The Faithful Penguin

The Test Kitchen: How to Make a Génoise Cake - Gourmet Magazine

2011-02-10T13:39:00.000-06:00

Gordon Ramsay - Baked alaska

2011-02-08T12:39:00.000-06:00

Gordon Ramsay prepare these Scotch Pancakes

2011-01-24T15:41:00.000-06:00

Oh so yummy

Souffle pancakes with rhubarb compote the F word

2011-01-24T15:38:00.000-06:00

Gordon Ramsay - Spiced christmas goose

2011-01-08T19:12:00.000-06:00

How To Make Authentic Paella

2010-12-25T15:57:00.000-06:00

Gordon Ramsay - Aubergine caviar

2010-12-01T14:14:00.000-06:00

Gordon Ramsay - Stuffed courgette rolls

2010-12-01T14:04:00.000-06:00

Not that hard to solve the deficit...

2010-11-21T15:59:00.001-06:00

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=dmt145qm

Quick Tiramisu

2010-10-31T18:35:00.000-05:00

Le Gavroche

2010-10-30T13:31:00.000-05:00

Mithras and Christmas

2010-10-29T17:54:00.002-05:00

Ehrman-Licona Debate: Can Historians Prove Jesus Rose From The Dead Part 3

2010-10-26T10:29:00.000-05:00

Dr. Bart Ehrman Sums it all up BIBLE NOT RELIABLE [MUST SEE]

2010-10-26T10:24:00.000-05:00

In case you're outraged...

2010-10-25T20:13:00.003-05:00

It's run by Republican appointees, and has been since 2003, you know. So the joke's on you! Especially as they've pretty much fired the liberals and now run with conservatives in a 2-1 margin over liberals in guest appearances and commentary.

But I'm curious, since you decided to talk politics, did you remain silent about the viewpoint-based firings of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Eason Jordan, Peter Arnett, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Maher, Ward Churchill, Chas Freeman, Van Jones and so many others? Because I don't recollect seeing your outrage when they were fired for "free speech..."

So, as far as I'm concerned, in the land of tit-for-tat, you have no legitimate complaint. Especially as it was one of yours that did the deed.

Pan Glazed Fillet of Beef - Gordon Ramsey

2010-10-25T20:12:00.000-05:00

Gordon Ramsay - Venison in chocolate sauce

2010-10-25T20:07:00.001-05:00

Gordon Ramsay - How To Cook Duck

2010-10-25T20:07:00.000-05:00

How To Make Spaghetti Bolognese

2010-10-22T13:28:00.000-05:00

Food in Uncertain Times: How to Grow and Store the 5 Crops You Need to Survive | Food | AlterNet

2010-10-21T21:58:00.000-05:00

Food in Uncertain Times: How to Grow and Store the 5 Crops You Need to Survive Food AlterNet

Lack of belief in gods

2010-10-17T20:15:00.000-05:00

The God of the Gaps (by Neil deGrasse Tyson)

2010-10-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

Neil deGrasse Tyson on "Intelligent Design" at Beyond Belief

2010-10-17T13:48:00.000-05:00

Beef Wellington

2010-10-12T17:25:00.001-05:00

Looks good. Food Network has a super-similar recipie: here.

Giving this a whirl...

2010-10-11T13:07:00.002-05:00

The Perfect Hard Boiled Egg

Recipe By : Julia Child, “The Way to Cook”
Serving Size : 1 Preparation Time :0:40
Categories : Cheese/Eggs Family Recipes

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
For 1-4 Eggs:
1 to 4 Eggs
2 quarts water -- * see note
For 12 Eggs:
12 Eggs
3 1/2 quarts water -- * see note
For 24 Eggs:
24 Eggs
6 quarts water -- * see note
Special Equipment_________________________
High (not wide) Saucepan with cover
Bowl w/ice cubes & water (large enough to
completely cover eggs)

*note: water should cover the eggs by 1 inch, so use a tall pan, and limit
cooking to 2 dozen eggs at a time.

1. Lay the eggs in the pan and add the amount of cold water specified. Set over high heat and bring just to the boil; remove from heat, cover the pan, and let sit exactly 17 minutes.

2. When the time is up, transfer the eggs to the bowl of ice cubes and
water. Chill for 2 minutes while bringing the cooking water to the boil
again. (This 2 minute chilling shrinks the body of the egg from the shell.)

3. Transfer the eggs (6 at a time only) to the boiling water, bring to the boil again, and let boil for 10 seconds - this expands the shell from the egg. Remove eggs, and place back into the ice water.

Chilling the eggs promptly after each step prevents that dark line from
forming, and if time allows, leave the eggs in the ice water after the last
step for 15 to 20 minutes. Chilled eggs are easier to peel, as well.

The peeled eggs will keep perfectly in the refrigerator, submerged in water
in an uncovered container, for 2 to 3 days.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NOTES : The perfect hard boiled egg has a tender white, and a yolk properly
set. There is not the faintest darkening of yolk where the white encircles
it (a chemical reaction caused by too much heat in the cooking process).
Eggs cooked this way can also be peeled neatly.

The system described here, developed by the Georgia Egg Board, takes a bit
of fussing - but it really does produce an absolutely Perfect Hard Boiled Egg!

Yay for Free Markets!

2010-10-09T06:36:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON — Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation.

Times Topic: Afghanistan WarThe Pentagon’s oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent insurgency, according to the report by investigators on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The United States military has almost no independent information on the Afghans guarding the bases, who are employees of Afghan groups hired as subcontractors by Western firms awarded security contracts by the Pentagon. At one large American airbase in western Afghanistan, military personnel did not even know the names of the leaders of the Afghan groups providing base security, the investigators found. So they used the nicknames that the contractor was using — Mr. White and Mr. Pink from “Reservoir Dogs,” the 1992 gangster movie by Quentin Tarantino. Mr. Pink was later determined to be a “known Taliban” figure, they reported.

The rest of the sordid details here.

Libertarian Government Services... Yay!

2010-10-05T09:19:00.002-05:00

"Carol Brown" (Choir of Ex Girlfriends) - Flight of the Conchords

2010-10-03T11:42:00.000-05:00

Enjoy

Westinghouse Electric Dryer Commercial

2010-10-01T12:11:00.000-05:00

Back in the old days... Commercials were narrated live...

Lemon Curd Mille-Feuille

2010-09-30T21:23:00.000-05:00

Mmmmm.... Yummy

Tony Gemignani - How to Make Pizza Dough Fundamentals

2010-09-27T23:02:00.000-05:00

Neat.

Steak Diane by Gordon Ramsay

2010-09-23T15:09:00.000-05:00

Cripsy Salmon Crushed Potatoes with Fresh Crab Meat

2010-09-23T14:01:00.000-05:00

Gene therapy saves patient from lifetime of blood transfusions

2010-09-16T08:28:00.000-05:00

From Not Exacty Rocket Science:

The patient known as P2 is just 18 years old, but he has been receiving monthly blood transfusions since the age of 3. P2 has a genetic disorder called beta-thalassaemia. Thanks to a double whammy of faulty genes, he can’t produce working versions of haemoglobin, the protein that allows red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body. Regular transfusions were the only things that kept him alive but for the last 21 months, he hasn’t needed them.

...

When was the last time Prayer did something like this? The answer is: never.

Science, the "real" way of knowing wins again.

Neil Tyson: If you're scientifically literate the world looks very diffe...

2010-09-15T12:29:00.000-05:00

This is how I try to look at the world. And what I try to pass to Miriam.

A little levity...

2010-09-07T18:36:00.003-05:00

The Intoxicating Influence of Tom Bombadil video - RJ-RotWK Mod for Battle for Middle Earth II: Rise of the Witch King - Mod DB

Moving is tough...

2010-09-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

Trying to remodel. Looking for apartments in St. Louis... And dealing with the accumulations of 13-years in the same house...

Armstrong and Miller - Rude Chef (Gordon Ramsey)

2010-08-24T08:29:00.000-05:00

A fine casserole indeed.

Gay Bar Song - The Armstrong and Miller Show - S2 Ep4 Preview - BBC One

2010-08-20T17:30:00.000-05:00

I love these guys...

Activist Post: 10 Signs The U.S. is Becoming a Third World Country

2010-08-18T12:02:00.000-05:00

Activist Post: 10 Signs The U.S. is Becoming a Third World Country

I've been saying many of these things for years.

Stone Age Sex Toys....

2010-08-17T18:32:00.000-05:00

Took me a while to convince my wife of this kind of behavior, but in the end I did:

Did sex toys provide a lift?

Peter Zetterlund / Swedish National Heritage Board

There's evidence that the sex industry may indeed be one the world's oldest trades. Take the 4,000- to 6,000-year-old phallus-shaped bone from Sweden shown here, for example. Archaeologists said the shape of the carved antler bone is unmistakable, though how it was used remains an open question.

Other archaeological digs, notably at Hohle Fels in Germany, have encountered even older figurines and carvings with clear sexual themes, including a sexually explicit figurine of a woman dated to 35,000 years ago and a dildo-shaped object from 25,000 years ago.

It's like I've been saying for years, porn and sex-objects go back to the stone age. Humans are just freaking horny...

Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury

2010-08-17T12:06:00.000-05:00

lol. Nerd porn?

One of Art's Little Truths -- Tennessee Ernie Ford Sings 16 Tons

2010-08-16T18:33:00.000-05:00

"SIXTEEN TONS"
Written By Merle Travis

Some people say a man is made out of mud

A poor man's made out of muscle and blood

Muscle and blood, skin and bones...

A mind that's weak and a back that's strong

_________________

Chorus
You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?

another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

__________________

I was born one mornin' and the sun didn't shine

I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine

I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal and

the straw boss said, "well bless my soul!"

.....you loaded...

(Chorus)

__________________

I was born one mornin' it was drizzlin' rain

fightin' and trouble are my middle name

I was raised in a cane-brake by an old mama lion

can't no high-toned woman make me walk no line

(Chorus)

__________________

If you see me comin', better step aside

A lot of men didn't, a lot of men died

One fist of iron, the other of steel

If the right one don't get you, then the left one will

(Chorus)

__________________

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

"Sixteen Tons"/ Copyright / Merle's Girls Music ~ All Rights Reserved

Louis CK learns about the Catholic Church

2010-08-15T20:24:00.000-05:00

Ah, ha ha ha ha ha...

Echoes Of A Supernova

2010-08-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

Really cool stuff...

Einstein's Theory Of Relativity Made Easy

2010-08-08T11:45:00.000-05:00

Really cool, except the dorky music.

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Lifestyle Nutritionists

2010-08-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

Kind of like Homeopathy...

Porcupine who thinks he is a puppy!

2010-08-02T15:46:00.000-05:00

So adorable.

How the GOP destroyed the American Economy

2010-08-01T13:18:00.000-05:00

Lifted from The Big Picture:

The details are what makes Stockman’s take so astonishing. Here are his most important observations, of which I find little to disagree with:

• The total US debt, including states and municipalities, will soon reach $18 trillion dollars. That is a Greece-like 120% of GDP.

• Supply Side tax cuts for the wealthy are based on “money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesiansism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.”

• Republicans abandoned the belief that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — government, trade, central banks private households and businesses.

• Once fiscal conservatism was abandoned, it led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.

• The Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement.

• Who is to blame? Milton Friedman. In 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold.

• According to Friedman, “The free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.” What actually occurred was “impossible.” Stockman calls it “Friedman’s $8 trillion error.”

• Ideological tax-cutters are what killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.

• America’s debt explosion has resulted from the Republican Party’s embrace, three decades ago, of the insidious Supply Side doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

• The GOP controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006: Combine neocon warfare spending with entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects and you end up with a GOP welfare/warfare state driving the federal spending machine.

• It was Paul Volcker who crushed inflation and enabled a solid economic rebound — not the Reagan Supply Side Tax cuts.

• Republicans believed the “delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.”

• Over George W. Bush 8 years in office, non-defense appropriations gained 65%.• Fiscal year 2009 (GWB last budget): Tax-cutters reduced federal revenues to 15% of GDP — lower than they had been since the 1940s.

• The expansion of our financial sector has been vast and unproductive. Stockman blames (tho but not by name): 1) Greenspan, for flooding financial markets with freely printed money; and 2) Phil Gramm, for removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation.

• The shadow banking system grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008 (see Gramm, above).

• Trillion-dollar financial conglomerates are not free enterprises — they are wards of the state, living on virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.

• From 2002 to 2006, the top 1% of Americans received two-thirds of the gain in national income.
I follow the Big Picture. The Big Picture Barry Ritholtz, like myself is (was) a kicked-from-the-party Socially Liberal, Fiscally Conservative Republican.

George Carlin ~ The American Dream

2010-08-01T12:50:00.000-05:00

Sad but true.

On the Short Bus to Crazy Town...

2010-07-31T11:26:00.000-05:00

People like this scare me...

ATT & Apple unveil the iPhone 4...

2010-07-20T09:55:00.002-05:00

Or at least it's functional equivalent on the #ATTFAIL network... I'm going to T-Mobile... $20 a month cheaper, better connectivity and it's NOT ATT... And I don't have to deal with Darth Jobs...:

This is a laugh fest...

2010-07-19T12:13:00.002-05:00

It's about WoW's new "non-anonymity" policy for forum posting...

2010-07-09T12:49:00.000-05:00

But if you know a girl-gamer, this is the crap she has to go through to play games on the Internet:

I don't play WoW at the moment. I played off and on (mostly on) for the first five years of the game, and I'll play again for a while once the expansion comes out, then probably quit again, etc. Anyway, especially a few years ago when I had the time and inclination to play more, I was fairly active on the forums. My husband still plays, and so do a ton of my friends. So I'm really familiar with how the forums work and what people are like there.

This is a terrible, terrible idea. Especially if the intent is to discourage trolling, there are much more effective solutions available. Some of the reasons why it's terrible have already been brought up, but a bunch of people who are obviously not familiar with the WoW forums have muddied things by making arguments based on incorrect assumptions, so for the sake of having an omnibus "this is why it's bad" post, here we go.

Incorrect Assumption #1: It's already easy to link WoW characters to their real life players.

That's just completely wrong. It's pretty difficult. It's impossible, in fact, unless someone outright tells you their real life name or e-mail address, none of which are available to fellow players. You have to ask someone for those things, and they have to willingly tell you. There are people I played with for years, even had their phone numbers, and I had no idea what their first names were, let alone their last names. For a while we had a guild leader who would delight in not telling us what his real first name was. I've also met nearly a dozen people from WoW in real life. People have different comfort levels about that sort of thing, but the point is it should be their choice.

When you see a character, either in-game or on the forums, you literally do not know anything related to real-life about that character, not even an IP address, unless they willingly supply that information. You don't even know what other characters are on the same account, much less what character belongs to what player. You'd have to work for Blizzard on the forums to see any of that information, and they're not allowed to disclose it. While it's true that an employee could just do it anyway, I think it's reasonable that people have some expectation of privacy in that regard. I'm not sure that I've ever heard of someone having their real life identity discovered without their willingly giving away obvious information, either their name or they're linked to their website and someone did a whois.

Keep in mind that few forums exist that display your full real-life name with your posts. You usually have some kind of username. Metafilter is like this. Maybe you can link that to an e-mail address and someone knows it's you that way -- and lots of forums will even keep that private if you want. But plenty of people -- for good reason -- keep their work and private e-mails separate. A lot of us cringe to think what others could dig up about us just using our e-mail address -- but let's be honest, it's because we either don't care that much or we've been sloppy. Both of those things are under our control.

The change Blizzard is making on the WoW forums isn't like that; it doesn't give you a choice except to stop using the WoW forums, or else lie about your name which isn't a great idea if you ever have a billing conflict or need to verify that you own the account. The latter happens whenever someone gets hacked, and people get hacked a lot, even smart computer-savvy people I'd think would never get hacked; once a few people I knew got hacked because someone inserted malicious code into a banner ad on a popular WoW website. The website fixed the problem, but still, everyone thought it was safe and it even took a while for anyone to figure out what had caused it. Point is: hacking is common and getting more sophisticated, you need your account info to be accurate.

So, right, the privacy-conscious people will stop using the forums. I just think it's ridiculous to force people's hand that way when it's not necessary.

Incorrect Assumption #2: People won't actually harass other people outside the game, come on.

This is just wrong. I don't know how else to put it. It's a lovely thought, but people go to great lengths simply to harass others in-game, and just handing the real name to them without their even having to do any work for it makes it easier to harass them outside the game. If you really, truly think it won't lead to harassment, you are underestimating both teenagers and angry, socially ill-adjusted people -- a ton of whom play WoW, alongside all the normal people. People already go to crazy lengths to e-stalk people and some of it already culminates in real life confrontations. I have trouble believing that anyone who says this has actually ever played an MMO, so if you haven't, please consider that you might not know what you're talking about and people aren't just paranoid and complaining about nothing.

And, more on this in a moment, but one really needs experience in the gaming community to comment on it. Particularly those in doubt of women being SEVERELY harassed in-game and, yes, on the forums. The gaming world is way more hostile to women than you think. I wish it weren't, I really, really do, and I know you mean well, but please do not say you doubt those things when I and other women have been through a lot in that regard. The WoW forums is not Metafilter by ANY stretch of the imagination. I would not mind my real name being on Metafilter and I've posted things here I wouldn't tell my mother, but I would probably cry if my real name was next to my WoW posts. It's not because I make a fool of myself on the WoW forums, either, but-- well, you'll see in a moment.

Incorrect Assumption #3: There's no good reason to keep your identity separate from the gaming community. If you're worried about someone from WoW finding you on Facebook, then why are you even on Facebook?

The answer to this is so long you'll just have to read my list of reasons why this is bad. The short version is: because the gaming community has a different culture than society in general, and it actually does make a big difference whether they know things that you don't try to keep hidden in real life. It's absolutely rational and sane to have 500 Facebook friends and not want anyone from WoW to know anything about you.

Reasons Why This Is Bad, Even If You're Not a Troll:
1. Girls are going to get harassed more than they already do. Just like in real life, while plenty of gamer guys are decent people -- gamer guys are the majority of my closest friends -- there are a ton of asshole gamer guys who make life hell for players who are openly female. Really, the gamer community is a much more hostile place for women than society in general. I never tried to hide my gender, so I have a ton of anecdotes I could tell you.

Here's the shit a female gamer has to deal with:
* People assume that you're not actually a girl, and you're just playing a girl character so you get "free stuff" from guys. This is actually the least bothersome thing. (For the record, I never got "free stuff." I think to get free stuff you actually have to cyber someone, or at least make them think you might, and I had no interest in any of those things.)

* constant requests -- some anonymous and some not, some crass and some just creepy -- asking for pictures, and these will not let up, EVER. In my case, the requests did not let up after five years.

* If you do post a picture (I never did) people either go nuts over how hot you are and won't leave you alone -- and the guys that perv on you treat you in a condescending way because hot=stupid; having to hear that shit addressed to other girls on Vent was really infuriating and uncomfortable -- OR they make a point of constantly telling you how ugly you are and won't leave you alone. There is no middle ground. They either want to fuck you or deride you. And it actually doesn't matter how hot or how ugly you are, either; the hottest girls will get called ugly (and FAT, ALWAYS FAT), and the ugliest girls still have to deal with lonely guys who aren't superficial. Any time the girl posts something thereafter, people will comment on her appearance, even though it has nothing to do with whatever is being discussed.

* if you don't post a picture they all sit around and speculate, and some people inevitably decide that you're not posting a picture because you're ugly, and therefore they don't like you. It does not occur to a great many people that a girl might not want guys bothering them for any reason. If you try to defend yourself, you're an attention whore.

Similar to pseudonymph, whenever someone asked me what I looked like I'd say something like, "I'm 350 pounds, all woman." Which always irritated me a bit: I said it because it was effective -- it made them less interested in asking, plus they usually thought it was funny and I didn't come across as prissy so it defused two concerns they'd have about female gamers -- but I didn't like perpetrating the idea that fat people are disgusting or something to be laughed at. I just never came up with another response that worked as well. :-/

* I got daily messages from people I didn't know because they liked my forum posts. This was bothersome for a few reasons. Some of whom were just normal people being nice and it was only bothersome as a distraction, but a fraction of them were lonely guys excited to be talking to a girl. The latter would bother me constantly. Other women I played with also dealt with these kinds of guys.

* If you ask someone to leave you alone, you're a stuck up bitch. That means you always have to be nice to everyone. This was both unfair and character-building, because now I'm really good at talking to and disengaging from socially ill-adjusted people without hurting their feelings.

* You are automatically a therapist and guys come to you for advice. This isn't so bad when friends do it, but you also have to patiently listen to a lot of emotionally-fragile guys you don't know very well. If this were infrequent it wouldn't be so bad. When it's constant and it's using up leisure time that you wanted to spend actually playing the game, it's really draining.

* People assume that you're bad at the game; they assume that any gear you got was given to you because you're a girl, and that your entire guild just started carrying you through raid instances because they were driven senseless by your siren song. It doesn't matter if you're in one of the top guilds in the US and doing content where you really can't carry bad players through. They can believe you're a good healer, sometimes. If you're a damage-dealing class they can't believe you could possibly be as good as a guy until they see raid reports. They will never believe you can tank.

* Some people think anything you do or say is attention-whoring, even if you never wanted the attention. If a guy makes a joke in a forum post, he's a funny guy. If a girl makes a joke in a forum post, she's an attention whore. If a guy makes a good argument in a forum post, he's a smart guy. If a girl makes a good argument in a forum post, she's doing it for attention. She's ESPECIALLY an attention whore if people like her or agree with her.

* Similarly, people assume that the only reason anyone likes you is because they're one of your fanboys. So people don't genuinely think women or funny or make good arguments, they're just fanboys. If other girls like you, then it's because women form cliques -- even if in the previous breath they were saying that women are all catty and hate each other.

* Even if people tend to assume you're male from your writing style, once they know your gender, some people tend to read everything in the shrillest way possible. You could literally copy and paste a guy's post and get an entirely different reaction.

* All of this applies to underage girls. I've played alongside 14, 15, 16 year old girls who would deal with all this horrible stuff every day. Often worse stuff really, since they didn't yet have the best handle on how to deal with it.

Want to hear some scary shit? One 14 year old girl whose father also played had to change her character's name and transfer her to another server because some guy was e-stalking her. If her real life name (or her father's name) were next to her character's name in forum posts she wouldn't be very safe right now, would she?

* For all of the above, it doesn't really matter much if you're married or in a long-term relationship. It doesn't stop anyone. The only real difference is that if you're married, people assume you're old and unattractive and probably controlling. (I stopped playing WoW when I was 24, and I'm about to turn 26.) Within my guild there was pretty much no fear that I was going to try to woo my way to anything at least, but outside the guild people keep thinking whatever they want.

I was really lucky to be in a guild with guys that AREN'T assholes, so I had a reason to keep playing even if random forum people would be assholes sometimes. For whatever reason, our guild was full of mostly rational, unprejudiced people; we would reject applicants that weren't those things. We were in a position where we could be that picky, but most guilds don't do well enough to get enough apps that they can afford to reject people for character flaws. Once our GM actually got on an app's case for creeping out the girls in the guild -- just basically warning him that he was not making us feel flattered -- and then he kicked him out of the guild a few days later when nothing changed; that GM had a pretty good understanding of what was skeezy and why we shouldn't have to put up with it. We were lucky for that, because the guy in question wasn't being crass or lewd, he was just kind of a stereotypical dorky guy who thought women liked to be treated like Renaissance maidens instead of people; he couldn't seem to understand we didn't want him to flirt with us even in a "harmless" complimentary way, that we just wanted to be left the fuck alone. One of the women in question wasn't even afraid to be really mean and condescending to him about it, and he STILL kept it up because he was too awkward to know how to do anything else. This is the sort of stuff we had to deal with.

Ours was an extraordinary guild, though; we've gone to great lengths to see each other IRL even since most of us quit WoW, and most guilds don't have that kind of protection and camaraderie. In most guilds no one would think there was anything wrong with that guy's behavior and we'd be too "sensitive" if we complained about it. For many girls, the solution is either to grit their teeth through it and say very little -- which isn't feasible if you want to raid, because any decent raiding guild requires you use a voice client. But if you don't want to raid, you can have male characters and just never disclose your gender. My primary character was female, but after seeing how that went, I made all my alts male just to get a goddamn break when I needed it. Several times when I quit the game it was because it had become too draining to deal with anymore; guys can just log in and have fun and log off, but girls have to log in and deal with everyone who wants to talk to them. After a while logging in meant I would spend all night typing while flying aimlessly around Shattrath instead of actually doing anything fun. I'm an introvert so I was especially worn down. You can't just not respond to people because they keep trying, or they think you're stuck-up, or they're seriously emotionally fragile and you really don't want to hurt their feelings, and they can always ask someone else in your guild to make sure you're not AFK. It sucks. I mean, you can do all that anyway, if you want to get harassed.

The only way to play it if you're not going to lay low is to have a pristine rep, and it's constant work. I accepted that as a sacrifice for not hiding my gender and wanting to actually be able to talk to my friends on the forums like guys get to do. I never thought it was fair but I was able to weigh the consequences and make a choice. But if you attach real life names to characters, a woman pretty much can't post on the forums anymore unless they're willing to deal with all of the above -- plus more, since everyone can look up her name on Facebook and pick apart her appearance! All the women that lie low for their own sanity aren't going to have that choice anymore, even if all they want to do is help someone out on the forums, or make a post looking for or selling something, or what-have-you.

2. Minorities will get harassed.

A sizable portion of gamers are racist. (Sexism, racism, and homophobia are what make me most uncomfortable about the gaming community; in a serious way I feel more connection to gamers than any other group, so this pains me. Plenty of gamers are none of these things and I love them to death, but I think those same gamers realize what a huge problem it is in the community in general.) An even bigger portion of gamers are just not very racially sensitive -- they'll use "nigger" or "Jew" a lot, for example, even if they don't think they actively feel anything against those groups, because they think it's funny. In the same way that saying stuff is "gay" is especially pronounced in the gamer community, even the people that say slurs ironically or by force of habit inadvertently make actual bigots in the gaming community feel empowered because they don't realize other people don't mean those things like they do. It is much more common and acceptable to express racist opinions in the gaming community than society at large.

Plus -- I hate to say this -- I've found that a lot of people in that latter category who don't feel like they're actively prejudiced against minorities actually do think black and Mexican people in particular are stupid. I've realized that about some gamers I'm friends with and it's not a great feeling; you have to hang around them a while before something comes up that makes you notice it, like how they interpret a comment they overheard from a black person, that sort of thing. It's usually people that grew up around only other white people; gamers that grew up around minorities tend to use the slurs because they're using to trading friendly jabs with minority friends, and they aren't actually racist and know when not to use the slurs. Unfortunately, the obliviously racist gamers especially tend not to understand why you wouldn't want to say those things even jokingly to a minority you don't know; they don't think they're racist, so their reasoning is that people shouldn't take offense. But it can get really uncomfortable when it's clear to everyone else that they actually are a little racist and don't realize it, and it's just as hurtful as a real racist remark when they're trying to be funny and the assumption shines through anyway.

Putting people's real life name on their posts just encourages people to drag their race into the discussion, whether they're being hateful or just think they're being funny. I've seen Black and Hispanic gamers in particular get a whole lot of crap already and they're often not forthcoming about their ethnicity. It doesn't even necessarily come through on voice clients so it's easier than hiding gender. Just like I don't blame women who chose to lay low so they can have fun playing the game instead of being drained by dealing with people, I don't blame minorities who do the same thing. They shouldn't have to deal with people's bullshit because their last name is Rodriguez or Goldstein.

And if anyone wants to say, "Well real life is like that," fantastic. WoW is a game. It's not supposed to be serious business. People play games as long as they're fun, and being harassed isn't fun. It's no one's moral obligation to be the banner-carrier for justice 24/7. If someone wants to make their gender or race (or sexual orientation) known in WoW so they can chip away at the problems in the gaming community, that's certainly praiseworthy. My guild was great so I and the other women and minorities and gays in the guild could feel a little more comfortable being open about that stuff. But it shouldn't be thrust on anyone.

3. You don't have to be a troll to not want your name attached to your posts. There is still a bit of a gaming stigma, and there is an especially strong WoW stigma.

I have friends that keep their WoW-playing secret. A lot of friends, actually. I think it's kind of silly but I understand the impetus because just like the gaming community has a different culture, they spend their real lives in cultures that stigmatize gaming. Some people deal with constant bullshit in MMOs because they're female or a minority or gay; some people deal with constant bullshit IRL because everyone they know thinks only losers or people with mental problems play MMOs. Several people in our guild were in the armed services and kept WoW a secret because the attitude toward MMOs was so negative there. Other people have relatives who literally think things like WoW are demonic.

Hell, even within WoW there is a stigma against playing it too much. I was in the top raiding guild on our server and we were constantly having to deal with people saying, "You're only doing so well because you play so much!" We were constantly struggling to finish everything for the week in two evenings just so we could say, "NUH UH, we play less than you do, you're just bad!" And then guildies would gossip about the few people in the guild that really did play constantly -- there were always a couple. If someone had some awesome item on their alt that you wanted for your main, well: at least you weren't a loser that played everyday like they did -- I mean you get laid at least, goddamn, you're too busy being cool IRL to have a good alt. Playing WoW is considered waaaay less cool than playing anything else.

Outside of WoW it's worse: for non-gamers, WoW may as well be the only MMO anyone has ever heard of, and they haven't heard good things; finding out someone plays WoW isn't like finding out they played Uncharted. Employers who don't know any better might feel apprehensive about hiring someone who plays WoW since the stereotype is that WoW players are irresponsible and end up losing their jobs. Sure, every now and then it might work in someone's favor -- I've had bosses who play WoW, and some of my husband's NASA colleagues do too -- but it should be someone's choice whether they reveal that sort of thing.

Again, I'm all for being open about things in order to change attitudes, but it shouldn't be forced on anyone. You don't have to actually feel shame for playing WoW to want to avoid dealing with bullshit from judgmental people; I'd argue that anyone who doesn't feel shame would be making a rational decision to avoid engaging with small-minded people on the topic. I mean, how many of us avoid talking about politics or religion? Most of us aren't ashamed, we just know it would be a contentious waste of time if our granny knew we we didn't hate gay people. And for the smaller subset that actually do feel shame -- and yes, I know some of those too -- "you shouldn't be such a wuss" doesn't outweigh privacy anyway. People should be able to be wusses if they want.

4. A lot of parents are going to have their teenager's posts linked to their name because their name is on the account.

Best case scenario is that the teenager is a perfect angel on the WoW forums, and everyone still sees a ton of WoW posts attached to the parent's name in Google searches. Bad for all the reasons above.

Less-than-best case scenario is the teenager engages in some colorful gamer humor, which, even if it isn't racist, is probably mildly sexual and insulting. Not really something you want appearing in an employer's Google search, or that you want your friends and family finding.

Worst case scenario is the child says some crazy shit and the parent looks crazy.

5. People who don't play WoW will get harassed or have WoW associated with them if someone else with the same name posts on the WoW forums.

6. If you're able to easily lie about your name in the forums to get out of privacy concerns, that just opens another can of worms.

7. It probably won't do that much to stop trolling.

If you're able to change what name is displayed, it won't stop trolling at all. But even if you can't change what name shows up, plenty of people already get a second account to post from and will keep doing that; this, of course, is also an option for privacy-conscious people, but they shouldn't have to pay more money when they're not doing anything wrong.

Plus there are people who don't care if you know their real name as long as you don't know what character they play; they're worried about in-game ramifications if people don't like them -- i.e. people won't let them into their group, or their guild, or they won't be able to sell anything. So while real life privacy is important to a lot of people, in-game privacy is just as important to others. (I think someone already noted upthread that some people prefer to keep all their forum activity separate from their main character, even when they're not trolling.)

Some people happily troll from their main already and just don't care that other people don't like them. When people troll on their main they're usually pretty polarizing and end up with as many friends as enemies, and some people are comfortable with that. My server had a guy that would be a troll on his main and I actually thought he was pretty funny, in a guilty pleasure sort of way; he would mostly bait people that were already raging about something stupid so it was hard to feel bad for them.

Will it stop some trolling, though? Probably. So would better moderation. So would a lot of things. Speaking of which...

8. There is a better solution.

Just let people see what characters are on the same account as the character that's posting. It doesn't violate their privacy nearly as much as the current solution and it would be enough to deter most people from trolling because they don't want their trolling associated with their main. All that'd be left is people trolling from dummy accounts, which it sounds like they can do under the new system anyway, so Blizzard would just make some extra money off crazy cowards.

Why in this world they thought this would be more appropriate is beyond me. I can't think of a single forum that I use that requires you to display you first and last name with your posts, and WoW sure as hell isn't important enough to warrant that.

posted by Nattie at 8:15 PM on July 6 [342 favorites]

Shamlessly ripped off from The slacktivist...

2010-07-05T08:13:00.000-05:00

Ask the Economist
DEAR ECONOMIST: Due to a recent series of events, my wife and I have been granted access to a long-term line of credit, allowing us to borrow $500,000 at 2.97 percent. I'd like your advice about how best to invest this money.

We plan, first of all, to pay off our mortgage -- a 30-year loan on which we're now paying 5 percent. After that we plan to pay off the auto loans on both of our cars.

Our home, like every home, has some long-deferred maintenance issues -- aging plumbing, several dying trees threatening to drop heavy branches or to fall onto the house, the early signs of what could one day be very expensive water damage to a part of the foundation. We figure it's cheaper in the long run to deal with all of that now, rather than risking the inevitability of future calamity, and this inexpensive line of credit will allow us to do that.

Our home was built in the 1960s, so it's also badly in need of upgrades to higher standards of insulation and energy use. An energy audit tells us that investing in such improvements will yield savings that outpace the 2.97-percent cost of the line of credit. Along the same lines, this money will allow us to invest in solar panels for our roof -- a step that will over time more than pay for itself and bring us closer to energy independence.

What other advice do you have for us for investing this windfall?

-- T. BILL, NEW DEAL, PA.

DEAR SPENDTHRIFT: Let me get this straight -- you've already got a 30-year mortgage and two auto loans and you're thinking about taking on even more debt? Are you insane? Your household debt level is obviously already too high -- that's why you haven't been able to attend to the basic maintenance of the infrastructure of your home.

With massive debt like yours, the last thing you should be considering is taking on more, so Just Say No to the lure of that line of credit.

Instead, concentrate on reducing your overall debt first by getting rid of one of those cars and the car payments that come with it. Many readers claim they need such debt-financed transportation to "get to work," but that only shows the lack of discipline that comes from an addiction to debt-driven spending. If your household cannot afford two auto loans then clearly your household cannot afford two jobs.

One of you will have to quit working until you demonstrate the financial discipline to pay off the first auto loan. Then and only then should you contemplate purchasing a second car or taking on the expense of a second commute.

And frankly until you grow up and demonstrate that kind of fiscal discipline, all this talk of energy efficiency and solar power is just a pipe dream you can't afford. For goodness' sake, think of your grandchildren.

Sincerely,

-- THE ECONOMIST

I really love the sarcasm over there...

Sam Harris makes a joke and a point

2010-07-03T12:59:00.001-05:00

Elvis is everywhere...

Millions and millions of bad computers....

2010-07-02T16:17:00.000-05:00

After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.

Just like Dell, bullshit right out of the box. I gave up on them when my last Dell, purchased in the mid-1990s had a bad Zip drive. It took me a year to get them to send me a replacement drive for the under-warranty computer. And, only then, because I bought a replacement drive to prove to them that their drive was bad.

Dell, however, had actually sent the university, in Austin, desktop PCs riddled with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing the malfunctions. Dell sold millions of these computers from 2003 to 2005 to major companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, institutions like the Mayo Clinic and small businesses.

And it gets worse, even when confronted by massive failures

:“The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time,” said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia that had bought dozens. “It’s unheard-of, but Dell didn’t seem to recognize this as a problem at the time.”

Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break. Still, the employees tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed customers to rely on trouble-prone machines, putting their businesses at risk. Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute.

Dell's solution has been, of course, to not make it good. That'd cost money.

SO the victims have to go to the Courts. The taxpayer-funded Courts. The ones so many lib-nuts would rather us not use, but instead have us trust to the "wisdom of the market."

Considering it's taken YEARS to hear of this massive, fraudulent problem (known to Dell management) I wonder where the "the wisdom of the market" people come up with the idea that people will know. And it gets worse:

The documents chronicling the failure of the PCs also help explain the decline of one of America’s most celebrated and admired companies. Perhaps more than any other company, Dell fought to lower the price of computers.

Its “Dell model” became synonymous with efficiency, outsourcing and tight inventories, and was taught at the Harvard Business School and other top-notch management schools as a paragon of business smarts and outthinking the competition.

“Dell, as a company, was the model everyone focused on 10 years ago,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor of international business administration at Harvard. “But when you combine missing a variety of shifts in the industry with management turmoil, it’s hard not to have the shine come off your reputation.”

For the last seven years, the company has been plagued by serious problems, including misreading the desires of its customers, poor customer service, suspect product quality and improper accounting.

Dell has tried to put those problems behind it. In 2005, it announced it was taking a $300 million charge related, in part, to fixing and replacing the troubled computers. Dell set aside $100 million this month to handle a potential settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over a five-year-old investigation into its books, which will most likely result in federal accusations of fraud and misconduct against the company’s founder, Michael S. Dell.

So he shipped bad computers, cooked the books (with the help of the auditors who were, according to "market wisdom" are supposed to prevent book cooking) and the Dell Model, so beloved of the laissez-faire class has been shown to be a load of crap.

You know, when I was in college they used different models... All of which, btw, fell out of favor when it was found those models also didn't work or were based on externalities not considered by the professors...

In fact, Toyota was one of those models. As was Sony and many, many other Japanese firms... All of whom have had at least one major crash-burn-and-die since they were "the best Company ever."

::::

Oh, btw, if you own an Apple iPhone and you've wondered why it's reception sucked. It was Apple, not ATT. Not that ATT hasn't sucked in general. But, apparently, the antenna in the iPhone's antenna isn't great shakes and Apple had a software glitch that added two bars to the reception strength. This gave people the impression they were getting good service, even when they weren't.

Are Reality Shows Setting Unrealistic Standards For Skanks?

2010-07-02T08:29:00.000-05:00

I love The Onion...

The Pope needs a miracle

2010-06-29T21:44:00.000-05:00

I love Pat Condell...

Supreme Court Upholds Public University Nondiscrimination Policy:

2010-06-29T08:29:00.000-05:00

I'm all for the ruling as expressed in the majority opinion. If you're going to use taxpayer resources and student fees taken from people's tuition, you've got to give them the opportunity to join your club.That's just common sense. What I don't understand is this dissent:

In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, "I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that today's decision is a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country." He was supported by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

How? Nothing is stopping these people from being homophobic bigots. Nothing.

Except that they probably don't have the balls to stand by their convictions when confronted with actual gays or those that believe in actual equal rights for all... But cowardice in expressing one's opinion is not Constitutionally protected.

An irony in this also happens to be that these people also tend to run to the wing-nut/tea-party edge. They hate big government and will preach its evils. Even as they're going to Hastings (UCSF Law School), a publicly-supported college, and using taxpayer courts to deny equal rights to others...

It's like they have chronic tin-ears or something...

Free Markets vs Regulated Capitalism

2010-06-28T10:25:00.000-05:00

I got my truck smogged today. It's a 1994 Ford Ranger.

Here, in Tennessee, we have smog stations that are run, through competitive out-sourcing, by the various counties. It cost me $9.00 to get my car smogged, including the certificate that tells the State my car passed.

In California, where the State controls licensing, but not profiteering, that would have cost me $45 for the test and another $10 for the "smog certificate."

The tests are the same. The equipment is the same. The employees are equally drone-ish and low-skilled. Really, everything is the same, save one small detail -- State intervention.

In California, with it's laissez-faire approach to smog testing, they pay five times what I pay. Whereas, in Tennessee, where the State, through the bidding process, force companies to be efficient and low-cost for this mandatory, essential service.

Now, you can say that they're "faster" in California. But they're not. The reviews I read typically run 15-20 minutes. The only time I spend 15-20 minutes going through the process is if I'm an idiot and do it the last day of the month. If I go early in the month, like I should, I cruise through in less than five minutes.

So, when I hear libertarians/small-government types ramble on about the "virtues of the free market" I shake my head and laugh. If these people would pull their heads out of their asses they'd see that governments, when run by people who want the government to run correctly, work quite well, over-all.

OTOH, if you hire people that don't believe in regulation... Well, we have financial sector melt-downs, Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc... And $50 smog checks for a two-minute procedure.

Brad DeLong writes:

2010-06-18T12:14:00.000-05:00

Microeconomic and Macroeconomic Excess Supply

In our normal, microeconomic world it is not a big deal when excess demand emerges in one market and excess supply emerges in another--it is, in fact, a good thing, because it induces shifts in production that make the structure of what is made correspond more closely to what people want (or perhaps to what the people with money want). There is excess demand in one industry. Sales exceed production, inventories fly off the shelves, and cupboards and supply chains become bare. Producers and entrepreneurs see large profit opportunities if they expand production to rebuild inventories and satisfy higher demand--and they do. They expand factories. They run more shifts. They offer workers more money for overtime, they offer workers more money to stay with their firm, and they offer workers not in the industry more money to come on over.

Where does the added supply of workers to swell the ranks of those in the industry whose products are in excess demand come from? From the industry whose products are in excess supply. There, producers see inventories piling up on their shelves. They are forced to liquidate products and lines of business at a loss. They are forced to lay off some workers, and lay off others lest they lose all their capital.

Overall unemployment may rise a bit or for a while as this process of adjustment takes place--it depends whether entrepreneurs and producers in the expanding industry where excess demand emerges are more or less on the ball, keen-eyed, and keen-witted than those in the industry where excess supply emerges and where businesses shrink. But the process of adjustment, even with frictional unemployment while it takes place, is a good thing--it makes us all richer. Attempts to stop it in its tracks or short-circuit its mechanisms are counterproductive and harmful. The end of the process comes and excess demand and supply are eliminated when there are more people making the things that are wanted more and fewer people making the things that are wanted less.

But in macroeconomics things are different. The excess supply is economy-wide--throughout all commodity markets, producing supply in excess of demand for goods, services, labor, and capacity. Producers and entrepreneurs respond to an aggregate demand shortfall just as individual producers respond to a particular shortfall of demand for their products: they hold sales to liquidate inventories, they cut prices, they cut wages to try to preserve margins, they fire workers. In the macroeconomic case, the dynamic process that leads to the elimination of excess supply and its counterbalancing excess demand in the microeconomic case gets underway--or, rather, half of it gets underway.

The problem is that the set of industries that are shrinking is made up of pretty-much-everybody. There are no industries that are expanding. The excess demand is not for the products of a goods-and-services producing industry that can rapidly ramp-up production by employing lots more labor. The excess demand is in finance: for means-of-payment, or safe high-quality assets, or for long-duration sales vehicles. There is a rise in unemployment from the flow out of goods-and-services producing industries where the excess supply has appeared. But there is no countervailing flow out of unemployment. How do you put large numbers of people to work making more Federal Reserve notes or increasing the supply of liquid assets that are means-of-payment that are the reserve deposits of banks? How do you shift the flow of production to instantaneously raise the stock of long-duration assets, of claims to wealth that are shares in companies with secure long-run prospects that are vehicles for moving purchasing power across time from the present to the future? You can't.

Thus workers fall into unemployment from the excess supply in the goods and services industries. But no workers are pulled out of unemployment by expanding production in growing goods-and-services industries. Incomes fall as the unemployed sit idle. Asset prices jump in the financial markets until markets clear. But markets clear and excess demand in finance is eliminated with incomes reduced by the amount of the lost earnings of the unemployed. The excess supply in goods-and-services is also eliminated in this rationed-equilibrium situation: inventories are no longer growing--but that is because the unemployed are not making anything.

And there the economy sits.

Whether this is an "equilibrium" or not is a matter of taste and definition.

Supply equals demand market by market in the markets for goods, services, and assets. There are no falling inventories or rising inventories to signal that any branch of production should be expanded or contracted.

There are, however, lots of unemployed workers who would like jobs. Their existence should aid employers in their bargaining with workers. Wages should then fall. And when wages fall higher profits should induce employers to expand production even without any increase in spending. Eventually wages should fall low enough that the economy returns to full employment and to normal levels of production and capacity utilization even without any increase in asset supplies.

Or will it? Falling wages means that households have even less money. Some of them will default on their loans. Some banks will find that their reserves are no longer large enough to provide an ample cushion because of these loan defaults. They will cut back the number of deposits they accept--and the money supply will shrink as a result, producing another round of excess demand for financial assets. Or if they are not deposit- but are themselves bond-financed their bonds will suddenly become shaky in quality, and we will see the emergence of an excess demand for safe, high-quality financial assets. In either case, Walras's Law will kick in again and this excess demand will be reflected in another round of excess supply for goods, services, labor, and capacity. Relying on nominal deflation of wages to restore full employment runs the risk of creating yet another shock of excess demand in finance and excess supply in goods and services to deepen the depression. The hoped-for cure's first effect is to worsen the disease.

We trust the market to take care of a microeconomic excess-demand excess-supply situation in a few industries in a productive way in a short period of time. Do we trust the market to do the same way to a macroeconomic imbalance, to quickly resolve a depression in a productive way without help? No, we do not. Rather than relying on economy-wide deflation to eventually restore balance, we should pursue other alternatives.

This is basic, obvious stuff. Which is why I get so angry when I here people rant about "the deficit will ruin our economy."

No. It. Won't.

From: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/#

REGULATION VACATION CELEBRATION!

2010-06-14T18:41:00.000-05:00

OMG! I've been saying Somalia is Libertarian Paradise for years!

Tim Minchin - Pope Song

2010-06-12T06:39:00.000-05:00

365,578
views 365,578
views fraserdldavidson — April 29, 2010 — My friend Tim recently recorded his own tribute to Pope Benedict XVI in time for his state visit to the UK. I an... fraserdldavidson — April 29, 2010 — My friend Tim recently recorded his own tribute to Pope Benedict XVI in time for his state visit to the UK. I animated it.

For those of you who have been asking, here are the lyrics.

Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the motherfucker,
Fuck the motherfucker hes a fucking motherfucker.
Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the fucking fucker,
Fuck the motherfucker hes a total fucking fucker
Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the motherfucker,
Fuck the mother fucker, fuck him, fuck the motherfucker.
Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the motherfucking pope.

Fuck the motherfucker, and fuck you motherfucker
If you think that motherfucker is sacred.
If you cover for another motherfucker whos a kiddy-fucker,
Fuck you, youre no better than the motherfucking rapist.
And if you dont like the swearing that this motherfucker forced from me
And reckon it shows moral or intellectual paucity
Then fuck you motherfucker, this is language one employs
When one is fucking cross about fuckers fucking boys

I dont give a fuck if calling the pope a motherfucker
Means you unthinkingly brand me an unthinking apostate.
This has nowt to do with other fucking godly motherfuckers
Im not interested right now in fucking scriptural debate.
There are other fucking songs and there are other fucking ways,
Ill be a religious apologist on other fucking days,
But the fact remains if you protect a SINGLE kiddy fucker
Then Pope or Prince or Plumber, youre a fucking mother fucker.

See I dont give a fuck what any other motherfucker
Believes about Jesus and his motherfucking mother.
Ive no problem with the spiritual beliefs of all these fuckers
While those beliefs dont impact on the happiness of others,
But if you build your church on claims of fucking moral authority
And with threats of hell impose it on others in society,
Then you, you motherfuckers, can expect some fucking wrath
When it turns out youve been fucking us in our motherfucking asses.

So fuck the motherfucker, and fuck you motherfucker
If youre still a motherfucking papist.
If he covered for a single motherfucker whos a kiddy-fucker,
Fuck the motherfucker, hes as evil as the rapist.
And if you look into your motherfucking heart and tell me true
If this motherfucking stupid fucking song offended you,
With its filthy fucking language and its fucking direspect,
If it made you feel angry, go ahead and write a letter,
But if you find me more offensive than the fucking possibility
The pope protected priests when they were getting fucking fiddly
Then listen to me motherfucker - this here is a fact,
You are just as morally misguided as that motherfucking,
Power-hungry, self-aggrandized bigot in the stupid fucking hat.
Category:
Comedy

Nirvana - Lake Of Fire (MTV Unplugged)

2010-06-12T06:32:00.000-05:00

Must of been the wrong prayers...

2010-05-29T07:19:00.000-05:00

Coleman's manager John Alcanter confirmed to AFP earlier Friday that the actor was in a critical condition after suffering a brain hemorrhage and was unconscious on life support.

"He's on life support. He's unconscious right now," Alcanter said. "We're grateful for the prayers we have received."

Would have been better if they'd had better techniques for this difficult issue which has a very, very high mortality rate. Unfortunately, medicine, in this area, is fairly primitive and they couldn't save him:

Former child actor Gary Coleman, known to millions as the star of hit sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes," died in hospital on Friday after suffering a brain hemorrhage, CNN reported Friday.

Coleman, 42, was hospitalized at the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center on Wednesday after suffering a head injury following a fall at his home near Provo, according to US media reports.

Long Time Coming...

2010-05-24T15:08:00.000-05:00

MMR doctor struck from register
By Nick Triggle
Health reporter, BBC News

The doctor who first suggested a link between MMR vaccinations and autism is to be struck off the medical register.

The General Medical Council found Dr Andrew Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct over the way he carried out his controversial research.

It follows a GMC ruling earlier this year that he had acted unethically.

Dr Wakefield, who is now based in the US, has consistently claimed the allegations are unfair. He now says he will appeal against the verdict.

His 1998 Lancet study caused vaccination rates to plummet, resulting in a rise in measles - but the findings were later discredited.

The GMC ruled in January Dr Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in conducting his research, but under its procedures the sanctions are made at a later date.

The case did not investigate whether Dr Wakefield's findings were right or wrong, instead it focused on the methods of research.

The panel concluded that it is the only sanction that is appropriate to protect patients and is in the wider public interest

During the two-and-a-half-year case, the longest in GMC history, he was accused of carrying out invasive tests on vulnerable children which were against their best interests.

The GMC also said Dr Wakefield, who was working at London's Royal Free Hospital as a gastroenterologist at the time, did not have the ethical approval or relevant qualifications for such tests.

And the panel hearing the case took exception with the way he gathered blood samples. Dr Wakefield paid children £5 for the samples at his son's birthday party.

It also said Dr Wakefield should have disclosed the fact that he had been paid to advise solicitors acting for parents who believed their children had been harmed by the MMR.

Serious misconduct

In making the verdict on the sanctions, Dr Surendra Kumar, the panel's chairman, said Dr Wakefield had "brought the medical profession into disrepute" and his behaviour constituted "multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct".

In total, he was found guilty of more than 30 charges.

Dr Kumar also explained the reasoning for striking Dr Wakefield off.

"The panel concluded that it is the only sanction that is appropriate to protect patients and is in the wider public interest, including the maintenance of public trust and confidence in the profession, and is proportionate to the serious and wide-ranging findings made against him."

Dr Wakefield has consistently claimed the allegations against him were "unfounded and unjust".

As the GMC announced its sanctions, Dr Wakefield said: "Efforts to discredit and silence me through the GMC process have provided a screen to shield the government from exposure on the MMR vaccine scandal."

Two of his former colleagues at the Royal Free were also ruled to have broken guidelines.

Professor John Walker-Smith and Professor Simon Murch both helped Dr Wakefield carry out the research.

Professor Walker-Smith, who is 73 and has been retired for the past 10 years, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and struck off the register. Professor Murch was found not guilty of serious professional misconduct despite there not being ethical approval for the research.

In explaining this decision, Dr Kumar said he took into account the fact that Professor Murch stopped carrying out tests on children for the study because he did not think they were necessary.

Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the scare over the vaccine had done "untold damage to the UK vaccination programme".

"We cannot stress too strongly that all children and young people should have the MMR vaccine."

The Department of Health reiterated this. A spokesman said: "The safety of MMR has been endorsed through numerous studies in many countries."

The guy is a sleaze. I just think he should be rotting in jail, not merely loosing his medical license, for putting the health of millions at risk so he could profit off the patent of his single-shot measles vaccine by making people fear the MMR vaccine.

Viral Stupidity...

2010-05-20T07:15:00.000-05:00

The original, somewhat frightening, campaign ad:

The funny Poe spoof:

We're Better Than That, Too!!!! w/ Dale Peterson - watch more funny videos

I did not know you could actually do this...

2010-05-17T18:05:00.000-05:00

It's just amazing... For it's utter stupidity...

The Next Victim...

2010-05-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

These are wild animals. They may be tolerating the "Lion Whisperer" today... But, someday, he's going to be dinner...

Like Timothy Treadwell, the "Grizzly Man" who was killed and eaten (along with his girlfriend) by brown bears in Katami National Park back in 2003, it's only a matter of time...

Wow...

2010-05-12T12:09:00.000-05:00

Libertarian Medicine at its finest:

Nailed: Dr Andrew Wakefield and the MMR - autism fraud

Summary of Brian Deer's investigation into a threat to children's health

With a series of stories spread over six years, Brian Deer has pursued a landmark public interest investigation for The Sunday Times of London and the United Kingdom's Channel 4 Television network into allegations - first made in Britain - linking the three-in-one measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) with claims of a terrifying new syndrome of bowel and brain damage in children. These allegations led to a decade-long health crisis in the UK, and sparked epidemics of fear, guilt and infectious diseases, which have been exported to the United States and other developed countries, spawning every kind of concern over vaccinations.

Almost incredibly, the trigger for what would become a worldwide controversy was a single scientific research paper published in a medical journal - the Lancet - in February 1998. Written by a 41-year-old laboratory researcher, Dr Andrew Wakefield, and co-authored by a dozen other doctors, it reported on the cases of 12 anonymous children with developmental disorders, who were admitted to a paediatric bowel unit at the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead, north London, between July 1996 and February 1997.

Backed by a press conference and a video news-release, the five-page paper’s claims received huge media attention, and were followed by a sustained attack on the vaccine. This included further publications by Wakefield, criticising MMR, and led to an unprecedented collapse in public confidence in the shot, which, since the late 1980s in the UK and the early 1970s in the US, has been given almost universally to children, soon after they are one year old, almost eradicating measles and rubella.

The prime cause of the alarm was findings in the paper claiming that the parents of two thirds of the 12 children blamed MMR for the sudden onset of what was described as a combination of both an inflammatory bowel disease and what Wakefield called "regressive autism", in which language and basic skills were said to have been lost. Most disturbingly, the first behavioural symptoms were reported to have appeared within only 14 days of the shot.

Although the research involved only a dozen children, and its results have never been replicated, many medical breakthroughs have begun with small-scale observations, and, if true, Wakefield's findings might have been the first snapshot of a hidden epidemic of devastating injuries. "It's a moral issue for me," he said at the 1998 press conference, where he called for a boycott of the triple MMR, in favour of breaking it up into single shots, to be given at yearly intervals. "I can't support the continued use of these three vaccines, given in combination, until this issue has been resolved."

As the doctor campaigned, UK vaccination rates slumped: below the level needed to keep measles at bay. Even Tony Blair became embroiled in the controversy when Wakefield supporters suggested - the Blairs say wrongly - that the prime minister’s youngest son was not vaccinated with MMR. Meanwhile in America, a ferocious anti-vaccine movement took off, after Wakefield appeared on the CBS network's 60 Minutes programme in November 2000, speaking of an "epidemic of autism". This was followed by claims that all vaccines are suspect: either due to their content, or because of an increase in the number given to children.

"In 1983 the shot schedule was ten. That's when autism was one in 10,000. Now there's 36, and autism is one in 150," argued American actress Jenny McCarthy, who blamed MMR for her own son’s autism, and gained the highest profile in the US movement. "All arrows point to one direction."

Andrew Wakefield's role unmasked

But, as journalists queued to report on parents' fears, Brian Deer was assigned to investigate the crisis, and unearthed a scandal of astounding proportions. He discovered that, far from being based on any findings, the public alarm had no scientific basis whatsoever. Rather, Wakefield had been payrolled to create evidence against the shot, and, while planning extraordinary business schemes, meant to profit from the scare, he had changed and misreported data on the anonymous children to rig the results published in the journal.

Before Deer’s inquiries, Wakefield had appeared to all the world to be an independent, if controversial, researcher. Tall and square-headed, with hooded eyes and a booming voice, he was the son of doctors (a neurologist and a family practitioner), had grown up in Bath, a prosperous, west-of-England spa town, and joined the Royal Free in November 1988, after training in Toronto, Canada. His demeanour was languid - he was privately educated - and, born in 1956, he was a lingering example of the presumed honour of the upper middle class.

But the investigation discovered that, while Wakefield held himself out to be a dispassionate scientist, two years before the Lancet paper was published - and before any of the 12 children were even referred to the hospital - he had been hired by a lawyer, Richard Barr: a jobbing solicitor in the small eastern English town of King's Lynn, who hoped to raise a speculative class action lawsuit against drug companies which manufactured MMR.

Unlike expert witnesses, who give professional advice and opinions, Wakefield negotiated a lucrative contract with Barr, then aged 48, to conduct clinical and scientific research. The goal was to find evidence of what the two men called "a new syndrome", intended to be the centrepiece of (later failed) litigation on behalf of an eventual 1,600 families, mostly recruited through media stories. This, publicly undisclosed, role for Wakefield created the grossest conflict of interest, and the exposure of it by Deer, in February 2004, led to public uproar in Britain, the retraction of the Lancet report's conclusions section, and, from July 2007, the longest-ever professional misconduct hearing by the UK's General Medical Council.

Barr [audio] paid the doctor with money from the UK legal aid fund: run by the government to give poorer people access to justice. Wakefield charged at the extraordinary rate of £150 an hour - billed through a company of his wife's - eventually totalling, for generic work alone, what the UK Legal Services Commission, pressed under the freedom of information act, said was £435,643 (about $750,000 US), plus expenses. These hourly fees - revealed in The Sunday Times in December 2006 - gave the doctor a direct, personal, but undeclared, financial interest in the results of his research: totalling more than eight times his reported annual salary, and creating an incentive not only for him to launch the alarm, but to keep it going for as long as possible.

In addition to the personal payments was an initial award of £55,000, applied for by Wakefield in June 1996 - but never declared to the Lancet, as it should have been - for the express purpose of conducting the research later submitted to the journal. This start-up funding was part of a staggering £18m of taxpayers' money eventually shared among a group of doctors and lawyers, working under Barr's and Wakefield's direction, to try to prove that MMR caused the previously unheard-of "syndrome". Yet more surprising, Wakefield had predicted the existence of such a syndrome - which he would later dub "autistic enterocolitis" - before he carried out the research.

This Barr-Wakefield deal was the foundation of the vaccine crisis, both in Britain and throughout the world. "I have mentioned to you before that the prime objective is to produce unassailable evidence in court so as to convince a court that these vaccines are dangerous," the lawyer reminded the doctor in a confidential letter, six months before the Lancet report.

And, if this was not enough to cast doubt on the research's objectivity, The Sunday Times and Channel 4 investigation unearthed another shocking conflict of interest. In June 1997 - nearly nine months before the press conference at which Wakefield called for single vaccines - he had filed a patent on products, including his own supposedly "safer" single measles vaccine, which only stood any prospect of success if confidence in MMR was damaged. Wakefield denied any vaccine plans, but his proposed shot, and a network of companies intended to raise venture capital for purported inventions - including a vaccine, testing methods, and strange potential miracle cures for autism - were set out in confidential documents. One business was later awarded £800,000 from the legal aid fund on the strength of now-discredited data which he had supplied.

Behind the veil of confidentiality

As with the researcher, so too with his subjects. They also were not what they appeared to be. In the Lancet, the 12 children (11 boys and one girl) were held out to be merely a routine series of kids with developmental disorders and digestive symptoms, needing care from the London hospital. That so many of their parents blamed problems on one common vaccine, understandably, caused public concern. But Deer discovered that the children (aged between 2½ and 9½) had been recruited through MMR campaign groups, and that, at the time of their admission, most of their parents were clients and contacts of the lawyer, Barr. None of the 12 lived in London. Two were brothers. Two attended the same doctor's office, 280 miles from the Royal Free. Three were patients at another hospital clinic. One was flown in from the United States.

The investigation revealed, moreover, that the paper's incredible finding of a sudden onset of autism after vaccination was a sham: laundering into medical literature, as apparent facts, the unverified, often vague, memories and assertions of a group of unnamed parents who, unknown to the journal and its readers, were bound to blame MMR when they came to the hospital, because that was why they had been brought there. Wakefield, a former trainee gut surgeon, denied this. But the true number of families accusing MMR wasn't eight, as the paper said: it was 11 of the 12 (later all 12) and, in some cases, records noted the children's legal involvement before they were even referred.

"Mum taking her to Dr Wakefield, Royal Free hospital, for CT scan, gut biopsies," wrote one family doctor in the north-east of England, for example, before referring the only little girl in the project. "Will need ref letter. Dr Wakefield to phone me. Funded through legal aid."

In the light of these discoveries, the case was overwhelming to dig deeper into Wakefield's findings. In an exercise never before accomplished by a journalist, Deer was able to go behind the face of the 1998 paper, identify the subjects, and access original patient data. Penetrating veils of medical confidentiality, he discovered that the hospital's clinicians and pathology service had found nothing to implicate MMR, but that Wakefield had repeatedly changed and misreported diagnoses, histories and descriptions of the children, which made it appear that the syndrome had been discovered.

As revealed in The Sunday Times in February 2009, the effect was to give the impression of a link between MMR, bowel disease and the sudden onset of regressive autism, when otherwise none was evident. The hospital's pathology service had repeatedly declared bowel biopsies from the children to be normal, and not one of the 12 cases was free of critical mismatches between the paper which launched the vaccine crisis and the kids' contemporaneous clinical records. Some children showed signs of autism before vaccination. Some were deemed normal months afterwards. Some did not have autism at all.

"From the information you provided me on our son, who I was shocked to hear had been included in their published study," said the father of a boy from northern California, who was admitted, at age 5, to Wakefield’s research, "the data clearly appeared to be distorted."

Children's protections sidelined

In addition to finding that the Lancet paper had been rigged, the investigation uncovered a raft of other issues: starting with irregularities in ethical supervision. Research on patients is governed by national and international standards - particularly the Helsinki declaration - and no reputable hospital review board would have endorsed the kind of fishing expedition Wakefield embarked on for Barr. Without that endorsement, moreover, no major medical journal would have published any resulting paper. Nevertheless, to satisfy the Lancet's stringent patient-protection requirements, but without revealing to hospital authorities what was really going on, Wakefield falsely reported that a gruelling five-day battery of invasive and distressing procedures performed on the kids, including anaesthesia, ileocolonoscopies, lumbar punctures, brain scans, EEGs, radioactive drinks and x-rays, proposed for the lawsuit, was approved by the Royal Free's ethics committee.

But Deer revealed that, despite the research being executed on the uniquely vulnerable, developmentally challenged children of sometimes desperate parents, the ethics committee was not told the truth about the project, and had given no such approval. Wakefield and his key associates issued a formal statement denying this explosive discovery, but later changed their story and admitted it during the General Medical Council hearing, where - despite clear rules - they now argued they needed no approval.

Wakefield's basic science was also probed. The story was much the same. He had obtained the legal money and planned his business ventures against a theory of his own that the culprit for both inflammatory bowel disease and autism was persistent infection with measles virus, which is found live as a normal part of MMR. But Deer revealed on Channel 4 that sophisticated, unreported, molecular tests carried out in Wakefield's own lab had found no trace of measles in the children's guts and blood. Those tests were among a string which found no evidence of the virus. The Sunday Times also disclosed critical flaws in one apparently positive study, which involved materials supplied by Wakefield. This had misled thousands of families affected by autism, both in the UK and the US, ensnared for years in hopeless litigation based almost entirely on his measles theory.

Deer (who in April 2006 reported the first British measles death in 14 years) took no view on whether vaccines may or may not cause autism, but he never found any scientific material which repeated the Lancet findings. Although all kinds of children suffer from digestive issues, he learnt of a mass of authoritative research which overwhelmingly rebutted Wakefield's claims. "Specifically, numerous studies have refuted Andrew Wakefield’s theory that MMR vaccine is linked to bowel disorders and autism," was how the American Academy of Pediatrics summarised the position in an August 2009 statement to NBC News for a Dateline programme which featured both Wakefield and Deer. "Every aspect of Dr Wakefield’s theory has been disproven."

The impact of the investigation has been felt around the world, with media coverage from New Zealand to Canada. In the UK, the revelations prompted a statement by the prime minister, a collapse in the anti-MMR campaign, and a rebound in vaccination levels. In the US - where the Barr-Wakefield deal was joined by allegations marshalled by American attorneys that a mercury-based vaccine preservative, thimerosal, was also at fault - findings by Deer were presented by the Department of Justice in federal court, followed in February 2009 by scathing judgments. After hearing a test case of petitions from some 5,000 families, one presiding judge said: "Therefore, it is a noteworthy point that not only has that 'autistic enterocolitis' theory not been accepted into gastroenterology textbooks, but that theory, and Dr Wakefield’s role in its development, have been strongly criticized as constituting defective or fraudulent science."

Wakefield campaign denies everything

In response to Deer's findings, Wakefield supporters denied that he received money for research, and, amid a barrage of sometimes paid-for attacks, smears and crank abuse, insisted that the doctor was a champion of children’s interests. But the father-of-four had not only baselessly triggered the resurgence of sometimes fatal or brain-disabling measles outbreaks, plunged countless parents into the hell of believing it was their own fault for agreeing to vaccination that a son or daughter had developed autism, and misled an ethics committee over child rights and safety, but it was discovered that he had gone as far as to buy blood samples from children as young as four years old, attending a birthday party, and then to joke about them crying, fainting and vomiting.

Meanwhile, Wakefield bizarrely argued that he never said that MMR caused autism at all. But documents - including patents - evidence the doctor's claims, and he published a string of further misleading reports intended to undermine the vaccine. Even when he knew that his allegations had been proven baseless, he was found promoting them from a controversial business in Austin, Texas, called Thoughtful House, where, after being fired from the Royal Free in October 2001, he held a $280,000-a-year post, spun from his campaign against the shot.

Throughout the investigation, Wakefield refused to co-operate, filed complaints, and issued statements denying every aspect. He also initiated, and then abandoned with some £1.3m ($2m) costs, a two-year libel lawsuit, financed by the Medical Protection Society, which defends doctors against complaints from patients. In reply, Deer and Channel 4 accused Wakefield of being "unremittingly evasive and dishonest". His conduct in the litigation was also criticised by a High Court judge, who said that Wakefield "wished to extract whatever advantage he could from the existence of the proceedings while not wishing to progress them", and that the doctor was using them as "a weapon in his attempts to close down discussion and debate over an important public issue".

Wakefield, who contrived a bizarre conspiracy theory, says he has done nothing wrong. "The notion that any researcher can cook such data in any fashion that can be slipped past the medical community for his personal benefit is patent nonsense," he argued in a March 2009 statement. "Scientific rigor requires repeatability for verification of any research and Mr Deer's implications of fraud against me are claims that a trained physician and researcher of good standing had suddenly decided he was going to fake data for his own enrichment."

Lancet paper retracted and doctor ousted

On 28 January 2010, a statutory tribunal of the UK General Medical Council handed down rulings on Wakefield's conduct, following a 197-day inquiry, wholly vindicating Brian Deer's investigation. Branding Wakefield "dishonest", "unethical" and "callous", the panel of three doctors and two lay members found him guilty of some three dozen charges, including four of dishonesty and 12 involving the abuse of developmentally-challenged children. His 1998 Lancet research was found to be dishonest, and performed without ethical approval. Five days later, the Lancet fully retracted the paper from the scientific literature, prompting international media interest.

"What is indisputable is that vaccines protect children from dangerous diseases," said the New York Times, in one of a string of editorials to appear in world newspapers. "We hope that The Lancet’s belated retraction will finally lay this damaging myth about autism and vaccines to rest."

On 17 February, Wakefield was ousted by the directors of his Texas business, and, after further proceedings, his license to practise medicine is expected to be revoked.

It's not like it's going to stop the anti-vax crowd though...

Fox Stupidity Exposed...

2010-05-05T12:21:00.000-05:00

Watching a mellow push-back against the right-wing stupidity of Faux News is hysterical:

Q As for critics who are calling this your Katrina, is there -- President Obama’s Katrina --

MR. GIBBS: Can I say this -- I watched FOX yesterday.

Q I really didn’t want you to go there. (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: But you sort of -- you opened both the double doors and voila, here I am. (Laughter.)

Q But it wasn’t just FOX calling this your Katrina.

MR. GIBBS: No, no, but FOX had the very special and unique interview with Michael Brown -- you opened it and I had to do it -- who for those who weren’t let in on the big secret, Mr. Brown, FEMA Director Brown under Katrina, intimated on FOX, and it wasn’t -- I will editorially say, didn’t appear to be pushed back on real hard -- that this spill was leaked on purpose in order for us to walk back our environmental and drilling decisions, and that the leak that we did on purpose got out of control and now is too big to contain.

So suffice to say, Wendell --

Q What is his attribution? What is his -- Mr. Brown’s attribution?

MR. GIBBS: I can only wish that the network that you work for had asked that prior to interviewing him yesterday.

Q But reporters in here asked that.

MR. GIBBS: Well, you should --

Q So I’m asking you --

MR. GIBBS: You should call headquarters, my friend, and --

Q I’m asking you --

MR. GIBBS: -- ask for somebody who makes the decisions to put people like that -- because I got to tell you, Wendell, I’m not entirely sure that a factual answer that I might give to any one of your questions is going to change the notion that your network put out the former FEMA director to make an accusation that the well had been purposely set off in order to change an offshore drilling decision.

Q Nor would that affect the reporting I do.

MR. GIBBS: I didn’t intimate that it did. Again, I would -- you and Major should --

Q If we can, let’s move on from it.

MR. GIBBS: You could get on a conference call and maybe do some work. Go ahead.

Sadly, the talking point discussed is just one of many foolish talking points put out by the wing-nutst...

Of COURSE...

2010-05-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

My general rule is, the more the gay-bashing, homophobia the bigger the closet...:

A Christian leader and prominent neuro-psychiatrist who co-founded the Family Research Council with evangelist James Dobson took a ten-day European vacation with a callboy he met through RentBoy.com and was caught in an airport with the escort by a Miami newspaper.

The escort said he had met George Rekers, professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina, on RentBoy.com. Rekers, when confronted, didn't deny that he'd met the callboy online, but said he had hired him to help him carry his baggage and didn't learn he was generally hired for "private company" until mid-way through his European vacation.

"I had surgery," Rekers told Miami's New Times, "and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him." (The paper noted that it didn't stop him from pushing a "tottering" pile of luggage through Miami International Airport.)

The callboy, identified by a pseudonym, told the New Times' Penn Bullock and Brandon Thorp that Rekers claim that he didn't know his "line of work" seemed spurious.

"He should've been able to tell you that," he said. "But that's up to him."

According to Penn and Thorp, the slender, 20-year-old escort's profile advertises his "smooth, sweet, tight ass" and "perfectly built 8 inch cock."

Really? Luggage? Was he lifting it with his dick? Storing it in his smooth, sweet, tight ass?

And didn't you, well, think those might be odd things to post in an on-line resume? Seriously, why would you hire someone stupid enough to make a resume like that? Unless, of course, you were looking for a call-boy...

Anyway, now that one of the heavy-hitters of the "ex-gay" movement has been caught with his pants down, maybe that creepy, homophobic industry will die...

Elavator Rapist Pwnd by Attempted Victim

2010-05-04T08:32:00.000-05:00

I think the most important thing she did was showing situational awareness and, when he made his move, responded with overwhelming force and DID NOT LET UP. One of the most important things to remember in a fight is to not let up until your opponent is incapacitated.

The Divine Justice of Quackery

2010-04-29T22:19:00.001-05:00

Well, ok, it's not "divine," but it is quite apropo:

A controversial alternative health guru is suing after a taste of his own medicine nearly killed him.

Gary Null - described on quackwatch.org as "one of the nation's leading promoters of dubious treatment for serious disease" - claims the manufacturer of Gary Null's Ultimate Power Meal overloaded the supplements with Vitamin D.

The buff "Joy of Juicing" author, whose products include Red Stuff Powder and Gary Null's Heavenly Hair Cleaner, claims he suffered kidney damage and was left bloodied and in intense pain from two daily servings of the supplement.

"Null continued to take the Ultimate Power Meal, all the while thinking that it would help him, and relieve his condition; instead, it made him worse," the suit says.

The suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court accuses Triarco Industries of causing Null's "near-death experience" by botching the testing and manufacturing of the supplement.

Null, who also owns an eponymous food shop on the upper West Side, contends he was hit last December with "excruciating fatigue" that left him unable to walk and forced him to fly back to New York and cancel lectures, counseling and filming.

"Null would later be told that if he had not flown back to New York and seen his doctor, then he could have died within a short period of time," the suit says.

"Null then sequestered himself and fasted, only consuming massive amounts of water as he was told there was no medical treatment to lower the amount of Vitamin D in his system."

The suit accuses Triarco of inadequate safety testing that led to six consumers being hospitalized with severe kidney damage. A company representative did not return calls.

"Null, in the midst of all this, while he was suffering in bed, had dozens of his customers calling him, along with condemning and threatening him," the suit says. "In fact, they threatened that they would never buy any product of his ever again."

A lawyer for Null declined to comment, but did say the tainted supplies of the Ultimate Power Meal have been pulled from store shelves.

The suit says Null, 65, is still suffering the effects of too much Vitamin D.

"Even now, Null's condition is questionable as he continues to occasionally urinate blood," the suit says. "Unfortunately, there is no medical treatment for this as it is a matter of waiting, watching and observing what develops next."

I'm sorry, but this is funny on too many levels. So many of these alternative medicine quacks 'prescribe' these HUGE vitamin supplements to their patients (all at huge mark-ups) as well as all kinds of "herbal remedies."

But lots of time their cures are, as we saw above, dangerous. Too much Vitamin A can cause dry skin, hair loss, birth defects, liver damage and excess cranial pressure. Too much Vitamin C can damage teeth, cause certain kidney stones, heartburn, cramps, insomnia, diarrhea and even, ironically, a condition called "rebound scurvy." Too much Vitamin B6 can cause peripheral nerve neuropathy.

An additional irony is that this is the natural and logical consequence of Libertarian Principles applied to medicine. The unregulated manufacturer, in the unregulated "quasi-medicine" market made a bad product; because, as the suit alleges, they didn't adequately test and inspect, thus letting bad crap get out the door. Something you shouldn't be able to without risk when an appropriately staffed, directed and funded FDA is testing your lots at random.

No word if the product is manufactured as designed. If so, that's a whole new irony.

Show me your papers.

2010-04-27T22:43:00.002-05:00

This week, Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country which will allow police to demand identification papers from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. I know there’s some people in Arizona worried that Obama is acting like Hitler, but could we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying "Show me your papers?" There’s never been a World War II movie that didn’t include the line "show me your papers." It’s their catchphrase. Every time someone says "show me your papers," Hitler’s family gets a residual check. So heads up, Arizona; that’s fascism. I know, I know, it’s a dry fascism, but it’s still fascism

Indeed.

Sex, Lies and Marketing...

2010-04-22T13:28:00.000-05:00

This fails to surprise:

Pfizer paid censured experts to educate doctors

They are billed as "healthcare professionals who spend years building expertise in their fields". Using materials firmly grounded in science, they educate their peers in the risks and benefits of drugs.

This is how Pfizer, the pharmaceuticals giant, describes the experts it hires to lead educational forums in which doctors are lectured on the use of its products.

Yet New Scientist has found that some of Pfizer's experts have been disciplined for deficiencies in patient care, while others have been reprimanded for how they conducted drug research trials.

The findings add to a growing controversy surrounding the pharmaceutical industry's efforts to market drugs by influencing patterns of prescribing.

Not all, of course. Some of them are not incompetent. But, I'll wager, most of them are dishonest and amoral while only a few are honest, moral and truthful. Reason being that people who are honest, truthful and moral don't get asked back for a second try... Only those who will compromise, and continue to compromise, their morals (if they possess them) do.

It's like how Pravda became "All Great Soviet Empire -- All the Time." They didn't force people to write positive stories. They just selected those that were more than happy to butter-up the Communist party and its leadership from a vastly lager pool of journalists.

Heck, it's how Faux News works today. A bunch of wanna-bes at the lower level, with the wing-nuttery ramping up at each level, leaving the more stable behind wondering why their career hasn't taken off...

Anyway, the rest is at The New Scientist.

Goldman Sachs Indicted for Fraud

2010-04-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

It's about time they were indicted for fleecing their own customers in the Laissez-Faire paradise that was the finance industry under Republican deregulation.

Insane Clown Posse

2010-04-18T20:16:00.001-05:00

How about one of these guys for Pope. Least they can sing.

The Catholic Church, getting worse, in every way, every day...

2010-04-14T08:27:00.003-05:00

So, "the Ghey" made them rape little girls too? Seriously, WTH:

SANTIAGO, Chile — The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the comments during a news conference Monday in Chile, where one of the church's highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true," said Bertone. "That is the problem."

His comments drew angry reactions from Chile's gay rights advocates.

"Neither Bertone nor the Vatican has the moral authority to give lessons on sexuality," said Rolando Jimenez, president of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation in Chile.

Jimenez also said no reputable study exists to support the cardinal's claims.

I know that there are phony studies that were run by anti-gay religious organizations, like Focus on the Family. But, as Jimenez implies, they weren't reputable. Hell, I can find studies that show women shouldn't get into higher education because they're not suited for it... Just troll on back to the 1930's...

"This is a perverse strategy by the Vatican to shirk its own ethical and legal responsibility by making a spurious and disgusting connection," he said.

Of course, because they're immoral and unethical. From top-to-bottom.

At least one of the highest-profile pedophiles in the Chilean church victimized young girls, including a teenager who became pregnant.

And he blames 'the ghey...' Fuck him and the horse he pontificated from... I think the lot of them should be arrested and made to stand trial for their world-wide criminal conspiracy.

Yeah. Like Captain Kirk...

2010-04-14T06:29:00.001-05:00

The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology:

Ten Thousand

2010-04-09T06:30:00.003-05:00

I heard the total victim count in the Catholic Church cover-up has at least 10,000 victims. That would be KNOWN victims. That number comes from a number of American parish's, plus a few European countries.

Which cover a small number of potential victims as we have the rest of the world to consider.

It boggles my mind just how many victims there probably were. Why the Catholic Church condoned (through their actions and cover up) this massive problem. And why the fucking Pope and half the clergy aren't in jail...

BSA: It was ok...

2010-04-02T20:26:00.004-05:00

...until we got sued a bunch of times:

PORTLAND, Ore. — The president of the Boy Scouts council for the Portland metro area has testified he believes the parents of some Scouts were negligent and even criminal for allowing sleepovers that led to sex abuse.

Eugene Grant told a jury in a $29 million sex abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and its Cascade Pacific Council that parents should not have allowed boys to stay overnight with a single man at his apartment.

The man, Timur Dykes, has admitted molesting the victim who filed the lawsuit and has been convicted of other sex abuse dating back to the early 1980s, when Dykes was an assistant Scoutmaster.

During cross-examination by Kelly Clark, an attorney for the victim, Grant said Thursday it was not Boy Scouts policy to allow sleepovers, especially when they were unsupervised.

"His parents should have known better," Grant said, referring to the parents of the victim. "I think it was criminal."

But when Clark pressed Grant about whether he knew the Boy Scouts had any formal policy against sleepovers in the early 1980s, Grant replied, "At the time, no."

First, the only thing "criminal" is someone blaming the parents who relied upon the Scouts to exercise due diligence and caution in acquiring Scoutmasters.

Second, when I was young, I was a boy scout and we had many solo-adult supervised situations, which included sleepovers. Nobody thought anything about it. At all.

So, to see someone point the finger... I'm sorry, that's just wrong.

The Spread of Goodness

2010-03-30T09:11:00.004-05:00

Originally posted at The Frontal Cortex on March 9th, 2010:

The Spread of Goodness

In recent years, it's become clear that much of our individual behavior
depends on the dynamics of our social network. It doesn't matter if we're
talking about obesity or happiness: they all flow through other people, like a
virus or a meme. Last year, I profiled James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis in
Wired, who have conducted several fascinating studies that demonstrate the power
of social networks:

There's something strange about watching life unfold as a social network.
It's easy to forget that every link is a human relationship and every circle
a waistline. The messy melodrama of life--all the failed diets and fading
friendships--becomes a sterile cartoon.
But that's exactly the point. All that drama obscures a profound truth about human society. By studying Framingham as an interconnected network rather than a mass of individuals, Christakis and Fowler made a remarkable discovery: Obesity spread like a virus. Weight gain had a stunning infection rate. If one person became obese, the likelihood that his friend would follow suit increased by 171 percent. (This means that the network is far more predictive of obesity than the presence of genes associated with the condition.) By the time the animation is finished, the screen is full of swollen yellow beads, like blobs of fat on the surface of chicken soup.

The data exposed not only the contagious nature of obesity but the power of social networks to influence individual behavior. This effect extends over great distances--a fact revealed by tracking original subjects who moved away from Framingham. "Your friends who live far away have just as big an impact on your behavior as friends who live next door," Fowler says. "Think about it this way: Even if you see a friend only once a year, that friend will still change your sense of what's appropriate. And that new norm will influence what you do." An obese sibling hundreds of miles away can cause us to eat more. The individual is a romantic myth; indeed, no man is an island.
In their latest paper, published this week in PNAS, Christakis and Fowler
re-analyzed an earlier set of experiments led by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter,
which investigated "altruistic punishment," or why we're willing to punish
others even at a cost to ourselves.

Christakis and Fowler demonstrate that, when one of the students gave money to help someone else - they were cooperating - the recipients of that cash then became more likely to give their own money away in the next round. (Every unit of money shared in round 1 led to an extra 0.19 units being shared in round 2, and 0.05 units in round 3.) This leads, of course, to a cascade of generosity, in which the itch to cooperate spreads first to three people and then to the nine people that those three
people interact with, and then to the remaining individuals in subsequent waves
of the experiment.

The paper itself is filled with optimistic sentences, but it's worth pointing out that 1) selfishness is also contagious and 2) there's a big difference between lab experiments played with strangers and the messy social networks of real life. That said, altruistic cascades like this make me happy:
We report a chain of 10 kidney transplantations, initiated in July
2007 by a single altruistic donor (i.e., a donor without a designated
recipient) and coordinated over a period of 8 months by two large
paired-donation registries. These transplantations involved six
transplantation centers in five states. In the case of five of the
transplantations, the donors and their coregistered recipients underwent
surgery simultaneously. In the other five cases, "bridge donors" continued the chain as many as 5 months after the coregistered
recipients in their own pairs had received transplants. This report of a chain of paired kidney donations, in which the transplantations were not necessarily performed simultaneously, illustrates the potential of this strategy.
Update: I've gotten a few emails wondering what this means for free will.
After all, if our decisions are so determined by the decisions of others, then
where is there space for human autonomy? My first reaction is that the new
science of social networks still leaves plenty of elbow room for individual
decisions. We're talking about risk factors and tendencies and statistical
correlations. Just because we're influenced by others doesn't mean we can't
reject those influences. I asked James Fowler a related question last year and
this was his eloquent response:

Everyone always tells me that this research is so depressing and
that it means we don't have free will. But I think they're forgetting to
look at the flipside. Because of social networks, your actions aren't just
having an impact on what you do, or on what your friends do, but on
thousands of other people too. So if I go home and I make an effort to be in a good mood, I'm not just making my wife happy, or my children happy. I'm also making the friends of my children happy.
My choices have a ripple effect.

There are some profound implications in social discourse there... People who spread hate and anger really do effect others. Even if they pretend they don't.

Great Lakes -- How the Earth was Made

2010-03-30T08:51:00.000-05:00

This is so cool...

Informed Debate on Health Reform. Tea Bagger vs. Liberal Congressman

2010-03-29T11:01:00.001-05:00

Funny, but is she has a driver's license, she has to have insurance to drive...

Living in Today's Bubble...

2010-03-29T07:24:00.005-05:00

I'm reading at an atheist blog. It's a post about why athletes aren't going to take the "concern trolling advice" (that boils down to sit down and shut up) so many Christians give atheists.

Someone quotes Martin Luther King's famous observation:

"The great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the outright bigot, but the moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises us to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

I love that quote. Because it's so very true. The coward will keep you in chains because he wants safety. It's the whole psychological basis behind the Republican War on America.

Then comes the young person, lacking any comprehensive understanding of America in the early 1960's:

"...who paternalistically believes in setting the timetable for another's freedom..."

That was so damn easy. For shame, MLK.

Posted by: jemand March 26, 2010 at 02:44 PM

And like a fat trout, rising to a spring fly I respond:

Are you serious? For shame, MLK?

Dude, a woman could not get birth control without the consent of her husband when MLK made that comment! [Check out Griswold v Connecticut (381 US 479) and comprehend.] So, please, don't take quotes nearly 50-years old and expect them to meet your definition of PC because the world changed.

That a woman has the right to not be turned into a baby factory by being spousally-raped and impregnated by her husband at will is something that women in the generation prior to mine didn't have until the early-to-mid 1960's in "Father Knows Best" America. And while it's true that most men didn't behave in that fashion; a woman, as the property of her husband, didn't have a lot to say about it if it did happen...

We also see this paternalistic attitude in the anti-abortion movement. A large cadre of (predominantly) old white men making laws about young women, as if those women are too stupid to figure it out on their own and/or with the help of their doctor.

Atheists, in this country, are persecuted and belittled by the majority. But they do not "cause" the problem. It's the unwillingness of the majority, like in Civil Rights, to treat others as their equals.

And I don't have to use atheists as an example of a persecuted minority in America. Wiccans have it as bad, if not worse, due to many Christians believing they worship Satan.

And while many people think that we should "be quiet" and "go softly," I (not so respectively) disagree. Social change doesn't happen with "politeness" and maybe a "letter to the editor..." It happens through upheaval that, primarily, changes the young who then change society through example and deed. The old fossils (typically relegated to the sidelines by statute/case law) die off, and eventually we are left with a large majority of those that are, at worst, neutral to the new societal norm.

Vatican Had Halted Trial for Accused Priest

2010-03-28T19:36:00.001-05:00

More exposure on Ratzinger's Criminal-Conspiracy activities. And a great blog post here.

Is Satan a Catholic?

2010-03-28T13:53:00.001-05:00

Another Pat Condell rant... This one about the child raping Catholic Church.

Jim Jefferies On Religion Horrible Blasphemy Panda

2010-03-27T14:41:00.001-05:00

Hysterical. But not completely work safe...

Bricks and Osama

2010-03-26T07:42:00.005-05:00

The wingnuts, in their irony, are retreating to terrorist lite. This brick, thrown into a Democratic Party office in Rochester, New York has a note attached: "Extremism in defense of Liberty is no vice."

I wonder if the man who threw that brick realizes that he's the spiritual brother of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden, terrorist that he is, does not perceive himself as some terrible outlaw. That much is clear from his tapes. Yet, I think, the old joke, first attributed to Winston Churchill, expresses the continuity of principle that links these two men:

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

Bin Laden, from all I have read and seen, seems to perceive himself as a Muslim freedom fighter trying to throw off the yoke of American Imperialism in the mid-east. His actions, while spectacular and more effective than the brick thrower are, on the continuity of belief, the same. That is, he believes his actions (however immoral others may find them) are justified in the name of freedom and defense of his liberty from the government of the United States. Just like the brick-thrower who refusing to consent to being governed via the process of the ballot box and the results of his democratically elected government.

Ironically, Bin Laden has the more intellectually sustainable position. He, as an Arab, is not given a say in the government of the United States and his roles are, consequently, limited to "victim" or "freedom fighter." Whereas our brick-thrower could engage in the political process and make a change.

Shagged by a rare parrot - Last Chance To See - BBC Two

2010-03-24T14:14:00.001-05:00

Lolz!

I see the Brown Shirts are out...

2010-03-23T16:57:00.000-05:00

Early on the morning of March 19, someone threw a brick through the window of Rep. Louise Slaughter's office in Niagara Falls, New York, doing $350 of damage, the Buffalo News reported. Slaughter (D-NY) briefly attracted the ire of conservatives over the "Slaughter Solution," a procedural maneuver that was considered (but, ultimately, not used) to pass health reform.

Also in Slaughter's district, a brick was thrown through the glass doors of the Monroe County Democratic Committee office in Rochester, NY, over the weekend, the Democrat and Chronicle reported. A note attached to the brick bore the Barry Goldwater quote, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," a spokesman for the committee told the newspaper.

In the early hours of the morning on Monday just after the House health care vote, someone smashed the glass front door of the Tucson office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), the Arizona Daily Star reported. "The perpetrator likely had to hop the gated fence to get access to the door, since it's not viewable from the parking lot," the paper reported.

On Friday night or Saturday morning, a brick bearing unspecified "anti-Obama and anti-health care messages" was thrown through a floor-to-ceiling window at the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, CNN and the Kansas City Start reported.

After the passage of the bill Sunday night, a "fist-sized" rock was thrown at a window at the Hamilton County Democratic Party in Cincinnati, in the district of Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), the Enquirer reports.

Losers.

All New!

2010-03-23T13:43:00.001-05:00

Toyota Simulator.

Waterloo and Stats!

2010-03-23T11:22:00.003-05:00

So the Republicans and their enablers are saying that the majority of Americans didn't want health care reform which is why they were "justified" in voting against the bill just signed into law. They are, mostly, citing the CNN poll from yesterday (or maybe the day before), which asked:

As you may know, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are trying to pass final legislation that would make major changes in the country’s health care system. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor it or generally oppose it?

Mar 19-21 2010

Favor 39%
Oppose 59%
No opinion 2%

What the data said:

NOT LIBERAL ENOUGH: 13%
FAVORED THE REFORM: 39%

In other words, 52% of America favored health care reform. And 46% opposed it with 2% uncommitted. Of the 52% of Americans who supported health care reform, a significant proportion opposed this bill because they were rather "all or nothing" about it. Even though, for the most part, big social programs tend to get upgraded over time.

But, of course, CNN and other apologists/enablers for the Republicans aren't going to report that the MAJORITY of Americans wanted Health Care reform. That would be too honest. Instead, they're going to do their best to hammer the Democrats into submission.

Romneycare Passes...

2010-03-22T13:44:00.003-05:00

Not everyone is happy:

Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

I don't think they will... I think they will be happy, just like the vast majority of Medicare recipients are happy, despite the fear-mongering regarding the inevitable slide into Socialism it would promulgate:

If you don’t, this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Normal Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism, and if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free. -- Ronald Reagan on the dangers of Medicare, circa 1961.

The whole Reagan speech is here:

They were wrong then, they are wrong now. Because unlike being forced to stop being bigots and racists, there are actual, tangible benefits, direct or indirect, for most people under this law.

I keep reading...

2010-03-20T14:34:00.003-05:00

...how America doesn't want Obama Care and it's his, and the Democratic Party's Waterloo. I'm not really buying it:

QUESTION: Does the fact that every Republican Member of Congress opposes the current health care proposals make you more likely to support the legislation, less likely, or doesn’t that make much difference either way?

More likely to support legislation: 27%
Less likely to support legislation: 20%
No difference: 51%

What this really means -- Republicans are stupid, heartless and out-of-touch. Unfortunately, so are one-in-five Americans. In any case, it's a net win for the Democrats and the President.

QUESTION: Does the fact that President Obama supports the current health care proposals make you more likely to support the legislation, less likely, or doesn’t that make much difference either way?

More likely to support legislation: 36%
Less likely to support legislation: 21%
No difference: 42%

Once again, one-in-five Americans surveyed as ass-wipes. Nothing new there. But even with all his other failings, a lot of people are still swayed by Obama.

The latest poll by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation found 46 percent of Americans support the healthcare bill and 42 percent oppose it.

The Democratic base appears to have rallied behind the legislation, which seeks to increase coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Three quarters of Democrats now support the bill, up from 70 percent last month. Republican opposition has hardened, going from 74 percent in February to 80 percent in the most recent poll, taken March 10.

Yeah, because that 20% of America is just stupid... And the rest of these people have no clue to the benefits of the new program, or to what their interests really are...

Best Daily Show Ever

2010-03-19T11:40:00.000-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Conservative Libertarian

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral - Irish Lullabye

2010-03-18T21:15:00.001-05:00

He does a good job.

The Irish Rovers - The Unicorn Song

2010-03-18T21:09:00.001-05:00

Enjoy