You can watch the whole intro but the fun starts about 1:40 in. Sadly, there's no cursing.

Thanks to just about everyone on Twitter where this is all over the place.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:25 PM | Comments (129)
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Evening Moron Nation and Happy Hump Day! How you all doin'? I got pressed into duty as Maet is now in Thailand trying to rescue Genghis from the Thai Tranny Pimp that Genghis ran afoul of last weekend. Some people never learn to tip their "waitress" appropriately.

I'm thinking of adding a Man Cave (I'll call it The CDR's Loft) to my house. I'm thinking this is a must have accessory. Guess I'll have to get an iPhone when Verizon finally gets it next year.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:15 PM | Comments (662)
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Yes, that Billy the Kid. The one killed by Pat Garrett in 1881.

The fat, grope-y governor who may be under consideration for Secretary of State (or not) is a Billy the Kid buff (they have so much in common, one with the rustlin' and shootin', the other with the gorgin' and gropin'), so he's spending his last few days of office considering a pardon for a dead man.

The article, though, is sorta neat, if you like Old West stuff. Pat Garrett's family is trying to protect Garrett's status as Good Guy, so they're the principle lobbyists against a pardon.

On the other side of things is Emilio Estavez. I'd imagine.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (207)
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That's the other thing associated with large amygdalas.

I guess it must have slipped their minds. (The man is... nefarious.)

Remember, this is Science, not some childish attempt at tribal points-scoring or self-flattery. Of course Science would mention such things; failing to do so must be due to oversight only.

Hide the decline &c.

Thanks to rdbrewer.

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (60)
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I didn't even see this one when I posted the other one. So here's more science.

A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions. At the same time, conservatives' brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate -- the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.

If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks.

Note how that last bit is put -- conservatives plan responsibly for the future, whereas liberals live for the moment and wind up living on others -- the ant and the grasshopper-- but rather than put it that way, they say that conservatives fear "worst-case scenarios" and liberals, eternal optimists, "tend towards rosier outlooks."

Oh, that stuff about "courage"? Um, yeah. Ask the troops.

Oh but I'm sure they are defining "courage" differently -- by "courage," they mean, in all likelihood, a willingness to sample other cultures. Not physical courage, of course.

Because, seriously? Yeah.

I Called It: This isn't 100% proof, but when I said they were probably using the word "courage" in the non-definitional manner of meaning "openness to new ideas"?

Yeah, based on this, I'm thinking that's the meaning of "courage" to a liberal.

The results, which will be published next year, back up a study that showed that some people were born with a "Liberal Gene" that makes people more likely to seek out less conventional political views.

The gene, a neurotransmitter in the brain called DRD4, could even be stimulated by the novelty value of radical opinions, claimed the researchers at the University of California.

If you're keeping track, socialism is now a 160 year old novelty of an idea.

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (337)
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The new, and welcome, normal.

CNN: How concerned are you to primary challenges to Republican incumbents up for re-election in 2012. Two that come to mind right off the bat are Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah

Jesmer: "Generally speaking, we live in a new world and Sen. Cornyn's been very clear on this: People need to be prepared for a primary challenge. I think both Senators Lugar and Hatch are aware of the world we live in and are working hard to state their case to Republican primary voters and general election voters."

CNN: Does the NRSC try to clear the field of divisive primaries, as could happen in Missouri, or Connecticut, where former Rep. Rob Simmons, who made a bid for the GOP Senate nomination this year, is already criticizing your committee in advance of a possible run again in 2012. How active does the NRSC get in trying to keep the peace on the Republican side?

Jesmer: I think it's up to individual candidates to make their case to primary voters and primary voters will decide their nominees. But we'll still be active on recruitment, like we always are, but I don't think it will be any different that it was last time. Primary voters will make up their minds and we'll support the nominee.

Recently Snarlin' Arlen Specter -- long known as the nastiest man in a the senate, an accolade he won year after year in bipartisan polls of DC staffers -- ended his political life with whimper, not a bang, in lamenting the passing of "civility." Defined, apparently, as life tenure for sitting senators.

Specter whined about losing the Senate where both parties seemed to be interested in finding compromise, and RINO's had a comfy home.
"That conduct was beyond contemplation in the Senate I joined 30 years ago," Specter said. "Collegiality can obviously not be maintained when negotiating with someone simultaneously out to defeat you, especially within your own party."

"Civility is a state of mind," Specter said. "It reflects respect for your opponents and for the institutions you serve together." Political polarization, he said, will make civility in the upcoming Congress "more difficult [but] more necessary than ever."

Similar bleats were made about poor Dick Lugar having to make a primary stand. Why has Dick Lugar been singled out for the most horrific treatment in the history of man?, some "centrist" type wondered.

There are two parts of our special form of self-rule: the Democratic part and the Republic part. True, we elect officials to make decisions on our behalf (that's the Republic part) but they do so with consent of the governed and knowing they either must vote the way their constituents prefer or face the wrath of the voters. That's the Democratic part. All those pining for some sort of Philosopher-Kings perfectly insulated from public opinion, those whining about how unjust a Democratic Republic can be for including some Democracy, seem to think the nation is just a Republic, or, perhaps, some other form of government. An aristocracy, perhaps, where the Common Folks are governed by their Social and Cultural Betters.

That won't do. That entire attitude needs to go.

First of all, it's not true that when we elect Senators or anyone else we are giving them a term-limited Divine Right to rule us only as their judgment and conscience see fit. We've never conceived of these posts in that manner. We've long had public assemblies and insisted upon our right to write to, and maybe hear back from, our representatives. We've never fully conceded all governing authority to them -- the very idea of petitioning representatives and meeting in town halls to give them some lip is completely at odds with the idea that once they're in office they're entirely free to vote however they like without our input. Town halls and assemblies are expressly a way to give them our input -- and we expect them to listen.

We never have lived in this Golden Age where we just took the wisdom of Senators as gospel without challenging it. Never. That wouldn't even be America. In what kind of America do we just decide that Person X is our superior in all ways and so we should defer to him in all things? That's so non-American I can't imagine how a Senator could think of the country in that manner.

We elect our representatives to exercise our will. Period. Yes, we let them make all sorts of decisions on things that are highly technical or which we care little about. The day to day functioning of government, the details of taxation and spending.

But the fact that we cede, temporarily, and qualifiedly, power to representatives to vote as their judgment suggests on the little things does not mean we've given up the right to exercise our right, as citizens in a democracy, to demand our wishes be obeyed on the big things, the things we've bothered to learn about and form an opinion about.

Specter, Lugar, and the rest of the Imperial Senators seem to think that we Americans have delegated our thinking to them, all of it, as if we were the Betas and Deltas in Brave New World, an intellectually-stunted sub-species, and they are the Double Plus Alphas, an intellectually-enhanced overlord species.

This isn't even the sort of thing that rankles because deep in our hearts we suspect it's true -- that is, it's not the case that we recoil from this because we recognize the horrific truth contained within it. Quite the opposite -- it rankles because most of us suspect that the usual attributes of a successful politician are a bland personality, a desperate need for validation, and a low regard for honesty and personal ethics. "High intellect" is definitely not one of the aspects of your typical elected official, and in fact probably tends to hurt a candidate.

Quick -- off the top of your head, name all the top-flight scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who've become successful politicians.

So: We have an entire class of mediocre-minded people -- not dummies, exactly, but at that just right level of mediocre intelligence that's not too low to perform at a job that requires some reading but isn't too high to come off as threatening or dangerous -- who've decided that they're so smart they get to do all of our thinking on our behalf, whether we ask them for this service or not.

Or even if we vocally object to it.

And these, you know, are the guys who then lecture to us about "civility" and What Democracy Is All About.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (205)
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Four words: We hope he fails?

Not really "we" because 61% of the public says they want Obama's policies to succeed; but that's down a big 10% since the December before last.

President Barack Obama enters the new year with a growing number of Americans pessimistic about his policies and a growing number rooting for him to fail, according to a new national poll.

But a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday also indicates that while a majority of the public says Republican control of the House of Representatives is good for the country, only one in four say the GOP will do a better job running things than the Democrats did when they controlled the chamber.

Sixty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they hope the president's policies will succeed.

"That's a fairly robust number but it's down 10 points since last December," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Twelve months ago a majority of the public said that they thought Obama's policies would succeed; now that number has dropped to 44 percent, with a plurality predicting that his policies will likely fail."

Only 44% think his policies will succeed. That's something, I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (79)
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Which doesn't translate into better performance.

This is a whoopsie post. I meant this and the last one for the sidebar, but I posted them here, so I'll make them into mini posts.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (116)
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The world looks different from the tip of a sword.

Kind of makes the swords look like those stupid giant anime blades.

This was supposed to be a sidebar entry but I accidentally posted it here, so I'm making a post out of it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (48)
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Lot of that goin' round.

The actual study here is about "gaze following." That is, looking at someone's eyes to see what they're looking at, then looking at whatever they're looking at. The study finds political liberals do this more, conservatives do this less.

Is that right? Who knows, I haven't seen the data. I suspect things like this may very well be right, as liberals may be found to have a stronger socialization/empathy tendency in their biological make-up (mommy traits), and conservatives a stronger threat assessment/response/rule of law sort of tendency (daddy traits). I would not be at all surprised to find some biological difference here (and in fact I'd be surprised to find there were no biological difference at all, that it was all purely a thing of airy intellect with no biological root).

Check out how they like to put their sketchy findings...

"Across a variety of tasks, we are beginning to find a consistent pattern where conservatives are more responsive to threat/disgust, more responsive to angry faces, and less sensitive to gaze cues than liberals," Dodd wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience. "Liberals, on the other hand, are proving to be more responsive to positive/appetitive stimuli, more responsive to happy faces, and more sensitive to gazes."

I can't help but notice that they're casting "conservative" attributes in bad terms, while making "liberal" tendencies sound happywonderful.

By the way, if you read the article, you find that the study itself is sort of wrong-headed. Because they don't test whether people are actually following human gazes, but rather drawings of faces on a computer screen, which seems to be assuming that people react to abstract representations the same way the react to the tangible reality. Which mostly isn't true.

Exit Question: Is liberalism a choice? Can it be "cured"?

More Interesting... than the devolution of human beings into the sub-species called homo liberus is the evolution of dogs, in this National Geographic special.

Interesting fact: Dogs know to follow human gazes and human pointing. Apparently other animals, even domesticated ones like horses and cats, can't do this. They aren't that locked-in on human cues to pick up on what pointing and looking mean. Even chimps don't do this.

At least that's what this video claims. (It should be noted, though, they used a trained dog and an untrained chimp in their pointing-recognition test, substantially weakening any conclusion that could be drawn from it.)

I'm Told... that horses can follow a finger-point. Ah well. I'm just telling you what the Nova documentary claimed. I don't run these tests myself!

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (288)
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