Ramones vs. The Misfits: What they Want

Link

Obama Killed Osama: The Five Stages of Republican Denial

LOOOL

See...the economy that had already crashed when Obama was inaugurated....Obama's fault. 9/11...Clinton's fault. Obama killing OBL three years after he took office, and after all Republicans had written it off...uh...Bush?

Poor, pathetic bastards. I almost feel sorry for them. Debasing themselves like this over and over again...it's not a pretty sight...

Bullshit Litmus Test: Slavoj Zizek

So, here's an easy test of your bullshit detector. Listen to like two minutes of Slavoj Zizek.

Now, this is not anti-intellectualism, nor impatience with dopey terminology, nor any such thing. It's an intolerance for nonsense. Zizek is just about 100% bullshitter--I'm a philosopher...you can trust me on this. He's the major-league equivalent of that dude in the dorms freshman year who had the gift of gab, and who was impressed by his own (rather modest) intelligence, and liked to hold forth to stoned friends in a knowing, check-out-how-insightful-I-am kind of way.

If your bullshit detector does not peg the meter when this Zizek fellow talks, then it's probably in need of a tune-up.

The key to this kind of bullshitting is to hit near the truth often enough that people dismiss the fact that most of  what you say seems like--nay, is--nonsense. For example, the point about loving real people, in some cases even loving their imperfections even as if they were perfections...that's a worthy point, though not an original one, of course. But the path there is the utterest nonsense, and the conclusion he draws from it--that environmentalists should love trash--is bullshit of the highest order. (Protip: persons and non-persons are different in this respect.) It's a winning combination for those seeking fame via bullshitting: wander around free-associating, throwing in some tempting, exciting terminology, then hit on a basically unrelated point that's genuinely plausible so that the audience gets a thrill of recognition and you maintain some credibility, then leap to some exhilarating, quasi-paradoxical conclusion.

Just to make it clear: it's not that Zizek is a controversial figure among respectable thinkers. He's not someone serious thinkers read or think about at all. He's some kind of popular lit-critty guy who spouts bullshit for the quasi-philosophical entertainment of people who like to play around in a world of semi-coherent, titillating, two-bit faux philosophy. Maybe he's a nice guy--I don't know. But don't take him seriously because you think that, say, philosophers at Princeton are sitting around reading the guy.

The thing to keep in mind is that it's very, very, very easy to make something vaguely resembling sense. That's how e.g. Rush Limbaugh operates--free associating some bullshit, then circle around every now and then to something vaguely like the truth, then head for some conclusion you wanted all along. Almost nobody, no matter how loony, makes no sense whatsoever. Let somebody get away with making even only about 80% sense, and they can take you all sorts of crazy places. "Hey, some of that kinda sorta made sense" isn't anywhere close to being good enough. It still leaves you with something like "Uh, I didn't follow much of that." Take it from me: in Mr. Z's case, there wasn't anything there to follow. If you're really tempted by this guy, the cure is to sit down and take a couple of weeks to read very carefully through a couple of pages. At the end of that, you'll be appalled that you were ever tempted by his vaporous nonsense.

Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) Has Police Illegally Confiscate Constituents' Cell Phones

Fascists.

 People cannot give into this sort of thing. Don't quietly hand your property over to people misusing state power, fer Chrissake!

More Retractions in Scientific Papers?

Maybe.

Just one study, and some obvious alternative hypotheses. But interesting.

25 Years in Prison, Framed by Prosecutors for His Wife's Murder

This is the story of Michael Morton. He was framed for murder by the prosecutor and the police. No one--no one--is merely incompetent enough to ignore the evidence that they ignored. They would have to have been the most incompetent men on the planet for this to have been an error.

So, they intentionally stole most of the best part of a man's life, let his wife's killer get away, falsely hung the murder on him and, to top it all off, made it possible for the murderer to murder another young wife and mother.

These men deserve life in prison. In a more just nation, people who intentionally convict an innocent man night hang. I expect no punishment for them at all, however, in actuality. At least Ken Anderson, the prosecutor, is being investigated.

Remember, not only are these men criminals, but they're misusing state authority and undermining the moral authority of the government.

Although I don't expect it, I sincerely hope that Texas gives them both barrels. Figuratively speaking.

Romney a "Prankster"?

This is almost painful to read.

First of all, being called a "prankster" is approximately on par with being said to enjoy "sport." Second...chambermaid? Jesus, can even his paid spinmeisters not tell a story about this guy without making him sound like Thurston Howell the Third? And, speaking of third: it's not very funny.

Honestly, if we lose to these bozos, I'm going to be suicidal.

Retired Israeli Spook Casts Doubt on Rationality of Current Israeli Leadership

Link

Hot Air Gets Desperate / The bin Laden Ad

LOOOL

Oh, man. They are really getting scared/desperate now.

The bin Laden ad is a really good one, one that aims to remind people of the truth, and to neutralize the GOP's (never-legitimate) advantage on foreign policy. And the Hot Air fellows are shrieking and puling about it. It's almost funny--almost--that conservatives have been reduced to trying to convict Obama of trying to frighten voters. Without irrational appeals to fear, contemporary conservatives have virtually nothing in the chamber.

The ad, of course, has nothing to do with fear. Obama said we needed to kill OBL. He was right. He killed him. The last Republican president ignored the threat from OBL, failed to pursue him, and used 9/11 as an excuse to launch an unrelated and disastrous war. The new GOP candidate said quite clearly that it wasn't worth pursuing OBL, and that Obama was reckless for saying that we should strike in Pakistan under certain conditions. The fact of the matter is that it's game, set, and match Obama on this issue.

If the raid had gone badly, R-money and his minions would be filling the airwaves with info about the raid--that you can be sure of.

Do check out that link to the Hot Air piece if you want a little charge--and don't neglect the comments! Those folks over there...they are really, really, really not smart. Ok, come to think of it, it's actually more pathetic than amusing.

Desperate, stupid, and kinda crazy is not a good combination...

"Kopimism": Possibly the Stupidest Thing Ever

"Kopimism" is a fake religion in which people pretend to believe that stealing (aka "sharing") files is a sacred rite. Teen stupidity over this stuff is one of the thing that keeps me away from comments on Reddit.

Look:

1. This is not a religion. This is a moronic, transparent ploy to rationalize stealing files. No sane person is buying this. This is not anyone's religion, and only the terminally sophomoric would even attempt to deny that.

2. Freedom of religion is an important principle. You want something genuinely sacred, that principle is about as close as you can get. Transparent, bullshit attempts to get your bad habits deemed religious weakens respect for the important principle. Stop it. You are idiots.

Interlude: look, weed should be legal. There's really no denying that. But I've never had any patience for folks who have, periodically, tried to pretend that smoking weed was part of their religion. Some religions do actually have an established history of using drugs (Rastas: you're a borderline case, dudes. I'm going to allow it.) The thing is, smoking weed is genuinely harmless. Stealing files isn't. Allowing some folks to get by with recreational drug use is, in part, an acknowledgement that there's really nothing wrong with what they're doing. But you can't just start, e.g., the High Church of the Pedobear and expect the state to condone your nonsense.

3. I don't know how the file-sharing madness will ultimately shake out, but currently we seem to have big corporations--who are already ripping off artists--doing loonier and loonier things to protect their files, and pirate-friendly kids saying loonier and loonier things to defend their penchant for riskless theft. Look, I don't think there's any big problem pirating the occasional file. Individual cases aren't the problem. It's folks who routinely pirate that's the problem. I simply don't see a big problem with snagging an album or movie when you can't find a way to buy it, or if you're checking it out because you're not sure you're going to like it, or whatever. But a policy of pirating stuff all the time is deserving of prosecution. Why people think it's ok to steal something simply because it's easy to do so really is beyond me.

But look: if you are going to steal files, at least be honest about it and admit you're stealing. Don't get mad because someone wants to get paid for his work, and don't pretend you aren't stealing just because you wish you weren't. And, fer chrissake, don't pretend it's a damn religion.

4. Oh and: should religion be accorded this special status? Well, it should probably just be freedom of thought that's protected. Atheists' metaphysical beliefs deserve as much protection as those of theists. But "freedom of religion" is probably a decent approximation. It's probably close enough for government work.

Schmience: Cell Phone Use and Daughters v. Husbands

Wow. Can you really get published with this kind of stuff?

Of course science (or "science") journalism is so bad that you can't really tell what's going on in the study half the time. But unless this is a really, really bad article at the L.A. Times, this study stinks.

Full Nelson: Duke vs. UNC

We're just better.

We realize this.

Colbert Quote

"Yes, Obama duped young people by not doing every single thing they want. So now, they'll all vote Republican. It's like when I want some bread, I won't settle for half a loaf. Instead, I'll have a muffin made of broken glass."

This is one of the reasons I don't spend much time looking at Reddit anymore. Too many Ron Paul fanboys and vapid sub-21-year olds convinced that, since teh weed is still illegal, Obama sold out, man, and the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans...

Russell Quote

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."

A central tenet of what Peirce called "the gospel of greed."

101 Non-Fiction Stories

This looks good. I've read some of them, and liked them.

Jennifer Rubin Is An Idiot / Yet Another Reason To Support Obama

Sully's "Ask Jennifer Rubin Anything"

It's no news that Rubin is an idiot, but my admiration for Obama is increased by finding out that there is nothing Obama could do to get her vote.

My favorite parts: she thinks Obama doesn't act unilaterally enough, and deplores his "strident tone."

Seriously, you just can't make this shit up.

Romney Is Dishonest: Vacation Days

While not an outright lie, criticizing Obama about how many vacation days he's taken is either ignorant or, as in Romney's case, the moral equivalent of a lie.

Republicans have already established their independent judgments about how much vacation it is reasonable to take by not having criticized Reagan for taking just shy of twice as much, nor Bush for taking about three times as much.

There's also the complaint about how Obama spends the vacation time he does take, but that's an even dumber criticism.

But of course Romney doesn't really mean any of this...or he means it only in the way that and to the extent that someone means some bullshit criticism they think up in anger. He's trying to win an election, he'll say anything to win, and he is a liar. So making up some crap that doesn't make any sense is just par for the course, as it were.

Jeez that guy is pathetic.

Ted Nugent Needs A Punch In The Face

Ted Nugent is a drooling moron.

Has there ever been a less-talented musician than this guy? I mean, seriously. The guy is famous for playing like one really, really, really shitty song back in the 1970's, the shittiest time for music in the entire history of the world. Now he's issuing what seem to be some kind of vague threats conditional on Obama's re-election.

Sometimes, people just need a good punch in the face. I'd be very happy to be the agent of the Universe in this case...er, if, of course, I condoned such things. Which I don't. Nope. Not a bit. Which is not to say that he doesn't deserve it.

But, uh, Ted: how about you STFU? How about that? You're a raging moron who doesn't have two neurons to rub together. We don't need to hear your Neanderthal political opinions. This is like getting political commentary from Snookie or Justin Bieber. There's just no there there.

Silver: Approval Ratings and Re-Election Odds

At 538.

For-Profit "Universities" Are Stealing Our Money; Virginia Foxx Is Helping

Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is helping for-profit schools like the "University" of Phoenix, in effect, steal our tax dollars. Foxx is helping to pass bills to make sure such schools have zero accountability.

These evil institutions prey on a vulnerable sector of the population, people who know so little about higher education that they actually think that they are going to get an education from the University of Phoenix...and that a degree from that august institution is going to help them out on the job market.

These "schools" are basically just enormous scams that suck up student loan money. Few things would make me happier than a massive campaign to crush these scumbags. Lord knows that even real universities don't educate their students all that well...but these folks aren't even trying.

Here's a recent something from Reddit by a University of Phoenix admissions dude.

These jerkweeds should have to plaster "Warning: Not An Actual University" at the top of every page of their website.

Marijuana-Infused Wine

Link

Thank God that the gub'mint keeps this dangerous substance out of our hands.

Or tries to...  Because I'm gettin' me some'a that.

Encouraging Poll Internals, Obama vs. R-Money

Cillizza in the WaPo.

Too early to get comfy, but things looking pretty daggum good.

Occasional Movie Reviews: Cabin In The Woods

Um.

Look, it's hard to do anything new...or even good...in this genre. And movies are not Joss's medium. Plus I never go to the movies because it's too expensive and it always sucks, but Tracy and JQ made me go, and the concession stand practices extortion. Plus I ate to much popcorn with too much "golden flavored popcorn topping," i.e. "butter," on it. Bleh. That sh*t's nasty.

Whedon always has good dialog and clever bits of business along the way... And, damn, Buffy/Angel and Firefly? Nobody even ever does one thing that good. CitW is, sadly, more in the Dollhouse sector of the Whedon oeuvre. So...well...not what you'd call the good sector.

But it's got some funny bits and snappy dialog, and it's exciting to see some of the old Whedonverse faves on screen. And, again, this stuff is hard, and at least he was trying something new and...and...

Just don't get your hopes, like, up...

Washington Voted Britain's Greatest Military Enemy

Link

Makes sense, and quite an honor.

One odd thing about the story as reported by US News, however, is that they cite Saratoga as evidence of Washington's military prowess. In fact, Washington wasn't present at Saratoga...right? Gates (and Arnold, and Morgan) get credit for that victory. In fact, IIRC, Saratoga was rather a thorn in Washington's side, as there was a Gates faction that wasn't happy with Washington's Fabian strategy. They wanted more Saratogas, and thought that Granny Gates was the man to get them. (Again, from memory, and too lazy to Google, so take latter bit with grans of salt...)

Obama 9 Point Lead Over R-Money

CNN link

Praise Jebus.

Jocks vs Nerds

Ha!

Why We Love Carolina Hoops

Another day of hoops outside Cobb dorm, with the 'Heels.

ALEC

SMERSH, SPECTRE, Wolfram and Hart, HYDRA, ALEC...

The first four are amateurs, evil-wise.

It's that last one you want to watch out for...

Ready.gov

Ready.gov

As S. rex is wont to remind me, being prepared doesn't make you a kook: it's your civic duty.

NOAA: Huge Storms Predicted from TX to IA

Cripes.

In other news: 4' of hail in the TX panhandle...

Is it just confirmation bias on my part, or is the weather getting crazier?

TNR: Founders Backed Mandates

Very interesting.

(h/t JQ)

VA House Speaker Bill Howell Insults Constituent Who Challenges him on ALEC Expenditures

Link

So you don't like your tax money being used to send your representatives to ALEC events where big corporations hand them corporation-friendly laws, pre-written and ready for passage? Don't like Koch, Scaife and Coors basically writing laws for us? Well, your obviously a dangerous dirty hippie radical, too, then.

Secret Service Agents Sent Home From Columbia:
The Quiz

link

Looks like a secret service dude went to a prostitute in Cartagena.

How will the fever swamps try to turn this into a criticism of Obama?

It's a tough one...  It's going to require every ounce of their advanced Sophistry Powers...

Ummm.....

How about:

(a) It shows that he sets a bad moral example that infects his underlings.

!

That's a kind of all-purpose sophistry that they might lunge for.

Or:

(b) It shows that they don't respect him.

Nice, vague, unfalsifiable.

But both pretty lame.

Maybe we should go at this from the other direction. Maybe they'll try:

(c) This shows Obama has no loyalty to his men.

Ah...that's a little better. It attacks him from the other direction, and has the advantage of being in the vicinity of some of their pre-established fantasies about Dems. Not loyal and manly, ya know.

But that puts them in the position of having to seem like they're ok with prostitution. Even Limbaugh probably wouldn't say that in public...

Well, in the end, all of those are exceedingly lame. Which won't necessarily keep the fever swamps from saying something similar. It's hard to predict how they'll try to turn this into some anti-Obama thing, but by induction I think it's safe to say that they will.

AZ: Life Begins Two Weeks Before Conception

link

Not really, of course. But that's when the clock starts for purposes of identifying a legal window for abortion.


All your uterus are belong to us...

(h/t JQ)

Douthat: Reproduction Enthusiast

Link

Anybody have any sense of how radically overpopulated the planet will have to become before Douthat and his ilk stop pretending that we have a moral obligation to crank up the population?

What is it with these people and reproduction? How have they convinced themselves that it is a moral obligation?

It's some kind of madness.

Welcome To The Police State: 
Did Anthony Carelli And Other White Plains, N.Y., Police Officers Murder Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.?

Link

It certainly sounds that way.

War Dehumanizes Everybody: Afghanistan Edition

"Afghanistan: The Gathering Menace," Neil Shea in The American Scholar

I'm no pacifist, of course, given that it's an insane doctrine. But I have a fair appreciation of the cost of violence. The phenomena discussed by Shea must be taken very seriously by anyone advocating military action.

There's no excuse for the U.S. military tolerating these kinds of actions. The "Givens" of this piece needs prison and a dishonorable discharge. I must admit, I wouldn't shed a tear if he didn't make it out of Afghanistan alive. The men of "Destroyer" jokingly refer to their sweeps as 'Taliban recruiting drives," but that's exactly what they are. I can absolutely guarantee you that if I were kicked out of my home by such soldiers and came back to find it trashed, I'd have an AK-47 the next day and be out shooting at Americans. And that's me--basically the most anti-Taliban guy on the face of the Earth.

When you conduct war, you are going to create/reveal psychopaths on both sides. These psychopaths, among other things, will drive sane people to commit justifiable violence in response to the evil actions of the psychopaths. So if you are going to conduct a war, you'd better do it as quickly and efficiently as possible, and you'd better understand the extremely high cost of such an undertaking.

Our own efforts in Afghanistan were, of course, undermined by Bush's Iraq adventure, itself a disaster, with disastrous costs in blood, treasure and sanity. Who knows whether we'd have won Afghanistan without Iraq. But the odds of winning would have gone up dramatically.

We need to know how common "Givens"s are, and how common are actions like those described by Shea. Shea suggests that we are inclined to turn a blind eye to such things in war...but he certainly doesn't speak for me. If we can't control such people, then we should just get out now. It would be better to drop our equipment and leave the country tomorrow than it would to continue to torture the poor Afghans in this way--people who are already oppressed by the Taliban, not to mention poverty and backwardness. They don't need us making things worse. And we don't need us spending billions of dollars doing nothing but creating new enemies.

And don't forget, folks, Givens et. al. will be back in the States soon enough. And then they'll be our problem in a whole new way.

Who Said It? Mitt Romney Or Mr. Burns

The quiz.

(h/t S. rex)

Lincoln on Analytic Philosophy

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. "


A quote I might do well to inflict on my critical thinking students.

The Banach-Tarski Paradox: An Intuitive Explanation

Nice

Gotta understand a wee tiny bit of transfinite math, but as long as you understand that the cardinality of the natural numbers is the same as the cardinality of, e.g., the even natural numbers, you'll get it.

Advice to Gearbox w.r.t. Borderlands 2

A little late for this even if they'd notice, but:

1. For the love of God, make it harder.

Borderlands was, in general, way, way, way, way too easy. The single added feature that would have improved B'lands most was a difficulty setting. The problem was so serious that someone created a difficulty mod...though that could only fool the game into thinking that there was a different number of players, and only up to 4.

An L4D-type difficulty setting is optimal, because it allows you to largely tailor the difficulty to your preferences. Nobody likes getting their asses kicked ad nauseam, but it's also no fun if you're just striding though the map laying waste to everything in sight.

2. Shake things up

If it were me, I'd bend over backwards to shake things up now and again. Some suggestions:

a. HUDs on the fritz
You become extremely dependent on your HUD. I'd make them less effective in some environs, or make them susceptible to damage, or maybe make static weapons knock them out temporarily.

b. Make ammo a problem sometimes
Ammo is almost never a problem. This contributes to the game being too easy. You can generally just hold the lever down, spray and pray.

c. Really work to make some characters more effective in some situations
For most of the game, e.g. sniping is way, way underpowered, IMHO. No matter how good your sniping skill, you can usually do better by just wading in and slugging it out.

d. Split the groups up a lot
This really makes things interesting.

e. Make stealth important at some points
Force players to use melee weapons.

3.  New Element: Cold
Why is there no cold elemental effect? How can you not have that?

4. Melee weapons
Why not melee weapons? Some guns add melee damage. But I want cool swords and stuff, too.

5. Versus mode
I don't like Versus mode in L4D b/c I like my zombies mindless. It's part of the allure. But B'lands cries out for Versus mode. It would make the game way, way awesome.

6. DEATH SHOULD COST MORE
Death means virtually nothing in B'lands. It costs a few readily-replaced dollars. This contributes to the first problem, that the game is too easy. Even just an L4D-style delay before respawning would be better.

7. Misc
I'd add...lessee...how about smoke grenades? And give the bad guys prox mines, too. You could also shake things up a bit by, say, diminishing hearing after grenade blasts.

[8. Friendly Fire
There should be a way to make friendly fire count. This would help address the difficulty problem. There's apparently a mod for this, but I've been too lazy to get it.]

I dunno. Too late for any major changes, I'm sure. It's a really fun game, but it could be even...funner.

Project JetPack

Inspired by this, I'm thinking of making a video in which I pretend to zoom around town in a jet pack. I'll make some FWOOOOM noises in the background and maybe have some graphics. I'll see whether I can get all sorts of press for it.

Whoa....! HERE I GO! I"M PRETENDING TO FLYYYYYY.....!

Feathered Tyrannosaurid

Found

[via Reddit]

"Romney Challenges Obama's Candor"

Just read that one more time.

(That was CNN's sidebar title for the piece.)

Romney challenges Obama's candor.

LOOOOOL


Oh, man, that's rich.

"Liberal" CNN and "Fact" "Checking"

ZOMG

I was--don't ask me why--watching CNN the other day. I rarely do so. It should be called VNN, The Vapid News Network.

lololol 'Vapid News Network'...ah....


Anyhoo...

One of their usual news folk plays a clip from Obama and then says ooooh, it looks like Obama wants to run a really aggressive campaign...and I think that might be fine with the GOP...  (Not a quote.)

Really?

Really CNN?

Obama wants to run an aggressive campaign?

And it's ok with the GOP?

What planet are you people from?

But wait--it gets better...

Then they play a clip of Romney repeating his lie that Obama claimed to be one of the four greatest U.S. Presidents. As you probably realize--or could guess--Obama said no such thing.

CNN? They play the clip of Romney's lie with no comment.

Then they play the clip of Obama noting that Romney called the Ryan budget "marvelous."

Then the CNN talking head says ooooh, weeeeellll, he didn't reeeally say thaaaaat...

And she plays the clip from Romney, and what he said was, roughly: it would be marvelous if Congress considered and passed the Ryan budget.

So: a bald-faced lie by Romney about Obama passes without comment. But CNN counts the difference between 'the budget is marvelous' and 'it would be marvelous if that budget was passed' as worth distinguishing between.

Your liberal media in action, my friends.

Not Ideas About The Thing...

...But The Thing Itself

ACC Barnstorming Tour

Independence, VA, here I come!

Borderlands 2

[Makes Homer gurgling noise]

Even Congress Wants To Know What The NSA Is Doing With Its $2 Billion Utah Spy Center

Link

And don't miss:

The NSA Really Doesn't Spy On Americans!...They Hire The Israelis To Do It

Oh Israel...are you trying to piss me off?

NBC Distorts Zimmerman 911 Call; Turns Non-Racist Utterances Into Racist Ones

Link

This was not a mistake.

This was intentional.

Or, rather: it is very, very unlikely that anyone could possibly make such edits accidentally, and without realizing that they had taken non-racist utterances and turned them into racist ones.

 Here is what Zimmerman said:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Here is what NBC made him say with editing:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

There is simply no way that you can plead mistake here. The odds of this being intentional distortion are very high, the odds of this being an honest error are very low. People do not make mistakes of that kind. If you edit the tape to say that, you almost certainly know what you are doing.

Why would they do this? I'm at a loss. To sensationalize it? But the case is already sensational. It's possible that Zimmerman does make a racist remark at a different point in the tape, though it's not clear.

Is this some "liberal media" thing? Honestly, it's loony enough that it makes me wonder. I normally think of network and cable news as largely just stupid, vapid and bad. But this case makes me wonder whether there might not actually be a slant there that I've been ignoring.

It still seems hard to fit the pieces of the puzzle together in a way in which Zimmerman did not murder Martin. But the above is a cautionary tale about the reliability of the news--though, of course, it's NBC in particular that should be the main target of our suspicion.

World Wide Wes and UK <3 Each Other

pic

Ugh. College sports is a mess. But the UK/Calipari/WWW axis is disgusting even by those degraded standards.

It's never seemed to me to matter all that much whether Calipari won it all. First, I expect that the season and the title will be vacated soon enough. Second, slimy is slimy whether it wins a title or not. It is, however, worse when slimy triumphs...

Behold Conservatives, Champions of Limited Government and Individual Freedom

Link

Conservatives on SCOTUS rule that people can be strip searched when arrested, no matter what they've been arrested for, even if there is no probable cause to suspect they are armed.

According to opinions in the lower courts, people may be strip-searched after arrests for violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliation of a visual strip-search” after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.

A nun was strip-searched, he wrote, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration.

 This country seems to become more like a police state every day.

Rock, Chalk, Etc., Etc.

Go Jayhawks.

Beat Calipari and the 'Cats.

You know why this is important; I know why it's important. No reason to harp on it.

On the bright side, even if UK wins, it'll probably be vacated in a couple of years. On the downside, Lexington will probably be destroyed by riots either way... That's a lot of good BBQ going to waste...