There's another low-key, non-sensationalist headline, of the sort I've seen in the MSM.

But really, we have to stop this "runaway cooling" before Manhattan lies dead beneath thirty feet... of ice. Only cockroaches and Scandis will survive the Holofrost, and we can't have that.

ce-covered Greenland really was green a half-million or so years ago, covered with forests in a climate much like that of Sweden and eastern Canada today.

An international team of researchers recovered ancient DNA from the bottom of an ice core that indicates the presence of pine, yew and alder trees as well as insects.

The researchers, led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, say the findings are the first direct proof that there was forest in southern Greenland.

Included were genetic traces of butterflies, moths, flies and beetles, they report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The material was recovered from cores drilled through ice 1.2 miles thick at a site called Dye 3 in south central Greenland. Ice cores from another site farther north, 1.8 miles deep, did not yield any DNA.

Greenland was discovered by Vikings sailing from Iceland about 1,000 years ago. While it had an ice cap then, the climate was relatively mild and they were able to establish colonies in coastal areas. Those colonies later vanished as the climate cooled.

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (14)
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Ah, the French. So sophisticated.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (9)
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Psychology Today runs a top ten politically incorrect truths about human behavior. A lot of this seems pretty damn bullshitty to me, as does, well, all of psychology.

However, I really can't argue with this. Note that "polygyny" means, I think, polygamy as we all understand it to exist --- specifically the taking of more than one wife by a single husband. I guess the distaff version would be polyandry, but that's almost unyeard of, except maybe for Catherine the Great, and she was more of a fan of polyequiny, I've heard.

Muslim suicide bombing...has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
...

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

...nearly all suicide bombers are single.

Confirmation! Well, whatever.

“We knew that Bilal was a religious person. He had a beard, and we used to say that he looked like a Wahhabi,” a medical school colleague of Dr. Abdulla’s brother said. At the university, Bilal Abdulla was a loner, according to a medical school colleague who graduated alongside him in 2003. “Dr. Bilal was not a normal person: he never had a girlfriend or close friendships with other students,” the fellow medical student said…

Which explains what many are calling the headline of the year:

HERO CABBIE: I KICKED BURNING TERRORIST SO HARD IN BALLS THAT I TORE A TENDON

...and yet that tendon-tearing nard-punt failed to drop the loser.

“Then I kicked him with full force right in the balls but he didn’t go down. He just kept on babbling his rubbish.

”I couldn’t believe that he was still standing. I know I would have been floored by that kind of kick.“

No point kicking them in the balls-- they've atrophied to the point they've become shrunken, useless vestigal organs.

Thanks to Jason and John.

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (50)
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Okay, so that's a wildly inaccurate headline; I learned that from the MSM. Actually, the study puports to debunk the claim that women talk more than men... although, by a smallish amount, it proves they really do talk more than men.

The stereotype of men as being strong and silent, and women as talkative and gossipy, has been overturned by a detailed study of how many words they utter every day.

As well as showing that when it comes to yakking, men chat just as much as women, it also reveals that womenÂ’s conversations are more about people, relationships and networking, whereas menÂ’s tend to be more about showing off, tools or cars.

The new research overturns the oft-cited notion that women talk significantly more than men, with the former supposedly using 20,000 words a day compared with the formerÂ’s paltry 7000 words.

...

Over eight years, Dr MehlÂ’s team recorded the conversations of nearly 400 American and Mexican male and female university students.

To catch all of their chit-chat, they developed an electronically-activated recorder that digitally, and unobtrusively, logged their conversations.

The results: women in the study spoke a daily average of 16,215 words during their waking hours, versus an average of 15,669 words for men.

Although women still win, the margin is not statistically significant.

I can assure you those excess 546 words are quite significant. My own research proves that those extra half-thousand words are just enough to put men near the breaking point.

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (40)
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Wow. That's some offer. At least it demonstrates that they seem to think they have an unplayable hand.

It's not exactly a shock that women and children have been packed into the mosque for use as human shieds.

Women and children were being used as human shields by militants besieged in a mosque in Islamabad, the Pakistan government said on Thursday as security forces ratcheted up pressure on hundreds inside to surrender.

PakistanÂ’s Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan said the few students who had quit the mosque spoke of a nightmare scenario for security forces trying to keep casualties down.

“A large number of women and children are being held hostage by armed men in room,” Khan told a news conference, adding that the brother of the captured cleric was hiding in the basement of an attached madrassa with 25 “women hostages”.

Musharraf has gotten somewhat serious about finally eradicating this cancer:

Pakistani forces early Thursday demolished the front walls of a radical mosque, where battles between security forces and students have raged for two days, intelligence and military sources told CNN.
art.surrender.

By loudspeaker, the forces warned students inside the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, that they had one last chance to surrender before a full attack took place.

More than 1,200 of the students have already surrendered, but hundreds more remain inside.

Heavy gunfire from both sides, punctuated by loud explosions and the firing of tear gas, erupted shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday (7 p.m. Wednesday ET).

The attack came hours after the mosque's top cleric was arrested while trying to slip away wearing a traditional woman's burqa.

Allah has video of this latest Profile in Jihadi Courage.

What accounts for Musharraf's newfound willingness to deal with the Taliban-style Vice Squads? Threats from China.

Demanding strict enforcement of Sharia (Islamic law), Red Mosque clerics had let loose moral squads on the capital to "prevent vices and promote virtue" - a concept first institutionalised by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

These moral squads, consisting of armed male and female students, were going around the city threatening music shop owners, and kidnapping women over allegations of operating brothels.

But every time they took the law into their own hands, the government had opted for negotiations, arguing that any use of force was likely to lead to bloodshed.

Emboldened by the government's perceived pussy-footing, Red Mosque clerics kept raising their public profile until they became a major embarrassment for the government.

However, President Musharraf kept advocating restraint on the basis of intelligence reports which warned of the presence of a large number of suicide bombers inside the mosque and its affiliated seminary.

The president repeatedly said if the government tried to use force, the clerics would unleash suicide bombers who could kill dozens.

"The same people including the media who are currently demanding that the government take action will then turn around and start accusing the government of killing its own people," he said at one of his public appearances earlier this year.

"I will order action if the media promises it will not show dead bodies," he said on another occasion.

Initially, many agreed with the president's reasoning, but the argument started to lose weight as the Red Mosque clerics became bolder.

"The turning point clearly was the abduction of the Chinese massage parlour girls," says a senior diplomat in Islamabad.

"We know that the Chinese sent a very strong message that they could take losses in Balochistan or the tribal belt but were not prepared to see their citizens abducted and tortured bang in the heart of the capital."

Note this is the BBC talking here, telling you that "pussy-footing" with terrorists and jihadis only "emboldens" them, and that uses of "force" are the only "negotiations" these monsters understand.

I'm curious to know why this principle seems to operate only in Pakistan and in no other area or the world... including bomber-besieged Britain.

It's nice to know that China still has the power to compel a neighboring state into better behavior... when they feel it's in their interests to do so.

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 AM | Comments (35)
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Judges were impressed by her pageant talent, which consisted of killing a Taliban by jabbing a crochet-hook through his eye.

Posted by: Ace at 04:04 PM | Comments (51)
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Can't frickin' wait.

Posted by: Ace at 03:52 PM | Comments (63)
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A McCain campaign spokesman quickly attempted to reduce the damage. "Look, he was on like six tabs of acid and fortified Gila monster venom when that photo was taken," he said. "It's perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Ask Hunter S. Thompson."

Mitt Romney seized upon the photo as a campaign issue, until he realized he currently has four pairs of nearly identical pants in his wardrobe. "But that hardly excuses the boots," he added.

Ron Paul's campaign issued a statement asserting that the Constitution does not permit for checkered pants or ties wider than 4" at their midpoint. He further added that he believed that 70s hard-rock act Foghat was currently heading the Trilateral Commission.

His sole defender was John Edwards, who called the attire "fashion-forward and full-out fabbo."

Thanks to a first-time tipster who wishes to remain anonymous, likely due to the media firestorm this will create.

Posted by: Ace at 03:47 PM | Comments (35)
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Well, in his hearing protection at least. This may be fake (should the bullet take that long to return to him? and what's with that strange whistle as it does? is that just the bullet tumbling or is it a laid-in sound effect?) but whatever.

No gore. Just good old fashioned accidental injury.

A key for me is the reactions of the other people -- do they sound like they're acting? To me, they sound real. "Gunny" says the bullet stuff looks and sounds real to him, and I usually defer to guys called "Gunny" on these points.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 03:36 PM | Comments (35)
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