Armbands and fight songs are the tip-off.

“The artificial weeping in this country... is embarrassing and unnecessary, and it just shows how emotionally immature the American people are.”

Carlin, from beyond the grave, still speaks wise.  Fifteen years after 9/11, we can hear the only bit George Carlin ever cut for taste - The Washington Post: "I spoke to Carlin only once, in 1999, and pressed him on a school shooting bit, which he did the night of the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo. “How can you still do that joke?” I asked. “Boy, you need that joke more than ever now,” he said. “The artificial weeping in this country, this nationwide mourning for dead people is just embarrassing, and these ribbons and these teddy bears and these little places where they put notes to dead people and all this s---. This is embarrassing and unnecessary, and it just shows how immature, how emotionally immature the American people as a class are.”"

George Carlin’s Shocking Prescience on the Nights Before 9/11 - The New Yorker

 "Toward the end of the album, Carlin implicates the audience more clearly in his death obsession. “I know some people think these kind of thoughts are ghoulish and demented and sick, but I know they’re not,” he says. “I know these things are normal and quite common. . . . Society has told you that nice people don’t take pleasure in mass death. But you’re wrong, because I think mass death is terrific, and I’m a really nice fucking guy.” Speaking in a menacing, devilish growl, Carlin gives voice to a dark part of us that eagerly, and at times almost giddily, consumes the wall-to-wall media coverage that certain kinds of mass-death events generate. “The only thing I care about is fun. That’s all. Entertainment,” he says. He explains the excitement he feels when watching fatal disasters as a visceral, animal response. The appeal he is making to members of the crowd, as he is getting them to laugh, is to consider this almost reflexive fascination, and to deny even a germ of it in themselves."

"[Catholic school] gave me the tools to reject the very religion they wanted me to have." - George Carlin

 "They taught me how to think for myself and to be independent."

12 years in hell | The Atheist Pig:

"I'd like to make a brief return visit to the that playground of guilty white liberals - Political Correctness." - George Carlin

"It presents itself as 'fairness' yet attempts to restrict and control peoples' language with strict codes and rigid rules... I'm not sure if silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech."

"So I know that a little later on this year you're going to have another of those really swell presidential elections that you like so much..." - George Carlin

"If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you are gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders...  So maybe, maybe, maybe it's not the politicians who suck.  Maybe something else sucks around here.  Like... the public.  Yeah. The public sucks!  There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody.  "The public sucks, fuck hope!" 

...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...

So I know that a little later on this year you're going to have another of those really swell presidential elections that you like so much.  You enjoy yourselves it'll be a lot of fun.  I'm sure that as soon as the election is over your country will improve immediately.  As for me, I'll be home that day doing essentially the same thing as you. The only difference is, when I get finished masturbating I'm gonna have a little something to show for it."

The CIA's "benign cover-up." Say it with me, 'back and to the left.'

JFK Assassination: The Spy Chief Who Lied - POLITICO Magazine: "Half a century after JFK’s death, in a once-secret report written in 2013 by the CIA’s top in-house historian and quietly declassified last fall, the spy agency acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that McCone and other senior CIA officials were “complicit” in keeping “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission...

According to the report by CIA historian David Robarge, McCone, who died in 1991, was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” at the spy agency, intended to keep the commission focused on “what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” The most important information that McCone withheld from the commission in its 1964 investigation, the report found, was the existence, for years, of CIA plots to assassinate Castro, some of which put the CIA in cahoots with the Mafia. Without this information, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots...

Initially stamped “SECRET/NOFORN,” meaning it was not to be shared outside the agency or with foreign governments, Robarge’s report was originally published as an article in the CIA’s classified internal magazine, Studies in Intelligence, in September 2013, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. The article, drawn from a still-classified 2005 biography of McCone written by Robarge, was declassified quietly last fall and is now available on the website of The George Washington University’s National Security Archive. In a statement to POLITICO, the CIA said it decided to declassify the report “to highlight misconceptions about the CIA’s connection to JFK’s assassination,” including the still-popular conspiracy theory that the spy agency was somehow behind the assassination...

Robarge’s article says that McCone, quickly convinced after the assassination that Oswald had acted alone and that there was no foreign conspiracy involving Cuba or the Soviet Union, directed the agency to provide only “passive, reactive and selective” assistance to the Warren Commission. This portrait of McCone suggests that he was much more hands-on in the CIA’s dealings with the commission—and in the agency’s post-assassination scrutiny of Oswald’s past—than had previously been known. The report quotes another senior CIA official, who heard McCone say that he intended to “handle the whole (commission) business myself, directly.”

The report identifies other tantalizing information that McCone did not reveal to the commission, including evidence that the CIA might somehow have been in communication with Oswald before 1963 and that the spy agency had secretly monitored Oswald’s mail after he attempted to defect to the Soviet Union in 1959. The CIA mail-opening program, which was later determined to have been blatantly illegal, had the code name HTLINGUAL. “It would be surprising if the DCI [director of central intelligence] were not told about the program” after the Kennedy assassination, the report reads. “If not, his subordinates deceived him. If he did know about HTLINGUAL reporting on Oswald, he was not being forthright with the commission—presumably to protect an operation that was highly compartmented and, if disclosed, sure to arouse much controversy.”"

And I stand by what I wrote years ago - Relaxed Focus: The main thing that convinces me JFK's assassination was a conspiracy.: "The sniper's nest is on the upper left side of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, facing down Houston St.  Kennedy is shot after the turn onto Elm St is made and proceeding away from the Depository.  Even with my minimal firearms training at the Academy and in the Marines, the story doesn't add up. No, the supposed shot that Oswald made isn't an impossible one [though I can't speak to the "X number of shots in Y number of seconds" theories] but here's what makes absolutely no sense at all - and you can see it on the map above. 

From a shooter's perspective, to wait until he's driven past you, moving away... when you've got a perfect headshot/killshot as the car makes the slow right turn onto and proceeds down Houston St makes no sense whatsover. Waiting till he's gone past you only makes sense if you're coordinating fire with other shooters and moving the target into a killzone - the 'triangulation of fire' theory you hear about from folks who posit another shooter on the Grassy Knoll or elsewhere."

If you're the only shooter and you're in the School Book Depository, you absolutely take the shot when the car is on Houston.  Even if they try to accelerate out of the kill zone, they're driving right to you and are easy pickings.

"I enjoy chaos and disorder... I'm an entropy fan."

"Perhaps I can make some small contribution in this area myself?"

The Cult of Children [& Parenting.]

The Red Pill Parent |: "[People] will try to convince you of the logic that children come first, that children are the future, that all of that which makes them better is more important than anything else. This is bullshit. Do you think cavemen sat around in caves all day playing and socially interacting with their babies? Do you think they had some kind of fresh-gazelle-delivery service that allowed him to interact with the children directly? Do you think the mothers were not under exactly the same survival condition, needing to forage for carrots, potatoes, berries, etc, while the men hunted and built structures? Do you think the “children” came first in any other era of humanity? If so, you are very sadly mistaken. 

Children are more than capable of getting everything they need to know about how to live simply by watching their parents live a happy life together. This is how humans did things for eons, changing that order and putting the “children first” is frankly perverse and the beginning of the destruction of the family. Children are more than information sponges, they are blank minds that want desperately to be adult. Children want to understand everything that everyone around them understands, which is why a parent telling a child that you’re “disappointed” in them is more effective than a paddling. If you focus on children, you are frankly just spoiling them with attention that they will never receive in the real world. If instead you focus on yourself and your spouse, you will raise children that see you putting yourself... and your marriage/partnership as an important part of what you do each day. Don’t put the children first. That’s essentially like negotiating with a terrorist, they’ll only make more demands on you until the cops storm the plane and lots of people get shot...

There are doubtless benefits that come from elevating parenthood to the status of a religion, but there are obvious pitfalls as well. Parents who do not feel free to express their feelings honestly are less likely to resolve problems at home. Children who are raised to believe that they are the center of the universe have a tough time when their special status erodes as they approach adulthood. Most troubling of all, couples who live entirely child-centric lives can lose touch with one another to the point where they have nothing left to say to one another when the kids leave home. In the 21st century, most Americans marry for love. We choose partners who we hope will be our soulmates for life. When children come along, we believe that we can press pause on the soulmate narrative, because parenthood has become our new priority and religion. We raise our children as best we can, and we know that we have succeeded if they leave us, going out into the world to find partners and have children of their own. Once our gods have left us, we try to pick up the pieces of our long neglected marriages and find new purpose. Is it surprising that divorce rates are rising fastest for new empty nesters? Perhaps it is time that we gave the parenthood religion a second thought..."

As usual, Carlin knew it first.

"If god exists..."

"What it is is contempt, disappointment, distaste, disillusionment. That plays as anger, naturally, because we're limited to these words that kind of define things rigidly."

Gettingit.com: The Happy Pessimist: "GI: In your most recent HBO special, you seemed really bitter and pissed off. I was surprised, myself, by how extreme it was. But I've heard you say you're pretty happy in your personal life. 

 GC: Yeah, there's not an ounce of bitterness, or anger, or anything in it. What it is is contempt, disappointment, distaste, disillusionment. That plays as anger, naturally, because we're limited to these words that kind of define things rigidly. Anger is a convenient way to describe what people see. It's very much like anger, and I guess by some definitions it is. But I don't experience it as anger. I experience it as contempt, disillusionment...

I have always had my dangerous flirtations with the mainstream. I've used it to serve my purposes, and it has, in a way, used me in a fair exchange. I've always kind of been of two minds when I'm doing something fairly mainstream: One is the critical observer outside, and the other is the person who wants something and is willing to make an accommodation to get it. All of living is, of course, a series of accommodations -- with conditions as they are -- so I don't look at it as anything more serious than that. 

...a curve of behavior that can be called a series of accommodations ... in order to pursue your own purposes in life. So I say the pure person is living in the woods, eating bark, and making his clothing out of vines. That's the purest person. And somewhere along the line, when you decided to wear clothing and use buses and use the telephone, you began a series of accommodations. So for instance, Ted Kaczynski hated, hated technology. He was willing to kill because of his hatred of technology -- and yet he used a typewriter to type his manifesto. And he rode the buses, an advanced form of technology, to get to the post office, where he used a government agency to deliver his crude technologies. So he's not a sellout, and I say, therefore, who is, and what's this all about? So it's kind of a philosophical examination of that...

GI: That's cool. Are there any philosophers that you've admired? 

GC: Well, when it comes to philosophers, I'm local. So I like people like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky. And I correspond with Robert Anton Wilson.

GI: You were publicly associated with a cocaine problem. Do you have an opinion at this point about coke as compared to pot and the hallucinogens? 

GC: I think it's pretty apparent that the hallucinogens are mind-expanding and value-changing, paradigm-shifting, and they sort of have a self-limiting quality, if listened to. Not everyone's life is in a place where they're open to knowing that and acting on it, but essentially I think those drugs have that quality. Whenever it comes to refining things is when we get into trouble. Refining sugar, refining flour, refining these plants into higher forms of the drug is when things get twisted. So, cocaine... it was a lot of fun, and I wouldn't trade any of that time, except I wish I'd written more seriously during those years. It sure helps you clean off the desktop."

The Gospel According to St. Carlin.

Funny, that.

"You're On The Global Frequency."

Truth.  One minute.

51 years old.  Tapping the Fountain of Youth, clearly.  Super-Bonus Points/Nerd Cred for the t-shirt.

 Cross-posted from FB, because...  "It's interesting... there's a lot of "this is a thing that consistently happens" but not a great deal of 'why does this happen?' In your forties, in Western cultures, why is there this window where the trappings and toys of society are no longer enough to distract you from the fundamental existential crisis? Is it just being halfway to death? Is it that when you hit your forties, if you've been paying attention, you realize how fundamentally untenable the socially constructed roles you've been expected to fill are... and are, essentially, a sucker's game? Is the 'happiness' that returns when you get past it actually happiness or is it resignation and rationalization given that most people lack the psychological wherewithal to effectively make changes in their lives? Is the often-mocked 'mid-life crisis' mocked mostly because the majority of people around you hate when you upset the status quo or are, in some respect, when trying to improve the trajectory of your life, shining a light on their unwillingness to do so for themselves? If someone is authentically trying to improve the course of their life, who is it for anyone else to say whether or not those choices are 'authentic' or valid? And how can you even know? Unanswerable questions, probably, in a lot of cases. Regardless, the best book on happiness I've come across, from a science-y perspective, [that I'm still trying to grind through] is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's [no, I can't pronounce it] "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience."" -- The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis - The Atlantic: "What a growing body of research reveals about the biology of human happiness—and how to navigate the (temporary) slump in middle age" 

Hirsi Ali slams feminism's 'trivial BS' | WashingtonExaminer.com: "Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a harsh critic of Islam’s treatment of women, said Wednesday that modern American feminism is focused on “trivial bullshit” and needs to be reclaimed. Speaking at the Independent Women’s Forum Women of Valor dinner, where she received an award for courage, Hirsi Ali reminded her audience of how far feminism has strayed from its original purpose. “I want you to remember that once upon a time, feminists fought for the access — basic right — access of girls to education,” she said...

But now, Hirsi Ali said, feminism has taken that victory and squandered it. “What we are now doing with the victory, and I agree with you if you condemn that and I condemn whole-heartedly the trivial bullshit it is to go after a man who makes a scientific breakthrough and all that we as women — organized women — do is to fret about his shirt?” Hirsi Ali said, referring to the controversy generated by the shirt featuring cartoons of scantily-clad women worn by the scientist who helped land a robot on a comet. “We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.”"

Sad/Infuriating.  Free speech is so last century. Today’s students want the ‘right to be comfortable’ » The Spectator: "I was attacked by a swarm of Stepford students this week. On Tuesday, I was supposed to take part in a debate about abortion at Christ Church, Oxford. I was invited by the Oxford Students for Life to put the pro-choice argument against the journalist Timothy Stanley, who is pro-life. But apparently it is forbidden for men to talk about abortion. A mob of furious feministic Oxford students, all robotically uttering the same stuff about feeling offended, set up a Facebook page littered with expletives and demands for the debate to be called off. They said it was outrageous that two human beings ‘who do not have uteruses’ should get to hold forth on abortion — identity politics at its most basely biological — and claimed the debate would threaten the ‘mental safety’ of Oxford students. Three hundred promised to turn up to the debate with ‘instruments’ — heaven knows what — that would allow them to disrupt proceedings.

Incredibly, Christ Church capitulated, the college’s censors living up to the modern meaning of their name by announcing that they would refuse to host the debate on the basis that it now raised ‘security and welfare issues’. So at one of the highest seats of learning on Earth, the democratic principle of free and open debate, of allowing differing opinions to slog it out in full view of discerning citizens, has been violated, and students have been rebranded as fragile creatures, overgrown children who need to be guarded against any idea that might prick their souls or challenge their prejudices. One of the censorious students actually boasted about her role in shutting down the debate, wearing her intolerance like a badge of honour in an Independent article in which she argued that, ‘The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has a detrimental effect on marginalised groups.’

This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered the Stepford students. Last month, at Britain’s other famously prestigious university, Cambridge, I was circled by Stepfords after taking part in a debate on faith schools. It wasn’t my defence of parents’ rights to send their children to religious schools they wanted to harangue me for — much as they loathed that liberal position — it was my suggestion, made in this magazine and elsewhere, that ‘lad culture’ doesn’t turn men into rapists. 

Their mechanical minds seemed incapable of computing that someone would say such a thing. Their eyes glazed with moral certainty, they explained to me at length that culture warps minds and shapes behaviour and that is why it is right for students to strive to keep such wicked, misogynistic stuff as the Sun newspaper and sexist pop music off campus. ‘We have the right to feel comfortable,’ they all said, like a mantra. One — a bloke — said that the compulsory sexual consent classes recently introduced for freshers at Cambridge, to teach what is and what isn’t rape, were a great idea because they might weed out ‘pre-rapists’: men who haven’t raped anyone but might. The others nodded. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Pre-rapists! Had any of them read Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novella about a wicked world that hunts down and punishes pre-criminals, I asked? None had.

When I told them that at the fag-end of the last millennium I had spent my student days arguing against the very ideas they were now spouting — against the claim that gangsta rap turned black men into murderers or that Tarantino flicks made teens go wild and criminal — not so much as a flicker of reflection crossed their faces. ‘Back then, the people who were making those censorious, misanthropic arguments about culture determining behaviour weren’t youngsters like you,’ I said. ‘They were older, more conservative people, with blue rinses.’ A moment’s silence. Then one of the Stepfords piped up. ‘Maybe those people were right,’ he said...

If your go-to image of a student is someone who’s free-spirited and open-minded, who loves having a pop at orthodoxies, then you urgently need to update your mind’s picture bank. Students are now pretty much the opposite of that. It’s hard to think of any other section of society that has undergone as epic a transformation as students have. From freewheelin’ to ban-happy, from askers of awkward questions to suppressors of offensive speech, in the space of a generation. My showdown with the debate-banning Stepfords at Oxford and the pre-crime promoters at Cambridge echoed other recent run-ins I’ve had with the intolerant students of the 21st century. I’ve been jeered at by students at the University of Cork for criticising gay marriage; cornered and branded a ‘denier’ by students at University College London for suggesting industrial development in Africa should take precedence over combating climate change; lambasted by students at Cambridge (again) for saying it’s bad to boycott Israeli goods. In each case, it wasn’t the fact the students disagreed with me that I found alarming — disagreement is great! — it was that they were so plainly shocked that I could have uttered such things, that I had failed to conform to what they assume to be right, that I had sought to contaminate their campuses and their fragile grey matter with offensive ideas."

"Men are four times more likely than women to commit suicide, even though women attempt it more. So men are better at it!  That's something else you gals will want to be workin' on.  Well, if you want to be truly equal, you're gonna have to start taking your own lives in greater numbers." - George Carlin

#TheStruggleIsReal 

  

  

Warren Ellis' Global Frequency Is Getting A TV Pilot—Once Again: "Deadline is reporting that Global Frequency has landed a pilot production commitment at Fox, with Farscape and Defiance creator Rockne S. O'Bannon writing and co-executive producing with Ellis, Jonathan Littman, and Jerry Bruckheimer. According to Deadline, "The show will chronicle the workings of The Global Frequency, a privately funded crime-fighting operation that uses worldwide crowd-sourcing to solve crimes the police cannot." The question is, will it explore what the strange doings of the world's governments, or will it be more of a typical crimefighting show?"

Finishing A Book | MORNING, COMPUTER: "On a tip from Joe Hill, I’m reading a book called DAILY RITUALS, about the working methods of creative people, and it appears so far that I am probably somewhat less functional than Kafka, while being less than half as good as him.  You start looking at their drinking and drugging patterns and falsely think, “mmm, that sounds good.  That sounds productive.” An old girlfriend once bought me a book about four brilliant writers who were alcoholics and their awful doomed lives.  “Thank you!”  I said.  “A manual!” “That is not,” she said gravely, “why I gave it to you.”"

This week in innocence: Ricky Jackson to be released tomorrow after 39 years in prison - The Washington Post: "Ricky Jackson, now 59 years old, has spent the last 39 years of his life in prison for a 1975 murder that he and two of his friends didn’t commit."

  

Albuquerque police lieutenant advertises “Killology” classes - The Washington Post: "As I pointed out in September, this is part of a growing movement within policing that emphasizing using more force more quickly, and encourages cops to see themselves more as soldiers and warriors, not as keepers of the peace. Jones not only wants cops taking a more aggressive approach to lethal force, but he also believes the public has no right to know about it."

thehappysorceress: herochan: Batman 2 18 x 29... - APE IN A CAPE:

For all the quality TV there is these days - and there is, quite a bit - MasterChef Junior may be the show I enjoy watching the most.  'MasterChef Junior': The Secret Ingredients Are Moppets And Empathy : Monkey See : NPR: "It's not necessarily intuitive that Gordon Ramsay, who once told a Hell's Kitchen contestant that a poorly cooked piece of fish resembled "Gandhi's flip-flop," would be good with children. It's surprising, then, that MasterChef Junior, a kid-centered spin-off of his Fox show MasterChef, is one of the most warmly reviewed reality-competition shows ... maybe ever...

The funny thing about this show, though, is that they're kids, and they're all pretty nice people who have a legitimate skill (that would be cooking). That gives the audience a chance to enjoy some of the really fun things about competition shows (growth, personality, triumphs) without the bad things about competition shows (backbiting, unpleasantness, resentment). It allows the audience to be on the side of not just some participants but all of the participants, which is secretly what a sizable chunk of the supposedly bloodthirsty crowd really wants to do anyway...  This season, I am carefully tracking the fortunes of Abby, a bespectacled eight-year-old, and Oona, a wry nine-year-old. If they made The Abby And Oona Show, where they just talked about whatever was on their minds at the moment, including but not limited to food, love, and world events, I would tune in. In fact, we need to start the Abby And Oona podcast. This is Oona, introducing a dish she's cooked, and right at the very, very, very end? That's Abby applauding with more good-natured sportspersonship than the jocks at the end of Lucas."

 The Return of Awesome Fitz.

  

 Kyle MacLachlan is killing it on S.H.I.E.L.D.

Strong Parenting Move.

"You got me there."

Climate change is a problem. But our attempts to fix it could be worse than useless - Telegraph: "The UN Climate Panel came out with its final report yesterday. It is a summary of its 3 main reports, published over the last year. It tells us that global warming is real and a significant problem. And as usual, the media hears something else – in the words of Mother Jones magazine, how future warming will be “ghastly, horrid, awful, shocking, grisly, gruesome.” In between the alarmist hype and the reality of climate change we once again risk losing an opportunity to think smartly about energy and find a realistic way to fix global warming.

We need to realise that the world will not come off fossil fuels for many decades. Globally, we get a minuscule 0.3pc of our energy from solar and wind. According to the International Energy Agency, even with a wildly optimistic scenario, we will get just 3.5pc of our energy from solar and wind in 2035, while paying almost $100 billion in annual subsidies. Today, the world gets 82pc of its energy from fossil fuels, in 21 years it will still be more than 79pc. The simple reason is that cheap and abundant energy is what powers economic growth...

As the poor half of our world is reaching for a similar development to that of China, they will also want much, much more power, most of it powered by coal. Even the climate-worried World Bank president accepts that "there’s never been a country that has developed with intermittent power." Realising that fossil fuels will be here for a long time means stronger focus on moving from coal to gas, since gas emits about half the greenhouse gasses. The US shale gas revolution has reduced gas prices and lead to a significant switch from coal to gas. This has reduced US CO₂ emissions to their lowest in 20 years...

While global warming will be a problem, much of the rhetoric is wildly exaggerated – like when UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon calls it “an existential challenge for the whole human race.” 

Global warming pales when compared to many other global problems. While the WHO estimates 250,000 annual deaths from global warming in 30 years, 4.3 million die right now each year from indoor air pollution, 800 million are starving, and 2.5 billion live in poverty and lack clean water and sanitation. When the UN asked 5 million people for their top priorities the answers were better education and health care, less corruption, more jobs and affordable food. They placed global warming at the very last spot, as priority number 17.

Climate policies can easily cost much more than the global warming damage will – while helping very little. The German solar adventure, which has cost taxpayers more than $130 billion, will at the end of the century just postpone global warming by a trivial 37 hours. While a low carbon tax in theory could help a little, the political reality is that climate policies almost everywhere have been ineffective, done little good while sustaining the most wasteful technologies. The IPCC warns than less-than-perfect climate policies can be 2-4 times more expensive. Biofuels, for instance, have driven up food costs, likely causing an extra 30 million starving, with prospects of starving another 100 million by 2020. And it is likely that biofuels cause net increase in CO₂ emissions, because they force agriculture to cut down forests elsewhere to grow food. This is why we have to be careful in pushing for the right policies. For twenty years, the refrain has been promises to cut CO₂, like the Kyoto Protocol. For twenty years these policies have failed. We should instead look to climate economics to find smarter solutions."

"Art Historian."

"The public sucks.  Fuck hope.  That's a nice campaign slogan...  I don't vote... it's meaningless.  This country was bought and sold and paid for a long time ago."

"I on the other hand, who did not vote, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created that I have nothing to do with."

 Ron Paul: 'Republican control of the Senate = expanded neocon wars' - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

Corn flakes were invented to keep you from masturbating.  True Story.  #knowyourhistory

  

Sleep: You're Doing It Wrong - Lift Big Eat Big: "I know this isn’t easy for everyone, but going to bed at the same time every night makes a huge difference in the quality of your sleep.  Our bodies like to be in a rhythm, and when the time you go to sleep is all over the place, you will have trouble falling asleep, which is another reason why people get poor quality of sleep.  Make it a priority at least during the week to go bed at the exact same time every night...

In your bedroom make sure there is absolutely no light coming in at all.  I make my bedroom into a cave with my entire window blocked off.  Our bodies are very light sensitive, so just a little light shining through can disrupt you...

Make sure there are no noises that can disrupt you.  Sometimes this is out of your control, so it’s a good idea to have some white noise to cloud other sounds out.  A loud fan will generally work well here...

Having a routine before you go to bed can be a great help in falling asleep faster.  Watching movies, television late at night can be very stimulating that can keep your mind racing for a few hours after.  Also doing stressful work before bed can do the same. Our bodies also like to sleep in a cooler temperature, around 66-72 degrees is ideal.  For myself nothing is worse than not being able to sleep because you are too hot. 

This is an obvious one but of course, avoid caffeine and other stimulants later in the day.  If you train later in the day then I would recommend taking a smaller dose to start to see how your body reacts. Start applying these habits and you will feel more energized and motivated to train harder and longer."