his countrymen at the first hint of danger.
On one hand, I should respect the opinions of Moore and his ilk. After all, civilian oversight of the military is crucial to democracy.
On the other hand, screw them. I could give a damn if some latent coward who has never and would never serve looks down his nose at me. My biggest regret in Afghanistan was having enemy in my sights but not being allowed to kill them; my biggest hope is that the one time I might have killed an enemy, I actually did. One of my happiest memories is of watching Kiowas and Apaches pounding hidden, trapped Taliban, and later learning five were killed. I would never feel happiness at the deaths of civilians, but I was ecstatic at the deaths of our enemies.My Review of American Sniper | chrishernandezauthor
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 AM | Your Say (2)
February 3, 2015
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:49 PM | Your Say (4)
Something rotten, very rotten has happened to the Left just in my lifetime.
They used to be champions of free speech; and now they are its most vehement opponents.
They used to be able to give some sort of argument or logical reason for their position, even if an incorrect argument; now they have no argument, none of them, aside from wild and insincere accusations delivered in a mechanical fashion without any hope of being believed, phony as a three-dollar bill.
They used to be firmly on the side of the workingman; now they hate the workingman as a white racist oppressor.
They used to be in favor of free love and the sexual liberation; now they object to rocket scientists wearing shirts with cartoon women printed on them, they object to science fiction magazines showing a scantily clad warrior princess slaying a monster, and they call all sex rape, and demand strict segregation of women and men. On the same day as these protests, they appear in front of the Pope, writhing on the ground naked with crosses and crucifixes inserted into their vaginas. So the Puritan rules apply arbitrarily, without sense or order, to anyone or no one.
They used to be in favor of Blacks and other minorities; now their disgust for all the impoverished and dispossessed is plain to see. All they want is to keep the Blacks on the plantation, addicted to welfare, addicted to crack, their children aborted, their parents unwed.
They used to be in favor of the Jews, and other minorities; now they kneel to Islamic Jihad at every opportunity, vowing that those who slander the prophet of Islam will no be in the future, and ergo the Left now curse the Jews, and pray daily for the destruction of Israel, and a new Holocaust in the warhead of a Muslim nuke.-- Dinosaur-sized bigotry | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:26 PM | Your Say (4)
My read on this faux-allergy stuff is it is mostly women.
The yogurt makers have figured out how to capitalize on their psycho-somatic stomach discomfort by claiming “probiotics” are the cure.
Slap a new label on the old yogurt, double the price and you have a whole new revenue stream for the Acme Yogurt Company. I wish I had thought of it.That said, men have their own food superstitions these days. I know guys who swallow dozens of supplements every day, believing they are the key to losing weight, staying young, getting a boner, living forever, etc. If the label says good things with words containing “-trophic” then they will shell out fifty bucks for a bottle. The more made up words the better. I read some of these bottles and start laughing as the neologisms are usually nonsense.Gluten Free Vegan Magic at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:53 AM | Your Say (5)
A sniper is probably the only type of combat soldier who rarely, if ever, finds himself killing non-combatants.
Warriors say critics of snipers do not understand their role.
“A sniper is one of the most effective tools on the battlefield,” said Brandon Webb, a SEAL teammate of Kyle’s and a former sniper instructor. “He’s protecting troops on the ground in some cases and eliminating high-value targets in a way that doesn’t come with collateral damage. We can tag [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula operator Anwar] al-Awlaki in Yemen and send a Predator missile to kill him. But what kind of collateral damage does that come with? With a sniper, in most cases, it’s zero collateral damage. You’re taking out an enemy target very effectively and efficiently and inexpensively.Chris Kyle and the Kill Zone: On Calling Snipers “Cowards”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:38 AM | Your Say (1)
Fifty Shades of Grey® Bear
Inspired by the best-selling book, the adult gift is specially designed for fans obsessed with Grey, biting their lips with anticipation over the movie. He features smoldering gray eyes, a suit and satin tie, mask – even mini handcuffs. Handmade in Vermont, USA using the silkiest fur we can get our paws on; smooth, faux-suede details and 100% recycled stuffing. Guaranteed for life. 15" Fifty Shades of Grey® Bear KK0015958 $89.99- The Vermont Teddy Bear Company
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (0)
February 2, 2015
"But the fumes in the assembly area were overwhelming "
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (2)
Mark Twain, “The Danger of Lying in Bed”
“Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal mines, falling off housetops, breaking through church or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills from 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to the appalling figure of nine hundred and eighty-seven thousand six hundred and thirty-one corpses, die naturally in their beds!”-- Risk Assessment – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (0)
The goal of progressivism is not to make the world rational; it’s to make the world Portland.
Progressivism, especially in its well-heeled coastal expressions, is not a philosophy — it’s a lifestyle.
Specifically, it is a brand of conspicuous consumption, which in a land of plenty such as ours as often as not takes the form of conspicuous non-consumption: no gluten, no bleached flour, no Budweiser, no Walmart, no SUVs, no Toby Keith, etc. The people who set the cultural tone in places such as Berkeley, Seattle, or Austin would no more be caught vaping than they would slurping down a Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s — and they conclude without thinking that, therefore, neither should anybody else. The wise man understands that there’s a reason that Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors; the lifestyle progressive in Park Slope shudders in horror at the refined sugar in all of them, and seeks to have them restricted.A Lifestyle So Good, It’s Mandatory | National Review Online
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (2)
February 1, 2015
Round and Round
Army ants are blind; they follow the pheromone tracks left by other ants.
This leaves them vulnerable to forming an “ant mill,” in which a group of ants inadvertently form a continuously rotating circle, each ant following the ones ahead and leading the ones behind. Once this happens there’s no way to break the cycle; the ants will march until they die of exhaustion. American naturalist William Beebe once came upon a mill 365 meters in circumference, a narrow lane looping senselessly through the jungle of British Guiana. “It was a strong column, six lines wide in many places, and the ants fully believed that they were on their way to a new home, for most were carrying eggs or larvae, although many had food, including the larvae of the Painted Nest Wasplets.”– Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (2)
Perhaps the reason the football deflation scandal resonates,
aside from the usual distraction from more serious matters, is that it reinforces the pervasive sense that this is a totally corrupt moment in our culture, in which everything is corrupt.
EVERYTHING is CORRUPT. Nothing is honest. Politicians lie with impunity. The media lies. Polticians steal and skim and it’s a big deal when someone prosecutes. Schools teach made up versions of history to placate minorities. Publishers change maps to placate clients. Directors change historic reality for a better story. The narrative is more important than the facts. If you don’t like your sex, call yourself the other one, and everyone will pretend it’s the case. So someone took a little air out of a pigskin, to win at a competitive sport…That is the very least of the corruption in which we live. But dismaying because … what’s left?”Never Yet Melted
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (4)
Learning to Hate
The pursuit of that holy grail, the negotiated settlement continues apace.
There are no more knockouts in international relations; just a bare-knuckle eye-gouging brawl that go on for 100 rounds, with the man behind on points revived by speed and dextrose so that he can answer the bell. This is the humanitarianized conflict of today. In the process, however, the stop-and-go fighting preferred by the elites builds up a huge head of primal hatred, which like a pustule that cannot be lanced creates an unreasoning yet understandable desire for revenge. This is what we see in Jordan’s threat. The balm of hashtags and candles finally fails lose their potency only to be replaced an almost desperate desire to end the conflict, whatever the cost, however great the brutality. The idea of an eternal stalemate, so beloved by lawyers, becomes unbearable to the public until it unleashes an unstoppable monster that neither lawyers nor journalists can control.| Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:19 AM | Your Say (1)