So I'm going to Vegas this weekend, any suggestions on bets are welcome.
I know less about college b-ball than I do about the health care bill as it's currently "amended".
The only thing I think I know is to bet on Gonzaga the first two rounds.
Posted by: Veeshir at March 15, 2010 02:05 PM (aFnZ8)
2The only thing I think I know is to bet on Gonzaga the first two rounds.
Go for Gonazaga first two rounds then against them after.
Go for Siena first two rounds.
My dark horse is Wake Forest though I'm only sticking with that for the first two rounds.
Posted by: alexthechick at March 15, 2010 02:18 PM (8WZWv)
3
I was going to say, "Go against MAAC 10" but I knew to bet for Siena the first two rounds when they make it.
I went to Siena my first year of college (year omitted to protect the innocent per the facebook/HR post) so I follow them. Their memories of me aren't as fond as my memory of them. The drinking age was 18 so they had kegs everywhere for Disorientation.
My sister knew the admissions people and she wanted to see the new dorms (The Friary had been a... wait for it... a friary before it was a dorm) so she had them put me in there. It was not a freshman dorm. It had 2 floors of girls (some freshman) and I was on the top floor with some of the basketball team, the rugby team and the third wing had the lacrosse team.
It was one drunken, drug-ridden floor. Saturday and Sunday morning found lots of passed out folks in the hallways. Even monks occasionally hung out with a few of the seniors on the floor, there's nothing like having to walk over a hung-over, snoring, beer smelling Friar Tuck to get to the shower.
One RA dealt pot, the other told you to towel your door if you forgot, I never saw the third.
The dean knew me by name and face my first semester there. I made two semesters.
When I went back to school (elsewhere) 12 years later, I literally tripled my GPA.
Posted by: Veeshir at March 15, 2010 03:17 PM (Cdhf/)
Uh oh you're gonna get suedThis is an interesting little blurb about how about 70% of HR professionals in a study admitted that they turned down a job candidate based on online reputation. From context, it appears we're talking MySpace, Facebook, etc. types of online media.
This has fascinating implications for discrimination laws. I have a friend who does high level HR work for a large company. He said that the first thing HR does with resumes is to go through and do an internet search on the person's name and the email address listed. I asked if they looked at pictures. He said yes. I said congrats, you just admitted to me that you have an official policy to review the age, sex, marital status, religious affiliation and race of your candidates. He stared at me and then said "oh shit".
The practical effect of doing these searches is precisely that. I totally understand why an HR department would do that. Hell, I would sue the hell out of, say, a security company that didn't do that and it turned out that the employee had a facebook group for "robbing the stupid". But that means that these searches are going to turn up exactly the types of information that companies are prohibited from asking directly.
The problem is that people act like Facebook, etc., is private when it truly is not. People blather all the time about their kids and spouses and vacations and going to church and on and on and on. Hell, people list their sexual orientations. How the hell is a company going to prove that it didn't hire someone because s/he was talking about how wasted s/he was at the club and not because of the picture of that person with her/his same sex partner? How is a company supposed to prove it didn't hire a guy because he was saying how he nearly went postal when the last place fired him and not because the picture shows that he's in his 50's? How is a woman supposed to prove she didn't get a job because she simply wasn't qualified and not because she talks about her struggles as a single mother?
Now, I know the obvious answer is to interpret anti-discrimination statutes narrowly and not in the massive way the laws are currently viewed. But that's not the current situation. The current situation is such that a more cynical plaintiff's lawyer could have a tremendous amount of fun getting an HR person to sit through a dep and explain why this person posting pictures about her cat is fine but that person posting a picture holding a beer is not. Good times good times.
That brings up something else. Say you're someone like me who is aware of these issues and works diligently to keep your Super Sekrit Real Identity off the intertubes. But. You have friends. And your friends take pictures of you when you're off on vacation. Your friends post pictures of you completely hammered to Facebook and tag those pictures with your name. That's then discovered by a prospective employer. Bingo bango you have the same problems.
This is an enormously lucrative business for evil trial lawyers mwahahahaha problem for businesses. You have to do some type of due diligence or you're screwed. Do too much and you're screwed. All I can say is I'm glad I don't do employment defense work.
1
That's why FaceChimp is in my real name, but my blogging is done under my alias. I'm less worried about hiring...I'm too conservative for the Seattle firms anyway, but I really don't need the farthest left in my profession trying to find ways to make trouble for me with the WSBA because I think their "access to justice" crusade is a load of crap.
HoboTech - Portable shelter
Whether you're the hobo or the hobo-hunter, it's always a good idea to stay informed on the latest in hobo technology. Fast Company Mag profiled several of these innovations: two jacket-tent combos, and a rolling slinky shelter thingamabob.
First, the oddly named "JakPak" - a jacket that transforms into a personal tent. Sort of.
1
That bastard gets no sympathy from me for anything. Harry "the war is lost" Reid's family could get kidnapped, raped, have their eyelids and lower jaws removed, and set on fire.
I would laugh in that assholes face. FUCK him.
Posted by: Nope at March 12, 2010 08:47 AM (QBQcg)
Yeah, there's absolutely no need to sink into the fever swamp levels of the loony left. Reid is a scumbag, but that doesn't mean we should wish his family any ill.
Anyway, I'm always suspicious of comments wishing lefties physical harm, or celebrating it. They've proven out to be lefty troll posts far too often in the past.
Posted by: Hermit Dave at March 12, 2010 09:34 AM (WhFvm)
4
Look, the ladies already have to deal with Harry every day which is more tragedy than they deserve.
And yeah Hermit, I wonder if that IP address has ever posted a comment as a "Concerned Christian" blah blah blah.
Posted by: Moron Pundit at March 12, 2010 09:58 AM (GC5S2)
5
Prayers being sent for his family. Broken back and neck? That's a terrible situation to be in.
Posted by: Wyatt Earp at March 12, 2010 11:15 AM (zgZzy)
6
That IP address hasn't posted as a 'Concerned Christian', but it did make this post.
Posted by: Alice H at March 12, 2010 01:02 PM (qJHYy)
President of the without a clue club?
In response to the common educational standards being proposed by governors and state education chiefs:
One critic said the proposal appeared to have unstoppable momentum.
"I think it's a done deal because Obama attached all this money," said Susan Ohanian, a former English teacher and education policy blogger who lives in Vermont.
She said standards deny teachers the ability to judge what should be taught and when. "If we don't trust teachers to do that, then we have no business leaving them in the classroom," she said.
The standards project was funded by the governors and state schools chiefs. Along with the Gates Foundation, it has backing from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and others. Drafters included experts affiliated with Achieve, ACT and the College Board. Reviewers included university professors and other educators.
Others are more positive:
The 70-page math proposal seeks to bring coherence, rigor and focus to instruction, said William Schmidt, a Michigan State University professor of education and statistics who reviewed it. In many states, he said, math standards are "a mile wide and an inch deep," in contrast to standards in countries that have outpaced the United States in achievement in recent years.
The 60-page English language-arts proposal, plus three appendices, seeks to build skills and knowledge in reading, writing, speaking and listening, with special focus on grammar, usage and vocabulary. E.D. Hirsch Jr., author of "Cultural Literacy," said the proposed emphasis on science and history texts would give students a stronger base of knowledge for reading.
Chester Finn Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute praised the examples of suggested texts from ancient Greece (Homer) to modern times (Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri). "It's full of terrific stuff, high quality, content-rich, the kind of thing you want your kids or grandkids to read in school," he said.
I'm sure that somewhere someone (Glenn Beck I am looking at you Glenn Beck) will find some hidden communist agenda in this but for right now I am mildly optimistic
Update: I sent a copy of the reading list to my parents, my sister and my brother so that they could take a look at what may be recommended (required?) for my nieces and nephews along with the following suggested additions to the list:
If it was me I would add a few things, the entire Constitution and the amendments, Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The 9/11 Commission Report, The Road to Serfdom, A Brief History of Time, Selected Feynman Lectures, 1984, The Gulag Archipelago, Atlas Shrugged, A Tour of the Calculus, Wealth of Nations, Two Treatises on Government, maybe Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, Treasure Island, and the Three Musketeers
Update 2: One of the Washington Post writers has some criticism of the standards.
What I especially worry about is a stepping up of what we have already seen happen with curriculum in the NCLB era. The “push down” effect has essentially pushed into lower grades the things kids are supposed to be able to do and know.
Once, schools gave youngsters a chance to learn how to read according to their own development. Now, a child who still can’t read by the end of first grade is in deep trouble from which it can be hard to emerge.
...
Telling teachers that they must teach certain things to each child in a specific grade ignores this notion of individual development.
Another concern about the new standards is that they are only for math and English. The emphasis on those subjects in No Child Left Behind's assessment scheme led to a dangerous narrowing of curriculum in public schools; the arts disappeared in many systems, science and history and physical education took a back seat too.
...
There is a common notion in American education reform circles that we are falling behind other countries with high-achieving school systems in large part because we don’t have national standards.
But in her new book, “The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future,” Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who served as Barack Obama’s chief education adviser duringn the presidential transition, makes clear that this isn’t the case.
She explains how Finland--now widely hailed by U.S. policymakers--turned around its school system. But, contrary to popular belief, it didn’t do it by establishing a highly centralized national system with detailed national standards.
It “shifted to a more localized system in which highly trained teachers design curriculum around very lean national standards,” she wrote. All assessments are school-based, designed by teachers, rather than standardized.
Valid criticisms and they echo the concern of commenter car in in the comments. My responses would be:
Push down is a concern but from what I can see these are not grade specific standards, but a set of outcomes that all students should be able to achieve by graduation. Maybe there are proposed grade specific standards coming, if so they would need further evaluation. Finland is used as an example of a case against national standards:
She explains how Finland--now widely hailed by U.S. policymakers--turned around its school system. But, contrary to popular belief, it didn’t do it by establishing a highly centralized national system with detailed national standards.
But in reality this is comparing apples and oranges. Finland is a culturally homogenous country with 1/60th the population in 1/30th the area of the United States and about half the population is located in 6 cities in one geographic region. Unless the standards from city to city vary wildly the local standards are in effect national standards. Even if that wasn't the case what Professor Hammond advocates (lean national standards implemented at the local level) is what is being proposed
The entire set of reading standards consists of 18 items of this nature:
Determine both what the text says explicitly and what can be inferred logically from the text.
If that is to detailed we really have problems. Math standards are more detailed but again it is only a set of measurable outcomes for graduation not specifics on how to get there.
"Die in a Fire for Suggesting That," as something kids should read, please, suggested by Me.
Posted by: Sean M. at March 10, 2010 04:25 AM (rLWHv)
2
You've got a bit of redundancy - Linda Monk's annotated guide to the Constitution is already on the list, and it includes the amendments. And no way in hell would I put the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf on any public school mandatory reading list, because I wouldn't trust a public school teacher to handle the teaching of either of those properly.
With the exception of a few stupid bits, I don't think this is a bad list, just incomplete. There's not much on there that can be used to radicalize the kiddos.
Posted by: Alice H at March 10, 2010 05:17 AM (qJHYy)
3
National Standards? GAH. don't. Want.
A guy on the radio - yesterday - said the problem isn't money or "National" standards. The guy wanted to give Detroit schools 200 million, but the city refused it because he wanted some accountability. so, instead he started his own charter schools.
Last year, he had 100% graduation rate and a 100% college/2-year program rate.
He said, point blank, the issue is finding the proper folks to run the schools. THAT is the main problem.
Not national standards. We've got too many total dipshits running things.
Anyone with a brain can figure out what should be taught.
Posted by: Car in at March 10, 2010 07:51 AM (H37Gq)
"Die in a Fire for Suggesting That," as something kids should read, please, suggested by Me.
I admit I haven't read the book and when I look for it on Amazon or google it I don't get any hits so what's so offensive about it.
@Alice - I swear I looked and looked for the Constitution in that list and all I saw was the preamble and the first amendment. I disagree on Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. You can't overcome ideas by hiding them. We read portions of both when I was in school, I don't think that it did lasting intellectual damage.
@car in - nowhere did I suggest that this is a single point solution to issues in schools. You can have the best educators in the world teaching but if you have a crap curriculum you are still going to end up with a bad output from the system. Note this is a voluntary process among the states not being imposed by the feds and states don't have to participate. I most states I beleive that the local school boards are independent so they don't have to adopt these standards in any case but they are there as a useful guidepost.
Posted by: chad98036 at March 10, 2010 10:25 AM (WNcvq)
Eh, it's better than cartoons. Okay, that's funny. Here we have politics in a Pakistani province. It's about funny and almost scary but not really endy, it seems to be localized in one province. Rioting broke out between rival parties Biryani Ittehad-Sindhi [BI(S)] group and Pakistan Pulao Party (PPP)
Why were they fighting? Rice. The Biryani Ittehad party likes, you guessed it, Biryani rice, the Pulao likes, right again, Pulao rice. Apparently they're fighting over which is more Muslim. The fighting happened at a place that served biryani rice. It gets funnier scared customers tried to leave, but were stopped by the unknown men who blockaded the door with the handis. (handis are little pots used to cook rice V) ...one guy had his priorities right “I saw one man scarfing down his plate of Bombay biryani under his table, even as children were crying in fear ... and the grand finish
Early this month, several newspapers ran print ads in which pulao was compared to paella and risotto – so-called ‘kafir’ dishes – while biryani
was extolled as the food of devout Muslims. The newspapers eventually
had to pull off the ads after demonstrations were held outside their
offices by Pakistan Pulao Party members. “It was an insult to a
sophisticated dish. Pulao doesn’t make you belch crudely like biryani,” said a PPP worker at the demonstration. “Calling it ‘kafir’ is just hitting below the belt.”
To get that province really riled up, run an ad about how biryani rice was given to the Persians by the Jews when they fled from Babylonian captivity so it's not a kafr dish but Jooooooooooooo-food. The funniest part is that the Persians weren't Muslim when they gave either rice to Pakistan so neither should be considered "more Muslim".
I'm surprised Israel hasn't perfected a method of causing rioting and
revolution in Muslim countries using this method. It's hard to get all
invasiony when your young men are fighting each other over important
stuff like rice.
Unless..... this is a test op. In which case I should probably shut up.
You may sometimes find yourself driving down the road, sun shining in your eyes, as you search in vain for those clip-on or magnetically attached sun lenses that came with your prescription eyeglasses.
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But with prescription sunglasses, you have the option of wearing them anytime outdoors without the need to search for clip-on sunglasses or deal with contact lenses.
Posted by: glasses at March 07, 2010 03:32 PM (cqUZx)
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Posted by: glasses at March 07, 2010 03:32 PM (cqUZx)
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Photochromic lenses are very convenient, but they do have a drawback: UV rays are required to activate the tint. Because most car windshields block a significant amount of UV, photochromic lenses usually don't darken very well inside a car.
Posted by: glasses at March 07, 2010 03:32 PM (cqUZx)
5
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Posted by: glasses at March 07, 2010 03:32 PM (cqUZx)
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Posted by: glasses at March 07, 2010 03:33 PM (cqUZx)
What's Australian for "Get the stick out of yer arse"?
Sunday morning update, vid changed. It works now. Via Tim Blair we find out that some Aussie has her knickers in a wad over a Texas circus having a boxing Kangaroo. I'm not sure which is funnier, the OUTRAGED!!!!!!! article or the vid. You make the call. First, the vid
From the article (subhed) IT IS an image that will leave every Australian sick to the stomach. ... One of Australia's most iconic symbols is reduced to a cruel and
insulting comedy act - all in front of an audience cheering for more.
You'd think they were beating it with brass knuckles or something, in case you haven't watched the clip, the kangaroo is having a blast and kicking ass.
1
It appears that the video was pulled. I'm sure it was fun though.
Posted by: Enas Yorl at March 06, 2010 09:00 PM (m4veH)
2
Well, there appears to be no shortage of boxing kangaroo videos on youtube, if you simply must watch some.
Posted by: Hermit Dave at March 06, 2010 09:07 PM (WhFvm)
3
The same vid is at the article, I couldn't embed it so I looked for a youtube vid.
Posted by: Veeshir at March 07, 2010 08:04 AM (ctcl3)
4
I feel the need to relate the following (true) story. back in the 80's we hosted an Australian Occupational Therapy student at our house. I was a teenager and she was a pretty hot 21 year old. So you know I was all about it. Anyhow, she worked with my mom (who was a practicing OT) and my mom worked with developmentally challenged kids in a local school system. So anyhow, the kids loved asking the Australian exchange student about her home, and she was happy to tell them whatever they wanted about the old Oz.
Well, one child asked her if she ever had a pet kangaroo. Well, she related the story of how they had taken in a young joey once who had been orphaned. What she DIDN'T tell them is that the joey was orphaned because they had shot and eaten the mother (and didn't know she had a baby until they rounded her up.
You see, in Australia, this "most iconic symbol" of Australia is considered a pest and nuisance animal. And while I have no doubt that this nutter complained about the "mistreatment" of the boxing kangaroo, to put it in context, it would be like us complaining that someone was mistreating a squirrel because we put it in a zoo act.
Posted by: MikeD at March 08, 2010 10:22 AM (FkL60)
Found At Power Glutes Emporium
Does this make any fucking sense?
Corruption is endemic to government. At a low level, it’s a cost of
doing business. But if you want to reduce it even further, you’re going to need
to go back to a system where fewer elected officials do a lot more appointing.
That way, one man or woman is accountable when things go wrong. When everyone’s
elected, no one’s accountable.
Wasn't (isn't) everything Bush's fault. He was elected.
1
What the fuck? That's the diametric opposite of the truth! The act of asking to be reelected every few years is what holds people accountable. How is some nameless faceless bureaucrat accountable for anything? Unless of course he means that when the asinine rules that congress sets up produce the inevitable result (catastrophic failure) that they have someone to blame. That's accountability.
As eddie might say: Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!
Posted by: Jeff M at March 05, 2010 05:19 PM (8P3+x)
2
Buh? I could say that making people buy their positions would be a better way to avoid corruption because they would be rich enough to not want to steal.
But that would be almost as crazy as what he just said.
Elected officials are not accountable while appointed ones are?
The God-King (You know he wants Obama to have that power) appoints some flunky to do something, said flunky does it. God-King fires flunky, and there is much rejoicing. Or would he prefer what they do in Commie China, just kill some hapless tool?
Posted by: Veeshir at March 05, 2010 05:22 PM (lno3s)
3
Milkyloads knows about corruption, since his stupid ass is still in the country.
Posted by: eddiebear at March 05, 2010 05:29 PM (wnU1W)
4
Milky needs to ease up off the meds--they're (literally) destroying his mind.
What O.J. Simpson wore when he was acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife and her friend was the suit seen around the world during one of the most watched televised moments in history.
But the Smithsonian Institution, America’s repository of historical artifacts rejected it Tuesday as inappropriate for their collection.
Announcement of the museum’s snub came the morning after a California judge approved the donation as the solution to a 13-year court battle over the carefully tailored tan suit, white shirt and yellow and tan tie. The ensemble has been held by Simpson’s former sports agent, Mike Gilbert.
Okay, look. O.J. Simpson is a douchebag. But the O.J. trial was of massive importance to this country. Massive. Everyone watched it, everyone still talks about it, and it was an historic event. Period.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is a whiny self-important Harvard professor, who was arrested for refusing to comply with an officer of the law's requests for identification. I know we had a heated discussion or two about whether it was okay for the guy to be arrested, but the fact is that the Beer Summit is nowhere near the same level of significance to American history that the O.J. murder trial is.
It's stupid to say, "Yeah, we'll take those handcuffs," and then, less than 30 days later, turn around and refuse to take the suit O.J. wore when he was acquitted.
I can't imagine that, in a museum collection of more than 142 million pieces, they don't have something else that is "inappropriate" to their collection, but I'm too lazy to go find something.
UPDATE: Here's a list of some of the weird shit in the Smithsonian collection. H/T to Patty Ann via this comment at The Hostages.
But the O.J. trial was of massive importance to this country. Massive. Everyone watched it, everyone still talks about it, and it was an historic event. Period.
It was certainly a turning point for many in this country. It was the moment when we all learnd that playing the race card provided a certain group of citizens carte blanche. It was a moment when a bunch of scumbag lawyers showed that they were willing to set back race relations in this country by 50 years or more, just to help a double-murderer beat the rap.
It was a moment in time that we should all be horribly embarrased by. I actually thank the Smithsonian for not falling for the "reality show" bullshit and make the right decision.
OJ is a simple murderer who had the ability to pay for a team of high-priced, unethical scumbag lawyers who would use any tactic at all to keep their client from the penalty he so richly deserved.
And we should give this pathetic episode a place of honor?
Fuck that.
Posted by: wiserbud at March 04, 2010 11:46 PM (EW49d)
And we should give this pathetic episode a place of honor?
It's not that I disagree with you at all, wiserbud; it's that I think it's blatantly ridiculous to take the handcuffs from Gates and not the suit from O.J.
Posted by: Ember at March 04, 2010 11:52 PM (LdRAG)
I believe it may have disintegrated from crotch-rot.
Posted by: JoeCollins at March 05, 2010 09:16 AM (iqSYm)
7
Riddle me this: how did Gates have the hand-cuffs in the first place? I gotta call bullshit on this, suspects are not given hand-cuffs as a parting gift when they are released. Back in the day (25 years ago) when I was involved with the law enforcement community, I remember officers being very possessive about their cuffs: they always demanded them back when transferring a suspect. How did Gates get to keep the officer's cuffs?
In one of the "Lethal Weapon" movies, there's a scene where the good guys are cuffin'-n-stuffin' a suspect and Riggs keeps shouting "Hey! Those are my cuffs!". LEO's don't let their cuffs get away from them.
My suspicion is that Gates went out and got a set of cuffs to do a bit of grandstanding to keep his 15 minutes alive.
Agreed, OJ's suit is several orders of magnitude more important as a historical artifact than Gate's cuffs, which are more than likely not the actual cuffs used in his arrest.
Posted by: Michael X. at March 05, 2010 10:23 AM (pk0HB)
8Riddle me this: how did Gates have the hand-cuffs in the first place?
Apparently he was given the cuffs at the Beer Summit.
Posted by: alexthechick at March 05, 2010 10:35 AM (8WZWv)
9
I did not know that. </johnnycarson> Thanks for the 411, Alex.
Posted by: Michael X. at March 05, 2010 10:47 AM (pk0HB)
I was forced to watch the preliminary hearings for one of my classes in law school. Needless to say, we rather quickly realized that the channel on the television in the library was capable of being changed.
Posted by: alexthechick at March 05, 2010 11:13 AM (8WZWv)
1
Reminds me of the parody films we made back in high school. Execpt we
would have made sure the soundtrack was not synced and would have used
accents from those Nostradamus the Vampire movies.
The music is perfet.
Posted by: cbullitt at March 04, 2010 02:11 PM (M/WbE)
2
Place me in the "officially ignoring your movie recommendations" after this one. Oldboy had my radar on alert but this one...? you're kidding right? It's not even funny in the most parodious state of mind, it's not even just stupid-as a matter of fact, it's what I'll be thinking of as death closes it grip on me and I lament the 90 minutes this film(?) used of my life
1I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's seen it...
Don't be so sure.
Posted by: Spank at March 03, 2010 06:29 PM (0FiCa)
2
I can honestly say that it was one of the worst films I have ever seen and I sat all the way through Robo-Jox.
Posted by: chad98036 at March 03, 2010 09:29 PM (WNcvq)
3
The biggest problem with this movie was that it was filmed almost entirely in one room. Not much else going on, except for the terminator robot and the chick and the boyfriend.
Iggy is in it though. The DJ with the industrial dick!
So, attention whoring atheist types are doing the pr0n for Bibles thing again
If Christians were smart, they'd set up next to the atheists and announce with bullhorns, "Keep your Bibles, there's porn free on teh intarwebs!" Seriously, why the fuck would anyonebuy porn in 2010? Is that technically wrong to do, as far as Christian doctrine? Yeah, probably. Would it be funny as hell to throw the smug bullshit right back in these guys' faces? Fuck yeah.
1
I did some time in the Atheist gulag and they are among the most bitter people imaginable. (I stress capital 'A' atheists, not the garden variety, which tend to confuse atheism with agnosticism, more often than not.)
Militant atheists are just as annoying as persistent proselytizers. What they don't seem to realize is that they do indeed have a religious belief system. They fervently believe that there is no god, which requires just as much faith as believing in one.
I'm not a religious person, but if anything I'll side with the church types as they have a good sense of community and they're much more pleasant to be around, as long as they're not too pushy about their beliefs. Many atheists are in fact nihilists, with atheism as just one aspect of a nihilistic belief system.
Posted by: Hermit Dave at March 03, 2010 02:19 AM (WhFvm)
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Militant atheists are just as annoying as persistent proselytizers.
My brother has been an atheist since he was a little kid (seriously, when he was nine or ten years old, he said that he didn't believe in God) and he hates Evangelical Atheists just as much as I do, and I consider myself an agnostic. He has friends who are devout Catholics, Protestants of various denominations, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, and he would NEVAR challenge their religious beliefs.
Posted by: Sean M. at March 03, 2010 04:18 AM (rLWHv)
Quick Hits Around the 'tubes. Fuck EditionWhat the Fuck? The Secretary of State, a highly skilled political operator, knows
exactly what she is doing here. She is giving her full support for the
official stance of Buenos Aires, despite the fact that Great Britain
has made it clear that the sovereignty of the Falklands is
non-negotiable. Fuck the What?
Our
home library needed a new copy of the Federalist Papers ... offers this disclaimer
“This
book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as
it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with
their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and
interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before
allowing them to read this classic work.”
We're Fucked. The uproar began when the all-white Zeta Tau Alpha team from the
University of Arkansas beat out five other ( all black V) sorority teams to win last
weekend's national final in the Sprite Step Off competition. ... On Thursday, sponsor Coca-Cola announced "scoring discrepancies" and
said the runner-up — ...whose members are black — would share first place and
receive the same $100,000 in scholarships... It was unclear what the discrepancies were and Coca-Cola would not elaborate.
Fuck us. Over the last six months of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804
times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times per day. ... 94 percent of the state's
SWAT deployments were used to serve search or arrest warrants,
leaving just 6 percent in response to the kinds of barricades, bank
robberies, hostage takings, and emergency situations for which SWAT
teams were originally intended.
No, Fuck You. The District of Columbia’s murder rate plummeted by an astounding 25 percent last year (That's since their "disarm law abiding populace" laws were declared unConstitutional. V)
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Ahhh, the whole Falklands thing-both funny and endy at the same time! Reading all of the battered wife style moaning from the same Fleet Street rags that whined ceaselessly about Dubya and demanded the election of the great Zero just makes me laugh and laugh. Poor limey bastards were too stupid to even comprehend what it would mean to have a fellow traveler elected POTUS.
Posted by: HayZeus at March 02, 2010 12:27 PM (RHxVZ)
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Exactly HayZeus, acting like this is encouraging a war not discouraging it. And now I have to wonder if, in case of a war, Obama will give satellite data to Argentina and maybe sell them some "emergency" military equipment.
Posted by: Veeshir at March 02, 2010 02:18 PM (DNnJo)
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I almost updated the post, but maybe I'm wrong. I just saw Megyn Kelly railing against the strip club owner who wants the very pregnant bartender gone. That makes me laugh for two reasons. First, she has her job because she's hot. If she was plain, at best she'd be on location in some shithole country. Second, when she was pregnant it seems to me they just showed her from the tits up and when she got too pregnant, she was gone. They make a point of hiding fat asses on their hotties. For the longest time they only showed Jane Skinner from the waist up for instance. I don't watch her now that she's on with Shep, but I have a feeling they haven't changed.
To see her railing against an honest strip club when her whole career relies on her looks, well, that's fucking funny.
Posted by: Veeshir at March 02, 2010 03:12 PM (uA+gG)
Duh.
Apparently, when you take thousands of young men and women at or near the height of perfect human physical condition and pack them into a dorm for two weeks they have a lot of sex.
You don't say. My mind has been fucking blown.
I'll put it this way, if I was 22 years old, able to lift my body weight with one arm, and surrounded by the female athletes I see at these olympics, I wouldn't be reading a fucking book in my hotel room every night.
I'd by looking for the UK curling team. Like a viking.
1
You see these stories every Olympics. They always make me laugh.
Go Team USA!! 2-0.
It's funny that the Fins have one of the 3 or 4 Islanders' "Goalies of the Future" floating around the NHL.
Posted by: Veeshir at February 26, 2010 03:21 PM (SbhZU)
2
One of my favorite bits of Old Man's War is that when everyone shows up with their perfect new bodies, the first thing they do is fuck. That's one of the most realistic responses I've ever seen in sci-fi.
Posted by: alexthechick at February 26, 2010 03:27 PM (lvYSc)
3
In Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga the characters regenerate every few decades so they are back in the bodies they had when they were 16 or 17 and they all go to these special clubs for newly rejuvenated people for that very reason. I'm looking forward to science catching up with this.
Posted by: Moron Pundit at February 26, 2010 05:00 PM (GC5S2)
4
*snerk* I swear, when I saw this on my google reader I thought it was another DADT post....
Posted by: Foxfier at February 26, 2010 06:44 PM (n2RW8)
Deep Thoughts
You know, if there really are infinite alternate universes, there must be one in which Sarah Palin and John "Torture Memos" Yoo have had a child together.
What's your reaction to that, Alternate Andi?
In the real world, Sully had back-to-back posts today asking (per the actress whom Seth MacFarlane, um, arguably used as a prop to attack Palin on Family Guy) "How many mothers who had a child with a significant disability would
drag him around 'like a loaf of bread' on a book tour as a prop?" and asserting that Yoo is "a war criminal who deliberately distorted the plain and unambiguous meaning of the law to enable war crimes."
But, hey, at least the former can be interpreted as St. Andrew of the Blessed Heart-Ache kind of acknowledging that Sarah Palin is actually Trig's mother, so maybe he's back on his meds.
Conversely, you can look at that statement and interpret his conclusion as "Well, she must not be his mother if she would do that, right? Riiiiight? Still, just asking questions here."
Since he's had to resort to being coy about the whole thing, I'll leave it up to you to decide.
I'd say this was a bad acid trip, but I don't do acid.
This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen on the internet. That *I'VE* ever seen on the internet. Think about that.
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I wouldn't think acid, it just looks like pot to me.
A fairly stupid idea taken way too far. If acid had been involved, there would have been more colors and the pony would fly. Plus, it would probably be a Dead tune or maybe Phish.
Posted by: Veeshir at February 24, 2010 09:28 AM (JOD88)
