The Joy of Hate focuses on the hypocrisy of modern tolerance — that it thinly disguises a growing, acceptable intolerance for the things that made America super-awesome. The origin of this phony intolerance springs from one source: the desire to be cool. Everything done in life these days springs from a fear of dorkiness. I called this "dorkophobia," and every time you use it, I get three dollars. Despite the fact that it’s the uncool who make the trains run on time, it's the cool to get the cred.Consigned to the ranks of the uncool ONCE AGAIN:
The definition of cool: mass popularity without much achievement.Looking for cool? GO NO FURTHER:
It's how Obama got elected. Ask anyone who voted for him, "Why did you do it?" and the convoluted, wide-eyed answer will ultimately be translated into: "He's cool and that other guy wasn't." The media pushed this to the hilt; and much of the public bought it; giving stuff away is cool — especially when it's others people stuff — and perceived as philanthropic.Following the "it's always projection" rule here creates a sad sad picture of a sad sad man...so let's let this Painter of Right fill in the details:
So what is perceived as cool, when it's really the opposite?I read about that in Vice!
- Bureaucrats spawned in teacher's lounges chiseling at your income, to the cheers of a pliant media
- Creating dependency as a romantic lifestyle, independent of achievementThat, friends, is comedic clarity on the order of Cal Thomas after a blood transfusion. There's more of course, but I'm tired of this and there are other things to do. So:
- Ridiculing women, minorities, and gays who reject the culture of dependency
- Fake work that doesn't require building, moving or doing things. In 2008, a community organizer beat a war hero who spent years in a prison camp. Apparently that's cool.
- Movements that reject American values in favor of American guilt (Occupy)
- Anti-Americanism as a needy appeasement to our international adversaries
- Hero worship of celebrities based on artificial edginess (Johnny Depp is not really a pirate)
Why aren't conservatives cool? Why are they perceived as intolerant when it's the other side who are truly the hateful ones? It's a fair question.It's true! They are the tolerant ones! Whether you're slaveholder or slave a conservative will LEAVE YOU ALONE.
Fresh off her smash-hit performances on five different talk shows in which she adamantly blamed an obscure video for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, CBS News reports that President Obama is likely to name U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.Yes yes, Benghazi something something, and boy isn't Susan Rice awful for showing up in the halls of government with the same last name as the GREATEST SECRETARY OF STATE EVER!
Not only is she credible and telegenic, but as CBS News notes, White House sources say the president feels he should be able to select any cabinet officials he wants “and they say that Rice has performed well on Iran and North Korea.”
No word on whether whether that assessment reflects the progress of Iran’s nuclear program or its attack on our drone.
best of craigslist > asheville > Wanna break my Star Wars cherry? Originally Posted: Sun, 1 Jan 16:47 ESTMade it to version 13 of the couple-thousand RSS feeds: still getting rid of Sharepoint programming hints while adding things that are, you know, interesting. To me.
Wanna break my Star Wars cherry?
Date: 2012-01-01, 4:47PM EST
Yes, it's true, I've never seen "Star Wars." I was 14 years old when the original came out (you do the math) and somehow I never managed to see it, or any of the sequels.
It's time. I'm ready to hand in my Star Wars V-card.
I know this might seem like pretty hot stuff to some of you, introducing a Star Wars virgin to the film that shaped you into the person that you are, developed your sense of virtue and cultivated your concepts of right and wrong. Imagine how hot will it be to sit next to me as I experience -- for the first time! -- the foundation upon which you've not only built your entire personality, but with which you've cultivated the purpose of your heart and the direction of your soul. It will be no less than miraculous, I'm sure. A spiritual epiphany.
This is a one-time offer. I mean, once it's busted, there's no getting my Star Wars cherry back, ya know? So I want it to be good. I want my first time to be memorable. Special. I want the build-up, the excitement, the breathless anticipation, all of it. I want you to tease me with your superior Star Wars wisdom until I'm begging you to please please PLEASE put it in, put it in!! Put the DVD in the player and start the movie! I want you to hold my hand as I submit for the first time to the marvel and wonder of this grand event. I might even be okay with some costumes and role playing before the movie starts, but I'd have to be really comfortable with you. Size matters (no matter what they tell you), so obscenely large screens to the front of the line, and surround sound is a must.
So how about it? Do you think you are the one to cure me of my Star Wars purity? Tell me why.
**Please note this is NOT an offer or request for any sort of sexual activity but I probably won't want to see you again, which is why I consider this a casual encounter.**
January 23, 2012This site is called Smart Software.
Commenting System
My commenting system was broken for over a year as all comments were going into the spam folder. I am aware of this issue and will respond to comments in previous blog posts. Sorry about the inconvenience.
Accepted wisdom will have us believe St. Louis' infamous Pruitt-Igoe public housing development was destined for failure. Designed by George Hellmuth and World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki (of Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth), the 33-building complex opened in 1954, its Modernist towers touted as a remedy to overcrowding in the city’s tenements. Rising crime, neglected facilities, and fleeing tenants led to its demolition—in a spectacular series of implosions—less than two decades later. In the popular narrative, bad public policy, bad architecture, and bad people doomed Pruitt-Igoe, and it became an emblem of failed social welfare projects across the country. But director Chad Freidrichs challenges that convenient and oversimplified assessment in his documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, opening in limited release January 20.A report from Brazil, where philosophy became a required high-school subject in 2008:
That’s not surprising, considering that the 2008 law is above all a political project. In 1971 the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 eliminated philosophy from high schools. Teachers, professors in departments of education, and political activists championed its return, while most academic philosophers were either indifferent or suspicious. The dictatorship seems to have understood philosophy’s potential to create engaged citizens; it replaced philosophy with a course on Moral and Civic Education and one on Brazil’s Social and Political Organization (“to inculcate good manners and patriotic values and to justify the political order of the generals,” one UFBA colleague recalls from his high school days).Hmm, Adobe Edge Animate is free for now if you sign up for their Creative Cloud service (which is also free). As with Google - which I hypocritically use in all sorts of ways - I feel bad encouraging them.
The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality. Can it do even more? Can it teach students to question and challenge the foundations of society itself?
With respect, the analysis below is wishful thinking. Tuesday was a profoundly consequential night (more on this in my weekend column) and to pretend that it was a “status quo” election that the incumbent merely “survived” is not helpful. J T Young writes:So, Republicans should concentrate on long-term offerings, which are...
Politically, Obama won without a mandate and becomes a lame duck shortly.Are you sure he knows that? He didn’t have a “mandate” for half the stuff he did in his first term, but he did it anyway – shoving Obamacare through on one last bought vote rather than focusing on jobs, etc. That’s the main reason his re-election was so narrow – because he spent his first term concentrating only on things that, whatever their immediate downside, offer his team serious long-term advantage. Our guys might usefully learn from that: Too often Republicans, even when they win, are content to be in office rather than in power.
The interesting question is whether he has an evidence or argument to support his claim (here presented without either) that the libertarian movement is a hiding place for reactionary privilege-seekers.
One oughtn't just say that, without backing it up somehow.
Last month, an anonymous blogger popped up on WordPress and Twitter, aiming a giant flamethrower at Mac-friendly writers like John Gruber, Marco Arment and MG Siegler. As he unleashed wave after wave of spittle-flecked rage at "Apple puppets" and "Cupertino douchebags," I was reminded again of John Gabriel's theory about the effects of online anonymity.FYI, as they say.
Out of curiosity, I tried to see who the mystery blogger was.
He was using all the ordinary precautions for hiding his identity -- hiding personal info in the domain record, using a different IP address from his other sites, and scrubbing any shared resources from his WordPress install.
Nonetheless, I found his other blog in under a minute -- a thoughtful site about technology and local politics, detailing his full name, employer, photo, and family information. He worked for the local government, and if exposed, his anonymous blog could have cost him his job.
I didn't identify him publicly, but let him quietly know that he wasn't as anonymous as he thought he was. He stopped blogging that evening, and deleted the blog a week later.
So, how did I do it? The unlucky blogger slipped up and was ratted out by an unlikely source: Google Analytics.
"I don't really care about politics. What I care about is how the pissant goings-on of political people affects the important things in this life such as family, comfort, peace, security, art, beauty, freedom and happiness. And all of those things are further imperiled by last night's results."In her place I might update the blogroll then, but I'm not one to talk as mine has a dead fish in it. BOO HOO!
Says Palladian, expressing something close to what I've been saying around Meadhouse since about 8 p.m. last night: It's time to stop talking about the election and have our lives be about love and beauty.
It takes a day like today to put all of that into focus. Cultivate your garden?! I've seen the photos of where she and Meade live. C'mon. Many of us would love to live surrounded by all those expensive toys and have the summer off to order a pile of books for the Kindle and take a few leisurely vacations.Ann responds as only Ann can:
The class (and income) issue rarely comes up here. I think it's about time we hashed this out.
As others have pointed out above, Ann's cavalier, gather-ye-rosebuds response is predicated on being financially stable for the rest of her life. She has the good life NOW and will have it till the day she dies (or almost).
I'd said "cultivate your garden" in a comment in that thread. It's a reference to Voltaire's advice in "Candide" — damn, I typo'd "candidate"! — where it's not just advice for the comfortably affluent. Here, you can put it in your Kindle — in English — for $0.00 — absolutely free. You can read the greatest books ever written and never run out of reading material — all free.It had never occurred to me that you could both be financially secure until you die AND be a cheapskate. How could I have been so blind?
And I have the summer off because I choose not to teach during the summer. I choose not to make more money. As for Meade's economic choices, you don't know what they are, and I choose not to invade our privacy by explaining the structure of the economic unit that is our household. But we do, in many ways, choose noncommercial activities over moneymaking things, and we take advantage of the wealth that we have built up in our lives by enjoying our home and the natural beauty of our state and our country. We buy a state park sticker for our car every year and county ski and bike trail passes, and we never run out of incredibly cheap things to do.
ANDREW C. MCCARTHYAll predictions edited to get to the point. Tsk tsk, Dr. Helen.
Mitt Romney wins … decisively.
– Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor and New York Times bestselling author.
ROGER L. SIMON
Nevertheless the part of me that is not superstitious trusts the one person who knows more about elections than anyone I know — my friend Michael Barone. Michael says Romney will win. So I’m choosing to believe him, when my blood sugar is okay anyway.
– Roger L. Simon is the co-founder and CEO of PJ Media.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
I think Romney will win by a point and the Republicans will come up one or two seats short in the Senate.
– Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.
CLAUDIA ROSETT
It seems safe to predict that if President Obama wins, it will be close. If there’s a landslide coming, it’s for Romney. But apart from that, I’d be lying to suggest that I could with any confidence foretell which way this election will go.
– Claudia Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.
ROGER KIMBALL
Romney is going to win, big time. Why? I can tell you in three syllables and a few numbers. The syllables are: Ben-gha-zi.
– In addition to his work at PJ Media and The New Criterion, Roger Kimball is the publisher of Encounter Books, a purveyor of serious non-fiction titles from a broadly construed conservative perspective.
ZOMBIE
Who is going to win the presidency? I don’t know. Furthermore, nobody else does either. Everyone is biased; everyone has an agenda. Even those who imagine themselves to be neutral.
MICHAEL WALSH
Romney by an electoral college landslide — more than 300 votes.
– Michael Walsh is weekly op-ed columnist for the New York Post and a regular contributor to National Review Online.
DR. HELEN SMITH
That said, two people have changed my pessimism about the election. First, my husband Glenn, who has never wavered in his faith that Romney will win, even months and months ago when it seemed impossible. We were at dinner one night with an entrepreneur and reader of Glenn’s blog who said that Instapundit was the only place he could go that made it sound like Romney had a chance. Another place I turned for encouragement was Roger Kimball’s blog. He also believes that Romney will win and win big.
And now as I see the crowds and the momentum that Romney is building, I have hope that Romney might win, just as Glenn and Roger Kimball do. I am naturally a pessimist at times, but I predict (hope, pray?) that the American people will not let the great American experiment go down the drain that easily. I predict and hope for a Romney win.
But even if my prediction doesn’t happen, I take comfort in the knowledge that there are a great many people in this country who will continue to fight to keep the American dream alive and will not let one man and his enablers destroy the vision that has brought prosperity to so many.
– Dr. Helen Smith is a forensic psychologist and a distinguished writer who has written for a variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ
If I were to guess, there’s a 50% chance it will be Romney by a squeaker, a 30% chance it will be Romney by a landslide, and a 20% chance Obama will pull it off.
– Richard Fernandez has been a software developer for nearly 15 years.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS
Romney will win because Catholic voters, particularly in the belt from Harrisburg to Minnesota, break for Romney. Obama will lose the election because he invaded one of the most sacred American traditions — religious liberty.
– J. Christian Adams is an election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.
DAVID P. GOLDMAN
The Senate is virtually a lost cause due to Republican errors in Kansas and Indiana. The presidency is a toss-up.
– David P. Goldman joined PJM after nearly 10 years of anonymous essaying at Asia Times Online and two years of editing and writing at First Things.
ANDREW KLAVAN
I believe Mitt Romney is going to win by a fairly large margin.
– Andrew Klavan is an award-winning author, screenwriter, and media commentator.
ION MIHAI PACEPA
There is no doubt in my mind that the overwhelming majority of Americans will vote for Mitt Romney.
– Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking official ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc.
DIOCESE OF GREEN BAYVia Le Show, something that must be completely unrelated:
P.O. Box 23825 • Green Bay, WI 54305-3825 • 920-272-8194 • FAX 920-435-1330
OFFICE OF THE BISHOP
October 24, 2012
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
AN IMPORTANT MOMENT
It is almost time to vote and to make our choices for president and other political offices both local and national.
You have often heard it said that this is a turning point in our country’s history and I could not agree more.
The Church is not a political organism, but as you hopefully have learned in the US Bishops Faithful Citizenship material (which we have made widely available to you in the parishes, in the Compass and on-line), the Church has the responsibility to speak out regarding moral issues, especially on those issues that impact the “common good” and the “dignity of the human person.”
I would like to review some of the principles to keep in mind as you approach the voting booth to complete your ballot. The first is the set of non-negotiables. These are areas that are “intrinsically evil” and cannot be supported by anyone who is a believer in God or the common good or the dignity of the human person.
They are:
1. abortion
2. euthanasia
3. embryonic stem cell research
4. human cloning
5. homosexual “marriage”
These are intrinsically evil. “A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program that contradicts fundamental contents of faith and morals.” Intrinsically evil actions are those which have an evil object. In other words, an act is evil by its very nature and to choose an action of this type puts one in grave moral danger.
Jury awards $500,000 to boy groped by priest
By Francis McCabe
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Posted: Nov. 2, 2012 | 1:27 p.m.
Updated: Nov. 3, 2012 | 2:41 a.m.
A jury awarded $500,000 to a Las Vegas man who said the Green Bay, Wis., Catholic Diocese was negligent for sending a priest, who groped him at age 13, to Las Vegas.
Miho Nishizumi begins life at a new school, quickly making friends with two of her classmates, Saori Takebe and Hana Isuzu. Just then, Miho is approached by the student council about participating in Panzer Warfare, the art of operating tanks, which is something she tries to avoid doing. She mentions to Saori and Hana that she had traumatic memories of doing Panzer Warfare in her family and came to this school specifically to avoid it, only to learn it is being resurrected. After a school presentation of Panzer Warfare and the retorted benefits, both Saori and Hana take interest in taking it up, but Miho can't bring herself to join them, so they decide to go with whatever she decides. However, the student council objects to this and threatens to expel them if they object further. Realizing how much Saori and Hana are doing for her, Miho decides to take up Panzer Warfare alongside them.You don't get over your traumatic memories of family Panzer Warfare in an instant.
Telehack is the most interesting game I've played in the last year... a game that most users won't realize is a game at all.Or maybe I've posted about this before. It's a foggy-brained morning.
It's a tour de force hack — an interactive pastiche of 1980s computer history, tying together public archives of Usenet newsgroups, BBS textfiles, software archives, and historical computer networks into a multiplayer adventure game.
Among its features:
The entire project was engineered by "Forbin," an anonymous Silicon Valley engineer named after the protagonist of Colossus: The Forbin Project. Like the chief engineer of the film, Forbin's created a networked supercomputer that defies all expectations. (Hopefully it won't gain sentience and enslave the human race.)
- Connect to over 24,000 simulated hosts, with logged-in ghost users with historically-accurate names culled from UUCP network maps.
- Hacking metagames, using simplified wardialers and rootkit tools.
- User classes that act as an achievements system.
- Group chat with
relay, and one-on-one chat withsendortalk.- Reconstructed Usenet archives, including the Wiseman collection.
- A BASIC interpreter with historical programs from the SIMTEL archives.
- Standalone playable games, including Rogue and a Z-code interpreter for text adventure games like Adventure and Zork.
- Hidden hosts and programs, discoverable only by hacking Telehack itself.
I had to know more. With the help of Paul Ford, I interviewed Forbin about the project — using Telehack'ssendutility, naturally. Read on for the full interview about his motivations, how it's built, and why he's chosen to remain anonymous.
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey around 1917. The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to sharpen them; some also painted their fingernails and teeth with the glowing substance.
Five of the women challenged their employer in a case that established the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers.
One of my items concerns a hot controversy in northern Wisconsin — where a teacher handed out a math assignment. The assignment asked the question, “What happened after Chief Short Cake died?” Then you solved some problems. And, in so doing, you were shown the answer: “Squaw bury Short Cake.”Stupid liberals. Jay thinks they should chill out! Know WHO ELSE might think stupid liberals should chill out? Ha ha, not Hitler: guys who burn witches.
The teacher was flayed for a hate crime, basically: that word “squaw.” He was even condemned in the London Daily Mail, the world’s most popular newspaper, as I understand it!
Some of my mail might say, “Whatever ‘squaw’ was in the past, it’s now an epithet on par with the N-word.” I don’t really buy it. But I realize that words are subject to fashion as hemlines are — probably even more so. And if the custodians of the culture declare a word radioactive: well, I guess it is.
In the column, I say, “Society can be very puritanical, about certain things. The puritanicalness doesn’t change; only the ‘things’ do, if you know what I mean.” If the Salem witch-burners were alive today, and beheld our reaction to the Wisconsin teacher, they might say, “Whoa, chill, dudes. Ease off. Life’s too short, you know?”
