This is so counter-intuitive I have trouble believing it, but Say Anything cites a Department of Defense manpower report for the claim.

In Clinton's first term, around 4300 soldiers died on active duty.

In Bush's, around 5100 soldiers died on active duty.

I don't know if this chart excludes Iraq deaths (but how could it?), and it's all hard to believe, but... they do always say there's almost as much danger in training as in actual combat.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 AM | Comments (31)
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Alcohol and nanotech. Together, they're invincible.

Scientists have developed artificial, super-strength muscles which are powered by alcohol and hydrogen.

And they could eventually be used to make more advanced prosthetic limbs, say researchers at University of Texas.

Writing in Science, they say these artificial muscles are 100 times more powerful than the body's own.

They said they could even be used in "exoskeletons" to give superhuman strength to certain professions such as firefighters, soldiers and astronauts.

Two types of muscle are being investigated by US researchers at the Nanotech Institute at the University of Texas in Dallas, working with colleagues from South Korea.

Both release the chemical energy of fuels, such as hydrogen and alcohol, while consuming oxygen.

In effect they are replicating the first stage in "breathing" - by taking in oxygen. The existing form of artificial muscles are driven by batteries.

However, neither of the types developed by the Texan researchers resembles a normal muscle - being made up of wires, cantilevers and glass bottles.

The most powerful type, "shorted fuel cell muscles" convert chemical energy into heat, causing a special shape-memory metal alloy to contract.

Turning down the heat allows the muscle to relax.

Lab tests showed that these devices had a lifting strength more than 100 times that of normal skeletal muscle.

Another kind of muscle being developed by the team converted chemical energy into electrical energy which caused a material made from carbon nanotube electrodes to bend.

I swear by everything holy, once I get my frigging nanotech super-muscles I'm going to hunt each one of you down and kick each of your asses, starting with the typo police. I'll pepper you with fuel-cell powered punches so that the bruises on your torsos spell out a simple message:

Spell-check is for fairies.

Via Anti-Media.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (17)
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Another week, another "study." This one purports to show that whiny little ill-tempered bastards grow up to be, well, you, and confident, resilient, well-adjusted little angles grow up to be liberals.

Science.

I guess conservatives get all their whining out of their systems at an early age, whereas liberals feel they didn't get enough whining in as tykes and so spend their entire adult lives screeching like little bitches. But that's just my "study."

I'm applying for a MacArthur Genius grant. I hope there's no math on the test, because I'm crap with fractions.

Anyway:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:05 AM | Comments (29)
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And then there are the people who will do anything, anything, to avoid paying Uncle Sam, hoarding and hiding actual treasures from the world while they live like paupers.

While preparing the estate for auction, the sheriff discovered a cache of
bearer bonds taped to the back of a mirror. That triggered a
comprehensive search of the house and outbuildings. The estate auction
would eventually be handled by Christies, and it would bring out collectors
from all over the world.

Of course, the U.S. Treasury prevailed in the end.

I know this has been floating around as an email for some time, but hey, its the first time I'VE seen it, Dave.

Thanks to Tom.

Posted by: LauraW. at 05:40 AM | Comments (9)
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I've got a very mild case of hoarding disorder. I'll pull a bent screw out of a piece of furniture and, instead of immediately tossing it into the trash, I'll put it into a drawer, figuring, hey, you never know when you'll need an old, chewed up, bent useless screw.

I have shit I never liked when I first bought it but I just keep it around to collect dust. I've got ruined CD-R's -- they were written on to blank, but can't be rewritten on again, so they're absolutely useless -- but I keep them. Because, I don't know, maybe one Chrismas I'll run some string through their middles and use them as a nice shiny garland for the tree.

But I don't have it this bad:

Jill VanGiesen opened the door to her refrigerator, revealing a blackened cavity.

Everything was coated with a thick film of dark slime - upright containers, tipped over containers - food from years ago.

"This is probably the worst," she said as the stench belched out, filled the kitchen and wafted into the hall.

"Even an inability to throw out bad food," she said, confessing that to throw something away is to waste it.

...

As she talked, two men carried bag after bag from her house. The men, workers for 1-800-Got-Junk?, were helping VanGiesen comply with a Lansing District Court order to clear out and scrub her house on Blair Street, off of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Workers don't think she'll meet the deadline. There was an estimated 20 tons of trash in the place.

VanGiesen accepts she is in trouble and says it's her avid collecting that has done it. What does she collect? Seemingly everything: plastic soda pop bottles, glass bottles, plastic grocery bags, plastic trash bags, foam cups, foam packing peanuts, pieces of paper, tin cans, chairs, a flattened pinata, a damaged broom, a snow shovel and a Lansing State Journal paper box.

See, I kind of get that. Foam packing peanuts are fun. Paper is always useful, even scraps. A flattened pinata? Well, you must have nieces and nephews you don't particularly like, right?

...

The disorder VanGiesen suspects she suffers from is considered by experts to be as debilitating as depression or schizophrenia. Experts estimate one in about 284 people has Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome. That would be more than 400 people in Lansing alone. Nationwide, there could be as many as 1.4 million.

"It's only 1.4 million?" asked Jim McCue, Lansing's interim code compliance manager.

At least six times a year, McCue's office is called in to help with what appears to be hoarding.

"I had one gentleman who had VHS tapes stacked up everywhere," McCue said.

The apartment was reduced to a series of paths.

VanGiesen is McCue's latest case, except she filled more than an apartment. She packed a two-story home. And there's more.

"At times I've had four storage units," she said.

That's one 5-foot-by-10-foot unit, two 10-by-10 units and one 10-by-30. In addition, she has an apartment in Meridian Township, which is where she has been living for about three years. The house on Blair Street, which she can't live in due to a plumbing problem, is just another storage unit.

As of Saturday morning, Got Junk had removed only five tons of junk, and VanGiesen was climbing the trash truck trying to rescue things to keep.

I wish I knew where they were taking these treasures I could get me greedy mitts on that damaged broom. I can always use another damaged broom or stinky, matted mop.

Thanks to Craig.

Posted by: Ace at 09:05 PM | Comments (34)
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Thanks to Yukari.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 PM | Comments (9)
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At least after a long fall.

Not so much when you drop-kick them. I think the kick stuns them or something. I'll need to conduct further field tests to confirm this hypothesis.

The report says the fall was eighty feet. It doesn't look like eighty feet to me.

Still, it's funny.

Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Comments (67)
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Garbage in, garbage out.

The report isn't officially available, but someone (maybe the author) helpfully leaked it to the press.

I've edited slightly, because the translation presented is a bit unclear.

[Judiciously], the Danish government therefore [ought to have], especially considering its international obligations, with respect to Freedom of Speech, taken a position not only on the consequences of the caricatures for its community of 200.000 Moslems but also for the protection of peace and order.

Without a doubt, it always is a concern that taking an action might provoke maniacs into mayhem and murder. But are we to then give in to the maniacs, to let their threats of violence control us? According to the UN's special idiot in charge of writing stupid shit, apparently so.

The author of this report can’t omit asking himself what the political and ideological national context the publication of the caricatures is a part of, and what the position of the Danish government is. This context is primarily colored by an agreement reached on December 8th, 2005 between the government and the Danish People’s Party, an extremist right-wing party, to tighten the conditions for achieving citizenship in a country whose immigration policies are considered among Europe’s most restrictive, a country where the Danish People’s Party has 13 percent of the votes and where a spokesman of the party, Søren Espersen, describes “Moslem immigration as a means to overrun Europe, the same as they’ve been doing the last 1.400 years.”

It certainly does seem that many would like to change the laws and cultural norms of Denmark. Through violence, and the threat thereof, if necessary.

Their uncompromising defense of a Freedom of Speech without limits or restrictions is not in accordance with the international rules which are based on a necessary balance between Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, especially to combat calls for racial and religious hatred, and which all the member countries of UN have decided are the basic rules for Human Rights. This attitude shows an alarming lack of sensitivity and understanding of the religious conviction and deep emotions of the groups of society in question.

There is no tension between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, though this terrorist apologist -- salary paid by the American taxpayer, of course -- pretends there is.

You have the right to believe in whatever god you like. I have the right to make sport of that god if I like. No tension. We both have rights.

The UN now believes that Muslims' "Freedom of Religion" includes the right to stop any speech they don't like.

Thus the newspapers strengthen the connection between Islam and Terrorism which arose after September 11th and which is the most important reason for Islamophobia being on the rise in the world at large and in their own countries.

You know what else strengthens this connections? Islamists continuing to engage in terrorism.

After Islamists murder 2800 people, the most pressing concern to many in the world, and even in America, is "How do we stop all this rampant Islamophobia?"

I know one very simple way to stop Islamophobia.

Islamists should stop fucking murdering people left and goddamned right.

But that is, of course, a fantasy world solution. Much easier to browbeat Denmark and newspapers that print silly cartoons.

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (33)
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Bill Clinton, Cocktail-Dress Befouler:

It's fun to be able to say what you want, and I do that, but I do try to avoid doing anything that complicates Hillary's life.

He questioned, however, whether "banging Hooters girls two-at-a-time in a gas-station rest-room" was really all that "complicating."

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (32)
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It's the question that no one is asking. Still, some people provide answers:

"I do not know for sure if he's looking or flirting," Donna Brazile, his 2000 campaign manager, said in an interview Monday. "But, I have an opinion - Gore remains a headliner and can raise money and rally the base. (But) it's hard for Gore to rule out running again before looking at the landscape."

Speculation about Gore's intentions has intensified in recent weeks due to three events: his Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday speech in January lambasting the president for "breaking the law" with his warrantless domestic surveillance program; his message to Democratic donors in February soliciting funds for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; and his party fund-raising appearances this month in Florida, the scene of the controversial voter recount that led to a Supreme Court ruling that made Bush president in the 2000 election.

Gore's activities prompted pollster Lee Miringoff to include Gore in a recent poll on possible Democratic 2008 contenders. It found Gore was second only to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, suggesting his reputation with the party has improved significantly since his 2000 loss to Bush. Clinton was the favorite of 33 percent, Gore was the choice of 17 percent.

"The numbers suggest that a case could be made for Mr. Gore in 2008 ... though it's a little unclear what he may have in mind," Miringoff said in an interview. "Clearly, he is someone to be watched, especially as an alternative to Hillary Clinton."

Luckily, Dick Morris thinks he might run, which is a pretty good sign he won't:

Gore "may be a man whose time has come in his party," Dick Morris, a political adviser to Bill Clinton for 20 years, wrote recently in his column for The Hill newspaper. "Like a completely refurbished 'pre-owned vehicle,' Al Gore seems to be positioning himself to Hillary Clinton's left and greener than John Kerry ... His slogan might well read 're-elect Al Gore.'"

If Al Gore hadn't revealed himself to be an unrepetent lefty, he'd actually have a solid chance, I think. Americans believe in fairness, and Al Gore would benefit from the idea that since he was almost elected in 2000, he deserves another shot.

But that was before he started spouting off like Michael Moore. And packing on the pounds like Michael Moore. And wearing as much make-up as Michael Moore's sister.

Posted by: Ace at 12:46 PM | Comments (32)
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