Expertise

John Ransom is the Finance Editor for Townhall:
I got an email from a reader yesterday that went something like this: "Hey, the American Cancer Society says you're full of it on the link between breast cancer and abortion. Trust me I'm an expert and a scientist, and you're being less than honest. So do us all a favor and shut up and stick to finance."

To which I reply: "Hey, if you're an expert and scientist why are you citing a lobbying orginization like the American Cancer Society? Thanks for proving one of the points in the email/hate mail column."

And the point was: People, especially conservatives, are distrustful of experts. As they should be.
Dirty orginizations! Don't trust experts, trust NON-experts, like John Ransom, who doesn't purport to know anything about anything.

Down the page we interrupt an anti-tax rant in mid-spittlefleck:
And then I’m thinking “What spending cuts?” Don't spending cuts require government spending to actually go down?

Only with DC’s dishonest budget math- thank you Dan Mitchell- can politicians, journalists and other "experts" claim that spending that will rise year-over-year for forever, is somehow a spending cut.

And so lastly I’m thinking “Thank God I have a gun.”

My gun makes me the expert on so much.
I've gotta get me one of them things.

Incentives!

Free market principles at work:
What's a push gift? It's a present your hubs gets you for carrying and generally pushing the baby out (and don't worry: C-section moms definitely deserve one too). Of course that gorgeous baby is reward enough, but if there's one person who deserves a little spoiling, it's a woman who's just rocked L&D. Although jewelry is the most traditional pick, we've come up with a few other unconventional ideas, too. Hit "send to a friend" to get these perfect picks into your husband's inbox, stat.
If you don't give the gift, what's her incentive for getting that kid out of there? Pony up, cheapskates.

Weddings continue!

Keeping with tradition, we attended ANOTHER wedding this weekend. 2 this year, 4 since we've been married, upwards of 15 (I know I missed some...) since we have been dating- the majority of those in the last three years. 

Weddings like the one this past weekend are the best- the couple is mutual friends of both the husband and I, so we both have friends to talk to. Instead of those weddings where my lovely husband knows NO one...but he attends because he loves me that much. The couple went to OU- and the groom also works at the same company as Doug; so plenty of his work friends (who are just as awesome as mine!). 

So now the best way to show you how awesome the wedding was it pictures!

Another Bobcat wedding!!
The flag makes another appearance
Best Friend :) her turn now!
Almost the whole group from the bachelorette party!
Some of my favorite people in the world- can't even wait until their wedding
Pretty ladies :) 
It was a fantastic weekend...which of course lead to a Sunday on the couch with Harry Potter #3 (1.5 times...I slept through half of it and had to rewatch it...) and #4...

Oh and yes, I did sleep all the way home. As I promised I would on Friday. My husband really loves me :)

Judge not, lest ye be Friedman

Yes, it's Thomas P. Friedman, more frequently addressed as Thomas L. Friedman, Mystax Cholericus, with yet another insight to offer to an astounded public.
Aireekah at regretsy.

This one has to do with his wrath, for the Mustache is wrathful today. He is downright sparked off, in fact. We haven't seen him so indignantly quivering since the Iraq War ended in May 2003.

Yes, of course, May 2003. When did you think the war ended? He took his mustache onto the Charlie Rose show to announce it, on the very same day, May 29, as [jump]
 President Bush announced that the Weapons of Mass Destruction had at last been found, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad; and the mustache began to quiver with indignation as he bethought himself of the Talking Bubble of Terrorism.
The terrorism bubble that built up over the 1990s said flying airplanes into the World Trade Center, that’s Ok. Wrapping yourself with dynamite and blowing up Israelis in the pizza parlour, that’s Ok. Because we’re weak and they’re strong and the weak have a different morality. Having your preachers say that’s Ok? That’s Ok. Having your charities raise money for people who do these kinds of things? That’s Ok. And having your press call people who do these kind of things martyrs? That’s Ok. And that build up as a bubble, Charlie.
OK, so maybe he was expressing himself a little oddly, but still, his emotion was completely genuine. And he's unarguably right, in the sense that all those things that were OK according to the talking bubble of his mystical metaphor or perhaps hallucination are definitely not OK.

What he's upset about today is something of a double bubble, as represented by the hapless brothers Tsarnaev, terrorists of the Boston Marathon finish line, who are now being reported in the Washington Post to have been
‘self-radicalized’ through Internet sites and U.S. actions in the Muslim world. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the U.S. war in Iraq, which ended in December 2011 with the removal of the last American forces, and the war in Afghanistan.
The question is—supposing just for the sake of argument that there's something objectionable about the war in Iraq, which ended (apparently for the second time!) with the removal of the last American forces (except for the ones that are still there, of course, which may provide an opportunity for an unprecedented third end to the same war), and the war in Afghanistan—
But what in God’s name does that have to do with planting a bomb at the Boston Marathon and blowing up innocent people? It is amazing to me how we’ve come to accept this non sequitur and how easily we’ve allowed radical Muslim groups and their apologists to get away with it.
Well, I'm not altogether clear to what extent "we" have "allowed" "radical Muslim groups" and "apologists" to "get away with it". (Friedman seems to save his fury for after the war is over, or after the criminals are arrested, in a compulsive way.) But I certainly get the non sequitur part. Indeed, I've been thinking about non sequiturs and terrorism for a while.

Giant soap bubble from The Enchanted Tree.
For example what, in God's name, did your terrorism bubble of ten years ago have to do with planting a vast army in Mesopotamia and blowing up an entire country? Everybody knows what Friedman had to say about that non sequitur ten years ago, chatting on camera with Charlie Rose, youthful jowls shaking:
We needed to go over there basically uhm, and, uh, uhm take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble. And there was only one way to do it because part of that bubble said ‘we’ve got you’ this bubble is actually going to level the balance of power between us and you because we don’t care about life, we’re ready to sacrifice and all you care about is your stock options and your hummers. And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad uhm, and basically saying which part of this sentence don’t  you understand. You don’t think we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy we’re going to just let it go, well suck on this. Ok. That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan,  We hit Iraq, because we could. And that’s the real truth.
Precisely. We're strong and they're weak and the weak have a different morality, so we can tell them to suck on whatever we want, whenever we want to. The non sequitur aspect is part of the program with which the bully establishes his authority: "That's for nothing, Saddam—wanna try something?" Suck on this.

It was one of the mightiest and completest non sequiturs in human history, and Ambassador Wolfowitz and all his mighty intellectuals, and Bush and Cheney, and Rumsfeld and Powell and Rice, and Feith and Franks, and the whole misbegotten crew, Apologist-in-Chief Thomas L. Friedman and his spittle-flecked, enraged mustache by no means least, got away with it clean. I'm not saying Friedman belongs in jail, he's just a cheerleader, but it's a shame to have him associated with the Times. The New Republic is too good for him. Is there an Energy CEO Quarterly, with shopping columns (tied to the ads) and party pix?

What a moral dirtbag.
Image from Pure Costumes.

Nerdpron, er, prom, with swagbag of Tweets

Nerd Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday. From also smarter-than-she-looks romance novelist Sarah MacLean.
No kidding, man. Why, as far as I could tell, nobody mentioned Sarah even once.* [jump]

*Or invited her, apparently, which the Vixen hints may be more to the point.**

**By the way, where exactly is she working her asses off along with the rest of America on Saturday nights, while the Beltway heedlessly parties, at the moment? Last I heard, she was in unplanned retirement. (Personal disclosure: I'm pretty much of a Monday-through-Friday kind of guy myself, at least since I gave up restaurant work a number of decades ago, and I've never thought twice about taking Saturday night to hang out. Should I be feeling guilty? Likewise, if Sarah's out waitressing or whatever, should she feel guilty for tweeting on the job?) 


Greta van Susteren's afterparty for the 2011 WHCD boasted Sarah as its "biggest get" (did they mean "git"?). All the girls worked their asses off in those days, if you know what I mean and I think you do, and it was the assclowns who had to go to the office. I knew there'd be a picture like this, but the one who actually found one is Greg Mitchell, to whom hat tips are due.
The thing that caught my attention was at MSNBC, where the youthful second-stringers holding the microphones (the starting players, obviously, were all at the dinner) began speculating at one point about why and how people had taken to calling it the "nerd prom". They thought it must have had something to do with the event's origins as a C-SPAN program, because "nerds watch C-SPAN". It never occurred to them to wonder why it's a "prom".

Conan O'Brien told a joke in the same semantic field, comparing the journalists in the audience to a high school cafeteria and its clique-divided tables: "the jocks are at Fox, the nerds are at MSNBC..." Certainly some of the meaner Fox women remind me a lot of cheerleader cliques as represented in the movies, but jocks? Doesn't that imply some kind of dedication and skill?
Think your spectacles will be a laughing spectacle at prom or your next formal occasion? Think again, doll. Glasses can be a sexy accessory when paired with the right dress. PromdressesDirectory. 
Fact is, the joke betrays an alarming failure to follow through on the analogy:
  • If it's a prom, the central and most basic division is the traditional one into girls and boys. Here, the girls are the journalists and the boys are the politicians (while the celebrities represent the frocks and corsages, "arm candy", with which the journalists are made to look desirable).
  • If it's the nerd prom, then there aren't any jocks by definition, are there? Everybody's a nerd (except, again, for the movie stars, which just demonstrates further that they are not really guests but attire).
  • Just as the "girls" are not on the whole women and the "boys" not exclusively men, so the "nerds" are not mainly nerds in the classically accepted sense—highly motivated people devoting enormous amounts of time to the study of something that everybody else considers like please just shoot me right now, or worse than boring—but in their structural position within the high school hierarchy, that is losers in any crowd that includes jocks or stoners or virtually anyone other than themselves, except for the principal. Even the cops are embarrassed by them.
  • The journalists in question are also not the nerds of the world of journalism (those would be students of economics, campaign finance, and the environment, for example) but its cheerleaders.
  • This analogy lives in an eternal 1962 where nerd boys have exciting careers ahead of them going to the moon and being on TV quiz shows, while nerd girls have nothing but their inability to get that male law or med student to notice them, at least until they take their glasses off, so don't blame the sexism on me.
Polaroids by Mary Ellen Mark.

Beyond the wacky rich

Video: White House Correspondents' Dinner: What it's like to walk the red carpet

Oh, Mikey! You're so—big!
Image from FamousDC.
Before turning to national politics, he covered schools and local governments in rural counties outside Fredericksburg, Va., for The Free Lance-Star, then wrote about Doug Wilder, Oliver North, Chuck Robb and the Bobbitts for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he nurtured police sources on overnight ride-alongs through housing projects. Allen also covered Mayor Giuliani, the Connecticut statehouse and the wacky rich of Greenwich for The New York Times.

Lazyposts

This is how to shoplift:
Ontario, Canada – A $26,000 bottle of scotch has been stolen from the shelves of a liquor store in Ontario.

The rare spirit, a 50-year-old Glenfiddich Single Malt, is one of 15 in the Canadian city, and one of only 50 in the world.

[...]

It was only after the man had left the store that staff realized the pricey scotch had disappeared. The bottle is the single most expensive item ever stolen from an Liquor Control Board of Ontario store, said Heather MacGregor, media relations co-coordinator for the LCBO:

“This bottle was displayed in a locked cabinet. There are quite a few very exclusive and rare products that are offered at that store.”
On the other hand maybe not:
Surveillance cameras at the Queens Quay liquor store picked up a suspect, a man in a Burberry shirt, cap and brown trench coat. The alleged shoplifter can be seen in the grainy CCTV image below.


The Exploratorium is in a new building.

Video from the Torygraph:
Einstein the goldfish, who had lost the ability to swim, is afloat once more after his owner made him a special buoyant frame.
Science On The March:
The bomb detector that 56-year-old British millionaire James McCormick peddled sounded too good to be true. It could sense C-4 at a range of 600 yards. And it could be programmed to root out other contraband, too. The pistol-sized device’s simple metal antenna would magically point to where explosives, ivory, even $100 bills were hidden. Authorities in countries like Georgia, Romania, Niger, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, where McCormick was able to sell the detector, could, with a flick of the wrist, stop smuggling, organized crime, and deadly terrorist attacks.

Guess what? McCormick was full of shit. His device, dubbed the ADE-651, was bogus. Earlier incarnations of the detector, produced under the brand name ATSC, were based on $20 novelty golf ball detectors, the kind of plastic gag gift you’d give your argyle-wearing uncle whose slice off the tee is worse than he’d ever admit.
New mujahedeen?
The EU's anti-terror chief has told the BBC that hundreds of Europeans are now fighting with rebel forces in Syria against Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Gilles de Kerchove estimated the number in Syria at about 500.

Intelligence agencies are concerned some could join groups linked to al-Qaeda and later return to Europe to launch terrorist attacks.

The UK, Ireland and France are among the EU countries estimated to have the highest numbers of fighters in Syria.
Californians don't know shit about recycling:
More possible fallout from this weekend's 4/20 festivities: An employee at the faux-shabby Joe's Crab Shack found three garbage bags filled with marijuana in a dumpster behind the seafood chain's Fisherman's Wharf location.

According to SFPD, the bags contained "maybe 50 pounds" of unwanted kind bud. The investigation is still underway, so police don't have any additional information on where the weed might have come from or if it could possibly have any connection to the nationwide seafood chain. A quick search of the location's Yelp page produced 24 reviews claiming the service was "a bit slow," "definitely super slow" and "so slow it almost move backward in time." But all that is probably unrelated to the huge stash found in the dumpster.

Trolling as a Money-Making Enterprise

Props to Manila Luzon:
SAN DIEGO – The University of San Diego – a large, private Catholic college – hosted a drag show in its campus theater Thursday night, prompting a protest by students and local residents who called the event an aberration to Catholicism’s values, while others on campus defended the performance.

[...]

The performance starred Manila Luzon, described on his personal website as an “Asian Glamasaurus” drag queen who can been seen with his/her boyfriend around New York City “at the gayest of spots holding each other’s hands and each other’s drinks.”

Before the show began, Luzon stood outside the building in which the theater is located, and where several San Diego news station cameras rolled. He donned a cherry-red kimono-styled dress and Asian-inspired make-up and laughed and chatted with students.

Social media posts Luzon made prior to his show included “If I had as many people buying my songs on iTunes as I have people signing petitions for me not to perform at a Catholic university, then I’d have enough money to pay for a gay wedding” and “Jesus is really mad I’m performing at University of San Diego.”

Protestors, in a flier emailed among members of the San Diego Catholic community, lodged their concerns over Luzon because he is “openly homosexual” and because of his “vocal support of same-sex marriage.”
Inspiring.

George W driven to Rehab

Uncredited image from Esquire.
Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street Monsignor Ross Douthat joins the choruses of "He couldn't have been that bad":
a lot of liberal criticism of Bush’s record (and especially his domestic record) looks not only misguided but absurd — and I think many liberals know it. Look at Yglesias’s piece, for instance, listing “positive aspects of the Bush presidency that often get overlooked.” It includes signature Bush-era legislation like No Child Left Behind Medicare Part D, plus smaller initiatives like the AIDS-in-Africa push and the “housing first” approach to homelessness, plus the emergency responses to the financial crash, plus some praise for Bush’s failed immigration push and his overridden farm bill veto. That’s almost his entire domestic policy!
First, whatever Yglesias says about No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D (you can tell he's neither a parent nor retired) they were disasters. (And yes, I do know Teddy's sacred name was on the former.) Second,
 That’s almost his entire domestic policy!
I just about rest my case. Third,
True, the list doesn’t include the Bush tax cuts...
Now it's his entire domestic policy. I.e., he had virtually none except to bring the country to fiscal ruin. And to note that Democratic legislators have not been very eager to close the cuts in an attempt to spread the Plame, I mean blame, is pretty disingenuous even by the young Monsignor's standards:
but you may have noticed that the Democratic Party showed no enthusiasm for repealing them for anyone except the wealthy. 
The Bush tax cuts didn't especially benefit anybody except the wealthy.
I don’t really think there are a lot of serious Obama-era liberals ready to argue that, say, Bush’s deficits were actually the grave threat to the republic Bush-era liberals made them out to be...
No, they were much worse—Bush's deficits were what above all made it politically impossible to enact an adequate stimulus after the 2008 crash...

Call for Signatures

Via Echidne of the Snakes:
Beatriz wants to live. She's 22 years old and the mother of an infant, but the 18 week pregnancy she's carrying is killing her -- right now as you read this -- and the government of El Salvador has refused to permit an exception to their abortion ban to save her life.
The fetus Beatriz is carrying is anencephalic; it has no brain and won't survive birth even if her health allowed her to carry to full term. More to the point, Beatriz has lupus, worsened by a kidney malfunction, and it's very dangerous for her to be pregnant. But under El Salvador's abortion ban, both Beatriz and any medical staff involved in providing a therapeutic abortion would face criminal charges, carrying penalties as high as 50 years in jail for her and 12 years in jail for her doctors.
El Salvador's minister of health and the attorney general for human rights both support making an exception to the law for this case, but the supreme court is slow-walking it. There's a petition you can sign, here.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Agrupación Ciudadana por la despenalización del aborto Terapéutico, Ético y Eugénesico.  Via  Amnesty USA.

Hello There. I Am Awful.

Brent Bozell:
But one thing everybody knows, whatever their political or religious persuasion: they want to blend in. They don’t want the “audience” – their family, their friends, their co-workers, even strangers – to look at each other and whisper, “Did he really say that? What a fool! Wayyy over the top.” No matter how old we get, no matter how secure or successful we become, for many of us, nothing ever takes the place of being “cool.”

Is same-sex marriage “cool?” That’s what the “cool kids” tell us. It’s up there now with smoking, nose-rings, vampire romances, and holes in your blue jeans. Unfortunately, it also wreaks havoc on the home, shatters the social structure, confuses children, and corrupts the culture. History shows that no society has ever indulged it and long survived. Which is probably why it is so clearly and strongly discouraged by the God Who created men and women, marriage and sex for His own purposes. And why those purposes have never altered to accommodate current fashions.

But then God, of course, is not cool, and never has been. And moral conventions have always been so … conventional. Neither plays well against the standards constantly being revised by Hollywood and political opportunists. Neither is easily explained to, or widely respected by, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our grandchildren, so many of whom are now embracing the hot, cool cause of redefining marriage.
I suppose the good part here is that Brent acknowledges that he wants to be cool and can't be and will suffer until he dies.



UPDATE:

In what is a total surprise to me this is Alan Sears and not Brent Bozell. I blame Hollywood permissiveness.

Cheap shots and expensive lifestyles

De Sacha Guitry à Diane Arnaud.
Please tell me David Petraeus with his visiting professor gig at the Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York, isn't burnishing his academic credentials for that presidential run (perhaps it could be a bipartisan Joint ticket with Anthony Wiener). Washington Post:
Petraeus has a doctorate from Princeton University and has written widely on international relations, military strategy and tactics and national security issues.

He says in a statement released by Macaulay he’s pleased to teach at the college, where most students are children of immigrants. He says he looks forward to leading a seminar on the global economic slowdown.
It would be cool to have one of those certified Serious people out there recommending a fiscal Surge on the Sunday morning shows, though I guess around five years [jump]
too late. I fear he'll call instead for a classic counterinsurgency approach, clearing, holding, and building one too-big-to-fail bank at a time.

I wonder if he could moonlight over on the literary side in the hip, postmodern field of biography studies, like (this goes out to you, Thers) The Man Called Petraeus: Dis-solution of the Subject in the Flood of  Jouissance.
L'esprit viennois.
It was supposed to be the legislation so bad that even Congress wouldn't be able to live with it—the dread sequester, which was to lop a hunk off the budget of every federal department as with a deli slicer, deaf to the screams of civil servants being divided from their water coolers, teammates, or thumbs. Faced with the prospect, our fearless legislators were expected to be galvanized into bold action, hastening to cut that budget on a rational basis instead.

Then it turned out that Congress thought they could live with it after all. None of their campaign contributors lost food stamps, or had to drive an extra 50 miles to get their chemotherapy, or found their neighborhoods unprotected by police or their children's day care centers unstaffed. No crisis after all! Funny how that works, isn't it? How the people that don't suffer from the legislation are the same as the people who get to vote on it?

But not so fast! Campaign contributors do have to eat meat, right? And your ranchers (Western states, big right-wing donors) have to sell it too. So they managed to pass some legislation permitting the Agriculture Department to use a scalpel instead of a slicer allowing the inspection of meat to go on as scheduled. And then they came for the air traffic controllers, who are needed to OK the flights on which legislators and their contributors frequently fly...
“I am so happy that we were able to work together across the aisle in a bipartisan way to solve this problem,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who helped spearhead the last-minute negotiations. “It’s nice to know when we work together we really can solve problems.”
Yes indeed, everybody has to sacrifice, unless of course it's somebody you know or somebody who has written or may someday write you a check. Because why solve a problem if it's not Serious?
Un dernier clou dans le cercueil du général Petraeus.
All images from the blog of the Swiss novelist and critic Roland Jaccard, where I am sorry to say they are uncredited.

Friday's letters

Dear Friday, I'm oh so happy it's the end of the week! Between an event last weekend and a late work meeting last night, I'm so ready for some relaxation this weekend. Dear Zach and Kari, I am so so excited for your wedding tomorrow!! Going to be a complete Put-In-Bay reunion for 3 summers ago...which means the booze will be flowing and there will be LOTS of dancing. Dear Husband, I am just going to apologize now for sleeping the whole drive home on Sunday...let's be honest- it's what I do (especially after drinking and dancing all night). Dear Chicago, hope you are ready for us next weekend! Though I would really appreciate if the 10 day forecast was wrong and you decided to stay in the 70s.

  • Husband and I drinking...so basically the whole weekend. Duh.
  • Bachelorette party for the soon to be bride!
  • SO pumped to be reunited with this girl in Chicago!!



Got paranoia? The aha moment

Vaughn Bode's The Man (1972), via Matt Seneca.
Via BooMan, a bit of very strong noticing from Walter Katz at The Week involving Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mysterious Armenian friend.
in 2008 or 2009, Tamerlan met Misha, a slightly older, heavyset bald man with a long reddish beard. [Tamerlan's ex-brother-in-law] Khozhugov didn't know where they'd met but believed they attended a Boston-area mosque together. Misha was an Armenian native and a convert to Islam and quickly began influencing his new friend, family members said.
Misha, apparently, was the Salafizing influence, who convinced him to give up music, go to mosque regularly, read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and become a 9/11 truther, and who knows what else?

What occurred to Katz is that all the radical-Muslim conspiracies that our government has stopped since  2001 have had a Misha-like figure, a kind of teacher who explained [jump]
the doctrine to them, who maybe came up with the idea of blowing something up, who played a big role in developing the plans, came up with money when money was needed, bought stuff, reassured, coached, listened. What he's usually called in the newspaper stories is the FBI informant, because that's what they were.

Because when you think about it every last one of those deadly conspiracies was manned by people of such an appalling loserness that they could barely be expected to tie their shoes without help, who had no idea what to do or how to do it. Without their FBI informant guiding them at every step, they would never have made it to the point where the FBI had something to arrest them for. Indeed, you could almost say the FBI created every one of those radical Muslim terrorist conspiracies, entrapping the loser Muslims into taking part, except of course that would be entrapment, which is illegal, and I can't imagine the FBI would ever do anything to break the law.

But the Tsarnaev brothers didn't have an FBI informant, did they? That's why they succeeded in their awful mission, right? There was nobody to watch them, to turn them in before it went too far. But then what if there was? What if Tamerlan and Johar were just that least little bit smarter than your average FBI-recruited terrorist gang and able to go the last mile on their own, with an Internet recipe for pressure cookers and ball bearings? What if they dumped Misha, or missed a meeting with him, and then went ahead?

What if the bombing of the Boston Marathon was one colossal fuckup on the part of Misha and the Bureau? Think anybody might go to jail over that?

Shays' Longue Rebellion

Army of Lawyers, from Saratoga in Decline.
Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice notes the startling views of cartoonist Ted Rall, who accepts the need for some gun regulation even as he proclaims himself to be (who knew?) a member of the Water the Tree of Liberty Second Amendment Club. He says, [jump]

There is an argument that regulation is a first step toward government seizure. If they know who has guns, they can take them away. Which is true.
I don’t trust the government. No one should. But I’m counting on the fact that, if and when the time comes for armed resistance, it will be possible for patriotic Americans to keep their weapons out of the hands of government agents who seek to take them away. The situation will likely be chaotic and anarchic.
It strikes me that this whole theme about the Second Amendment and the right to revolution and shoot your congressman in the face is not merely offensive to pacifists and liberals and morally wrong and quite distinct from what the Founding Fathers-and-Mothers had in mind and off the wall in various other respects but is also really profoundly dumb. An adjective I never imagined myself applying to Ted Rall, but strange things happen.

In point of fact, that train left the station a long time ago. Long enough that it was definitely a steam train. Or more likely a boat, if it was in 1815, when demobilization from the War of 1812 left the nation with its first substantial standing army, of 10,000 troops. That's when the Second Amendment as revolution-enabler was definitively abandoned. Or else 1865, when the theory failed an extremely thorough test.

No matter how abusive the US government might be, or how abusive it may become in the future, it is not going to be overthrown with guns. They will always have more guns, little revolutionary, than you. In a proportion so great that it might as well be infinite.

If you would have revolution, you would be much better off learning how to do things with your computer. Or better still taking a cue from Pakistan and the black-suited regiment of attorneys that overthrew Pervez Musharraf in the most significant victory for democracy of that country's history. Try prying a lawyer from my cold, dead hands!
No fear of guns, flees at the sight of a briefcase. For reals! Via DNA India.


Various

Offbeat China:
Below are pictures of two RMB notes donated to the recent earthquake in Sichuan…with handwritten text on them. The words on the green one (RMB 50 yuan) on the top read: “This is what I donated to Ya’an. Fuckhead, I dare you to graft this.” The words on the red one (RMB 100 yuan) on the bottom read: “This is what I donated to Ya’an. Whoever dares to graft this, your whole family will die.”
Metaphors and the law:
Culminating a two-week trial in which no hacking in the traditional sense occurred, a California man was convicted Wednesday under the same hacking statute internet sensation Aaron Swartz was accused of before he committed suicide in January.

Defendant David Nosal was convicted by a San Francisco federal jury on all six charges ranging from theft of trade secrets to hacking, despite him never breaking into a computer. Nosal remains free pending sentencing later this year, when he faces a potential lengthy prison term.
Orcas vs. sperm whales.

Film about architects competing for a project.

Rotoscoped GIF Tumblr. Go see.

Artists in Laboratories:
Zarestsky has co-habited during one week in a terrarium with E. Coli bacteria, worms, plant, fish, frogs, mice, flies and yeast. He has dedicated part of his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to playing Engelbert Humperdinck's Greatest Hits to fermenting E.Coli continuously for 48 hours and observing the impact that the rather camp music had on the bacteria. More recently, the artist has worked with materials that include surgically manipulated pheasant embryos and a preserved turd of the deceased writer William S. Burroughs.

So that's what we are going to discuss in this episode of #A.I.L., turds from a famous writer but also eyeballs in armpits. And ethics, biotechnological materials and "Full Breadth Genetic Alterity."

26 awesome things

With the big 27 coming up, I've been thinking a lot. Most of those thoughts revolving around seriously? I'm 27? I still act feel like I'm 21 (let's be honest- can't go any younger than that with the amount of wine I drink). And according to others, I don't look any older than 18.

I came across Erin's adorable blog the other day, with this list of 25 things about her 25th year. So here is my 26 Awesome things that happened while I was 26.

1. My best friend from college, and her boyfriend (who was my husband's old roommate) got engaged on a trip back to Ohio University.

2. Said weekend was then spent full of day drinking, stumbling on the brick streets of Athens and gorging ourselves on every kind of deliciousness we could squeeze in (Souvlaki's, O'Betty's, Courtside, Millers Chicken, Big Mama's...etc..etc..)

3. I ordered 600 yards of ribbon...instead of the 600 feet I actually needed. Blame the bride brain! Yes, this makes the top 26. Basically shows how I was losing my mind during our wedding planning!

4. We road tripped to New Jersey and visited New York City for the first time

5. And on the same trip, attended the first of many weddings of an old coworker.



6. The following weekend, we headed down to Columbus for wedding #2...my old college roommate and her longterm boyfriend (so cute- they met freshman year in the dorm we all lived in!)

7. We hit the 100 day mark in our wedding countdown and I tried not to stress like crazy.

8. I enjoyed spending time with my niece- girl really loves summer time!
Eating East Coast Custard
After a long day at Cedar Point

9. Wedding #3 of the year together...and nope, not done yet. This was the wedding of a current co-worker.

10. We kept on trucking with all the wedding crafts and planning. And realized we were insanely blessed with everyone who was helping us out. .

11. I attended two concerts within three days of each other- Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw, followed by Florence and the Machine.





12. I completely fell in love with our wedding invitations and we sent them out in July.

13. 7 of my closest friends helped me celebrate the end of my single days at my bachelorette party in Athens. Still one of my favorite weekends this year!

14. I was showered with gifts at two different bridal showers- I have the most amazing family and friend!
With 3 of 4 Bridesmaids
15. While all our boyfriends/fiances were at Doug's bachelor party- us girls had a mini Bachelorette party part two in Lakewood. A totally random and awesome night.

16. I completed the Warrior Dash...didn't skip any obstacles and tried to run at least MOST of the way.
Obviously pre-mud
17. Obviously the most important occurrence of my 26th year...as well as my absolute favorite, was getting married!! My wonderful, amazing husband makes me thankful I have him every single day!

18. We then spent a week in Vegas, basking in our newlywed glory, playing the penny slots and enjoying cold drinks by the pool.
After the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show...seriously coolest thing I have ever seen!

19. Post wedding and honeymoon bliss, spent my first weekend as a Mrs. at a bachelorette party for my friend Megan.

20. Weddings #4 and #5, both in December and both of which I was honored to be part of! My close friend Megan and my cousin/maid-of-honor Abby.
My favorite. I haven't seen her since her wedding since
she moved to Oklahoma right away. Definitely missing her!
The girl on the left is getting married in September...so excited!

21. Spent more time with my niece...taking her sled riding for the first time and celebrating her 2nd birthday. Obviously, she played a large role in my year. 
 

22. We attended some awesome Cleveland Events with amazing friends- Brite Winter Fest and Yuri's Night. 
 

23. I decided that this is the year I needed to try to stress less...focusing on a few things that always stress me out.

24. Attended yet another bachelorette party for my dear friend Kari, who is getting married this weekend will be #7 of my 26th year!

25. And wedding #6...just this past weekend 


26. While this hasn't happened yet, I will be ringing in my 27th in Chicago with some of my favorite girls in the world! Hence why the husband and I already celebrated (all the Harry Potter movies on Blu Ray- so awesome). The plans include a trolley bar crawl, wandering the city, lots of girl time, and of course margaritas! Such a Cinco de Mayo baby.

26 has treated me well. I have an amazing husband, friends and family surrounding me. And I am so excited to see what 27 will bring (top of mind is hopefully home buying, more traveling, the birth of my 2nd niece, crazy busy times at work, and many more weddings-including some of our best friends).
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...