This has been going around the email circuit for a couple of months now, and I can resist no longer:
You may be a Taliban if...
- You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer.
- You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can't afford shoes.
- You have more wives than teeth.
- You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon "unclean."
- You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.
- You can't think of anyone you HAVEN'T declared Jihad against.
- You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing.
- You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.
- You've ever uttered the phrase, "I love what you've done with your cave."
- You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least one.
- You bathe at least monthly whether necessary or not.
- You've ever had a crush on your neighbor's goat.
And one more, which I got from commenter Pistolero over at Ace of Spades HQ:
- You may be a Taliban if don't think the saying 'punishing the one eyed cleric' is a euphemism for male masturbation.
Now that's funny, I don't care who y'are.
I keep hoping that McCain will do something that will want to make me vote for him, but Fred Thompson shot down the biggest thing McCain could do before the question was even asked. In an interview on last night's Hannity and Colmes, Fred said he had no interest in being the vice president and if McCain actually posed the question, would advise him to get someone else with "a different profile".
It’s not what I want. The presidency is the only job in town that’s worth going through what you’ve got to go through to get it. And that includes the vice presidency and all of the rest of them, as far as I’m concerned.
And I thought I had an opportunity to do some things a different way. And if I was successful, I could lead in a different way. That didn’t work out. I’m interested in absolutely nothing else other than doing what I can to help those who are trying to help this country, and be a good citizen and do those things that I can do now in the private sector to help these kids and grandchildren.
But that does not involve, you know, going to state funerals in faraway places.
And that last statement is why I love Fred.
Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who became the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. He pens a comprehensive article in today's Australian about the danger of the coming ice age:
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.
Chapman admits that one year of cooling does not a trend make, but then he turns to sunspot activity. According to SOHO, the latest cycle of sunspots (No. 24) failed to begin on schedule (sometime shortly after March of last year).
The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.
Again, Chapman admits that there may not be a causal connection between last year's precipitous temperature drop and No. 24's late start. But given the grim consequences of another mini-ice age, he warns us to start planning now. Lack of action could prove fatal:
The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.
The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.
By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.
Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.
Global warming we could deal with. In fact, it would open up more farm land and expand the habitable area on the Earth.
But an ice age is another thing altogether.
So please, for the future of humanity, everyone go out and buy a huge (non-hybrid) SUV and fire up the smudge pots. In the meantime, I think I'll invest in some acreage on the equator. Hmm, I wonder what a small plantation in the Brazilian rain forest goes for these days.
Who would you rather have in the White House?
That is the question asked by a cute poll over at Swarm, in which you can vote by clicking here.
Now that's funny, I don't care who y'are.
The thing is, for a lot of people it's actually true. Which is why RINO McCain will be our next president.
Magicians/showmen Penn & Teller took on the $30 billion a year weight loss industry in one episode of their Emmy-winning show, Bullshit! You can watch about ten minutes of this episode on YouTube, but my favorite part starts eight minutes in with an bit by Glenn A. Gaesser, Director of Kinesiology at the University of Virginia and author of Big Fat Lies:
Fat people who exercise regularly are better off health wise, and have lower mortality rates, than thin people who don't.
Now there's a truth that you won't hear too often. That's because weight loss has been so politicized that it is hard to ferret out the what is known from what is conjecture from what is outright lies designed to get you to buy more books, diet pills, exercise equipment, sports bras, and so on.
Salted throughout the show are examples of just how little we really know about health and how to improve it. Penn addresses this in a somewhat unique way:
500 years ago, the plague was blamed on the wrath of God. It wasn't until 1847 that some Hungarian nut-doctor in Vienna suggested doctors wash their hands before delivering a baby. As late as the 19th century, cutting someone open and sucking out half of their blood was a standard medical practice. 25 years ago a couple of Australian doctors demonstrated that almost all peptic ulcers were not caused by stress, but by a bacteria. Some recent studies suggest - suggest - that obesity might also be caused by a bacteria. We don't know for sure yet, though.
And our pal, Marvin Minsky, who pioneered artificial intelligence at MIT, says, "I don't work out because we don't know yet enough about the long-term effects. It appears that each hour of exercise may add two hours to one's life - but I don't know of any evidence that this leads to getting better ideas."
Better ideas, fuck! Yeah, and you can bet your fat ass what we're doing today will look incredibly stupid in 30 years.
Exactly.
The bottom line is that activity level is more important than weight. If you have a "weight problem", my advice is to throw away the scale and join a baseball team. Or maybe just buy a Wii.
I can't find the original to give credit to the author, but here's something useful I received via email (click for full-sized image):
The Condi rumor-mill is churning again, this time rumor has it that she is "actively campaigning" for the VP spot on the McCain ticket.
"Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this," Senor said.
The party strategist said Rice could represent an ideal vice presidential candidate when paired with the Arizona senator, who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
"What the McCain campaign has to consider is whether or not they want to pick a total outsider, a fresh face, someone a lot younger than him, a governor who people aren't that familiar with," Senor said. "The challenge they're realizing is that they'll have to have to spend 30-45 days, which they won't have at that point, educating the American public about who this person is.
"The other category is someone who people instantly say, the second they see that announcement, I get it, that person could be president tomorrow. Condi Rice is an option."
As far as cutting-edge, minority-rights politics goes, Republican black woman on the ticket trumps either of the Democrat nominees. Particularly one that grew up in the conditions that she did, and one that is as brilliant as she is.
And to have someone who actually believes in the Second Amendment is a dream worth thinking about. Not to mention that the up-at-4am-to-stay-in-shape angle will play well with the soccer moms.
Writing for WaPo, Hunter does Heston right. Here's a taste:
He was the hawk.
He soared. In fact, everything about him soared. His shoulders soared, his cheekbones soared, his brows soared. Even his hair soared. . . .
Later in his life, he took that stance into politics, becoming president of the National Rifle Association just when anti-gun attitudes were reaching their peak. Pilloried and parodied, lampooned and bullied, he never relented, he never backed down, and in time it came to seem less an old star's trick of vanity than an act of political heroism. He endured, like Moses. He aged, like Moses. And the stone tablet he carried had only one commandment: Thou shalt be armed. It can even be said that if the Supreme Court in June finds a meaning in the Second Amendment consistent with NRA policy, that he will have died just short of the Promised Land -- like Moses.
Representatives from around 300 Indian Madrasas met for three-days, whereupon they reached a conclusion that seeking insurance cover was only another form of gambling.
[For their next trick, the Islamic scholars will determine that eating at a restaurant, where food is prepared by an unknown person or persons, is gambling that the food is not tainted or even poisoned. Hence dining out is to be banned.]
Health insurance schemes have turned a noble service in to a business activity, hence under Islam it is not permitted, they said. . . .
The Ulema suggested that the community could itself organise services to help in the treatment of poor.
Ah yes, it takes a village to care for the ill. Isn't this HillaryCare?
Charlton Heston, Actor, Author, Patriot
Charlton Heston, the Oscar-winning actor who achieved stardom playing larger-than-life figures including Moses, Michelangelo and Andrew Jackson in historical epics and went on to become a best-selling author, a contentious Hollywood labor leader, an unapologetic gun advocate and darling of conservative causes, has died. He was 84.
Source: LA Times
A man of integrity and strength, and an American patriot. A force for freedom was lost when he retired from public life. Today a light is gone from the world.