Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Our Wacky World—12/5/2012

Best spam subject I've seen in quite a while: "Be the king at the orgy"

Here's the scoop on how they've been torturing Bradley Manning.

What would Kickstarter be without woo? And what the hell is it with Michio Kaku? The man is not stupid but he keeps saying embarrassing things:
"At last, a serious and thoughtful book about this controversial subject. Skeptics and true believers will find a treasure trove of insightful and eye opening information. This book is bound to set the gold standard for UFO research."—Michio Kaku, Ph.D. Author of Physics of the Impossible and host of Sci Fi Science on the Science Channel
Note the quote from venerable fool-ee Harold Puthoff slightly lower down. You're now in great company, Michio. And this book is a game-changer, all right. It's the end of Leslie Kean's journalistic career and the start of a new, more bogus one. Check out Bob Sheaffer's review of it (if you see a bunch of weird characters in the text set your browser's text encoding to "ISO Latin 1").

"North Korea is as annoying and weird as it has always been, but getting nuclear weapons didn't transform it from an economic basket case into a mighty regional power and didn't make it more inclined to misbehave. In fact, what is most remarkable about North Korea's nuclear program is how little impact it has had on its neighbors. States like Japan and South Korea could go nuclear very quickly if they wanted to, but neither has done so in the six years since North Korea's first nuclear test.

"For some strange reason, however, the U.S. national security community seems to think that both logic and all this prior history does not apply to Iran."
Foreign Policy


I can't wait to see how this works out:
"Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum," he suggested last year. "Put all the trash together."
Telegraph


Tattoo face guy changes his mind (big fucking surprise):
"Hartsburg will be able to have subsequent sessions at offices around the country, so it won't slow down a professional wrestling career that he is hoping to transition into a role in the entertainment industry. After all is said and done, Hartsburg hopes ditching the tattoo won't hamper his rise to fame, instead allowing him to 'be more than just the tattoo face guy.'"
Yahoo

The Internet is forever. Good luck with your wrestling career. While I'm at it, here's another update from the last WWN...


She's now job hunting.


How Republican candidates pay off their staff:
"Basically he handed me a check with a condom in it, told me I was screwed," Gomes said. "That's the rudest gesture you can ever do to a person, it's like spitting in a person's face."
Booman Tribune

"By all accounts, the past month has been most difficult on Romney’s wife, Ann, who friends said believed up until the end that ascending to the White House was their destiny. They said she has been crying in private and trying to get back to riding her horses."

"The son of Detroit — who boasted of the Cadillacs he owned as a sign of support for the U.S. auto industry during the campaign — was spotted driving a new black Audi Q7, a luxury sport-utility vehicle manufactured in Slovakia."
Washington Post


I've been highly bemused by the changes in evangelical charlatanry over the years. Prosperity Gospel™ is the most profitable scam yet, but just to make sure evangelists are now covering all the bases with quack medicines and gold investment schemes. Today I first heard about this:
“If you have shied away from profiting from the immense promise of stem cells to treat disease because of moral concern over extracting stem cells from fetal tissue, pay close attention. You can now invest with a clear conscience. An Israeli entrepreneur, Zami Aberman, has discovered ‘an oilfield in the placenta.’ His little company, Pluristem Life Systems (OTCBB: PLRS) has made a discovery which is potentially more valuable than Prudhoe Bay.”
Dispatches From The Culture Wars



Obama is a dog:
Another embarrassing picture
from his college days
“He suggests that he’s dogging it as president, faking it as an illegal president in a second way now with a stolen election. That he’s a real ‘dog’ for such deception. The image of a dog further suggests: a pet favored by the media and blind supporters who would not dare to explore his illegality by birth or unfair election; that he will dog or haunt America for another four years because a dog also bites especially a wounded one."
Dispatches From The Culture Wars


Fact checking, conservative style:
"They also unfairly tarnish Michele Bachmann as a liar, when anybody who follows her already understands that many of her statements aren’t meant to be truthful in the first place — she simply says what she feels."
Existential Crisis Factory


Tired of being gay? There's a treatment for that:
"Downing directed Levin to say one negative thing about himself, remove an article of clothing, then repeat the process. Although Levin protested and expressed discomfort, at Downing's insistence, Levin submitted and continued until he was fully naked. Downing then instructed Levin to touch his penis and then his buttocks. Levin, unsure what to do but trusting in and relying on Downing, followed the instructions, upon which Downing said 'good' and the session ended."

"On one occasion, Downing instructed Unger to beat an effigy of his mother with a tennis racket, as though killing her, and encouraged Unger to scream at his mother while beating her effigy"
CNN

"Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik accused prison officers of trying to drive him to suicide in conditions he describes as 'a mini Abu Ghraib.' ...he is frustrated that guards do not cooperate with his carefully planned daily schedule, where he times his various activities down to the minute."
Yahoo


What's wrong with the media today? Howard Kurtz gives us a shining example—himself. Strangely, he doesn't seem to be interested in getting at the truth of anything. All he wants is for everyone to "play nice". His post is chock full of the usual exercises in false equivalence. The article is supposed to be about the Petraeus debacle but instead we hear how much alike Alan Grayson and Allen West are. As if. Grayson is a blunt realist, West is a demonstrably batshit crazy, Tea Party looney who's a very poor loser. Kurtz succeeds in doing exactly the same thing as the hordes of hosts and guests on Fox News—reducing the world to black and white with the one subtle difference of hoping for some "gray" instead of touting "white". Kurtz would be the first to complain about the Leftists on MSNBC. Get rid of those few people and you have exactly zero balance on cable TV. To achieve the same "balance", Roger Ailes would have to fire everyone except Shepard Smith.

Is Kurtz really that oblivious? Is he some sort of tragic hippie? Do you think I really give a fuck?