Well, I mean, apart from the obvious answers.

A lot of men are in a state of arrested development and indulgence.

We’ve been lowering expectations on young men for decades. The only reason we’re still calling it progress is because we lost the direction–the vision–of what manhood (and life itself) is really all about. Even the adjectives that the men in their twenties living half a century ago wanted associated with their name and character–sacrificial, honorable, resourceful, diligent–have been replaced with such lackluster descriptors as “progressive,” “open-minded,” or “stylish.”

The problem here is that these are not, broadly speaking, manly things. By this I mean that there are manly things. We just donÂ’t seem to prize them anymore, and this is, in part, because they are not easy to obtain and require hard work to maintain.

And meanwhile, women aren't happy campers. On this last point, though, one might object that "happiness" per se isn't really the goal in life, anyway.

But the best criticism of Stevenson and Wolfers’s study sharpens the implied critique of contemporary life rather than weakening it. This criticism is that there’s a difference between happiness and meaning. We’ve all seen the studies which find that parents report less happiness than non-parents, and yet very few of us actually consider this a “case against parenting.” We consider it a case against happiness research.

The good life includes suffering as well as contentment. And most of the important choices in our lives are choices for more stress, for pushing ourselves, refusing to be satisfied with whatever comes easiest.

Posted by: Ace at 02:21 PM | Comments (299)
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Interesting. Via the Hollywood Reporter:

The Kochs, who some sources say are interested in the clout they could gain through the Times' editorial pages, could bid on their own or combine in a bid with Doug Manchester, the San Diego real estate magnate who bought the San Diego Union-Tribune in November 2011.

I'd be less interested in their editorials than in their insistence on actual balanced coverage -- negative stories about both Republicans and Democrats, with equal resources and attention to both; what a concept.

If they buy this thing, I'd suggest they ask Mickey Kaus and Patrick Frey for some critiques of the paper as it currently stands. Kaus has a number of non-political complaints about the paper, chiefly, if I remember, that it's boring, and apparently deliberately so, and seems aloof to the city's number one industry, entertainment. Which is crazy -- not only are entertainment stories more interesting than people care to admit, but in the case of the Los Angeles Times, they should be the paper's beat. It's like the Wall Street Journal deciding they find economic & market news so beneath them.

Every newspaper smuggles entertainment stories into the news to drive sales. The Los Angeles Times is the only big paper with a justification for doing so.

Speaking of conservative entries into the media, the Herring broadcasting company is planning a cable news channel to compete with Fox.

One America News Network will provide Americans a new, credible source for national and international news and investigative reporting as well as talk shows designed to foster an independent, cutting-edge debate about the policies, issues and solutions facing the country,” CEO Robert Herring Sr. said in an announcement on the Washington Times website.

And Glenn Beck would like you to call up your local cable station and ask them to carry Blaze TV.

After all, if you are a cable subscriber, your money is already bankrolling MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS a host of other foreign news and overwhelmingly number Leftist leaning "information" channels. And as of July, you will be helping to pay the salaries of Al Jazeera TV. (Al Gore recently sold his Current TV to Al Jazeera for an amazing sum of money- considering the low viewing audience they have).

Now- Beck has put out a call to all journalists and bloggers to "Link Arms"- and to share information with one another -in order to get news and information out to wider and broader audiences- outside the mainstream media.

Sounds about right.

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (216)
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Crazy glue, duct tape, and tampering with the data.

Hide the decline, baby.

We wrote here about a recent effort by a group of climate alarmists headed by geologist Shaun Marcott to resurrect Michael MannÂ’s discredited hockey stick. The Marcott paper, as you would expect, received uncritical coverage in the liberal press. But it didnÂ’t take long for climate scientists to begin taking it apart, as we noted in our post.

Now Steve McIntyre, who was principally responsible for showing that MannÂ’s original hockey stick was a fraud, has gone over MarcottÂ’s data on the key proxies he uses for 20th century temperatures, ocean cores. McIntyre found that Marcott and his colleagues used previously published ocean core data, but have altered the dates represented by the cores, in some cases by as much as 1,000 years.

Obviously if you shift core samples showing cooler temperatures back in time and samples showing higher temperatures forward in time you're going to get a graph that shows... temperatures rising from cooler to warmer.

But... why would you change the f***ing dates? This is supposed to be science, not screenwriting. You are not allowed to compress events and change dates in a science, even if it leads to the more dramatic narrative arc you were hoping for.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (258)
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Someone got his nose bent out of joint because some golfer mentioned (on a golf broadcast) that he studied Scripture.

Oh my Gosh that's terrible. We're Almost A Theocracy (TM).

Norm MacDonald tweeted back, reasonably...

After making the point that most people are in fact religious and study Scripture, and many people are "smart," atheists got on him for saying The Worstest Thing Ever and he deleted his Tweets, though Twitchy still has them.

Religious people get a bad name because of the Church Lady Syndrome -- the person who seems to believe in God not because God is the Creator but because believing in God makes the believer superior to those around her (I say "her" because of the Church Lady). Thus, far from a Church Lady Type giving glory to God, God gives glory to the Church Lady Type.

However, it's becoming more and more obvious every day-- if it weren't already obvious -- that this particular indulgence of the ego isn't part of the religious mindset. It's part of the human mindset. You can see it in the Anti-Church Ladies of the Evangelical Atheists who do their own Superiority Dances over their righteous nonbelief in the Deity.

Some seem to believe that a professed atheism automatically makes one enlightened and rational, and rational, moreover, in a specific way: Freed of the childish belief that simply speaking certain Magic Words makes one a better and smarter person.

But it plainly does not. Better-thinking religious people must be occasionally embarrassed by their Church Ladies; are any atheists embarrassed by their own Anti-Church Ladies?

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (479)
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Step One: Hire Mitt Romney's ad people.

No just kidding.

1. Create division among the people.

2. Encourage a culture of ridicule for basic moral principles.

3. Undermine the nation's financial stability with crushing government debt.

4. Weaken the morale and funding of the military.

"It appears, coincidentally, that those are the very things happening right now," Carson noted ruefully, although he went on to say it would be a mistake to pin this entirely on Barack Obama, or any other individual.

I wrote about Step One over at Breitbart, though it's stuff you've read before.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (264)
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Hah.

The show's ratings are, as you've probably heard, as high as heaven. I like this especially:

How can the cable mini-series “The Bible” be such a ratings hit when there is no audience for overtly religious entertainment programming? According to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than anything on broadcast network NBC … during the entire week. The second installment of this five-part mini-series airing at 8-10 p.m. Sundays through Easter — the first foray into scripted drama for “Survivor” creator Burnett — drew 10.8 million viewers, good for number one in its timeslot and number 11 overall for the week.

It's predictable that it's someone like Mark Burnett doing this, as he doesn't do scripted TV and has a reputation as someone who just makes a lot of money doing shows others might put their noses up at (like Survivor). What I mean is that it's my guess he's doing this largely as a money play. Which I'm not knocking-- but why is it so many other people in Hollywood would prefer to not make money than serve the "niche audience of 50% of the country"?

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (381)
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Cypriot banks will be closed until Thursday.

Supposedly legislators are trying to renegotiate the deal to lessen the impact to depositors with less that 100,000 euros, but it won't matter. The damage is done.

I liked this comment from Nevergiveup over the weekend:

20 If you like your money, You can keep some of it, maybe.

Yep.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:55 AM | Comments (252)
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Well, she announced her support for same sex marriage which is the same thing really.

"LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones," Clinton said in the video released Monday. "And they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage. That's why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law."

Clinton said her views on same-sex marriage have changed over time.

"Like so many others my views have been shaped over time by people I have known and loved, by my experience representing our nation on the world stage, my devotion to law and human rights and the guiding principles of my faith," Clinton said. "Marriage, after all, is a fundamental building block of our society, a great joy and, yes, a great responsibility.

"A few years ago Bill and I celebrated as our own daughter married the love of her life and I wish every parent that same joy. To deny the opportunity to any of our daughters and sons solely on the basis of who they are and who they love is to deny them the chance to live up to their own god-given potential," she continued.

Yes, I'm sure her conversion is just as sincere as Barack Obama's was.

On the upside, the Supreme Court is going to find a constitutional right to marriage this term so we won't have to deal with it come 2016. Well, other than people pushing the GOP nominee to support a federal marriage amendment. So there's that fun to look forward to.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:43 AM | Comments (336)
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Here's the report (pdf)

The short version is...Romney was a terrible candidate and his campaign was awful. They never say that but it's clearly the subtext of everything.

After saying they aren't a policy making board, they make one policy suggestion.

We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our PartyÂ’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that
comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.

They don't call for embrace of "same sex marriage" but they hint at it pretty strongly.

Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes
at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.

They suggest spending $10 million on minority outreach. Not sure how that's going to work or be received by the target audience.

Here's my favorite bit. Once upon a time it got you branded as someone who hated capitalism. Now it's key to our growth.

We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare. We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when CEOs receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

Honestly they could have saved a lot of time on the messaging section and just reprinted this post from a week after the election.

You want a free idea on making the GOP more friendly to new voters...move the RNC HQ out of DC and into Pittsburgh or Cleveland. Don't just say you're going to be different, actually BE different.

The "what went wrong" stuff is easy, everyone can see it. The how do you fix it is harder. All this report offers is some gentle prods that basically amount to "we need to rebuild and retrain our base to deal with the modern world".

It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a committee made up of a lobbyist, a long time RNC insider, a "veteran strangest and and top ally of Jeb Bush", and a member of W. Bush's team, Ari Fleischer. Only one member seems to have any grassroots credibility.

This is a pretty vanilla report. That would be fine because that's what these things are. The problem is the RNC hyped it as some important moment in the history of the GOP's renewal. Once again, they are over promising and under delivering. Stopping that bit of terrible marketing would be a major step in the right direction.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:47 AM | Comments (306)
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• Weiner Is Still Fuming Over His Downfall
  
• We Now Can Confirm What Was Transmitted To Vladimir
  
• RNC Releases Its 2012 Election Postmortem
  
• Obama Still Showing Up On Random TV Shows
  
• The Perfect Amnesty Storm
  
• More Than 25% Of Americans Are Raiding Their 401k Accounts
  
• Cyprus Bailout Shakes Markets
  
• Whistle Blowing Scientist Sues UCLA For His Job
  
• You'll Never Be Able To Count On Retirement
  
• Another Poll In Which Voters Claim They Want One Thing, But Vote Against In Actual Elections
  
• Should We Set Up Drone Guidelines?
  
• S&P Warns Of Socially Explosive Situation In Eurozone
  
• The Rise Of The Cossacks Amidst Russia's Decline
  
• Gov Walker Speaks
  
• Funny Dog Snoring Video (autoplay)
  
• A New Type Of Military Coup Takes Shape In Pakistan
  
• This Article Isn't Going Over Well In Philly
  
• David Bowie Tops UK Charts With Comeback Album
  
• How Beer Gave Us Civilization
  
• Apparently The Natural Was Very Loosely Based On Reality
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:35 AM | Comments (272)
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