Thursday, March 31, 2005

Peep Shows

here and here

Here's also hot content for hardcore sex addicts

If it were me, I'd need to think about it

Ladies and gentlemen, the funniest sentence ever uttered in my lifetime. Perhaps in anyone's lifetime . . . .

I would much rather carry your seed than the seed that would destroy the earth.

--Brooke Lemke playing "Linda", to William Shatner playing "Shane" on Invasion Iowa tonight.

UPDATE: Most of the Iowans get it, but Iowa newspapers, and Mr. Boston columnist doesn't.

What will happen to Iowan Brooke Lemke when she realizes just how awful she truly is in the faux movie -- and that the Spike audience is laughing at her?

She'll probably still be chagrined that she's as good an actor as Shatner ever was.

UPDATE: More Invasion Iowa linkery:

The show's official weblog

The official site for Murph's Bar. With t-shirts for sale.

Supposedly, "InvasionIowaTheMovie.Com" was a dummy site meant to fool people into thinking there was real movie production. Now its in disuse, but registered.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The Funniest Show Ever!

You must watch this show tonight! It's the funniest thing I've seen since Sifl & Olly went off the air.

Two things to be learned from doing so:

(1) William Shatner is an incredibly strange man. I thought it was just his lengendary propensity for overacting and to take every gig he's offered. But no, he's as weird as as a football bat, eccentric enough to make Michael Jackson look like fucking Prince Charles!

(2) Some Iowa farmhands can act just as well as tenured hollywood stars. It's not rocket science to play make believe for a living.

Monday, March 28, 2005

I Lack Subtlety, and So Does God

Well, a earthquake the day after Christmas, and now an earthquake the day after Easter. In almost the same place.

[Insert here a witty, deadpan ironic musing that a Christian God is inflicting his wrath, specifically on all the Muslims in the region, and that the end times are near]

Friday, March 25, 2005

Allah Devours His Children

Some of the folks over at Little Green Footballs wonder where all the supposed moderate muslim are.

Apparently, they're hiding for their lives:

The [Virginia Commonwealth University] professor, Amina Wadud, has been threatened and sharply criticized in many parts of the Islamic world since the March 18 prayer service in New York that was attended by an estimated 80 to 100 people, about half of whom were men. Traditionally, Muslim women do not lead prayers in a mosque, and they pray separately from men.

Wadud called in sick yesterday, according to Pamela D. Lepley, director of university news services. Wadud's home telephone has a security system that permits only calls from approved numbers to go through, and she could not be reached for comment last night.


A conservative can only hope, and relish the idea, that the twin fallacies of Islam and liberal gender egalitarianism will cave in on each other. We have here two dueling memes: "Woman are equal to men in every way" and "Women are subjugated to men by the will of Allah". One can't survive in the other's world. Meanwhile, a philosopher/spectator can curiously observe the two premises duke it out, which strangely enough, are both mutually exclusive and both incorrect. What do they have in common? They're both outside constructs separate from observable reality which make their believers ontologically superior to the rest of us.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

The Perverts Next Door

This guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy are registered sex offenders who live within walking distance from me. The links include their addresses and their pictures.

I'll let you decide which is scarier, that so many sex offenders lives next to me, or that I'm able to pillory these people.

ReductIMAO ad absurdum

Frank J. makes a modest proposal.

I'd rather die than be born in Haiti, but that doesn't mean I believe in killing all Haitians.

The view that wants Schiavo to die has, as its basis, that her condition cannot be improved. Such a notion is unprovable, but instead proves that euthanasists hold the malevolent view that human fate is unimprovable.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Cry For Help!

Drudge, on his radio show, just had audio of Terri Schaivo responding to questions from her father about her feeding tube being removed. She is obviously cognizant. This is murder.

UPDATE:

My goodness! Have I been responsible for a thread hijack?! I don't know whether to be sorry or proud of myself.

But seriously, we know this much:

(1) Serious questions exist as to whether Schiavo is cognizant

(2) Serious questions exist as to whether she wanted to be kept alive.

(3) If the federal and state system of law is to be consisent--let along just--then Schiavo should be granted the same deferance toward life that a mass-murderer on death row would get.

I'll add as an aside, if the liberal powers-that-be choose to belligerantly oppose this, it will mean that end of the right-to-die movement in this country. This isn't just about people refusing medical treatment; this is a morbid bloodlust exhibited by the collective left to blank-out undesirable specimens of humanity.

MORE UPDATE:

For those who think that Terri's case is hopeless, I suggest they read this book, another future-shock by Ray Kurzweil.

It's thesis--giving the possible, nay probable, advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology, virtually immortal physical and mental health will be possible within most of our lifetimes. In the next 20-50 years, they're going to come out with stuff that will make the most fabulist stories of science-fiction into commonplace fact.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

You can say that again!

Blogger's being a pain in the ass. Thus the reason for some of the double posts--you'll think the thing froze up and didn't post, then post again. And I'm not the only one complaining here.

People pour their heart and soul into these blogs. It would be like Caesar burning of the Alexandria library if blogger FUBARs their network. Meanwhile, I'll be taking efforts to save the source code on a (hopefully) daily basis.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

God Made Wyoming to Train the Faithful

Out of an obscure state with more cows than people, The Equality State sure makes some brilliant politicians statesmen. First Vice President Dick Cheney, and now Senator Mike Enzi. Drudge reports:

**Exclusive Fri Mar 18 2005 00:50:07 ET** The
Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee, Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) has requested Terri Schiavo to testify before his congressional committee, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. In so doing it triggers legal or statutory protections for the witness, among those protections is that nothing can be done to cause harm or death to this individual.


Members of Congress went to the U.S. Attorney in DC to ask for a temporary restraining order to be issued by a judge, which protects Terri Schiavo from having her life support, including her feeding and hydration tubes, removed... Developing...


You can thank/congratulate Senator Enzi here.

שלןם

Welcome to all those linked by Meryl Yourish.

Women's Bracelets

Rachel Lucas assaults a female officer (if you can call her the latter). Meanwhile, Ann Coulter says the same thing with much more empirical evidence, though not with much less vitriol.

Meanwhile, Doug Powers questions why he wasn't wearing handcuffs:

"In Atlanta, Brian Nichols, 6 feet tall and a couple hundred pounds, was being escorted by a female officer, without cuffs, into court for his rape trial. ...
"Why wasn't he wearing handcuffs? Because 'studies' have shown that jurors are 'unfairly influenced' when a person on trial is wearing handcuffs. ...
"Quite often, the level of stupidity in political correctness is so high that it's comical. This time, it's anything but. When PC strikes the college campus, young minds are poisoned. When PC strikes the public sector, including the courtroom, people can get killed. ...
"Leave it to the bearers of political correctness to remove the cuffs from criminals, and tie the hands of everybody else. ...
"Brian Nichols wasn't handcuffed, and he's killed people as a result. ... Brian Nichols now faces the death penalty, instead of 20 or so years for the original crime, and four people are dead. Would making him wear handcuffs to, in, and from court have been better for him, or worse for him?
"PC do-gooders assisted Brian Nichols in ruining what was left of his life, and gave him the means to destroy many others — all in the name of 'fairness.' I'm sure the families of the victims will thank them for caring."


____________


BTW: How this guy got a WorldNetDaily column and a book deal, yet has the same blog traffic as I do, is beyond me. /envy

However, in light of this article, the handcuff controversy appears to be moot:

In a federal case in Atlanta in the late 1990s, drapes around the defense table were used, with court approval, to conceal the shackles on a defendant accused of killing a prison guard. Similarly, stun belts can be worn under defendants' clothes - although the devices have still been cited as grounds for appeal.

____________

There's a dozen ways you could physically restrain a defendant without any prejudicial effect.

However, consider the four possible scenarios:

  • A passive, handcuffed defendant: The defendant is prejudiced and unfairly maligned in front of the jury.

  • A belligerent, handcuffed defendant: The defendant is not prejudiced or unfairly maligned; he really is a belligerant person who needs to be restrained.

  • A belligerent, unhandcuffed defendant: The defendant is not prejudiced or unfairly maligned when he lashes out in court; he really is a belligerent person who would do the unthinkable.

  • A passive, unhandcuffed defendant: No prejudice.

    Thus handcuffs should be a no-no only when the defendant gives no impression of being a pugnacious person. I don't see why this fact can't be fairly determined by a bench ruling. The person wearing the handcuffs--and not the cuffs themselves--should determine whether they should be worn.

  • Wednesday, March 16, 2005

    Bad Goverment Mandated Art, Part II

    We previously discussed this monstrosity, a six-figure eyesore on the City of Richmond police station that looks like a prop from a Fritz Lang movie. Our Local AM talk-radio Clearchannel affiliate has gathered together more government "sponsored" art.



    A memorial to the great Confederate victory over the Giant-Locust People of Regulon 6



    "And this, young hobbits, is where Gandalf and our uncle Bilbo turned the trolls to stone"



    With safety in mind, the artist designed the holes just large enough for children to get their head stuck in them, so they'll be less likely they'll fall off and suffer multiple fractures.



    Mightly Zeus doth ate generously from his divine ambrosia, and as Helios raced over the heavens two hours in length, he sat crouched over Mount Olympus with great agony. And as the god sounded with savage fury, out of his bowels fell the great legendary city of Copropolis.



    Arborists flock to Richmond to observe the tridecennial mating cycle of North American Beech, the only time when the tree will bear its physiologically latent testes.



    "Dammit! This doesn't look nearly as cool as it did on the cover of my 12th grade calculus textbook!"

    ___________

    Well, off to look for more blogfuel!

    Monday, March 14, 2005

    More Fun with Math: NY Auto Theft Prevention

    Tom at Undercaffeinated complains the NY state government is pissing away his money. Though I would happily agree, I thought I'd be fun to play Devil's Advocate on the subject.

    According to this site, in 2000, there were about 57,160 car thefts in New York State per year: (285.8/100,000 vehicle thefts per citizen) x (approx. 20,000,000 people).

    According to this article, the average value of a stolen car at the turn of the millennium was $6,701.00.

    Thus the total value of all car thefts in New York per year was $383,029,160.00.

    New York had a drop in auto theft 3.5% greater than the national average. [38.5% - 35% = 3.5%]

    The total value of money saved due to the additional 3.5% drop would be $18,567,338.53 per year: $383,029,160.00 x 138.5% from before x 3.5%.

    New York spent $6.2 Million per year on auto theft prevention between 1997 and 2001: $31 Million / 5 years.

    Thus New York arguably profited $12.3 Million per year from the program, and more than doubled their investment.

    Of course, (1) the statistics are skewed due to limited data, (2) this is not an objective measurement of how effective the program actually was, and (3) not all auto thefts equal a total loss of the automobile's value (though could possibly exceed it, through loss man-hours and cost of retrieving it). Even then, NY might have broken even on the venture.

    Crime prevention spending shouldn't be viewed with the same categorical skepticism as welfare, social-spending, do-gooder pork projects. Government spends it money best by preventing theft, and spends it the worst by facilitating it.

    Saturday, March 12, 2005

    Fischer Lashes Out Against Three-Dimensional, Non-64 Square Reality

    Although missing for years, World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer has popped up over the past decade. He should've kept himself hidden. Fischer's sanity and rhetoric has deteriorated to a point somewhere between pity and disgust. The guy is so unhinged and vitriolic against the U.S. he makes Ward Churchill look like Brit Hume.

    Fischer popped up in 1992 to play a rematch between Boris Spassky. The problem? It was in Serbia/Montenegro, which at that time, was run by a genocidal maniac. Not only did Fischer play anyway, he openly dared the U.S. to try and catch him. He was subsequently indicted by a grand jury with charges that could lead to 10 years jail time, and was on the lamb for twelve years after in parts unknown.

    However, according to the UK Daily Telegraph between 1999 and 2005, he was been a regular caller/interviewee in a Filipino radio show. His calls consisted the most anti-American, anti-Semitic rants ever uttered in a language not German or Arabic.

    On September 11, he said the following:

    "This is all wonderful news. It is time to finish off the US once and for all.

    "I was happy and could not believe what was happening. All the crimes the US has committed in the world. This just shows, what goes around comes around, even to the US.

    "I applaud the act. The US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years. Now it is coming back at the US."


    The full audio is here. What he quoted above is fairly common moonbattery, but his whole tirade has to be heard to be believed. His sadistic quisling enthusiasms approaches this level.

    WARNING:This, and the below links, contain profanity and racial epithets, and linked to an anti-semetic website. The full list of audios, buried deep in a pile of wacko links, is here.

    His initial January 14, 1999 sums up everything you need to know about his politics, his prejudices, and his current mental state:

    Bobby Fischer: This. all of these things come to less than 4000 dollars. so I was sending him 5 grand a year to take care of all this, plus giving him like a thousand dollars for his trouble. and he was paying it. But then he got the words from the dirty Jews. fuck Fischer's ass. sell his memorabilia. This was in conclusion. this was in collusion with this Bekins storage company in Pasadena. You know. what the hell am I gonna give away all of the stuff which I have taken years to accumulate and to preserve over 400 dollars. I've got 300 million dollars in Switzerland. I got dough here in Hungary. They did it all behind my back. Nobody contacted me. nothing. They didn't contact my lawyers. nothing. the fucking Jews want to destroy everything I've worked for all my life. There as no Holocaust. The Jews are liars. it's time we took off the kid gloves with these parasites.
    Pablo Mercado: All right. with all of these things Mr. Fischer. what do you intend to do now?
    Bobby Fischer: I intend to do what I'm doing right now.
    Pablo Mercado: What?
    Bobby Fischer: Which is to expose the Jews for the criminals they are, the parasites they are, the liars they are, the thieves they are, the niggers (?) they are.
    Pablo Mercado: You speak like an Arab.
    Bobby Fischer: .. You ask the Palestinians. I was just listening to the BBC. the horror story that come out of there when you get into an Israeli prison. the way they torture you . it's unheard of. I was listening to a Palestinian woman, a Christian woman from Palestine, not even Muslims, Christian women who were anti-Israel. They got picked up by the Israeli police, taken down to the jail, and then the Israeli police tried to get information -- Who do you know among your friends that's anti-Israel? Give us all the names of your Arab, Christian friends who are anti-Israel. When they refused, they put the women in a cell, these are mothers, these women, mostly. They put em in a cell, and then they start playing, in Arabic, on the loudspeaker, 24 hours a day, "Mommy, come home, Mommy, we miss you" in Arabic. They played it over and over again until the women just collapsed.
    Pablo Mercado: All right, do you have any.
    Bobby Fischer: This is the Jewish mentality. These are a criminal people. They torture their prisoners in the worst way. It's even illegal! They don't even deny it hardly. Jews were always bastards throughout history. They are liars, they are the worst pieces of shit in the world. They mutilate their own children.
    Pablo Mercado: all right.
    Bobby Fischer: Fuck the Jews.
    Pablo Mercado: ok. you don't plan any legal moves against them? against those who sold your memorabilia?
    Bobby Fischer: What is this he said?
    Pablo Mercado: Legal moves, like a case in court.
    Bobby Fischer: You know, the Jews control the courts. What is your name, Mr. Mercado?
    Pablo Mercado: Yes, Pablo.
    Bobby Fischer: Yes, the Jews. Pablo, yeah Pablo. The Jews control the courts. It's just a charade they go through. It's Facade City, you know - Facade City. I've been involved in a number of law suits in America. Never got a penny, never got a stop order, never got nothing. I've been involved in about 5 or 6 lawsuits, about 5 cases throughout the years, never got a penny, never got any property back, never got a stop order, never got nothing man. I spent a lot of money, and I have all the documents, and I have all the justice on my side. It's a joke. The United States is a farce controlled by dirty, hook-nosed circumcised Jew bastards.
    Pablo Mercado: Bob, uhh, I have no other questions. Maybe Eugene, he has a few questions for you.
    Bobby Fischer: Ya ya, Hi Eugene.
    Eugene Torre: Hi Hi Bobby. Well, uhh, not much questions. I think you have expressed, uhh, quite good your side, and exposed these people, you know? *laugh*
    Bobby Fischer: Hey Eugene, what's the difference between a good Jew and a bad Jew?
    Eugene Torre: Yeah. What's the difference between a good Jew and bad Jew?
    Bobby Fischer: The good Jew fucks you slower.
    *All laugh*


    (full audio here)

    Silver Lining: Fischer is now being detained fo U.S. Extradiction in a Japanese prison. The Japanese penal system, shall we say, rather strict by western standards.

    - You are only allowed to speak when taking a walk, and half-hour walks are only allowed three times a week. Apart from those times speaking is forbidden.

    - You are usually alone in your cell and are not allowed to walk in it, to lean against a wall, to wash your face at any other time than the morning, to look out of the window, to sing or whistle, to talk to yourself, or to lie down outside of the appointed times. Playing any kind of game is also forbidden except during appointed times.

    - In your work place you have to keep your eyes fixed on your hands, which have to be placed on your workbench. You cannot look right or to the left.

    - You can only go to the toilet at the appointed times.

    - When you move from place to place in the prison, you have to march in step. If you do not walk correctly during a recreational period, you have to spend the period marching around the courtyard.


    That ought to calm Fischer down, but it might hurt his game. Give him a few months in there before extradition to the U.S. and he'll come out singing Yankee Doodle Dandy begging to enjoy his cherished Fifth Amendment rights in a plush American prison. This is assuming our Asian friends remember to fill out the paperwork. Due to Japan's marvelous absence of habeas corpus privileges, he can rot in there for years.

    On a final note, Ayn Rand had this guy pegged years ago. In a 1974 letter to Spassky, deriding him for overindulging in the merit/logic based world of chess as an evasion of Soviet barbarism, she also gives the following criticism of Fischer:


    Bobby Fischer's behavior . . . is a clear example of the clash between a chess expert's mind and reality. This confident, Disciplined, obviously brilliant player falls to pieces when he had to deal with the real world. He throws tantrums like a child, breaks agreements, makes arbitrary demands, and indulges in the kind of whim worship one touch of which in the playing of chess would disqualify him for a high-school tournament. Thus he brings to the real world the very evil that made him escape it: irrationality. A man who is afraid to sign a letter, who fears any firm commitment, who seeks the guidance of the arbitrary edicts of a mystic sect in order to learn how to live his life--is not a great, confident mind, but a tragically helpless victim, torn by acute anxiety and, perhaps, by a sense of treason to which might have been a great potential.


    Please keep in mind the above, those under the misguided impression that Rand left no room for pity of human weakness.

    (Hat tip to Skippy for find this story and for apparently preparing the transcription. It makes it so much the harder to again give a WARNING that his site has lewd/pornographic material.)

    UPDATE: Whoa! Someone get grandpa his Wellbutrin!

    Thursday, March 10, 2005

    funny

    Sgrena's Mystery Machine

    "Zoinks Scoob, Miss Sgrena said she was shot at by a hail of bullets," said Shaggy. "But there's no bullet holes."

    "Rhosts Raggy??"

    . . . . .


    Of course, nothing beats Family Guy's parody:

    FRED: You're right, Scoob, we're dealing with one sick son of a bitch.

    Wednesday, March 09, 2005

    The Federal Stone Sanguinity Act of 2005

    The recent proposed bankruptcy reforms in favor of credit card companies have the blogosphere talking about the nature and justification of bankruptcy. Prof. Reynold's got an email questioning "Isn't present Bankruptcy law (the fundamental purpose of which is to allow a party who freely entered into a contract to repudiate their obligations under the contract) contrary to basic libertarian values?".

    No. Bankruptcy is an admission of reality. The debtor is not going to pay his debts. He does not have the will and/or means to gain the money, and you don't have the means to make him get it. No amount of asking, begging, pleading, arm-twisting, nastygrams or legal threats will get him to pay. You can ask the debtor to pay and he won't. You can threaten the debtor to pay, and he still won't. You can garnish his wages, and he can refuse to work, if he was ever able to in the first place. You can put him in prison, and he can still refuse to pay you. You can force him into slavery (arguably excepted to in the Thirteenth Amendment), and he can still refuse to work. You can kill him, and he can definitely refuse to pay you. Even if some degree of duress or torture will get your money back, that degree may be too unconscionable or impractical to inflict.

    Bankruptcy is legal acknowledgement that (1) certain duties to another are too onerous or degrading to oppose on a human being, (2) certain rights are too precious to a human being to be given away, (3) the law cannot effect all verbal affirmations into reality, like a god or magician. In this sense, bankruptcy does not punish irresponsible debtors who think the government will bail them out of their poor spending decisions, but irresponsible creditors who think the government will bail them out of poor business decisions.

    For this reason, the proposals to except credit card debt may be unwise. As one NC attorney said in this WaPo article "People would be better off if they stopped paying. They may harass you, but your balance doesn't keep rising. That's the irony." In the end, no matter how many laws the creditor has on its side, a debt from a deadbeat is nothing more than a false hope that he will actually pay.

    Monday, March 07, 2005

    Who'll Be the Lucky Winner!

    Drudge reports that a blogger will be admitted in the White House Press Corps. It doesn't say if it's a day pass like Gannon has.

    Maybe I'll call up and see if I can get in!

    UPDATE: Oh please! I never even heard of these N00Bs. This is nothing but a further example of meida self-congratulatory circle-jerkery. This site appears to be nothing more than a temp agency and/or Moose Lodge for journo good-ole-boys. (Notice, however, this doesn't stop the NYT from calling these people bloggers, setting up for themselves another strawman they can feebly knock down.) Instapundit, LGF have much higher traffic and have put a much bigger dent in the body politic. Where the hell is their press pass? Not that they'd even need one. In the 21st century, news is made on the field with real-time reports and digital photos, not by getting pre-prepared quotes from Scott McClellan.

    Sunday, March 06, 2005

    Screwtape Interviews Wormwood

    LGF has up a shameful interview between Bill Maher and Ward Churchill. I feel degraded for even knowing these people exist.

    Some observations:

    (1) I'm beginning to seriously think that Ward Churchill is a Bipolar Schizophernic, or has some similar mental disease. His whipped demeanor in this interview has little in common with the fiery rants he's given in his "lectures".

    (2)Maher seemed like a cross between Bill O'Reilly and Al Frankin: boorish, unfunny conversation-monopolizing, attention-monopolizing, exhibiting poorly thought-out opinions, showing no respect to those around him, and exhibiting a ideology which has loathing of human virtue as it's primary basis. I'm having trouble believing that a grown, sober adult would actually converse with someone in this manner.

    Friday, March 04, 2005

    When Nerds Relax

    How did I spend a friday night after a long week's work? By correcting Simpsons' trivia on IMDB, of course.

    IMDB trivia for The Simpsons said that Springfield is supposedly both 678 miles from Mexico City and 2,653 miles away from Orlando, Florida. However, it is impossible for both of these facts to be true, since the radius of the distance from Mexico City would be wholly contained by the radius of the distance from Orlando--i.e., there is no possible intersecting point. If Springfield is 678 miles from Mexico City, then in order to be a part of the Continental U.S., Springfield could only be in Texas, south of Austin.

    I learned how to make these calculations from a webpage about geographic two-dimensional trilateration on this site's information about GPS receivers.

    Thursday, March 03, 2005

    "Balance of Terror"

    Bigwig ponders why, if the federation was so smart, do the Klingons and Romulans have cloaking and they don't.

    I posted the following:

    I suppose its a reflection on 1950s-60s paranoia about the US/USSR space race. They got in space first. They got a man in space first. They had space ICBM while we only as atmospheric weapons.

    Sometimes totalitarian, marshall societies can have technological developments above free ones, but those accomplishments are esoteric, fleeting, and only for show. It takes businessmen to take byzantine scientific knowledge and present it to society at large in paltable, useful forms.

    Tuesday, March 01, 2005

    But is it art . . . ?



    I don't know about that, but it's excellent parody.