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March 31, 2015
“Sex roles, ethnicity, religious distinctions, and the like are less oppressive than liberating.
They free us from formlessness and enable us to live with other people in a definite and functional manner that is, as much as possible, in accordance with our innate and acquired characteristics.In contrast, inclusiveness tends toward tyranny. In place of a largely self-governing equilibrium based on shared ways of life and natural, accustomed, or voluntary connections, it gives us an imposed social scheme based on money and bureaucratic hierarchy, in which we are manipulated through incentives and penalties or simply told what to do.” James Kalb — Against Inclusiveness HappyAcres
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:09 PM | Your Say (2)
Due to the recent mass murder of 149 men, women and children with a high-capacity Airbus A320 airplane
– which is just the most recent in an epidemic of suicidal airplanes – airplane safety rules are being reviewed by the Federal Transportation Department for possible revision.Under the leadership of luminaries like former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg as well as other well known anti-gun politicians and Hollywood activists, grass root advocacy groups have been quickly organized and funded. One of the largest to-date is Mothers Against Planes* (MAP). They’ve already begun to lobby Congress for legislation that will ban any aircraft that holds more than 10 passengers. As always there are apologists for Big Planes who say silly things like “planes don’t kill people, people kill people.” Michelle Obama's Mirror: #BanHighCapacityAircraft: More “News” From the Rabbit Hole
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:04 PM | Your Say (2)
Elton John is a hysterical, spoilt, ugly fat man who thinks his opinions count.
I say boycott Elton John, and the less we hear or see of him the better. By the time you read this the Top Gear brouhaha, I hope, will have been resolved, but do not for a minute doubt the fact that this is cultural warfare. The Left wants Clarkson out because of his centrist opinions. The Left believes in social regulation, and any speech the Left does not like becomes hate speech. Remember what Lenin said: “We can and must write in the language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, scorn and the like, toward those who disagree with us.” We all know the BBC is a malodorous cesspit run by and full of lefties. Clarkson seems to be a good guy with a good sense of humour and he says funny things that are true. Romanians do steal and Mexicans do sneak into the United States and Germans have been known to invade Poland, so what’s the big deal? The P.C. vipers are after Clarkson because they have a totalitarian mentality and hope to make all speech they deplore hate speech. Truth, after all, is hate to those who hate truth.King of the Hill - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:56 PM | Your Say (4)
America has the greatest health care system on earth.
It is super cheap, with lots of options and a high degree of customer satisfaction.
It is called veterinary medicine. American pets get better health care that 95% of the world population for pennies. The reason is there are few barriers to suppliers so there are many options along the price curve. There’s also incentives to innovate. My Vet has world class lab equipment because it helps attract business. But, we would rather pamper our pets and starve out children than accept the reality of the human condition. Death Spirals | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:46 PM | Your Say (2)
It’s legal to kill babies, but let’s worry about a gay person’s right to cake
Indeed, as babies are explicitly excluded from basic legal protections and the most fundamental of human rights,the attention of the country focuses on a religious freedom bill, passed last week, which might, in some limited circumstances, interfere with a gay couple’s ability to procure baked goods. Liberals throughout the land are frantic over the prospect that homosexuals may possibly, in some potential situations, experience the moderate nuisance of a business owner declining to participate in their gay wedding. Cakes for gay people, that’s the issue of the day. The widespread legalization of child murder? Well, why would anyone be upset about that? -- Matt Walsh | TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:42 AM | Your Say (6)
Who indeed?
What man among us, really, hasn't been high as a Georgia pine on cocaine, dressed as a woman, and tempted to storm Fort Meade?
— Kevin D. Williamson (@KevinNR) March 31, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (4)
March 30, 2015
4 Baby Bird Cams You Should Watch This Spring
From sleepy bald eaglets to clamoring owlets, get a bird's-eye view of new families in their nests. Cams and links are HEREPosted by gerardvanderleun at 5:21 PM | Your Say (2)
"A deliberate mass murder that killed far more people than any one-man shooting spree in history."
If a person wants to kill themselves, I suppose that’s their choice.Erasing oneself is probably the most self-indulgent thing someone can do. But when you drag other people into your suicide, it ceases to be so…libertarian? The children you financially strand and the loved ones you emotionally destroy have no choice in the matter. And on top of all that, deciding to drag 149 other people down with you into your sick miserable hole of self-loathing while you permanently scar thousands of other lives as a result? That’s a leap of selfishness as high as the French Alps. The Most Selfish Suicide Ever?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:02 PM | Your Say (5)
It is said that marriage rests on compromises, but in fact it rests on concessions,
and you will make all of them. You will find your social life gravitating fast to other married couples.She won’t want you to have single female friends (nor will you want her to have single male frieds: Marriage is based on mistrust.). Worse, she won’t want you to have single male friends. She will want you where she can keep an eye on you. Forget going out with the guys.... You may well find that you do not particularly like your children. You probably have certain tastes in regard to character, intelligence, and so on. Your children may not have these qualities. In romantic theory you should love them because they are yours. In practice you have to say that you do.Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:47 AM | Your Say (11)
Is it possible for the United States to break up, either de facto or formally?
Another possibility of secession lies in the South. Mississippi, the darkest state, is thirty-seven percent black.
Although we are not permitted to say it, the racial hostility of blacks toward whites is intense. While whites will (now, anyway) vote for a black candidate over a white—which is how we got Obama—blacks vote as a bloc for black candidates. (If memory serves, Obama got 93% of the black vote.) Should the black percentage in Mississippi grow to a tipping point, then, when whites bail out (which is usually what happens though we are not supposed to say this either), the state would become a self-governing country within a country—dependent on federal subsidies, yes, but having no loyalty to or culture in common with white society. It would not, methinks, feel an urgent need to obey federal laws. Tell me I’m crazy. But wait twenty years. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (7)
March 29, 2015
Grace Kelly on Her Wedding Day
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:19 PM | Your Say (6)
Four more completely Incompetent and corrupt women you could not find.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:14 PM | Your Say (8)
March 28, 2015
Vanessa Summers, 56, is everything that is wrong with today's racial politics.
Don Surber: What a horrible womanThis week she accused an 18-month-old boy of being a racist.During a debate on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act -- which surprisingly she opposes -- Vanessa Summers turned on Republican Jud McMillin’s baby boy. She said, "I love his little son, but he’s scared of me because of my color — and that’s horrible." Really? Maybe he's scared of her because she is a big woman with a loud mouth.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 PM | Your Say (10)
No class of writers knows less about politics than political pundits
My own development as a political thinker was tragically stunted by employment as a political pundit.
No class of writers knows less about politics than they. In order to write at all in this genre, one must pretend to take seriously an entire political order that is preposterous, peopled by the mentally and emotionally disturbed, and ruled by power-hungry maniacs, until one’s own last mooring is shot. The madness is compounded by complete ignorance of what is going on, since no one not himself up to his ears in the actual exercise of political power can possibly understand what is in play. And, those up to their ears are drowning. On legitimate government : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:50 PM | Your Say (0)
Download 422 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Drawings from the Royal Library; and Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Go to Book titles with full text online | MetPublications | The Metropolitan Museum of Art [Via | Open Culture]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:05 PM | Your Say (1)
So, what is a Kulak to do?
Once your liquid assets are seized, it is necessary to take your tough-to-move assets, and when you have nothing left to give, you are useful either as a slave or as a dead body. If the moral trend can be reversed, by openly contradicting the story of [insert group here]'s perfidy, then good on you, but typically, once a state has begun the scapegoating process, it finds itself unable to back down from it -- it has to see it to its logical conclusion. Physical resistance usually never occurs, because actors within states only begin these sorts of widespread demonization programs if there is unlikely to be any real physical resistance to it. Kill the Kulaks - Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:16 PM | Your Say (5)
“You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.” [Bumped]
Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.” He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.” - - Germanwings Pilot Was Locked Out of Cockpit Before Crash in France
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (29)
In the official Women’s Conference document we find such things as this:
The appropriation of Black women by white gay men is prevalent within the LGBT scene and community. This may be manifested in the emulation of the mannerisms, language (particularly AAVE- African American Vernacular English) and phrases that can be attributed to Black women. White gay men may often assert that they are “strong black women” or have an “inner black woman.” White gay men are the dominant demographic within the LGBT community, and they benefit from both white privilege and male privilege.davidthompson: The Amazon Vanguard
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:21 AM | Your Say (2)
Why is this so difficult to understand?
When forced to choose between big corporations and big government, you should never choose big government because whatever you don’t like about the big corporations WILL ALSO BE PRESENT IN BIG GOVERNMENT, ONLY WORSE, AND WITH GUNS.I never resort to all caps, but I don’t know how else to communicate this. I’ve tried every other way. Should I write it in a poem? Say it in Pig Latin? Mail it to you in a candy gram? Communicate it via interpretive dance? What can I do? What can I do to somehow force millions of oblivious people to understand that the government is not a magnanimous white knight that rides into town to rescue you from the scary dragon. The government is the freaking dragon. Dear Foolish and Gullible Americans, Net Neutrality is Not Your Friend | TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:11 AM | Your Say (2)
March 27, 2015
What would a traitor president look like?
abandoning a country that is that enemy’s enemy and has been our ally for over sixty years (Israel). We are doing this not because our hand is being forced by a military or economic defeat—au contraire—but because our president wants to do it. And although Obama has always said during campaigns that he favors talks with Iran, he has always said that he will not concede the very things he is getting ready to concede, and always pledged his support for Israel. - - neo-neocon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:00 PM | Your Say (9)
Parents Must Sign Permission Slip Before Kids Can Eat Oreos
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (5)
"There are absolutely no absolutes"
Because the state of Indiana has now made it legal for a business to refuse service to homosexuals because they believe the practice to be wrong... they are refusing service to Indiana, because they believe such a refusal to be a practice which is... wrong. Word Around the Net: BOYCOTTING FOR BOYCOTTING
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:12 AM | Your Say (7)
And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.
Christ’s reminiscence is one of the spookiest moments in the New Testment.He knew evil of old. We, on the other hand, have forgotten it, or deny it exists. Lufthansa thought it could make its planes safer through layers of screening and automated processes, but it failed to defend against the oldest enemy of all: the insistent will. To guard against this old enemy — which civilization remembered until recently — systems of checks and balances were built into critical systems to ensure that no single individual will could unilaterally control them. “Per US Air Force Instruction (AFI) 91-104, ‘The Two-Person Concept‘ is designed to prevent accidental or malicious launch of nuclear weapons by a single individual.” Germanwings Flight 9525 | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:02 AM | Your Say (2)
March 26, 2015
"Let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of kings; / How some have been deposed; some slain in war ...."
Richard III laid to rest at Leicester Cathedral
in prayer for me, lost long, forever found;
or sensed you from the backstage of my death,
as kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 PM | Your Say (8)
The estate tax is the single biggest cause of the rise and dominance of Progressivism in the 20th century.
Three Cheers for Death Taxes? at The Z Blog The formation by business magnatesof massive charitable foundations in order to save their fortunes from government depredation created a massive slush fund for the financial support and promulgation of every lunatic Progressive idea in existence. Without the Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur and other foundations, Progressive lunacy as we know it would not exist. Heck, PBS and Sesame Street, which poisoned the minds of innocent children with liberal dreck for generations, would not exist.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:29 PM | Your Say (10)
It's probably nothing....
This is almost understandable. It's a little like every single customer service call, supposedly recorded to make your next customer service call far, far more enjoyable. However, the following words border on the numbing: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition." We are NOT having your mother here this weekend, next weekend or ANY weekend! I'm pregnant and it's not yours. The possibilities curdle in the mind.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 PM | Your Say (6)
"A vast outpost"
its scale inspiring awe even in the astronauts who have constructed it. From the edge of one solar panel to the edge of the opposite one, the station stretches the length of a football field, including the end zones. The station weighs nearly 1 million pounds, and its solar arrays cover more than an acre. It’s as big inside as a six-bedroom house, more than 10 times the size of a space shuttle’s interior. Astronauts regularly volunteer how spacious it feels. It’s so big that during the early years of three-person crews, the astronauts would often go whole workdays without bumping into one another, except at mealtimes. Indeed, it’s so big, you can see it tracing across the night sky when it passes overhead (there are apps for finding it, ISS Spotter among them).
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:48 PM | Your Say (1)
If there’s some sacred cow in the Leftist canon Ted Cruz has left undefiled, he will soon enough defile it. That's the plan.
If you were to re-write his speech into its essentials it might sound like this.
“Imagine if we could tell all the stuffed shirts in the media to buzz off. Imagine if we could tell the busybodies to butt out our lives. Imagine if we could actually tell the IRS we want to keep our money. Imagine if we could the tell the NSA you need a warrant to tap my phone. Imagine if we didn’t have to feel guilty of being Americans. Imagine that we could call Islamic terrorism by its name.But you don’t have to imagine because I’m doing it right now. I am standing right here, committing what is accounted political suicide saying every damned thing you ever felt like saying but couldn’t. I’m on YouTube giving every bit of lip you were afraid to give for fear you might lose your job. Do you see that hat over there my friend? I’m going to knock it down. All I am asking you to do is take out your cellphones and punch in this number and by that ever so negligible act, join in the fray!”William Cruz | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:05 PM | Your Say (0)
The environmental movement tying itself to personal virtue may have been stupid,
including (a) an obession with sin, (b) an eschatology (AGW), (c) irrational taboos (GM foods), (d) weekly observances of no weight other than as symbolic virtue signaling (residential recycling), and (d) fideistic refusal to consider evidence contrary to its doctrines. The rise of environmentalism perfectly tracks the fall in religious observance among elite whites in the U.S., because it’s binding to the same receptors. Eric Raymond @ Links 3/15: Linksmanship | Slate Star Codex
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (5)
The New York Times editors and reporters are not just liberal.
They're stupid. Don Surber: NYT thinks you get an honorable discharge for desertionPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:03 AM | Your Say (3)
March 25, 2015
File Under: Never a Hellfire Missile Strike When You Really Need One
Feminists Passed Resolution to ‘Eradicate’ Gay Men From Appropriating Black Women Culture!1. The appropriation of Black women by white gay men is prevalent within the LGBT scene and community.
2. This may be manifested in the emulation of the mannerisms, language (particularly AAVE- African American Vernacular English) and phrases that can be attributed to Black women. White gay men may often assert that they are “strong black women” or have an “inner black woman”. 3. White gay men are the dominant demographic within the LGBT community, and they benefit from both white privilege and male privilege. 4. The appropriation of Black women by white gay men has been written about extensively. This quote is taken from Sierra Mannie’s TIME piece entitled: “Dear white gays, stop stealing Black Female culture”:
“You are not a black woman, and you do not get to claim either blackness or womanhood. There is a clear line between appreciation and appropriation. I need some of you to cut it the hell out. Maybe, for some of you, it’s a presumed mutual appreciation for Beyoncé and weaves that has you thinking that I’m going to be amused by you approaching me in your best “Shanequa from around the way” voice. I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t care how well you can quote Madea, who told you that your booty was getting bigger than hers, how cute you think it is to call yourself a strong black woman, who taught you to twerk, how funny you think it is to call yourself Quita or Keisha or for which black male you’ve been bottoming — you are not a black woman, and you do not get to claim either blackness or womanhood. It is not yours. It is not for you.”
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (11)
March 24, 2015
Headline of the Year (So Far): Fire extinguisher factory destroyed in massive blaze
The extra-alarm fire broke out in the Archer Heights section of the city just after 9 p.m. at the industrial building on W. 38th Street, according to MyFoxChicago.com.Within 30 minutes, the building, which housed several businesses in addition to the chemical factory, was completely engulfed in flames. More than 150 firefighters responded to the scene and it took them nearly three hours to extinguish the fire. The crews had difficulty getting enough water to the building because of a lack of hydrants and had to perform an "inline operation," in which six trucks were spaced out over a mile and connected by hoses to pipe water, the Chicago Tribune reported. | Fox News
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:18 PM | Your Say (2)
Easy-Bake Evolution: 50 Years of Cakes, Cookies, and Gender Politics
“The first Easy-Bake Oven didn’t look like much of an oven,” Coopee says. “It was this box that came in turquoise or pale yellow, and a handle on the top. It had a slot that you’d push the pan into, and then a window where you could watch the cake being baked. The cooling chamber on the side had this fake range built over it.”But its strange appearance didn’t prevent it from becoming the must-have toy of the season. “They only had time to manufacture half a million of them before November, and they sold out immediately,” he says. “It was one of those Christmas toys that people would fight over in the store.” | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:10 PM | Your Say (4)
"I have strange power of speech."
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:15 PM | Your Say (1)
The Israeli left doesn’t want a country.
The left doesn’t want a country. It wants a Berkeley food co-op.It wants a city with some ugly modernist architecture. It wants a campus with courses on media studies and gender in geography. It wants an arcade where unwashed lefties can tunelessly strum John Lennon songs on their vintage guitars. It wants cafes with Russian Futurist prints on the walls. It wants to be excited about political change. Its only use for Israel was as a utopian theme park. Sultan Knish: Israel’s Leftist Losers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:24 PM | Your Say (3)
The revered Baby Boomer Icon David Crosby, while driving his Tesla... hit a pedestrian who was busily involved in Saving The Planet by jogging. But wait, there's more:
The guy he hit was named.........Jose Jimenez. CHP: Rocker Crosby hits jogger with car on California road. [ HT Rob for the headline and the copy]Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:56 PM | Your Say (6)
Huffpo coming out in favor of segregation
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:55 PM | Your Say (15)
California has plenty of water…
just not enough to satisfy every possible use of water that people can imagine when the price is close to zero.
As David Zetland points out in an excellent interview with Russ Roberts, people in San Diego county use around 150 gallons of water a day. Meanwhile in Sydney Australia, with a roughly comparable climate and standard of living, people use about half that amount. Trust me, no one in Sydney is going thirsty. So how much are people in San Diego paying for their daily use of 150 gallons of water? About 78 cents. As Matt Kahn puts it: Where in the Constitution does it say that the people of California have the right to pay .5 cents per gallon of water? The Economics of the California Water Shortage
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:45 PM | Your Say (2)
Attention Starbucks. Black People Don’t Drink Coffee
The trend is that relative to their Caucasian oppressors, black people don’t drink as much coffee as white people do.According to this super-special government document, white American adults drink about three times as much coffee as blacks. That seems unfair. Why the disparity? Why the persistent and seemingly ineradicable coffee inequality? If one were so inclined, one could fairly describe American blacks as “coffee-deprived.” They’re a “coffee-underserved population.” You might even allege that urban blacks live in “coffee deserts.” - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:33 AM | Your Say (2)
The Great and Powerful Ob
49% of black males have been arrested by the age of 23; a third of black males will probably spend time behind bars. 54% of black men graduate from high school vs. more than 75% of whites. Only 14% of black eighth graders score at or above the threshold of proficiency. And nearly three-quarters of black births are to unmarried mothers. On the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, these are catastrophic results. Magical thinking now infects what was in the past a civil rights movement, for example the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” slogan adopted from an incident that Obama’s Justice Department proved never to have happened. | Spengler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:26 AM | Your Say (2)
Of Groupies and Tater Tots: She's ready for a seconds. Are you?
While most of the 40-plus talks at the weeklong conference are accessible only by those willing to spend $500 for online access or $8,500 to $17,000 for conference passes, he said that the organization plans on uploading her talk to TED’s website as soon as Friday. “That was a blockbuster talk,” he said. “It’s going to be incredibly exciting to send that around the world.”Following Lewinsky’s speech, the conference watched a video of a dog failing to eat a tater tot. Washington Free Beacon
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (2)
March 23, 2015
Kaboom! 10 Facts About Firecrackers That Will Blow You Away
“Interestingly, firecrackers were reported to have been part of Fourth of July celebrations only after the holiday’s 11th year,” Dotz says. “The norm before then was ‘illuminations’—where people placed candles in their windows—as well as bonfires, bells, musket fire, and loud parades.” Also, the earliest Fourth of July celebrations involved using explosives to send anvils into the air. According to Firecrackers, “A blacksmith’s anvil was placed on the ground and a bag of gunpowder with a fuse was placed on top of it. Finally, another anvil was placed upside down on top of the bag, the fuse was lit, and everybody scattered. This was to avoid being crushed like a cartoon character, because the top anvil was propelled into the air before returning heavily to the ground. It was said you could hear the sound of a good anvil shoot for miles in all directions.” | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 PM | Your Say (6)
"In your heart you know he's right."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:05 PM | Your Say (0)
Yarn: The silent killer.
Name of Product: Bernat Tizzy Yarn Hazard: In finished knit or crochet items, the yarn can unravel or snag and form a loop, posing an entanglement hazard to young children. Incidents/Injuries: Bernat has received two reports of children becoming entangled from unraveling or snagging yarn blankets. No injuries have been reported. Remedy: Consumers should immediately stop using the yarn or finished yarn projects, keep them out of the reach of young children, and contact Bernat for a full refund. This Week’s Consumer Product Safety Recall is…YARN | Free Range KidsHT: The invaluable Morning Links of Maggies Farm.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:52 PM | Your Say (7)
I am quite puzzled as to why so many on the right appear to give up so easily and quickly.
One thing that I think has changed is that, although conservatives don’t dominate the Republican Party, they do constitute a greater percentage of it than they did in recent decades.The solution to the problem of the GOP would be to support more conservatives, and work for that. I am quite puzzled as to why so many on the right appear to give up so easily and quickly. And if you say to me: what do you mean quickly?—I’ll point out that the left has been working for at least 150 years in order to reach the point it’s reached now, maybe even more. And working very very hard, too. I assure you they never give up, although there have been times when it must have looked to them like they were losing. neo-neocon - The road ahead
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:27 PM | Your Say (6)
We should petition Starbucks to open stores in both Ferguson and Selma.
And they should commission photographersto snap a picture of each franchise from the same angle once a day…for five years. And then they should compile a time-lapse video of what happens to a tony white coffee chain when it opens its doors in a downscale black neighborhood. It might prove to be a highly illuminating experience—one where the scales fall from every eye and the espressos from every hand. Black People Don’t Drink Coffee - Taki's Magazine
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:02 PM | Your Say (6)
The “Wizard of Oz” is the best single-source explanation of American politics.
Specialists, to be sure, will want to read the Federalist papers, de Tocqueville and the speeches of Lincoln,but the 1939 MGM movie tells most of the story. We are a nation of scarecrows without a brain, tin men without a heart, and lions without courage. Nothing is going to fix us, but the next best thing is to feel better about ourselves. A broken-down carnival huckster impersonating the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz gives our three national archetypes not what they need, but the next best thing: A phony diploma, a testimonial, and a medal. The party favors don’t help the feckless trio (the Scarecrow proceeds to recite a comically mistaken formula for the length of the sides of an isosceles triangle) but they did wonders for their self-esteem. The Great and Powerful Ob | Spengler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:24 AM | Your Say (2)
Why Stepping on a LEGO Makes You Want to Die
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (4)
The Not-So-Great Generation
Yes, some folks have jumped out of the pot, but they are not participating in any fixit solutions, they are busy saving their own asses. The only other way to "fix" our situation is with a deus ex machina like a giant asteroid or the earth's crust splitting open along mile-deep fault lines or space aliens like Ming the Merciless taking over or nuclear war or ... you get it.
Our descendants of the Greatest Generation are sitting on the couch grumbling and yelling at the kids and the only way they'll get up off the couch is when it catches fire. Apathy, resignation, inertia, live and let live and bitch about it. No wonder the illegals and jihadists are coming over -- good food, medical care, four gentle seasons, free housing, a target people that won't shoot back -- they don't need nirvana, they got their paradise right here. Well, except for the virgins, the last known ones were living in a group home in Ohio." Posted by: chasmatic in What Conservatives Suffer in a Mad World Run By Fools
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (4)
Islam. Listen up! Just what is your major malfunction?
The faith’s claim, promoted by many of its leading lights, to combine spiritual and earthly authority, with no separation of mosque and state, has stunted the development of independent political institutions. A militant minority of Muslims are caught up in a search for legitimacy through ever more fanatical interpretations of the Koran. Other Muslims, threatened by militia violence and civil war, have sought refuge in their sect. In Iraq and Syria plenty of Shias and Sunnis used to marry each other; too often today they resort to maiming each other. And this violent perversion of Islam has spread to places as distant as northern Nigeria and northern England.The Middle East: The tragedy of the Arabs | The Economist
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:52 AM | Your Say (5)
Nations, like the massive oceans, are hard to freeze;
but once frozen they require an equal amount of energy to thaw out again. Round Two | Belmont ClubPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:37 AM | Your Say (2)
March 22, 2015
Ted Cruz: Still young enough to be Hillary's grandson
There's a chance Hillary saw the Cruz announcement in one of the six times a night she gets up to pee.
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) March 23, 2015Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 PM | Your Say (5)
You know you want one
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:02 PM | Your Say (3)
Word.
Mainstream conservativism is more obsessed with fighting petty political battles than with looking for a means of rebuilding society. Dean Abbott (@DeanAbbott) | TwitterPosted by gerardvanderleun at 10:55 AM | Your Say (6)
The Technophobic Democrats
Sultan Knish: The new lefty Luddite loves gadgets; he just hates the limitations that make them work.He wants results without effort or error. He wants energy without pollution, consensus without experiment and products without industry. The same narcissism that causes him to reject the fact that he has to give something to get something in human affairs leads him to also reject the same principle in technology. He wants everything his way. He thinks that makes him an innovator, when it actually makes him a regulator. Innovators understand that every effort comes with risk. Regulators seek to eliminate risk by killing innovation. The progressive Luddite believes that he can have innovation without risk. But that’s just the classic progressive fallacy of confusing regulation with innovation and control with results.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:10 AM | Your Say (1)
March 21, 2015
Word.
"I was right" is bullshit. "I won" is all that matters.
Posted by: Rob De Witt in The Top 40: As we saw with the coffee-colored Fonzarelli who bamboozled his way into the White House, cool = votes.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 2:42 PM | Your Say (2)
Makes them soggy and difficult to light...
Serbia Asks People To Please Stop Throwing Their Grenades In The Garbage "The ministry ... appeals on citizens not to dispose of hand grenades and explosive ordnance in garbage containers and such places ... they should instead call the nearest police station and officers will arrive as soon as possible to take the ordnance away,"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:18 AM | Your Say (6)
“It would be transformative if everybody voted,” Obama told an audience in Cleveland.
Yes, it would. It would mean a lot of people who aren’t interested in public policy and choose not to follow it would suddenly be deciding it.The way it is now, if you aren’t interested—and you have the right not to be interested—you don’t have to vote. If you are interested, you pay attention, develop political views, and vote. Making those who don’t care about voting vote will only dilute the votes of those who are serious and have done their democratic homework. Both Parties Are Nervous About 2016 - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:24 AM | Your Say (8)
March 20, 2015
The spiral arms of our galaxy... are corrugated.
— weird enough already for their wobblesome braiding habits in response to who-knows-what dark invisible gravitational forces — are corrugated. The mass of stars rise up and drop down in these helical waves from our galactic centre; and from our own position, part way up one wave, the next wave was blocking our view outward, and from all directions tending to omit much of the stellar flotsam in the troughs. Careful analysis now lets us see through the blockage. There’s more stars down there in the dips, as well as up and over the extra wave, and thus our galaxy turns out to be so decidedly more populous. Add another hundred billion stars, easy. Hell, add two hundred billion. Give them Obamacare. More, there is more : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:35 PM | Your Say (8)
They’ll all be divorced by 2017, anyway.
12-Steps for America 3. DROP GAY MARRIAGEThere is an argument to be made suggesting gay marriage is a ruse and that the agenda behind it sabotages American traditionalism by redefining our most sacred institution. So what? Gays getting married just to spite us is like a woman having sex with you to show you how disgusting you are. I’ll take it. Heterosexuals sullied marriage when baby boomers invented divorce in the 1980s and if someone wants to assimilate into our culture, we should do nothing but encourage them. Besides, pretending you’re for gay marriage is a great way to get young votes. They’ll all be divorced by 2017, anyway.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:05 PM | Your Say (4)
As we saw with the coffee-colored Fonzarelli who bamboozled his way into the White House, cool = votes.
12-Steps for America 4. DROP THE DRUG WAR As with gay marriage, it doesn’t really matter how you feel about the war on drugs.The war is lost. We killed Escobar and created a vacuum that lead to massive cartel wars in Mexico and ultimately created an environment where Obama and Holder could enact Fast & Furious. The more you meddle the worse it gets. Nobody’s going to ask you to endorse hard drugs, but it pays to shrug your shoulders when asked about marijuana. It’s cool and as we saw with the coffee-colored Fonzarelli who bamboozled his way into the White House, cool = votes.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:00 PM | Your Say (6)
Okay.... here's the plan!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:52 PM | Your Say (3)
Liberals do not want a conversation, they want a soliloquy…
This is liberalism in a nutshell:This fondness of “conversations,” which are actually soliloquies, way-off-somewhere — “Those People” conversations. Conversations about the “root causes” of blight, illiteracy and crime, in elitist, overly-privileged, communities nestled deep inside protected enclaves, behind gates and guardhouses, in which there is not much chance for anyone to be bothered with any blight, illiteracy or crime. What guns shall we ban, what health care laws shall we pass, to get things right with Those People? What levers shall we pull, what knobs shall we twiddle. House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:40 PM | Your Say (1)
The Cold, Hard Truth About Popsicles
According to the official Popsicle website, Popsicles were the accidental invention of an 11-year-old boy named Frank Epperson, who, in 1905, “left a mixture of powdered soda, water, and a stirring stick in a cup on his porch. It was a cold night, and Epperson awoke the next morning to find a frozen pop.” | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:23 PM | Your Say (0)
I Sexually Identify As An A-10 Thunderbolt
Sgt. Major Fairchild said I’m fucking stupid and I can’t be a jet, but I’m beautiful and I am a goddamn jet. If the Army won’t pay for me to get the surgery, I’m just going to bring in Code Pink and point out that that Manning loser is getting hormones and he’s in prison so why shouldn’t a perfectly well-adjusted and honorably serving soldier have the right to be who they truly are, a metal killing machine? -- Duffleblog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:13 AM | Your Say (0)
Be Skeptical of the Hype in the Search for "Earth-like" Planets
estimate the number of potentially habitable (“Earth-like”) planets in the Milky Way galaxy by extrapolating from a small number of roughly Earth-sized planets we’ve found orbiting in the Goldilocks zones around “sun-like” stars. Never mind that these three parameters are often very liberally defined. More importantly, there is a world of difference (pun intended) between “Earth-size” and “Earth-like.” - TheStream
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 AM | Your Say (2)
Mr. Chemex: The Eccentric Inventor Who Reimagined the Perfect Cup of Coffee
Some of Schlumbohm’s cleverest contraptions included the Instant Ice container, which chilled liquids quickly using brine; the Cinderella, a conical trash pail with disposable wax-paper linings; and the Minnehaha, a device that mixed and aerated drinks by forcing liquid through hundreds of tiny perforations. Schlumbohm also patented a stylish hot-water kettle made entirely of glass, a disposable aluminum frying pan, and a cigarette holder tipped with a miniature Chemex-shaped fitting that held a tiny filter, years before the tobacco industry adopted them. | Collectors Weekly
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (0)
Premium Shitphone is an improvement
The screen is excellent, the camera is good enough for Instagram (though still not great in the dark), and the software sits at the modern end of the vast fragmented spectrum of Android. It’s an attractive, thin, simple device. Like Shitphone, it is 4G but not LTE, a difference which is, in my somewhat diminished use case, rarely noticeable. It is responsive if not smooth. People ask me about it with genuine curiosity. Then, when they try it, they don’t laugh. It’s just another Google phone. Every aspect of its performance could be better in ways I know from firsthand experience, but after a few days I stop thinking about it. It exceeds my demands. Not by much, by enough. — Medium
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:17 AM | Your Say (6)
March 19, 2015
Trending on Twitter today #HillaryFunCamps
Hillary: We Need 'Camps for Adults' | Truth RevoltAs I have gotten older, I have decided we really need camps for adults. And we need the kind of camps that you all run, I mean, really. None of the serious stuff, none of the life challenge stuff. More fun, I think we have a huge fun deficit in America, and we need to figure out how to fill that fun deficit, certainly for our kids, but also for the rest of us. We need a reminder of our skills from time to time, maybe some enrichment, certainly some time outdoors, maybe actually spending time with people we didn’t know before.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:04 PM | Your Say (11)
Starbucks burns low-grade coffee beans in order to persuade its customers that they are drinking something sophisticated and European. Because the flavor is unpleasant, Americans saturate it with milk.
It’s time to address this national disgrace.The next time you meet a Starbucks barista, start a serious conversation: does he or she have no shame in foisting this fraud upon the American public? How can we as a people maintain our self-esteem if we pay top dollar for the excrescence of incinerated low-grade coffee beans? Take the time to have this important conversation and to save our national soul. Time for a Serious Conversation about Starbucks | Spengler
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:37 PM | Your Say (12)
"This gender myopia has become a disease, a substitute for a religion...."
I believe that all barriers to women's advancement in the social and political realm must be removed. However, I don't feel that gender is sufficient to explain all of human life. This gender myopia has become a disease, a substitute for a religion, this whole cosmic view. It's impossible that the feminist agenda can ever be the total explanation for human life. Our problem now is that this monomania—the identity politics of the 1970s so people see everything through the lens of race, gender, or class—this is an absolute madness, and in fact, it's a distortion of the '60s. Everything's Awesome and Camille Paglia is Unhappy! - Reason.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:08 AM | Your Say (3)
"If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country."
I know what you’re thinking; “MOTUS, can the government actually pass a law that makes us do something we don’t want to do?” YES! Big Guy learned from Justice John Roberts that we don’t actually “make you do what we want,” we just tax the crap out of you if you don’t.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:40 AM | Your Say (6)
March 18, 2015
The Angina Monologue
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:45 PM | Your Say (1)
The answer is “Too many.”
How many men have been deprived of the chance to do honest, useful, empowering work to instead play status games, take drugs,and wind up indebted and underemployed by following the advice given in increasingly bad faith by society’s elite? How many young women fritter away some of their best years on preparation for sterile office jobs while degrading their ability to ever pair bond with a husband by engaging in equally sterile rutting with men who value her little beyond sexual access? How many families are being delayed or never formed from this arrangement? How many billions of dollars and man hours are being squandered on an egalitarian pipe dream? Confessions of an Overeducated A/C Man | Thedening the West
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:34 AM | Your Say (5)
Door. Ass. Bang. "Dear Azealia Banks, Please Feel Free To Leave America And Never Return"
You are much richer than the average farmer, so do you give your own surplus wealth back to the black community the same way these “racist” laborers and growers do?That’s the thing, Ms. Banks. If all of the black pop stars and rappers — the Azaelias and Kanyes of the world — took their millions and, instead of buying 16 luxury vehicles and 12 houses and 6,000 ounces of weed and bragging about it in their music, used it to build homeless shelters and soup kitchens in impoverished black neighborhoods, most of the problems you pretend to care about could be addressed. -- Matt Walsh @ TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (4)
March 17, 2015
On the Banks of Plum Creek
and in The Long Winter, the seventh book in the series, we read the harrowing, memorable tale of the winter of 1880-1881 (the one the Indian warned about), which in the Dakotas brought many blizzards from October through April, blizzards that stopped the trains with their food and fuel supplies and led to the freezing and starvation of livestock and homesteaders. Wilder makes of this epic winter an extraordinary story of survival—her family resorts to twisting hay to make “logs” and grinding wheat seed to make bread and gruel. Although, at personal peril, two young men of the town do travel with make-shift sledges to secure wheat to keep the townspeople from starving, the main story of that long winter stays by the barely-warm stove of the Ingalls family. There, huddled beneath blankets, they grind wheat in a coffee mill and sit in the dark all day long to save kerosene, trying to keep one another’s spirits up with stories and songs. Laura’s World by April Bernard | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:55 PM | Your Say (7)
The Fall of Man, the Ascent of Man, and the Eternal Return
If the natural process of life and death were the only reality, we would not be able to imagine, nor able to long for, anything beyond or above that. We would not be homesick for Eden.
I submit that it is obvious that all man are homesick for Eden in some way. Even the pagan who speaks of the Golden Age when men were half-gods, even the bold socialist who imagines a cure for all the evils of the free market once world revolution has erected Utopia, even the science fiction fan who seeks a future filled with rocketpacks and superskyscrapers and cities on the Moon: they are discontent with the here-and-now, and seek happiness in an era not their own. So, odd as it seems, the Fall of Man is the only theory that explains the fact that we humans feel like exiles here on Earth, and death and sorrow feel like injustices and blasphemies. It may be a paradox, but the other theories are impossible. | John C. Wright's Journal
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:44 PM | Your Say (3)
Nikola Tesla, When Woman is Boss, Colliers, January 30, 1926
"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket. "When Woman is Boss"Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:41 AM | Your Say (3)
The clever propagandist lies about preposterous things, and does so incessantly.
There is another way in which the left convinces so many that up is down, war is peace, etc., and that is by telling no small lies, only grandiose ones.
Most people are in fact somewhat honest and assume that of those around them, so a person claiming that the red car right in front of the two of you is blue will be immediately seen to be liar. But if they tell you the the car is powered by a nuclear reactor, you have no immediate evidence to the contrary, except your learned sense of what is reasonable and what is not. It is not reasonable that an ordinary-looking red car encountered parked at the curb is nuclear powered, but it is not impossible either. It is ALSO not reasonable that an otherwise normal person would lie for no apparent reason in such a preposterous way! The clever propagandist lies about preposterous things, and does so incessantly. This has the effect of making "reasonable" people doubt what is "reasonable". Continue this process over years, amplify it by enlisting celebrities and other easily-duped people, and you can destroy society by destroying its sense of what is reasonable and leaving it defenseless to any lie, no matter how preposterous. Posted by Ray Van Dune : What Conservatives Suffer in a Mad World Run By Fools
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:34 AM | Your Say (1)
Dalek Relaxation Tape
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (1)
Perhaps the absurdities and walk-ons, the cameo characters, are the most real things about the world.
The bearded bravo on Youtube, the 3,000 year old coin on eBay seem as ephemeral as ourselves.
It’s not a surprise to learn that in this uncertain world religion is making a comeback since it never really left, just had itself re-imagined. Like modern Hollywood history apparently does only sequels. The Wall Street Journal describes the latest re-make, noting that environmentalism has become a religion, calling it a “perfect remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths”. Except Christian myths stop being myths when they are recast in environmentalism. March, 2015 | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (0)
17 March 1945: Kuribayashi prepares to meet his end on Iwo Jima
It would not be until 23rd March that Kuribayashi sent his final message to Chichi Jima:Unable to complete this heavy task for our country
Arrows and bullets all spent, so sad we fall.
But unless I smite the enemy,
My body cannot rot in the field.
Yea, I shall be born again seven times
And grasp the sword in my hand.
When ugly weeds cover this island,
My sole thought shall be the Imperial Land.
All officers and men of Chichi Jima – goodbye from Iwo.- - World War 2 Today
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:20 AM | Your Say (4)
March 16, 2015
The world Augustine describes is not flat.
It has a vertical dimension as well as a horizontal. In slices, it makes pretty patterns, but we cannot understand it in that way. Nor can any line drawn through that plane lead anywhere, but ultimately in a circle, back upon itself. Evolution is the snake eating its own tail.
Indeed, in this human condition, we cannot honestly begin to consider what scientism proposes as the task of “science”: which is to understand, on explicitly material terms, how we came to be. The very existence of this universe and of ourselves is a bottomless Mystery that cannot be “solved.” Reason may worm about, and make its observations on our plane, but Revelation provides the only possible access to that vertical dimension. It offers the only way we could ever comprehend, within the limits of our faculties, what was in the beginning, is now, and ever will be — not flat. Flatman rising : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:58 PM | Your Say (1)
Don't fight them over there. Fight them over here:
This is why the West is presently losing the Third Great War of Islamic Expansion. Any time your grand strategy is based on an idea as intrinsically idiotic as the notion that the magic of geographical translocation will somehow transform invading enemies into clones of yourself, you deserve to lose. Vox Popoli: Don't fight them over there
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:39 PM | Your Say (5)
The executives can sign what they like, but the contract is not enforceable until it is approved by the board.
In the American system, the President is tasked with negotiating treaties. For those treaties to become law, they must be ratified by the Senate.
In contract law, this is the same as a deal requiring board approval. The executives can sign what they like, but the contract is not enforceable until it is approved by the board. The Founders recognized the dangers of giving the President sole discretion in treaty making. He could use this power to circumvent the power of the legislature by striking deals with other countries that trumped US law. Imagine Obama striking a deal with Mexico, giving Texas back, so their votes would not count in the next election. Post-National America | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:16 PM | Your Say (4)
Ernest Hemingway, 1950s
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:47 PM | Your Say (5)
The First Taco Bell
There was no indoor seating -- just a small kitchen, an ordering window and a few tables and chairs on the patio. A clay-tile roof, arch-shaped entryways and a large metal bell set in a cavity above the entrance lent it an air of festivity -- but no embellishment could conceal its essentially modest nature. The Forgotten History Of The World's First Taco Bell, And Today's Attempt To Save It
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:59 AM | Your Say (4)
Digital Dog Collar
Tim Cook, the Apple C.E.O., seems like a decent and likable guy — no tech overlord in a Darth Vader suit.But his presentation of the new watch on Monday creeped me out, and offered a road map to a world I’m not sure I want to join. “The Apple Watch is the most personal device we have ever created,” he said. “It’s not just with you, it’s on you.” Ewwww. It sounds like a digital dog collar, complete with an anti-flea component. From here on out, there is no down time, and no excuses for reality escapes. You are connected, 24/7. - NYTimes.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (1)
World War T
Just as the stodgy old priests were getting comfortable with sodomy,it’s time to get them comfortable with lopping off the cocks of eight year old boys, feeding them oestrogens, and telling them that they’re girls. Just when your wife became comfortable with having a few gay friends, it’s time to send a man who calls himself a woman into the women’s shower at the gym, where he will nonchalantly soap his balls while pretending not to be male-gazing all over his fellow ‘women.’ -- Henry Dampier
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:34 AM | Your Say (2)
Too bad students don't study the effects of student loans on the lives of students after they finish their studies.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (12)
March 15, 2015
"A student at Cal Tech has reported that listening to rap be making you stupid!"
Go figure! Angry White Dude may put a different spin on this study. I’m not sure sure that listening to rap makes you stupid so much as that you are already stupid and just listen to rap. Let’s face it, rap is pretty much the same thing over and over…ho’s, bling, bitches, drinking and drugs, shooting homies and pimps, etc. I think that pretty much sums up the genre. You won’t find many rap aficionados debating the ideas of 17th century philosophers. RAP MUSIC BE MAKING YOU STUPID! FO SHIZZLE! |
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:35 PM | Your Say (6)
The Narcotic of Anti-Racism
Those sentences are barely English – literally!But, you can bet he felt great after having typed them. He got to bang on publicly about the pale penis people, thus showing his piety. That’s the thing about anti-racism. it’s hard to mock someone for it. Start yammering about trannies or even sodomites and people will snicker.In many respects, anti-racism is the perfect topic for the Cultural Marxist. The pale penis people will always be with us so there is no “winning” or end game like we had with homosexual marriage. Since blacks will also always be with us, the disparities are a social constant. | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:30 PM | Your Say (0)
Best Sentiments of the Week
humans are so cute, when we say goodbye we put our arms around each other and to show we love someone we bring them flowers. we say hello by holding each other’s hand, and sometimes tiny little dewdrops form in our eyes. for pleasure we listen to arrangements of sounds, press our lips together, smoke dried leaves, get drunk off of old fruit. we’re all just little animals, falling in love and having breakfast beneath billions of stars... -- YouphoricPosted by gerardvanderleun at 3:44 PM | Your Say (2)
Vagina Cookies for 2nd Graders
But when Autumn arrived, tray in hand, every single cookie was shaped like a vagina. The teacher noted that every kind of vagina was represented, including “small, puffy, white, brown, shaved, bald, and even a fire crotch.” They were frosted accordingly. When the teacher told Autumn that the cookies were inappropriate, the mother began yelling about the importance of young children learning about sexuality. Autumn left the cookies and stormed out. Mother Bakes Vagina Cookies For 2nd Graders And Bugs Out When Teacher Says 'No' (Photo)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:37 PM | Your Say (6)
"The crisis of the Roman state."
Hugely extended frontiers demanded the creation of armies greater than ever before, legions of impoverished soldiers who hoped their generals would look after their interests when the fighting was done. A political culture based on competition overheated when so much wealth and so much violence were at hand. Global problems necessitated the empowerment of brilliant but self-serving generals like Pompey and Caesar who could not be contained in civil society. But none of this explains the psychology of a political elite turned into murderers. The Ides of March brought together members of every faction, and once Caesar was dead they immediately sprang apart and became enemies once again. What had Caesar done? Book Review: ‘The Death of Caesar’ by Barry Strauss - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:29 AM | Your Say (1)
March 14, 2015
Miracles? What Miracles?
The most astonishing thing about the extraordinary outpouring of growth and innovation that the United States and other economies have achieved over the past two centuries is that it does not astonish us.Throughout most of human history, life expectancy was about half what it now is, or even less. We could not record voices or speech, so no one knows how Shakespeare sounded or how “to be or not to be” was pronounced. The streets of the greatest cities were dark every night. No one traveled on land faster than a horse could gallop. The Battle of New Orleans took place after the peace treaty had been signed in Europe because General Andrew Jackson had no way of knowing this. In Europe, famines were expected about once a decade and the streets would be littered with corpses, and in American homes, every winter the ink in the inkwells froze. from “Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity” (2007)
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:35 PM | Your Say (5)
No nonrenewable resource has ever run dry, while renewable resources—whales, cod, forests, passenger pigeons—have frequently done so.
The Atlantic Ocean is finite, but that does not mean that you risk bumping into France if you row out of a harbor in Maine. The buffalo of the American West were infinite, in the sense that they could breed, yet they came close to extinction. It is an ironic truth that no nonrenewable resource has ever run dry, while renewable resources—whales, cod, forests, passenger pigeons—have frequently done so. Fossil Fuels Will Save the World (Really) - WSJ
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:24 PM | Your Say (2)
Spare Change?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:19 AM | Your Say (6)
Is there any honest doubt that Hillary is even duller than Gore and even more puffed up than Kerry?
Is Hillary more like Presidents Clinton and Obama, or is she more like failed candidates Al Gore and John Kerry?Is there any honest doubt that Hillary is even duller than Gore and even more puffed up than Kerry? Is there any question in anyoneâs mind that if she were not Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton, this boorish old woman would not seriously be considered as a candidate for president at all?
There remains only her gender to recommend her to voters. Is that a winning strategy? No. Just consider the 2014 midterm races. Democrats nominated five women as gubernatorial candidates to run against Republican men â in Texas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Rhode Island. The Democrat women beat Republican men in only two of the five races (and, indeed, almost lost all five). Republican women beat Democrat men in three states â New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. In each of those three races, the Republican woman was pro-life and conservative. Articles: Just How Bad a Candidate Would Hillary Be?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (4)
Happy PI Day
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (3)
March 13, 2015
This Just In....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:58 PM | Your Say (5)
Hey, tell me this, Planet Fitness:
If she comes out in tears crying that a man just sat down beside her and began to take off his clothes, will you kick her out, also? Whose side do you take in that confrontation? You fools. I realize your “tolerance” of the “transgendered” might earn you adulation from the liberal fringe. That’s an easy thing to earn, especially because many liberal outlets have dishonestly reported on this (and on everything else), with headlines like “Woman Complains About Transgender Woman in Her Gym“, as if she had a problem with the man being anywhere in the building, rather than specifically in that one place where women change their clothes and use the bathroom. Dear Planet Fitness, Why Don’t You Care About The Safety And Privacy of Women? | TheBlaze.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:19 PM | Your Say (9)
On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets:
According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ''radio location'' (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites (see, for example, [3]). The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations. It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings. Media Laboratory, MIT
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:12 PM | Your Say (4)
Make me Queen and I shall give you bread.
Give me the power and I will make the trains run on time.
Make me Queen and I shall give you bread. Truly great men can resist the temptation to turn themselves into autocrats. King George III asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what George Washington would do after winning independence. “West replied, ‘They say he will return to his farm.’ ‘If he does that,” the incredulous monarch said, ‘he will be the greatest man in the world.’” But we live in a lesser age. And modern pygmies would rather be gimcrack kings than be remembered as a president of the United States of America. Should anyone succeed at “Caesarism” there might be personal glory in it a spell. But Caesar would still live under the Hollow Crown and such a system would bring lasting instability to the magnificent — and regrettably ordinary — Republic. The Men Who Would Be Kings | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:48 AM | Your Say (3)
So God made a Clinton.
God said, “I need somebody willing to spend decades nursing naked ambition.
And then watch it die when some upstart nobody from Chicago decides he doesn’t want to wait his turn. Then dry her eyes and say, ‘Maybe in 2016.’ I need somebody who can shiv a political enemy with nothing more than a nail file and an iPhone case she swore was way too inconvenient to carry around in addition to a Blackberry. And who, in primary and general campaign season, will doggedly complete the Sunday show sweep, and then pop up on TV again later that evening to tell you, ‘The server will remain private.’” So God made a Clinton. So God Made A Clinton
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:46 AM | Your Say (3)
The opposite of schadenfreude
Mudita is word from Sanskrit and Pali that has no counterpart in English. It means sympathetic or unselfish joy, or joy in the good fortune of others.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (1)
Great Moments in Fashion -- "Eldridge Cleaver: ‘We’ve been castrated in clothing’"
Instead, he saw himself as the man, and designer, to ‘put sex back where it should be’ countering what he described as ‘the problem of the fig-leaf mentality.’5 In an attempt to remedy this mindset, he designed two styles of trousers; one with an oval pouch, similar in shape to an athletic support cup in which the genitals sat, and another with a sheath-like pouch protruding from the front into which the penis was placed, with a smaller pouch behind for the wearer’s testicles. -- The Fig Leaf Mentality | Vestoj
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 AM | Your Say (4)
For every one person foraging wild sorrel and nasturtium, there are 10,000 people watching Guy Fieri call a sloppy joe “bomb-dot-com gangster” while fist bumping an untrained line cook.
it’s huge and phallic as opposed to being a taco. It’s first and foremost a metaphor, but it’s also a chimichanga! I took a 12 inch tortilla, filled it with rice pudding, brownies, and salted caramel, then deep-fried it, dipped it in chocolate, and rolled it in peanuts #boom. Writing an actual recipe seems silly because all I did was throw pre-made goodies into a tortilla -- Culinary Bro-Down
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:41 AM | Your Say (3)
"Misophonia"
A condition with which certain sounds can drive someone into a burst of rage or disgust.A 2013 study by Arjan Schroder and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam identified the most common irritants as eating sounds, including lip smacking and swallowing; breathing sounds, such as nostril noises and sneezing; and hand sounds, such as typing and pen clicking. The range of responses to these noises is broad, from irritation to disgust to anger. Some sufferers even respond with verbal or physical aggression to those making the noises. One woman reported wanting to strangle her boyfriend in response to his chewing. Please Stop Making That Noise
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:33 AM | Your Say (7)
Social justice is crowd-sourced law, the whining little sister of mob rule.
What we don't want, although many will claim that we need it, is more zero-tolerance.Handing the mic over to those who cannot shut up is only a victory for oppression, because the more law you have, the more police have to do. How closely do you want to police society? Let the outraged be outraged. You can always tell them to piss off. They don't have a legal case. But if you let the meddlesome noses of 'social justice' into the tent, meddlesome laws may ensue. Cobb
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:52 AM | Your Say (1)
"Comes at the last and with a little pin / Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!"
Who wants to be like Russia? Alas, for some reason a substantial percentage of American voters hanker after that sort of arrangement.They want a king, because the entertainment elite has convinced them its so much cooler to be ruled by celebrities than governed by themselves. The New York Times writes that Democrats See No Choice but Hillary Clinton in 2016. In nation of more than 300 million pepole, why can no one else be found? Is it because she is best or because she is a Queen of the House of Clinton? The Men Who Would Be Kings | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:49 AM | Your Say (1)
Quote of the Day: Rule of Law edition
And we are ruled by criminals. If you treat IRS rules the way the IRS treats IRS rules, you go to prison; if you treat federal law the way the secretary of state does, you go to prison. If you treat immigration controls the way our immigration authorities do, you go to prison. If you’re as careless in your handling of firearms as the ATF is, you go to prison. You cook your business’s books the way the federal government cooks its books, you go to prison. Quote of the Day: Rule of Law edition From the inestimable Kevin Williamson:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:26 AM | Your Say (1)
March 12, 2015
Isn’t it time for a Day of National Media Shame and Reflection?
How much blood do Eric Holder and George Soros, who pays for many of the protests, have on their hands?There is Zemir Begic, the two murdered cops in Brooklyn, and now these two Missouri cops, who appear to be survivors. The toll is starting to mount. Isn’t it time for a Day of National Media Shame and Reflection? -- Steve Sailer The Unz Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:36 PM | Your Say (5)
No, we still don’t know where the Clinton server is, was, has been [UPDATED] : And Still I Persist…
Now, HRC states that she has deleted all the “personal” e-mails on the server — apparently without ever reading them.
Since she negotiated and turned over printouts of another 30,000+ e-mails related to her time as SecState, I suspect they are no longer on the server, either. So what is left on the server? Probably nothing, outside of the operating system and some applications. (Hopefully, no web browsers; as I mentioned in an earlier post on this subject, browsing the internet directly from a ‘protected’ server is a very bad idea.) There are plenty of free and commercial utilities to “clean up” a computer system — delete system log files, update and/or clear out file metadata, remove “deleted file” information from system directories, and wipe clean unallocated disk space on the hard drive(s) to prevent forensic recovery of files. I suspect all that has been done, and was done months ago. And Still I Persistâ¦
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 PM | Your Say (2)
17 Things to Know Before You Go Live in a Cave in the Yukon
It’s a Dawson tradition to place a mummified human toe in a glass of whiskey, and people must drink the whiskey guided by this single rule: “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow—but your lips must touch the toe.” Since Captain Dick Stevenson began this initiation ritual in 1973, more than 52,000 people have joined the Sourtoe Cocktail Club. But whatever you do, don’t swallow the toe. Over the past 40 years, eight Sour Toes have been accidentally swallowed, stolen, or gone missing from the bar. Don’t be the ninth: swallowing the toe has a hefty fine of $1,500 or a hell of a lot of dishwashing. - Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:28 PM | Your Say (1)
TransScouts
Just ran into a new sort of troop at my local Piggly Wiggly. TransScouts.
Pink beanies with labia-shaped ear flaps. "What's the big seller here?" I ask no one in particular. "Lots of people are buying Amputated Pud Creme Supremes on a Stick. You can eat dick and prance at the same time. Crunchy Teste Mini Joy Bags is a close second." Lance de Boyle coimmenting on Kute Korner Krack Dealers: They're Baaaaaaack! @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:32 PM | Your Say (0)
Now, it’s possible that out of all this a decent third party can coalesce. It’s even likely. A party based on strict constitutionalism and states rights.
You know, I read all over the net, mostly in comments (and more on that later) that the GOP had gone spineless and they had funded Obama’s amnesty. So I went and looked at numbers. 1/3 of the GOP flipped. ONE THIRD.Two thirds held firm. And this on a matter that has emotional appeal to politicians if not to the people on the ground. You see, they are convinced if they vote against it it will drive Latinos away from the GOP. It’s what the media and their corrupted offices tell them. It’s the “smart” opinion, as opposed to all us rubes on the ground.
And two thirds held firm.
You’d think it would be a moment to celebrate. You know, ten years ago half of them or more would have caved. But we’ve been working on taking over the GOP. And it has effects.
It seems to me what we should be doing is celebrating that two thirds held firm, and taking notes of the cavers to primary them. Winter At Valley Forge | According To Hoyt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (6)
March 11, 2015
If you keep it up you'll go blind.
Since December 2014, as many as 15 cases of ocular syphilis—a sexually transmitted disease which has led to blindness in several of the individuals—have been reported in men who have sex with men on the West Coast.
Confirmed cases in Washington State, San Francisco as well as two suspected cases found in Los Angeles that are currently under investigation are raising alarm among public health officials, community care providers and prevention specialists. In December and January, Washington State health officials reported six people diagnosed with ocular syphilis—including two who have gone blind—according to recent Washington Department of Health public warnings and news articles. AIDS Healthcare Foundation | HIV/AIDS Testing, Treatment, & Advocacy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:16 PM | Your Say (8)
Hillary Rodham poses in her 1965 senior class portrait from Maine East High School
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:34 PM | Your Say (9)
Guess who.
VIDEO: 4 teens viciously beat girl in Brooklyn McDonald’s as crowd cheers. You're right. Don't even have to click.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:59 PM | Your Say (9)
Nurse Ratched's press conference
It's spooky. Between her and Obama, it's difficult to say who's the more irritating. And yet, there are obviously people -- millions of them -- who not only don't find her irritating, but want her to be their Big Nurse. One Cʘsmos: The Blest Things in Life are Invisible
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:41 PM | Your Say (5)
Front Page of the Month
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:05 PM | Your Say (6)
Robert Heath thought we should all wear luminous hats.
the facility of seeing and finding the hat, &c., in closets and dark rooms and places, the presentation of a hat, &c., of different shades during day and night, the beautiful appearance of the article when worn at night, and the provision of distinguishing or indicating the localities of those who may wear the hats, &c., whose occupations are dangerous, such as miners, mariners, &c. For persons who are exposed to weather, sea, &c., the head-wear will be suitably waterproofed, so that the self-luminous nature thereof will not be injured by water.Simple enough. His patent was granted on Feb. 27, 1883. Bright Idea – Futility Closet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:01 PM | Your Say (6)
Looking Up From The Ghetto
I do my shopping at the rich man’s grocer, rather than the stores serving the ghetto.I cook my own meals and therefore prefer fresh meats and produce. Ghetto Lion, for example, has mostly prepared foods that are popular with ghetto dwellers. Anyway, at the checkout, a dough-faced fat girl with a pin in her nose address me with “wassup.”
I’m led to believe that the pin in her nose signals her availability to black men. Almost always, the pram-faced girls in the ghetto have caramel colored kids, along with the nose pin. Perhaps it is a coincidence. Her sing-songy language told me she was a ghetto girl. White people talking black always sound odd to me. It’s like hearing a Chinese guy speak Spanish. There’s something unnatural about it. I speak some ghetto so we got along fine enough as she rang up my purchases. at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:59 PM | Your Say (4)
March 10, 2015
Well, if you are going to have just one sweater....
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:14 PM | Your Say (3)
On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches.
I got into my car and drove off down the hill. What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep. On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again. - - Chandler, The Big Sleep/32
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:31 PM | Your Say (2)
The green stays green.
It’s quiet. Like, really quiet, save for the sound of distant neighbors felling trees for firewood or clearing a driveway with their John Deere. It’s cold but not debilitating, and on a bright day I’ve been known to split logs in my running shorts. It’s easier to make friends with winter here. Friends With Winter | Huckberry
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:08 PM | Your Say (0)
“Nonwhites cannot be racist”
Will this tired conga beat never end? “Nonwhites cannot be racist” is a transparently nonsensical statement. It’s a freeze-dried and vacuum-sealed bag of pure bullshit, one of those innately fraudulent Newspeak mantras that bother me more every time I hear them—you know, obvious lies such as “alcoholism is a disease,” “rape has nothing to do with sex,” and “race doesn’t exist, but racism is rampant.” It’s an idea that makes no sense, which may be why its proponents feel compelled to constantly hammer you in the head with it until you finally relent merely because your head hurts. Nonwhites Can’t Be Racist Cuz My Teacher Told Me So - Taki's MagazinePosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:48 PM | Your Say (9)
City of Forgotten Souls
tropical disease was a great killer in the early days; soldiers died in small battles; and many ancient mariners were lost in shipwrecks. As I walked among the tombs, I felt nostalgia for a time I will never know. A few tightly spaced, crumbling graves lay to the side, and it was hard not to feel a bit of retrospective pity for the inhabitants of those cramped tenements. I imagine they found little solace in India. The vigil of a small community, dependent for news of the outside world on three or four shipments a year and given to deadly boredom in the heat of a tropical summer. If the fates dealt harshly with them in life, they have made no amends to their memory in death. - Roads & Kingdoms
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:40 AM | Your Say (0)
Revolvr gives you the power to select your personal band of merry revolutionaries.
We also have accounts for propaganda purposes; children you can bandage or ask to play dead for the cameras, face guys who work tech jobs or in academia for the television cameras and women who can cry on command while wailing native language gibberish (Hollywood is jealous and contacted us as their representation). We provide you financiers whether private or state run with a forum to meet interested young, unemployed men (and some women) who are trying to fill the void of modern life or have a little fun in their sand filled lives. 28 Sherman: New App: Revolvr
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:02 AM | Your Say (0)
In letting it burn – what do you think will happen?
Our current administration has brought us far closer to nuclear war than we’ve been since the Soviet Union collapsed in on its corrupt self.And worse, it will be a multiparty war that will leave at best 1/3 of the world in ruins. And what they’re doing to the new generation, between indoctrination, unemployment and setting the sexes against each other doesn’t bear thinking too deeply about, lest the black pit yawns beneath our feet. Winter At Valley Forge | According To Hoyt
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:00 AM | Your Say (4)
March 9, 2015
Avoid hanging around people with names like Dreekius Oricko Johnson.
is to avoid spending time around guys with names like Dreekius Oricko Johnson. His mother would have done better by him if she named him Food Stamp or Government Cheese. At least then he could pass himself off as the child of dope smoking artists. instead he came into this world with a ghetto name and left this life in a ghetto fashion.A a general rule, if the first result on Google for your name is a link to mugshots.com, you have made some bad decisions.Some Good Advice at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:54 PM | Your Say (7)
Barbie Begins
On March 9, 1959, the American Toy Fair in New York City had the distinction of being the debut venue for Barbie, the best-selling doll in history. From the reactions of at least half of the buyers at the toy fair, you’d have never guessed the toy’s future global domination. After all, this doll was the first consumer doll meant for kids that was modeled after an adult, rather than a baby or toddler. Not everyone was ready for a doll meant for kids that had breasts and a come-hither expression, not unlike novelty adult blow-up dolls.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:42 PM | Your Say (1)
Did the Battle of Gettysburg Really Begin as a Search for Shoes?
Perhaps because they were sorely in need of them,a rumor had been circulating among Lee’s forces that there was a stockpile of shoes in the town, and shortly after arriving, Heth, in fact, ordered Brigadier General Johnston Pettigrew to “search the town for army supplies (shoes specifically), and return the same day.” Pettigrew ran into Union troops, and, despite Lee’s orders, Heth ended up starting a small skirmish. -- TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:40 PM | Your Say (1)
Manufacturing Outrage
Manufacturing outrage is the modus operandi of Obama and Democrats.Liberal media are their tools. The result has been destruction, pain and murder. And the worse is yet to come. The last six years have seen an explosion of faux controversies generated by Democrats. Aside from political ads attacking opponents (Paul Ryan pushing grandma and her wheelchair off a cliff; Romney as a bully, homophobe, dog abuser and carcinogenic (I may have missed a few calumnies). Before those defamations, it was Sarah Palin who endured unceasing attacks. And before that it was Obama’s two opponents for the Senate who were targets of ginned up outrage. American Thinker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (2)
This is a SecState with zero accomplishments except hiding that she has zero accomplishments.
In a further development underlining how the Clinton machine operates above the law, or off-the-books,
we now see that the pant-suited SecState had her own very private email server installed at her house. She used this system to send and receive emails, apparently including official ones, and never bothered to use a State email address. This was a blatant attempt to avoid FOIA by hiding her correspondence from official records, and, most important, to hide her disastrous actions and inactions on major events--e.g., Libya, Egypt, Benghazi, Fast and Furious--and a violation of all sorts of laws and regulations on the security of communications. This is a SecState with zero accomplishments except hiding that she has zero accomplishments. The DiploMad 2.0: The Clintons: The Same Old Tricks
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:56 AM | Your Say (3)
Naked Came the Stranger
– who willingly get into bed with guys and then are amazed when sex occurs. Is there some parallel universe where that is considered unusual? The reason I ask is that I can say with dead certainty that I have never in my entire life gotten nekkid into bed with a male person without the expectation, nay the fervent hope, that sex could occur. But that’s just me. Thoughts from the ammo line | Power Line
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (1)
March 8, 2015
Because no one wants to look at old hags,
TV is dominated by young hyper-attractive people. Most of whom are as dumb as a goldfish, but they can read from a teleprompter without moving their eyes.The job is to grab and keep the viewer’s attention. Similarly, the Interwebs is run by the young and those who pretend to be young. Therefore the language is geared for a high school level viewer. Again, it’s about getting and holding the attention of the people. The problem, of course is that you end up with former mall cops pretending to be experts. They are interviewed by guys like Brian Williams, who are lost in a fantasy world and probably in need of psychiatric help. From the perspective of TV, it makes no difference if the opinions and experts are batshit crazy, just as long as they get and keep an audience. MSNBC had a nice run with this model. Evolution Versus Mass Media at The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (2)
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? From today's Lectionary: - Maggie's FarmPosted by gerardvanderleun at 11:36 AM | Your Say (0)
A Buzzard
I spoke once with a falconer, who said his bird could convey a remarkable range of perceptions through his eyes, and an emotion like companionship. Too, he said there is no companionship like two creatures who would kill for each other. But they are not sentimental. It goes deeper than that, and even in the eyes of so fierce a predator, there is also something of the rudiments of love. A buzzard : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:04 AM | Your Say (0)
Einstein in Mason Jars
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:39 AM | Your Say (1)
Dark networks are dangerous places.
The Clinton system thus represents a discovered entrance into a Dark Network, that arrangement of communications which is neither monitored, policed nor even completely understood.Finding the Clinton email system is like stumbling over a hidden trap door in the woods, which on inspection leads to a subterranean world of no apparent limits. The discovery of the Clinton system should lead us to ask “where does it go?” For surely someone must have been on the other end of that private email system, whose identities the president either already knows or cares not to know. Dark networks are dangerous places. A trip down into their depths usually takes a person to places like: • Drugs • Alien Smuggling • Money Laundering and counterfeiting • Intellectual Property • Terrorism • Human organs • Stolen Art • Sex Trafficking • Arms Trafficking • Nuclear Proliferation -- Hillary and The Mines of Moria | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:30 AM | Your Say (3)
The one thing that Democrats and Republicans have in common these days is nostalgia for a pre-Obama era.
There have been dynasties in American politics before, but none of them were driven by this degree of escapism.Americans are not looking to the future. Polls show that they no longer expect the future to bring them a better life. Instead they are nostalgic for a better past. They want the nineties back. They even want the last decade back. There is no better sign of how miserable Obama’s two terms in office have been than that the last names Clinton and Bush now induce nostalgia, rather than anger. Sultan Knish: Nostalgia for a Pre-Obama America
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:29 AM | Your Say (3)
March 7, 2015
"Hot dog . . .this will bust ‘em wide open. Shove everything you can across!" -- Gen. Omar Bradley
the first invader to reach its east bank since the time of Napoleon. But he wanted all the honors passed on to a young lieutenant of the engineers, John W. Mitchell of Pittsburgh. ‘While we were running across the bridge – and, man, it may have been only 250 yards but it seemed like 250 miles to us – I spotted this lieutenant, standing out there completely exposed to the machine gun fire that was pretty heavy by this time.’ ‘He was cutting wires and kicking the German demolition charges off the bridge with his feet! Boy that took plenty of guts. He’s the one who saved the bridge and made the whole thing possible – the kinda guy I’d like to know.’
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:40 PM | Your Say (5)
Glow Suit for Clowns
They just need to wear pieces from Holmes' new "Anti Paparazzi Collection" -- a line of clothing made from a reflective material completely ruins flash photographs. The collection currently consists of a hooded jacket, an infinity scarf, suit pants, a blazer, and a hat. While they look like regular clothes, the fabric is actually coated with glass nanospheres. This coating makes the clothes act like mirrors when hit with bright light, so the resulting images are horribly underexposed and the wearer is practically invisible. | Oddity Central
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:44 PM | Your Say (7)
How older bureaucracies make worse decisions, and bigger mistakes, and make them faster and with greater confidence
Consensus is an evolutionary process.If a consensus is proposed and it is somewhat reasonable, only 20 out of a hundred [experts] have to be converted or ostracized to complete the consensus-manufacturing, the next thing that will happen is a new consensus. Then 16 out of the remaining 80 will have to be converted or ostracized, at the end of which you have a consensus that is only sufficiently reasonable that 64% of the original group found it agreeable. By the third stage, with similar ostracizing events and measuring the [reasonableness-versus-] risibility of the consensus-content this way, you’d be down to 51.2%, then at the next stage it goes to 41%. Keep in mind, all this time the ostracized members will be replaced by newcomers, but the newcomers won’t have a vote in the prior stages of this evolving consensus. And of course, when an opinion becomes obligatory, but it’s only sufficiently reasonable that barely 40% of reasonable free-thinkers would align themselves with it, it can be a very silly opinion — even if it IS obligatory. - - House of Eratosthenes
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:40 AM | Your Say (5)
The Green Left's Fascist Roots
The fact of the matter is, the modern green movement did not spring into worldwide action out of nowhere in the 1960swith Rachel Carson and the hippie movement. Modern environmentalism is largely rooted in Germany like a giant oak tree that tapped into German Romanticism, Existentialism, and Social Darwinism that flowered in the European continent throughout the 1800s -- all three of which valued Nature over people and laid the foundation of what is otherwise known as the green movement today. While Nazi racism is now in the rear-view mirror, it has been replaced with an anti-humanist agenda, but environmental tribalism can still be seen in its veritable worship of all things indigenous hiding behind the doctrine of multiculturalism. -- American Thinker
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:25 AM | Your Say (11)
"The Obese Virgins have set me a problem which I confess I have not yet solved.
Like all races who set great store by sexual enjoyment, these people have a correspondingly exaggerated reverence for virginity.It therefore occurred to me that if I could apply Jacques Loeb's great discovery of artificial parthenogenesis to man, or, to be precise, to these young ladies, I should be able to grow a race of vestals, self-reproducing yet ever virgin, to whom in concentrated form should attach that reverence of which I have spoken. You see, I must always remember that it is no good proposing any line of work that will not benefit the national religion. I suppose state-aided research would have much the same kinds of difficulties in a really democratic state. Well this, as I say, has so far beaten me. I have taken the matter a step further than Bataillon with his fatherless frogs, and I have induced parthenogenesis in the eggs of reptiles and birds; but so far I have failed with mammals. However, I've not given up yet!" The Tissue-Culture King
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:36 AM | Your Say (2)
What role did Mount Vernon play in the development of the souvenir market?
It seemed to be the mission of every tourist to make a pilgrimage there, even when Washington was alive, and anything related to Washington was at the center of their relic collections. There’s no dearth of accounts from travelers making their way to Mount Vernon, just showing up unannounced, and being welcomed by the father of the country or by Martha after his death. It was difficult to get there until the beginning of a regularly scheduled steam excursion that would leave from Washington, D.C., stop in Alexandria to pick up more people, and finally land at Mount Vernon. In the late 19th century, they put in a trolley line.
The people that ran the estate had to be on their toes when visitors were circulating through the house and the grounds. Taking pieces of Washington’s house, slices of chairs, or things like that was always prohibited, but they did sell souvenirs, like objects made of wood from the estate that was carved into canes and that sort of thing. Mount Vernon’s caretakers began to shift their attention to the greenhouse, where visitors could buy plants or other items that could be produced at the estate.The Relic Hunters Who Saved American History
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (0)
Legend is Obama’s Achilles Heel
The authority for his actions is increasingly himself. This happens all the time with charismatic leaders. Hugo Chavez did it, and it leads to disaster. Because the day may come when someone may ask , "Well where are all these beautiful and evocative short stories you wrote as an organizer? Where are all the articles you wrote as President of the Harvard Law Review? And what was your legislative track record before becoming president?" These questions are all off limits even though they are interrogatories of the most ordinary kind. And they are off limits for a reason. They undermine the root of the legend. A Question of Personality | Belmont Club
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (5)
March 6, 2015
The future of the Toronto Blue Jays
He rummages through a half-empty cooler until he finds a dozen eggs. "I'm not sure about these," he says, removing three from the carton, studying them, smelling them and finally deciding it's safe to eat them. While the eggs cook on a portable stove, he begins the morning ritual of cleaning his van, pulling the contents of his life into the parking lot. Out comes a surfboard. Out comes a subzero sleeping bag. Out comes his only pair of jeans and his handwritten journals. A curious shopper stops to watch. "Hiya," Daniel Norris says, waving as the customer walks away into the store. Norris turns back to his eggs. "I've gotten used to people staring," he says. This is where Norris has chosen to live while he tries to win a job in the Blue Jays' rotation: in a broken-down van parked under the blue fluorescent lights of a Wal-Mart in the Florida suburbs. There, every morning, is one of baseball's top-ranked prospects, doing pull-ups and resistance exercises on abandoned grocery carts. There he is each evening, making French press coffee and organic stir-fry on his portable stove. There he is at night, wearing a spelunking headlamp to go with his unkempt beard, writing in his "thought journal" or rereading Kerouac.Top Blue Jays prospect Daniel Norris lives by his own code
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:38 PM | Your Say (5)
Don’t let cellphone radiation affect sperm count!
The prestigious Cleveland Clinic and the Journal of Andrology have both reported dramatic reduction in sperm count and quality in men whose reproductive area is exposed to cell phone radiation. Carrying your phone in your front pocket puts it right in the sensitive kill zone. RadiaShield Boxer Briefs reduce radiation exposure to reproductive organs. High level microwave protection is built into the codpiece and back. Luxurious Modal/Spandex plus RadiaShield Fabric provides stretchy comfort for all day wear. Anti-bacterial, anti-odor, light-weight, breathable, and machine washable too! Specify size when ordering: s, m, L, xL.EMF Safety Garments, Bedding, & Grounding Devices
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:26 PM | Your Say (9)
Adam Carolla: 'I'm Done Apologizing'
"Go find a politician or somebody who's in charge and poke a popsicle stick up their butt," Carolla said. "I'm a comedian. I'm done apologizing, I really am. ... And by the way, everyone who apologizes is faking it. They're only doing it because they're gonna get canned."Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:44 PM | Your Say (2)
You're not crazy if you think women are getting crazier...
At least one in four women in America now takes a psychiatric medication, compared with one in seven men. Women are nearly twice as likely to receive a diagnosis of depression or anxiety disorder than men are. Medicating Women’s Feelings - NYTimes.comPosted by gerardvanderleun at 1:39 PM | Your Say (4)
Hunts with Wolves
The answer, she argues, was the creation of the human-wolf alliance. Previously they separately hunted the same creatures, with mixed results. Once they joined forces, they dominated the food chain in prehistoric Europe – though this success came at a price for other species. First Neanderthals disappeared to be followed by lions, mammoths, hyenas and bison over the succeeding millennia. Humans and hunting dogs were, and still are, a deadly combination, says Shipman.How hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals | Science | The Guardian
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:27 PM | Your Say (11)
The reminder that she is The Congenital Liar
Hillary also lies because she gets away with lying.Anyone who defends her is an accomplice, which makes them liars too. The comfort by which liberals defend her raises questions about their veracity on all other matters. This email nonsense and her acceptance of bribes through her tax-exempt foundation are reminders that she is a liar by birth. We shall see if Democrats continue to accept that and nominate her in 2016.Don Surber:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:17 AM | Your Say (5)
March 5, 2015
"So what?"
I do not see, or care, why it is thought my duty to like, or dislike,
groups because of their race, creed, color, sex, sexual aberration, or national origin. Nor do I think it their duty to like me. I especially do not understand why the federal government should decide with whom I ought to associate. But back to "So what?" Among its charms is that there is no answer to it, other than huffing and puffing and indignant expostulation. All of these amuse me. Used frequently, "So what?"would shut up people who badly need to shut up, or else force them to think. Not likely, as most apparently cannot. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:07 AM | Your Say (3)
March 4, 2015
Canadians Are Spocking Their Fives
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 PM | Your Say (3)
At Wesleyan University, if you’re oppressed, there’s a “safe space” for you.
Just when you’d gotten the hang of LGBTQ, they go and triple the number of categories. Wesleyan University is now offering a “safe space” (formerly known as a “dorm”) for students of the LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM persuasions, or, for those who need things spelled out, for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Flexual, Asexual, Genderfuck, Polyamourous, Bondage/Disciple, Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism student acolytes. If you are so heteronormative as to see the word “FAG” in the center of that jumble, you will surely not be allowed into the “safe space,” known as Open House. Not Your Parents' Open House
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:12 PM | Your Say (9)
“More research is needed,” say all the people who make money from such pointless research.
It should also be noted, for the benefit of credulous materialists, that the time and money invested in gathering and analyzing inconsequential health statistics subtracts from serious medical research into suspected causes of disease — including the hard and focused epidemiology that can usefully assist.Resources for such work are always finite, yet almost everything I see flagged in the media is an example of resources bled away. A deeper note needs to be sounded, however, against the consistent tendency of all this “pop,” or more precisely, “crap science.” The target will ever be some innocent human pleasure; genuinely sinful ones with direct and potentially grave health consequences (sexual promiscuity, for instance, or sodomy), are shied away from, for fear of the politically correct. Cutting down : Essays in Idleness
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:24 PM | Your Say (1)
If we sat down to think about what’s really important to us,
we might come up with qualities like fairness, kindness, responsibility, loyalty, and mutual respect. It seems like all of the major problems in the world are caused by a small contingent of bad apples, who simply shun these important qualities and ruin it for kind, responsible, honest and fair people like ourselves.I think this is wishful thinking. The truth is that all of us — even those of us who feel like good people — are almost comically terrible at achieving these qualities, yet we expect them as a matter of course from each other and ourselves. Our incredulous response to scandal and selfishness suggests that we believe any of us could, at any moment, snap out of our self-interest and dysfunction, and make the world the place it should have been all along. This Just In: Humans Are Bad at Everything That’s Important
Posted by gvanderleun at 6:17 PM | Your Say (1)
March 3, 2015
Nimoy: Spock Before Spock
is of the character Roger, in the American film version of Jean Genet's The Balcony, directed by Joseph Strickland (1963). While fierce combat among various parties in a civil war is raging outside a brothel, inside the prostitutes are acting out various fantasies with the patrons; the chief of police, played by Peter Falk, sets up one of the customers, played by Nimoy, in a scenario with the brothel's accountant, who is wearing a glittering, diaphanous gown, tempting him in a stark, rocky setting that evokes one of the planetary landscapes found later in Star Trek. The Smart Set: The Undiscovered Country - March 2, 2015
Posted by gvanderleun at 6:05 PM | Your Say (2)
Sweet Briar Girls
But, though they were obviously the offspring of wealthier and more socially prominent families than most of ours, they were also clearly the products of a rural culture, and were more interested in talking about their horses and sport than in calculatingly sizing you up, in the manner of Vassar, as a potential husband and breadwinner. I remember having more fun at the Sweet Briar mixer than at any of the others I attended that year. Never Yet Melted ｻ Sweet Briar To Close Next August
Posted by gvanderleun at 5:33 PM | Your Say (7)
So it pulls away from the station and into the tunnel and I’m thinking this can’t possibly get any worse.
Then our conductor starts to make an announcement about delays or something but I can barely understand him because he’s mumbling like an idiot.And that’s when I notice that we’re now above ground, which is odd because this line doesn’t normally go over a bridge. Except I realize we’re not on a bridge—we’re on a barge heading out to sea. Then the conductor says something else, and this time I barely make out the words. He says, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are being held momentarily on a barge heading out to sea. Thank you for your patience.” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Sorry I’m Late, But This Morning’s Commute Was a Killer.
Posted by gvanderleun at 5:25 PM | Your Say (5)
I'm installing this in all the supermarkets in a 20 mile radius of my house
Posted by gvanderleun at 2:03 PM | Your Say (10)
“Picking fights and causing trouble....”
In late January, Chinese authorities announced that they are considering formal charges against Pu Zhiqiang, one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, who has been in detention since last May.Pu’s friends fear that even a life sentence is possible. The crime? “Picking fights and causing trouble,” and other related offenses, on his microblog. Even amid a growing wave of repression under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the outlandish nature of these pending charges stands out. Pu’s short, Twitter-like posts to his Weibo account are unusual for their cleverness, but do not really stand out by the standards of the Chinese Internet. After the authorities’ list of allegedly criminal posts was leaked, comments like this appeared: “What’s so new? We’ve been talking like this for years” and “If these are crimes, can the prisons hold a few million more?” If the case results in a criminal conviction and a lengthy prison term, the effects on China’s Internet will be devastating. The casual sarcasm that has been the coin of its realm will suddenly become perilous, and self-censorship will become even more pervasive than it already is. Such an outcome, though, would be quite in line with the general chill on dissent that Xi Jinping has brought to China during the last two years. China: Inventing a Crime by Perry Link | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books
Posted by gvanderleun at 1:18 PM | Your Say (3)
What Is America’s Worst Restaurant Chain?
And the winner is.....
Posted by gvanderleun at 10:31 AM | Your Say (19)
And so say we all....
Sometimes I think this blog could consist entirely of daily links to the writings of Richard Fernandez and some choice excerpts, and it would be a net gain for my readers. neo-neocon Catch up with Fernandez She's right. If there is a single genius revealed by blogging, it is FernandezPosted by gvanderleun at 10:14 AM | Your Say (4)
Archaeologists find untouched ruins in their search for the Lost City of the Monkey God
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:58 AM | Your Say (2)
Russia: Another Dead Democrat
Before the murder Nemtsov had dinner at a restaurant on Red Square, just minutes from the bridge, with a female companion (who was with him when he was shot and survived the shooting unscathed).It would have been impossible to know beforehand when they would leave the restaurant and where they would go next, without tapping into Nemtsov’s cell phone or lingering in the area waiting for them, which would have immediately attracted the attention of the ubiquitous surveillance cameras. (And of course Nemtsov, as a major opposition figure with a history of antagonizing the government, was likely under surveillance himself.) The killers were highly professional, judging from the accurate shots in Nemtsov’s heart, lungs, and head. They must have been confident of their impunity to act so boldly. The newspaper Kommersant has reported that the video surveillance cameras were not operating at the place of the shooting. They were allegedly “under repair.” by Amy Knight | NYRblog
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:46 AM | Your Say (2)
“One day you’ll know what age feels like—that is, if you don’t die trying.”
The young’uns these days have no qualms about mocking the elderly, the near-elderly, and anyone at least a year or two older than they are.And they do it in ways that would be considered unforgivably hateful if directed against, say, a gay black midget. Hating people merely because they plopped out of their mother’s punani a dozen or more revolutions around the sun before you did is not only tolerated among the young—it often seems to be encouraged. We witness endless torrents of scalding verbal acid flung at “old white men” whose demographic demise is celebrated as a historical inevitability and a triumph of justice rather than, say, some kind of quietly orchestrated genocide. -- Is it a Hate Crime to Call Madonna a Shriveled-Up Old Hag?
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:18 AM | Your Say (2)
March 2, 2015
He's Got Some Balls
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:57 PM | Your Say (2)
In the custodial state, however, the cops function as hyper-violent helicopter parents.
If a citizen is doing something the authorities think is unsafe or uncooperative,the state sends in a swat team as a “show of force” or worse. There are over 50,000 SWAT raids a year in America. Most are for things like serving a summons or collecting non-violent parolees. The argument is the cops don’t know what they are getting into so for their safety they send in Seal Team Six.
This is the logic of the managerial class. Police departments have arrived at a bizarre sense of self-awareness where they no longer see themselves as part of the community. They stand apart from those they watch, like game keepers in a preserve. While their job is to keep the animals safe, their first priority is their own safety above all else, fueled by a deep distrust of those they supervise. The Show of Force at The Z Blog
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:30 PM | Your Say (5)
Here you see the hive mind at work.
At some level, the author and his [Envirowhacko] coreligionists believe that the presence of even one non-believer keeps them from reaching the promised land.Just as ISIS is focused on purifying their lands by ridding it of every last infidel, the modern liberal obsesses over the dwindling number of non-believers in the West. The other fascinating thing is that these utopians never take yes for an answer. That’s because they can’t. What animates their faith is the struggle. Gaia Worship at The Z Blog
Posted by gvanderleun at 9:24 PM | Your Say (1)
A Target Rich Environment: Beyond Weslyan's LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM Safe House
Despite the seemingly all-inclusive aspirations of the LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM acronym, the university recognizes that not every student will feel comfortable in this new “safe space.”To accommodate still further variations in student interest, Wesleyan’s Office of Residential Life offers a variety of unique living options. Farm House provides students “interested in the politics and culture of food production and sustainability a place to cultivate a mutualistic relationship with the earth that provides them with their lunch everyday.” Residents of Earth House can “espouse the values and principles of social ecology, deep ecology, and eco-feminism” while simultaneously “challenging traditional social structures and replacing them with new, creative and egalitarian alternatives.” African-American upperclassmen are welcome to apply to live in Malcolm X House, where they can dedicate themselves to “the exploration and celebration of the cultural heritage of the African Diaspora, both for themselves and for the larger Wesleyan community.” Turath House is for Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim students looking “to articulate their views and express and affirm their culture and religion without fear of harassment and discrimination.” Not Your Parents' Open House by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal 26 February 2015
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:09 PM | Your Say (4)
The basalt principle of current American governance is that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time.
The smart can safely be ignored.People with capacious and well-stocked mental larders are statistically insignificant. Thus candidates campaign by grinning and smirking, hiding whatever intelligence they may have, and professing sympathy for orphans and the downtrodden. In France, a candidate with the mind of a lawn chair would be held in contempt, but in America he is thought to be of the people, and authentic. Unfortunately, he is. Fred On Everything
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:29 AM | Your Say (5)
"Maybe it pays to pick a fight with Obama."
Netanyahu more popular than Obama in the USA, according to Gallup 45% of Americans approve of Benjamin Netanyahu -- only 44% approve of Barack Obama, Gallup polls found.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:43 AM | Your Say (1)
March 1, 2015
The plant has the capacity to process 400,000 pounds of Dell's Maraschino Cherries a week.
Once investigators discovered a hidden room behind a flimsy wall in a basement storage room, they uncovered a grow-op that could hold 1,200 plants. When investigators unearthed a basement full of luxury cars, suspicions were aroused, and they then found some "suspicious shelving," which turned out to be a fake wall held fast by magnets. They opened the door and the rich, rank odor of marijuana burst from it.That's when Mondella, who had been cooperating in the hours-long "inspection," ran into a nearby bathroom, locked the door, told his sister "Take care of my kids," and shot himself in the head.Maraschino Cherry Mogul Kills Self As Cops Discover Huge Marijuana Grow | Alternet
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:45 PM | Your Say (2)
The New York Times readership, in a nutshell
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:20 PM | Your Say (14)
We have the responsiveness of a corpse
We are conflict-averse. We want to be left alone but by ironic consequence, we will not be. As a whole we have tended to confuse Christianity with passivity, and civility with letting things slide, as if the whole message of the Gospels and the entire content of tolerant civilization consisted of taking punches on the chin and begging for more. Mein Kampf in the Piety Stall | Belmont ClubPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:20 AM | Your Say (3)