Dad walking and holding hands of nine and ten year old daughters: Do you know what the abyss is? It's when you stare into nothing and nothing stares back at you.
Daughters: [bewildered silence].
Dad: Do you understand? I want you to see that it's a state of mind.
--E 4th St near 1st Ave
Overheard by: Dan
"Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.
He has, through friends, put out inquiries, they said, and has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales’s case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government’s chief lawyer, are typically highly sought."
"...“a White House reporter asked Dana Perino a critically important question after Bush’s speech: “I don’t understand how a fragmented, clandestine, non-Iraqi terrorist organization could produce and sell Iraqi oil on the global market, especially when the majority of Iraqis have turned against al Qaeda. Could you describe a plausible scenario?”
Perino had a little trouble with this one.ERINO: The purpose of what the President said is that al Qaeda should not be allowed to have safe haven in Iraq and take over —
Q: How can they take over Iraq’s oil reserves —
PERINO: Well, if we were to leave we would certainly ensue chaos and not be able to — if we were to leave too soon, it would certainly be chaos and it would be terrible for not only the innocent Iraqis, but the entire region and, in fact, our own national security. That’s what the President —
Q: But the Iraqis would let a foreign terrorist organization take over their oil?
PERINO: You’re missing the point, and I think that you should go back and read —
Q: No, I —
PERINO: Yes, actually, I think you are missing the point. And I call on you because I see what you write about how you come here and you really want to have questions asked. And I’m calling on you and I’m providing it to you, but I suggest that you read the President’s speech and read it in context, because that’s — what you’re suggesting is not what the President said.
This isn’t complicated. The president told the nation, “An emboldened al Qaeda with access to Iraq’s oil resources could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction to attack America and other free nations.” The claim is absurd, and asked to defend it, the White House couldn’t. Indeed, if we take Bush’s words at face value, and consider them in context, we’re necessarily “missing the point,” as far as the president’s chief spokesperson is concerned.
It fascinates me that even now, as the war begins its sixth year, the White House is still struggling to come up with arguments that make sense and can withstand even cursory scrutiny."
[Obama]: People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them. So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington....there is a far more disturbing aspect to his interpretation. He misses the essential nature of modern culture. People don't end up focusing on issues like the right to bear arms, gay marriage, faith-based and family-based issues, and the like, because of bitterness against Washington or a sense that they can't effect change there. People focus on these issues because modern American political culture is, effectively, about subcultures, variety, pursuing parochial aims, and shaping one's identity and personal agendas independent of the state.
What Obama implicitly regards (in both his statements) as signs of disintegration, as reflections of popular frustration, are in fact examples of a thriving culture... Yet Obama's approach betrays a very suffocating vision of the state as the be-all and end-all of political-cultural behavior. Outside the confines of the state there is no salvation, only resentment. This is nonsense, but it also partly explains why Obama is so admired among educated liberals, who still view the state as the main medium of American providence."
"...I am offered cakes, muffins, and all kinds of delicious assorted pastries on a daily basis at my real estate office and many other places (drooling over the Starbucks pastry case every morning). I always turn them down, and I’ll hear so many people say to me, “why deprive yourself?… life is too short.”
I see these people chowing down all the muffins every week and I’m actually thinking the same thing about them… Aren’t they depriving themselves of nice bodies by eating them everyday? None of these people are in shape and they are all sitting around with big belly rolls and jiggles all over their bodies. I’m just thinking to myself when I see them, that they are depriving themselves of the great feeling of being fit.
...focus on what you’re getting (the body you want),… not what you’re giving up and it gives it a new positive perspective."
"It is VERY possible to lose weight eating crappy unhealthy food, or even maintain your weight while eating crap.
…it is very possible to maintain a certain scale number and actually look like total shit. (you can be skinny and have HIGH bodyfat = skinny fat) Scale weight tells you a few things…
Will the scale tell you if you look good ? NO. Does your body look nice because you ring up a certain number on the scale? NO.
Eating properly changes your body composition and makes you look better. How strict should you be about not eating crap?
...If you want to be a certain weight and wear a certain size clothing, and you don’t mind having cellulite, belly rolls, and hanging flab... eat all the crap you want while maintaining your special number on the scale.
...If you want visible muscle and a lean looking body, staying away from the crap and eating properly is what makes the difference… regardless of how great you do your workouts.
...My grandmother used to make sure she always weighed her ‘certain’ special number throughout her entire life. But what she didn’t seem to realize was that without exercising and eating properly, (although she kept maintaining that number), she had 6 inches of hanging flab swinging on the backs of her arms and she always looked 9 months pregnant. It didn’t have to be that way, it’s just a matter of exercising regularly and eating the right food. She was attempting to ‘watch her weight’, but she had it all wrong."
"Lenore Skenazy wrote a piece for the April 4 edition of the New York Sun about letting her 9-year-old son find his way home from downtown NYC using the subway system. Many people were upset with her.Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.
Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”
Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.
Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them."
Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone | The New York Sun:And yet —
“How would you have felt if he didn’t come home?” a New Jersey mom of four, Vicki Garfinkle, asked.
Guess what, Ms. Garfinkle: I’d have been devastated. But would that just prove that no mom should ever let her child ride the subway alone?
No. It would just be one more awful but extremely rare example of random violence, the kind that hyper parents cite as proof that every day in every way our children are more and more vulnerable.
“Carlie Brucia — I don’t know if you’re familiar with that case or not, but she was in Florida and she did a cut-through about a mile from her house … and midday, at 11 in the morning, she was abducted by a guy who violated her several times, killed her, and left her behind a church.”
That’s the story that the head of safetynet4kids.com, Katharine Francis, immediately told me when I asked her what she thought of my son getting around on his own. She runs a company that makes wallet-sized copies of a child’s photo and fingerprints, just in case.
Well of course I know the story of Carlie Brucia. That’s the problem. We all know that story — and the one about the Mormon girl in Utah and the one about the little girl in Spain — and because we do, we all run those tapes in our heads when we think of leaving our kids on their own. We even run a tape of how we’d look on Larry King.
...Trevor Butterworth, a spokesman for the research center STATS.org, said, “The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you can’t protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning.”
Justice Department data actually show the number of children abducted by strangers has been going down over the years. So why not let your kids get home from school by themselves?
“Parents are in the grip of anxiety and when you’re anxious, you’re totally warped,” the author of “A Nation of Wimps,” Hara Estroff Marano, said. We become so bent out of shape over something as simple as letting your children out of sight on the playground that it starts seeming on par with letting them play on the railroad tracks at night. In the rain. In dark non-reflective coats.
The problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself. A child who thinks he can’t do anything on his own eventually can’t.....
"A lot of Christians are angry at Oprah about her latest book club selection, Eckhart Tolle's New Age tome A New Earth. Here is one of many YouTube videos attacking her:That clip is called The Church of Oprah Exposed; it is, among other things, a promo for Carrington Steele's book and DVD Don't Drink the Kool-Aid: Oprah, Obama, and the Occult..."
"YouTube - Backflip Impossible"
Via: Rosstraining.com
"Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, which transform the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer. A multi-ovation demo from TED2008."
"Researcher Johnny Lee became a YouTube star with his demo of Wii Remote hacks -- bending the low-cost game piece to power an interactive whiteboard, a multitouch surface, a head-mounted display ... To understand Johnny Lee, just take a look at his personal Projects page. Aside from his Wii Remote hacks -- voted the #1 tech demo of all time by Digg -- you can see all the other places his mind has turned: typography, photography, urban renewal ... to say nothing of his interesting sideline in Little Great Ideas, like the hypnotic "___ will ___ you."
When he's not hacking Wiimotes, Lee is a graduate student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University."
"A Navy supply officer and former Naval Academy instructor testified Thursday that she moonlighted as a prostitute for the D.C. Madam, a California woman accused of running an escort service that prosecutors say netted her several million dollars over a 13-year period."
"The truth here is as obvious as it is deeply entertaining: Bad parenting abounds, baby, and what's more, I say our culture needs psycho parents and their preening, hyperplucked kids simply because the culture needs future Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans and spoiled UCLA sorority girls with names like Dakota and Bree because, well, who else will we mock? Who else can future generations of normal kids look to and say, oh my God, at least I'm not like that? Who will grow up to date all the obnoxious frat guys and have bad drunken sex with them for 3.2 minutes and later marry and soon contribute to America's good Christian divorce rate? Exactly.
...Next up: a big trend piece about how all alarmist trend pieces that have anything to do with teenagers, pubic hair, the early sexualization of kids, thong underwear and the tragic death of innocence in modern America all point to a larger trend of how we as a culture are just way, way too obsessed with trend pieces that obsess about the style and sexuality of trendy teens. Watch for it."
"And we knew they knew and we were right. ABC News aired a segment on their daily news show that after a five month investigation, they could say that Bush’s most senior officials not only knew about the torture they were inflicting on suspected terrorists, but decided down to the last detail exactly how much torture to inflict.The discussions in the White House were top secret and sources say, involve some of the President’s most senior and influential advisors, principals of the National Security Council. In dozens of private talks and meetings, sources said that a handful of top advisors discussed specific high-value al Qaeda prisoners and exactly how those prisoners would be interrogated. Whether, for example, they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding. The discussion about the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, sources said, the interrogations were almost choreographed, down to the number of times the CIA could use a specific tactic...There’s your war crimes tribunal list right there..."
It also was discussed and approved in meetings by the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a group that included Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, John Ashcroft.
"“This presents an interesting scenario that readers can ponder for themselves about the nature of religion and of gods: Are higher powers at work in our universe, or are they merely hallucinatory manifestations of our own inner fears, strengths and desires?”"
"I suspect this same theory goes a long way towards explaining Japan's fascination with robots. Yes, robots are unequivocally awesome, but when you live in a city with a ten-to-one ratio of meat to oxygen, a man made of metal is a particularly wonderful thing. No wonder the birth rate is declining: why birth a mewling, meconium-spurting sprog when you can just have protected sex and buy yourself a cute robot puppy that flips as it yips?
But the drawback is declining birth rates and a collapsing social infrastructure. 40% of Japan's population will be over 65 in less than fifty years. And according to the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation—a robotics think tank—it is possible that up to 3.5 million jobs in Japan will be filled by robots by 2025.
In fifty years, Japan will be a curious island of anime-obsessed geriatrics, cared for by an armada of cybertronic care givers. And fifty years after that? Robo-Japan officially applies for membership in the United Nations, an event which—as all men know—eventually predicates the creation of the Matrix."
Busboy: I'm joining the national guard next week. You get lots of tuition for only one weekend a month and two weeks a year.
Manager: Yeah, right. Pick me up a key chain from Baghdad, would you?
Circle Centre Mall
Indianapolis, Indiana
Overheard by: Shatmandu
Female staff: Oh man, I'm so into "America's Next Top Model." You know that show.
Male staff: Oh yes. Good quality programming.
Female staff: They were having this marathon on VH1 this weekend, like the whole last season all at once. I got so hooked. But I missed the last two or three episodes, so I don't know who won it.
Male staff: That's awful. You really don't know? That was last season.
Female staff: No, I didn't see the last few episodes.
Male staff: You mean to tell me that you don't know who won last season's "America's Next Top Model"?
Female staff: I didn't see the last episode?
Male staff: But you don't recognize her from all of the glamorous advertisements and runway shows she's been doing?
Female staff: Well, no, I... Oh. You're being sarcastic.
Male staff: For minutes now.
10 Medical Center Boulevard
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Teenage girl: Look at the headline on this magazine. There's a quiz called "do you know if you're a virgin?"
Teenage boy: Yes. Oh god, yes.
--Barnes and Nobles, Astor Place
"...I absolutely agree that push-ups are a symbol of everything we have done wrong in fitness, especially for women. There's been a tremendous focus on cardio exercise above all else, especially because it burns calories, even though strength training increases your resting metabolism, and therefore, yes, burns calories.
Women don't focus on strength
Many women spend hours on Stairmasters and treadmills and spin bikes and running trails, while our arms do no more work than it takes to hold the handles of a piece of gym equipment or pump at our sides during a run. Oh, and we do crunches in the quest for a flat stomach. (Those will help with the core strength necessary for push-ups, by the way.)
...Instead, we leave the push-ups and the dumbbells and the bench presses to the dudes, as though we couldn't possibly do such macho exercises.
And really, it's not just about push-ups - there's the whole barbell issue, too. Even women who weight train may not be using enough weight to get the full benefit of the workout. Too often afraid of getting rippling, bulky muscles, women tend to prefer 3- and 5-pound dumbbells and do lots of reps (we sometimes call it "body sculpting," but it might as well be called "wheel-spinning"). Using itty-bitty weights and doing tons of sets is not going to get you anywhere near the results of real strength training. And studies have shown that both men and women tended to select too-light weights to get strength gain benefits when they have received no coaching in proper load.
More of a 'man' exercise
If it were actually that easy for anyone to bulk up, we'd see many more giant ripped men walking around, but taking it a step further, the vast, vast majority of women lack the testosterone to get the muscle girth of guys. It's not going to happen unless you pop steroids with your morning smoothie.
Of course there's something more insidious going on here.
Women don't do push ups because they think of them as a man exercise. Same goes for weightlifting. We teach women to strive for thin and toned, but not strong and powerful. I mean, be athletic, but not so athletic that you can kick a guy's rear end at strength endeavors.
...We are conditioned to think we can't possibly lift like men, or crank out a set of 20 nice push-ups, and, if we do, we are too masculine. We're taught to hide our strength or minimize it or just avoid using it altogether. "Could you give me a hand carrying this box, guy-from-my-office-who-never-works-out?""
"On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had retreated to room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, worrying about a sanitation strike in Memphis and working on his sermon for Sunday. Its title: 'Why America May Go to Hell.' For King, whose focus had shifted from civil rights to antiwar agitation and populist economics, the Dream was turning dark.
...To his family, King was murdered because he was no longer the King of the March on Washington, simply asking for the whites only signs to come down. He had grown radical: the King of 1968 was trying to build an interracial coalition to end the war in Vietnam and force major economic reforms--starting with guaranteed annual incomes for all. They charge that the government, probably with Lyndon Johnson's knowledge, feared King might topple the "power structure" and had him assassinated. "The economic movement was why he was killed, frankly," Martin Luther King III told NEWSWEEK."
Underling to boss, incredulous: The lord was cock-blocking you?!
Boss: Sure! It's in the bible!
Los Angeles, California
"Over at MobHappy, Russell Buckley comments on a news story about an elderly gentlemen who for years has called his late wife's Verizon voicemail just to hear her voice. During a system change though, the message was lost. Apparently though, Verizon heard about the sad situation, found a back-up of the old greeting, and restored it."
White attorney,at deposition: Are there any activities you used to do before the accident that you can no longer do?
Trinidadian woman, 55: I can't get my freak on anymore.
White attorney, smiling: Remember, I have to report this to a bunch of other white people. How often did you used to freak before the accident?
Trinidadian woman: Oh, I went to dance clubs all the time. Plus I used to go hiking all the time.
White attorney: And by "hiking," you mean walking on nature trails, right? I mean, that's not some hip-hop slang, right?
Trinidadian woman: Yeah, just walking up mountains and stuff.
Brooklyn, New York
Overheard by: Big Larry
"Japanese high school students are more aware about brand goods than their counterparts in other countries, while their parents let them spend their allowance more freely compared to students abroad, a survey has found.
The survey, which was released on Tuesday, was conducted by the Japan Youth Research Institute last fall and covered 5,394 high school students in Japan, the United States, China and South Korea."
"At the beginning of the documentary Planet B-Boy, as several hip-hop veterans offer a breezy history of breakdance, a not-to-be-messed-with French street dancer describes a transformational filmic experience. “Flashdance,” he says, and pauses to hold back tears, “It’s personally emotional for me.” A Japanese b-boy, recalling his first viewing of the film, is reduced to “wow.” An earnest German promoter confirms that the 1983 film, which includes scenes with the breakdance pioneers Rock Steady Crew, had pan-European influence. In bringing an urban American art form to Seoul, Paris, and Capetown, Flashdance planted the seeds of a subculture all over the map. Jennifer Beals, apparently, is an effective conduit for the culture of the South Bronx.
...[the Koreans are] clearly brimming with national pride as they gear up to compete with Japan. When the film was shot, the Koreans were the reigning world champions, a showy Korean crew called Gamblerz having won the year before. The Gamblerz 2005 show may qualify as the oddest performance in the history of hip-hop. The crew splits into two groups and reenacts “the history of Korea” through six minutes of b-boy battling, one side representing the South and one the North. In the end, the sides are reconciled, and the crew springs into the eerily perfect synchrony that only the Koreans seem able to pull off.
...Like any great, populist dance film, Planet B-Boy ends with a battle. For nearly two decades, unremarkable Braunschweig has been home to the “battle of the year,” where crews from 20 or so nations fling themselves across a stage... The French, in the words of one promoter, have an unmatched sensitivity for music and flow. The Japanese dream up the most innovative, conceptually complex show.
The Americans have a knack for individualizing their dancers, shaping characters out of movement. The Koreans dominate the competition with a combination of robot-like synchrony and gymnastic prowess...
Clearly, Americans no longer own the dance. Some of the most poignant moments of the film come as Korean crew perform in Germany and the camera lingers on the Vegas crew’s faces. Their eyes are tinged with fear, their mouths slightly open. Afterward, one manages to offer a half-hearted pep talk. Their show is just “different,” he explains, “Hopefully the judges don’t just want to see…some amazing shit.”
The judges do want to see some amazing shit, which is why the Korean team "Last for One" emerges victorious."
"...the height of college fashion in their raccoon coats in front of the Theta Chi House, 1928-29."
"...Other ideas, like a microwave gun to 'beam' words directly into people's ears, have been tested. It is claimed that the so-called 'Frey Effect' – using close-range microwaves to produce audible sounds in a person's ears – has been used to project the spoken numbers 1 to 10 across a lab to volunteers'.
In 2004 the US Navy funded research into using the Frey effect to project sound that caused 'discomfort' into the ears of crowds."
Cute nerd-girl playing scrabble #1: Did you see that episode where Data made a daughter? It was so good, and so sad!
Cute nerd-girl playing scrabble #2: Yeah, it was.
Cute nerd #1: And do you remember the episode when the little boy idolized data...
Cute nerd #2 interrupting: I remember all the episodes.
Cute nerd #1: But there was this one scene...
Cute nerd #2: I remember that scene.
Cute nerd #1: But I didn't finish...
Cute nerd #2: I remember all the scenes. Seriously. There was one time when my friend was flipping channels, and she flipped to Star Trek. And I only saw like, a quarter of a second of it, with Dr Crusher bending over a patient, and I said, "'his blood is turning to some kind of liquid polymer.'" and then Dr Crusher said, "His blood is turning to some kind of liquid polymer!" It's like when some people hear like 3 seconds of a song and can identify it. I can do that with Star Trek.
--Starbucks, 2nd & 9th
Pissed girlfriend: You never want to do anything fun.
Exasperated boyfriend: That's because everything you call 'fun' involves heroin or fire.
--Union Square
"For many years now millions of people around the world, including former members of the US and other governments, academics and professionals have known and spoken about the fact that "al-Qaeda", far from being a modern Islamic terror group was the name given to a small grouping of extremist and deluded nut-jobs that the US and British governments hired and trained to fight the Russians in Afghanistan in the late 70's and early 80's. Also widely accepted is the fact that, after that particular conflict, Pakistani intelligence, in league with the CIA, continued to handle and groom these extremists and stage-manage their sporadic attacks around the world in order to conjure up the modern "Islamic terror threat".
Several mainstream media outlets and US government officials have stated that Osama bin laden was a CIA asset who was used to funnel money to these extremists and oversee the establishment of militant training camps, all under the control of Western agents.
A French intelligence report, carried by the mainstream press, stated that Osama Bin Laden met with a CIA agent in the American hospital in Dubai two months before the 9/11 attacks.
Everyone knows, (or should) that the Bush government escorted members of Bin Laden's family out of the US on September 11th 2001...
And finally, several mainstream media outlets, quoting official government sources, have reported that Osama bin Laden probably died many years ago.
Given just these basic facts, the tip of the iceberg of the evidence, how can anyone still believe that the US is actually fighting a "war on terror" to "safeguard our freedoms" rather than a war of conquest and empire expansion, and still lay claim to their sanity? I mean, is the proposition so hard to digest? Remember history class? It's not like this is the first time..."
"Monday through Friday - Eat a diet consisting of 60% fat, 35% protein, and only 5% carbs. You'll get the fat and protein mainly from steak, hamburger, eggs, and fish. Turkey, chicken, and tuna are all okay, but the password here is red meat. You'll also eat full-fat cheeses, pepperoni, sausage, and certain nuts. The key is to generally avoid carbohydrates, eating only around 30 grams a day...
Saturday and Sunday - Switch gears. On the weekends, eat 30% fat, 10% protein, and a whopping 60% carbs..."
"“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” If only John F. Kennedy could have known what his 1961 call to service would become: a rallying cry for generations of rich, middle-aged men convinced that the nation’s youth are lazy, unpatriotic ingrates.
Normally, we can shrug off such nonsense and chalk it up to nostalgia (“Ah, for the days of Camelot!”) or the positive correlation between age and irritability. But having endured a primary campaign rife with candidates and pundits of both parties yapping about how putting me to work for almost no pay is in the nation’s interest, I’ve stopped laughing. This national service fever must stop.
...Politicians usually embed these ideas in ennobling, Kennedyesque rhetoric about serving your country. I’d be more inclined vote for a candidate who says something like this: “As president, I’ll try to put your kids to work as soon as they’re out of the house. Not for full pay, of course, or anything resembling fair compensation. When Junior hits his formative years around high school and college, my administration will dangle all kinds of incentives that amount to a fraction of what you, a fully grown adult, would get for doing the same work.”
At least you couldn’t fault him for his honesty."
Black guy #1: Lady, don't sit next to that man, he's got aids, motherfucker.
Black guy #2: Who you talkin' bout aids? I went to prison for ten years and I don't have no aids. Peace, brother.
Black guy #1: I tell you he got aids, motherfucker!
Black guy #2: Peace, brother, peace.
Black guy #1: Aids, motherfucker!
--PATH Train
"Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him,“What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!
“This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God,” Davis said. “Get out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon!"
"No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification of any Office or public Trust under the United States"and
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"- from a little thing called the Constitution.
This Way, She'll Be Trained for Her Future Husband
Mother, to four-year-old boy who has just slapped a little girl: Why did you do that?! Give me a reason right now. I demand a reason, now!
Four-year-old boy: I have to control her.
--East Broadway
"Glenn notes how well the media is doing its job:In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:
“Yoo and torture” - 102
“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
“Obama and patriotism” - 1,607
“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079"
"...it's difficult to achieve happiness via changing external conditions. Our brains are good at adapting to situations, good or bad. This isn't so hard to understand, think of any important goal you've achieved--remember how anti-climactic it felt? This is the problem with being overly attached to end results: we place too much pressure on achievement changing our mindset...
Of course, no achievement will ever be enough., which is why people unconsciously stay in the anticipation phase and avoid achieving their goals...
Does this mean we shouldn't bother with goals? Of course not! Goal-less-ness is the path of the cop out. People who claim that everything is illusion are unmotivated people looking to avoid growth and change. The key is setting goals and achieving them for the sake of doing it... According to John Elliot, author of The New Science Of Working Less To Accomplish More, we perform better when we're fully in the moment and unattached to outcome: life's fullest moments can be reduced to those moments in which we're fully present with no thoughts of past or future. These are the moments in which we're fully alive and time seems to stand still...
Everyone wants to be happy whether they realize it or not and even if they don't want to admit it. We need to realize that happiness isn't a result of focusing on conditions."
"...The problem of immigration, note, is entirely self-inflicted. The US chose to let them in. It didn’t have to. They came to work. If Americans hadn’t hired them, they would have gone back.
We have immigration because we want immigration. Liberals favor immigration because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy and international and all, and from a genuine streak of decency. Conservative Republican businessman favor immigration, frequently sotto voce, because they want cheap labor that actually shows up and works.
...Do we expect businessmen to vote themselves out of business? That’s why we don’t take the obvious steps to control immigration (a thousand-dollar-a-day fine for hiring illegals, half to go anonymously to whoever informed on the employer).
...There is much billingsgate about whether to grant amnesty. The question strikes me as cosmetic. We are not going to round up millions of people and physically throw them across the border. Whether we should doesn’t matter. It’s fantasy. Too many people want them here, or don’t care that they are here, or don’t want to uproot families who have established new lives here. Ethnic cleansing is ugly. Further, the legal Latino population votes. It’s just starting to vote. A bumper crop of Mexican-American kids, possessed of citizenship, are growing headlong toward voting age. These are not throwable-out, even in principle.
People complain that Mexico doesn’t seal the borders. Huh? Mexico is a country, not a prison. It has no obligation to enforce American laws that America declines to enforce. Then there was the uproar when some fast-food restaurant in the US began accepting pesos. Why? Mexican border towns accept dollars. Next came outrage against Mexico because its consulates were issuing ID cards to illegals, which they then used to get drivers licenses. Why outrage? A country has every right to issue ID to its citizens. America doesn’t have to accept them. If it does, whose problem is that?
If you want to see a reasonable immigration policy, look to Mexico. You automatically get a ninety-day tourist visa when you land. No border Nazis. To get residency papers, you need two things (apart from photographs, passport, etc.) First, a valid tourist visa to show that you entered the country legally. Mexico doesn’t do illegal aliens. Second, a demonstrable income of $1000 a month. You are welcome to live in Mexico, but you are going to pay your own way. Sounds reasonable to me.
...It looks to me as though America thoughtlessly adopted an unwise policy, continued it until reversal became approximately impossible, and now doesn’t like the results. It must be Mexico’s fault."
"...OH MY GOD I CAN'T IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT MY COMIC BOOKS SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME."
"We can spend our time planning out our lives, setting goals and creating an illusion of control over this crazy world, but in reality we have little--if any--control. You can be in the best shape of your life and on cloud nine one minute, then get hit by a car the next, ending the rest of your days as a paraplegic. You never know what's around the corner. Then, every once in a while, we'll predict something that comes to pass, feeding our ego and again reinforcing the illusion we can see our future--yet it is just that: illusion.
...From the Buddhist point of view, it's not what happens in our life that makes us suffer, but how we interpret it.
...When we lack purpose and meaning in our lives, a part of us dies every day, and it's important to understand this early, before purposelessness, like a virus, replicates within our cells, literally taking over our lives.
Never get comfortable and stop growing. Once you do, you begin dying..."
Teen girl: So I found a picture of him on facebook, half-naked, being straddled by some fourteen-year-old with a bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand. I swear, my brother has all of my precocity, but none of my charm.
Older guy: Oh yeah, and none of your humility either.
--96th & Amsterdam
Overheard by: kids these days...
"Feeling a little sorry for myself (if all else fails self pity is as good as comfort food) I complained to Tom that, ‘I can’t get an agent. I really want one but no one’s interested.’ Tom looked at me, unable to stop his eyebrows rising into a question mark.
He said, ‘how many agents have you tried Geoff?’
I said (quick as a flash) ‘oh, loads.’
I‘d sent a flurry of emails and letters out in a day of mad exuberance but never really bothered to follow any of them up.
Tom said (and this has stayed with me ever since, in fact every time I feel as though things are not happening for me I remember his advice) ‘Geoff, if there are fifty agents in London and you have only tried forty nine of them, then you haven’t done your job. If there are fifty agents in London and you have tried them all, but only once then you still haven’t done your job because second time around you will be talking to different people on a different day, and they will have different needs and different moods.
If you haven’t got an agent, it is because you don’t want an agent.’"
"...His was the mistake made by many; they presume that if something is difficult then they are in the arena. But experience has taught me that the only time you are truly in the arena is when you are (ever so slightly) out of your depth.
Difficult easy is when you are on familiar terrain, not matter how hard the going.
Difficult difficult is when you find your self at the bottom of someone else’s class with three crazy training partners; fear at your left, doubt on your right and (that big bastard) uncertainty squaring up in front of you.
...You fill every spare moment with hard lists of worthy causes (difficult easy) so that you don’t have the time to invest in the book that you were always going to write, or the film you would love to make (if only you were not so committed in other areas) or the (difficult…very difficult) painting career that you had always intended to create.
You immerse yourself in course after course, book after book (so difficult, and yet….so deliciously easy) on becoming a life coach/property developer/master chef instead of just getting out there (difficult, oh so difficult) and actually doing it.
...stop chasing ostentatious challenges (that are difficult easy for you) and sort out your health; you are three stone over weight and your blood pressure is off the scale.
Kill the worthy endeavours that you think other people will think are impressive and do something truly and uniquely impressive; take your (secret) addictions to task and kill the porn (in all its forms)..."
"“The internet is a copy machine,” Kelly writes. “The previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order…When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.”"
"...there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." - Morpheus, to Neo, in The Matrix.
"First off, let's start with what makes me laugh the most. This whole 'You gotta grow up' shit. That is easily one of the most retarded arguments that people who have kids use to justify why their lives are more just or righteous.
One of the more interesting things about this statement, and I've heard it before, is that it always comes from guys that are either married or are living with chicks, and they almost all have kids. As if the biological process of shooting a live load into a chicks snatch and having her pump out a living organism that shares your DNA makes you a 'grown up.'
You're just a guy that got a girl pregnant and decided to stick around. There’s nothing “noble” about that. It’s nice that you’re there to raise your kid and offer guidance and support, but don’t get confused and think it somehow makes you special and a “grown up.”
There are no "grown ups." They don't exist. There's just people living a temporary life on a rock spinning around in space. Some have been alive longer than others and have accumulated more knowledge, but they’re just people. That’s it. Everything else that you add to what you’re doing here is just your ego’s way of justifying your ultimately pointless existence. The whole idea of you saying “You gotta grow up someday” is nothing more than someone showing their frustration for their own life, and somehow thinking that what I’m doing with mine HAS to have some sort of a downside to it, so you take the hack route, and say that there’s something wrong with NOT conforming.
That, is TRULY fucking hysterical.
People vary in age and occupation and personality, but they’re just people, and no one has any idea what the fuck this life is all about. Most people are just playing follow the leader, locking into predetermined patterns of behavior set into motion by the people that were born before you that were just as clueless as you are, but they were there first, so fuck it. I'll just do what they're doing. See, that's what being a "grown up" is; following a cultural pattern.
This idea that responsibility and family life are some sort of higher calling that has a righteousness and elevated end to it all is mindless bullshit. All you are doing by having kids is keeping this species moving. I know you THINK it's meaningful and beautiful and that there's rewards for this life that I can't possibly comprehend, but you're just breeding.
I know a fuck more about having a wife and kids than you do of being a celebrity, tubs. I’ve lived with chicks, and I’ve lived with a chick and her kid. I also have plenty of friends that have kids, and luckily most are honest about what it’s like.
I know the pleasures of it. I know the glow that a parent feels when they see their child learn new things, and show improvement. I also know that all a kid is really is just a growing organism, and these feelings of wonder and love that you feel from such common things as a child’s first steps are really just a biological trick in the form of a chemical called oxytosin produced by your brain that makes you connected with the child. It’s nature’s way of rewarding you with pleasure to ensure that you’ll continue to provide for and guide this little organism so that it can grow to fruition and make some people of it’s own.
Now, here’s the original post that I made that got you so riled up: “"People fucking lie about how great having kids is. I'm sure it's great SOME of the time, but it's no substitution for freedom, and anyone who tells you it is, likely has a bunch of fucking loser friends, so freedom means hanging out with them, and that's no picnic either."
Here’s what I think about that post: First off, people DO lie about having kids.
Even if they love them, which most people I know that have kids do, it’s rough, and most of the time they lie about how great it is. I’ve had friends that fucking LOVE their kids admit to this. They have to think that way to keep it going.
I personally don’t think that having kids is a substitution for the freedom that you get when you don’t have a wife and kids. Of course that’s just my opinion, and everyone is different, but I stand by what I said.
Now, for the other part, “and anyone that tells you it is, likely has a bunch of fucking loser friends” that was a flippant statement on my part. Everyone is different and everyone has a different personality. To some people having kids and being married might be the coolest thing ever, and it’s very possible that they have cool friends.
I was just running off at the mouth when I wrote that. However, I do think it probably applies to you. I just can’t imagine that with that sloppy mind of yours you’ve managed to surround yourself with a bunch of interesting, creative people, and I’m more than willing to bet that your friends are all losers.
I just can’t see anyone cool sitting around with you while you talk about how bad ass you are in bar fights, and how when you kick guys asses they buy you drinks.
Nope. Can’t see it.
I think you’re a dope, and I’m betting your friends are dopes too.
Did I say something dumb when I said that people that prefer kids over freedom are likely losers, I believe I did, because if you like it, and it works for you, then that’s all good really. But I’m glad I said it, because it made you make that thread, and that made me spark up a joint, and use you as my daily writing exercise...""
"As soccer superstar David Beckham kicks off the Los Angeles Galaxy's 2008 season, Drew Carey asks what this says about immigration in the U.S. in a new reason.tv video.
While workers from Mexico draw the ire and fiery rhetoric of anti-immigration forces, there was no outrage or concern when the English-speaking soccer hero brought his family and curling free kicks to America.
"I think we should welcome all peaceful people to our country,” says Drew Carey. "They get to the pursue the 'American Dream' and we get to benefit from all the wonderful things that immigrants bring to our country—like good old fashioned soccer. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.""
"Free Running 6 Year Old."
Levi "SkyNative" Meeuwenberg, who just appeared - and made it further than anyone - on this year's Sasuke program in Japan.
"SkyNative Freerunning - This is My Path"
Linkin Park's video for "Remember the Name" featuring video clips sent in by fans.
"Dan Inosanto is a Legend in the Martial Arts World. He worked in the movie "Game of Death" and is the most recognized of Bruce Lee's students. A Jeet Kune Do leader and Machado BJJ Black Belt."
"The ABC affiliate in Albany reports that Gov. David Paterson and state legislative leaders have agreed on a $1.25-a-pack increase in New York's cigarette tax, making it $2.75. That will give New York the highest state cigarette tax in the country, surpassing New Jersey's rate of $2.57 a pack. Smokers who buy cigarettes in New York City pay an additional $1.50 a pack, so they will be shelling out $4.25 in state and city taxes, plus the 39-cent federal tax, for a total of $4.64 a pack. They also have to pay sales tax, which in New York City is 8.38 percent. So a pack of cigarettes that would cost, say, $4 without taxes will cost New Yorkers more than $9, most of which will go into city, state, and federal coffers. In other words, the government will be taxing a product disproportionately consumed by poor people at an effective rate of more than 100 percent, reaping bigger profits than anyone else from a business it simultaneously condemns as the foremost threat to public health. It can get away with this punitive levy because the people it's bleeding are an unpopular minority with little political influence. And what do we call this policy? Progressive."
"3. Don’t wait for inspiration or the right moment."Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”...If you feel inspired one day that’s great. Use your inspiration. But don’t limit yourself to the moments where you feel inspired or you feel like the moment is just right to do something. Act instead...
7. It’s not too late."Youth has no age.”Don’t let social conditioning tell you what you can or cannot do just because you are of one age or another. Age is most of the time just in your head anyway..."
