To sauna at five, to jail at six
The post "My First Shower Nearly Killed Me" at "The Rebelution" contrasts the expectations and attitudes of children, teens and adults towards learning.
Eidelblog explains in "American Idol Farce" why he doesn't like American Idol any more after Chris Daughtry was voted off. Speaking of which, it seems obvious to me that the results of this week's vote, in which each of the three remaining contestants received 33 percent plus change of the votes, cannot possibly be true. This is not some presidential election that could end up being this close because both parties continuously campaign and measure the public opinion by polls and adapt their campaigns to them to grab the swing votes. What has obviously happened here is simply that the phone lines at the show's phone bank were flooded to capacity, so that each line took in as many votes as it possibly could and left out an unknown number of voters with a busy signal. Since each contestant has the same number of lines and presumably capacity to tally his votes, all contestants get the same result plus minus some random fluctuation. But we have no way of knowing how many left-out voters who would have made the difference each contestant would have had.
Lawrence Auster has already explained why the term "Islamist" (= bad Muslim) is objectively meaningless. The post "Andrew Sullivan -- Homosexualist" at "Rhymes With Right" examines the similar term "Christianist" that certain people are trying to coin, and offers a symmetric term to refer to those who believe that "homosexuality is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that sexual orientation dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, homosexual and non-homosexual alike." Another post "The Duke Lynching" addresses a quote by a black profeminist man reported in Newsweek:
According to Newsweek, the young man at NCCU said that he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted, "whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past."
Since it is delightful to see a lesbian who is not a socialist, I'll link to "Sitting Pretty", a blog that offers solid-looking advice on saving and investing. Another lesbian laments the attitudes of young men in "Too much porn".
Water is wet and "Immigration hurts the poor", notes the Catholic Light.
"Helicopter Parents"
are a horde of modern-day boomer parents who obviously have too much
free time on their hands. This is hopefully one American phenomenon
that the rest of the world will not ape. Speaking of helicopters, the
post "Huey? Apache?" of "South Park Pundit" shows a nicer type of a helicopter that is not as annoying to its surroundings and the people in it.
The post "MySpace "Haters"" at "The View from the Nest"
reminds us that real "haters" are something completely different than
people who are "not radically pro-gay and not self-guilty about being a
white male". Now, if somebody could just get this message out to the
leftists...
With the recent happenings in Florida, I have to
wonder if the major TV networks are already shooting their made-for-TV
movies about man-eating mutant alligators. After all, "This is "The Summer of the Gator"", as Infinite Improbability informs us.
I noticed that tonight's movie on the Movie Network is "Stealth",
one of those movies that I wouldn't pay to see but would watch on TV
without commercials. Plus, I am curious to see whether the evil
airplane growls in a threatening fashion each time before it embarks on
an attack on the American way of life. For more military porn, "Enter Sandman, Exit Mujahid" at Red Sky
offers us an uplifting Marines recruitment video, set to the music of
Metallica. This video kind of reminded me of that episode of Beavis and
Butt-Head where they went to military recruitment office, and the
officer there had a collection of recruitment videos, each geared
towards a different type of youth. The Marines need a few good
headbangers!
Mini-Obs lists "Thirteen Words/Terms I Dislike".
Now
that the Internet exists and works, few things are as ridiculous as
moving bits around with physical means such as paper. The post "Libraries R Us" at "Cronaca"
wonders what happens when all books have been digitized, and introduces
a robot that can read and scan books automatically, flipping through
the pages with its robot finger. It's about time somebody did this!
There is nothing more useless or less sensible economically than sending humans to outer space. The post "Martian Chic" at "Italics Mine"
showcases the new NASA spacesuit designed for future Mars eplorers. I
guess that every government agency somehow has to spend its annual
budget in entirety, or next year they will get less money.
In the same blog, the post "Crawling Thru Ductwork: A Primer"
reminded me of something that I had often wondered. When I grew up in
Finland and watched American movies, characters often seemed to escape
from a trapped elevator through the hatch in the roof of the elevator.
Since no Finnish elevator that I ever stood in had such hatch, I
optimistically guessed that construction of American buildings is
different. But at least in Canada this guess turned out to be wrong: I
have never seen an elevator with such a hatch either. Fortunately, our
main library has a kind of elevator in which the mechanism is
completely visible from the outside, thus satisfying my curiosity about
what is going on at the roof of an elevator car.
Conversion between the English language and symbolic logic is not always clear. The post "Unless" at "Anal Philosopher" discusses how this common word works. "Steven Pinker on the Bourgeoisie" quotes the scientist about something that should be obvious, but apparently is not to many people.
As for sneering at the bourgeoisie, it is a sophomoric grab at status with no claim to moral or political virtue. The fact is that the values of the middle class—personal responsibility, devotion to family and neighborhood, avoidance of macho violence, respect for liberal democracy—are good things, not bad things. Most of the world wants to join the bourgeoisie, and most artists are members in good standing who adopted a few bohemian affectations. Given the history of the twentieth century, the reluctance of the bourgeoisie to join mass utopian uprisings can hardly be held against them. And if they want to hang a painting of a red barn or a weeping clown above their couch, it's none of our damn business.
Or as it is in our case, a tiger by Robert Bateman.
I
have sometimes been wondering whatever happened to Andrew Dice Clay (I
even have the four issues of the "Ford Fairlane" prequel comics in my
collection), but I guess I got my answer in the post "Wow! Someone Actually Speaking the Truth on CNN" of "Cartoon Nazi". The site also seems to feature other interesting video clips and cartoons.
"New York Times Editors Yearn For Paradise" at "Horsefeathers"
takes apart a hippy-dippy leftist woman's fantasy about how primitive
life is superior to modern postindustrial life. Fish and barrels, I
know, but so entertaining.
The post "Manifestations" at "Rigorous Intuition" reveals what will be the next epidemic after HIV and bird flu.
Jill Stanek asks "What's wrong with sex selection?" hoping for answers from the pro-choice crowd.
At "ex-Liberal in Hollywood", we should notice the posts "Normal People & Human Subgroups", "Moron Education" and "A Day Without Illegals". The blog also links to the article "Florida Atlantic U's Feminist Menace" that describes a rather typical womyn's studies professor.
The last link that I post is not from this search, but it's so good I wanted to post it anyways: "NYC girls: stoned or dethroned?"
Thanks for the mention. Nice roundup idea, but--that's a LOT of work!
Posted by Ranten N. Raven | 6:15 PM
Just to be clear, I didn't go to even close to all sites that were previously unknown to me. What I could find in two hours was quite enough for this post.
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 8:06 PM
The retarded post showed some of the interesting lefty opinion that "intelligent" is open-minded, which is agreeing with them.
Posted by Anonymous | 11:51 PM