Well if you don't have anything better to do I guess you can hang out here. But if the cops come by, my story is gonna be that all you people are uninvited intruders who happened to bring along their own malt liquor kegs. And could probably use a good tasing.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:04 PM | Comments (1342)
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I have one. After giving up cigarettes for a year and a half, I picked the habit up again. Now I feel awful literally every day of my life.

What about you guys?

Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (559)
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Kind of what I've been thinking of late.

I make a big exception for John Ekdahl's behind-enemy-lines list of passionately anti-war celebrities who have apparently been kidnapped during the Obama administration.

But most of this is just very easy content and very dumb linkbait.

There is a desperation to get clicks now, and it's apparent in the language used. It's not enough to post 14 hilarious interviews from Ellen in 2013. We have to post "14 Ellen Interviews From 2013 That Made Us Literally ROTFL."

That's a real Buzzfeed article, by the way.

This guy is so annoyed by Buzzfeed he runs a site called Buzzfeed Minus GIFs, in which he quotes Buzzfeed's actual words -- you know, minus the pictures.

For example:

18 Stages Of Getting Addicted To A New TV Show

Ok, so everybody is talking about it. Maybe I should give it a try. Download the first season. Watch the first episode. It seems nice. Watch 5 more episodes. It really is great!! Watch it nonstop for days. Download all seasons. CANÂ’T STOP WATCHING. Suddenly you get to the latest episode. And for now on you have to wait an entire week for the next one. You feel anxiety. The season ends and you have to wait MONTHS for the next one. The waiting. MORE anxiety. You feel empty. Lonely. But the next season starts and itÂ’s all happiness again. And thatÂ’s how you know youÂ’re really addicted.

Or even:

The 19 Worst Things Ever

This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This. This.

One book I've been talking about lately is Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

The idea of the book (which, frankly, is better than the book itself) is an elaboration of Marshall McLuhan's aphorism, "the medium is a message." Which is something [I] never understood until reading this book. The aphorism stands for the proposition that every medium -- whether it be writing, speaking, song, epic poetry, telegraph reports, news journalism, or television -- has embedded deep within it a preference for certain modes of expression and certain types of stories, and thus each medium contains within it an embedded philosophy of thought which cannot be wholly separated from the actual content of the communication.

Thus, the medium itself, to an extent not appreciated enough, is part of the message it carries.

Now, Postman's book contrasts two different media, print and television. His book documents the long fall of America from a print-based method of political discourse to a television-based one. The early New England colonists, he points out, had a literacy rate of 95%, which was unheard of in the world at the time (and is rather high even today). They consumed printed material -- pamphlets, books, all of it -- and even spoke in that fashion. For example, he notes that Lincoln's speechifying, which may sound overly-complex for spoken argument today, was in fact fairly common of the style of rhetoric at the time, and people had no particular trouble following it.

Nowadays, we've lost our ear for long spoken sentences with lots of dependent clauses, and it's all we can do to make sense of them even in print, where we can take our time parsing them out.

This is part of his point: The method of communication breeds a certain method of thought in a population. To Americans living from 1730 to 1870, Lincoln's speeches were not overly-complicated or difficult to follow. They were accustomed to long complicated thoughts in political speech.

This has all changed since the television became the chief conveyance of not merely pop entertainment but, crucially, of political expression and culture itself. I will not belabor the long litany of sins he lays at the feet of television. Suffice to say that he believes that much of the superficiality and stupidity of the modern world is due to television's promotion of a certain style of thought, which is to say a certain style of thoughtlessness: Fast cuts, short sentences, information stripped of context, a disdain for abstractions -- indeed, a disdain for anything that cannot be filmed occurring in the here-and-now.

And the carnival barking-- Dear Lord, the carnival barking. Everything on TV is the best, the latest, the most spectacular, the weirdest, the most shocking. That sort of endless Hype of the Present Moment seems to give a big middle finger to All History Which Has Come Before.

Society is increasingly expressing a preference for the quickest, shallowest, most meaningless sorts of writing. It's the writing equivalent of jelly-bellies.

It's what I call the Nummification of Culture.

We are indeed becoming a more childlike people. We are more and more shirking the expected obligations of adulthood, such as marriage and procreation, and even more basically, we're rejecting the obligation of adults to actually think, in terms of numbers, and of best outcomes, and so forth.

The national mode of thinking is now Nummy. "We" -- and by we I mean Americans, not "we" meaning us here right now -- increasingly think in terms of cute, and easy, and glib, and dumb, and fun.

...

We are indeed becoming a more childlike people. We are more and more shirking the expected obligations of adulthood, such as marriage and procreation, and even more basically, we're rejecting the obligation of adults to actually think, in terms of numbers, and of best outcomes, and so forth.

The national mode of thinking is now Nummy. "We" -- and by we I mean Americans, not "we" meaning us here right now -- increasingly think in terms of cute, and easy, and glib, and dumb, and fun.

A horse on a couch. This has nothing to do with anything I'm writing,
but market research says that I'll lose 50% of readers at this point
if there isn't a Funny Animal Picture interrupting the text.
...

Years ago, when Titanic ruled at the box office, Hollywood began chattering: Will culture -- I mean, popular culture -- be determined by the tastes of the 16-year-old girls who turned that film into a billion-dollar bonanza by repeat viewings?

I think they rather overshot the mark. The culture is now dominated by the tastes and preferences of Tweener Girls. Or, in reality, 50 year old men and women attempting to channel their inner Tweener to appeal to a population which has decided that they were fools to have ever turned 13 at all.

You know, thirteen -- when you lost your innocence. When you stopped thinking Smurfs were All That and a Bag of Gummy Bears.

...

We are drowning in nostalgia and crushing debt and we can't see the latter because we've checked out into our Happy Place to chase the former.

I can't blame the White House or BuzzFeed for these trends. They're pushers, but they didn't create the sad addiction. This stuff works in America.

But why? Why does it work?

When did we all check out of adulthood to revert to tweenerhood? And when did we stop thinking that might be a little indulgent and shameful?

This isn't Buzzfeed's fault or anything. They are merely responding to the signals the market is sending, and the market is sending the signal "Dumb is Easy, and Easy is Holy."

Thanks to @rdbrewer4 for the horse picture.

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (378)
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Yup.

An icebreaker ship attempted to cut through the thickening, coldening Antarctic ice, but has failed and was forced to retreat from Nature's Oddly-Cold Warming Onslaught.

Does AP notice the irony here? Do they say "ironically enough" at any point in the article?

Of course not. Because that would be to notice that the "science" of global warming is being undermined by the Advancing Glacial Ice of global warming, and political correctness requires that you never notice the obvious. Which is part of Orwell's Doublethink.

A Chinese icebreaker that was en route to rescue a ship trapped in Antarctic ice was forced to turn back on Saturday after being unable to push its way through the heavy sea ice.

The Snow Dragon icebreaker came within 7 miles (11 kilometers) of the Russian ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which has been stuck since Christmas Eve, but had to retreat after the ice became too thick, said expedition spokesman Alvin Stone.

The Akademik Shokalskiy, which has been on a research expedition to Antarctica, got stuck Tuesday after a blizzard's whipping winds pushed the sea ice around the ship, freezing it in place. The ship wasn't in danger of sinking, and there are weeks' worth of supplies for the 74 scientists, tourists and crew on board, but the vessel cannot move.

Always remember that the following three things prove the theory of global warming:

1. Alarmingly warm temperatures

2. Alarmingly cold temperatures

3. Alarmingly mild temperatures

See? They're covered all three ways.

"Science"

The best theories are the ones that by their own logic can never be disproved.

Scientists who announce clear refutation scenarios are just pussies who Hate Science.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (258)
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This is what universities (heavily subsidized by the US taxpayer) are churning out.

Because milk is produced by female mammals, a feminist perspective seems to offer a logical foundation for such inquiry. From the start, feminism has been a movement for justice: at its heart is the centrality of praxis, the necessary linkage of intellectual, political, and activist work. Feminist methodology puts the lives of the oppressed at the center of the research question and undertakes studies, gathers data, and interrogates material contexts with the primary aim of improving the lives and the material conditions of the oppressed. Using standard feminist methodology [standard feminist methodology?], twentieth-century vegan feminists and animal ecofeminists challenged animal suffering in its many manifestations (in scientific research, and specifically in the feminized beauty and cleaning products industries; in dairy, egg, and animal food production; in “pet” [note the scare quotes] keeping and breeding, zoos, rodeos, hunting, fur, and clothing) by developing a feminist theoretical perspective on the intersections of species, gender, race, class, sexuality, and nature. Motivated by an intellectual and experiential understanding of the mutually reinforcing interconnections among diverse forms of oppression, vegan feminists and ecofeminists positioned their own liberation and well-being as variously raced, classed, gendered, and sexual humans to be fundamentally interconnected to the well-being of other nondominant human and animal species, augmenting Patricia Hill Collins’s definition of intersectionality to include species as well.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (367)
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Melissa Harris-Perry and crew found the adoption mock-worthy.

AllahPundit summed it up well here. They really had no idea what was mockable about the adoption or the picture -- they were just certain that it had to be mocked.

[T]he interesting thing about this is that they put the photo on the air even though they obviously didn’t have anything to say about it. Ostensibly it’s comic fodder for Harris-Perry’s panel of comedians to riff, but all they can muster is (1) hey, one of them looks different, (2) a Kardashian joke from MHP herself, and (3) a predictable dig at the GOP — which would have worked just as well as a dig at Obama’s 2012 campaign team, actually. It’s not that the photo’s inherently funny or that a white family adopting a black child is wrong — imagine them reacting to a photo of Tom Cruise with his adopted son — it’s that, I think, they felt they couldn’t let it go unremarked upon that the GOP’s last nominee seems happy to have a black child in his family. On MSNBC, racism is the only reason to become a Republican. They’ve got to mock, even if they’re not exactly sure what they’re mocking, to delegitimize the inconvenient possibility that Romney isn’t prejudiced.

I must point out once again that, despite the protestations of the media, despite its claims of professionalism, despite the belief of many in the media that they are "elite" in some fashion -- most cable shows are now essentially Televised Blogs. Melissa Harris-Perry and crew are just snarkin', because snarkin' is what the ADD audience loves.

It doesn't matter if no one can actually announce what it is, precisely, that they're snarking on; snarky-snark isn't really logical expression. That's not it's point. The chronic snarkster isn't snarking to communicate any particular idea, except for two very base, primitive ones:

1. We're Superior to This Thing We're Talking About, Whatever It Is, and

2. We Constitute a Tribe, You and I, Mutually Loyal To Each Other, Because We All Hoot and Grunt At the Same THings.

Gabe has written about this. In Hollywood fictions, as well as in alleged "news" stories recounted by the media, there are Designated Heroes and there are Designated Villains. Whatever the hero does is heroic not because of the intrinsic heroism of the action but simply because it is the Designated Hero doing it -- and thus the action is heroic, simply because he performs it.

Likewise, everything the Designated Villain -- here, the Romney family -- does is villainous. Not because adopting a black orphan is villainous, but simply because the Villains are performing the action, and you know they must be up to no good. After all, they're the Villains.

I'm not really "outraged" by any of this and I doubt people on the right are "outraged" either.

But there are several points to be taken from it:

1. As Ann Althouse notes, the segment directly following this one -- which Melissa Harris-Perry teases at the end of the clip -- is a round-up of allegedly "racist" statements. This segment is entitled "Hey, Was That Racist?"

I don't think Melissa Harris-Perry's Televised Blog snarking on the race of Romney's grandson is "racist" myself. But I am fairly confident that she would deem this sort of thing racist if someone from Fox were talking about a Democrat adopting a black kid.

By her standards, the "Hey, Was That Racist?" question is answered in the affirmative.

2. Despite their beliefs that they are elevated and enlightened, most leftists are exactly like most other people -- fairly crude and obvious in their thought, and frequently "offensive" when they're not watching their words carefully.

3. MSNBC is not a professional news operation. It is, as someone from Politico observed, "Animal House for lefties."

MHP has now kinda-sorta apologized to anyone who was "offended" (how they love that construction).

But while she apologizes for giving "offense," she makes no apologies for her own racism.

And yes, by her own standards, she is a racist. To speak of race cavalierly or flippantly or mockingly is racist, no matter what the context, is racist -- that is the standard she inflicts on others.

But she herself won't accept that standard for herself.

I don't blame her on that part of it. It's an unlivable standard. It is a punitive, vindictive standard which sets people up for failure and then condemnation.

And that is of course why she insists on that standard for others.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (388)
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Happy Tuesday.

Have a happy and safe new years eve.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:39 AM | Comments (345)
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:25 AM | Comments (545)
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Hey don't forget to buy your Amazon stuff through the blog (or this link) and keep the head Ewok in the bourgeois lifestyle he's accustomed to. 

Why Is The United States The Greatest Thing In The History Of Ever?

You know, Canada's nice. Too nice, according to Canadians, but they're just being, well, too nice about the whole thing. They don't want you to feel bad about how nice they are. That wouldn't be nice. The British Isles are fairly pleasant. They have nuclear weapons, but I never get the impression they'd use them or anything. They're like the hood ornament on a Jaguar. It doesn't matter what's on the hood, because the car is always in the shop. I think Finnish people are nice, or would be, at least, if they would answer a question without staring at their shoes. Australians are a blast, of course. I think it's all the Foster's and everything being poisonous in their country that makes them so jolly. Why be glum if even the fuzzy, cute animals might drop you where you stand? The orchestra played at a 12 degee pitch on the Titanic, didn't it? Might as well; it's less work than panicking.

No, the US is not the greatest thing in the history of ever because we're all nice, or fun, or polite, or smart, or salubrious, or even interesting. We're the Greatest thing in the history of ever because we spent $25 billion just so we could do donuts on Old Man Moon's lawn.

The rest of our Federal budget? We wasted it.

Well the ability to deliver a physics package on a miscreant anywhere in the world within the hour is pretty awesome too.

And we recently achieved this even with no government funding. So we have that going for us.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:49 PM | Comments (675)
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No MNF tonight but my muscle memory must have kicked in cause I was looking for one to post, like I usually do after a long day and I still think I'm running late.

BUT, We've got the Valero Alamo Bowl, Texas and Oregon (would have loved to see Baylor play Oregon but that's just me). Currently 10-7 Ducks. They will score more.

Ole Miss beat Georgia Tech earlier today in the Franklin American Mortgage Music Something Else Bowl, 25-17. Also Navy beat Middle Tennesee 24-6 in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Military Industrial Complex Bowl.

Later tonight (way later tonight, 10:15 EST) Arizona State and Texas Tech in the National University Holiday Bowl.

That's Monday. Stay tuned.

My pick in tonight's Alamo Bowl.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:54 PM | Comments (264)
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