You Could Have Answered That Email, But NO.

Too late:

GENEVA — Swiss authorities on Thursday lifted a 12-year freeze on nearly seven million dollars in assets the late Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko held in Switzerland, allowing their return to his family.

Top One John Hawkins Writing Technique

July 14, 2009 Five Criticisms of George Bush That Could Be Better Applied to Barack Obama

June 30, 2009 3 Reasons To Stop Obsessing Over Obama's Birth Certificate

June 23, 2009 Five More Myths the Left Has Created About Itself

June 16, 2009 5 Myths the Left Has Created About Itself

June 9, 2009 The Party Of Yes: 6 Ways Democrats Are Hurting America

June 2, 2009 5 Character Flaws That Are Destroying America's Future

May 26, 2009 20 Hypocrisies Of Liberalism

May 19, 2009 The Six Problems With Modern Liberalism

May 12, 2009 Seven Issues Where the GOP Should Adopt the "Party of No" Label

May 5, 2009 Twenty Small Ways to Help Get Our Country Back on Track

Apr 28, 2009 20 Great Moments from Obama's First 100 Days!

Apr 21, 2009 The Top Ten Reasons Conservatism is Dead as Disco!

Apr 14, 2009 25 Examples of Everyday Evil

Apr 7, 2009 Seven Reasons Why the GOP Comeback Will Begin in 2010

Mar 31, 2009 The Top Seven Techniques Liberals Use to Lie About Conservatives

Mar 24, 2009 Barack Obama's Top 5 Bart Simpson Moments

Mar 17, 2009 Five Ways that Insanity Has Become the New Normal in America

Mar 10, 2009 The 10 Biggest Amateur Mistakes By the Obama Administration So Far

Mar 3, 2009 Stealing the Baby's Milk Money to Pay for Viagra

Feb 24, 2009 Fifteen Reasons I'm Already Tired of the Obama Era

Feb 17, 2009 Six Reasons Deficits Will Doom The Dems In 2010

Feb 10, 2009 The Top Six Problems With the Stimulus

Feb 3, 2009 Why the Liberal View of Government is Wrong

Jan 27, 2009 Fight Back Against the Tolerance Fascists

Jan 20, 2009 Endangering American Democracy to Go After Bush

Jan 16, 2009 A "You Suck" List Part Two

Jan 9, 2009 A "You Suck" List

Jan 2, 2009

The Twenty Biggest Stories Of 2008

Listening at Work

Iran

The BBC World Service is doing a series on Iran's relationship with the West, starting with the revolution. Part one is worth a listen.

Personal Stimulus

Watch the squirming in comments over a question to St. Ronnie:

Here is my question Mr. Reagan; as a good conservative I don’t believe in handouts or welfare. I think the government is spending us into socialism and pushing us towards rampant inflation. At the same time the money Mr. Obama is handing out to buy cars is my money! Should I take the $4500 from the government or should I stand on principle and leave the $4500 discount on the table?

Are there similar agonies about the use of the sidewalk?

The Spirit of Rebellion

Mark Steyn:

The transformation of developed societies - either into old folks' homes (like Japan) or semi-Islamized dystopias (like Amsterdam, Brussels, etc) - will lead, in fact, to emigration. A young German or Japanese circa 2040 will have no reason whatsoever to stay in his native land and have most of his income confiscated in a vain attempt to prop up an unsustainable geriatric welfare system.

FUCK YOU MOM AND DAD!

I Suggest "Pornographic"

The BBC informs us that

An Irish cinema showing controversial film Bruno has taken a novel approach to attracting customers, warning them that the film is "vile".

Well, That Was Tedious

Moving and name-changing and all. Seems to work though.

Enjoy!

The Stamp of Approval

On the one hand, peace between Israel and Palestine would contribute to stability in the Middle East.

On the other hand, war between Israel and Palestine would contribute to stability in the Middle East.

Let the Photoshopping Begin

John "Humbert" Derbyshire will soon have a new book out, and I gotta say I like the cover:

The "doom" is apparently a running gag.

Via mikey:

I Have No Bridge and I Must Troll

Attacked!

God, I feel so good now. Got it all out. Okay, let’s hear it in the comments section now. No holding back. That includes you, Unrighteous Bubba and Cognitive Dissonant. Tell us about all the kinky things you like to do with tinfoil, Vaseline and vacuum cleaners while watching sick online German porn in your mothers’ basements

Biggus Dickus Is Angered!

Roy takes Rod Dreher to task:

The other has to do with Dreher's idea of life in general. He's alarmingly sympathetic to plural marriages between/among nymphets and middle-aged men in a religious context. But the notion of sexual fantasy nauseates him. With God, all things are possible indeed: if a grown man picks the right faith he can live like Humbert Humbert minus the guilt, but if he or anyone looks at Miss November not only is he doomed, but so is society.

So too does this gentleman:

Rod Dreher irresponsibly drags the "problem of pornography" onto his blog and then attempts to hide the mess behind a few utterly boring "essay" questions. Typical Dreher. Bring up a problem that is at the root of the soul-annihilation of an entire generation, hope people will applaud you for noticing (and being "above it all, really"), and proceed to render the gravity of the problem vulnerable to the most basic statistical and narcissistic critiques.

Why yes, thank you for guessing, smart person!

It's RIMWELL again!



LATE-BREAKING BUTTDATE!!!

A dynamic logo for a dynamic personality:

Nostalgia

Subsidized Blogriculture

Mark Steyn spies this:

The closing of a newspaper means a little piece of democracy has died.

Mark Steyn responds thus:

This kind of indestructible, fatuous narcissism is a big part of what's wrong. What other industry conflates itself with the very legitimacy of the state? If you're insisting on your indispensability even as millions dispense with you, you're the one with the problem.

That makes me want to donate money to the National Review which could not survive in the marketplace without the blah blah blah.

Bicycle Race

Antonio Ruiz, 1938.

Philadelphia Museum of Art.

How Dare They!

Billy is outraged!

Last but not least comes Madonna (who just screams “family values”). During the 2008 campaign, she used a photo montage during one of her performances to compare John McCain to Hitler.

NOBODY ON OUR TEAM WOULD BE SO CRASS.

In comments to the article (which is entitled "Hollywood's Oxymoronic Definition of 'Liberal Tolerance'"):

Here's the sitch. These fragile ego'd pretenders in Hollywood feel guilty because they know they know what they do is a joke and yet they get paid well and are fawned over. They feel bad because they play act all day and do nothing of importance yet earn much more than people of real significance. They also are aware of what dirt-bags they are (remember "casting couches" -- Think they went away?) and due to a non-belief in God are unable to ever feel forgiven for their shortfalls. To fight and appease this nagging guilt, they get involved in social causes. Further, most all of them have massive insecurities and so they cannot tolerate anyone who shines a light on their immorality. As such they surround themselves with other dirt-bags, including a dirt-bag President who will not threaten to expose their immoralities and shortcomings.

Also the site is entitled Big Hollywood, because conservatives are supposed to like entertainment just like regular folks.

The Human Shrub

The world needs heroes.

Corrupt bureaucrats cannot stand the shining green light of justice aimed at their actions:

Martin Hunt, the council committee member for parks and gardens, said the only reason containers were bereft of flowers was because the planting season had yet to begin.

"If the Human Shrub is crossing dual carriageways in order to make a political point then I think he is being very irresponsible," he told the East Anglian Daily Times.

"He could get himself injured or killed, or even worse could lead to someone else being injured or killed. At least when he was outside the town hall he was amusingly stupid. This is not funny at all."

Quartz Composer

I've been fiddling with Blender once in a while, which is free, but the learning curve is steep and I tend to give up after extruding a sphere or two. While I was looking up some related material I remembered Max/MSP which had a nifty kinda modular interface but costs oodles of money for honest law-abiding citizens such as myself. For some reason I looked that up on the Wikipedia and I find I have a low-budget modular video synthesizer right on my Mac. Quartz Composer is a fucking snap to use.

Share with me the fruits of my labours:



Autoplaying and looping YouTube is awfully fun.

Serendipity

Here is Michael S. Rulle Jr.:

He is manager of his very own financial firm and loves the Red Hot Chili Peppers:

I have been trying to figure out how to work the Red Hot Chile Peppers’ (RHCP)* 1999 hit, Californication, into a blog.

This is a wonderful coincidence, because prior to moseying over to Big Hollywood to nutpick I had spent upwards of twenty seconds trying to figure out how to work this picture "into a blog":



Shall we finish up the first paragraph?

I had known and liked the song for some time. Who doesn’t?** But other than simply liking the song and having a general sense of what it was about, I had never listened closely. Of course, the title itself has almost the entire meaning of the song within it. I had recently read economist Russell Robert’s Hayekian novel, “The Price of Everything.” It is a simple yet spiritual characterization of the mystery of what Hayek called the “spontaneous order” in human organization.

What follows are a couple thousand words of similar character and spontaneity in an attempt by Mr. Suit and Tie Guy to have a more dignified midlife crisis than his buddy who got the clap. After a painful verse-by-verse examination of the lyrics, we wind up here:

Lets put it all together. We know this “Californication” thing is “bad” but what is it? Californication is libertinism, crass materialism, solipsistic interactions and spiritual emptiness. It is our modern secular world, in short. Who knew RHCP shared something in common with cultural conservatives?

Like Hitler, Anthony Kiedis is fond of children and dogs.

*My gratitude to the author for clarifying what might have been a confusing acronym later in the article.
**Me.

Chernobyl

Dave Brockington has a post up at LGM about Chernobyl tourism. (I'll be damned: spell-check likes Chernobyl.)

One of our party wanted to go, but our schedule was full and some of us were opposed, myself included. I had no wish to become irradiated or have to replace everything I was wearing. The lure of of inhabited land turned feral - not just returned to nature but poisonous - remains pretty powerful though, and I still regret not going, much as I know if I was presented with the chance again I still wouldn't take it.

Below is a picture from the terrific-by-Ukrainian-standards Chernobyl museum in Kiev (photography not allowed, dumb tourists cut some slack). These men who look so pleased at their triumph over the reactor died shortly thereafter of course.