Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Other Unpleasantness

Charles Kesler:
Who knows what Bill would advise regarding our current contentions. He liked to surprise, whether by endorsing marijuana decriminalization or by opposing a blind man’s sailing expedition (“a profanation,” he insisted). Still, I’m pretty sure my old friend would say to depressed conservatives today something along the lines of what Barry Goldwater said to depressed right-wingers at the 1960 GOP Convention: Grow up, conservatives! Bill lived through and surmounted Goldwater’s 1964 debacle, the ensuing Great Society, Nixon’s presidency and resignation (at the time, hard to say which was more embarrassing), American retreat in the 1970s, the assassination attempt against Reagan, the various stains of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and other unpleasantness, not including, however, Barack’s Obama’s election in 2008. He was spared that indignity.
Hi racist! Let me remind you of the other unpleasantness:

George W. Bush

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Prudes Speak!

David French:
Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto highlights a revealing and much-talked-about exchange between the Washington Post ombudsman, an anonymous reader, and an anonymous Post reporter exploring the Post’s bias against social conservatives. While the entire exchange (and Taranto’s analysis) are worth reading, I wanted to pull out two quotes of interest. First, the WaPo ombudsman:
Because our profession lives and dies on the First Amendment — one of the libertarian cornerstones of the Constitution — most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do. We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies pretty much when, where and how we choose.
Taranto’s response:
That “libertarian” is quite a dodge. Most journalists are anything but libertarian in areas where that would mean siding against the left, such as guns, education, taxes, nonsexual health care and nonmedia corporate free speech.
I agree with Taranto — “libertarian” is the wrong word. And this raises a pet peeve. It’s astounding how many times liberals say “libertarian” when they really mean “libertine.”
Stick to your guns, social conservatives! Make sure the Republican party never strays from its mission to scold.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Lazy Linkage Post

This is an interesting and pretty thing, but it runs the ChromeOS. For the money, it's useless: I can get any number of cheap laptops that do more.
Whether or not the Pixel can actually sell in any significant numbers is an, as yet, unanswered question. Pichai wouldn’t disclose specific sales numbers for any Chromebooks, but he said he believes that the appetite for a high-end Chromebook is there, noting that since Google and Samsung launched their $250 Chromebook 125 days ago, that specific computer has been the best selling laptop on Amazon every single day.

“This is targeted for a segment of users who have committed to the cloud,” he said of the $1,300 Pixel. “We believe we’ve built the best laptop from a hardware standpoint.”
Surprise! Canadians whining about Americans. Like about 95% of this blog's output.
"In [Argo], Canada and Ottawa didn't exist," [former Canadian ambassador to Iran] Taylor told the New York Times' Carpetbagger blog. "It's a great film, it's great. But at the same time, it was a Canadian story that's been, all of sudden, totally taken over by the Americans. Totally."

"I don't want to be hard on Tony Mendez," he added, referencing the CIA agent played by Affleck who led the covert op. "I want to give him all the credit I can. But at the same time, I'm a Canadian, and enough is enough."

Taylor also told the Associated Press today that it would be "a further reflection" on Affleck if Argo wins Best Picture and he fails to thank the Canadians who played such a huge role in the real-life version of events.
Genesis Death Sandwich discoverers steal your joke:
Researchers using text-analysis software say they've discovered a new literary device in the first book of the Bible: the "Genesis death sandwich."

The name refers to a familiar rhetorical structure -- sandwiching bad news in between the good. In the case of Genesis, the slices of white bread are themes of life, and the slimy cold cuts in between are mentions of death.

"The structuring of life and death in Genesis appears to be something that hasn't been noticed before," researcher Gordon Rugg, a senior lecturer in Computing and Mathematics at Keele University in the United Kingdom, wrote in a Feb. 21 blog post. "We think it's a standard literary device being used on a larger scale than had been previously realized. No aliens, no secret codes, no conspiracies, but some striking images, and a great name for a band."
Nick Cave tweets!
The Q&A did not start well. His disdain for the process was quite clear as he said wearily on one six-second clip: “Whatever it is I’ve been roped into doing, I’m starting now.”

The first response, to whether he hated the event, also proved particularly apt: “I am hating this… beyond measure and I haven’t even started yet.” He later said the whole process was “bullshit”.

Friday, February 22, 2013

The Party of Death

There's an interesting slapfight going on at The Corner right now. This might be the fuel.
Since 1985, when Tanton, using his position at FAIR and U.S. Inc., created CIS, it has attempted to become the scholarly face of the immigration restrictionist establishment.162 CIS is supposed to “[b]uild the intellectual basis for immigration law reform”163 by supplying information to FAIR and other anti-immigration activists. The same environmentalist, abortion, and population-control ideology permeates CIS, its funders, and founders.

Mark Krikorian, the current executive director of CIS, used to work for FAIR. When asked about the ties among CIS, population-control groups, and John Tanton, he stated:
The center [CIS] has no views on population control, no views on China’s one child policy, or anything else. The guy you mentioned, John Tanton, he’s an eye doctor or retired doctor, he helped arrange our first grant, he’s a population guy, Malthusian in a lot of ways, has never been on our board, doesn’t know where our offices are, never told or had any hand in the opinions, development, or views of the research of the center in any way. I met him a couple times and he seems like an affable enough guy, but what do I know, and what do I care.164
Tanton’s own writings to donors and others contradict Krikorian’s statement. As noted earlier, Tanton told Cordelia Scaife in a letter that “For credibility this will need to be independent of FAIR, though the Center for Immigration Studies, as we’re calling it, is starting off as a project of FAIR.”165 CIS’s supposed independence from FAIR was a façade. Tanton was intimately involved with its founding and guided its positions from the start. As late as 1994, Tanton’s front group U.S. Inc continued to funnel money to CIS.166 Tanton arranged a lot more than a first grant for CIS—he created it, funded it, and provided its ideology.

Mark Krikorian says immigration-wets are Mexicans and Muslims, big whoop.

John O'Sullivan:
Nor need you hire a researcher to uncover what they think. Mark writes regularly for the Corner. When were you last horrified or outraged by him? My guess is never.
There was this...

Mario Lopez is returning fire.
In all of the discussion about my Human Life Review article, it seems telling that no one attempts to refute any of the facts laid out in it. Indeed, Mark Krikorian is proud of the “common cause” he has with some on the left — it’s worth exploring who some of these people are.

The evidence shows that John Tanton and some of his close allies in the radical environmental movement started the Center for Immigration Studies. Prior to getting CIS off the ground Tanton helped create NumbersUSA and the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, and he was heavily involved in groups such as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, Zero Population Growth, and the Michigan Council for the Study of Abortion.
More here and here and here and there must be more elsewhere.

What all of these people are dancing around is that immigration hawks don't have a problem if the immigrants are white.

They're Coming For You

michelle malkin

Michelle! Someone has noticed you're a big fat liar! And they made it ILLEGAL!

Bouffant pointed at some nice clear rubberface video. There's more to be done with it once I get the facial recognition plans worked out.

michelle malkinmichelle malkinmichelle malkinmichelle malkinmichelle malkin

Thursday, February 21, 2013

International Relations

An American writes a polite letter:
PARIS (Reuters) - The CEO of a U.S. tire company has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France's work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day.

Titan International's Maurice "Morry" Taylor, who goes by "The Grizz" for his bear-like no-nonsense style, told France's left-wing industry minister in a letter published by Paris media that he had no interest in buying a doomed plant.

"The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three," Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English addressed to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.
The lazy socialist Frenchman writes an unaccountably rude response:
As the leaked letter drew outrage in France, Montebourg penned a scathing response, spelling out the reasons why France routinely ranks as a leading destination for companies to invest, beating China and India in mid-2012.

"Can I remind you that Titan, the business you run, is 20 times smaller than Michelin, the French (tire) technology leader with international influence, and 35 times less profitable," Montebourg wrote, in a two-page letter in French.

"This just shows the extent to which Titan could have learned and gained, enormously, from a presence in France."
From the hazy mists of the past comes a memory confirming Taylor's nobility:
He built up Illinois-based Titan over 23 years into a global brand in tires for tractors and other off-road machinery and ran for the White House in the 1996 Republican primary, campaigning on a pro-business ticket.

At that time, he admitted to being "abrasive" in order to "get the job done": "The politicians, they all want you to like them," he told an interviewer. "I don't care if people like me."

To Montebourg, the author of "Kill All the Lawyers and Other Ways to Fix the Government" wrote: "You're a politician so you don't want to rock the boat ... France will lose its industrial business because its government is more government."
No cheese-eater should think he can impugn the character of a man who ran for president on the Republican ticket.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Goodbye Kevin Ayers

There is a nice tribute here:
The sublime singer/songwriter Kevin Ayers—an original member of psych-prog legends Soft Machine (and their predecessors, the Wilde Flowers)—passed away in his sleep Feb. 18 at age 68. The cause of death has not been reported.
Ayers played on Soft Machine’s classic self-titled debut album and then set off on a long and rewarding solo career, all the while occasionally collaborating with innovative musicians such as Brian Eno, Nico, John Cale, Robert Wyatt, and Mike Oldfield. Ayers wrote some of the most memorable and compelling compositions on The Soft Machine (aka Volume One), including the catchy as hell and exceptionally eccentric “We Did It Again,” “Lullabye Letter,” and “Joy of a Toy.”

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Politics and Weaponry

Eliana Johnson gives up on her defence of Hitlerian sensibility to concentrate on Democratic equivalence with the festering evil of Republicans:
Colorado state representative Joe Salazar demonstrated yesterday that, as far as politics are concerned, making undiplomatic remarks about rape appears to be a bipartisan issue. The Democratic legislator cautioned yesterday that women, fearing they are going to be raped, may shoot and injure innocent victims.

Arguing a in favor of bill that would ban the individuals from carrying concealed weapons on college campuses, Salazar acknowledged, “There are some gender inequities on college campuses” that put women at risk. He explained, “It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at.”

Salazar continued, “You don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop, pop a round at somebody.”
This is a stupid thing way to put it; most women are pretty aware of both the threat and when the threat is about to become more than that. So condemn condemn condemn, it's okay by me. I can imagine what his point might be, but why offer charity? Anyway:
Republican senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were defeated in November after making remarks about rape and reproduction that were widely criticized by politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle.
Here's what Todd Akin had to say:
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”
And here's what Richard Mourdock said:
“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God,” Mourdock said. “And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

[...]

Democrats seized on the remarks following the debate. Perhaps anticipating the impact they might have, Mourdock tried to backpedal in the minutes following the debate.

“Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think God ordained or pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that anyone could suggest that. That’s a sick, twisted - no, that’s not even close to what I said,” he told reporters, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

But he reaffirmed his view that conception is determined by a higher power.

“It is a fundamental part of my faith that God gives us life. God determines when life begins,” Mourdock said. “I believe in an almighty God who makes those calls. ... There are some things in life that are above my pay grade.”
Is run-of-the-mill women-are-silly sexism the same kind of sexism as God's-plan-is-to-make-you-have-your-rape-baby-and-is-rape-legitimate-anyway sexism? If so, then yes, this Colorado state representative is just as brain-numbingly terrible as the two Republican Tea Party candidates for the US Senate.

Congratulations are due, I suppose, to Colorado Republicans for playing the sexism angle when they don't give a shit.

Now With Bonus Animated Gish

mitchum gish night of the hunter

Monday, February 18, 2013

Morning!

mitchum night of the hunter

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Too Much Render Time Wasted...

So I had to post it. And a terribly low-res version at that.

shadow test

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Edwin Mellen Press Has a Dubious Future

Is Edwin Mellen Press a dubious publisher?
In September 2010, Dale Askey, now a librarian at McMaster University, in Ontario, published a blog post titled “The Curious Case of Edwin Mellen Press,” in which he called the Edwin Mellen Press “a dubious publisher.” For a few months afterward, several people chimed in in the blog’s comments section, some agreeing with Mr. Askey, some arguing in support of the American publisher.

In June 2012, Edwin Mellen Press’s founder, Herbert Richardson, issued a notice of action to Mr. Askey, suing him for more than $1-million. That same day, the press issued a similar notice of action to Mr. Askey and McMaster University, telling them that they were being sued for libel and seeking damages of $3-million.
Suing a blogger for a million dollars seems dubious. Suing a blogger and the university that later employed him for three million dollars is worse.

I suspect this action may cost them what they're asking for in damages.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Adam Carolla Is Not Funny

Here is Adam Carolla again. Adam Carolla is not funny:
“Alright, you’re not supposed to have two kids,” Carolla said. “Minimum-wage jobs are the ones you’re supposed to have in high school and you’re supposed to pass through them. The idea is — I worked at McDonald’s when I was 16. The whole idea isn’t let’s make Adam Carolla comfortable working at McDonald’s. I was like, ‘I’m getting $2.43 a hour. This place sucks ass. I want out of here as fast as I can possibly do it.’”

“I didn’t have anything — I just knew this job at McDonald’s sucked,” he continued. “If they paid me 10 bucks an hour, maybe I’d be managing the place today. So your jobs where you’re paid just a little bit are jobs you’re supposed to have in high school and you’re supposed to move through. And you certainly aren’t supposed to have two fucking kids when you’re making Minimum Wage. It’s not responsible; it’s not responsible to the kids you’re trying to raise; and it’s not responsible to the community they live in because you’re not — you’re not paying your fair share.”
Perhaps I should rephrase: Adam Carolla is not intentionally funny.
Carolla explained that he didn’t have opportunities simply handed to him in life, noting that his parents were divorced and his mom received welfare benefits.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Opportunity Knocked

Ishmael Reed writes an interesting column:
Republicans should also be more open to programs like that of the educator and poet Haki Madhubuti, a founder of the Betty Shabazz International Charter School in Chicago. He focuses on African-American literature — not just books about black dysfunction, readily available in the marketplace, but a variety of texts that give students alternative role models to those provided by the media, who are too often seen toting semiautomatic weapons.

And Republicans should oppose discrimination against blacks by banks and mortgage companies, which frequently deny blacks access to loans with which to begin businesses and purchase homes so that they can develop the equity toward a nest egg. And since the Republican ideal is a colorblind America, how about promoting a colorblind criminal justice system?

Rather than running on bizarre suggestions that Mr. Obama was influenced by his father’s anticolonialism, wouldn’t the billionaires in the Republican Party get more for their money by embracing proven solutions that address the real problems of black America?

After all, if the president and the Democrats won’t do it, someone has to.
Not gonna happen, as Republicans are too crazy and/or too unwilling to sacrifice their base for a smaller one (and Reed doesn't seem to notice that his ideas are Programs for Special Interest Groups). It'd be an interesting inroad for Green politicians to try though. If another party is ever gonna have a shot it has to have a local base, and a good and very visible base might be found in urban municipal politics. The Dems have left a gap that the Republicans won't fill...why not someone else?

In My Experience People Sometimes Go Right Back

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Why We Fright

Neal Boortz:
You’re snug in your cabin in the mountains outside of Big Bear, California. Snug, but fearful. They’re searching for a killer near you. A terrifying, heavily armed former cop from Los Angeles who has gone on a killing rampage.

Suddenly you hear gunshots. You part the curtains to look outside ... and there’s the man whose picture you’ve seen countless times on TV over the past few days running toward your house as he returns fire to police officers in pursuit.

Just a few weeks ago you had been considering buying an AR-15 just in case it might be needed to defend your home from predators of the two and the four-legged variety. They don’t call the place Big Bear for nothing. You couldn’t buy one, though, because private ownership of these weapons had been outlawed. That didn’t stop the killer. He was carrying one ... that along with several pistols. The law didn’t seem to deter him at all. The murderer was still far enough away that you could stop him with one shot through your window, but that option had been taken away by anti-gun zealots.

Somehow you don’t feel comfortable with only your handgun and it’s seven-shot magazine to protect you from this approaching danger. You know the killer, who is rapidly nearing your door, is much more heavily armed than you. Things aren’t looking all that rosy for you and your family right now.

Why did this have to happen? Why were these liberals -- these Democrats -- so hell-bent on reducing your capacity to act in your own self-defense in a situation just such as this?

Interesting question, isn’t it?
YES.

Other places where I have once been snug and then cowered in fear as an insane cop stalked me while I only had seven bullets and my trusty handgun between me and certain death:

  • My old Kentucky home
  • My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii
  • My bunker
  • My duck-blind down by the lake
  • My treehouse where the girls aren't allowed
  • My orbital death platform
  • My fort that I made out of the kitchen table and a bunch of chairs and a whole lot of sheets

Potential Animated GIFS



Also is Gram Parsons insanely overrated or what? Deleting song after song.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The Sin of Omission

Hugh Hewitt:
Because the Roman Catholic Church adamantly defends life in the womb, the oldest and most infirm and the institution of marriage, it has legions of foes spread throughout major media.
Ha ha, legions.

Anyway, CHILD RAPE.

As much as I like to imagine that the people who shape our culture are not really people at all, various humiliating sex-tapes prove to my satisfaction that most likely are. And this means that some of those people might be anti-Catholic, and some might be pro-Catholic. Nevertheless, whatever your bias is, it's pretty juicy news when the the guys representing righteousness keep getting caught raping kids.
Today's lead piece on the succession in the New York Times is a perfect example. Authored by Rachel Donadio and Elisabetta Povoledo, and originating in Vatican City, it contains this whopper of a paragraph:
The resignation sets up a struggle between the staunchest conservatives, in Benedict’s mold, who advocate a smaller church of more fervent believers, and those who believe that the church can broaden its appeal in small but significant ways, like allowing divorced Catholics who remarry without an annulment to receive communion or loosening restrictions on condom use in an effort to prevent AIDS. There are no plausible candidates who would move on issues like ending celibacy for priests, or the ordination of women.
This is so silly a paragraph as to rank in some annual competition for naked bias somewhere.
Hmm, maybe a Hugh Hewitt award?
Note these two reporters do not cite a single name of one of those staunch conservatives
I cite Pope Benedict!
nor of a cardinal or even an advisor to a cardinal who wants to allow divorced Catholics who remarry without annulment to receive communion.
Here I would note that the struggle might be between a bunch of aging rape apologists and their laity, the latter group being oh-so-grateful for birth control and possibly unhappy about the potential of being kicked out of their community while waiting for their church to complete annulment paperwork.

Also they're generally against raping kids.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Liberty!

Via Boing Boing, Ron Paul does not believe in free speech:
Earlier today, Ron Paul filed an international UDRP complaint against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org with WIPO, a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations. The complaint calls on the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Ron Paul.

On May 1st, 2008 we launched a grassroots website at RonPaul.com that became one of the most popular resources dedicated exclusively to Ron Paul and his ideas. Like thousands of fellow Ron Paul supporters, we put our lives on hold and invested 5 years of hard work into Ron Paul, RonPaul.com and Ron Paul 2012. Looking back, we are very happy with what we were able to achieve with unlimited enthusiasm and limited financial resources.

Last month, after Ron Paul expressed regret on the Alex Jones show over not owning RonPaul.com (in an interview titled “Ron Paul: The Internet Is Our Last Chance to Awaken America“), dozens of supporters urged us to contact Ron Paul to work out a deal.

[...]

Instead of responding to our offer, making a counter offer, or even accepting our FREE gift of RonPaul.org, Ron Paul went to the United Nations and is trying to use its legal process related to domain name disputes to actively deport us from our domain names without compensation.

Below is a copy of Ron Paul’s complaint and our original offer to Ron Paul. We have 20 days to prepare a response and we are tentatively looking for a lawyer to represent us in this case.

Hopefully it won’t have to come to that!

What in the world is going on?
The only response to this is

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

WORKS ONLY FOR SOME UPDATE:

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

I Can't Go See This

So YOU DO IT.
The period from the 1890s through the 1930s was the Golden Age of American Illustration. The rapid rise of popular magazines created a new audience for art—the American public—and a new demand for illustrations. The nation's most talented artists responded by turning illustration into a sophisticated art form that gave visual life to our nation's dreams and ideals. Drawn from one of the country's premier collections of historic American illustration, this exhibition features original paintings by legendary artists such as Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, J. C. Leyendecker, and Norman Rockwell.


Sunday, February 10, 2013

Body Language

Here is a PDF called Curious Rituals:
The Security Pass Hip Bump, which I first noticed a former client doing repeatedly in the library building she worked in, is particularly enjoyable. It occurs when someone carries their RFID-enabled security pass in their bag, and approaching a sensor, lifts the hip to angle the bag towards the sensor, creating a hands- free connection and activating the lock (the hands are often full of paper files, ironically enough.) It’s clearly an odd thing to do, when considered like this—to insouciantly cock your hips towards a small black rectangle on the wall as a form of greeting and personal identification—but can be carried off with a certain panache, admittedly.

When the same security passes are on extensible key fobs, they are articulated as if they were keys; when they are worn on lanyards, it’s as if they were simply identity cards from an earlier age, merely “shown” to a sensor rather than a security guard. This is different. It relies on a loose, instinctive, trial-and-errored understanding of the range of the radio waves involved, and the materials involved, and again feels like a form of interaction entirely unforeseen by the designers of security systems.


From here.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Fear

Science meets an obstacle:
For years, SM, a 44-year-old woman, has been helping researchers study the emotion of fear. Dubbed the "woman with no fear", she suffers from a rare genetic condition known as Urbach-Wiethe disease, which in late childhood destroyed both sides of her amygdala, two almond sized structures on either side of the brain.

The condition means she is not afraid of things that strike fear in most people, such as snakes, spiders, horror films, and being attacked at knife or gunpoint.
Science formulates a response:
One type of event that triggers fear and panic attacks via the amygdala brain circuit is when inhaled air has unusually high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), a sign of possible suffocation. The brain picks this up because inhaling high levels of CO2, even at non-lethal concentrations, increases acidity of the blood.

So, if the amygdala is essential for processing events that lead to fear, then people with damaged amygdalas should not get afraid by inhaling CO2.

This was the idea that Feinstein and colleagues wanted to test: especially as inhaling CO2 is a different kind of trigger to sensing external events with eyes and ears.

But when SM underwent an experiment, where she wore a mask to breathe in air enriched with 35% CO2, she had a full blown panic attack. Her body went rigid, her skin was flushed and her eyes opened wide.
SCIENCE TRIUMPHS!

I remember this time when there was this atom and the scientists just totally SMASHED IT because they were badasses.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Relics

Some, including yours truly, still have their internet HAND-DELIVERED.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Credit to Irma LaDuce

Just watch:


Dave Weigel has an interesting piece on the way the GOP too often takes the bait laid out deliberately by Dems to paint Republicans as “kooks.” An excerpt:
“Attn skeet birthers,” tweeted David Plouffe. “Make our day—let the photoshop conspiracies begin!”
It was Feb. 3, a week and change since Plouffe had left the White House and joined Twitter, and he was already on top of a meme. The New Republic had asked President Obama whether he’d ever shot a gun. “Up at Camp David,” he’d said, “we do skeet shooting all the time.” A small number of conservatives asked—totally reasonably—whether there was any proof. The White House released a photo of the president firing a shotgun.

But it did so by having deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer call the critics “skeeters,” and then came Plouffe, egging it on. “Day made,” he tweeted, hours later. “The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading. #whereistrump”

[...]
I think Weigel certainly makes a fair point. But he leaves out an important chunk of what is going on. The Google News metric doesn’t just count conservative media outlets. The fact that there are so many results for the “great skeet hunt” demonstrates how willing — nay, eager — the mainstream media is to hype the Republicans are kooks story line. 
Commenter Irma LaDuce:
IrmaLaDuce 26 minutes ago

I'm just going to leave this here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
The link in question:

I’m at my cigar shop where they tend to have CNN on a lot. So I couldn’t help but hear Paul Begala rip into people who were skeptical of Obama’s statement that “we do skeet shooting all the time.” Like many other defenders of the president, Begala argued that the White House’s release of a photo showing Obama firing a shotgun should be mortifying for anybody who doubted the president’s word. It’s a “huge embarrassment” for them etc., etc. 
Here’s the problem. I don’t know many people who thought Obama had never fired a shotgun. I was skeptical that he does it “all the time.” Indeed, in my experience the phrasing — “we do skeet shooting all the time” — is not the way most people who shoot skeet talk about skeet shooting. To my ear it sounds like saying “we do fishing all the time,” a formulation I’ve never heard from a fishermen of any kind. I still don’t believe that he goes skeet shooting all of the time, if all of the time means anything like the frequency of Obama’s golf and basketball outings. But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he does skeet shooting every bit as much as he does basketball and does golfing. Maybe, the super-geniuses at the White House press shop thought it made sense to release thousands of photos of him golfing — far, far, far more than Bush ever did by the way — but for some reason declined to release a single photo of him doing skeet shooting. I see nothing wrong or unreasonable in being skeptical about politicians in general or this one in particular.
And so it goes.

Stereotypical Behaviour




Go, my pet! Find the zombie!

ATTACK!



ALSO:

Andrew Breitbart is DEAD DEAD DEAD.Andrew Breitbart is DEAD DEAD DEAD.Andrew Breitbart is DEAD DEAD DEAD.Andrew Breitbart is DEAD DEAD DEAD.

TIME TO KILL UPDATE:

The typical goatse reaction demonstrated in three species:

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Impotence

Stanley Kurtz has Atrios bait:
Jonathan Last’s thoughtful and important new book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster is a fun read. Policy questions aside, Last provides a fascinating and crystal-clear account of America’s demographic decline. There’s plenty to learn on related issues as well. Last explains, for example, why the recent plateau in divorce statistics may be a bit of an illusion. Family decline is very possibly a good deal more advanced than we’ve realized.

[...]

It would take a more extended effort from Last to play these ideas out, but what’s striking is how diametrically opposed his vision is to the regnant aspirations of the left. Today’s rage for “sustainability” is largely an effort to draw people out of suburbs and press them instead into tiny, densely-packed urban apartments. Blocking highway construction is a favorite tactic of these greens. That can only compound what Last calls our “coming demographic disaster.” So the supposed solution to the left’s favored cataclysm of global warming is apparently the worst possible step to take in response to the right’s disaster scenario of demographic-economic meltdown. It’s a case of dueling catastrophes.

The left’s anti-suburban project draws heavily on the claim that suburbs kill community, a narrative that seems outdated given the impersonal nature of today’s urban apartments complexes. Last is suggesting that, with a few tweaks, community may actually have more chance at a comeback in the suburbs than the city. That is a novel, fascinating, and potentially very important idea.
I quite like the idea of duelling catastrophes, as if you get the catastrophe of your choosing at the polls.

But wait a minute...I voted for the flaming radioactive meteor party.

Anyway, the left makes you not have kids by stuffing you into giant Le Corbusier towers. Discuss!

Monday, February 4, 2013

The first thing we do, let's pay all the lawyers.

Previously:
Donald Trump has placed himself in the middle of another controversy involving a birth certificate—this time his own.

In a letter obtained by Yahoo News, the real estate mogul and de facto leader of last year's "birther" movement against President Barack Obama sent a copy of his New York City birth certificate to comedian Bill Maher, who earlier this week made a Trump-like demand to see it.

On Monday's "Tonight Show With Jay Leno," Maher said he would donate $5 million to the charity of Trump’s choice (Maher suggested Hair Club for Men, among others) if the "Celebrity Apprentice" host could prove he is not the "spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan." Maher was mocking Trump's much-publicized announcement in October that he would donate $5 million to charity if Obama would release his college records.
Now:



Paul Campos often notes that lawyers are hard up. I suppose Donald Trump himself may be a living donation to their charity.

Louise Bourgeois

Metafilter says:
Louise Bourgeois; The Complete Prints & Books will document every print and illustrated book created by Louise Bourgeois, ultimately comprising some 3,500 entries. Entries will be added to the site once a year, according to theme. The majority of the works in the catalogue are in MoMA’s collection; others may not have been examined by MoMA cataloguers, and their documentation was gathered from various sources. Also, Louise Bourgeois Art 21
posted by R. Mutt
From Philadelphia.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Warfare and Efficiency

Testing, testing:
An unmanned British stealth drone that can fly faster than the speed of sound and go undetected by radar will soon have its first test flight in Australia.

The £125 million ($190 million) Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, can attack targets across continents, automatically dodge missiles and other efforts to bring it down and independently identify targets. It can refuel in mid-air and carry weapons including laser guided bombs and missiles.
I'm kinda partial to having 19000 drones that cost ten thousand dollars, but that's just me.



Or maybe 19000000 drones that cost $10 each.

Go Fuck Yourself

Some asshole:
And you must write everything you write with enough passion to earn these small, precious victories. Or you really shouldn’t write anything at all.

Don’t clog our Interwebs with your greasy, grimy, gopher guts of a blog post that’s already been written 168 times without adding any original research, insights or value. That’s stinkier than a half-eaten hoagie rotting at the bottom of some fat, hairy dude’s hamper.

If you’re not prepared to give an electrifying performance, why trot out on stage? Keep the curtain closed and keep rehearsing until you nail it. Shakespeare must never be half-baked.

Yes, you have quotas to meet.
GO FUCK YOURSELF

Saturday, February 2, 2013

It Ain't My Fault

Hey there!
The Los Angeles Archdiocese tonight released some 12,000 documents from files on priests accused of sexual abuse and announced that retired Cardinal Roger Mahony has been relieved of remaining public duties.

Additionally, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry, who was Mahony's point person on sexual abuse cases, has also stepped down from his post.
Asshole writes what?
Dear Archbishop Gomez:

In this letter I wish to outline briefly how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and I responded to the evolving scandal of clergy sexual misconduct, especially involving minors.

Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem. In two years [1962—1964] spent in graduate school earning a Master’s Degree in Social Work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children. While there was some information dealing with child neglect, sexual abuse was never discussed.

Shortly after I was installed on September 5, 1985 I took steps to create an Office of the Vicar for the Clergy so that all our efforts in helping our priests could be located in one place.
Prior to 1985 the Satanic Panic was well underway. While that was bullshit, I'd venture to say that at that time even a pious and naive virgin could understand - as such opinions were broadcast across all networks on every news show - that RAPING CHILDREN WAS VERY BAD YOU ASSHOLE.
In the summer of 1986 I invited an attorney-friend from Stockton to address our priests during our annual retreat at St. John’s Seminary on the topic of the sexual abuse of minors. Towards the end of 1986 work began with the Council of Priests to develop policies and procedures to guide all of us in dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct. Those underwent much review across the Archdiocese, and were adopted in 1989.

During these intervening years a small number of cases did arise. I sought advice from several other Bishops across the country, including Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, and then Bishop Adam Maida of Green Bay. I consulted with our Episcopal Conference frequently. All the advice was to remove priests from active ministry if there was reasonable suspicion that abuse had occurred, and then refer them to one of the several residential treatment centers across the country for evaluation and recommendation.

This procedure was standard across the country for all Arch/Dioceses, for School Districts, for other Churches, and for all Youth Organizations that dealt with minors. We were never told that, in fact, following these procedures was not effective, and that perpetrators were incapable of being treated in such a way that they could safely pursue priestly ministry.
KILL YOURSELF.

Amon Amarth



It counts as a post!

Friday, February 1, 2013

Education Posting for Real

Opportunity knocks!
What Could Hill University Do For You?

Hill University is one of the leading online universities, educating individuals with diverse needs and backgrounds by giving them an opportunity of registering into flexible and interactive degree programs. Hill University encourages working individuals to get quality education through Hill's well structured curriculums that fosters effective learning and professional development
Wait, what was that URL again?

http://www.hilluniversitylegit.com/index.html

Okay then, it's like an MC Hammer seal of approval!



What I want to know is what someone just like me could do with a Hill University degree:
Ever since her childhood, Sherrie Windsor was known for her sharpness and intelligence toward learning new skills and actively participating in all the major events at school - showcasing her talents. However, her teachers and parents failed to understand as to why she did not perform even half as good when it came to her academic studies.

Sherrie’s only explanation to such inquiries were the fact that she is simply restless, and cannot bring herself to sit through the long sessions of memorizing her theories, definitions and chronicle dates etc. Her concentration level in the classroom also was hardly consistent.

All this led Sherrie to eventually drop out of high school and to channel her energies toward something that interests her. Due to her exceptional interpersonal skills alone, she luckily landed an internship in a reputable bank and initially impressed the managers simply by her shrewd customer dealings.
That Sherrie - or is it Sherry? - sounds JUST LIKE ME, kind of stupid and inattentive yet conniving enough to get by!

I will proceed to the main Hill University site and as an extra-special favour to them I will advise them to sue Brampton International University for theft.





Searching for the Opposite of Senseless

Just stealing and posting what's below for the sake of preservation. Comments are worth reading. I suspect the thing will disappear at some point.

Text  
President Obama issued a statement yesterday to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He noted that survivors who bore witness to “the horrors of the cattle cars, ghettos, and concentration camps have witnessed humanity at its very worst and know too well the pain of losing loved ones to senseless violence.” (We noted below how some in Europe chose to mark the day, which takes place each year on January 27, the day Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.)
The idea that all violence is “senseless” violence is one that has taken deep root on the left; it’s also, unfortunately, one that poses a major impediment to understanding the world.
Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.
On September 12, 2012, President Obama also lamented the “the kind of senseless violence that took the lives” of four Americans in Benghazi. That, you may recall, is the day the president supposedly said the murders occurred as a result of a non-senseless terrorist attack carried out by jihadists.
This sanitized version of events, both past and present, is surely more comforting. It’s also truly senseless.
Where's the Jonah Goldberg response?

DIGGING DEEPER UPDATE

Clarification:
Text  
Pundits and non-pundits on both the left and the right have reacted with derision and horror to a Corner post in which I criticized President Obama for referring to those who perished in the Holocaust — as well as the four Americans who were murdered in Benghazi — as victims of “senseless violence.” I argued that violence carried out in the service of ideology is a more serious threat than violence that we typically refer to as “senseless” or “random,” and that, as a result, it deserves more serious attention and analysis.
I’ve since been accused both of justifying Nazism and of anti-Semitism. This is not only wrong, but cheap.
The opposite of “senseless” is not, as many have suggested, “sensible.” Nor is it “good.” According to Merriam-Webster, “senseless” means “destitute of, deficient in, or contrary to sense: as: unconscious,” or “foolish, stupid,” or “meaningless.” Even the most cursory understanding of Nazi Germany reveals this to be a poor description of its behavior. It was precisely the threat posed by the “organized and calculated violence” of the German state and the “party organization, several millions strong, who derive all kinds of profits, good and bad, from the upkeep of the regime” to which Churchill sought to awaken his countrymen. Were the gravestone of the Third Reich a monument to caprice, its consequences would likely have been less dire. 
Many tragedies are indeed “senseless.” Those, by and large, are the ones that occur despite human attempts to understand and prevent their causes: the hurricanes that have ravaged large swaths of the country in recent years; motor-vehicle accidents; terminal illnesses; acts of violence that are truly random in nature; events, in other words, to which nearly any one of us, at any time, could fall victim.
Those carried out with forethought, purpose, and intent by men who have convinced sensible people — yes, sensible people — that the murder of innocents is justified in the name of Communism, Nazism, fascism, or Islamism are a different matter altogether. Dismissing such acts, and their perpetrators, as senseless demonstrates a failure to engage with a reality that is much more complicated; one in which politics, ideology, and human nature have combined to produce with careful planning some of the greatest episodes of evil in human history. Not for nothing did Churchill refer to Nazi Germany as a “monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime.” The lamentable crime to which he referred was more premeditated murder than manslaughter; sadly, it was not senseless, but the logical conclusion of a perverted worldview that was distressingly popular in its era.
The hysterical reaction elicited by my post underscores precisely the point I intended to make–that the notion, now deeply ingrained on the left, that violence is by definition senseless and incomprehensible poses an enormous impediment to understanding the world and the forces at work in it.
Somehow the right-wingers at the start of the post turned into left-wingers at the bottom. Funny how that works.