Microsoft Beefs up Encryption, France Worries about Bitcoin, Whistleblowers Warn Snowden: P.M. Links

• 

  Microsoft logo

  In the wake of the various NSA surveillance shockers, Microsoft has announced an effort to beef up its encryption systems.

• Russia is going to investigate a Reuters report that children adopted by Americans are being trafficked in an underground market by parents who had changed their minds.
• The Bank of France has joined China in worrying about the stability of Bitcoin. They really should probably be more worried about the stability of France.
• Tomorrow Rand Paul will be in Detroit recommending economic fixes there. No doubt his ideas will seriously pondered by the civic … ha, ha, ha, no.
• Jailed whistleblowers urge Edward Snowden not to come home because did you notice the first word in this sentence is "jailed?"
• Amnesty International has released satellite images of North Korea's prison camps and worries they may be growing.

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Comments

[Caleb Turberville]

http://tinyurl.com/lxg2gm7

CJ Werleman writes:

In the days running up to Thanksgiving, Walmart urged its workers to donate food to their most in-need colleagues. You know, instead of Walmart having to pay said workers a livable wage. When people ask me what libertarianism looks like, I tell them that. By people I mean atheists, because for some stupid reason, far too many of my non-believer brethren have hitched their wagon to the daftest of all socio-economic theories.
It doesn’t help when atheist luminaries publicly extol their libertarianism. Penn Jillette writes, “What makes me a libertarian is what makes me an atheist?I don’t know. If I don’t know, I don’t believe?.I’ll wait for real evidence and then I’ll believe.”

Ophelia Benson writes:

Oh right, because libertarianism alone among political commitments has no kind of belief at all, it’s just an empty space.

CJ Werleman continues:

Atheists who embrace libertarianism often do so because they believe a governing body represents the same kind of constructed authority they’ve escaped from in regards to religion.

Ophelia Benson replies:

Which would be great if it weren’t for the tiny flaw that it’s completely simple-minded.

In addition, I enjoyed the critical take on Atlas Shrugged from someone who’s obviously never read it.

[Bam!]

That would make Penn Jillette an agnostic, not an atheist. He does believe: He believes there is no God.

[Caleb Turberville]

Penn Jillette doesn’t view agnostic and atheist as mutually exclusive. I believe I’ve heard him state that since he doesn’t know if god exists, then he doesn’t *actively* believe in god, hence his atheism.

[Bam!]

No, he’s way beyond that.

[Caleb Turberville]

I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy ? you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word “elephant” includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

What he’s saying is that even though the empirical evidence points toward agnosticism, for all practical purposes, he’s a hard atheist. I’m an atheist about there being a gremlin in the trunk of my car, but if you had to ask me for evidence, I’d have to agree that there’s no evidence one way or the other.

[Bam!]

I quoted him exactly.

[Bitter Klingon]

There is no evidence of a god, period. To say, when there is no evidence, that “I don’t know” is to be a cowardly fence-sitter, an agnostic. An agnostic declares to the world, “Who am I to think?”

[kbolino]

Certainty is for fools and charlatans. Which are you?

[Juice]

To say, when there is no evidence, that “I don’t know” is to be a cowardly fence-sitter, an agnostic.

Comparing something like a transcendent being to a gremlin in your trunk is simply disingenuous. Would you say that there definitely no other intelligent life in the universe? Of course you can’t say that because it’s so plausible that “I don’t know” is the correct answer. “Definitely not” is the incorrect answer. It’s plausible because we know so much about how life develops and the nature of the universe. But we don’t know anything about how an omnipotent being may make its existence. So we can’t discern the criteria for plausibility. We can’t rationally make a definite decision as to its existence or not. “I don’t know” is the correct answer.

[Corning]

There is no god and I have proof.

I asked Satan and he told me himself that god does not exist and then showed me photos of it.

[Kid Xenocles]

Arguably he wrote it that way in order to meet the “This I Believe” template.

[Tonio]

Hi, Merkin!

[Sevo]

Bam!|12.5.13 @ 4:32PM|#
That would make Penn Jillette an agnostic, not an atheist. He does believe: He believes there is no God.”

Wrong. And you get to figure out why.

[gaijin]

the tiny flaw that it’s completely simple-minded.

See, the evidence is unequivocal!

[gaijin]

often do so because they believe

More evidence!

[LynchPin1477]

You can’t expect something to be true if the unwashed masses can understand it!

[Juice]

And when I read the blog post and its responses all I could think was, “how simple-minded.”

[Dweebston]

“What makes me a libertarian is what makes me an atheist?I don’t know. If I don’t know, I don’t believe?.I’ll wait for real evidence and then I’ll believe.”

I have absolutely no problem with this, with the proviso that it’s not a matter of agnosticism for the efficacy of government but skepticism for the inside baseball politicking that drives policy. Statists, progressives especially, treat politics like a hard science: it’s driven by consensus, fact-checked by scholars, and above all follows the rational logic of dispassionate method. It’s really the opposite of science: personality-driven, self-serving, obfuscative, and not in the slightest truth-seeking.

Atheism might be a good parallel for libertarianism, but skepticism is a better analogue.

[MJGreen]

When people ask me what libertarianism looks like, I tell them that. By people I mean atheists

Why? Why did he write it like that? Was this some hardcore stream-of-consciousness writing, and this guy couldn’t be bothered to go back and tidy up a bit?

Why say “people” and then immediately clarify that people means atheists? Why? WHY??

[Nooge.]

Because he is not half as smart as he thinks he is, and he is not a good, or even passable, writer.

[Nikki just says no]

Yeah that’s really bad. I can’t click through because I’m worried about total brain death, but if that’s the lede…it’s fucking terrible.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Obviously he means that the people with whom he talks about it are generally atheists, though it’s still a cringeworthy error

[Ted S.]

It’s Free Thought Blogs, if you’re worried about that the Tinyurl is linking to.

[Nikki just says no]

No, I just saw another excerpt from the same article earlier and decided not to harm myself dreadfully by reading the whole thing.

[Invisible Finger]

It’s like that Chevy ad where they say “Nobody beats Chevy value. And by Nobody I mean Ram and Ford.”

So logically nobody = Ram and Ford. So Ram and Ford beat Chevy on value.

[Juice]

When I saw that commercial I thought the exact same thing. I’m sure someone has pointed it out to them because I only saw the commercial once.

[Generic Stranger]

Maybe they purposely phrased it that way to avoid a fraud prosecution, knowing their customers wouldn’t be smart enough to suss out what they’re really saying.

[seguin]

I thought the same…I thought ad companies were supposed to be good with words.

[LynchPin1477]

When people ask me what libertarianism looks like, I tell them that.

What, that people can voluntarily rally together to help those in need, without being forced to do so? By all means, keep spreading that message.

[Nooge.]

It’s pretty damn funny that some atheists think libertarian atheists are, I dunno, what’s the word? Heretics? Something like that?

[Tonio]

Heretics is probably the best word; and doubly so for the irony.

[Pro Libertate]

Personally, I’d say it’s a move down to make men into your gods, because we know for a fact that we’re all fucked up.

[PD Scott]

Top. Statist. Atheists.

[Pro Libertate]

There are loads and loads of theist libertarians. Belief or disbelief in God really is irrelevant to political beliefs.

[robc]

Really, I cant think of a single one. 🙂

[Winston]

Belief or disbelief in God really is irrelevant to political beliefs.

No Kidding.

[CatoTheElder]

This statement holds only for secular political beliefs.

Many religions in history — Shintoism, Wahhabism, Aztec Huey Tlatcani worship, etc. — have been as much political as they are religious. Whether one believed in the religion and its gods was quite relevant to accepting the associated political beliefs. Actually, the whole notion of freedom of religion was controversial at one time, and disbelief in God was quite relevant.

[Pro Libertate]

I was making a general statement about politics in the U.S. today and agree completely that it has been less true in the past.

[Winston]

Well I was thinking more that I don’t think that atheism or theism is a reliable indicator of libertarianism or statism.

[Pro Libertate]

I agree with that. I know some very religious libertarians who got there because of them seeing natural law as something handed down by God. And, of course, there are plenty of atheistic libertarians who believe in natural law, too.

[Cytotoxic]

No it’s not. There is a cross-talk. Denying so is specious.

[Caleb Turberville]

As someone who is both an atheist and a libertarian, should I have to choose, I think I’d rather attend a meeting of theistic libertarians than atheistic liberals. Just my personal preference. I think it was different 10 years ago, and I might change my opinion in the next 10 years. But right now, my worldview is dominated more by my libertarianism than by my atheism.

[Cytotoxic]

Same. And boy some Atheists are really capable of douching things up. See ‘Atheist Churches’.

[Pi Guy]

Late to the game but 100% in agreement.

I’ve come to think of theistic libertarians and atheistic libertarians as akin to Baptists and Bootleggers. And I’m okay with that. Somewhere in that 100+ year-old piece of paper thingy… Freedom of religion? Is that what it says? I just checked the box that says “None.”

disclosure: I actually found Reason.com when Ed Brayton cross-posted a Radley Balko article. I visit here every day, haven’t been back there in 4 or 5 years.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Ah, Ophelia Benson, veteran Elevatorgate warrior.

I enjoyed this exchange on the original post:

Christine Gernant ? 17 hours ago
Why? He nailed it. He wasn’t talking about Atheism per se, rather Libertarianism. And Libertariansm are just Republicans who want to smoke dope and get laid.

Rob ? 14 hours ago
“Democrats are just Communists who don’t want to give up their iPhones.”

It’s easy and fun to make up demonstrably false political statements when you’re ignorant!

[Zeb]

Yeah, Republicans never get laid. Their kids are actually delivered by a stork.

[Pro Libertate]

I knew quite a few Republicans in college, and they mostly were drug-using whores.

[Ted S.]

Fucking -gate suffix!

[Generic Stranger]

Fuckgate? Wasn’t that the Clinton scandal?

[lap83]

“Democrats are just Communists who don’t want to give up their iPhones.”

Is that supposed to be sarcastic? Because I think it represents a lot of Democrats. “Communism forever! Unless I have to give something up! Then it’s the teabaggers fault!”

[LynchPin1477]

This is also pretty good

Robert Reich says that one of the most deceptive ideas embraced by the Ayn Rand-inspired Right is that the free market is natural, and exists outside and beyond government. He writes:

In reality, the ‘free market’ is a bunch of rules about 1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); 2) on what terms (equal access to the Internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections?); 3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?); 4) what’s private and what’s public (police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); 5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees, individual pricing?). And so on. These rules don’t exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don’t ‘intrude’ on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren’t ‘free’ of rules; the rules define them.

So does this guy believe in intelligent design?

[Rasilio]

Well he is correct to a point.

“Free Markets” are not devoid of rules, all markets have rules of some sort. It is also true that historically government has at some level been the one setting those rules and as long as those rules are not inherently coercive and generally agree with what most people want they are not really an imposition on a free market.

Where he is wrong however is in the assumption that government is the ONLY possible source of rules. It is not. Custom, morality, culture, and other factors have and can set those rules as well.

The only place where it is possible to make the argument that government MUST set the boundary is dispute resolution. Both ancaps and minarchists have good points to be made here but the evidence from history does favor the minarchists as there are only 2 partial examples of non government dispute resolution mechanism’s in history

[Caleb Turberville]

The problem is that Leftists tend to view “custom, morality, culture, and other factors” as mere superstition. State power is the rational source of rules to the materialistic leftist.

[CatoTheElder]

Bastiat nailed the problem with Leftist thinking:

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

[Pro Libertate]

Exactly. We believe in maximizing cooperation, they believe in maximizing coercion. It’s that simple.

[LynchPin1477]

Oh of course markets have rules. But markets, much like evolution, are emergent systems, in this case arising from the many individual and group exchanges that people make. He seems to be arguing that markets need government to impose those rules, otherwise it is all chaos. That isn’t dissimilar from people who think life requires a designer, because complex systems couldn’t arise otherwise.

[Caleb Turberville]

Really, Robert Reich is the political/economic equivalent of Michael Behe. Markets are irreducibly complex, and therefore must have been designed by government.

[PapayaSF]

Another of Reich’s errors is to believe that government rules have no or minimal cost, which is demonstrably untrue to anyone who examines the evidence.

[Rasilio]

Well some government rules might be costless.

Take for example the rule which says we must drive on the right hand side of the road.

Well which side we drive on is irrelevant as long as we all agree to be on the same side. The rule has to exist or traffic on roads would not work. Whether government or some other source sets the rule is irrelevant.

The problem comes in when government inevitably says “oh yeah and you can’t drive faster than 55”, a rule which is not necessary and does come with costs.

[Overt]

Having driven in Bangalore, I can assure you that “picking a side” is not at all required. And there is a cost to it (ever seen a road completely gridlocked going one direction, but not the other?)

Now, that said, it is likely that the benefits of rules like this outweigh the costs, but don’t confuse that for being no cost at all…TANSTAAFL

[PapayaSF]

OK, granted. I don’t think the Department of Weights and Measures is a horrible and inefficient infringement on liberty, either. But progs tend to ignore the costs of all laws and regulations.

[MJGreen]

It’s one big non-sequitur. Of course the free market has rules, but that’s not his argument. I wouldn’t deign to call it correct to a point.

For one thing, he’s saying that the free market has rules, therefore the rules can be anything. But there is obviously some substantive content to the idea, as made clear by both “free” and “market.” Free must refer to certain kinds of rules over others, and ditto for market.

It’s the classic non-sequitur that Tony loves to use here. There must be some rules, and some coercion, therefore “the rich” must pay 50% of their income and cannot leave anything to their descendants. Merely by agreeing that there need to be some rules, we’ve supposedly agreed to any rule that the elite, or “democracy,” or whatever else establishes. We don’t get to make any distinctions between good or necessary rules and bad or superfluous rules.

[PapayaSF]

Yes, this.

[cavalier973]

One doesn’t “get paid” a “living wage”. One earns a living wage by bringing the knowledge, skills and abilities to the marketplace that are valuable to labor consumers (also known as employers).

[Dweebston]

Jailed whistleblowers urge Edward Snowden not to come home because did you notice the first word in this sentence is “jailed?”

Most transparent administration evar.

[Mike M.]

Sorry sloop, but no charges for Winston. The woman has no credibility and he didn’t do anything wrong, just like I suspected.

Good luck in the national championship game; you guys are going to need it.

[BigT]

We have a little bump in Indy first.

[robc]

I was hoping for a Duke Orange Bowl appearance.

[Caleb Turberville]

I’m a big “innocent until proven guilty” kinda guy, but doesn’t Tallahassee PD have a lot of questions to answer in regard to how they initially handled this case? I don’t know, I haven’t quite kept up with this case, but I what I’ve heard about the TPD hasn’t inspired my confidence.

[robc]

Its both possible that he is totally innocent and that members of the TPD need to be fired.

[Pro Libertate]

Exactly. While I have no idea whether he did anything wrong or not, something smells bad up there. Besides the state government, I mean.

[playa manhattan]

Sounds like he did nothing wrong:
http://www.tmz.com/2013/12/05/…..n-willing/

[Pro Libertate]

I don’t trust anybody in these situations. She may be a psycho, but I’m sure a star like him would get cover, regardless. Enough that he’s not being charged.

[Rasilio]

This.

I don’t pretend to know whether Winston actually committed rape here, normally I’d side with the woman since she did seek treatment and have a full rape kit worked up pretty much immediately. However if that was completely inconclusive and he has witnesses vouching for it being consensual I don’t see how they could have gone forward with a trial.

Either way however the behavior of the Tallahassee PD is troubling at best

[Brett L]

Well, its an interesting dynamic. But with two distinct male DNA samples and only one person accused of rape, the prosecutor wasn’t going to prove to anyone beyond a reasonable doubt that she was good to go with one but not the other.

Whatever the truth is, nobody was making their best decisions that night.

[John]

One of two things happened here. Either, they dredged up this charge out of political correctness even though they knew it was false and put this guy through hell for nothing or they are letting an guilty guy go free because he plays ball. This case should have been closed long before now. That it wasn’t is a disgrace.

[RBS]

I saw part of his statement earlier. Basically they didn’t think they could win at trial.

[John]

And they didn’t know that a year ago why?

[Rasilio]

Cause the cops buried the file until TMZ filed a public records request for it

[RBS]

They do but the prosecutor down there has a reputation for harassing FSU players.

[Pro Libertate]

He does, but the malfeasance appears to be at the cop level, if the stories about that are true.

[Dead or In Jail]

Let me be clear: FUCK the Tallassee Police Department. They can go to hell and die.

[Ted S.]

Is that link just a slideshow or is there supposed to be something more?

[Dead or In Jail]

I was looking for something that had a picture but wasn’t on “autoplay.”

If interested, google “Rachel Hoffman”

[Brett L]

I didn’t get much either, but she was a 19 year old who the cops had busted with (a large number of) ecstacy pills and went easy on her (but still, IIRC got a felony no contest) if she would become a CI. And was then promptly killed by some dealers on a buy. Because they knew the score.

Of course, she was a pretty, middle-class white girl, so it actually made the news and stayed there.

[Invisible Finger]

Would that be rape then?

[Mike M.]

Tallahassee PD was competent enough to arrest and charge Greg Dent pretty quickly.

The woman simply has no credibility. She initially claimed that the “attacker” was 5’10, then a month later she said it was Winston, who is 6’4″.

She also had the DNA of two different guys in her, Winston and some other dude. Who is the other dude? She won’t say, the dirty little girl.

In college, crap like this happens all the time. I bet the Tallahassee PD sees it hundreds of times a year.

[Brett L]

Well, let us say that there weren’t a whole lot of good decisions with the possible exception of Meggs deciding not to charge him.

[Ted S.]

Shouldn’t you be wishing them luck against Michigan State first? :-p

[Pro Libertate]

Yeah, I’d be worrying about that if I were Ohio State, not about the slaughter to come.

[Ted S.]

Don’t be sorry. Urban Meyer isn’t facing any charges either. 😉

[Fist of Etiquette]

Tomorrow Rand Paul will be in Detroit recommending economic fixes there.

He got the idea for his plan while watching Aliens.

[CE]

Which he mentioned in the footnotes to his speech.

[Bam!]

“Amnesty International has released satellite images of North Korea’s prison camps and worries they may be growing.”

North Korea is all a prison camp.

[gaijin]

They’re trying to build a prison,
They’re trying to build a prison,
They’re trying to build a prison, (for you and me to live in)

[Rufus J. Fisk]

System of a Down….+1

[Tonio]

North Korea is all a prison camp.

True, but some parts are worse than others. Horribly, terribly worse based on escapee accounts.

[gaijin]

You Reason commenters are probably all drunks!

Smarter People Drink More

“studies show there might be a positive correlation between intelligence and alcohol consumption.”

I just figured it was how some people made other people more tolerable!

[Mad Scientist]

It’s true. The drunker I get, the more I’m convinced I’m the smartest guy in the room.

[Pi Guy]

I’ll drink to that!

[Clich? Bandit]

I attribute this to smarter people needing to dull their senses to deal with the widespread Cassandra syndrome.

[C. Anacreon]

I attribute this to smarter people needing to dull their senses to deal with the widespread Cassandra syndrome.

Yup. Sometimes it’s easier to just drink so that you can think on the level of those around you. Suddenly they’re not so stupid, they’re new friends!

[CE]

I blame college.

[Rasilio]

Probably the same reason why smarter people do more drugs. Intelligence highly correlates with desire for novelty and mental diversions and since not everybody can play D&D they turn to Sex, Drugs and Booze (not meant to imply that any of those 3 things are bad in any way shape or form)

[gaijin]

desire for novelty

That’s actually one of the things in the study that the article covers.

[Warty]

Stronger people drink more, too. NSFW.

[playa manhattan]

I didn’t know I was totally ripped!

[General Butt Naked]

When asked why he drank so much beer, Schemansky had this to say, “Because fuck you, that’s why.”

Sounds like he has a future in politickin’ or policin’.

[LynchPin1477]

I posted this in a dead thread last night but I think it deserves a place here.

Mountain Man Goes to Court for Illegal Fishing, Offers the Greatest Self-defense in Legal History

I don’t know that I trust Guyism’s legal analysis but this sure was fun to watch.

[playa manhattan]

Francisco d’anconia?

[LynchPin1477]

It did immediately bring to mind Rearden’s self defense.

[Warty]

“Do you still live at 28 Flying Eagle in Manhattan?” (Or whatever the town’s name was)

“That is a storage unit that I sleep in from time to time. I live in myself in this body. I am the living man.”

Well, I have another hero.

[The Last American Hero]

He was like the weird bastard love child of John Galt and White Indian. I just kept waiting for him to ask the judge if he was free to gambol.

[robc]

In before the trolls:

5# Belgian Pils
5# Flaked Wheat (or torrified wheat)
1# Flaked Oats
Juice of 3 limes
*

.5 oz Saaz 60 min
.5 oz Styrian Goldings 60 min
Zest of 3 limes 5 min
3 tsp dried Orange peel 5 min
2 tsp ground Coriander 5 min

WLP400 Belgian Wit Yeast

The boil should be starting any minute now.

*consider rice hulls, that mash stuck hard.

[playa manhattan]

There was a need for a recipe in one of the earlier threads. A know-nothing know-it-all law student was at it again…

[robc]

Feel free to put this in reply to him in your mind.

[playa manhattan]

I did a prime rib sous vide last night. Maybe I’ll post the recipe if the situation requires.

[Brett L]

Post it anyhow.

[playa manhattan]

Haven’t typed it up yet, but here’s the gist:

USDA Choice or better (I got a 3 bone from Costco). Salt and pepper 48 hours before cooking. Pat dry, seal, and put in a bath at 131.5 for 6 hours. Unseal, drain, and rub with peanut oil. Dust with smoked salt or preferred seasoning. Place in the oven at 550F for 10 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before carving.

[Killaz]

*consider rice hulls, that mash stuck hard.

Not for drinking, but I made a small batch of a rice wine a little while back. Anchovies and jasmine tea are now soaking in it for a flavorful SE Asian style fish sauce.

[Killaz]

Also, I’m getting the shit together to make this bad bitch after the holidays.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f7…..one-81698/

I even have an over sized fish tank my brother in law is allowing me set the carboys in for temperature regulation.

[robc]

I would skip the rock amber candi and use some plain sugar. Or more of the dark syrup.

I have a similar beer going right now for New Years.

9# 2 row
9# Belgian Pils
8 oz Special B
8 oz Wheat
2 # D-180 dark candi syrup

1 oz Amarillo 75 min
.5 oz EKG 30 min
.5 oz Tettnang 30 min
.5 oz EKG 15 min
.5 oz Tettnang 15 min
1 oz EKG 5 min

WLP500

[Killaz]

I like the hops profile in your recipe — that’s going to be interesting.

I usually test hops combinations before trying them in a brew by letting a pellet of each type I want to combine sit in a Bud light for a week. There is so little taste in that beer that it doesn’t interfere in the profile. I’m not very experimental with the hops in my Belgians since I have little experience in that style, (did Jamal’s Abbey clone once, still mellowing in the basement) but ambers, ryes, and pales, I like to get funky.

[robc]

Ive been using that hop combo in this beer for nearly a decade.

[robc]

The Amarillo on top is definitely non-tradition.

[Killaz]

I noticed! But, I like the sounds of that, and no doubt its solid. I’m going to try that combo in the Bud light trick if I get a hold of some Tettnang. I’m only familiar with it in commercial beers, have not isolated it myself. Amarillo and EKG though, I’ve got plenty in stock.

[robc]

I use Tett a lot. And usually have EKG around. I have to get Amarillo for this brew every year.

[jesse.in.mb]

Gizmodo: New study: Striking brain differences explain some gender stereotypes

From the study:

On average, men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions, whereas women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group. They have a mentalistic approach, so to speak.

Giz’s commentary:

According to their conclusions, this denser connectivity explains why males are better at coordinating their perceptions with their actions, while women are better at connecting their analytical and intuition functions […]

In other words: women are great at leadership and finding solutions for humanity while men are grunts good at learning single tasks fast. Which actually makes a lot of sense and explains the state of things in the world.

Yes, Giz, one preliminary study totally explains everything about the world around us.

[Pro Libertate]

That’s so obviously wrong, you have to wonder how they convince themselves it’s right. Blows to the head?

[Dweebston]

Collectivists gonna collectivize.

[JW]

There’s only one Gawker site that’s even the slightest bit tolerable, and that’s Jalopnik. The rest are the equivalent of smearing feces all over yourself.

GAWKER. JUST SAY NO.

[jesse.in.mb]

I usually power through Giz on my RSS feed for camera reviews and their daily deals listing, but generally I agree.

Occasionally I’m tempted by cross-listed posts like: Bro Becomes Best Bros With the Bro Who Slept with His Girlfriend

When Ben Lively caught his girlfriend cheating on him with some random bro, he didn’t get mad ? he got friendly. With the other bro.
[snip]
“That guy is me,” he wrote under his Reddit handle pabst_jew_ribbon. “I have an awesome attitude. And it’s funny how it worked out. Turns out she’s a slut, and he’s a cool ass dude. Life works out in weird ways.”

That’s absolutely adorable. The comments are vile of course.

[MJGreen]

That’s pretty awesome. But I’m guessing, given the use of “Bro,” Gawker thinks we’re supposed to hate this.

[Tejicano]

So… …wobbly H?

[jesse.in.mb]

“That guy is me,”

I just assumed they’re sleeping with each other. I mean it’s not gay if you’re doing yourself.

[John]

From the comments on the Huffpo story about the guy arrested for picking up his kid. Read it and weep for America.

Just_Duck

Schools and teachers are MANADATED to, above all else, protect the student. Parents and guardians are required to sign children out of school. If the school suspects that there is anything that can endanger the student (e.g., the parent isn’t who they say they are, the parent is highly agitated and/or abusive, the parent is not sober, etc…) they have an obligation to report it to the proper authorities/resources and error on the side of keeping the child. The repercussions of releasing a child into a dangerous situation are far worse than those of delaying a release by deferring to authorities.

The time to challenge/questions pick-up procedures is during designated public or private meetings – NOT during a transition time like the end of school where children our at most risk of being taken, lost, or hurt and school leadership needs to be most focused. Moreover, it sounds like the school and the PTA were already taking steps to address the problem and had a plan whereas the parent was more concerned with recording himself taking a stand. His behavior was selfish, “childish,” and had the potential to do more harm than good. The officer did the right thing. Like with students throwing tantrums in class, it’s usually best to isolate the behavior so it does not effect the other students’ right to learn in a safe, stable environment.

[Andrew S.]

The state knows all. Far better than us proles.

[John]

The comments to that story are half reasonable outrage and half horrifying stupid.

[Pro Libertate]

What is stunning about that viewpoint, besides it just being evil, is that the actual evidence is so overwhelming the other way. There are shitty parents, sure, but they have much more likelihood, as a whole, to give a crap about their kids than do some random teachers and administrators.

[John]

I would take the record of parents protecting their kids over the sorry record of schools, jails, and foster care protecting them.

[Zeb]

What the schools are protecting is their own asses from getting sued. Follow all the official procedures and you can’t be blamed.

[Invisible Finger]

Just like Eichmann.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

Schools and teachers are MANADATED to, above all else, protect the student.

So it’s not about education?

[CatoTheElder]

Education? That’s way, way down on the list of public school priorities. Reasonably safe babysitting and child control is probably number one. Indoctrination in state worship and obedience is number two. I don’t know exactly where education ranks, but it’s after football.

[Nikki just says no]

The repercussions of releasing a child into a dangerous situation are far worse than those of delaying a release by deferring to authorities.

The artificial, legal repercussions? Sure. Legislation vs. reality, how the fuck does it work?

[Invisible Finger]

I consider a school to be a dangerous situation. My kid can’t get bullied at school if he’s not at school.

Internet-based education will surely reduce bullying, yet apparently this obvious safety measure isn’t MANDATED by public school systems.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Did the school know who he was?

If so….

IT WAS HIS FUCKING KID!

[MJGreen]

It’s the school’s kid until they decide to release him/her.

[Invisible Finger]

Will there ever come a day when we won’t fall for this substitution of the word “safety” in place of “liability”?

My guess is that even a child actually being kidnapped in front of their handcuffed parents won’t be enough. Fiscal bankruptcy is the only solution to our moral bankruptcy.

[John]

Fun short film from the 80s. If you haven’t seen Rush, you should. It is just a great movie. In this film the real Niki Lauda explains F1 racing. Two things are fun about it if you have seen the movie. First, the real James Hunt drives the road car in the track demonstration showing just how fast F1 cars are, which is an amazing demonstration itself. And second, when you listen to Lauda you realize what an astounding job the actor playing him did in the movie. It is just uncanny how close he nailed Lauda’s mannerisms and accent and speech patterns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y0ipydYKW8

[JW]

Bruhl absolutely nailed Lauda. I wish I had been watching F1 in that era.

That reminds me to watch 1 this weekend.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

In the 80s it was called Grand Prix racing. Was big into it back then. My father would take me and my brother to Ile St-Helene in Montreal when it wasn’t as popular as it is today.

[John]

I want to go down to Austin and see the race next year. I am not generally a race fan. But I find F1 fascinating. The cars are just so fast. Top Gear tests all of those cars on their track. The fastest road cars, things like Zondas and Veyron’s run around it in 1:15 or so. One time they brought in a no shit F1 car to run the track with the Stig driving and it did it in 50 seconds. That is 25 seconds faster than the most expensive super car. That just boggles the mind.

[JW]

The line that gets repeated is that F1 cars generate so much downforce, that you could take one and run it upside down.

[Mad Scientist]

The Stig was Michael Schumacher at one point in time.

[John]

That was sort of a joke. The Stig was Micheal Schumacher once because they tested some multi million dollar Ferrari and Ferrari would only let them run the car if Schumacher was the driver. So they tested it and has Schumacher revealed as the Stig.

The real Stig outed himself as some former rally driver I think. So they fired him and hired a new currently unknown one.

[Mad Scientist]

Ha, is that so? I was under the impression it had been Schumi for a while. That’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do for giggles.

[JW]

That was just a stunt.

Past Stigs were drivers Perry McCarthy and Ben Collins.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

I wanted to watch it, but got caught up with life. Now it’s out of theatres.

[John]

Watch it on DVD when it comes out. Great movie. Best racing movie ever and one of the top five sports movies ever.

[Mad Scientist]

Best racing movie ever

I haven’t seen it yet, but that’s a pretty high bar. Better than Le Mans?

[John]

Yes. It is a real movie. LeMans is really cool and the racing scenes are great. But it is kind of screwy movie with an odd plot. Rush in contrast has just as good of racing scenes and has a great plot and dialog. LaMans was really just about watching Steve McQueen and all of those gorgeous cars from the early 70s. Rush in contrast is about the people.

[Mad Scientist]

I guess I’m going to have to get a copy when it comes out then. Thanks!

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

It can’t be better than Senna

[John]

That is a documentary. So it is hard to compare the two. It is equally good as Senna.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

Feminists in Argentina attack men as they protect church from being vandalized.

The protesters, many of whom were topless, sprayed paint on the men, wrote on their faces with markers, and spat on them, in addition to other indignities. The men stood with linked arms and prayed during the assault. Inside the church the Archbishop Alfonso Delgado also led 700 people in prayer.

[John]

Feminism has long since devolved into fascism.

[CatoTheElder]

I’m not sure I’d even dignify this Argentine feminist bunch by calling them fascist. It just seems batshit crazy to me. Say what you will about the fascists, at least they have an ethos.

[LynchPin1477]

That is terrifying. I give those guys a lot of credit. I think of myself as pretty even keeled but I don’t think I could have stood there and took that without fighting back.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

Yep, none of the men can be seen inserting their rosaries into the feminist’s ovaries.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

NSFW video footage of event.

[Dead or In Jail]

Support for gun control drifts steadily downward, like a feather making its way to the earth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..s-to-drop/

[Dweebston]

All those poor children died in vain if we can’t wring a bunch of ill-conceived, ineffective legislation from their corpses.

[mr lizard]

I’ll say it again. Team Prog died while trying to take Hill GC.

And everything that happens to them is payback for the above. I seriously think O-care would’ve been nursed along had team blue not charged that hill. May this lesson be pounded into them come next November.

[Juice]

What’s Hill GC?

[Mad Scientist]

Gun Control

[Tonio]

I believe that Hill GC means Gun Control. “Hill” is a geographic reference often used in war movies, ie “Take [capture] Hill 175.”

[Cytotoxic]

What’s a little interesting is the rise in ‘% less strict’. It’s higher than it was even before the Newtown shooting.

[jesse.in.mb]

Stolen cobalt-60 found in Mexico; curious thieves likely doomed

AND NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED!

The carjackers, who set off international alarm bells by absconding with the material, most likely had no idea what they were stealing and will probably die soon from exposure, Mexican authorities said at the end of a brief national scare.

I almost feel bad for them, but I have friends who have had family carjacked and kidnapped for ransom, and then I want this news blared loudly all over Mexico. Suck a painful death by radiation poisoning carjackers.

[John]

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2013 Darwin Award winners.

[playa manhattan]

Time to start selling these signs to tourists:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi…..ol.svg.png

[tarran]

Ok.
I did some back of the envelope calculations.

3000 curies of cobalt 60 works out to a source putting out 4110 rem / hr to an observer 1 meter away.

IIRC the LD50 dose is something like 400 rem. The guy pulling the source out of the container being much closer to the source than a meter probably got that dose in about 3 seconds.

His friend standing half a meter away watching him would get the same dose after about a minute and a half.

If they hung around for a minute about half a meter away from the source, they got 1000 REm of exposure easily.

Which means that over the next 10 days various organs are going to fail and they are going to die.

The kids attending the kindergarten 50 meters away from the source, are going to get 13 rem each school day… Not fatal, but equal to the annual dose rad workers in the U.S. are permitted by regulation.

[Cytotoxic]

The kids attending the kindergarten 50 meters away from the source, are going to get 13 rem each school day

Minus shielding from the building. Still, a bit uneasy thinking of what can kill me from so far away.

[Corning]

How the fuck do they not know what the radioactive symbol means?

[Clich? Bandit]

Anyone out here in the icebox known as Denver going to see Ron Johnson tonight? I was thinking of heading down there. I need a warm place to imbibe scotch and cigars, screw smoking outside, that is crazy.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

pic.twitter.com/C6yT8GzGYZ

Never linked Twitter pics before. Hope it works.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Damn. Guess not.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

The link I want to use says ‘your comment contains a word that is too long (50 characters).” Too bad. It’s a good pic.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

Take off the ‘s’ from the https:// …

[Rufus J. Firefly]

http://twitter.com/RossOilsand…..12/photo/1

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Wow. Empowering. Thanks Arch!

[Ted S.]

My comment was before Archduke’s! (It’s got a lower number.) Where’s my fucking hat-tip?! :-p

[Ted S.]

Does this work? If so, I expect a hat-tip from you.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Ted, yes, – to answer a question from the A.M. links the other day – I am from Montreal.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Oh. Hat tip.

[Ted S.]

This comment wasn’t here when I started typing my last one! 😉

[Rufus J. Firefly]

I know.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Clich? Bandit, what do you think about Huawei leaving the market?

[Clich? Bandit]

Honestly there has been scuttlebutt in the engineering world for several years about suspicious “alleged” spying capabilities. They hit the market with, quite literally, child labor prices on their equipment. Level 3 bought in deep, cause that has to be the dumbest company ever for many reasons, but no one else seemed to want to take the plunge too far.

We had it in the lab for several months…seemed ok but their maintenance numbers were sketchy and they are an untested element in an entrenched industry. So, their leaving is not a surprise.

Their pricing however did cause the big boys like Cisco and Alcatel to aggressively reduce costs. The downward pressure has actually done a shitload for capacity in the US. Juniper and Cisco both have really become more competitive and Qwest/CTL, Level3, and Zayo all started to drastically reduce the 10gig prices. It would be unfair to say Huawei had nothing to do with that.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

A while back I read someone grumbling in the comments on Ars about some of Huawei’s routers running pirated copies of IOS. I’m not sure of the veracity of that story (or if IOS is decoupled from the hardware enough for a competitor to use it) but I did find this.

[Clich? Bandit]

lol…I hadn’t heard that but as far as TL1 and IOS and JNOS, they all are pretty similar.

[Rasilio]

Don’t blame them but then I never trusted them either. I figured that their stuff was basically just the cheapest stuff out there and worth at best what you paid for it so no real loss.

[Clich? Bandit]

a shorter me.

[Dead or In Jail]

Florida’s Supreme Court is hearing a case about whether medical marijuana should be allowed to be on the ballot in next year’s Constitutional Convention.

If it makes the ballot, it looks like a shoo-in to pass.

http://www.theweedblog.com/flo…..-is-today/

http://www.miamiherald.com/201…..dical.html

[mr lizard]

Idk, the sherif’s association will completely ignore this law, and will harass any dispensary 10x worse than the FEDs.

[waffles]

The Bank of France has joined China in worrying about the stability of Bitcoin. They really should probably be more worried about the stability of France.

Doctor Cryptolove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Coin

[Sevo]

France is not worried about the stability of Bitcoin; France it worried that folks will short the Franc for Bitcoin.
And they should be.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Don’t they use the euro?

[Ted S.]

I swear this comment wasn’t here when I started typing mine!

[Sevo]

‘Scuse, yes. And they still should be worried.

[Ted S.]

They still use the franc? :-p

[Invisible Finger]

Fiat currency by definition is shorted by its own issuer. France is concerned its citizens will start acing like France.

Has there ever been a successful social engineering project?

[The Last American Hero]

It depends on if you are the engineer or the engineered.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Nelson Mandela dead at the age of 95, according to news reports

[Dead or In Jail]

Obama will do anything to distract from his stupid healthcare plan.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

YUP

[Zeb]

Oh. I thought he already died.

[Ted S.]

Is Lou Reed still dead?

[Certified Public Asskicker]

Should we take bets on if Mandela will exceed Lou Reed’s record of 57 H&R posts on his death?

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

not sure, but I know Generalisimo Francisco Franco is.

[Ted S.]

Part of me wants to act the way the British left did when Thatcher died, just to watch people’s reaction. (Not that I actually feel that way about Mandela.)

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

You can just say the truth: that despite his admirable attempts at reconciliation he was, when you look at the record, a mediocre president and administrator.

The ANC has managed to get away with two decades of mismanaging the country because of him and his legacy.

[Pro Libertate]

He did okay, it seems, despite positions and actions that I don’t care for. It’s quite amazing how peaceful the transition was from apartheid. And the oppression under apartheid was real, so what he did to help end that was important, too.

[GILMORE]

“In the wake of the various NSA surveillance shockers, Microsoft has announced an effort to beef up its encryption systems.”

“””Like many others, we are especially alarmed by recent allegations in the press of a broader and concerted effort by some governments to circumvent online security measures “”‘

….

http://www.theguardian.com/wor…..-user-data

Because WE ARE SHOCKED!! SHOCKED! THAT THE NSA WOULD USE THE ENCRYPTION KEYS WE GAVE THEM FOR OUTLOOK AND SKYPE!? FOR SHAME!!

The files show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft’s Outlook.com portal from the moment the company began testing the service in July last year.

Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats

A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: “MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal” with the issue. “These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012.”

Two months later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com portal.

But between then and now? TOTAL CHANGE OF ATTITUDE!

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Because WE ARE SHOCKED!! SHOCKED! THAT THE NSA WOULD USE THE ENCRYPTION KEYS WE GAVE THEM FOR OUTLOOK AND SKYPE!? FOR SHAME!!

It doesn’t seem that they gave the government any keys, just that they added backdoors.

And while that is sucky, it is at least a tiny bit better than the NSA sniffing data as it moves between their datacenters.

[Medical Physics Guy]

You remember this right:

Wikipedia entry for _NSAKEY

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

I do, but it’s not relevant.

[GILMORE]

So, their idea of security is a thin layer of gauze between you and the NSA?

One that you have to *pay for* as well…

Cute.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

I don’t recall saying that.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

I installed a bitcoin client to see what the excitment was.
It’s been syncing with the network for 3 days, so nothing to report yet.

[Clich? Bandit]

ummm a miner? cause if you installed a client just to buy bitcoins/open a wallet, ur doin it wrong.

Miner not Minor!!! … ya lost me

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

What should I install?

[Clich? Bandit]

are you trying to mine coins? Cause if so you need either a shitload of gpus at this point or wait 6 months for an ASIC by Butterfly labs or something OR you can join a pool.

If you just want to buy a bitcoin or two then you need a wallet. You can host it (bad idea in my opinion) or you can keep it locally. In the latter case use electrum. Simple and sufficient…follow the instructions.

[waffles]

Is it bad to let coinbase handle my bitcoin wallet needs for me? I use blockchain for loose change but have left the bulk where I bought em.

[Clich? Bandit]

Just referencing all the thefts lately…of course I trust no one, brainwallet all the way.

[Juice]

Butterfly labs has ASICs ready to ship if you’ve got $22,000.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Dear Prudence: Help! My polyamorous daughter wants to bring her husband and her boyfriend home for Christmas

Our daughter “Amanda” lives in another state and has been married to “Jacob” for several years. Theirs is an open relationship, and I have always known that. My husband, however has kept his head in the sand regarding this. My daughter has a boyfriend, “Tom,” whom Jacob knows about and has a great friendship with. They are all planning to come to our home this Christmas, but my husband insists that Tom (who has visited us previously) is not welcome. Do I tell our daughter, son-in-law, and daughter’s boyfriend to make other holiday plans? My opinion is that they are all consenting adults, there are no children involved, and always behave appropriately in public.

Wonder if the husband gets a girlfriend.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

I always find it helpful to first find out if the girl is hot. If not, I don’t give a shit.

[LynchPin1477]

This was the first thought that entered my mind as well. Great minds and all…

[Zeb]

Maybe he’s just into watching.

This was covered yesterday.

[jesse.in.mb]

What, Polys are too good to go through decades of friend based holidays before their relationships become acceptable to their families?

My opinion is that they are all consenting adults, there are no children involved, and always behave appropriately in public.

Also Mom: fake, trying to be hip, or actually reasonably cool?

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Me watching that show with the dude with four or five wives for the first time with the missus:

Wouldn’t do her.
Wouldn’t do her.
Maybe. If it was a slow night.
Wouldn’t do her.
Wouldn’t do her.

Never watched another episode.

[John]

What I don’t get is why they feel to advertise the fact that she is banging him. Just introduce him as a friend and leave it at that.

And for the record they don’t appear to be poly. This guy isn’t a second husband. He is just a friend with benefits. Polys bring a full on third into the relationship. These people are just fucking around with the others’ permission.

[Rasilio]

Um John that’s still poly.

As far as not advertising it? Even if no one said a word EVERYONE would put 2+2 together.

The casual physical contact that people who are sexually intimate engage in without knowing it combined with the fact that a married couple brought their friend across state lines for a holiday with the family where said friend had no pre existing relationship with said family will be dead give aways

[John]

I don’t see that as poly. If it is, the guy who has a mistress and his wife just tolerates it because a divorce would be a scandal or maybe she just doesn’t think it is a big deal is Poly too.

Words can mean whatever you want them to. So, we are just arguing semantics here. But I see poly as being a true communal living all three parties are in the relationship with each other thing. I see these people as just swingers or a married couple that is bored with each other and wants to fuck around. It is not like the husband has a lot of interaction with the guy who is banging his wife.

[John]

And maybe the guy she is screwing could keep his hands off her for a few hours so she doesn’t have to get into ti with her family?

That doesn’t sound too hard.

[Rasilio]

As someone who has always been in open relationships this is usually a problem and ultimately the only solution is the daughter will have to stop associating with her family as much because the odds of dad changing his mind are pretty much non existent.

She doesn’t need to cut off all ties, but she’ll need to have a rule, we’re all invited or none of us are going. Which will almost always result in no one going.

[John]

Two questions, how did you ever get women to buy into such a thing? And did any of the relationships last? If they didn’t, did they end for other reasons or because they were open?

[Ted S.]

It’s his women who sleep with other men; not him sleeping with other women. 😉

[John]

Yeah. Rasilio, it is not poly when she is just fucking around on you. 😉

[Rasilio]

It’s not fucking around when I like to watch 😉

[Rasilio]

Well my first marriage lasted 8 years, I was with my current wife as a secondary relationship at the time and we have been together for 12 years and married for 10.

As far as how you get women to buy into it, well I will admit it is a much harder sell but with more than 20 years spend in the Poly community it is a pretty common phenomenon when couples open their relationships for it to be the guys idea at first and then the woman to be the one to really prefer that lifestyle.

As far as my first marriages ending, Poly was a factor in it’s final death but in reality the marriage had been over for more than 2 years at that point and I was just too stubborn to give up. Basically my ex was an extremely self centered woman with a mild case of borderline personality disorder and when the dot com bubble burst I was out of work and could not support her in the manner which she expected, then thanks to a drug interaction cause birth control failure my girlfriend got pregnant. The ex took great personal offense to this and all of a sudden decided I was cheating on her (even though we were all living in the same house). So yes Poly played a role in the timing of the end of the relationship but not the fact that it ended.

[John]

I can’t imagine the cat fights that would go on between two women. I like sex as much as anyone. But no sex is worth putting up with that. And as far as another guy, I am not gay. So I don’t see what I would get out of that. And beyond the sex issue, I can’t stand guys. I don’t want some guy in my house. Guys are pigs. Good for you if it works for you. But I can’t see ever doing it.

[Rasilio]

That’s never happened to me but it can happen. More often if everyone is living together the girls bond and become friends and beat up on the guy.

Like I said, in my experience on average women handle and enjoy open relationships much more than men.

As far as it not being for you, that’s great to each his own.

[benji]

random quote

Herein lies a characteristic feature of all Marxist theory and Marxist policy: moral passions are masked as scientific laws which, by defining a historic necessity, sanction the machinery of violence which fulfills the necessity. Engels said that Marxism had transformed socialism from a utopia into a science. But actually, Marxism still relies on the emotional force of its utopian aspirations and merely disguises them as scientific predictions.

It is important to understand this peculiar structure. The scientific disguise provided by Marxism not only protects its moral aspirations from being discredited as mere utopianism but actually enables these aspirations to dominate from inside the pronouncements of Marxist theory and thus todirect its political machinery. Marxism establishes thereby a coupling between moral motives and political action, which is the exact opposite of that usually described as rationalization. There is no question here of concealing greed behind moral pretenses. Quite the contrary: genuine moral motives are given a chance to operate by concealing them within a scientifically respectable machinery of acquisitive violence.

Michael Polanyi

[jesse.in.mb]

DJ Earworm’s annual United State of Pop

When does the JibJab year in review happen?

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

I heard that last night, I wasn’t impressed enough to share it.
But thanks for contributing!

[jesse.in.mb]

Yeah, it’s not one of the better ones, but it’s become a bit of an institution.

Don’t get uppity with me just because your people think you’re going to get the North Pole.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

Wife unknowingly ‘live-tweets’ husband’s fatal crash

Is there a term for this phenomenon?

[benji]

Princeton jazz professor composes ‘Ballad for Trayvon Martin’

Branker, who celebrates his 25th anniversary this year as founder and director of the program in jazz studies at Princeton, has composed a piece of music that draws on Martin’s story, which he said “moved me to the core.”

…

According to Branker, the work is intended “to be a form of healing and something that could be seen as a composition of hope ? one that speaks to all of us to continue to work together so that children of any race, ethnicity or religious affiliation never have to meet such a tragic end.”

Rather than write from a place of anger, Branker has worked to create a lyrical, peaceful and harmonically beautiful work that incorporates a fugue and Brazilian style. The goal, he said, is to pay tribute to Martin, as well as others who have been victims of racial violence.

[John]

The goal, he said, is to pay tribute to Martin, as well as others who have been victims of racial violence.

You mean like all of the white people who have been physically assaulted by aggressive black males?

[Pro Libertate]

Apparently, the guy who shot Martin was a victim of racial violence, so he is getting this tribute as well?

[Zeb]

When are people going to forget about this stupid, boring story. I guess people just love to display their ignorance. OF all the people to pick as your poster child.

[Pro Libertate]

It’s typical. Heck, this happens so much that I’m beginning to wonder whether Rosa Parks wasn’t a Klan member or something. So many lies and distortions anymore.

[C. Anacreon]

I just read the other day how it is “open season” on young black males in the US. So this is obviously still going to be news for quite awhile.

[Pro Libertate]

Huh? Has anything changed? Aren’t most crimes of violence committed against young black males committed by other young black males?

[C. Anacreon]

No, this is open season on young black males, hunted by white and white hispanic middle-aged men. Apparently a 45-year-old white guy kills a black youth, just for being black, every day now.

Or at least that’s what it says in the Op-Ed section of our local newspaper.

[Tejicano]

It finally hit me. Zimmerman isn’t a “White Hispanic” for the reason that he is Hispanic with light colored skin (which probably surprised him too). He is a “White” Hispanic because he killed a black person for (presumtive) racist motives, which only could happen if he was white.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Of all the people to pay tribute to.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

It actually insults ALL PEOPLE regardless of race or creed who were real victims of racial crimes.

This guy couldn’t care less about blacks killing whites if I were to guess.

[Juice]

He probably has “mixed feelings” about the Knockout game.

[Medical Physics Guy]

I just cannot believe Princeton has a Jazz studies program. That is the most white bread university on the planet. What were they thinking.

[Winston]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25239440

He is the most powerful man in the world, according to one cliche, but he can’t get anything he wants done.

If only the Republican wreckers and saboteurs were unpersoned then Comrade Obama could provide all Americans with full Employment!

[PD Scott]

He pardoned the turkey, didn’t he? So he got that done.

[Drake]

He’s got some awesome vacations done.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Man enrolls in Obamacare, chides people for perceived resentment

Now, 24 hours after I made that mistake, I am seriously wondering how many of those people are my friends.

The problem — I am getting a great deal on my health insurance. And my friends, some of my more conservative friends, at least, are resentful because they think they are the ones who are going to foot the bill for my good fortune.

They are.

That is not how some of my friends saw it. One of my former students was upset because of how much he and others were having to pay “so Mr. Turner will only have to pay $1.98 a month.” Others expressed similar sentiments.

How sad it is that people who make millions, sometimes billions of dollars a year, have fanned the flames of resentment in this country to such a point that the people who most need the Affordable Health Care Act are becoming the targets of scorn and others who need it are willing to go to any length to avoid using it.

Thankfully, most of my Facebook friends were happy that I had been fortunate enough to be able to pay such a small amount for health care. In a few months, I have no doubt we will be hearing more and more success stories and a few years down the line we will wonder what all of the fuss was about.

Thinking about themselves and not me. Selfish bastards.

[John]

How sad it is that people who make millions, sometimes billions of dollars a year, have fanned the flames of resentment in this country to such a point that the people who most need the Affordable Health Care Act are becoming the targets of scorn and others who need it are willing to go to any length to avoid using it.

Liberal expresses shock over the amount of class resentment in America. The irony it burns.

But this shows what I keep saying, the progs forgot to hide the cost of this. Everyone loves to help the less fortunate with other people’s money. The people getting fucked by this, and that is the vast majority of America, are not going to be convinced everything is okay because we need this to help the less fortunate.

[Ted S.]

We should have class warfare in this country. But the classes should be the productive class and the government class.

[seguin]

Morlocks vs the Eloi….FIGHT ON!

[Invisible Finger]

Wait til this asshole tries to actually GET health care. My guess is he’ll bitch and moan about moths and months of $1.98 payments down the drain.

[Invisible Finger]

After all, he should be bitching about the leeches.

[JW]

I am saving all my schadenfreude up for these self-absorbed fucks. Surprise!

I cannot WAIT for the rending of garments from the status-quoers to begin over ZeroCare.

[AuH20]

How sad it is that people who make millions, sometimes billions of dollars a year, have fanned the flames of resentment in this country to such a point that the people who most need the Affordable Health Care Act are becoming the targets of scorn and others who need it are willing to go to any length to avoid using it.

Yeah, those Democratic politicians, many of whom are quite rich, sure are dicks!

[PD Scott]

Chinese netizens sorry to see US Ambassador leave.

“Chinese netizens love Locke, and that love began even before his arrival in Beijing. A photo of him shopping at a Starbucks with a backpack at a US airport went viral in China before his assignment started. Chinese netizens were “shocked” because a Chinese official at his level would never pay for his own coffee or carry his own bag.
Locke won hearts for his humble manners, for his honest, and for the fact that he is the dream official that many Chinese have hoped to have but never did.”

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Chinese netizens love Locke, and that love began even before his arrival in Beijing. A photo of him shopping at a Starbucks with a backpack at a US airport went viral in China before his assignment started. Chinese netizens were “shocked” because a Chinese official at his level would never pay for his own coffee or carry his own bag.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

oops

[PD Scott]

It’s a little weird, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any photos of new ambassadors to the US.

American exceptionalism?

[widget]

Speaking of Microsoft, I finally decided to install Open Office rather than MS Office on my goto computer. It’s been a glitchless transition so far. I hate the ribbons on MS Office, just hate them. I tried this before, but backed off. Open Office wasn’t quite ready. This time it’s been OK.

[benji]

LibreOffice

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

FYI, most of the development is occurring on LibreOffice these days

[Pro Libertate]

So it’s better than OpenOffice?

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Yes, basically.

When Oracle bought Sun people got worried they would abandon OpenOffice, so they forked it to make LibreOffice*. They were correct; Oracle largely abandoned OpenOffice and gave it to Apache. Most improvements are made to LibreOffice nowadays.

*there were other reasons too, which predate the Oracle acquisition, but that is the simple story

[Pro Libertate]

I had installed OpenOffice on the kids’ computer until one of them got Office for free from school (insane, I know). But good to know, anyway.

[widget]

Libre Office – Open Office, Ubuntu – Mint. I might have picked the wrong donkey, but heaven help me it isn’t wearing a ribbon.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Actually the correct analogy is LibreOffice : OpenOffice :: Mint : Ubuntu

[Medical Physics Guy]

Will it be pistols at dawn gentlemen?

[Marc F Cheney]

I switched recently. After my hard drive failed after a year (thanks Apple), Office insisted I enter a license key after I restored from backup (thanks Microsoft), and I’d lost the key.

I won’t say it’s awesome, but it works.

I’ll try LibreOffice, though.

[widget]

I used OLE a lot in the Microsoft Office documents I produced from 1998 to about now. That is I would embed an Excel worksheet tab into a Word doc. Opening docs like this with Open Office (maybe LibreOffice too) seems to be OK now.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

I’ve been using google docs a lot.

[widget]

I’ve been reading them too. Just kidding Duke, ask your wife. Google docs is OK to a point, I use it too, but you can’t do serious dragdowns with one. You need your own CPU for that still.

[GILMORE]

“widget|12.5.13 @ 5:05PM|#
Speaking of Microsoft, I finally decided to install Open Office rather than MS Office on my goto computer. It’s been a glitchless transition so far. I hate the ribbons on MS Office, just hate them.

Ubitmenu

http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

Works for me. 2003 toolbars for all office apps.

[Cytotoxic]

Ribbons?

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)

[Cytotoxic]

Link is…strange. I still don’t understand.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

try this

[jesse.in.mb]

Menus are replaced with tabbed, more visually oriented toolbars.

Examples

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Yeah, the squirrelz apparently object to parentheses in URLs

[Episiarch]

The “ribbons” were Microsoft proactively getting ready for Windows 8 and touchscreen. The ribbons are specifically designed to be tapped on a touchscreen. If you’ve ever played with Office on a Surface it becomes instantly obvious. Frankly I’m amazed at how far ahead they planned for this, and how much Office hate they endured for it. Or maybe it was that Windows 8 and their tablets came out way later than initially scheduled.

In any case, just like Windows 8 is incredibly touchscreen oriented, Office 2007 and later was meant for the same purpose.

[jesse.in.mb]

I agree. At least the MS Office team was on the ball in moving toward touch display early and getting people acclimated. I do hate the interface though, particularly because I’m not using a touch display.

I have the same problem with Win8. I have to work a lot harder to get what I want from 8 because it’s so well optimized for a tablet interface.

[BakedPenguin]

I do hate the interface though, particularly because I’m not using a touch display.

I have the same problem with Win8. I have to work a lot harder to get what I want from 8 because it’s so well optimized for a tablet interface.

THIS. Ever so much this. Fuck you, Microsoft, not everyone in on a fucking tablet or smartphone. Dicks.

If Open Office supported most of the formulas I use daily, I’d be very happy to switch to Calc in a second.

And for desktops, Windows 8 SUCKS.

[Winston]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25142557
secret double life of a gay neo-Nazi

Well Ernst Roehm’s sexual preference was no secret at the time…

[jesse.in.mb]

Did you get your copy of Pink Swastika signed by Scott Lively, Winston?

[Winston]

What brought that response?

Erik N. Jensen regards the authors’ linkage of homosexuality and Nazism as the recurrence of a “pernicious myth”, originating in 1930s attacks on Nazism by Socialists and Communists and “long since dispelled” by “serious scholarship”.[

Oh those tolerant Socialists and Communists!

[jesse.in.mb]

Skimmed your comment and thought you were making a Nazi/gay connection. The BBC article is pretty interesting. Good find.

[Winston]

So what do you think of all the rumors of Hitler being gay? I haven’t really looked into it (nor into the rumors of his monorchism) so I don’t really have an opinion one way or another. It’s obviously a sensitive issue since on one hand it fits in with the notion that homophobes are all closeted but on the other hand it fits in the old Communist notion that Fascists are Gay which is Bad.

[jesse.in.mb]

I haven’t really looked into it either. I just assume it’s a conveniently nasty rumor that makes both gays and Nazi’s look bad by association.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

See the cool new Shenzhen airport terminal that is going basically unused.

[John]

China has a real estate bubble the size of a Shai-Hulud

[Zeb]

It’s like a huge spice blow getting ready to break the surface.

[LynchPin1477]

Reminds me of the Mirabel airport near Montreal.

[Medical Physics Guy]

Stimulus! Infrastructure!!

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Topless woman chases peeping Tom she caught trying to record her undress

A topless woman sprinted through a Kohl’s department store to nab the Peeping Tom who allegedly shot video of her trying on bras in the dressing room.

“I just screamed and chased him topless through the store,” Jeanne Ouelette told KCTV. “I know I shouldn’t be chasing someone … I was just enraged. I was at a store in a very private place, and I was enraged and I wanted to get the phone.”

Ouelette, of Kansas City, Mo., said she didn’t catch the man she saw sticking a smartphone under the dressing room wall to record her bare breasts ? but the cops did.
Jeremy Bradley was busted about three blocks away from the Lenexa, Kan. store.

He was charged with breach of privacy, a misdemeanor. If convicted he faces up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.
Ouelette said she is disgusted Bradley only faces a misdemeanor. She thinks he is clearly mentally ill and needs treatment, fearing that his alleged behavior might escalate, KCTV reported.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

*CPA clicks on link to see…*

ARRGHH!

[JW]

They better have been amazing tits.

[playa manhattan]

Yep. He’s definitely mentally ill.

[Rasilio]

So let me get this straight.

She was worried about her boobs being on camera she ran out into an area full of security cameras and smartphones with boobs exposed?

[Mad Scientist]

I can imagine, at that point, not minding if the whole world had photos of your boobs so long as that one guy didn’t.

[Rasilio]

Yeah, if her thinking was she didn’t give a damn about people seeing her boobs but rather just wanted to beat the living shit out of the guy for invading her privacy I’d have cheered her on but she didn’t need to get the camera for that.

[Pro Libertate]

Sounds like typical female thinking to me.

[Invisible Finger]

You can bet there are security cameras in dressing rooms. That seems like the most obvious place people could get away with stealing clothes, especially undergarments.

[Invisible Finger]

Has this woman heard of TSA?

[Brett L]

Wow, I guess I missed a $50k-bomb on the fundraiser. Which is great. I think my wife is nearly sleep-deprived enough I can drop a little something, but I’m not matching that.

Also, I can’t wait to cheer O-H-N-O next week or next month!

[playa manhattan]

I want to cheer this guy:
http://bleacherreport.com/arti…..light-tape

[PD Scott]

Pomelo fruit inspires high-strength aluminum composite.

The pomelo’s peel is comprised of a “graded, fiber-reinforced foam” that incorporates a myriad of tiny impact-absorbing strut-like structures.
The center of the material is composed of pure aluminum, which is good at withstanding permanent changes in shape. The outer shell, however, is made of an aluminum-silicon alloy, which has a high tensile strength (it’s difficult to break, in other words). As a result, the composite resists both deformation and breakage, better than either the pure aluminum or the alloy on their own.
It has been suggested that the metal could be particularly useful in the manufacturing of strong but lightweight safety materials, particularly in the automotive industry.

[Cytotoxic]

http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Titanium-A_armor

[NotAnotherSkippy]

The center of the material is composed of pure aluminum, which is good at withstanding permanent changes in shape.

Odd statement to make. Aluminum is a pretty soft metal with a low yield strength on its own. And the idea of composite materials is hardly original.

*shrug*

[The Late P Brooks]

Better than Le Mans?

No.

Also not better than Grand Prix.

*shrugs shoulders*

[John]

Sure it is not better than LeMans, if you don’t think a movie needs a coherent plot or any interesting dialog. I mean really. LaMans is a ridiculous movie. It is fun and it is way cool to see all of those cars. I have a total affinity for 60s and early 70s LeMans cars. But I don’t see how anyone could pretend LeMans is in any way a good movie beyond just watching the cars.

[Mad Scientist]

Le Mans is a great movie because McQueen epitomized a certain kind of driver. The lack of dialog is part of the point.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Not that it really matters, but wasn’t Rand a hardcore atheist? (wrt the “libertarians are bad for atheism” tripe)

[cavalier973]

She was atheist, but she wasn’t a libertarian. She was an Objectivist.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

Oh I’m aware of that, but she always comes up

[Winston]

Doubt Rand is the sort of person Werleman wants to associate with.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

S?o Paulo stadium will not be ready until mid-April
Sepp Blatter confirms ‘there’s no plan B’ following delays

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Sepp Blatter is a piece of corrupt shit.

Qatar. Retarded.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

The super-rich are ruining art!

At Christie’s and Sotheby’s some of the wealthiest members of society, the people who can’t believe in anything until it’s been monetized, are trashing one of our last hopes for transcendence. They don’t know the difference between avidity and avarice. Why drink an excellent $30 or $50 bottle of wine when you can pour a $500 or $1000 bottle down your throat? Why buy a magnificent $20,000 or $1 million painting when you can spend $50 or $100 million and really impress friends and enemies alike?
These questions will not go away. And it is a little too easy to blame it all on the super-rich and the various counselors and courtiers who cheer them on at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Of course there’s nothing we can do about what Steven A. Cohen and Peter Brant choose to sell at the auctions or what Roman Abramovich and Sheikha al Mayassa Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani choose to buy. But the total lack of embarrassment with which everybody involved conducts themselves must at least in part be blamed on an educated public that has become embarrassed about discussing?much less advocating for?anything that suggests a principle or standard of taste.

Need more proletarian art!

[Pro Libertate]

We need sumptuary laws, clearly.

[Winston]

trashing one of our last hopes for transcendence
What?

And isn’t it funny that now the “modern art is simplistic trash” attitude is now appropriate among the left? Is a return to Puritanism next?

[PD Scott]

I recall similar whining back when the Japanese were spending plenty of money on art.

I have to admit that a lot of art prices are, to me, a form of star-fucking. I watch Antiques Roadshow and I just shake my head when a decent painting is worth so much, but if you can verify it’s an original famous artist’s, it’s worth so, so much more.

[Andrew S.]

I’m torn. Of course, most of it is crap, but then again it does take a shot at Roman Abromovich, and that’s never a bad thing. Fucker ruined the Premier League.

[Marc F Cheney]

Agreed.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

A girl I dated was/is a manager at a gallery. Basically, in a nut shell, the art and wealthy community is a love-hate one. The left rails against those with the cash, but guess who they secretly pray buy their art?

[AuH20]

It goes back to Beethoven, and probably even before that, but Beethoven is the first one I can think of who very publically shitted on the idea of patronage.

Basically, artists want to create art for “pure” reasons: Because it speaks to them, they want to make it, etc. Sadly, they have these pesky bill things, so they need to make not the art they love, but art that will sell. This is poison to the artists souls…. because artists never grew the fuck up, and instead created a narrative about how ennobling and powerful art is and how it’s about speaking truth to those damn rich people.

My favorite response to artists? T.S. Elliot worked as a bank manager his whole damn life. You aren’t a better writer or whatever than T.S. Elliot, so shut the fuck up, get a day job, and do art on your own time.

[Winston]

The only alternative then is government funded art. And these politicians will surely not use art as propaganda now will they?

[AuH20]

Artists are effete snobs?

This is my shocked face.

[Marc F Cheney]

Am I supposed to check the price tag on a work of art before I decide whether I can enjoy it or not? If it’s too much, there goes my hopes for transcendance? How does this work?

[Medical Physics Guy]

From what I understand these purchases are partly people looking for a safe haven for a lot of money. Some people just don’t trust fiat money for some reason…

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

Quel Surprise: Races in New Jersey, Mexico and Korea will not feature in the 2014 Formula 1 season

[Mad Scientist]

I’m amazed anyone thought that race in Joisey was every going to take place.

[JW]

I was going to be damned if Jersey would have been my first GP. New Fucking Jersey?

Gotta get to Austin next year.

[The Late P Brooks]

According to Branker, the work is intended “to be a form of healing and something that could be seen as a composition of hope ? one that speaks to all of us to continue to work together so that children of any race, ethnicity or religious affiliation never have to meet such a tragic end.”

Does he fix the cable, or not?

[The Late P Brooks]

But the total lack of embarrassment with which everybody involved conducts themselves must at least in part be blamed on an educated public that has become embarrassed about discussing?much less advocating for?anything that suggests a principle or standard of taste.

Does that mean I’m not gonna be able to sell my rainbow colored elephant poop lollypop for eleven million dollars?

Goddammit!

[PD Scott]

If you can convince a sucker aficionado that a famous artist did it, you can.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Push avant-garde relativism as a way of life in the leftist art world, and suddenly art has no standards of taste? Who could have seen that coming?

[Coeus]

Hehe

Yesterday, President Obama gave what will likely go down as one of the best speeches of his presidency and you probably missed it because you were out living life, working hard, and making magic happen. President Obama is finally on offense with regards to Obamacare, after months of the breathless, “The Web site is broken!” stories that dominated the headlines. His speech at the THE ARC in D.C. was focused on the problem of income inequality, which he called the “defining challenge of our time.” The president focused on the message that every American should be able to work hard and get ahead. The Republicans normally attack this messaging as “class warfare” but given that the Obamacare website is on the mend and the midterm elections are coming up in a year’s time, the president is choosing this moment to get back to his work to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. President Obama is far from perfect, but speeches like the one he gave Wednesday are refreshing reminders of why we supported him in the first place.

[Marc F Cheney]

Ugh. Don Boudreaux dismantled that speech yesterday.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

R.R. did too. They’re the best.

[Certified Public Asskicker]

every American should be able to work hard and get ahead. The Republicans normally attack this messaging as “class warfare”

Huh? What? Owh.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Yuk. He’s so uninspiring.

Usually us foreign observers like to look at American leaders and feel a pinch of inspiration.

It’s just not there with this guy.

I don’t know what people are seeing. I really don’t.

[Invisible Finger]

They are seeing themselves: platitudes hiding the lack of substance.

[Irish]

Obama speaks like a professor. As a result, professors and career students love him despite his gross and provable incompetence and the fact that none of his speeches are actually any good.

[The Late P Brooks]

LaMans is a ridiculous movie.

Wrong. Le Mans is a RACING movie.

Rush was a soap opera. NTTAWWT

[John]

What is the point of a racing movie when there are real races on like 20 times a year?

[Mad Scientist]

A race is about 26 cars and talking heads analyzing what’s going on for 90 minutes. A racing movie is about one driver or one team and a season.

[Invisible Finger]

Don’t some circuits offer an internet way of focusing one team of your choice? I thought most major races rented headsets at the track so you could hear the team communications. I’m not a big race guy so I don’t know all the limitations

[Mad Scientist]

I really only follow F1 and MotoGP, so I can’t speak to the myriad other racing series, but those two have very strict controls on content. I’ve not heard of a way to tune in to a single team during a race in either series.

[seguin]

AFAIK they haven’t really leveraged the information revolution in any meaningful way. It seems to me that with a little bit of time, race coverage could become so much more; ubiquitous cameras, UAVs, and driver/engine audio overlapping to produce a slick video centering on what each race fan wants to see.

But they’re stuck in the 80’s.

[AuH20]

Gawker Celebrates the End of the Suburbs, dances on their grave.

I’m okay with this. The idea that everyone needs a McMansion with a huge mall down the street and the office across the way is ridiculous. If only are cities were more densely populated, public transportation could be used to tremendously decrease congestion, better air quality and make commuting much simpler and cheaper. Today 3:29pm

SlickWillie
I am too, and doubly cool with it if they tear these awful things down and replace the trees and farms that were sacrificed for their brief, awful existence.

And:

Good. (mandatory grumpy cat picture)

After having lived in several cities, I realize how incredibly wasteful and limiting my suburban upbringing was. Any planning incorporating the idea of permanently cheap gasoline and unlimited cars needs to be buried with all the other relics of the Jet age

[AuH20]

Oh, also, if you look at the comments, their is a TON of hating on white people (for white flight) and TEAM RED/TEAM BLUE shit (basically, everyone who is not in a coastal city is a stupid, mouth-breathing RETHULICAN!)

[PD Scott]

You can’t make us look at the comments.

How about a concentration city for gawkerians? There’s too many for a camp and they’d love the new-new urbanist design. Surround it with barbed wire and a firewall and we’d finally be safe from them – we could convince them it was to protect them from us stupid mouth-breathing Neanderthals.

[JW]

I’d be happy if they’d let the rest of us split off, not too unlike an Indian reservation. We’ll go our way and you leave us the fuck alone, other than through trade.

Unfortunately, no one is permitted to leave the collective with their precious resouces. There are internal organs that can yet be harvested.

[C. Anacreon]

They all say they’d rather live in the city than the suburbs. Great! And good for you. Isn’t it the best world when people have choices?

You also get the idea that none of these commenters have kids. Once you start having children the suburbs makes a lot more sense. I like having a driveway and a yard that my son can play in.

Oh, but you’re saying you want other people to live the way you think they should? No suburbs, everyone must be in the city? We should all be in beehives and Save The Planet?

Fuck off, slavers. And by the way, thanks for reminding us all about the 9th Plank of the Communist Manifesto (eliminate the difference between country and city).

[CE]

No one actually plays in their yard, and hasn’t since 1985.

[seguin]

That was like a hundred years ago CE. No one could be expected to understand playing in the yard.

[Marc F Cheney]

Oh, also, if you look at the comments, their is a TON of hating on white people (for white flight)

Can you imagine being a white person who moved to the city from the suburbs, hating other white people who moved to the suburbs form the city?

[AuH20]

Actually, they’re mad at white people coming and going. White people leaving is white flight, leaving the urban core to rot.

But white people coming back is gentrification, and it pushes out minorities and makes it harder and more expensive for them to get to work.

Seriously, they make both of these arguments in the comments.

Shorter Gawker: If white people are doing something, anywhere, it’s hateful and racist!

[Medical Physics Guy]

Good point. And don’t forget white people vacationing, wrecking all those scenic paradises with their pesky money.

[Winston]

And bringing in their awful consumerism instead of the natural beauty of the poverty stricken foreign countries.

[Marc F Cheney]

That is AWESOME.

[jesse.in.mb]

One of these days I’ll go back and read Jane Jacob’s Death and Life of Great American Cities.

I recall her going into great detail about why decay and gentrification were good things for everyone.

[John]

We made everyone poor just like losers like us are!!!

Can we start selling hunting licenses for Gawker commentators now? I am hunting down and killing anyone who doesn’t get their limit.

[JW]

It saddens me deeply to know that I share the same genetic make-up as these cackling hyenas.

[Thane is a cosmotarian!]

I like the suburbs. Does that make me uncool?

[Marc F Cheney]

I grew up in the suburbs and live in the city. I don’t want to live in the suburbs, but I understand that some people do, and I don’t sneer at it.

And I do enjoy the occasional trip out there, just as I’m sure that suburbanites enjoy occasional trips to the city.

I like options.

[Marc F Cheney]

Can you imagine being upset about suburbs?

Or believing that suburbs consist of McMansions, malls and offices?

[Mad Scientist]

They’ll latch onto anything they can blame, no matter how much straw it’s made of. The alternative is discovering their own policies perpetuate the problems they claim to despise.

[Winston]

Didn’t the progs use to hate cities and love suburbs since it allowed people to get away from the cramped and diseased cities and have lawns and houses?

[Irish]

Shopping malls are disappearing. Office parks are disappearing. Mcmansions are disappearing. Garages are disappearing. And now, suburban corporate headquarters are dying. Soon, there will be nothing left of the suburbs but a single Little League field, watered with tears. [Photo: AP]
L

Uh…this is largely because the continuing lack of economic growth and massive unemployment makes it so people can’t move out of the cities. They simply don’t have enough money to buy a house in the burbs and spend that kind of money on cars and gas.

Gawker is essentially cheering on poverty.

[The Late P Brooks]

I’m amazed anyone thought that race in Joisey was every going to take place.

I wonder how much that sleazebag Hindery flimflammed those suckers out of.

[AuH20]

That Lying Waitress is a piece of work

There’s a new development in the ongoing saga of discredited restaurant server Dayna Morales: It seems the woman who falsely claimed she received an anti-gay “tip” from two patrons never donated the money she received from supporters to help wounded vets like she promised.

In the immediate aftermath of Morales’s anti-gay allegations against a New Jersey couple who dined in her section at the Gallop Asian Bistro, many supporters began showing up at the restaurant with “monetary contributions.”

Within a few days, Morales had racked up over $2,000 in donations, but told NJ.com she planned to forward it all to the Wounded Warrior Project.

But an investigation by Bridgewater Patch discovered that, as of today, no donations to the nonprofit have been made in Morales’s name, nor were any donations made from any ZIP codes in the Bridgewater area.

It’s been really funny watching Gawker turn on her, after being so willing to believe because it fits the narrative. Now, she must be destroyed so that the narrative can be preserved.

[Winston]

So will Obama be authoring a new translation of Beowulf? I mean he does know Old English…

[Death Rock and Skull]

“Russia is going to investigate a Reuters report that children adopted by Americans are being trafficked in an underground market by parents who had changed their minds.”

Is what Reuters was getting at similar to the gypsy horseshit that Reason already covered?

[Killaz]

Mankiw skewers some bitch named Francis:

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com…..toric.html

A few reactions:

First, throughout history, free-market capitalism has been a great driver of economic growth, and as my colleague Ben Friedman has written, economic growth has been a great driver of a more moral society.

Second, “trickle-down” is not a theory but a pejorative used by those on the left to describe a viewpoint they oppose. It is equivalent to those on the right referring to the “soak-the-rich” theories of the left. It is sad to see the pope using a pejorative, rather than encouraging an open-minded discussion of opposing perspectives.

Third, as far as I know, the pope did not address the tax-exempt status of the church. I would be eager to hear his views on that issue. Maybe he thinks the tax benefits the church receives do some good when they trickle down.

[CE]

Russia is going to investigate a Reuters report that children adopted by Americans are being trafficked in an underground market by parents who had changed their minds.

Gypsies, tramps and thieves…. That’s all we are to them.

[Dave Krueger]

In the wake of the various NSA surveillance shockers, Microsoft has announced an effort to beef up its encryption systems.

Too late, Microsoft. You’re already one one of “them”. Everything you do from now on is going to be seen as damage control to regain the confidence of customers you betrayed. You are where GM was when it suddenly woke up to the fact that quality matters and Japanese manufacturers were already delivering it while GM didn’t even know what the word meant.

But don’t feel bad. You are really no worse off than any major communications provider, social media network, financial institution, medical service provider, insurance company, or electronics equipment manufacturer. Because, as we now know, they are all very likely to be business partners with the intelligence agencies.

We have met the enemy and he is everyone who cooperated with government at the expense of their customers, thinking they would never be found out. That’s you, Microsoft.

[Paul.]

Microsoft Beefs up Encryption

By adding backdoors for the feds?