DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

We have seen the future, and it sucks.

Archive for August, 2010

Making Soldiers Fit to Fight, Without the Situps

31st August 2010

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Disgusting. I rather doubt that the Marines make the same choices.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 2 Comments »

Plans to combine British and French navies to be discussed in Paris this week.

31st August 2010

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I can hear Nelson spinning in his grave from Texas.

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4 Israelis shot dead in West Bank

31st August 2010

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Four Israelis — including a pregnant woman — were killed Tuesday near Hebron in the West Bank in a shooting for which the militant wing of Hamas claimed responsibility, officials said.

The incident occurred near Bani Naim junction, the largely Palestinian territory where Jews have settled in places like Hebron, Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibowitz said. The victims were in a car on Route 60, the IDF website said.

Guy Gonen, a paramedic who was one of the first people on the scene, said the car was sprayed with bullets.

Izzedin Al-Qassam Brigades — the military wing of Hamas — claimed “complete” responsibility for the attack, according to a statement on its website.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the group, confirmed responsibility for the attack in an interview with the Hamas radio station.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, congratulated the attackers, saying the attack was a normal reaction to what he called “the crime of occupation.” Hamas, which controls Gaza, opposes direct talks and the continued existence of Israel.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace you got there, Mohammed.

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on 4 Israelis shot dead in West Bank

Iraqis want American to stay

31st August 2010

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That is the paradox of Fallujah, the city that saw the bitterest fighting of America’s seven years in Iraq. Its inhabitants regard the Americans with hatred, but say they represent their only insurance against the enemies by whom they are surrounded: al-Qaeda, the Iraqi government, and Iranian agents.

Remind me why we’re wasting our time (and money) on these people?

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Iraqis want American to stay

Bronx Trial Shows how Prisons Breed Terrorists

31st August 2010

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Of course, they breed every sort of criminal; why should terrorists be left out of the mix?

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Bronx Trial Shows how Prisons Breed Terrorists

For Health Care Lobbyists, ObamaCare Is the Gift That Keeps On Giving

31st August 2010

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In his January State of the Union speech, President Obama woefully declared that “each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith.” But by the following month, The Hill was reporting that “despite his push to rein in special interests, President Barack Obama sparked a boom on K Street.” Lobbyists for the health care industry in particular were given an enormous boost in Washington as the health care bill rolled slowly through Congress and then moved on to the regulatory phase.

How’s that Hope & Change thing working out for ya?

The Crust takes care of its own.

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Obama aide: Iraq speech not a victory lap

31st August 2010

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Of course not. Surrender-monkeys don’t get victory laps.

When President Obama steps into the Oval Office to deliver his prime-time address on Tuesday, he won’t be taking a victory lap and won’t utter the words “mission accomplished, a top aide says.

Indeed. You have to have a mission objective in order to know whether it’s accomplished. We’ve never had that In Iraq — or Afghanistan, for that matter.

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Eddie Bernice Johnson (D, TX-30) diverted scholarship money to family members.

31st August 2010

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So.  We have a legislator named Eddie Bernice Johnson (D, TX-30), member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and thus one of the people whose responsibility it is to hand out partial college scholarships to worthy recipients.  A worthy project, to be sure: good policy, good politics, good publicity.  There is – sensibly – a non-nepotism rule; and there is – also sensibly – a rule that this money is to be given to students in your district.  But there is apparently no oversight at all over who gets the money, which is why Rep. Johnson was able to use this money gave 15 scholarships to six ineligible kids – four grandchildren and two kids of an aide – and none of them live in the district.  Important point, there: even if grandchildren and children of aides don’t count under the anti-nepotism rule (an argument which the CBC itself rejects), the point of the whole thing is to foster local education.  Rep. Johnson’s defense?  She’s a nine-term Congresswoman who somehow missed the fact that she wasn’t supposed to give CBC scholarships to out-of-district family members.

She’s a female black Democrat politician, a gold-standard victim and member of the Crust, and therefore above criticism.

Please remember this when Rep. Johnson is defended – and she will be.  They’ll talk about her relative lack of personal wealth; they’ll talk about how she at least didn’t actually steal the money; they’ll talk about the relatively small amounts involved; they’ll talk about the need of those kids for those scholarships; and they’ll undoubtedly call people racists for even broaching the subject of yet another member of the CBC who’s involved in shenanigans.  What they won’t do is admit that Rep. Johnson has no right to be defended.  She was given money dedicated to bettering the lives of her constituents.  She instead used it to better the lives of her family and subordinates.

Muslims would understand, because that’s what they’d do. Normal Americans? Not so much.

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Your genes determine whether you will respond to surveys

31st August 2010

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Humanity is in general genetically predisposed not to take surveys, according to new research. However there exists a proportion of mutant freaks whose genes make them want to respond to surveys.

That explains a lot.

The amazing news comes as part of a new study by profs in America and Singapore. This involved the cunning sending out of a survey to over 1,000 sets of twins.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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The Gender-Neutral Pronoun: 150 Years Later, Still an Epic Fail

30th August 2010

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Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

They Crawl, They Bite, They Baffle Scientists

30th August 2010

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‘Progressives’? No, bedbugs. (There is a distinction. Trust me.)

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Where is the Sarah Palin of the Left?

30th August 2010

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For all the talk of their support for women, there is no one on a national level doing for liberals what Sarah Palin is doing for conservatives in this election. Who is helping the Democratic women win seats? The highest ranking woman in the Democratic Party? No, Nancy is focused on investigating the Ground Zero Mosque detractors and still trying to sell a health care plan that has already been passed. … Instead of finding better candidates to run against the fresh crop of small government advocates, Nancy Pelosi is cherrypicking the candidates she can throw under the bus this fall.

And don’t get me started with Hillary Clinton.

The problem with women of the Left is that they’re too tightly focused on forcing their way into what they view as the Old Boy’s Club; they don’t realize that, once they’ve forced their way in, it merely makes them Old Boys with boobs.

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Hatching Bigger Government

30th August 2010

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There have been a lot of unsurprising news stories lately. Rod Blagojevich going on TV. Tiger Woods and his wife divorcing. The economy racing along like an elderly tortoise. And the Food and Drug Administration saying the salmonella outbreak proves the agency needs more power.

We should have seen that coming. In the private sector, entities that fall short of doing their jobs find themselves forced to shrink. In the public sector, the opposite is typically true. Failure is an option, and often a beneficial one.

The Federal Reserve Board and Treasury facilitated the 2008 financial crisis? Then obviously we have no choice but to give them even more responsibility. The Securities and Exchange Commission let Bernie Madoff rob investors? A bigger SEC will be a smarter SEC.

It’s true that the FDA is charged with assuring food safety. But really, the government can’t do that. The task is too big and too complex. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to do it, because the pressures of competition force producers to make sure their goods are clean and wholesome.

What goes curiously unnoticed is that egg suppliers and grocery stores have nothing to gain from sickening their customers—and a lot to lose. It doesn’t take many obvious hygiene lapses for a company to get a bad reputation, and a bad reputation can be catastrophic.

In 1971, a New York man died of botulism after eating a can of Bon Vivant soup. If you’ve never heard of Bon Vivant soup, there’s a simple explanation: In no time at all, the company was bankrupt and the brand was as defunct as William McKinley.

Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Hatching Bigger Government

Man looking for ‘ghost train’ killed by the real thing

30th August 2010

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

UK: Jump jets to fall victim to spending cuts

30th August 2010

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Britain is on the verge of being a Scandinavian country with respect to its military.

When you spend (and borrow against) all your tax revenue on free butter, there isn’t anything left for guns.

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Enchantment under the sea: bridal suite beneath the waves at Maldives hotel

30th August 2010

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You, too, can risk having to learn to breathe water.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s firm gets cut of 9/11-suit payouts

30th August 2010

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Ground Zero workers are on the hook to pay steep interest on money their lawyers borrowed from a group of investors that include Silver and his law partners, The Post has learned.

Silver’s partners at the Weitz & Luxenberg law firm are top board members of a business that quietly loaned money at 18 percent a year to the law firm representing some 9,800 Ground Zero workers with toxic-illness suits against the city.

New York politicians are corrupt? Whoda thunkit?

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Clean People Feel Morally Superior

29th August 2010

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Well, that’s because we are.

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Harvard is always first to leverage the brand

29th August 2010

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Yale, of course, has too much taste to indulge in this sort of vulgar enterprise.

I suspect that this is a startup run out of a dorm room in Eliot House.

Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Harvard is always first to leverage the brand

Oxford English Dictionary ‘will not be printed again’

29th August 2010

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Sales of the third edition of the vast tome have fallen due to the increasing popularity of online alternatives, according to its publisher.

The dictionary’s owner, Oxford University Press (OUP), said the impact of the internet means OED3 will probably appear only in electronic form.

A team of 80 lexicographers has been working on the third edition of the OED – known as OED3 – for the past 21 years.

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A City in the Cloud: Living PlanIT Redefines Cities as Software

29th August 2010

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‘Forward into the future, Comrades!’ I can see the ghost of Lenin smiling.

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World’s Most Advanced Machinery Was Reason For Apple’s Liquidmetal Deal, Expert Says

29th August 2010

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Apple recently licensed Liquidmetal Technology’s IP  for use in consumer electronics. Liquidmetal Technologies is one of the leading companies trying to commercialize space-age metal alloys that are extremely hard and lightweight but can be processed as easily as plastics. NASA has said Liquidmetal is “poised to redefine materials science as we know it in the 21st century.”

In addition, there are the capabilities of Liquidmetal itself. The alloys, also known as  bulk metallic glasses, are as strong as titanium but use only one-third of the material. It can be mixed with very small amounts of precious metals to make jewelry-like finishes, or optimized for functions such as an antenna. And while titanium scratches and magnesium corrodes, Liquidmetal is scratch and corrosion proof, and resistant to greasy marks.

“You get fingerprints all over them and they just disappear,” Merkel says. “You could add gold or silver to get a beautiful look you’ve never seen before.”

Hmmm … say, the components of a handgun?

Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on World’s Most Advanced Machinery Was Reason For Apple’s Liquidmetal Deal, Expert Says

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

29th August 2010

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Consider this example. Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin. These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so.

On the other hand, English does oblige you to specify certain types of information that can be left to the context in other languages. If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my neighbor, I may not have to mention the neighbor’s sex, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions. Again, this does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time. But it does mean they are not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action.

When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.

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The Neuroscience of The New York Times

29th August 2010

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An examination of the semi-Luddite proclivities of the premier Voice of the Crust.

Is checking your email while you’re waiting in line at the grocery store really hurting your ability to learn?

That’s the basic premise of Matt Richtel’s very popular New York Times story this week, “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Valuable Downtime.” The article couches its arguments in the language of science, but its actual scientific content is pretty sparse.

And these are the ‘progressives’. Like ‘Democratic Party’, a more entertaining oxymoron has not been seen on this planet for time out of mind.

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The role of information in American “Islamophobia”

29th August 2010

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One theme in the recent MSM hand-wringing about America’s alleged “Islamophobia” is the notion that Americans are giving Muslims a more difficult time now than they did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The  Washington Post  conceded that public opinion surveys don’t show a meaningful change, but it quoted unnamed “religious scholars and other experts” who find the change in tone “striking.” And it quoted a Muslim in Tennessee who recalled nothing but good will from the “locals” back in 2001, but who now sees palpable hostility following the decision to build a sprawling new mosque complex in the area.

Since then, we have learned that the radical ideology behind 9/11 is not quite as alien as we thought. Some portion of the American Muslim community – presumably small, but we don’t know how small – is drawn to it.

Moreover, what looks like a considerable portion of those who hold themselves out (and are held out by the MSM) as leaders of American Muslims refuse to disassociate themselves from terrorist groups. They don’t countenance al Qaeda, though they do blame America for that outfit’s terrorist acts. But they won’t repudiate other bloody terrorists, notably Hamas.

Thus, while only the most highly informed Americans probably could have imagined terrorist plotting or even pro-terrorist rhetoric in an American place of worship back in 2001, many can imagine it now, and with reason.

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on The role of information in American “Islamophobia”

‘I Like Glenn Beck Because He’s Fun to Watch’

29th August 2010

Tim Cavanaugh ‘fesses up to his guilty secret.

Yes, he’s trying, as Moynihan memorably put it, to learn history and teach it at the same time. But so what? Like the dumpy woman with low self-esteem we all dream of, Beck makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in natural gifts. I like the sense that he’s bringing you his findings as fast as they come in. You get the impression that two weeks ago Beck had never heard of Woodrow Wilson, yet now he has figured out that Woodrow Wilson was one of the most evil people of the 20th century, and he wants to tell everybody. There’s something fun about that, a performance that invites you to help fill in details and fix errors. It’s certainly something you don’t see anywhere else on TV, a medium populated almost entirely by people who are more cocksure about everything than I am about anything.

And he’s right about Woodrow Wilson.

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American Electric Power v. Connecticut

29th August 2010

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The environmental law community is buzzing over a brief filed by the Solicitor General’s Office this week on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority in American Electric Power v. Connecticut.  As reported by the Washington Post, the WSJ’s Washington Wire, and Greenwire, environmentalist groups are shocked and dismayed by the SG’s decision to enter the case.  “Obama Sides with Polluters” reads the title of a blog post by UCLA’s Jonathan Zasloff at Legal Planet.

How’s that Hope and Change working out for ya?

In AEP, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (that initially included then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor) allowed several states and private groups to pursue public nuisance claims under federal common law against a handful of the nation’s largest utilities, including the TVA, for their contribution to global warming.  Among other things, the court held the states had standing and that their nuisance claims were not displaced by federal regulatory authority over greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.  This suit, like others filed elsewhere, has increased pressure on utilities and others to accept federal climate change legislation.

Poor babies. Apparently there actually are some grownups working for the government after all, and Mother Gaia will have to look elsewhere in hopes of reversing the Industrial Revolution. (Why are ‘environmentalists’ considered ‘progressives’? If you look at the policies they push they’re the most reactionary people around; they won’t be happy until the world is returned to the way it was during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.)

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

Last Refuge of a Liberal

28th August 2010

Freeberg piles on.

But did you notice the other thing all these issues in Krauthammer’s list have in common? Someone needs to be told to go stick it where the sun don’t shine. Someone’s just-plain-bad. The Islamophobes need to learn to live with the Victory Mosque, which they really hate, but that’s a good thing because once it’s there they won’t be able to do anything about it, and they deserve it. They need to suffer because they’re bad people. Ditto for those xenophobes in Arizona, dang it, they deserve to have all those brown people who “aren’t like them” streaming through their fences. I hope they choke on their chewing tobacco over it!

Today’s liberalism is retrograde but natural machismo, repressed through artificial disciplinary techniques and then exploding elsewhere in an uncontrolled and unhealthy way. Go through the list of things liberals do that embarrass them once the wrong people find out about them, but that they can be counted on to do once they’re among friends in a “JournoList” type of setting. It is the same list of things boys do when their hormonal rushes are driving them into that Venturi manifold toward manhood — and when they’re under-supervised.

It’s as if they missed out on the coming-of-age when they were thirteen or so, and are trying to make up for it.

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Whoops! The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time

28th August 2010

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I note that 7 of the 10 are by Americans.

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Military service makes Israeli techies tougher

28th August 2010

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I certainly learned more about management in the Navy than I did in my MBA program. And they paid me rather than me paying them.

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The William: Innovative Cooktop

28th August 2010

Watch it.

This. Is. So. Cool. I want one of these so badly, I’m speechless.

Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | 1 Comment »

Gmail Voice Is About Future Search, Not Free Calls

28th August 2010

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‘Fiendishly clever’, I think, is the correct term for this.

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Top 10 Lost Technologies

28th August 2010

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Are Libertarians Really as Useless as a Bucket of Armpits? Or Do They Just Smell That Way?

28th August 2010

Nick Gillespie doesn’t take himself or his movement very seriously … which is why he’s one of the best writers at tReason Magazine.

I think part of the problem with these sorts of discussions, including Brink Lindsey’s liberaltarianism, is that participants are constantly mixing levels of discussions (I know I do). Liberals and conservatives are used interchangeably for Democrats and Republicans, right wing and left wing, etc. While the Dems are reliably more liberal (in a contemporary sense) than Republicans, the overlap isn’t perfect and many liberals have libertarian or even conservative sympathies. And while their numbers are small, there are in fact libertarian Democrats along with liberal Republicans. Most importantly, how someone governs is probably less a reflection of ideology than other material concerns (there’s the Marxist libertarian in me!).

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Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare

28th August 2010

Reason.tv examines the Commerce Clause, that universal Leatherman that Congress uses to stick its nose into our daily lives. It’s only ten minutes, and will teach you a lot about how our government had degenerated.

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Airborne electricity is ripe for the picking, claim researchers

28th August 2010

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Detractors have pointed out that Dr. Galembeck’s team may be generating the droplets’ electrical charge by the act of pumping the air over the metals — which might imply you couldn’t practice this technique with still, humid air — while there’s also the rather large caveat that the little electricity they were able to collect from vapor was a hundred million times less than what you could obtain from a solar cell of equivalent size. Still, it’s another new door unto a potential alternative energy source and we don’t ever like having to close those.

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Fidel Castro: Osama bin Laden is a US agent

28th August 2010

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Great. Let’s have him blow up Fidel Castro.

(I can see Fidel and Raoul watching the MSNBC reporter come in and muttering to each other “Let’s have some fun with this guy.”)

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One in four lap dancers has a degree, new research has shown.

27th August 2010

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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The genetic code of wheat, which is five times larger than the human genome, has been mapped out by scientists for the first time.

27th August 2010

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The genome sequence is expected to help scientists develop new wheat strains which are more resilient to harsh conditions and disease and deliver higher yields.

But only if they can get it past the EcoNazis environmental activists.

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Antarctic monks pay tribute to The Beatles

27th August 2010

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Not a headline that you read every day.

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Western journalist ’embeds’ with Taliban army for first time

27th August 2010

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Hope he doesn’t think that will make him bulletproof.

The journalist, Norwegian Paul Refsdal, says Taliban leader Commander Dawran granted him the access and allowed him to film the enemy soldiers while they attacked a US convoy.

That makes him an unlawful combatant just like them, and subjects him to the standard penalties under international law. He can be summarily executed wherever found.

After Refsdal returned to Kabul, following a US attack upon the Taliban camp, another Taliban fighter “Omar” offered him an opportunity to return two weeks later.

Refsdal returned to Omar but was kidnapped and held hostage for six days. No ransom was paid.

Unfortunately, I doubt that he will learn anything from the experience.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

The Mohammed Coefficient

27th August 2010

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Mohammed Coefficient (abbreviated MC): The statistical measure, given as a decimal or a percentage, of the incidence of the name “Mohammed” among a group of perpetrators of evil deeds. Variant names that contribute to the MC include Mahmoud, Mahmud, Mahomet, Mamadou, Mehmed, Mehmet, Mehmood, Mehmud, Mihammad, Mohamed, Mohammad, Muhamed, Muhammad, Muhammed, and Muhammet, and all other cognates of the original Arabic name of Islam’s prophet.

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Britain faces new terror wave

27th August 2010

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One of the major threats in Britain, according to Prof Clarke, is from released prisoners who may have been convicted of terrorist offences or may have been radicalised while in jail. “British prisons still house more terrorists than in any other European country, though not for very long periods,” he warns.

He points out that just 23 people, around 19 per cent of those convicted of terrorism offences, have been given life or indeterminate sentences. Twenty per cent have been sentenced to more than 10 years, and the largest single proportion, 32 per cent, received between eight months and four years. “It raises immediate questions about the motivations of those now released, or soon to be released: are they more or less inclined to reoffend?” he says.

“From previous experience in Northern Ireland, it is more likely that the majority of those released will remain as committed to their cause as before, and may serve as a source of motivation to others, albeit in clandestine ways.”\

And does the government plan to do anything about that? Evidently not.

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Britain faces new terror wave

‘Canadian Idol’ contestant among three arrested as part of terror plot

27th August 2010

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Police arrested Hiva Alizadeh and Misbahuddin Ahmed in Ottawa on Wednesday and Khurram Syed Sher in London, Ontario on Thursday. Alizadeh, 30, and Ahmed, 26, appeared in court Thursday. All three are Canadian.

Yeah, that’s the first thing I think of when I hear Hiva Alizadeh, Misbahuddin Ahmed, and Khurram Syed Sher — ‘Hey, I’ll bet those guys are Canadian.’

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on ‘Canadian Idol’ contestant among three arrested as part of terror plot

The last refuge of a liberal

27th August 2010

Charles Krauthammer is fed up.

And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

— Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

— Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

— Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

— Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats’ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

Well, obviously, the only solution is for the government to get a new populace; this one just isn’t working out.

Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »

Tony Hayward refuses to testify in front of Senate committee for second time

27th August 2010

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‘Please, sir, we’d like you to show up for a necktie party.’

‘No, thanks, I think I’ll pass.’

Smart boy.

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Anyone Who Wants to Cut Entitlements Clearly Has No Place on a Commission Devoted to Fiscal Responsibility

27th August 2010

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At the Columbia Journalism Review, Trudy Lieberman provides further evidence for my conclusion that what really offended Alan Simpson’s critics about his comparison between Social Security and “a milk cow with 310 million tits” was his candor. Lieberman says “what’s really at stake here” is not Simpson’s colorful language but his “long-standing antipathy toward Social Security and Medicare,” which “raises the question about why the president appointed him [to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform] in the first place.”

I mean, really. Cut entitlements? What was he smoking?

Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Anyone Who Wants to Cut Entitlements Clearly Has No Place on a Commission Devoted to Fiscal Responsibility

New York governor could face perjury charges

27th August 2010

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Judith Kaye, the former chief judge of New York state, said Governor David Paterson “at a minimum” made “inaccurate and misleading” statements when testifying to the New York State Commission on Public Integrity in March.

The governor came under scrutiny after it was revealed he took five free tickets from the New York Yankees to attend the first game of the 2009 World Series.

Maybe it’s just me,  but every time I see the Governor of New York I think of Mel Brooks as Governor Lepetomaine in Blazing Saddles.

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Drunken employee pops cap in server

27th August 2010

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Joshua Lee Campbell, 23, had apparently been enjoying a few liveners with a fellow worker at the Twilight Concert in Pioneer Park, and later nipped back to work to shoot the server with a .45-calibre automatic.

Hey, we’ve all had one of those days….

Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Drunken employee pops cap in server

A 30lb carp ended a Texas kayaker’s attempt to win a 340-mile race after it jumped out the water and hit him in the head.

26th August 2010

Read it.

When even the fish are against you, it’s time to quit.

Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on A 30lb carp ended a Texas kayaker’s attempt to win a 340-mile race after it jumped out the water and hit him in the head.