Perhaps something to be said for amphetamines.

[Professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University] Oliver Sacks gets amphetamines right:

"'I would take a huge dose of amphetamine,' he recently told the New Scientist, '400 tablets on the weekend – and basically have something like a nonstop orgasm for 48 hours.'"

Goatburger.

Saw it in the store and I had to know.

Tasted a lot like lamb.  Reminded me of the gyros and souvlaki I had in Greece... wow... has to be almost 18 years ago now...

Chinese Visitor.

Is it racist I think of all praying mantises as Chinese?  Anyways, dude was hanging out on our window, 5 stories up.  Kinda cool.

Couple more random apartment photos...

To go with these here from before.  The apt is prob about 95% done, with the exception of finding a way to hang pictures and whatnots on our all concrete walls.  The apt is ridiculously huge, especially having lived in Japan these last five years.  My whole apt in Japan would probably fit inside of the living and dining room here.  Takes some getting used to.


Living Room of Freedom.

Dining Area of Spaciousness.

Entranceway of Justice. 

Hallway of Infinite Length. 

Bed of Comfort. 

Shatner sings Cee-Lo's "Fuck You!"

Great Thing or Greatest Thing Ever? You be the judge.

Lede of the Day - "The Tears of John Boehner Are Like Acid to Freedom."

Via Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Hilarious defense lawyer quote.

Quote | End the War on Freedom:

"'We, as criminal defense lawyers, are forced to deal with some of the lowest people on earth, people who have no sense of right and wrong, people who will lie in court to get what they want, people who do not care who gets hurt in the process. It is our job - our sworn duty - as criminal defense lawyers, to protect our clients from those people.' - Cynthia Roseberry"

Fedgov sues Coke because of deadly poison ingredient - caffeine!

As dumb as this might seem to us, I can almost guarantee that the War on [some] drug [users] will seem equally as ridiculous to a couple generations from now.

In 1911, Coca Cola went on trial for being a killer brain tonic:

"In March 1911, a federal lawsuit against Coca Cola (The United States Government vs. Forty Barrels, Twenty Kegs Coca-Cola,) began in Chattanooga. How come? The US government alleged that Coke's added caffeine was a deadly poison.

Nowadays Coca Cola is demonized for causing obesity and dissolving your incisors, but in the early 1900s the US government accused the soft drink of poisoning consumers."

US Embassy Norway busted.

Spying in embassies?  Shocking.

Via Google Translate and US embassy commissioned illegal surveillance of Norwegian citizens - Boing Boing

"TV 2 News tonight reveals that a secret intelligence group in Oslo on behalf of the United States has systematically monitored the Norwegians for over ten years.

Among the Norwegian monitors are several former police tops and ex-employees from the Police Security Service has been paid by the Americans.

...According to the newspaper would Johansen and two other former colleagues have been working as security advisors at the U.S. embassy. Here they had the responsibility to build up the civil guard, recorded security missions and worked to strengthen ties between the PST and American intelligence services, primarily the CIA.

Johansson confirmed that he worked for the embassy, but stood seven years ago surprised the link between his own and two colleagues at the embassy's involvement and the close relations between the PST and the CIA..."

US Embassy in surveillance scandal / News / The Foreigner — Norwegian News in English.:

"...Minister of Justice Knut Storberget claims he was not aware of the SDU’s undercover activity until yesterday.

However, Philip J. Crowley, assistant secretary and the US Department of State in Washington, confirms it took place, and that was in cooperation with Norwegian authorities."

Summing up Japanese culture in one sign.

See, it's not getting caught between the doors that's the problem, it's that it gets attention and people see you.  Oh, Japan...

Via Tasia @ i want to go to there: trains

Evil - "US law does not forbid rendition... to countries that torture, says CIA lawyer."

"The law is a ass." And evil.

US law does not forbid rendition of terror suspects to countries that torture, says CIA lawyer - Boing Boing

"U.S. law does not ... preclude the United States from rendering individuals to a third country in instances where the third country may subject the rendered individual to torture. The only restrictions that do exist under U.S. law preclude U.S. officials from themselves torturing or inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on individuals during rendition operations..." —Daniel Pines, assistant general counsel at the CIA.

GWB - "No one was more sickened or angry than I was when we didn't find weapons of mass destruction." - George W. Bush, from his book 'Decision Points.'

Really?

REALLY?

How about the 4,000 troops killed? Their families & friends. Or the 100,000 Iraqi deaths? ONE. HUNDRED. THOUSAND. Or their families & friends?

You amazingly simple minded, unrepentant douchebag.

Casualty stats from here and here.

Why conspiracy theories exist - "UK Lord claims mysterious Foundation wants to give Britain 17B, no strings attached." via Boing Boing.

UK Lord claims mysterious Foundation wants to give Britain 17B, no strings attached - Boing Boing:

"Charlie Stross links to an official transcript of the Nov 1 debate in the UK's House of Lords in which the Tory life-peer Lord James of Blackheath (a respected industry magnate and financier) claims to have been contacted by a secret foundation with more gold on hand than all the world's bullion reserves combined. This group, 'Foundation X,' apparently has offered to give the UK 5 billion right away, no strings attached, with another 17 billion to follow before Christmas for works on hospitals, schools and London's crossrail project. Lord James seems to be totally serious about this, and he claims to have brought other respected Lords to meet with these shadowy goldbugs."

"Relationships: A Guide" via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Now that's just funny.

Gospel of Carlin - "I don't vote. Two reasons. First of all it's meaningless; this country was bought and sold a long time ago... Secondly, I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain..."

“I don't vote. Two reasons. First of all it's meaningless; this country was bought and sold a long time ago. The shit they shovel around every 4 years *pfff* doesn't mean a fucking thing. Secondly, I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around – they say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain', but where's the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.”

"The Science of Libertarian Morality."

Much more at the link.

The Science of Libertarian Morality - Reason Magazine:

"...A fascinating new study, “Understanding Libertarian Morality: The psychological roots of an individualist morality,” to be published in a forthcoming issue of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In probing the moral thinking of libertarians, the study uses the “largest dataset of psychological measures ever compiled on libertarians,” involving moral surveys of more than 10,000 self-identified libertarians gathered online at the website yourmorals.org, run by Haidt and colleagues.

...the study found that libertarians show (1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle and correspondingly weaker endorsement of other moral principles, (2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional intellectual style, and (3) lower interdependence and social relatedness.

In his earlier work, Haidt surveyed the attitudes of conservatives and liberals using what he calls the Moral Foundations Questionnaire which measures how much a person relies on each of five different moral foundations: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. Typically, conservatives scored lower than liberals on the Harm and Fairness scales and much higher on Ingroup, Authority, and Purity scales. In this case, libertarians scored low on all five surveyed moral dimensions. “Libertarians share with liberals a distaste for the morality of Ingroup, Authority, and Purity characteristic of social conservatives, particularly those on the religious right,” notes the study. Libertarians scored slightly below conservatives on Harm and slightly above on Fairness. This suggests that libertarians “are therefore likely to be less responsive than liberals to moral appeals from groups who claim to be victimized, oppressed, or treated unfairly.”

The Schwartz Value scale measures the degree to which participants regard 10 values as guiding principles for their lives. Libertarians put higher value on Hedonism, Self-Direction, and Stimulation than either liberals or conservatives and they put less value than either on Benevolence, Conformity, Security, and Tradition. Like liberals, libertarians put less value on Power, but like conservatives they value Universalism less. Universalism is defined as “understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection of the welfare of all people and nature.” All three put high value on Achievement. Taking these results into account, Haidt concludes that “libertarians appear to live in a world where traditional moral concerns (e.g., respect for authority, personal sanctity) are not assigned much importance..."

"3 Reasons This Election Didn't Change a Thing."

"Here's three reasons the GOP wave won't change a goddamn thing:

1. We're still on the fast track to the poor house...

2. Nobody's talking about foreign policy and ending the warfare state. In constant dollars, defense spending has basically doubled since 2000 and is projected to stay at levels hundreds of billions of dollars above what it was before the Cold War ended. Perhaps more important, neither President Obama nor his party's leadership has even begun a meaningful conversation about foreign policy. The same goes for the Republicans, who constantly exempt defense spending, one of the very largest annual items in the federal budget, from serious scrutiny, much less significant cuts. President Obama is following George W. Bush's painfully slow withdrawal plan from Iraq and has tripled down in Afghanistan without clarifying U.S. goals and leaving lots of wiggle room when it comes to supposed deadlines for leaving. The only folks more hellbent on maintaining an unexamined status quo than the president are the Republicans.

3. The only people worse than liberals on social issues are conservatives... If anything - and despite all the limited-government rhetoric - they'll be even worse when it comes to expanding individual autonomy and increasing lifestyle choice."

"Do as we say, not as we do." - America to, well, everyone.

Secretary Clinton: The past must be confronted - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

"Secretary Clinton instructed Kenya to proceed with war crimes trials of its former officials, while President Obama demanded that Indonesia continue investigating past human rights abuses on the ground that 'we can't go forward without looking backwards.' In other news yesterday: George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at the World Series baseball game while the Texas crowd cheered and chanted: 'USA. USA.'"

"You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting..." - the wisdom of Spider Jerusalem.

Heh. Never fails to amuse.

"You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting.  Imagine you're locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pit bulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight.  You like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation". They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns and brand-new sexual organs that you did not know existed.  So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as the eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades.

That's voting.  You're welcome." - Spider Jerusalem

2NE1 kinda kicks ass.

2NE1 keeps popping up on my radar, here and there on the internets, so I checked them out, even with ridiculously slow internet speeds here. Ended up being worth it.

K-Pop is similar to J-Pop in that it can have the same kind of overproduced feel [hell, mainstream pop anywhere is like that, truth be told - very little difference between Morning Musume and Britney Spears, when you think about it...] but maybe it's just from my time in Japan they seem somewhat similar. But I dug the hell out of these. I dig on the cross cultural bits, the English mixed with Korean, the hip-hop-pop hybrid, the wicked choreography and the eclectic styling. Pretty damn cool. Catchy.