Is Captain America Gay?

Whilst cackling with my workmates over this, I found a long thread devoted to a very important question. Sample excerpted below:



It's entertaining how angry some people get over it.

Philanthropy

Jonah:

That’s right, the Koch brothers are pro-free-market simply because they’re unsatisfied with their billions. It couldn’t possibly be because they’re trying to make the country better, even a little.

[Note to self: spam for Jonah, non-stop. A guaranteed sale.]

Libertopia

The bedsprings of freedom squeak ever onwards:

A judge in Ontario has overturned key Canadian anti-prostitution laws, finding they force sex workers into the streets at risk to their safety.

She ruled with three prostitutes who had challenged bans on brothels, pimps and solicitation.

Reward and Punishment

A comment by Ben Hyde on a post at Crooked Timber:

Let’s train a pile of pennies to behave. Good pennies come up heads. Flip the pennies ten times. Divide them into two piles, the good ones and the bad ones. Now punish the bad ones. Beat them with stick. Repeat the experiment. Notice how their behavior improves! Now reward the good ones. Kiss them. Repeat the experiment. Notice how they appear to be slacking off! Clearly negative reinforcement works and positive reinforcement doesn’t.

Mo' Problems, Mo' Money

Make money off the accusation, make money off the retraction. It's the American Way.

More than 20 years ago, Meredith Maran falsely accused her father of molestation. That she came to believe such a thing was possible reveals what can happen when personal turmoil meets a powerful social movement. In her book "My Lie: A True Story of False Memory" (the introduction of which is excerpted on Salon), Maran recounts the 1980s feminist-inspired campaign to expose molestation, which hit feverish levels in 1988 with the book 'The Courage to Heal." As an early reporter on the story, Maran observed family therapy sessions, interviewed molesters and steeped herself in cases where abuse clearly took place. Meanwhile, she divorced her husband and fell in love with a woman who was also an incest survivor. Maran began having nightmares about her own molestation and soon what had been a contentious relationship with her father turned into accusations of unspeakable crimes. Eventually, she came to realize the truth. She was the person who had done wrong.

The Fight for Democracy

Equal representation before the not-law in Pakistan:

Commenting on corruption in the country, the minister said that only politicians should not be blamed for corruption, rather generals and judges should also be held responsible in this regard. He opined that everyone had an “equal right” in corruption, while demanding that the Baloch, Seraikis, Sindhis, Pashtoon and Punjabis should be given an equal right to corruption. “Only the ruling parties should not be given the right to corruption, rather this right should be given to everyone,” he remarked.

Sex Mad

This Does Not Work That Well

Overflow Projects

Power issues:

On a blustery Labour Day weekend this year, the wind turbines sprinkled across Ontario’s landscape set a record.

That Saturday, they pumped an average of 1,000 megawatts of power into the province’s grid over a seven-hour stretch, the biggest sustained wind output on record. It amounted to about 7 per cent of the power demand at the time.

That was the good news.

The sobering news was that the power flowed into the grid on a cool Saturday afternoon during a holiday weekend when there wasn’t much demand for it.

We could take care of all this extra power that's gumming up the works by diverting it to a giant laser that would split the moon in two. Then in quarters, and so on. Really, it could go on forever.

WWTE?

A book:

In 1879, more than a year into the European tour that led to “A Tramp Abroad” and miserable from too much hotel cooking, a “cranky, ravenous, homesick” Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain) sat down and wrote a menu of all the foods he longed for from home, which he said he wanted “served at a 'modest, private affair' all to himself, the moment he stepped off the steamer.”

Stretching pages, the final list was 80 items strong and covered everything from radishes, asparagus, and butter beans to raccoon to roast turkey and pumpkin pie. Potato chips (the newly invented “Saratoga potatoes”) made the list and so did “catsup.” Twain was incredibly specific in his longings: from “San Francisco mussels, steamed” to “Lake trout, from Tahoe” and “Canvas-back duck, from Baltimore.” Even iced water made the list – “not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.”

Writer Andrew Beahrs has attempted to recreate Twain's menu in his new book, “Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens,” which combines Twain's life with the history of the foods the writer loved. (Twain, a quotable writer on any subject, cared passionately about food and could leave today's critics eating their napkins in despair.)

True Facts

Here is another non-surprise regarding Sheriff Paul Babeu's crack team:

Two nationally known forensic pathologists are questioning a sheriff deputy's version of how he was shot in the remote desert south of Phoenix, adding to theories that the incident was a hoax timed to enflame the debate over illegal immigration.

No conclusions made of course. More if you follow the link.

Death to Gummis

C'mon Sudanese Guys, Make An Effort

Is Our Engineers Learning?

Haikuing the News

I enjoy Gnoetry Daily.

Tue September 21 16:58:23 2010

The physician who
lives in the soil made the corn
stalks puny. As dirt.

Digg Sucks

What's with the nonstop lists of shit? It's like Right Wing News but less funny.

Evidence Aplenty

Arizona sheriff Paul Babeu raises the alarm:

In a phone interview, Babeu told TPM that when he spoke about the cartels controlling parts of the state, he meant they control movement. Babeu says cartels have scouts and other surveillance set up to monitor activity, and when the sheriff and his staff aren't around to patrol, especially in the rural parts of his county, smugglers operate freely. Babeu's website includes news items about drug spotters on hilltops and in caves in Arizona.

"Often times during our patrols out there, we would find cold food and a box of AK-47 rounds, you know, and some other things," Babeu said. "There wasn't a confrontation or a shooting, but we find these pieces of intel, that we know clearly there was somebody here on this high point. And they left because they saw us coming up 45 minutes ago. So that's the kind of stuff that we have, that we're asking for additional help and resources."

Perfectly reasonable to me that there are drug smugglers in Arizona. But, absent the drug smugglers, it's also perfectly reasonable that there are guys in the hills eating food and shooting guns. It's Arizona.

War is a Dirty Business

The BBC explores military vehicles:

Jonathan Beale describes the advantages of the Ocelot vehicle, which will replace the controversial Snatch Land Rover, the Ministry of Defence has announced.

The latter vehicle pictured below:



Recycling helps the Earth.

Fake Outs

Stephen Colbert will testify before congress in character. Daniel Foster thinks it's bizarre. Mark Krikorian is dumberfounded. Jonah Goldberg is stunneder by the stupidity. Jonah:

I still like Colbert and think he can be funny.

A template for all Jonah says and a perfect illustration of why he is not testifying before congress, and there's still more:

But it’s almost as if the Democrats are deliberately taunting the voters. Maybe that’s the idea for some reason? Or maybe the idea is to activate the youth vote by making congressional hearings into an ironic joke?

"I don't get it." Well spoken!

Let's imagine Foster, Krikorian and Goldberg in front of the committee, something I'm sure they'd be happy to do. Foster's the sharpest of the bunch and most likely to say something unapologetically awful and know and acknowledge how awful it is. Krikorian's likely to say something awful and not know it's awful. And Jonah, poor Jonah, would not know what he was talking about and not understand how awful it was.

I think it's safe to say that Stephen Colbert is better at delivering the National Review's message than the National Review staff.

Christian Zeal and Activity

At-work listening:



Also: