Iran: Kind of a Funny Place

An interesting ratio of female vs. male students in architecture at one of the best institutions in Iran:



In contrast to that, here are two photos Alzahra University - specifically for ladies dontcha know - has chosen to highlight the art department's clothing and fabric program:



Looks like a lotta room for creative development there. At least in Alzahra's engineering faculty you get sexy glasses and over-the-chador white smocks when the welding equipment's fired up.

Anecdata: boy oh boy do women from Iran ever seem happy to be elsewhere.

For Future Use

Welcome Moving Goalposts:



This one's less blocky but maybe too yellow:



Hmm, it's cuter anyway...

JanusNode News

There's a mild JanusNode update for the Mac.

At Gnoetry Daily you can download some files that'll produce stuff like this:

Brilliant Snuggle bunny,
You are my immoral egoism. You are my happy chastity. You are my earnest snake. You are my many nail. My academic business wonders your conspiracy.
Yours relentingly,
Shriek

Kind Transformer,
You are my convoluted saint. My conformity crawls your arbitrary oak. My adult objectivity carefully quantifies your patriotic pest. My chimpanzee precludes your excessive organization. You are my silvery pessimism.
Yours engagingly,
Daytime

Sensitive Love,
My authorization guards your nutty depth. My guilty ill disruptively shivers your harmonious clove. My Canadian dinosaur pietistically laughs your television. You are my demented plasma. My capricious chicken disgustedly does your moldy connection.
Yours fatalistically,
Interest

Thoughtful Loved one,
My naked harp drifts your political mate. My agony ostracizes your courage. My daughter writhes your famous circuitry. You are my broken causality. My tar insightfully carries your sensual aspect.
Yours unobservantly,
Smile

Universally admired Genius,
My fuzzy centralizer acapella darkens your patriarchal world wide web browser. My party scarily wants your fallacy. You are my pure aggravation. My infantile onslaught infrequently finishes your fudgy daddy. You are my seething hat.
Yours feet-first,
Cello

Warm Soul,
My fantasy pines your biological swan. You are my everlasting yoke. You are my tricky daybreak. You are my crimson cornucopia. My flow structurally offends your cannibalistic art.
Yours shiveringly,
Toad

Great Lover,
You are my rotting contaminant. My bold ecstasy tormentedly jilts your fog. My inequality flows your nasty mouse. You are my soft rifle. You are my nutritious behavior.
Yours effortlessly,
Poet

Astonishing Beloved,
My garlic offends your watery monk. My cessation spiritlessly loves your peachy sock. You are my furry jail. My hard flame thrower bawls your clumsy sense. My x-ray inconsistently says your hug.
Yours resignedly,
prettification

Sexy Snuggler,
You are my furry scum. My old wheel jostles your debut. You are my pallid conception. You are my jittery darkness. You are my jazzy havoc.
Yours unimportantly,
Mold

Loving Lightning bolt,
My presupposition restfully plays your evil hurt. You are my green outgrowth. My calamity gigantically ignores your jazz calm. You are my optimal performance. You are my penitent pa.
Yours lawfully,
Excellence

Heart-warming Wanderer,
You are my seething fad. You are my malignant flame. You are my long business. You are my strangely jerk. My willing interest procures your leadership.
Yours upbeat,
Atheism

Defense and You

Rob Farley:

As I suggested above, we are approaching a political and economic situation in which real reductions (depending, I suppose, on how we characterize “real”) to defense spending can become possible. Consequently, I think it’s very important that progressives start thinking through the details of defense issues now. Non-partisan blogs like Information Dissemination and the USNI blog have commenter communities that are both well informed about defense issues and lean strongly right; there is no good reason for this situation to persist. Institutions like CAP should continue to contribute on Afghanistan and Iraq, but should also give greater attention to what US military doctrine should look like in five years, and to how progressives can and should shape overall US military capabilities. Robust, consequential progressive work on technology and doctrine will be good for progressives, and good for debates on US military capabilities.

Speaking as one of those radical sissy hippies I'm of course in favour of brutal and perhaps fatal cuts to US capabilities, but in my secret identity as hand-wringing middle-class liberal I also wonder who's gonna fill the vacuum. Because those vacuums do get filled. Go read the post. I think what it comes down to is your faith that the US can do useful things with its weapons, something you can argue for using the recent examples of Operation Skeletor's Castle and the breathtakingly successful Assault on Mordor. As well, US forces now have the Kinect, leaving those faggy Wii controllers in the dust and one American soldier can now command legions of zombies through interpretive dance; should money still be thrown at blimp-lifted trebuchets?

The Can of Worms

Shorter Charles Jacobs:

Why aren't Jews everywhere conspiring to raise kids who will defend Israel right or wrong?

The article is exceptionally odd and requires genius-level unpacking both to appreciate what it is and, you know, not be a total dick about it. Surely that Someone is Mr. Else, but look at the title of the thing:

Jewish Malware: Why is World Jewry So Bad at Defending Itself?

That starts off kinda David Dukey and then gets... I dunno. Nicer? Ickier?

The dynamic is something akin to the virus that flummoxes Iran’s computers. Jews may be susceptible to a particular type of rhetorical virus, so devastating that once implanted it prevents them from acting in their own self-defense and turns otherwise eloquent people into stuttering blockheads. The worm is simple, and ancient. It’s called “accusation.”

Accuse the Jews. Accuse them unfairly and with such disproportionate frequency that anyone who wishes to can see there’s an agenda at work that has little to do with the actual charges raised. Accuse the Jews and they instinctively, like moths fly to candles, start believing they can cleverly explain themselves, and convince their accusers of their innocence and their goodness.

Apparently, what you use to battle against accusations that there is an agenda at work among World Jewry is for World Jewry to have a Working Agenda. I guess that the "agenda at work" in sentence two paragraph two might be the agenda of the accusers, but if "anyone who wishes to can see" I'd hope the accusers were then outed as bigots, right?

Instead of explaining to our students the dynamic of “accusation” that has been used to hobble Jews from time immemorial, we teach them to sit in the dock. Instead of exploring with them just how Israel is under a massive ideological assault which masquerades as legitimate criticism, we teach them to keep the focus of discourse on Jewish conduct, Israeli behavior, which is exactly what our adversaries want. Instead of turning our fingers back on the tyrannical Arab/Muslim world whose criticism of Israel defines chutzpah, we answer its charges.

"Jewish conduct"="Israeli behaviour": um, wouldn't I be a total shitheel to propose that?

We Find That Religious Folks Are Kooky

Via the reliably dense John J. Miller at The Corner we find a delightful bit of makework from people with too much time on their hands (PDF):

In this paper, we investigate whether alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements are correlated, both over time and across cultures, and why.

First, we do find a historical correlation between a global shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Second, looking at the various societies nowadays, we find that part of the Muslims and the Mormon Fundamentalists are the only two groups (together with some African tribes) that are still practicing polygyny and, interestingly, they also forbid alcohol consumption. Third, using historical data on pre-industrial societies – among which there are a substantial number of cases of polygyny – we find a cross-cultural correlation: monogamous societies drink more alcohol than polygynous societies.

Also in some cultures a certain big thick book is favoured over other big thick books.

An entertaining set of tables at the end of the work:

RAAAAAHH

Dave Noon found a funny person:

Cage fighter Alex Reid took things much further with his tips for health this year. Giving his fans advice on how to prepare for a match, he told the Sun: "It's actually very good for a man to have unprotected sex as long as he doesn't ejaculate. Because I believe that all that semen has a lot of nutrition. A tablespoon of semen has your equivalent of steak, eggs, lemons and oranges. I am reabsorbing it into my body and it makes me go raaaaahh."

If you want to call bullshit on this please explain the roving gangs of Amazons and their gay male minions who catch and milk me in the front yard every morning.

Museum of the Dead

There's a newish museum in town, the Beaty Biological Diversity Museum. Let us explore, shall we?

Here is a dead blue whale, scavenged from a beach:



There are delightful pictures of the excavation process: the twenty-years-dead corpse, submerged in sand, still had a considerable amount of what once was flesh on it.

From there we descend into the bowels of hell a basement research museum designed to make science approachable and friendly to the schoolchildren whose bus was parked outside. See for yourself:







That's right, the museum consists of row upon dimly-lit row of locked black closets broken up by an occasional display table or open space or glass panel. What is in these closets?

SCIENCE.



I will be back upon the improvement of the snack bar:

An Era Has Passed

Goodbye, easily-replaceable cog in an entertainment machine. In tribute, here is a song you may never have been in the studio for, plus completely unrelated visuals.

Yum Yum Good Eats

Gratuitous advertising: holy shit is Vij's a great place. Had the mushroom appetizer and the venison main, got to sample the yam appetizer and the eggplant and chickpea main. I don't go there often, but wow once again.

The View From Afar

Warner Todd Huston:

It has gotten so bad in France that in some parts of its cities, those parts controlled by marauding gangs of Muslim youths, whites never enter for fear of their lives. Not only that but not even police dare enter these areas. This dangerous situation does not seem anywhere near being solved. In fact, it’s just getting worse.

Well, fortunately modern technology allows us the means to check this out. Let us go then, you and I, while an evil crescent crosses the sky...



Closer...



Closer...



And on to street view, for the advertised unrest, NOW IN PROGRESS:

Death

Daniel Foster wants you to know that the president will kill you:

The stripping of the “death panels” from the final version of Obamacare won’t stop the administration from getting “end of life planning” into Medicare by other means.

You might think that "end of life planning" might have something to do with ordinary medical treatment like, say, weighing the benefits of extending your life for a year vs. spending most of that year hooked up to machines or taking poison intravenously, or, you know, at least letting patients and their loved ones know in advance what their prospects are. I think I am to read Mr. Foster otherwise.

Conflict

To placate the maternal unit I went out with her on Christmas Eve to Jazz Vespers.

As church services go, it was better than most, and the jazz was as white as snow, which is okay at Christmas, the highlight being a version of the song embedded below (which I already like a LOT) with Jennifer Scott channeling Karen Carpenter. Yes, I mean that in a good way.

The United Church of Canada is pretty decent as decency goes, and the pastor was awfully gay (and happily married). Since candles and charity were involved, there were some firemen involved and he made some jokes about being handled by them, and the crowd had a whole bunch of happy folks being open about who they were; such a scene is good for mom, who once got awfully angry with me about the concept of gay marriage. It's also good for me: I muster up cringeworthy statements now and then, perhaps including this post. Still, bitter me at Xmas was thinking about the good feelings that the UCC is willing to extend to others in the pursuit of their mission being an expansion of the potential audience that can be lied to. The Baby Jesus story yet again moved me not in the least, but people holding hands in church who would, in my youth, have been beaten senseless for doing such a thing was a lesson. Mind you I haven't sat through an other-than-wedding service in many years, and it's Vancouver anyway, so who knows what's going on in those places? Bong and Bondage Vespers on the way soon? Bongdage Vespers?

And none of this good will prevented me from being the object of a creepy bathroom interrogation by a crazy guy wanting to know why I didn't go to church. Answering "IT IS CRAZY" did not seem to be right for the night, so "Merry Christmas" and I was out.

Non-Parrot Entertainments

You probably saw this before I did:



Now consider the genius of Basil Wolverton:

Treasures of Archive.Org

One of my RSS feeds is a feed for the Internet Archive, which I mostly don't click through to. It's interesting to see the items go by, in a way: lotsa religious sermons, shitty dance tracks, and technical gobbledygook. Much like the internet as a whole I guess.

Well, it seems that the LaRouche maniacs also like to preserve video there. When I first saw LaRouche on TV he was an obvious nut buying late-night airtime, and his name is still synonymous with lunacy. If you watch the video, though, (or rather start watching it and never ever finish) how far is that lunacy from the lunacy of sitting Republicans? It's no different from Glenn Beck except that LaRouche dislikes some authoritarians - the focus on the British Empire remains absurd and hilarious - while Beck seems to like them all. Just how big an influence on right-wing memes is Lyndon LaRouche?



Note the tags:

economic; larouche; crash; econ; depression; recession; recovery; british; empire; world; 9/11; inside; job; defense; ego; president; obama; summers; modification; manipulation; sociology; swine; epedemic; pandemic; genocide; disease; pig; h1; n1; infection; sick; development; rail; power; nuclear; atom; fission; fusion; science; future; magnetic; levitation; looting co2; pollution; global; warming; epa; carbon; dioxide; climate; health; care; mri; ray; life; doctor; assisted; suicide; hospital; cut; payment; hmo; adam; smith; empiricism; religion; dogma; dollar; money; federal; reserve; usury; nazi; fascist; hitler; germany; england; british; king; adolf; kill; death; camp

In the Absence of Posts

Go read this.

I am not sure how present I will be over the next while; maybe I'll be here more, maybe I'll be here less FEWER. In any case, enjoy what there is to enjoy and thank you very much for entertaining me.

The Itch That Must Be Scratched

Shorter Washington Times:

Know WHO ELSE took advantage of a lame-duck session?

HUGO

CHAVEZ.

Also Hitler did bad stuff.

And Mussolini.

Must-See Entertainment

News from one of the many places that pretends to be a kind of Hollywood:

Six people have been injured in an explosion on the set of the feature film Dungeon Siege II in a provincial park east of Vancouver.

The show must go on! Break a leg! Blow up in a propane-tank explosion! Et cetera! Please bring us Dungeon Siege II as the world is clamouring for it!

Who is heading up the crew of artistes endeavouring to bring us the finest in projectimacated pictures?

The film is being directed by Uwe Boll and stars Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren, who was last seen in the film the Expendables.

World, you owe us for cradling this soon-to-be masterpiece. Kiwis can EAT IT: WE IMPORTED BOLL.

Riverdale Sucks Too

Archie gets disappointed and Reggie’s an asshole again:

When Archie Andrews and Reggie Mantle are opponents in the race for student body president, each candidate channels one of the most well-known figures in American politics: Archie goes blue with Obama while Reggie goes red for Palin. Soon the real life politicians visit the young politicians.

Food of the Clods

Not merely the love of one foodstuff but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated hunger; that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces. She put the chocolate chips down upon the graham crackers, among the fallen marshmallows. Presently the melting and dripping of the sugary goop quickened, and in a sort of pleasant ooziness they slid askew. The sun seemed to have grown hotter. They were all ravenous. Almost immediately they ate and ate for about half an hour. Sarah finished first. You could not have pure hunger or pure indulgence nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their meal had been a battle, the dessert a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.