MemeMachineGo!

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has a wonderful article on confidence games, including this brilliant conclusion:

A couple of days ago I finally put my finger on something I've been sensing but not grasping—you know, one of those itchy back-of-the-brain apprehensions that there's a pattern here, only you can't quite see what it is. Somehow it's felt like literary analysis. The question is, why do these scams—inheritance cons, MLMs, tax dodges, Make Money Fast, hot stock tip swindles, et cetera—take the forms they do?

What did it was looking at my list of basic scams and observing that what they have in common is the promise of lucrative, risk-free investments. Lord knows the things exist, I thought, but nobody ever gives them away. In theory, high rates of return are the investor's payoff for taking on higher-risk investments. Achieving that happy state of all payoff and no risk is the main reason the wealthy and powerful manipulate the system.

Oh.

These scams take the forms they do because they're parodies—no, a better way to put it: they're cargo-cult effigies—of the deals the ruling class cut for themselves. If you're an insider, if you have the secret, you can have a job where you make heaps of money for very little work. You can avoid paying your taxes. You can inherit a pile of money because an ancestor of yours left a moderate fortune that's been appreciating ever since. You can be your own boss. You can have other people working for you, who have other people working for them, who all pay you a percentage of the take.

Of course people believe it. After all, they vaguely know this sort of thing happens. It just doesn't happen to them. But why shouldn't they be the lucky ones, this time around?

I've always been fascinated by con games, and have just recently been musing about doing more research on them, but Teresa's pretty much done all the heavy lifting for me, especially through the pointer to Quatloos!, the Cyber-Museum of Scams and Frauds.

The WHO is advancing evil socialist propaganda, saying that balancing the consumption of the rich and poor would be better for everyone:

Just 10 avoidable risk factors, including malnutrition, unsafe sex, smoking and poor sanitation, account for a massive 40 per cent of global deaths each year, warns the World Health Organization.

[...] The risks are starkly different between "haves" and "have-nots". Whereas poor people typically die through lack of food and clean water, the rich die through diseases of overindulgence. The reasons may be obvious, but the WHO describes them as "shocking".

Of the 10 risk factors, the five that dominate in poor countries are: abnormally low body weight, unsafe sex, iron deficiency, unsafe water and exposure to indoor smoke from solid fuels.

[...] In richer countries, the five key killers are tobacco, alcohol, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and obesity.

(Thanks, Geoff!)

Lose weight fast:

The time is ripe for developing a profitable space tourism industry, according to advisers to the US Air Force space programme. They have developed a strategy that they say could make space flight so cheap it could attract millions of space tourists within 10 years.

[...] But it does not have to be so expensive, says Jay Penn of The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, which provides engineering research support for the US Department of Defense's space programme. "There is no fundamental technological reason why you can't achieve space tourism," he says. "We think we can get the price down to around $15,000 a passenger."

Yeah, cheap irony following an entry bashing consumption with one on dropping a sum that alone would definitively keep a family of three out of poverty on tourism with a high environmental footprint in terms of greenhouse gases. But as a feral child raised in the wild by Heinlein novels, god, I still want to go.

Scientists, ever on the alert for reasons young girls should be having sex, have discovered:

The earlier a woman has sex, the less stressed she is as an adult, scientists have discovered. [...] Stress levels were up to 60 per cent lower in women who lost their virginity before their 18th birthday.

Find out how you can help. Because you care.

Grandchildren of boys with plenty to eat before puberty four times as likely to die from diabetes mellitus:

Researchers looked at 303 people, born either in 1890, 1905 or 1920, and the harvest data for the region where they lived. They found that males in areas with a surfeit of food were four times more likely to have grandchildren who died of diabetes mellitus than those who suffered famine in childhood.

I find this very alarming: this is based on people from the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the crops were good, not people surrounded with cheap junk food. Now, with childhood obesity so epidemic that adult-onset diabetes isn't just for adults anymore, what's it going to be like 50 years from now when today's kids have grandkids?

An interview with Suzette Haden Elgin, lingust, sf writer, and author of the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series, and other linguistics books:

The other thing that's going on right now, and I don't know how new this is, I don't know exactly where it started, but there is a very major split between the sexes in terms of the metaphor that they use to guide their behavior. For most American men, it's the football game. Most male adults operate out of a football game metaphor. Most female American adults operate out of the metaphor of the traditional schoolroom. And what that causes is the most incredible thing. It means that males and females use the same words with very different meanings attached. For example, the easiest one to understand is, if you're on a football field, it is not a lie to pretend you have the ball when you don't. It's not a lie to act as if you're going to run one direction and go the other way. That's the way the game is played. In the traditional schoolroom if what you say or do is false, it's a lie. Period. So what we have coming out of that is this constant business where the woman is saying, "You lied" and the man is saying, "I did not." And she's saying, "It wasn't true" and he says, "I know, but it wasn't a lie." When you run into that kind of thing, you know immediately these two people agree lying is wrong, but they don't agree as to what lies are.

We have the same problem with violence. Men and women define it differently. We have the same problem with cheating and cooperating and teamwork. Remember what cheating is in a traditional schoolroom? You have to work all by yourself with no help from anybody or it's cheating. On the football field, this just would not do. That particular item, that metaphor split, is what is the basic reason for all of the communication problems.

Jack LaLanne, still an athlete at 88:

He eats at least ten kinds of fruits and vegetables each day. He shuns meat, but does eat fish. He avoids saturated fats, and never drinks milk. Listen to this:

Jack La Lanne: “You name me one creature on this earth that used milk after they’re weaned.”
Keith Morrison: “But milk’s good for you.”
Jack La Lanne: “It’s not good for you. It’s good for a suckling calf. Are you a suckling calf?”

Oh, and also, he fortifies himself each day with a handful of vitamins and minerals. And there is one big rule, by the way, which the processed food industry may not like but here it is:

“If man makes it, don’t eat it,” he says.

This is very important. The rich and powerful are not only getting more ambitious and greedy, but more brazenly unapologetic about it. Globalization is importing third-world standards of living into America. Even if you earn in the low six-figures, the difference between you and the homeless is tiny compared to you and the very rich. And they're out to make it smaller. For richer:

When I was a teenager growing up on Long Island, one of my favorite excursions was a trip to see the great Gilded Age mansions of the North Shore. Those mansions weren't just pieces of architectural history. They were monuments to a bygone social era, one in which the rich could afford the armies of servants needed to maintain a house the size of a European palace. By the time I saw them, of course, that era was long past. Almost none of the Long Island mansions were still private residences. Those that hadn't been turned into museums were occupied by nursing homes or private schools.

For the America I grew up in — the America of the 1950's and 1960's — was a middle-class society, both in reality and in feel. The vast income and wealth inequalities of the Gilded Age had disappeared. Yes, of course, there was the poverty of the underclass — but the conventional wisdom of the time viewed that as a social rather than an economic problem. Yes, of course, some wealthy businessmen and heirs to large fortunes lived far better than the average American. But they weren't rich the way the robber barons who built the mansions had been rich, and there weren't that many of them. The days when plutocrats were a force to be reckoned with in American society, economically or politically, seemed long past.

[...] But that was long ago. The middle-class America of my youth was another country.

We are now living in a new Gilded Age, as extravagant as the original. Mansions have made a comeback. Back in 1999 this magazine profiled Thierry Despont, the ''eminence of excess,'' an architect who specializes in designing houses for the superrich. His creations typically range from 20,000 to 60,000 square feet; houses at the upper end of his range are not much smaller than the White House. Needless to say, the armies of servants are back, too. So are the yachts. Still, even J.P. Morgan didn't have a Gulfstream.

As Tom Tomorrow notes, conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the rise and fall of organized labor in the rise and fall of the middle class.

According to an Indymedia article:

In Appleton, Wisconsin, a revolution has occurred. Its taken place in the Central Alternative High School. The kids now behave. The hallways arent frantic. Even the teachers are happy. The school used to be out of control. Kids packed weapons. Discipline problems swamped the principals office. But not since 1997.

What happened? Did they line every inch of space with cops? Did they spray valium gas in the classrooms? Did they install metal detectors in the bathrooms? Did they build holding cells in the gym?

Afraid not. In 1997, a private group called Natural Ovens began installing a healthy lunch program. Huh?

Fast-food burgers, fries, and burritos gave way to fresh salads, meats "prepared with old-fashioned recipes," and whole grain bread. Fresh fruits were added to the menu. Good drinking water arrived. Vending machines were removed.

As reported in a newsletter called Pure Facts, "Grades are up, truancy is no longer a problem, arguments are rare, and teachers are able to spend their time teaching."

Principal LuAnn Coenen, who files annual reports with the state of Wisconsin, has turned in some staggering figures since 1997. Drop-outs? Students expelled? Students discovered to be using drugs? Carrying weapons? Committing suicide? Every category has come up ZERO. Every year.

Mary Bruyette, a teacher, states, "I dont have to deal with daily discipline issues — I dont have disruptions in class or the difficulties with student behavior I experienced before we started the food program."

Though I certainly think a healthy body is important to a healthy mind and good nutrition is crucial to a healthy body, I'm skeptical that changing one meal a day would have results this pronounced, and would love to see this verified.

SF Improv's troupe, of which I'm a member, has a regular gig on the second Saturday of the month at Cafe Eclectica at 1309 Solano Ave. in Albany (just north of Berkeley) at 8 PM.

That mean there's a show this Saturday, November 9 (as well as December 14, January 11, and so on.)

Admission is free, so you have no excuse, other than, say, living in Toronto.

I'd been meaning to mention that MMG had recently been blogrolled by a couple of blogs with irrestistibly clever names: Easy Bake Coven and Lactose Incompetent.

In the meantime, though, Easy Bake Coven dropped the link, perhaps because I've been lame about updating lately. Oh, the ignominy!

Been busy having a life, and like I've said before:

The unblogged life may not be worth living but the unlived life is not worth blogging.

A groups of scientists have come to agree with the American right that there's no point in limiting CO₂ emissions. But not quite for the same reasons.

Only a revolutionary advanced technology will save the Earth from relentless global warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions, scientists warned yesterday. [...] "No amount of regulation" could solve the problem.

Makes me feel warm all over.

As Grant Williamson cynically and aptly notes in American Samizdat, in a point about the coming liberation of Iraq's oil fields:

One thing you can credit free market capitalism for; money is more honest than politics. If you want to know if climate change is real, just ask insurance companies about the millions they spend on research into the question, and the rising insurance premiums for climate-related disasters, such as floods and cyclones.

(First link via Post-Atomic)

A women in San Pablo (4 towns north of Berkeley) has been verified as the oldest living American.

When she was born, on June 12, 1889, Benjamin Harrison was in the White House, Queen Victoria sat on the British throne, and people still traveled by horse-and-buggy.

She was born in a world in which the Civil War was in as recent national memory as WW II was for Gen Xers. The intercontinental railroad was only 20 years old; long distance roads were rudimentary at best, and cross-country travel was still an adventure. The Jack the Ripper murders were only 10 years in the past. Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling were current writers. Washington become the 42d state that year. Edison and Tesla were fighting the Electricity Wars.

She was 14 when the Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk. She was working in a factory in Richmond during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. She was 25 when the Lusitania sank and 26 as Wilson campaigned on "He Kept Us Out of the War." 31 years old when the 19th amendment granting women's suffrage passed, and commercial radio was born. 38 when "The Jazz Singer" was released. 50 when Germany invaded Poland and Batman was created. 80 when Apollo 11 reached the moon and the first Internet transmission occurred. 101 when the web was born.

We're all time travellers and the rate of change is only getting faster.

Some things in this world are predictable. Alan Moore gives an interview, LinkMachineGo links to it, and I lift it from there. Excerpts from an interview to appear in Eddie Campbell's Egomania:

Can you imagine anyone else being able to get a wonderfully accomplished artist to spend thirteen years drawing pornographic material for them, customised to demand; being able to declare himself a pornographer and have everyone take it as some bold new intellectual position; or even claiming against tax for high class scud-books like The Art of the Marquis Von Bayros as "reference material"? No. You can't. This is why I am a genius.

From the Times Online:

While the question “where do your ideas come from?” gets short shrift from most authors, to Moore it is “the only question worth asking.” Six years ago he was toying with the notion of “Idea Space”, a literal pool of shared concepts into which a correctly attuned artist could dip. Now he is beginning to map it.

“This planet has a physical geography with which we have already familiarised ourselves. But since the dawn of the first stories, there is a fictional geography, where the gods and demons live. We have created this big imaginary planet that is a counterpart to our own; and in some cases these places are more familiar to us than the real ones.”

Oh, I give up. I'm going to go subscribe to The Third Alternative to get their 2-part interview with Moore in issues 30-31, and my friend John Aegard's story in issue 31.

I just finished Steven Barnes' Charisma. The Book of Five Rings plays an important role, and the whole book is available on-line and is well worth reading.

Do not think dishonestly.
The Way is in training.
Become aquainted with every art.
Know the Ways of all professions.
Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.
Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
Pay attention even to trifles.
Do nothing which is of no use.

Gunther IV is a multi-millionaire who lives in a Florida mansion with a harem of five "gifted youngsters" and generally lives the beer commercial lifestyle. He's also a German Shepherd.

Gunther does not have owners. He has trustees. Thus, Gunther and the other dogs of the group's whole life and training are oriented towards the achievement of joy, pleasure, amusement and improvement of their sexual activity. Recall that Gunther and the other dogs were originally chosen because of their spontaneous inclination towards these types of behavior. Another element which the experts believe is necessary in order to raise the quality of a dog's life is for the dog to live without a specific "owner." Rather, the animal should live together with young euphoric people. These youngsters should be as dynamic, joyful and clever as possible. The experts contend that the company of young, joyful and sexually very active people operates to increase the drive, mood, alertness and other cerebral processes of the dog which in turn generates its happiness and, ultimately, better psychological health. Additionally, the company of these youngsters "pleases" the dog and brings him to fulfillment

See the pictures. The youngsters are called the Burgundians:

These five youngsters were the most talented among a selected group of boys and girls of international origin endowed with special features; beauty, intelligence and independence.

Gunther has also been in a comics story with Madonna, and recently paid $35,000 for a kilo of fungus.

(Via XQUZYPHYR)

When SF Improv's doing a show at Cafe Eclectica, they let us in early and leave us there alone to set up. On Saturday, the phone rang.

I answered. "Cafe Eclectica."

"Hi. Is there an event tonight?"

"Yes. SF Improv is doing a comedy improv show at 8."

"Are they, like, really funny?"

"Oh, yes. They're really funny."

And we were. You should've been there. Shows are the 2d Saturday of every month; the next is December 14. Sign up for our mailing list.

The first scene I did on Saturday was "3 way dubbing." I provided the dialogue for Regina's character, she provided the dialogue for David's, he provided the dialogue for mine. So we have to watch each other really carefully... if someone begins mouthing words, their dialogue-provider has to say something. If someone says something, their dialogue-providee has to mouth words. All while inventing, telling and acting out a story. Sound confusing? It is. I knew I'd screw up, and I didn't care. Some of the fun for an improv audience is seeing the actors struggle with the constraints.

Last night I attended an open-mike stand-up comedy night at A Cuppa Tea. It was pretty good — it easily exceeded my expectations for an open mike.

I find myself thinking I'll probably do some stand-up at some point.

Improv doesn't scare me any more. Stand-up still does.

My friend Kelly used to have as her .plan, back when people had .plans:

To always do what I am afraid to do. And to change.

What she said.

Guys with messy sock drawers have three times as much sex as those without.

The poll was conducted by IKEA, the home furnishings people. It was part of their "You Can't Be Too Organized" survey. I guess this "more sex" result was not something that the pro-organized people at IKEA predicted. And those who are disorganized don't just have more sex. According to the poll, their relationships might be better in other ways, too. Those couples that don't have closet organizers argue three times less per month than those who do.

For the record, my sock drawer is a mess.

(Via Amorous Propensities)

Give a man a tuna, and he'll eat for a day. But give an Amazonian tribe a grand piano, and it's going to need tuning.

It has been two years since British explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell delivered on a promise made to the Wai Wai tribe's chief priest, Elijah.

Now he is leading the team to retune the mahogany instrument in the tiny settlement of Masakemari.

Colonel Blashford-Snell. How self-parodyingly British.

Dibs on the film rights.

(Thanks, Timprov!)

Stay up late this Monday night for the peak of the Leonids.

And next summer Mars will be at its closest to the Earth for the past 73,000 years.

Forget News of the Weird. Spizzerinctum provides Weird Words of the News. For some examples:

A federal judge Friday approved an antitrust settlement that will essentially prevent Microsoft from acting like a corporate mammothrept when it doesn't get its way.

Despite facing skeptical Congressmen, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling insisted Thursday that he was parviscient of accounting tricks used by the company to conceal losses.

A federal appeals court in Manhattan Thursday threw out the conviction of police officer Charles Schwarz in the Abner Louima torture case, saying that the judicial process had been conspurcated.

You just know there are writers getting chewed out by their editors over these.

(Thanks, Maureen!)

Another thing that's predictable: Eclectica links to cute pictures of animals of unlike species being friendly (no, not in a porn site way) and I lift it from there.

In recent years, I've read a bunch of current British novels. Occasionally the slang and language gives me pause... it was a while before I felt confident I had the correct connotation of "take the piss out of." But sometimes there can be surprises I don't see coming.

In Bridget Jones' Diary, Bridget routinely quantifies certain aspects of her days, especially her calorie intake, cigarettes smoked, and her consumption of 'alcohol units.' I took it as invented personal slang for a drink.

But it seems like 'alcohol unit' is actually standard usage in the UK. The British Nutrition Foundation:

A convenient way of measuring alcohol intake is in units of alcohol. Each unit contains 8 grams of pure alcohol (ethanol).

BBC story:

Campaigners are calling for mandatory labelling on wine bottles and beer cans to tell people how many units of alcohol they contain.

Speaking of Brits and alcohol, a recent British study showed that even very moderate drinking by women is correlated with a marked increase in breast cancer risk. N.B.

It suddenly occurs to me that 'nota bene' is basically the ancient equivalent of 'word' in last decade's hip-hop.

Am I rambling yet?

It is my great privilege to participate in an excellent writers group, Draft₂ (pronounced "Second Draft" — representing it with the subordinate 2 is my own affectation.) After Sunday's meeting in which we critiqued four stories, I was inspired to remark: "I want to thank you all for such an enjoyable and intelligent discussion."

And there was a silence as they all waited for the punch line.

"Ah, the peril of being a smart-ass," I said. "I am speaking unironically. I am complimenting you all."

I think they ultimately believed me.

The Large Penis Support Group is the subject of this Register article:

Did you know that around 1.5 per cent of all accidents in the home are caused by large penis-related incidents?

[...] "A large penis is a friend as well as a foe. Treat it as such."

Not enough dead animals on your table?

Once upon a time, possibly at a lodge in Wyoming, possibly at a butcher shop in Maurice, La., or maybe even at a plantation in South Carolina, an enterprising cook decided to take a boned chicken, a boned duck and a boned turkey, stuff them one inside the other like Russian dolls, and roast them. He called his masterpiece turducken.

In the years that followed its mysterious birth, turducken has become something of a Southern specialty, a holiday feast with a beguiling allure. There are some Cajun butchers, like Hebert's Specialty Meats, who have made it their signature, stuffing dozens of turduckens each week, and shipping them frozen around the nation. At Thanksgiving time, Hebert's production leaps to nearly 5,000 a week.

Three three three carcasses for the serving footprint of one!

(Via Boing Boing)

Terrifying Tales of the Republican majority:

Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma will take over leadership of the crucial Environment and Public Works Committee, which reviews almost all major legislation concerning conservation and environmental enforcement. [...] He will succeed Senator Jim Jeffords. [...] While Jeffords is widely admired by conservation groups for his pro-environment stance, Inhofe is just the opposite. The League of Conservation Voters, a nonprofit group which monitors the environmental voting records of all Congress members, gave Inhofe a 0 percent rating for his lifetime voting record, noting his support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and opposition to increased fuel efficiency standards, among other environmental issues.

Inhofe intends to protect the oil and gas industry, as he has stated many times over the past decade. In these February 24, 1999 comments to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Carol Browner, he said, "I hope we can work together and provide some regulatory relief to the oil and gas industry. I am concerned not about any specific rule, but about all pending regulations across the entire agency."

Believing that the states "are in the best position to enforce the environmental laws and regulations," Inhofe can be expected to limit the role of federal agencies, particularly the EPA. He said on June 10, 1997, "The EPA should be limited to an oversight role for consistency only and for providing advice to the States. They should not be in the business of second guessing States or playing the big bully on the block."

("Mr. Fox" line lifted from Charlie's Diary)

I would use an idea from a book by:

1. Edgar Allan Poe 30.01% (873)
2. Stephen King 15.57% (453)
3. GOD 15.47% (450)
4. Anne Rice 11.76% (342)
5. Chuck Palanhiuk 7.12% (207)
6. Poppy Z. Brite 6.05% (176)
7. Clive Barker 5.23% (152)

Select the link to vote and see complete current results.

Poe in the lead? What, are there a lot more people out there with over-roomy wine cellars than I ever imagined?

The 2002 Bad Sex in Fiction shortlist has already been created. The article refers to last year's "winner," Christopher Hart's Rescue Me:

"Her hand is moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely will towards the pole," he wrote.

"And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Pamela will not easily be discouraged. I try twitching, and then shaking my leg, but to no avail.

"Ever northward moves her hand, while she smiles languorously at my right ear.

"And when she reaches the north pole, I think in wonder and terror - she will surely want to pitch her tent," reads the passage from Rescue Me.

No Booksense link — the book seems unavailable in the U.S., tragically enough.

Condoms? Never heard of them.

The government is waging a covert war on condoms.

[...] A fact sheet on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus has disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control Web site. According to lawmakers who have protested, the missing sheet was based on public health data showing that "latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are highly effective in preventing transmission of HIV" and other sexually transmitted diseases. In its place is a notice: "Being revised."

A separate CDC listing of sex-education "Programs that Work," meant to give local officials information on scientifically proven methods of reducing risky teen sexual behavior, also has vanished. The list was created at the request of schools that wanted "credible evidence of effectiveness" as they selected sex-education programs, lawmakers say.

President George W. Bush has begun appointing critics of condoms to a presidential advisory panel on AIDS. They include social conservatives who question the international scientific consensus that condoms are highly effective in AIDS prevention. Instead, they emphasize failure rates from slippage, breakage and not using condoms every time.

As Steve Martin once said:

I believe that Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was — an arctic region covered with ice.

And perhaps George W. Bush can make this country what it once was. A place where teenage girls who can be convinced in the moment, say, that you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up, are dying in back-alley abortions. (Obviously dumbing down sex education and overturning Roe v. Wade are different things... but is anyone going to be surprised when he goes for it?)

(Via MeFi)

This Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is Buy Nothing Day. The sentiment behind it can unite Canadian Mennonites and American anarchists.

Way cool gallery of covers for The War of the Worlds.

(Thanks, Larry!)

I wish you a happy Thanksgiving, whether you celebrate American Thanksgiving or not.

Ever since I began MemeMachineGo! I knew I would link to the Electric Sheep Thanksgiving Special on this day. Enjoy.

Mark Crispin Miller literally wrote the book on Bush's verbal gaffes, The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations of a National Disorder. He believes that Bush is not an idiot.

"Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."

[...] "He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge. "When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller said. "It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes."

Bush's ascent in the eyes of many Americans — his approval rating hovers at near 80 percent — was the direct result of tough talk following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In those speeches, Bush stumbled not at all; his language of retribution was clear.

[...]When Bush is envisioning "a foreign-handed foreign policy," or observes on some point that "it's not the way that America is all about," Miller contends it's because he can't keep his focus on things that mean nothing to him. "When he tries to talk about what this country stands for, or about democracy, he can't do it," he said.

This, then, is why he's so closely watched by his handlers, Miller says — not because he'll say something stupid, but because he'll overindulge in the language of violence and punishment at which he excels.

(Via Obey Your Thrust)

Phil Farber writes in this Mindlist entry:

In ancient times, the ritual sacrifice was consumed so that the eaters would gain some of the qualities of the sacrificial beast. Eating the heart of a bear would provide courage and strength, the testicles of a goat would make one prolific, and the ass of a missionary would make your skin go pale.

The turkey is a dumbshit of a bird. Millions of turkeys are consumed by Americans on Thanksgiving. Doesn't this explain a lot about America?

Rapture Letters:

After the rapture, there will be a lot of speculation as to why millions of people have just disappeared. Unfortunately, after the rapture, only non believers will be left to come up with answers. You probably have family and friends that you have witnessed to and they just won't listen. After the rapture they probably will, but who will tell them?

We have written a computer program to do just that. It will send an Electronic Message (e-mail) to whomever you want after the rapture has taken place, and you and I have been taken to heaven.

Dear Billy,

You're-gon-na-burn-in-he-ell! Neener neener neener!

(Via Eclectica)

New EPA regulations may compromise stricter state regulations:

New air pollution regulations issued by the Bush administration undermine an important tenet of national environmental laws: the rights of states to adopt stricter controls than the federal government, environmental lawyers and California officials say.

This part of the new regulations portends an ominous shift in federal policy that could threaten scores of unique environmental measures adopted by California in areas from air quality to pesticides to drinking water, they say.

[...] Part of that concern comes from the following language contained in the 600- plus pages of regulations: "For states that choose to adopt all the new . . . provisions, we expect that the (state approval process) will be expeditious. Of course, the review and approval process will be more complicated for states that choose to adopt a program that differs from our base programs."

Just some cheap irony following Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairman Jim Inhofe's spiel on not letting the EPA limit states' rights. Entirely different branches of government, of course, so disagreements like this are just part of the delicate checks and balances keeping us all safe.

Rantomatic has been serving up some fine rants. Check it out.