Lurleen says I'm cute

I am so getting a new doctor.
I went yesterday because I've been having a problem breathing when I walk, so he had me disrobe and sit on his table.
When he walked in he just said, "D'Oh!", told me to lay off the doughnuts and beer and walked out.
Then he sent a nurse in to take a pic.

He never did tell me why he just said that. He suggested I show the pic to "Marge" and she could tell me why.
Well, I don't know any "Marge", so maybe I could get some help here. Image below the fold (No, it's not Helen Thomas, I do that one when you're not expecting it).
more...

Posted by: Veeshir at 03:42 PM | Comments (45) | Add Comment
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Friedrich von Hayek: His Life and Thoughts

Found this while I was digging around for a project I am working on. It's long but worth watching.

Posted by: chad98036 at 11:28 PM | Comments (43) | Add Comment
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Bleg - Who knows someone at Blizzard

I am having problems with a World of Warcraft account and am not getting a lot of traction in getting it resolved.

Here's the issue: 

Last Feb. (2009) My account was frozen because it was stolen or suspected of being stolen.  I contacted Blizzard and after a number of days they sent me some forms to fill out and said they would determine whether to restore the account.  I sent the forms in and never heard anything back, and the account remained locked so when my Credit card expired I let the account payments expire. 

Recently I decided to start playing again so I dug out the disks and set up a battle net account.  My original Wow disk was damaged so I bought a new one and installed and downloaded patches.  No problem so far.  Then I tried to install Burning Crusade.  Put the disk in and it skipped immediately to play (no install stuff which after the patch I download seems semi reasonable) so I go to enter the key on battle-net and it gets refused because it is linked to the old frozen account.  I go to the FAQ page as directed and it tells me to merge the old account.  I try but of course it is still frozen, so I contact Blizzard.  Again it takes a couple days for response but a GM contacts me and asks me to repeat everything I put in the trouble ticket.  I do and he responds that I need to merge accounts.  I explain again that I can't and tell him that if they want to supply a new authentication key great or if they will unfreeze the old account great. He responds again and tells me to contact billing and technical services, the same people who didn't restore the account last time.  So I can try again to have Blizzard restore the old account, which I am not optimistic about, I can shell out another $80 for Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, I can hope someone knows someone who can maybe bump this issue up a notch, or I can take my money somewhere else.

At this point the last option looks most likely, but hell who knows maybe one of you is on a first name basis with some Blizzard dude who can make the world right again.

Update:  So after a 1.25 hour wait on hold for someone to answer I am back to where I was last year with Blizzard telling me the account was locked because it looks like someone stole it and please fill out these forms, which he promised he would e-mail.  No record of the ones I filled out and faxed back last year.  They did reset the email back to my email so that's a plus at least.

Update 2:  Giving credit where credit is due, David did send the form in a timely fashion and followed up after I resubmitted it this evening.  The wait earlier was irritating, as is the entire issue, but his attitude is making up for it.

Posted by: chad98036 at 03:59 PM | Comments (36) | Add Comment
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Ask A Moron: alexitis

alexthechick asks, "Does this look infected to you?"

Yes. 

Now, before you get angry I'd just like to apologize and try to explain.  You see, I have it on pretty good authority that I'm not required to inform you of any condition I may have because it may interfere with my right to a fun, happy and fulfilling life.

Just think of it as a way to always remember our time together.*

* - We were hobo hunting and things got REAL.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 08:38 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment
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Ask A Moron

Alright morons, I've been working on my super secret project for a while now but I'm ready for some questions and to finish my long-overdue Zombie question.

Anyway, I demand that you ask me some stupid questions starting now.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 09:07 AM | Comments (57) | Add Comment
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Is America a "Christian" nation?

The NY Times magazine* is asking that question this week and they actually don't do too bad a job of it:

This year’s social-studies review has drawn the most attention for the battles over what names should be included in the roll call of history. But while ignoring Kennedy and upgrading Gingrich are significant moves, something more fundamental is on the agenda. The one thing that underlies the entire program of the nation’s Christian conservative activists is, naturally, religion. But it isn’t merely the case that their Christian orientation shapes their opinions on gay marriage, abortion and government spending. More elementally, they hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders.

The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

...

the Christian bloc’s notion this year to bring Christianity into the coverage of American history is not, from their perspective, revisionism but rather an uncovering of truths that have been suppressed. “I don’t know that what we’re doing is redefining the role of religion in America,” says Gail Lowe, who became chairwoman of the board after McLeroy was ousted and who is one of the seven conservative Christians. “Many of us recognize that Judeo-Christian principles were the basis of our country and that many of our founding documents had a basis in Scripture. As we try to promote a better understanding of the Constitution, federalism, the separation of the branches of government, the basic rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, I think it will become evident to students that the founders had a religious motivation.”

Plenty of people disagree with this characterization of the founders, including some who are close to the process in Texas. “I think the evidence indicates that the founding fathers did not intend this to be a Christian nation,” says James Kracht, who served as an expert adviser to the board in the textbook-review process. “They definitely believed in some form of separation of church and state.”

There is, however, one slightly awkward issue for hard-core secularists who would combat what they see as a Christian whitewashing of American history: the Christian activists have a certain amount of history on their side.

The article goes on to look at both sides of the issue for 9 pages.  It's conclusion, while the founders may have been Christian they were also participants in the enlightenment (enlightenees??) and that was characterized by questioning and distrust of religions role in government. 

I agree.  I am not a constitutional scholar but personally I feel that the founders did intend a "wall of separation", at least at the federal level.  It can be seen in Jefferson's writings, the history of colonization in America (specifically the Pilgrims who came here to escape "established churches"), The writings of Thomas Paine and James Madison among others.  The board members in Texas seem to ignore those writings.  Personally I think they fatally undercut their case.

  I suspect that there are some who will disagree with me wholeheartedly.

(Note:  This isn't to say that I am denying the strong Judeo-Chrsitian influence on American society and history.  That is undeniable and a positive thing in my opinion.  I am just saying that I don't think the founders intended a "Christian nation") 

*I am probably violating the DPUD style guide by linking the NY Times but I excerpted a lot of material so I felt it had to be done.

Posted by: chad98036 at 09:57 PM | Comments (31) | Add Comment
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Green Police

Mike D. asks, "Where the hell is the dpud thread on the freakin Green Police commercial!?!"

Right here.


It was about 2 seconds into the song when I said to my friends, "The 'green police' come into my house and start fucking with me and I'll fucking shoot every one of them in the fucking FACE."

From there, my confidence that there would be epic bloodshed should some group of hippie cock-gobblers try to arrest me for using a fucking plastic grocery bag increased steadily.

Just to be clear, enviro-nazis, if you try to force me to be "green" I will force you to bleed severely from one to many holes in your torso and genital region.  You can pry my Styrofoam take out container from my cold dead hands.  Of course, if I were a betting man I'd bet that your hands would be cold and dead long before mine.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 04:04 PM | Comments (26) | Add Comment
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Input needed

So I'm going to the Giants/Foreskins game on Monday (Yay!).
It's going to be in the 20s.
So my question:
What's a good hot drink?
I usually have hot chocolate and Crown (don't tell my father I mix my whiskey with something besides water), but that's too sweet to have more than one or two.

Right now I'm leaning toward hot tea with Hennessy and Bailey's, leading to tea with Hennessy leading to Hennessy.

Do any of you know any better hot, alcoholic drink? I can't think of one.

Posted by: Veeshir at 10:26 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment
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WTF? UFO? AGW? ICBM? LOTR?

I don't know how to embed the vid from this page, but check it out.
It's about freaky. It looks like the first couple of seconds as the aliens break into the atmosphere in Independence Day but it just hangs there.
Is it p-shopped?
Is it the beginning of an eye storm?
Update with video even though it's old.


It's freaky deaky whatever it is.

Posted by: Veeshir at 02:47 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
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Swine Flu Or Ace On A Bender In Canada? Which Is Worse For The Hobo Population?

We may soon find out.

"We know we would have very high death rates," said Wendy Muckle, executive director of Ottawa Inner City Health. "We also know that with the numbers of people that we have who could be infected, we would decimate the health care system."

Ottawa Inner City Health is a non-profit organization started by groups that serve the homeless. It is funded by Ontario's Ministry of Health.

Muckle said shelters in Ottawa have been working on a pandemic plan for three years, and believe they have a good system in place to minimize the spread of the disease.

Otherwise, it could quickly sweep through the homeless population, whose members have high rates of HIV, hepatitis, diabetes, chronic respiratory problems and other existing health conditions that weaken their immunity to contagious diseases.

Posted by: eddiebear at 11:25 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Ask a Moron: It's a Conspiracy! Edition

Thought I'd give this a go, Jon Henke asks the following on Twitter,

When will Republicans do to the Birthers what William F. Buckley did to the Birchers?

The answer?  Never.  Because you can never do to the modern Birthers what Buckley did to the Birchers.  Sure, you can marginalize them some, but you aren't going to be able to reduce their ability to publicize themselves on a broad scale or engage in attention whoring stunts, it's like trying to grab a fistful of water.  When you only had to shut them out of a few publications, radio stations and TV shows, you could marginalize them pretty handily, as Buckley did.  Modern technology makes that an impossibility. 

Could the left and the Democrats slap down the even more embarrassing Truthers or Code Pinkos in any significant way?  Not that I saw.  The Truther and Code Pinko crews seem to have quieted down after the 2008 elections...odd that.  Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that a certain percentage of society is pretty much is just going to become certifiably insane after the results of any election.  Let's not forget those polls exposing the shocking percentage of liberals who were Truthers.  I fully expect a surprising percentage of GOPers who believe the Birther crap too.

Consider it one of the downsides to opening up broad publication access to the public at large.  I for one consider the fact that I and most of us Morons, Henke and other decent folk can have the ability to publish our thoughts to a (theoretically) broad audience and organize trumps the downside, that insane Truthers, Birthers and other refuse can do the same.

As for politicians smacking down these guys, it'll never happen, that's like sticking your dick in a hornet's nest.  You're better off backing away slowly and calling in a professional to take care of the pests. 

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A History of American Growth from The Economist

Interesting visual of the American economy since WWII

Posted by: chad98036 at 04:56 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Ask a Moron: Starving Zombies

Veeshir Asks -

When the zombies attack I want to know if they can starve to....uhhhh..... death(*)? So can I just stay in my house and wait until they run out of brains and all die(*)?

(*)Or whatever it's called when zombies are no longer ambulatory.

I'm glad you asked this because I believe it is an issue at the heart of how to prepare for the coming Zombie Apocalypse and it needs clarification.

Short answer: No. Kinda. "Enervate" is the appropriate term*.

Long (no, really... LONG) answer: It depends on what you mean by "zombie." As anyone that has read anything I've written about zombies knows, my definition (the true definition) of zombie is a dead human that has returned from grave through supernatural means, often a vague cause like "Hell Is Full." Unfortunately, many recent films about "zombies" have implied or explicitly stated that the cause of the outbreak is an infectious agent of some kind such as a super-virus bred by an evil corporation or released by moronic hippies at a monkey lab. This is, obviously, magnificent bullshit.

This is the source of the confusion. Infected "zombies" are, for all practical purposes, alive. They breathe, eat, shit (presumably), and otherwise follow the laws of biology and physics. This being the case, it is absolutely impossible (thermodynamics, babeee!) for them to continue to remain ambulatory without a source of energy; in this case: brains. So, were a massive infection of "zombies" to begin to spread it would logically follow that eventually they would exhaust whatever food source they had and at that time would begin to starve to death as all living things deprived of fuel would. Like an influenza outbreak, you could quarantine and wait it out.

Unfortunately for you, the coming zombie apocalypse has absolutely nothing to do with diseases or corporations**. No, G-d is going to get pissed and fucking close the doors to hell, forcing the damned souls of the recently dead to return to the rotting husks they previously called their bodies. The rage and suffering at the core of these beings, now deprived of their just punishment and the presence of a loving God will force these beings to hunger for that which allows the living to commune with their creator and enjoy the essense of his love. Their brains***.

Now, there are two things that I need to very clear. 1) Zombies do decay. Lacking the energizing effects of biology, the physical elements of their being will slowly rot.  They just do it slowly, seemingly at a random rate.  This is probably caused by the same supernatural effect that allows them super strength and biting ability.  2) Zombies do not feed for sustenance. They feed to satiate an addictive need to harm and absorb the energy of the living. It is a need originating from the combination of a craving for what they have lost with the desire to punish those that retain it.

Actually eating the brain does nothing for the zombie, not even momentarily sate the crushing addiction. But, as is the case with many addictions, the lack of enjoyment does not predicate a realization that their pursuit is pointless. Nay, it only increases the desire to chase the desired high.

So, what would happen if you tried to wait the zombies out? I hope you are in a library and haven't broken your glasses because you're going to be there for a while.  A human body can take a long time to decay under normal circumstances and the addition of supernatural resistance would only increase it. I'd estimate anywhere from several months to several years for the zombies to enervate to a point that they couldn't harm you. There soul would still be in the husk but it would lack any ability to move (barring the very frightening skeleton warrior scenario).  So, you maybe could wait them out but it wouldn't necessarily be a perfect solution as the decay rates of different zombies in different environments might extend their unlife for quite a long time.

So, um... no, they can't starve to death. Yes, you can wait them out but it would be a long wait and there is no guarantee they would all be fully enervated.

* - Of course, this only applies to true "Hell Is Full" zombies and not the pathetic Infected "zombies" we are often confronted with in many modern films.
** - But it will have something to do with hippies, which I find less than 5% variant from zombies in any outwardly discernable way.
*** - An argument that love is felt in the heart is an archaic idiocy originating long before the function of the human body was understood in any meaningful way. It is clear that the brain is the seat of all human thought and emotion and therefore the logical source of the energy craved by zombies.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 10:58 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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I Missed It

And I'm not at all sad that I did.

Because you're all wrong. 

You should be spending your time talking about how FUCKING AWESOME I AM.  The four words that should matter are "MP IS AWESOME." 

For example, did you know I can lick my nose?  Did you know I can calculate PI to the THIRD DIGIT IN MY FUCKING HEAD?

Yeah.  I'm fucking amazing.  Deal with that all day until tomorrow and then repeat. 

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 07:55 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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Ask A Moron: Pizza

FishFearMe asks: This isn't the Pizza Hut on-line ordering page?

Actually, Fish, it is.  And your pizza is ready.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 11:31 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Ask A Moron: Why don't you ever answer any Ask A Moron Question?

A secret admirerer writes: My dearest and most esteemed Moron Pundit, for what reason have you ceased your delightful feature 'Ask a Moron?'  I fear I will soon expire without your wise guidance and crudely drawn diagrams.  Love, your secret admirer.

P.S. - The shaft just isn't wide enough.  Please widen.

Well, the main reason is that I ran out of questions*.   I intend to finish the Zombie Invasion questions but those take a long time to write and life has been a crazy, chaotic mess since about November. 

 So, ask away if you dare have the deepest mysteries of the universe, life and everything revealed to you by a drunk guy wearing a helmet.

* - Well, that or the questions I did have didn't get answered in a timely fashion by myself and reached their expiration date. 

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 09:11 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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3-D Pr0n May Sound Cool, But Can I Watch It On My Computer?

Ummm...just askin'.

Shooting on the Chinese-language film 3D Sex And Zen, budgeted at 4 million US dollars, is scheduled for April with producers promising some of the most realistic close-up sex scenes ever.

"Just imagine that you'll be watching it as if you were sitting beside the bed," Stephen Shiu Jnr told the Sunday Morning Post.

"There will be many close-ups. It will look as if the actresses are only a few centimetres from the audience."

Twenty five to 30 per cent of the movie, an update of one of Hong Kong's best known erotic films Sex And Zen, will be sex scenes, Shiu told the newspaper.

A Hong Kong-based special effects company that has worked on major blockbusters including The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D will help produce the 3D images for the sex movie.

Posted by: eddiebear at 10:42 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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Ask A Moron: Hand-Face-Cock Jane

mare asks - For heaven's sake, Moron Pundit who deserves a facecock more than Jane Fonda?

That's easy.  Nobody.

You were right to call me out on that, mare.  I apologize.

If you'd like a quick answer to your stupid question, leave it in the comments or e-mail me at chaos -dot- overlord -at- gmail -dot- com.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 03:32 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Ask A Moron: Tape Causes Fusion

I asked myself earlier today*, Can you use single-side 'scotch' tape to create nuclear fusion?

Apparently, yes:

Researchers have found a new "see-through" use for clear sticky tape -- it produces X-rays when it is peeled off the roll.

The report in the journal Nature confirms a theory dating back to 1930 -- that the process of peeling the tape releases energy not only in the form of a flash of visible light, but also an X-ray.

Many children hiding in closets have demonstrated that unwinding sticky tape produces sparks of light. The phenomenon is called triboluminescence and is caused by the movement of one surface against another.

Carlos Camara of University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues used a motorized peeling machine to unwind a roll of tape in a vacuum.

They generated enough X-rays to show the bones inside their fingers.

Holy crap.  I hear you out there saying, "but you said there'd be fusion!"  So there shall:

"If you unroll the tape on your office desk in ambient conditions you only get visible light. You don't get X-rays," he added. This is because gases in the air slow down the electrons that produce the X-rays.

"What always makes X-rays in general is electrons that are moving very fast and suddenly get stopped," Camara, a physicist, said.

"They are flying from one side of the tape to the other as you separate them. You get something like a miniature lightning strike."

This property might be used to make nuclear fusion, Camara and his team said. All it would take is about 10 times as much energy as was produced during the experiment, he said.

It might be possible to unroll the tape even faster to get the effect, Camara said.

"It's just an energy issue. We have managed to get X-rays with this. If you could go another factor of 10 you could get that much more energy and fusion would be proof of that much energy," he said.

It is a very strange world. 

* - I am only posting this as an Ask A Moron so we can get more questions.  I know CB asked me about my car but I just can't find a clever way to explain buying exactly the same car.  It actually does get good mileage and is fun to drive... if I'd bought a cement truck it would have been more entertaining. 

So what I'm saying is, leave your questions in the comments or e-mail them to chaos -dot- overlord -at- gmail -dot- com.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 09:22 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment
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The Coming Police State (With Pixie Dust!)

While I'm polishing off my ridiculous rant (3500 words or so) I thought I'd bitch about Obama a bit to cleanse the pallet.  It seems that Obama's surrogates are threatening the FCC licenses of radio stations that run pro 2nd Amenment ads:

I have friends that say they're voting for Obama because Bush took away too many of their rights. I don't dispute that the Bush regime has taken away a lot of civil liberties and that's nothing I'm proud of. Point taken.

But what the Dimocrats don't get is that taking away my gun rights is no better. And they don't give a tinker's damn about my 2nd amendment rights, as witnessed by the telling comments of impeached federal judge and Democratic House Leader Alcee Hastings.

Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because "anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."

So, all gun owners are genocidal racists. Thanks for that, Criminal Hastings. Glad to see you're not painting people with a broad brush.

Meanwhile, not only does Obama want to ban the sale and transfer of all semi-automatic firearms. Not only does he want to ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns. His campaign is now threatening to have the FCC revoke the licenses of the television stations if they don't drop NRA ads that accurately depict his position on the 2nd amendment.

Allowing advertisement that accurately depict his rabid anti-gun history aren't okay but receiving untold millions in in-kind contributions from a friendly media and astroturfing PR firms is?  I guess its because any legitimate issue raised against Obama is a distraction and should be illegal while anything supporting him is divine and should be supported.

I wonder if Obama's thought police will have unicorns on their badges.

(h/t: Anal penetration expert and regular commenter Alice H.)

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 11:03 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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