Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
Shine, Perishing Republic

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught -- they say -- God, when he walked on earth.

-- Robinson Jeffers



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 26, 2009 5:10 AM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Abortion in America: A Personal Journey

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Four and a half months

Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Pick up on one and leave the other behind.
It's not often easy and not often kind.
Did you ever have to make up your mind?

-- The Loving Spoonful

No Answers Here. Just Observations and Anecdotes

Like most serious people in America today, I've had to struggle with my views on abortion. You are required, in this deadlocked and soul-locked society to have a view on this issue. "I don't know" just wont cut it. You've got to know. It says so right here in America: The Instructions.

But what *do* I know about Abortion? Here's what I thought I knew then and what I think I know now. Why today? Because I read the news today. Oh boy. And the news is only too happy to tell me that today, January 22, 2009, is the 36th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that released the crushing Abortion juggernaut to roll over the soul of America.

Abortion is, as we all know, one of the 25 or 30 third rails of American politics. So what? A President must prove to the American people that, from time to time, he can reach out and touch a few of these rails with both hands. This can be, as I am sure George W. Bush discovered and Barack Obama will find, a shocking experience, but I wouldn't want a man as President who couldn't do it.

Like it or not the issue of abortion is one of those rails. Bush grasped it to his cost and benefit, but it is clear he did so out of personal conviction and not political expediency. Whether or not you like his choice depends on your choice. But grasp it he did. I'm pretty clear where he stood on abortion. Obama is on record, where record there is, of being pro-abortion, even in its most odious forms. But it seems that Obama is more a man of expediency than conviction and such men are always malleable. Decisions from Obama, so far, have always had the whiff of Prufrockian diffidence about them:
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

This Prufrockian posture in civic life clothed in the skin and expressions of some smooth operator is one of the main reasons Obama has been able to feed his legions -- so far-- on the thin political gruel of "hope." Now that he has entered the realm of his every syllable being recorded and his every move being examined like auguries, his long stroll on the beach is over. He is now expected to serve up the bitter and chafing gall of "change" and convince his legions it tastes of ambrosia. Somewhere on the list of ingredients in this dish is "abortion."

The Vexation and the Fear. The Abstract Issue and the Real Child

Abortion is one of our most vexing issues. Like a satanic Energizer Bunny it just keeps going... and going... and going. There's no good in it and no good end to it.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 22, 2009 8:06 AM | Comments (49)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Florida: The Fool's Golden State

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The beauty parlor is filled with sailors.
The circus is in town.

-- Bob Dylan | Desolation Row


The frozen rain that would not stop drove me out of Seattle a few weeks ago. I took shelter at a friend's house deep in the Florida Keys. No rain. No chill. Turquoise waters. Long bridges and longer sunsets. A half an hour north from Key West. Fish sandwiches, large flocks of snowy egrets, Tiki bars specializing in Rumrunners with a dark rum float. Hammocks and sunshine. Powerboats and new yachts and boat drinks and running up on plane past Little Palm Island and out into the Gulf Stream with twin Cats putting out a perfect wake.

In a word, "Paradise." Right?

Yes. If you don't track in for the close-up.

Because, as much as the boosters of Florida want you to believe it, Florida is no longer "ready for its close-up." Florida is still pretty from the air and also in the middle-distance. But a close up examination of Florida, in the Keys or elsewhere, is like a close-up of a once beautiful woman that time is beginning to dissolve into age lines, lank hair, and too many calories in too many visible places.

Like that fabled great beauty, Florida is going to great lengths to keep anybody from noticing. The brochures have increasing amounts of make-up slathered on in the form of retouching. The flab is being trussed up in Spandex or draped with new clothes cleverly cut for the "ample." Most of all, the fact that large sections of the Keys and the Florida coastline are really quite dead is being hushed up at every opportunity, and new shades of rouge are being applied to the corpse to keep the money rolling in.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 17, 2009 9:42 AM | Comments (31)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Flight 1549

There's nothing to add to the universal amazement and gratitude regarding this moment except the subject line of a recent email:

"Yet again God speaks to the deaf......"



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 17, 2009 5:22 AM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Ah, Florida!

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"I'm melting! I'm melting!" -- The Wicked Witch of the West and Condo crazed Florida

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The Ironic Sunday Paper's Front Page



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 11, 2009 6:32 AM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink: Permalink
EMERGENCY MEASURES: BUSH HALTS ALL DOMESTIC PRODUCTION AND IMPORTS OF BULLSHIT.

"Sorry, but we're full," sez soon-to-be-ex-prez.

In what may be his last executive order, President George Bush today put the kibosh on the Bullshit industry citing "national security concerns" and the lack of enough bullshit snorkels to supply the population of all states.

"It is with great reluctance that I do this," said Bush, "since in so many ways bullshit is our most important product. However, with the bailin of the Obama administration of bullshit artists from the Clinton years, the bailout of even the porn industry, and the unforeseen tsunami of bullshit flowing out of Hollywood and cable television, the level of bullshit in the country is now over the heads of our toddlers and is rapidly rising to the point where even average sized adults are in imminent danger of drowning in it."

Following the President's statement, the head of FEMA confirmed that yet again the agency will be unable to supply the population of the country with life-saving bullshit snorkels should the barriers to BS fail during the Obama inaugural. "We've determined that as Obama takes the oath of office, the media alone could unleash such a slobbering wall of bullshit that it will overwhelm the banks of the Republic and drown millions not prepared or equipped with bullshit snorkels. If we had had more funding after the election we could have done something but as it stands the entire country is now at risk."

The director of Homeland Security concurred in this assessment stating, "We are doing everything we can to turn back the massive floods of foreign bullshit currently streaming towards our shores, but unless the President orders the navy and air force to eliminate offshore bullshit havens such as the BBC and Christine Amapour, our ability to protect the nation is seriously in doubt. Without napalm strikes on MSNBC and Nancy Grant, we're helpless."

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A ray of hope from the still surviving private sector.

Wal-Mart responded to the bullshit crisis by rushing to all its stores the "Emergency Obama Age Snorkels" (above) that have proven to be effective during the campaign. Wal Mart spokesperson said, "We hope that by making these simple devices available at cost to our customers that some of our fellow Americans will be able to ride out the bullshit flood that is about to engulf the country. Wal-Mart is, once again, the store that cares!"

Soon to be Bullshit Commander in Chief Barack Obama said, "Oh yeah? Well, we'll see about that."



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 9, 2009 8:47 AM | Comments (7)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Greatest Thing About Texas is...

... that everything in Texas turn out to be on my diet!

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The second greatest thing about Texas is the if this United States of America thing doesn't work out, Texas is already set up to be its own sovereign nation. (And it's already had a dress rehearsal.)



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 9, 2009 7:25 AM | Comments (6)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Greetings from Austin, Texas

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As in "Don't Mess with..."

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Home of Lone Star Beer...

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... and strangely enough, Rosie the Riveter.

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Posted by Vanderleun Jan 4, 2009 12:13 PM | Comments (12)  | QuickLink: Permalink
January 1, 2009

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Since my main subject of study is America, I'm going out to do some urban, suburban, and rural anthropology for a bit. Posting will be a sometime thing.

In the meantime, here's a selection of traveling music. Take it away, Bob.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 1, 2009 8:57 PM | Comments (11)  | QuickLink: Permalink
On the Road Again. Turn the Page.

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Since my main subject of study is America, I'm going out to do some urban, suburban, and rural anthropology for a bit. Posting will be a sometime thing.

In the meantime, here's a selection of traveling music. Take it away, Bob.

Now the rainman gave me two cures,
Then he said, "Jump right in."
The one was Texas medicine,
The other was just railroad gin.
An' like a fool I mixed them
An' it strangled up my mind,
An' now people just get uglier
An' I have no sense of time.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Jan 1, 2009 8:54 PM | Comments (0)  | QuickLink: Permalink
As if you didn't have enough to worry about...

A New Kind of Mind

When this emerging AI, or ai, arrives it won't even be recognized as intelligence at first. Its very ubiquity will hide it. We'll use its growing smartness for all kinds of humdrum chores, including scientific measurements and modeling, but because the smartness lives on thin bits of code spread across the globe in windowless boring warehouses, and it lacks a unified body, it will be faceless. You can reach this distributed intelligence in a million ways, through any digital screen anywhere on earth, so it will be hard to say where it is. And because this synthetic intelligence is a combination of human intelligence (all past human learning, all current humans online) and the coveted zip of fast alien digital memory, it will be difficult to pinpoint what it is as well. Is it our memory, or a consensual agreement? Are we searching it, or is it searching us? - Kevin Kelly -- The Technium



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 1, 2009 12:57 PM | Comments (3)  | QuickLink: Permalink
The Only 2008 Wrap-Up You'll Ever Need

VIA: Cassandra



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 1, 2009 12:02 PM | Comments (1)  | QuickLink: Permalink
"ALL I HAVE IS A VOICE / TO UNDO THE FOLDED LIE"

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
JANUARY 1, 2009

by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the January night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Terrorism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.



Posted by Vanderleun Jan 1, 2009 9:55 AM | Comments (5)  | QuickLink: Permalink
G2E Media GmbH

MONTHLY ARCHIVES


SIDELINES

Death Thirst Still Not Slaked: In a paradigm shift, winning means losing!

If the goal is not beating Obama, despite the fact that the polls show he can be beaten, then I would say that the Republicans are simply victims of themselves....
If winning is to be abandoned as strategy, and the Republicans lose, what is to be done in the next five years with a lame duck Obama who can do as he wishes? Whine and complain? Get even more sick and tired of ever-more-entrenched Obamacare? Start an armed revolution? Position another loser to head the 2016 ticket? I think a lot of Republicans will get tired of this new, losing paradigm. I know I will. --Classical Values


Gays over blacks, Part XIV

A recent trend is prominent blacks like Kobe Bryant getting in trouble over remarks insensitive to gays.... I think it reflects a more general impatience with stereotypical black behavior. A lot of straight white people are happy to seize upon a different Official Victim Group as a club to justify finally upbraiding blacks to not be such knuckleheads. -- Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog:

That was then (October 2011). This is now.

Back to a list of 2:
"Some are simply universally admired for their activism, like Clint Eastwood (pictured), John Wayne and Bob Hope." -- Box Office Politics: The Movies and Stars Dems vs. GOPers Love (and Love to Hate)

Uh, make that "John Wayne and Bob Hope."

Widespread Dependence on Big Wind Will Bring Frostbite and Death

Did anyone even think of deploying our wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?
Of course not. We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure.... Somehow the reality of that situation should be impressed upon these green activists who have wormed their way into positions of control. It may be that they are merely pursuing the fastest route to the "great human dieoff," an issue dear to the hearts of large numbers of green activists and philanthropists. But those of us who actually wish to live our lives, must get in the habit of telling them: "You first!" -- Al Fin Energy


"CIVILITY NOW!" In which Morgan soft soaps who he'd vote for before the current president

Road kill scraped off a randomly-selected backwoods highway comes next, followed by a gap,
followed by the spider I killed last summer because it bit my girlfriend. Then the proverbial syphilitic camel, then a few randomly selected lunatics just sprung from the asylum, then we get into the presidents from history who were voted out because they blew it. I mean, the rancid ones. Buchanan, Tyler, Harding, Hoover…THEN we go overseas and look to some dictators who’d like to see us dead…THEN include Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars…THEN, after another gap, we loop back over here and pick up Jimmy Carter… Tyler Durden. The Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of turpentine. An old sock someone used because they were out of toilet paper. A spitoon. Its contents. A booger. A mummified hemorrhoid.... -- Your 2012 Lineup @ House of Eratosthenes


"Bad Boy. No gun for you:" Comment of the Moment

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John Fleming reflects on Side-Lines: Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot
"I just figured out why he's got that stupid 4-yr old face. A case of arrested childhood development. HIs commie mommy never let him play with guns. He had a most unusual non-American childhood. He probably never had two cap guns with holsters, or a Johnny Seven shooting plastic bullets, or a wrist-rocket, or a super-soaker, or Daisy BB gun. Never got to build and launch rockets. Never went plinking with a .22. When he was in Indo, and he got the opportunity to play with other American boys (not often), he probably came home to mom and asked for cool stuff like the other kids had, and his mom sniffed, "No, they're not our people."

Guns are only for the Security Committee people. If the Party wants you to have guns, it'll give you one. He looks like that, because at 50-something years, he finally gets to have a little manly fun. All his life, mom, grandma, wife, have been telling him no, he can't go have fun with guns. Tragic, really.


Student, don't let the sun set on you here!

The Yorktown neighborhood of Philadelphia, immediately adjacent to Temple University,
prevailed upon the city to create a special Yorktown Overlay in which "student housing" would no longer be permitted in its single-family zones... This is the first time that I am aware of that a city has taken the bold step of barring a certain class of persons, by name, from a neighborhood (at least since the era of racial zoning). --Old Urbanist: Tuesday Zoning/Takings Litigation Update


PI PIE

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I’ll Be Knocking Out Beautiful Poetry This Whole Goddamn Flight

What will it be about? Anything.
There are no limits to my subject material. I’ll write a poem about flowers. I’ll write a poem about dragons. I’ll write a poem about a flower that fights a dragon and you’ll be all smug and think, Well obviously the dragon would win. But don’t get too comfortable with that mindset because, like a stealth bomber ravaging your brainscape with heartfelt language, here I come out of the blue with all these poetic details explaining why the flower winning is not only plausible but necessary. -- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Monologue:



Koan for Our Era

If you enter “Dostoyevsky” into the search function of Twitter, you don’t come up with much interesting these days. --Dostoyevsky — Marginal Revolution

Comment of the Moment

Clint is right. It IS halftime in America. We're down by about 5 trillion. Time to switch quarterbacks. -- Clint Eastwood's Chrysler Super Bowl Ad: The Untold Obama Connection - The Hollywood Reporter

"Get me re-right"

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Elementary school students learn what journalists do.
Everyday exciting things happen” to journalists, according to a third-grade textbook found by the Stuff Journalists Like blog. “A good journalist works very hard to make sure his or her stories are interesting and true.”


Mitt did it all wrong

No matter who you support this year, you have to admit Mitt Romney went about becoming president the wrong way.
Instead of wasting his time learning how business works and building a multi-billion-dollar company that really did save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mitt should have lived off his daddy's fortune like Jack Kennedy. Chasing skirts and molesting teenage virgin is a lot more fun than figuring out how to revive an old business. Instead, Mitt Romney gave his inheritance to charity. Who does that anymore? -- ォ Don Surber


Yup, not a teaspoon of testosterone from toenail to topknot

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The "O" Face
Splat! Geek-in-chief Obama tests marshmallow gun "The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about this,"
Obama said, before energetically pumping a compressor and shooting the marshmallow gun, invented by 14-year-old Joey Hudy. Obama watched open-mouthed as the candy shot across the room before crashing into the wall near the entrance to the Red Room, an elegant state parlor which stuffed with rare 19th century French furniture.

The man who "got" Bin Laden. Yeah, right.


Landlord's Nuts

I'm sure there will be a lot of takers to explain that house as mental illness, but like I said: I'm not buying.
The person went feral. Back into a state of nature. It's the hunter-gatherer Eden ruined by Western Civilization that we're told we need to go back to that's on display here. She was living off the land. When the land is covered with stripmalls, pizza and Diet Pepsi represents the nuts and berries. --Sippican Cottage: So You Want To Be A Landlord


The Vile Monsters of Planned Parenthood and Their Hostages

Planned Parenthood is very far from the uncontroversial organization the Susan G. Komen Foundation aspires to be. According to its most recent annual report, for 2010, Planned Parenthood sells abortions to nine out of every 10 pregnant women who come to its clinics.
And it's known throughout the country as an implacable and aggressive opponent of any meaningful restrictions on deliberate feticide.... Breast-cancer victims are only the latest hostages taken by Planned Parenthood. Unless the organization is finally held to account, they will surely not be the last. --Robert George and Carter Snead: - WSJ.com


A double whammy on the dumb class.

I still like the Charles Murray argument which is, basically, that the poor are increasingly populated by the cognitively inferior and that taking away certain social controls has lifted the lid off of the crock pot.
The cognitively inferior need stringently enforced social codes in order to stay on the straight and narrow. So what has happened over the past several decades is that the cream of the crop are leaving the areas where dumb people reside, and the voice of morality has diminished. This is a double whammy on the dumb class. --Folgers ォ Gucci Little Piggy


Ten West of COFAX

At 1,000 feet above the water... 40 knots too fast with the glideslope full scale deflection below us. Obviously, this is not going to work.
Me- Ok, this is not a stable approach. Let's go around and try it again. He says something that makes me laugh... Now? Me- Yes, now... Go around. -- Flight Level 390:


View from the Land of NO-Money

There is not enough money in the world to pay back America's national debt.
Total United States currency (paper and electronic entries in reserve accounts) sums to about $2 trillion. The national debt sums to over $14 trillion. If people ever really suspected that the U.S. monetary printing press was broken, there would be the mother of all bank runs. Bond holders would redeem their U.S. debt instead of rolling it over. Savers would hold tightly to any real currency. --Europe's Wile E. Coyote Moment


Not a dry fly in the house

On the same day a report revealed the names of a number of top donors to presidential campaigns, President Barack Obama spent time with around 25 wealthy donors who paid $35,800 each to be with him behind closed doors at a Washington hotel. --President Obama Spends Afternoon With Wealthy Donors In DC ォ CBS Washington




The Choice: A Scion or a Bastard

Voters this year look set to continue an odd pattern that's prevailed in presidential politics for a quarter century.
They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father. The surviving serious contenders—Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—all exemplify one of these two categories. For the seventh consecutive election, the winning candidate will be either a privileged prince with an adored, powerful patriarch, or an up-from-nothing scrapper with no relationship with his biological dad. -- Michael Medved: Presidential Fathers and Sons - WSJ.com


Gay Choice? Yet More "Settled Science" That Is Becoming Unsettled

In 1993 geneticist Dean Hamer studied pairs of brothers
who were very loosely defined as “exclusively or mostly” homosexual. He claimed to find a pattern in a specific region of the X chromosome that such brothers seemed to disproportionately share. This was widely trumpeted in the media as the landmark discovery of a “gay gene.” But Hamer and others failed to subsequently replicate his results. In fact, a 1999 Canadian study contradicted them. Hamer is a gay man who has reportedly stated he hoped his research would help end intolerance toward homosexuals. He also later claimed he’d discovered the “God gene,” so take whatever he says with a grain of DNA. --Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? - Taki's Magazine


Beardski: Just the Thing for the Coming Global Ice Age

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Hit the piste like Grizzly Adams’ gung-ho nephew with your very own Beardski. Part insulating ski mask, part fake beard; these spectacular accessories will make you look like the most experienced man on the slopes. --Beardski @ Firebox.com

Have you ever wondered where your Flying Car is, now that you live in the Age of the Jetson’s, dear reader?

Answer: you sold it for a mess of pottage.
When civilization abandoned institutional Christianity for liberalism, then abandoned Christian notions of decency and individualism for socialism, and then abandoned Christian notions of chivalry and truth for political correctness, and then abandoned Christian notions of the objectivity of truth, beauty and virtue for the roaring abyss of nihilism, civilization lost the engine and motive of its progress. When you stopped calling yourself sons of God and started calling yourself naked apes, you stopped climbing Jacob’s Ladder toward the angels, and slumped instead toward the jungle where Nature red in tooth and claw holds reign. -- Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal


Where Christian virtues fail

Where Christian virtues fail there liberty turns into license and licentiousness: pornographers admired as men of business. Wealth promotes an industry of envy, as lawyers, bureaucrats and politicians make it their daily business to loot what others produce. Medicine turns to infanticide, and the Hippocratic Oath languishes. Science goes mad, and says the universe is nothing but a carousel of atoms, and your brain a defective calculation machine that merely hallucinates self-awareness and free will. --Futurism and Shoepiles | John C. Wright's Journal

"May I suggest that this is not a rejection of the Tea Party,"

but rather of the candidates themselves. None of them are worthy -- at least at this point --€” of the presidency. A three-term congresswoman and a half-term governor are as unready as Barack Obama was in 2008. Let's not fight fire with fire. Let's use water. That usually works unless it is a grease fire. --The view from the fence « Don Surber

Inside The Ridiculously Complicated Process Of Buying A Super Bowl Ad

"The $4 million price tag is the least of it." -- The 1st of 14 screens @ Business Insider

And now football, like Madonna, is over...

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"Then there's the other Republican Party. "

It does not believe that most of the national debates are a tempest in a teacup
that can be settled amicably behind closed doors. It is uninterested in bipartisan great compromisers, it seeks fighters who will stand up for its agenda. It is not interested in the progressive voyage to the national future that has been taken up by both parties, what it would like is independence from their reign of policy terror. It would like to roll back the progressive policymaking of both parties. --Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield RTWT!


Piltdown Man: Another Case in Which "The Science Is Settled"

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Unearthed in a gravel pit at Piltdown in East Sussex and revealed to the outside world exactly a century ago,
those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth. --Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax The Observer


"If you were an Iranian subscriber to the Post who works at Iran's "Interests Section" inside the Pakistani embassy in Washington, what would be your considered judgment? "

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U S Bases

What would you report home to Tehran after reading the Washington Post day after day?
I think you'd end up saying: "We can't compete with the Krauthammers. They are better than us at putting together words. Therefore we can't guarantee that the ruling class in Washington won't work itself into another frenzy like it did in 2003 and do something stupid. So, we'd better get ourselves a few nukes as a deterrent." --Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog: The Great Game ain't so great anymore


The Summing Up

JUST ABOUT AS BAD A GAME AS YOU'D EXPECT FROM TWO MEDIOCRE TEAMS...

Citizens of Slab City

There are Year-Rounders who brave the 120ーF summer inferno, and Snowbirds who land from as far as Canada with their souped-up RVs and pensions,
soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. -- Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands


Big Wind: For Dummies, Chumps, and Greens

Once an honest and intelligent person opens himself to the facts,
it becomes very difficult to support big wind power on any basis whatsoever. Unless, of course, you are a big developer or investor in government subsidised wind farms. In that case, there are $billions to be made, without the need to provide any useful power to the public, whatsoever. A neat scam, if you can live with yourself. Just ask Warren Buffett. --Al Fin Energy:


"There are new monsters in America, and I am starting to wonder whether I am to be considered among them: "

those of the uninvolved and uninformed lives, the bar-raisers, the downright mean ones,
the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the “way you look”, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on. My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons? -- Works and Days » Are You "Them"?

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Even a Nun Might Say, "Jesus Christ it's cold in Europe!"

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And the Sammy Hager Award Goes to McCain for "You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!"

“Slow traffic keep right” is such a simple rule to understand,
but evidently they’re issuing drivers licenses to people too stupid to understand that rule, who are probably also too stupid to figure out that passing a semi-truck might require use of the accelerator pedal. (Trust me, idiot: It’s down there on the floorboard of your car, probably somewhere on the right side.) If there were any justice in the world, state troopers wouldn’t be laying radar traps for guys doing 82 mph in a 65 mph zone, but would instead be issuing tickets to slow-moving idiots who take more than a few seconds to pass a semi-truck. -- Hate Hoax Busted by Cop’s Dash-Cam (Also: You Idiots, Get Out of My Way!) : The Other McCain


"Spoiler alert! Living in San Francisco with her gay male BFF blogging the existential ennui of being unmarried was my tip-off."

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How exactly do we know, from the photo, that she is on the political left rather than right?  Seriously.  Here is her blog and profile.  Here is her Twitter feed.  How do we know?  And that we know — should it make you less confident in your own political beliefs?  WWRHS? -- Assorted links -- €” Marginal Revolution

Change is nothing but the status quo

The status quo must be thought of as a direction, not merely a state,
considering how predictable change has become. (Does anyone dispute at this point that, for example, gay marriage will soon be legalized, most likely by the courts?) Political action must address this change, must figure out where it stands relative to that change and act accordingly; if it limits itself to addressing the present, it may end up misdirecting its energy, addressing issues that will soon resolve themselves by pure inertia and ignoring issues for which the direction that inertia will eventually drive them in has not yet been decided. --Anonymous admits its irrelevance


The One-Check Education Bill in the United States

If you had to write one big check for the whole twelve years of public education of the 88 percent or so of the entire population of the United States that doesn't go to private schools, at 2011 rates of $10,441 per person per year, it would be a check for thirty-three trillion, eight hundred forty-eight billion, eight hundred eighty-six million dollars. --Sippican Cottage: Bin Laden; Joe Biden; Whatever

If Newt wasn't steeped in envy, spite, and self-pity he wouldn't have to empty his drool cup so often

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Tru' dat, but every few days it seems that this whining "candidate" redefines "sore loser:"
"They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful." --Gingrich: Romney didn’t deserve congrats – CNN Political Ticker

Sigh. The person who doesn't deserve congrats for the regularly scheduled destruction of Newt Gingrich is.... Newt Gingrich!

Strange Apparatus

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Hoping for another visitation from ye olde Proverbs 5:3

Nerd Valentines

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Valentine's Day gift ideas for the nerd in your life.

The Dead Cities of Syria

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Over 700 abandoned settlements bear the collective name The Dead Cities of Syria....
Between the cities of Aleppo and Hama there is a limestone massif and it is here these ancient settlements were built by their once prosperous peoples. The area is about thirty kilometers in width yet is several times longer – extending to almost 140 kilometers in length.... An extensive and fascinating photo essay @ Kuriositas


10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class

Kenneth Boehr, Clara Lazen's science teacher, handed out the usual ball-and-stick models used
to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she'd made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn't sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical. -- | Popular Science


In which Warren Buffet wraps up his national tour of intellectual drooling and presidential fellatio with bunny ears

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No fool like an old.... etc. A Day With Warren Buffett Offers Wealth of Photo Opportunities
The ritual ends with a photo shoot. Each student gets to take two pictures with Mr. Buffett. The first one is a serious shot, the second is a funny pose of their choosing.

Would the ritual ended with sepaku for the hilariously named "Sage of Omaha."

If he's talking about prayer we know he's lying. On the other hand....

Obama: 'I have fallen on my knees with great regularity' - Investors.com



Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low

No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month!
So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. -- | ZeroHedge


Caesar Commands the Jews Eat Pork, Quakers Join Army, Amish Get i-Pods, Christians Burn Incense

To all Roman Catholics who voted for Mr Barack Obama: SUUUCKERS! -- | John C. Wright's Journal

Kinder, Gentler Embroidery

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