Here's a video spoofing the new "security enhanced " iOS 7:

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:18 PM | Comments (156)
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It's really unbelievable that people do this, and think of themselves as "heroes" for it.

One can understand a lone psychopath, or a duo. But an entire ideological system of psychopaths?

Thanks to Lauren.

Posted by: Ace at 02:31 PM | Comments (328)
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"...and the farmer had this smokin' hot daughter..."

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to AoSHQ's solemn and prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

You know what's cool about what all you morons do on the book thread? Most AoSHQ threads last maybe 1-3 hours and pretty much die out when they get pushed down on the stack. But I come back to the book thread 6, 7, or even 8 hours later and I often see new comments up. And last week's thread has comments that were posted on the following day. That's very gratifying to see.

It Ain't Necessarily So

I don't think there's ever been a civilization that didn't have storytelling in one form or another. It seems that human beings are just wired that way and stories exert a powerful effect on the human psyche. There's something very compelling to us about hearing a good story.

And what's interesting is that the story doesn't have to be true in order for us to feel the effects of its power.

Like that Chipotle 'scarecrow' video ace linked to earlier this week. It doesn't argue a point, it tells a story. And watching those poor cows trembling in their prison boxes works, even though you know you're being shamelessly manipulated.

So with all that in mind, here's a story we've been telling ourselves for the last 15 years or so: the story of Matthew Shepard.

The story got started when Shepard was murdered in 1998, and the murderers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, argued at trial that their actions were due to "gay panic", because Shepard, who was homosexual, had come on to them. And then, according to Wikipedia:

McKinney and Henderson subsequently drove the car to a remote, rural area and proceeded to rob, pistol-whip, and torture Shepard, tying him to a fence and leaving him to die. According to their court testimony, McKinney and Henderson also discovered his address and intended to steal from his home. Still tied to the fence, Shepard, who was still alive but in a coma, was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, a cyclist who initially mistook Shepard for a scarecrow.

From this, it was widely reported that Shepard was targeted because of his sexual orientation, and this was a hate crime against homosexuals. It inspired books, music, movies, and legislation. The wikipedia section on this is too extensive to list here. And of course, The Matthew Shepard Foundation was formed by Matthew's parents in support of homosexual rights.

But what if all of this was wrong? What if it simply didn't happen this way?

There's a book coming out next week that claims precisely that. The Book of Matt by investigative journalist Stephen Jimenez argues that the Shepard murder, as brutal and horrific as it was, was not a sex crime, but rather a drug crime. The perps were not "strangers", but rather known by Shepard, himself a meth dealer, who even had meth-fueled sex with the lead perp. Said perp was on a five-day meth binge when he killed Shepard. Jimenez' book is based on over 100 interviews he conducted with ShepardÂ’s friends, friends of the killers, and the killers themselves.

I notice that the wiki entry on Matthew Shepard as yet contains none of this new information, but rather still reflects the original narrative. But it's still early.

The Matthew Shepard story is one we tend to think of as one primarily told by "the other side", and so it is. But we tell ourselves stories, too.

Like the story of Cassie Bernall.
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:15 AM | Comments (117)
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Horrifyng.

Al Shahhab claimed guilt.

via @BrentCochran1

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (217)
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via @rdbrewer4, I don't know why this is supposed to be funny.

I thought it was all pretty obvious. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (69)
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Yes, we are becoming a banana republic. Mark Steyn: American Banana Republic.

“Banana republic” is an American coinage — by O. Henry, a century ago, for a series of stories set in the fictional tropical polity of Anchuria. But a banana republic doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a sensibility, and it’s difficult to mark the precise point at which a free society decays into something less respectable. Pace Obama, ever swelling debt, contracts for cronies, a self-enriching bureaucracy, a shrinking middle class preyed on by corrupt tax collectors, and thuggish threats against anyone who disagrees with you put you pretty far down the banana-strewn path.

more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:04 PM | Comments (521)
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This was a rare sighting, in Ace's hair band days.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:15 PM | Comments (379)
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Note: See Andy's College Football thread below for college football and hot cheerleaders.

Niedermeyer's Dead Horse sends this. This is actually by some kind of economist. The piece itself is humorous in nature, and ornamented with quasi-economic language for comedic effect, but it's a matter of Kidding on the Square -- he's being funny, but he means it. Or at least the basics of it.

Worth a read, I think, if you like this sort of mock-academic humor.

First, he looks into s, the fraction of a population which is Stupid. After first noting that the only rule of s will always be larger than your estimates of s (in other words, no matter how Stupid you think people are, you're wrong, they're more stupid than you think), he notes that this fraction s is independent of other factors (such as education, income, race, and so forth) and Stupid is maddeningly consistent among all sub-populations.

Whenever I analyzed the blue-collar workers I found that the fraction s of them were stupid. As s's value was higher that I expected (First Law), paying my tribute to fashion I thought at first that segregation, poverty, lack of education were to be blamed. But moving up the social ladder I found that the same ratio was prevalent among the white collar employees and among the students. More impressive still were the results among the professors. Whether I considered a large university or a small college, a famous institution or an obscure one, I found that the same fraction s of the professors are stupid. So bewildered was I by the results, that I made a special point to extend my research to a specially selected group, to a real elite, the Nobel laureates. The result confirmed Nature's supreme powers: s fraction of the Nobel Laureates are stupid.

Being an economist, he graphs the human population according to their propensity to fall into one of four categories: The Helpless, who will give you a benefit while experiencing a loss themselves. The Intelligent, who will bargain a benefit for themselves while also delivering a benefit to you. And the Bandit, one who benefits himself while simply stealing from you.

The fourth category are the Stupid, who cause a loss for you while deriving no benefit from it themselves:

A stupid person is a person who caused losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behavior. But let us abandon the lofty plane of theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life. We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss: we had to deal with a helpless person. We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do indeed occur. But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life. Our daily life is mostly made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does what he does. In fact there is no explanation- or better, there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

After discussing the "super-Stupid," he turns to the role of the Stupid in society. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (214)
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It's so over-the-top I'm half-suspicious it's actually some kind of ironic meta thing attacking conservatives.

But I don't think so, not really. I don't think many people have so much faith in their audiences that they'd assume they'd look beyond the surface message to find the contradictory meta ironic counter-message.

I also don't know if there's some kind of similar parody running against other political strains.

The "show," "Impotent Rage: The Liberal Superhero," runs on the televisions in the game (you can watch TV in the game), and is a cartoon.

Mild content warning for Heavy Metal style cartoon boobs and such. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (150)
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I don't have really anything to add to this, but it's one of those stories you really have to read.

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Posted by: JohnE. at 07:40 AM | Comments (71)
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