Create your own content. It's like Build-A-Bear but we don't give you any of the bear parts.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:13 AM | Comments (359)
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Winter is coming here. Be careful out there morons.

Just a reminder for those interested in playing the NFL Fantasy Playoff Challenge. Click the link, search for AoSHQ in the groups section and enter the password "val-u-rite". more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:45 PM | Comments (1059)
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Ace, Gabe, John & I ring in 2014 with a roundup of the slow news week (kudos to Gabe for the painstaking research) and offer some predictions for the coming year.

Submit your questions & comments here: Ask the Blog

Referenced in this episode:

• Myths of the 'Free Rider' Health Care Problem


• Magpul Phone Cases


• An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates


• Crime soared with Mass. gun law

[MP3 Download] | Subscribe: [RSS] | [iTunes]

Follow on Twitter:
AoSHQ Podcast (@AoSHQPodcast)
Ace (@AceofSpadesHQ)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabriel Malor (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 08:56 AM | Comments (152)
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Happy Friday. Early start for me, so just a video.

Ben's got a link dump lined up for you in a bit and the first podcast of the new year should be posted this afternoon. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:04 AM | Comments (355)
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• NFL's Blackout Rule May Prevent Three Playoff Games From Being Shown In Their Respective Markets
  
• Kim Jong Un Had His Uncle Eaten By A Pack Of Wild Dogs
  
• Sister Of 9/11 Victim Not Happy About Release Of Lynne Stewart
  
• It's About To Get Cold Up In The North East
  
• 10 Coolest Archeology Discoveries Of 2013
  
• The Controception Mandate And The Constitution
  
• Obamacare Debuts With More Cancelled Plans That Enrollments
  
• Lost Generation
  
• Magpul Leaving Colorado
  
• Bob Grant Dead At 85
  
• The 2014 Team USA Hockey Roster
  
• Duck Dynasty Launches Its Own Line Of Guns
  
• Marines Delay Fitness Test After Half Fail
  
• Seattle Woman Ate Only Starbucks For A Year
  
• There Is No Where That You Can Hide From The Robots
  
• Government Regulation: Illegal Weed Is Still Cheaper Than Legal Weed
  
• Illegal Immigrant Gets California Law License
  
• Ace Of Spades Lifestyle
  
• You Can Draft A Fantasy Puppy Bowl Team
  
• Designer Vaginas Are Ruining The Idea Of What Women's Bodies Should Look Like
  

Feel free to follow me. Seriously, here's my home address. I'm at a point in my life where I think I would appreciate a stalker.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:16 AM | Comments (818)
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Because Racist

Or why these pictures are somehow evidence of the latent shadow racism in the United States or some such. And make the racialist hosts at MSNBC utter inane racist stupidities.

Also the sad state of adoption in America where any cross-racial adoption is discouraged by the very people responsible for finding homes for children.

Most of the parents waiting to adopt are white; most of the children awaiting adoption are not. Parents' attitudes toward transracial adoption have become much more liberal since the 1970s, but the racial attitudes of social workers, those sometimes pitiless gatekeepers on the adoption pilgrimage, have hardened. A study published by the academic journal Child Welfare found that 43 percent of the caseworkers responsible for the longest-waiting black children in New York State expressed hostility toward transracial adoption. Federal law prohibits the use of racial criteria in adoption placement, but ethnic considerations have seeped into the system: The number of transracial adoptions executed each year remains tiny despite the willingness of the majority of couples to adopt a child of a different race. About 8 percent of all adoptions are transracial or cross-cultural - and that number includes international adoptions, commonly from Asia and South America. Professor Judy Fenster of Adelphi University finds that black social workers are particularly inimical to the prospect of cross-racial adoption. It seems that the matchmakers at the heart of the adoption system are part of the problem.

Because racist.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:27 PM | Comments (1093)
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You've heard this claim sixty thousand times: The uninsured don't go to doctors before a condition worsens, so they show up at the emergency room with a condition that could have been treated much more cheaply earlier.

Or: The poor go to the emergency room because they know they can't be turned away. And thus the absolutely highest-dollar part of the hospital is overutilized, thus driving up health care costs. Which you pay for, because, in the end, the hospital isn't eating that loss.

So, Obamacare was supposed to reduce costs by weaning the uninsured off their habituation of using the emergency room as a local health clinic.

Nope. Medicaid patients use the emergency room forty percent more than the completely uninsured.

Is there a single claim about this program that wasn't a "wrong promise"?

A new study of Medicaid beneficiaries in Oregon makes a strong version of this case. The study, published today in the journal Science, finds that adult Medicaid beneficiaries rely on emergency rooms about 40 percent more than similar uninsured adults.

"When you cover the uninsured, emergency room use goes up by a large magnitude," said Amy Finkelstein, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who served as a lead investigator on the study, in an MIT press statement accompanying the study.

There were no exceptions to the trend. "In no case were we able to find any subpopulations, or type of conditions, for which Medicaid caused a significant decrease in emergency department use," said Finkelstein.

As Peter Suderman notes there, a previous Oregon Medicaid study also demonstrated that people on Medicaid experience no better health outcomes than those without any insurance at all.

Posted by: Ace at 03:42 PM | Comments (378)
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A study claims that dogs align themselves with earth's magnetic lines when they poop. And when the magnetic fields are scrambled, they become "confused."

Czech and German researchers studied 70 dogs during 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations over the course of two years, and found that when the Earth's magnetic field was stable the dogs chose to align themselves with it. When it was unstable, such as during a solar flare, the dogs would become confused.

...

Dogs on leashes, however, do not consistently align themselves as such, mainly doing so when they are free to choose. Researchers are yet to figure out why dogs exhibit this preference.

Yeah, here are some big old doubts I have: How frequently did dogs choose to align with the magnetic fields? Just somewhat more frequently than mere chance would suggest, I'd bet. And there's a lot of room for shenanigans with the definition of "aligning" one self with the magnetic field. How far off the line can a dog be and still get counted as "aligned" with it?

Those doubts aside, a lot of animals can sense magnetic fields and they use them as clues to navigating the local environment.

thanks to @clayremick

Posted by: Ace at 02:31 PM | Comments (240)
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I've completely flipped on this.

I still react with hostility to the pot subculture -- these people are so psyched about a mild hallucinogen it's just sad, really; they wear pot-leaf necklaces, for crying out loud -- but my distaste for someone's lifestyle and preferences is no justification for a law presuming to squelch those choices.

Whether I approve of this or not, these people are happy. Why should that bother me?

I mean, Let's Be Honest, it does bother me. It's a very deeply human thing to resent someone enjoying something one doesn't enjoy oneself.

I think pot laws and most drug laws are paternalistic. They are a vehicle for the majority of society expressing their distaste for a certain lifestyle, in the guise of helping the wayward find a better way of living.

But we really ought to respect other citizens as adult, free human beings. And freedom means the freedom to make mistakes, or, if not mistakes, to make choices the mainstream of society doesn't approve of.

We don't all have to be mainstream.

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (552)
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votermom wanted to know how the "Morons" label started.

It started with Arnold Schwarzenegger. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (180)
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