In the Village Voice. The only good thing about leftist rags is that they hate establishment liberals almost as much as they hate conservatives.

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits.

The news didn't make everyone all googly-eyed. In fact, some people at the paper's annual stockholders meeting in the New Amsterdam Theatre exchanged confused looks when Janet Robinson, the company's president and CEO, uttered the phrase "data mining." Wasn't that the nefarious, 21st-century sort of snooping that the National Security Agency was doing without warrants on American citizens? Wasn't that the whole subject of the prizewinning work in December 2005 by Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen?

And hadn't the company's chairman and publisher, Pinch Sulzberger, already trotted out Pulitzers earlier in the program?

Yes, yes, and yes. But Robinson was talking about money this time. Data mining, she told the crowd, would be used "to determine hidden patterns of uses to our website." ...

Do readers really want data-mining behavior from their newspapers—not just the Times but every other big media outlet? Do they want newspaper databases to store reading histories, minute by minute, until one day the government shows up to examine ordinary citizens' shopping and viewing and chatting habits in detail? If you think it can't happen, ask the librarians who've been told to hand over readers' checkout records under the Patriot Act.

It was pointed out at the time of the NYT's revelations that data-mining was quite common in everyday business and marketing. The Times, nevertheless, pushed forward its editorial line that data-mining was dangerous, invasive, and patently unAmerican.

How the Times has changed.

Thanks to dri. Again. This is getting embarrassing.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (29)
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Kind of interesting essay about the tension in feminist thought between strong-form sexual equality -- including equality in the mate market -- and many feminists' unapologetic pursuit of the alpha male.

But even this does not account for the scorn with which feminist women hold low-status men. It is not enough for them to say simply that low-status men are unattractive. It is not even enough to say that they are socially inept (which is often the case for personalities bred in social isolation, itself a function of unattractiveness). No, these men are evil for one reason or another. Witness Spungeon’s observation that unattractive people are conveniently mean and treacherous. I say “convenient” because these qualities relieve Spungeon of any obligation to have compassion on them. The liberal worldview does not allow for distinctions like “the deserving poor” or shrugging at the realization that the free market leaves some better-off than others. No, low-status men must be morally undeserving, because if they weren’t that would mean . . . .

I will at this point officially decline to speculate what “affirmative action” or a “welfare program” would look like for men who can’t get dates.

Damnit, that was precisely what I was reading this for.

Allah just emailed to say "This article changed my life."

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (35)
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George Lucas says "Spider-Man 3" was "silly."

Lucas told me he has seen all the summer movies since his company, Industrial Light and Magic, does most of the special effects. The only one they didn't work on was "Spider-Man 3." What did he think of it?

"It's silly. It's a silly movie," he said. "There just isn't much there. Once you take it all apart, there's not much story, is there?"

Well, it's not "Star Wars."

"People thought 'Star Wars' was silly, too," he added, with a wink. "But it wasn't."

The link also includes Roger Friedman's attempt to deny the obvious about Cate Blanchett - namely, that she looks like an extra from "Dawn of the Dead." Doesn't surprise me, though. This is the same guy who actually thought the Queen of England might be devastated that there were so few celebrities at the White House State Dinner.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip must have been a little disappointed last night. The White House dinner thrown in their honor didn't include any Hollywood stars. Remember when Princess Diana got fussed over by John Travolta and Tom Selleck? How times have changed!

What is it about being a Hollywood reporter that turns people into such leg-humping suck-ups?

Posted by: Slublog at 11:06 AM | Comments (21)
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Remember "The Glove"?

Grahn and his research partner, biologist Craig Heller, started working on the Glove at Stanford in the late 1990s as part of their research on improving physical performance. Even they were astounded at how well it seemed to work. Vinh Cao, their squat, barrel-chested lab technician, used to do almost 100 pull-ups every time he worked out. Then one day he cooled himself off between sets with an early prototype. The next round of pull-ups — his 11th — was as strong as his first. Within six weeks, Cao was doing 180 pull-ups a session. Six weeks after that, he went from 180 to more than 600. Soon, Stanford’s football trainers asked to borrow a few Gloves to cool down players in the weight room and to fight muscle cramps.

...

In trying to figure out why the Glove worked so well, its inventors ended up challenging conventional scientific wisdom on fatigue. Muscles don’t wear out because they use up stored sugars, the researchers said. Instead, muscles tire because they get too hot, and sweating is just a backup cooling system for the lattices of blood vessels in the hands and feet. The Glove, in other words, overclocks the heat exchange system. “It’s like giving a Honda the radiator of a Mack truck,” Heller says. After four months of using it himself, Heller did 1,000 push-ups on his 60th birthday in April 2003. Soon after, troops from Special Operations Command were trying out the Glove, too.

It's going mass-market:

The system has been in testing now for 2 years with a range of elite sporting teams, firefighters, the military and sufferers of Multiple Sclerosis, who often suffer badly from an inability to regulate core temperature. Testing has been an unmitigated success - no adverse side effects have been found, the system has been shown time and again to cool the body core quickly and effectively - and some unexpected performance gains have become apparent.

Using the RTX system while exercising under a thermal load increased athletes' endurance by 25%, increased the initial recovery rate by 50%, and increased fat oxidation by 15% - meaning the athletes burned a greater percentage of fat instead of carbohydrates during exercise.

Seems like it'll be huge -- and as good a reason as any to start exercising again. If only for the novelty value of seeing results quickly. The thing seems like mechanical steroids.

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (34)
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OK, morons, here's a chance to put your inner geek to work.

I'm bored with my current suite of PC games, and I feel like grabbing something new to while away some free time.

Unfortunately, since I have pretty much only played WoW for the last 18 months or so, I have no idea what has come out that might be worth a look.

Do y'all have any recommendations? If so, feel free to offer your suggestions in the comments. If it helps, I'm partial to Strategic Sims (two of my favorite games of all time were "Command HQ" and "Shadow President") and I really liked the Diablo franchise.

So fire away! Let me know what's out there so that I can get my geek on.

Posted by: Jack M. at 10:11 AM | Comments (221)
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Supposedly. How this is possible I'm not quite sure.

A man cut off his own head with a chainsaw after stabbing his 70-year-old father to death in their apartment in the German city of Cologne, police said.

The body of the offender, 24, was found headless when police raced to the apartment after an emergency call, apparently from the dying father, had been broken off in mid-sentence.

Alf Willwacher, a senior prosecutor, said an electric chainsaw was next to the son's body.

"We do not believe any third party was involved,'' he said.

How do you actually drive the thing through before you die due to, you know, your lack of a head?

Thanks to dri.

Jack's Update: Not to be outdone, a California man attempts to Decapitate himself with a Circular Saw.

An Orange County man cut off his mother's head with a circular saw and then died after trying to decapitate himself, authorities said.

Police answered a 911 report of a family dispute at a Pinehurst Avenue home just after 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, entered a locked bedroom and found the body of 60-year-old Guadalupe Ruiz on a bed, police spokeswoman Cindy Knapp said.

Arthur Ruiz Jr., 32, was on another bed with the saw nearby. He had died of neck injuries, police said.

Remember kids...if circular saws are outlawed, only outlaws will have circular saws.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (29)
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A guy who couldn't really write or draw churned out a bunch of lame knock-off superheroes with goofy powers and stupid names.

Imagine, for instance, a hero named Stardust the Super Wizard – a man with a crime-detecting laboratory on his own private star, and whose “vast knowledge of interplanetary science” makes him the “most remarkable man that ever lived.” In addition to these formidable attributes, our hero has other improbable talents. He changes size arbitrarily from one panel to the next; his limbs, head and torso swell and distend for no discernible reason beyond alarming lapses in draughtsmanship. When not racket-busting or camouflaging the Earth with a giant, sculpted cloud of steam, our hero operates his “violently vibrating crime-detectors” and tosses foreign-looking villains down the mouths of active volcanoes. He’s clearly quite a guy.

The guy has a cult sort of following. These guys bust on him affectionately, and even did a "virtual cartoon" of Startust, the Super-Wizard with "Scientific Rays." I'm guessing most of this dialogue is from the actual comic -- but a few lines here and there are tweaked for humor.

I have a feeling they'll wind up doing a movie about him. In addition to being incompetent, he was also a drunk and a womanizer -- what's not to love?

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (12)
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A dude lays down fresh rhymes about his mad skillz in a roleplaying game tournament. Light language blasphemy alert as he calls upon Jesus to help him skewer and decapitate his enemies.

Thanks to Ryan. He also sends this Snopes piece about the Newsom/Christian murders, filled, as usual, with Snopes' annoyingly ipse dixit, ex cathedra liberal bullshit.

I know youÂ’ve complained about Snopes before, so maybe this will be of interest. I never had anything against them except their tendency to give me a sociology lecture before theyÂ’d tell me if the damn picture of the giant pig was real, but this piece really bothered me.

...

[Here's Snopes'] typical strawman argument:

Some commentators . . . have made much of the fact that the bulk of the news reportage about the Newsom/Christian murders has been local . . . while the case has received little or no national coverage by major news outlets – a phenomenon attributed to supposedly biased news media loath to report black-on-white crime.

. . .
However, the notion that every major news outlet in the U.S. (all of the competitive, profit-making businesses) has conspired to ignore what would otherwise be a compelling national story is rather implausible.

Of course, no one is arguing that, and Snopes’ refusal to address the issue of the media’s selection and handling of “scandals” is either another example of this issue, or maybe evidence that that kind of thing is beyond their capabilities.

And of course, theyÂ’re ignoring the privileged white elephant in the room. The Duke lacrosse rape story (because after all, even if Mangum wasnÂ’t raped with penises, she certainly was raped with lily-white patriarchy) was as far as I could tell the incident against which the non-coverage of these murders was being set. Snopes excuses the media by noting that the killings werenÂ’t as juicy as Jon-Benet Ramsey or Virginia Tech while refusing to acknowledge that the Duke case was juicy only because the media desperately wanted it tobe.

Yeahp. And of course Snopes has to give us a very long sociological treatise on What Life Was Like In The Sixties before explaining whether or not it's true that Hillary Clinton helped work to free two Black Panther murderers. Snopes claims it's False, despite the fact, you know, it's actually True.

Posted by: Ace at 05:53 PM | Comments (63)
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I'm partly linking this to show basic reportial incompetence. Nowhere in the story does this rocket scientist bother explaining to us why archaeologists believe that this is Herod's tomb. I'm sure they have their reasons -- but the reporter doesn't seem interested in such trivial details. Instead, we're fed the tentative conclusion without even being given a taste of the evidence supporting that conclusion.

Is there really any reason to think this is Herod's tomb? Maybe, but you'll have to look elsewhere for such a reason.

An Israeli archaeologist on Tuesday said he has found the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land - a potentially major discovery that capped a 35-year quest for the researcher.

Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer said the tomb was found at Herodium, a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert where Herod built a palace compound. Netzer has been working at the site, just outside Jerusalem, since 1972, the university said.

Netzer said the tomb was discovered when a team of researchers found pieces of a limestone sarcophagus believed to belong to the ancient king. Although there were no bones in the container, he said the sarcophagus' location and ornate appearance indicated it is Herod's.

Okay, I overstated -- there's your evidence it's Herod's tomb. Its location and "ornate appearance." The location -- okay, it's in the general area where Herod built a palace. The "ornate appearance"? What about it suggests it's Herod's, or any other royal's, for that matter?

"It's a sarcophagus we don't just see anywhere," Netzer said at a news conference. "It is something very special." Netzer, who led the team, said he was not at the site when the sarcophagus was found.

Ah. It's "very special."

Way to get into nitty-gritty there, AP reporter.

He said all signs indicate the tomb belongs to Herod, but said ruins with an inscription on it were needed for full verification.

"We're moving in the right direction. It will be clinched once we have an inscription that bears his name," said Pfann, a textual scholar who did not participate in Netzer's dig.

Yes, that would probably be helpful. A "very special" sarcophagus probably isn't going to prove the case on its own.

Again, I imagine the archaeologist has his reasons for making such a bold announcement. Just would have been nice if the reporter had asked about them.

From Dvorak Uncensored, which has this high-energy Truther-style video asserting that jets' contrails are some kind of weather-manipulating disease-causing mind-controlling (?) form of chemical warfare.

That's the thing I really wanted to post, but I didn't figure I should swipe the embed directly from him.

Posted by: Ace at 05:23 PM | Comments (43)
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They just show up on Greg Gutfeld's "Red Eye" at 2:00 AM to broadcast their insanity to the world.

Luckily, Allahpundit recorded the segment and has commented on it as well. And he did me a favor by posting it so I could put up an entry about it, so visit his link and watch the video.

I caught this segment when it aired last night and I was absolutely appalled at how glibly Samantha Judge, "Maxim's Radio Gossip Guru", tried to pass off her apparent belief in "truther" lunacy.

Apparently, "we just don't have a simple answer for what happened on 9/11" according to Ms. Judge. There's just too much "conspiracy" for us to ever know the "truth."

Now, it's true, I don't really expect much in the way of deep or even ANY, thinking from someone who is employed by Maxim to be a "gossip guru."

But I do expect a certain level of human decency. And that's one of the things that has always struck me about the "truther movement"; it simply has none. None for those who were killed. None for the families left behind. None for the people who are currently risking life and limb to prevent a similar attack from happening again.

It is "holocaust denial" for Generation Y. Only in this case it's as "fashionable" as a "Che" T-shirt because it isn't being touted by a bunch of cranky John Bircher's; it's being touted by a bunch of liberals in birkenstocks.

And it's "fashionability" is leading to it being increasingly mainstreamed. Years ago, even the most vapid of B-list celebrities (is Ms. Judge even a B-lister?) would be ashamed to go on National Television and willingly embrace his/her conspiratorial side.

Now? It's "chic". Or as self-proclaimed "feminist" Ms. Judge explains it, it's "subversive". Stick it to the man, Sammy!

To Red Eye's credit, Gutfeld and the rest of the gang didn't let Judge get away with it. And, knowing she was about to be PWNED she shut the hell up.

But I don't think they went far enough.

I think that Ms. Judge, and any other truther, should be denied a forum in which to spread their poison. They should be mocked and ridiculed and demeaned.

They have a right to believe their kooky theories. On their own time, and their own dime.

They do not have a right to demand that we respect their insanity. Or that we treat them with the decency they so willingly deny the victims of 9/11.

I would hope that Red Eye would cross her off the list of future guests. They can be forgiven for not knowing about her "trutherism" before she opened her mouth.

They can't be forgiven for ignoring it in the future.

I've already sent an e-mail to Red Eye asking that they disavow future affiliation with Ms. Judge.

If you would like to do the same here is the address: redeye@foxnews.com.

Posted by: Jack M. at 04:33 PM | Comments (94)
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