Why? Who knows. I was told I had a "really big IP" before she began moaning it.

Clicking will start the sexual moaning of numbers. Not really work safe, but almost so preposterously stupid you could get away with it. It's hard to believe that someone could actually get aroused by a porned-up version of Sesame Street.

Posted by: Ace at 03:36 PM | Comments (36)
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The rich greatly out-bred the poor in England from 1200 to 1800, he argues, thus leaving England in a uniquely strong position to take advantage of the incredible new rewards to be gained from success in the post-1800 Industrial Age. (Note that other countries also experienced this rich-outbreeding-the-poor phenomenon; in England it was just especially pronounced.)

Obviously this is a pretty provocative thesis, and may even be pure crank.

Interesting, though.

What does this mean for the modern world? Societies that went straight from the hunter-gatherer state to the modern economy may have historically rooted, cultural disadvantages in competing in a capitalist world. This may explain the difficulty groups such as Australian Aborigines have had in successfully incorporating into the capitalist economy. It could even explain why industrialists in sub-Saharan economies such as Zambia are importing Chinese workers into mines and factories, despite having to pay them more than local labour.

Finally, one puzzle of modern affluent societies is that while we have an abundance of goods, we have a poverty of leisure compared with hunter-gatherers. Indeed, the higher income a person has, the less leisure he has. Our poverty of leisure has been blamed on advertisers producing endless wants. But the true source of our compulsion to work, even when all conceivable material needs are met, may lie in our ancestorsÂ’ passage through a preindustrial world that rewarded a compulsion to work and accumulate with reproductive success. We may be prisoners of a history that makes us unable to enjoy the fruits of our modern economic success.

Those two points seem to be the least important and least provocative of all this theory's implications.

Thanks to someone.

Posted by: Ace at 03:16 PM | Comments (30)
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Content warning on the video; the boy is horribly maimed.

So maimed by fire, in fact, that Scott Beauchamp is already writing a few knock-knock jokes about him. I'm sure his buddy Corporal Quotey McQuoterson will be "doubled over," rolling with laughter, at Beauchamp's jestwit.

Allah makes some sort of comparison to the Michael Yon report of Iraqis claiming Al Qaeda had cooked a boy and then forced his family to eat him. I'm not sure the point needs to be made; most on the right didn't take that seriously. I know I didn't. I figured it was just a propagandistic rumor. Yon was just reporting what he was told and pro-war bloggers didn't exactly invest a lot in the tale's veracity. Not sure we have anything to be defensive about on that score.

Still, I guess Allah's point holds: If "bad things happen in war" is the left's "proof" that every single allegation made against US troops is true, then I do suppose this story proves Yon's second-hand story to be true as well.

Posted by: Ace at 02:44 PM | Comments (19)
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I intended to mention it in my earlier post but set it aside when I ran out of time for blogging this morning. Commenter Christopher Taylor reminded me of what IÂ’d forgotten when we had this exchange in the comments:

Did Congress "declare War" for constitutional purposes when it passed the AUMF 2002 (Iraq War Resolution)?

[Christopher answers:] No.

The AG claimed that there is a difference between formal declarations of war and authorizations to use military force “in law and in practice.” We will see that there is not. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:40 PM | Comments (16)
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It's so obvious they take terrorism seriously, isn't it?

While the Big Blog mixes fun and news on a daily basis, in this case we undermined a serious issue and a serious debate, and made it seem as if we in the newsroom didnÂ’t acknowledge its importance.

Seem as if.

You know why sometimes things seem a certain way? Because they are that way.

That bit is at the end of Michelle's post.

Before that -- tips about the suspicious men have flooded in to the FBI. Thanks to other papers and to blogs, but absolutely no thanks to Seattle P-I.

A Suspicious Package... was found behind a toilet in the a public bathroom near the ferry.

I've got to imagine when you're looking for a suspicious package behind a toilet in a public rest-stop you're relieved if it only turns out to be a bomb.

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (15)
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Which is of course simply crazy-talk. Undoubtedly she's just getting this immigrationist crankery from Rush Limbaugh:

“He’s been through the courts and the jail before, and nobody caught it,” Williams said. “If they’d caught it, he would have been in jail or deported, and then he wouldn’t have been out there on the streets, and my babies would still be alive.”

Gee, I wonder if Geraldo will interview her. It will be fun to see the Mustache of Passionate Outrage bully her and tell her that, in the scheme of things, her daughter just doesn't matter.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (23)
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What doesn't kill brain cells makes them stronger, I guess.

I'm doubtful.

Posted by: Ace at 01:26 PM | Comments (27)
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...can still be found here, at least until 20th Century Fox annoys the Bullwinkle Blog into taking it down.

Yeah... remember when I said I hear it's funny in that "very middling Family Guy sort of way?" Boy did I nail it. It's eh funny.

And for those who asked how long it would take for Seth McFarlane to work in an obvious joke equating the Empire with Bush/Cheney: Twenty seconds.

Count 'em. Twenty. The very first departure from the actual movie.

Did I Say "Eh" Funny? That might be overstating it.

Why do they call them TIE fighters?

Oh God.

Not only is that lame, they did that before on Robot Chicken. In the Emperor/Luke "Yo Mama" fight, the Emperor says "Yo' mama so dumb she thinks TIE fighters come from Bangkok." Thaaaiii... fighters. Ha, ha.

Not.

So lame. And yet Seth McFarlane swipes this.

It should be noted McFarlane was involved in that Robot Chicken thing, though. I'm pretty sure he does some of the voices.

Still. If you're going to steal, why not steal something worth stealing?

Posted by: Ace at 01:13 PM | Comments (29)
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You've probably read about Izzat al-Douri elsewhere. Even so, skip to the last paragraph to get a bit of what the media isn't telling you about the war in Vietnam.

Or Iraq.

Sometimes it's so hard to tell the two apart!

After all, IRAQ LIKE VIETNAM: BUSH'S NEW TALKING POINT AS 14 DIE.

Snark aside, we do seem to be killing and capturing a lot of these guys at a very fast clip. "We're making more terrorists than we're killing" breaks down as a (supposed) rule when we're killing them this fast, doesn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (25)
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It's real.

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation." But beyond the irony lies China's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

EricA. links this to the DUI citation of one Bill "Carl Spackler" Murray, wondering if he still has "that going for him."

Drew made that joke earlier when he sent me the Bill Murray story. I didn't know how to work it in. I still don't, really. Odd coincidence, though.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (15)
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