Picture Of The Day

More Hunter S. Thompson motivational posters can be found here.

Boston Blonde On An Escalator

I'm assuming that taking the stairs would have just been too much work:


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Quote For The Day

"There is a rising tide of pink fascism in this country, and it comes as a result of the election of Barack Hussein Obama. Obama has signaled that during his reign it will be acceptable to impose gay marriage on the people of the United States. He's being very cleverly used as a tool of the gay puppet masters. He is personally masculine, has a beautiful family and was used by the gay mafia to convince real American families that they should support him.

And now that Obama the Trojan horse has been taken inside the gates, so to speak, the contagion from within his administration is spreading throughout the country. One state at a time seems to be falling. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, California is teetering on the brink. Will Texas be next? Will Obama say that in order to make up for the oppression caused by slavery that the Deep South will now have to accept gay marriage under duress? Is this a sexual reconstruction of the entire country? Don't ask, because Obama won't tell," - Michael Savage, WorldNet Daily

Two things: 1) I'm predicting right now that Texas is a long ways away from establishing marriage equality for its gay citizens, and 2) yes, that's a real, undoctored photo of the guy decrying gay marriage rights wearing a white suit and hat whilst holding a fluffy little dog in San Francisco. Nosce te ipsum.

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TDS: Baracknophobia - Obey

Jon Stewart breaks down the right's recent "government tyranny" paranoia much better and much funnier than I've ever been able to (but in my defence, I have no writing staff):

That was close at the end there. He almost let the black cat out of the bag...

Ferris Bueller: Where Are They Now?

Made almost a quarter of a century ago and one of the defining movies of my generation, but what have the actors been up to lately? Short answer: many of them just got old and fat. Longer answer: check the link.

What You Should Fear Instead Of Terrorists

In the past I've written that the relative odds of getting killed by terrorists are worse than those of being wiped out by a killer asteroid, yet polls repeatedly tell us that for the majority of Americans terrorism is one of their greatest fears. John Goekler has crunched some numbers in order to put the odds of a possible terrorist attack in perspective:

The single greatest killer of Americans is the so-called “lifestyle disease”. Somewhere between half a million and a million of us get a short ride in a long hearse every year because of smoking, lousy diets, parking our bodies in front of the TV instead of operating them, and downing yet another six pack and / or tequila popper.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. And some 85,000 of us will drink to our own departure.

After the person in the mirror, the next most dangerous individual we’re ever likely to encounter is one in a white coat. Something like 200,000 of us will experience “cessation of life” due to medical errors – botched procedures, mis-prescribed drugs and “nosocomial infections”. (The really nasty ones you get from treatment in a hospital or healthcare service unit.)

The next most dangerous encounter the average American is likely to have is with a co-worker with an infection. Or a doorknob, stair railing or restaurant utensil touched by someone with the crud. “Microbial Agents” (read bugs like flu and pneumonia) will send 75,000 of us to meet the Reaper this year.

If we live through those social encounters, the next greatest danger is “Toxic Agents” – asbestos in our ceiling, lead in our pipes, the stuff we spray on our lawns or pour down our clogged drains. Annual body count from these handy consumer products is around 55,000.

After that, the most dangerous person in our lives is the one behind the wheel. About 42,000 of us will cash our chips in our rides this year. More than half will do so because we didn’t wear a seat belt. (Lest it wrinkle our suit.)

Some 31,000 of us will commit suicide by intention this year. (As opposed to not fastening our seat belts or smoking, by which we didn’t really mean to kill ourselves.)

About 30,000 of us will die due to our sexual behaviors, through which we’ll contract AIDS or Hepatitis C. Another 20,000 of us will pop off due to illicit drug use.

The next scariest person in our lives is someone we know who’s having a really bad day. Over 16,000 Americans will be murdered this year, most often by a relative or friend.

After that, it’s an overdose on “non-steroidal anti-inflammatories”, acetaminophen or aspirin. About 7,600 hundred a year, perhaps due to the aftermath of those tequila poppers.

Next most dangerous thing is going to work. About 5,500 of us will buy the farm due to “occupational trauma”.

If that’s scary enough to skip work, we might want to skip lunch, too. Next most dangerous thing is the food we eat. About 5,200 of us will hurl our lives away due to “foodborne agents”.

Another 4,000 of us will drown. A significant percentage will be fishermen found floating with a high blood alcohol content and an unzipped fly.

When you also take into account the fact that the vast majority of Americans live far away from any major cities or other "hot" targets that terrorists may be planning to hit in the future our collective fear seems almost laughable, but then again collective fear seemed to be one of the primary reasons for many of the Bush administration's policy positions in the first place, didn't it? Here's hoping that an Obama administration can and will do better.

Pat Schrodinger's Kitty

In the event I ever do reproduce I've just found one of the books I'll be reading to my eventual progeny:

Tiffany Ard creates "artwork and nursery decor for serious science nerds." Seen above is a spread from her book Pat Schrodinger's Kitty. From the description:

Here are Paul Dirac and Enrico Fermi. They can do lots of things. You can do lots of things too! This parody of the children's classic Pat the Bunny is perfect for the babies in your life who are interested in physics.

For those of you who aren't huge physics nerds you can learn about the dilemma of Schrodinger's paradoxical cat at this link.

The Pittsburgh Police Murders

A troubled young man named Richard Poplawski murdered three Pittsburgh police officers with an AK-47 assault rifle when they arrived at his home on a domestic disturbance call last Saturday morning. Poplawski is a neo-Nazi skinhead who frequented and posted on White supremest websites and feared that a violent societal upheaval was imminent, chiefly caused by a Jewish media and economic conspiracy and the election of Barack Obama as the president of the United States.

Shortly after the slayings, many left-wing blogs were reporting (correctly) that Poplawski is a far-right conservative and that one of the triggers that set him off was the meme circulating in the right-wing blogosphere and media that President Obama was going to do everything in his power to take lawfully owned guns away from Poplawski and other Americans like himself. These rumors are of course completely false but this incident demonstrates the danger that callously fanning the flames of this kind of paranoia can produce.

Many have stated that Poplawski is not representative of the right in this country, and they're correct; he no more represents the average conservative than does William Ayers and the Weather Underground represent the average liberal. The vast majority of Americans on either side of the current political divide in this country are good people who want nothing more than to peacefully live out their lives and take care of the ones they love. Troubled men like Poplawski are exceptions to this rule and one would be correct to relegate him and others with similar beliefs to the fringes of society, but sometimes all it takes for these dangerous individuals to act out their paranoid fears and fantasies is an ideological push in the wrong direction and unfortunately it has been quite easy for these people to find that message in the mainstream political media.

Now obviously Poplawski is the only person responsible for the deaths of these three men; they died by his hand and his alone. But let's be honest here: this young man did not create these paranoid delusions or plan these violent acts in a vacuum. The steady drumbeat of right-wing talk radio, bloggers and other media about Obama taking away our guns, about re-education camps and civil indoctrination squads, about the supposed descent of this country into socialist/Marxist chaos, about capitulation to our enemies and secret Muslim conspiracies has had a definite effect on the mentally deficient and morally weak amongst us, and for those who have been spewing this garbage to now throw their hands up as if they were not at least tangentially culpable for creating the atmosphere that helped lead to this tragedy is an act of outright dishonesty and rank cowardice.

Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished and safe-guarded rights as American citizens and I would never suggest that this right be curtailed for any reason. Fascism lies down that road and like so many other rights and privileges in a free society, once the individual relinquishes them to the state it is almost impossible to reattain them. But with all rights and privileges also comes the responsibility to not abuse them or use them to harm other individuals or society as a whole, and the political right in this country has utterly failed on this count. The recent atmosphere of malice and paranoia being cultivated against President Obama and the political left for power/ratings/whatever is only hurting us as a society and denigrating us as a people, and until we recognize that fact and take appropriate steps to alleviate these intolerable levels of hatred we will fail to advance our civilization and more innocent people will almost assuredly die tragically as a result.

Move Over Twitter, Here Comes Flutter

If you clicked on my April Fool's post you know how stupid I consider the whole recent Twitter phenomenon to be and this parody video of the next, faster personal messaging technology exemplifies this opinion:

I do have to say however that I love the Flutter Eyes option. It's one of the many applications I'll upload when I finally get my bionic contact lenses.

SNL: Taco Town

I'm of the opinion that this thing could use some bacon but maybe that's just me: