Lazy Friday

Submitted for your approval on this lazy Friday:

Posted by: Joseph at 08:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yikes...

This is actually pretty appalling - via Proteinwisdom.

I'm confident that my own lady wouldn't lie like this article claims many of them do, but perhaps she's the exception and not the rule...

Or, it could be something to do with women in the UK.  That culture seems to avoid social conflict and open displays of emotion like the plague compared to us vulgar old Americans.  I'd like to see the same questions asked of women from other countries to see how they compare.

Posted by: Joseph at 09:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Quote of the Day

If Allah doesn't make this his Quote of the Day, he should:

"Is it some kind of fraud to pretend you've got a mind?" [emphasis mine] - Ward Churchill


Er hem.

---

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Posted by: Joseph at 10:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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DING DING DING!

Someone give this woman a prize! The linked article there is a truly superb look at the evangelical atheist set - the kind who are not content with quiet, personal unbelief.

Back in the day, the many atheists I knew went about their unbelieving lives in a quietly sardonic, but non-combative way: They'd abandoned organized religion, but sought no quarrel with those who stayed. They explained their non-belief to their children, but let them join the boy scouts.

Everything old is new again, but different. Yesterday's live-and-let-live atheism has morphed into today's truculent "atheism with attitude," where God is not only dead, but --postmodern glee having replaced Nietszchean gloom regarding His demise -- with good riddance to Him.

...

But the political handwriting on the wall is especially evident in this statement by American activist Herb Silverman: "What I would really like is for atheists to come out of the closet because we are so demonized in our culture."

"Culture"? "Closet"? Uh oh. The ideological appropriation of "rights" vocabulary is the canary in the identity-politics "equality" mine. Once gay persecution is adduced, can the cry for official atheist equity be far behind?

Go read the whole thing.

Posted by: Joseph at 10:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I Have A Man-Crush...

... on this guy.

What if a senator was playing games instead of bashing them?
It’s already happening in Guam, where as reported by the Pacific Daily News, Sen. Ray Tenorio (left) is a serious, level-70 WoW player. Tenorio’s avatar is a Dwarf priest named Paleray on the Silverhand server. He’s a member of a guild, of course, the Knights of the Marianas.

How cool is that? And what's more, he even responds to the post in the comments!

Posted by: Joseph at 09:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Stupid Fluff Post #1

Have a look at The Hill's 50 most beautiful people in Washington.

Notice the political affiliations.  I was actually surprised - there's a lot of really good looking Republican women.  But then, being happy tends to make you a lot more attractive than being angry/outraged/etc. 

Oh, and I love how the journalists don't tend to give a political affiliation.  They're so cute when they try so desperately to maintain the pretense of objectivity.

Posted by: Joseph at 09:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Taliban Maniacs Killing Hostages

Someone needs to annihilate every last one of these savages. 

Rest assured, a day of judgment will come. 

Posted by: Joseph at 09:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Evidence of White Guilt?

A recent Association for Psychological Science article has attempted to decipher why people feel "guilt."

To test their theory, the researchers showed participants pictures of White, Black, or Asian faces, while monitoring their brain activity using EEG. The researchers then relayed randomized scores to the participants, telling them whether they responded positively or negatively to the White, Black, and Asian faces.

After receiving feedback indicating that they had responded negatively toward Black faces, subjects reported significantly increased guilt, anxiety, and sadness. The increase in guilt was larger than the change in any other emotion. Their reports were confirmed by the EEG, which showed significant reduction in left-sided frontal asymmetry following feedback. A large body of literature contends that left-sided asymmetry corresponds to approach motivation. So, in this case, the participants were initially feeling the punitive effects of guilt, or withdrawal motivation.

Given the way they're measuring this effect, I'd love to see some demographic information on their participants.  Who wants to bet they're predominantly white, female college students?   I'd be willing to bet we're looking at a classic example of white guilt in action.

Posted by: Joseph at 11:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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That's Gotta Be Haram...

Doctors in the UK are using some seriously unconventional procedures to save the terrorists that tried to blow themselves up in Glasgow.

DOCTORS are to use skin made from SHARKS to treat the terror suspect horrifically burned in the Glasgow Airport attack.

Surgeons struggling to save Kafeel Ahmed, 27, have turned to a revolutionary treatment.

The expensive process involves a skin substitute made from shark cartilage and cow tendons. A source said: “Ahmed is being treated with these grafts because there is nothing left on his body that can be used.”

The Glasgow Royal Infirmary insider added: “He is receiving the latest technology to try to heal the skin — but there is still little hope of him surviving.

“In the past, pig skin was used to treat severe burns, but the shark skin treatment is used now.”

So, Haram or Halal?  Does it count if it's incorporated into your own body?  I think we can be reasonably sure that the pig skin is right out - can you imagine the howling if they'd used that technique?

I truly hope the guy lives to stand trial.  That'll be some fun times spent thinking about the procedure.

Posted by: Joseph at 10:07 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Excellent New Utility

Anyone interested in the actual factual course of the rehabilitation of Iraq should click here.

Victory Caucus has some really nice information and meters up that give you an at-a-glance view of what's going on in Iraq right now.

Posted by: Joseph at 01:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Shocker: UNIFIL Forces Blind, Toothless ... and Fabulous?

Check out this post at LGF.

A usual, UN forces display the raging, one might say flaming, incompetence we've grown to know and love. 

Posted by: Joseph at 10:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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AllahPundit Panders to the Mouth Breathing Troglodytes

Well, I know he hates this sort of thing, being a sophisticated realist and all, but every now and then one must give the commoners a boon.

I hate crap like this but people on our side love it so here you go. It’s a retreat into fantasy: “If only Patton were still alive and we had the political will and weren’t so PC, we’d have already pacified Iraq through the sheer brains and balls of one of Uncle George’s tank offensives.” Different war, different time, different enemy, different manpower. Get over it.

AP does some good stuff, but every so often he comes off like a such an enormous tool. Watch your tone for crying out loud. If you're going to post something you know a ton of people will like, don't crap all over it on the way out and then insult them for enjoying it. That's stupid. If your goal is to entertain, do so willingly.

"I think a lot of you will like this, though I believe it's time to focus on present realities over nostalgia, however comforting."

There, you're done. No need to imply that your readers are all stuck-in-the -past brainless idealists. He only makes it worse with the comments.

Posted by: Joseph at 08:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You fail at life!

Reagan's 11th Commandment was to never speak ill of a fellow Republican. Well, call me an independent then, because this idiot needs to go.

Someone called Rep. Don Young out for his pork-barrel BS, and he threw a tantrum over it:

"You want my money, my money," Young stridently declared before warning conservatives that "those who bite me will be bitten back."

Young took extreme exception to an amendment by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to strike money in a spending bill for native Alaskan and Hawaiian educational programs.

Twits like this guy represent everything that's wrong with government - everyone feeding at the trough, trying to get theirs.  Ugh. 

Congrats Donny boy, you win this weeks "YOU FAIL AT LIFE AWARD!"

Posted by: Joseph at 07:47 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Tolerance, a Liberal Value

Or perhaps not so much.  It would seem that for a few eco-crusaders, some things are just right out.  Like, you know, picking the car you'd actually like to drive.

Let's hope he finds the twits that did this and rolls over them with his Hummer a few times.  I'd bet they'll generate far more emissions than the car ever will.

Posted by: Joseph at 02:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ashamed of My Major

As a Psych major, every so often I'll find a study so stupid that it makes me want to hold my head in my hands and weep. Here's one now.

 The headline is "Americans Don't Understand Others."

The study, though oversimplified compared to real life, was instructive. Keysar and his colleagues arranged two blocks on a table so participants could see both. However, a piece of cardboard obstructed the view of one block so a "director," sitting across from the participant, could only see one block.

When the director asked 20 American participants (none of Asian descent) to move a block, most were confused as to which block to move and did not take into account the director's perspective. Even though they could have deduced that, from the director's seat, only one block was on the table.

Most of the 20 Chinese participants, however, were not confused by the hidden block and knew exactly which block the director was referring to. While following directions was relatively simple for the Chinese, it took Americans twice as long to move a block.

"That strong, egocentric communication of Westerners was nonexistent when we looked at Chinese," Keysar said. "The Chinese were very much able to put themselves in the shoes of another when they were communicating."

The assumptions and leaps of logic here are awful to the point of inducing whiplash. As if that wasn't enough, check this out:

"Of course, these are very gross oversimplifications," said Keysar. "Even in America, you can find collectivist societies. For example, working class people tend to be much more collective."

No, the gross oversimplification here is that you're assuming the truth of your assertions, namely that being from a "collectivist" culture makes it easier to see another person's perspective!  Your only evidence for that claim comes from MOVING BLOCKS ABOUT A TABLE.  Taking a completely unrealistic situation in a lab and applying that to vastly different conditions in the real world and then attaching a blanket statement headline is irresponsible bordering on malicious.  This is agenda driven research and make no mistake.

This study might tell us something about perspective as it relates to moving and directing objects in the physical world, but making the enormous logical jump to culture, and then tacking on a value judgment to boot is just embarrassing.  How in the hell do these idiots manage to get research grants?

Posted by: Joseph at 10:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Political Glamour

I saw this article over at Hot Air about how Romney spent a pile of money on makeup, of all things.  After all the crap the right wing Silky Pony over his hair, it would be hypocritical not to mention it.

But honestly, if we're going to create a culture where the surest way to attain power is through charisma and developing a personality cult, shouldn't we expect this sort of thing?  These days I hear more about a candidate's grooming than their actual, practical stance on the issues.  I don't mean the high-minded ideological bloviating that happens on the stump either.  I want to hear what each candidate would actually do to address problems: real world, practical solutions.

I couldn't care less about Silky's hair (amusing as it is) or Romney's makeovers.  I just want someone to propose a plan of action for once.

Posted by: Joseph at 09:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I Really Can't Blame Him

In America, we fantasize about doing this.  In Germany, they actually do it.

I'm half convinced that I could collect old computers and have people pay me to let them throw the old PCs off of buildings.  Think of the kind of healthy catharsis that would encourage. 

Posted by: Joseph at 09:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Theological Puzzles

I often find myself struggling with a few specific theological puzzles: questions that simply don't have good answers.

1.  Why did God create the universe if He knew what the final outcome would be, and that it would involve so much human suffering?

2. Why does God choose to elect that one person be saved and another be damned, if election is in fact how it all works?

Those are two of the larger questions on my mind at the moment.  I've discussed several of them over at PRCalDude's site, but of course, nothing conclusive. 

Part of it comes from the idea of eternal suffering without the possibility of redemption.  I find that horrifying beyond description - to the point where I start hoping for the sake of my atheist and agnostic friends that they might just be right.  If Calvinists have the right of it, there's nothing I can do for them.  If the Arminians are correct, I really should be doing more ... but I'm not sure I can. 

To the Calvinists, I ask: Why does God choose the people he chooses?  If the people He chooses don't necessarily deserve to be chosen, then why choose them?  If it's nothing about them in particular, then what?  Why would a just, ordered, merciful, omniscient God perform the divine equivalent of pulling names out of his hat?

To the Arminians, I ask: If my God can forgive sins like rape and murder, why can't he do something about people who were lied to and persuaded to follow false Gods?  Should random chance determine who makes it to heaven and who doesn't?  Certainly people are accountable for their actions, but not everyone has access to the same resources.  Should I simply trust that God gives everyone a fair shot?

Posted by: Joseph at 02:45 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Protest Justice

Remember the whack jobs waving signs saying "Behead those who insult Islam" when the Danish Cartoon Jihad was in full swing?  It appears they're getting jail time for inciting to murder.

To which I say, good.  More, please. 

Posted by: Joseph at 02:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Arbiters of Faith"

It would appear that wearing a tiny promise ring is an egregious violation of the school dress code in the UK. Of course Sikhs get their bracelets, and Muslims their head scarves, but heavens forfend that a Christian girl should show her commitment to abstinence.

The school's reasoning?

The school denied her claims, arguing that the purity ring is not an integral part of the Christian faith and contravenes its uniform policy.

Really?  And now some random educrat gets to decide what is and is not an integral part of someone's faith?  Can you imagine the howling from the left if  a judge had denied the right of one of your miscellaneous grab-bag pagans to wear a pentacle?

Christianity is to religions like white is to races.  It's safe to offend Christians.

Posted by: Joseph at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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