Submitted by snake-plisskin on Wed, 01/02/2013 - 20:53.
BAD INVENTIONS
January 2, 2013
I am bored with politics, refuse to pay attention to the news and am watching only True Crime TV shows and Turner Classic Movies these days. With the Democrats controlling the Senate and presidency, nothing good can possibly come out of Washington for at least another two years. So I thought I'd start the new year with something useful, like a short list of bad inventions.
(1) SILENT DISHWASHERS
Are people installing dishwashers next to their beds? I've checked my "Top 500 Daily Irritations" list and dishwasher noise is not on it.
What possible benefit derives from having a dishwasher that makes absolutely no noise? Was that gentle whooshing sound driving some homeowners bonkers? Is this a product designed by the same people who gave us the electric car, a vehicle so silent that the first sign of its approach is the sound of your pelvis breaking as the car hits you?
Not only are the virtues of a silent dishwasher elusive, but there's one big disadvantage: You can't tell if it's running. A dishwasher doesn't have to sound like the Concorde blasting off to provide some indication that the thing is working.
Now, in addition to the usual steps of washing dishes -- loading the dishwasher, inserting the cleaning agent and turning on the machine -- the fancy new quiet dishwashers demand yet another step of the homeowner: You have to hang around and keep putting your ear against the door hoping to hear activity. If you forget to perform this bonus time-waster, every once in a while you'll start unloading dishes the next morning and notice that they're still dirty.
A top Muslim Brotherhood official is calling for Egyptian Jews to return to Egypt to make room for Palestinians who will take their place when Israel is decimated within a decade.
“Palestine houses people who conquered it and those occupiers have previous homelands,” Essam al-Aryan, an adviser to Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi, wrote on Facebook, according to the Israeli Ynet News. “There will be no such thing as Israel, instead there will be Palestine which will be home to Jews, Muslims and Druze and all of the people who were there from the start. Those who want to stay will stay as Palestinian citizens. Those who conquered Palestine will have to go back to their countries.”
A source told London newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat that Al-Aryan does not speak for Morsi and that his comments do not represent the president’s stance.
Al-Aryan, also the deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Freedom and Justice Party, first said last week that “every Egyptian has a right to return especially if he is making room for a Palestinian.”
“I want to enable the Palestinians to return to their land,” he said. “I call upon the Jews, Egypt is worthier of you than Israel.”
The comments set off a storm of controversy across Egypt, with a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman disavowing the statements, saying, “Egyptian Jews are criminals who must be punished for what they did to Egypt and the Palestinians.”
Marriage equality became official at 12:01am this morning, and gay couples wasted no time tying the knot. Above, Michael Snell and Steven Bridges of Portland became the first same-sex couple to legally wed in the Pine Tree State.
The labor union that forms the backbone of opposition to Republican plans to privatize Pennsylvania’s liquor store system gave more than $140,000 to state-level candidates in 2012, including plenty of campaign cash to some high-ranking Republicans.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which counts about 3,000 state liquor store employees among its members, is the most visible and vocal opponent of House Majority Leader Mike Turzai’s (R-Allegheny) call to privatize the state-owned liquor monopoly.
And with Gov. Tom Corbett in support of privatization and the GOP in control of both chambers of the General Assembly, the union must rely on more than just Democratic support to keep privatization proposals at bay.
A review of campaign finance records by PA Independent found the union gave more than $12,000 to Republican candidates in 2012—much of it targeted at key figures in the state House. As expected, the union gives more heavily to Democrats, who collectively received more than $40,000 in contributions.
Wendell Young IV, president of UFCW Local 1776, said Thursday that his union is not a single issue entity, but acknowledged that the privatization of the liquor stores is their top issue.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Thu, 12/27/2012 - 12:23.
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," which he based on the philosophy of "Mein Kampf" -- and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear.
Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the "framed" murder of two whites included: "the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department" and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. "was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt" -- an interesting standard of proof.)
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, "Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents."
Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot to death two Black Panthers on the UCLA campus: Al "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
Submitted by electricrazor on Wed, 12/26/2012 - 19:45.
Nicole Hawkins‘ three daughters have matching glittery boots, but none has the same father. Each has uniquely colored ties in her hair, but none has a dad present in her life.
As another single mother on Sumner Road decked her row-house stoop with Christmas lights and a plastic Santa, Ms. Hawkins recalled that her middle child’s father has never spent a holiday or birthday with her. In her neighborhood in Southeast Washington, 1 in 10 children live with both parents, and 84 percent live with only their mother.
In every state, the portion of families where children have two parents, rather than one, has dropped significantly over the past decade. Even as the country added 160,000 families with children, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother. In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers.
America is awash in poverty, crime, drugs and other problems, but more than perhaps anything else, it all comes down to this, said Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative: Deal with absent fathers, and the rest follows.
Islamists in Mali have begun destroying remaining mausoleums in the historic city of Timbuktu, an Islamist leader and a tourism official said.
"Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu," Abou Dardar, a leader of the Islamist group Ansar Dine, told AFP news agency.
Islamists in control of northern Mali began earlier this year to pull down shrines that they consider idolatrous.
Tourist official Sane Chirfi said four mausoleums had been razed on Sunday.
One resident told AFP that the Islamists were destroying the shrines with pickaxes.
Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th centuries.
It is a UN World Heritage site with centuries-old shrines to Islamic saints that are revered by Sufi Muslims.
The Salafists of Ansar Dine condemn the veneration of saints.
"Allah doesn't like it," said Abou Dardar. "We are in the process of smashing all the hidden mausoleums in the area."
Islamists seized control of Timbuktu in April, after a coup left Mali's army in disarray.
The news that further monuments were being destroyed came one day after Islamists were reported to have cut the hands off two people.
The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, another Islamist group operating in the area, warned that there would be further amputations, AFP reported.
Last Thursday the UN Security Council gave its backing for an African-led military operation to help Mali's government retake the north if no peaceful solution can be found in coming months.
The Best Movies of 2012: The Bat Battles OWS, Ben Affleck Brings History to Life
The year began with horror dreck like "The Devil Inside" and wrapped with a film flirting with a 0 percent rating at Rottentomatoes.com, "Playing for Keeps."
In between, the industry rebounded with films that took advantage of technological wonders as well as filmmakers eager to push the medium in fresh directions. A group of super-powered heroes who don't play well with others gave audiences the most bang for their entertainment buck.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Wed, 12/19/2012 - 22:52.
December 19, 2012
In the wake of a monstrous crime like a madman's mass murder of defenseless women and children at the Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the nation's attention is riveted on what could have been done to prevent such a massacre.
Luckily, some years ago, two famed economists, William Landes at the University of Chicago and John Lott at Yale, conducted a massive study of multiple victim public shootings in the United States between 1977 and 1995 to see how various legal changes affected their frequency and death toll.
Landes and Lott examined many of the very policies being proposed right now in response to the Connecticut massacre: waiting periods and background checks for guns, the death penalty and increased penalties for committing a crime with a gun.
None of these policies had any effect on the frequency of, or carnage from, multiple-victim shootings. (I note that they did not look at reforming our lax mental health laws, presumably because the ACLU is working to keep dangerous nuts on the street in all 50 states.)
Only one public policy has ever been shown to reduce the death rate from such crimes: concealed-carry laws.
Their study controlled for age, sex, race, unemployment, retirement, poverty rates, state population, murder arrest rates, violent crime rates, and on and on.
The effect of concealed-carry laws in deterring mass public shootings was even greater than the impact of such laws on the murder rate generally.
Submitted by HydroFoiler on Wed, 12/19/2012 - 02:52.
this story currently draws large circles in the State of Israel, shocking many israelis and their worldwide supporting community. the story is not launched by palestinians, but based on israel institutions official numbers and scientific comparisons.
"POISONOUS ENJOYMENT: ISRAEL USES MORE PESTICIDES IN FRUIT AND VEGETABLE PRODUCTION THAN ANY OTHER OECD MEMBER STATE"
note: whether you may feel affected by israel things or not, like its political construction, religions, history or philosophy or its military stuff doesnt matter to me, personally. i think this article is worth being read and understood to draw purchasing consequences - and you dont get any more stupid than you are.
in any case: merry christmas to skype assholes members
and the stupid, uncivilized, unbehaved, unpolite rest of the world (esp legoland)
Last December a Canadian judge ruled that a 15 year-old boy murdered one of his closest friends because of the effects of Prozac. The ruling will not be appealed.
Though the case was against the boy and not Prozac’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, you’d think they’d have a thing or two to say about allegations that their drug causes homicidal tendencies.
Amid the push for more gun control in the wake of the Conn. shooting, it's important to remember the lesson gun control laws have taught us in other countries -- namely, that less guns lead to more crime.
We saw this clearly in Australia when Aussies were disarmed by de jure measures in 1997.
To accomplish this, the Australian government sponsored a $500 million buyback on all privately owned firearms that led to a ban. Australian politicians who supported the move "promised a lower crime rate once the ban was in place."
Did lower crime result? No. Instead armed robberies rose significantly and home invasions rose as well.
Moreover, assaults involving guns rose more than a 25% and murders with a gun rose nearly 20%.
Note -- crime with guns increased after the gun ban was passed. How could this be possible? It's possible because criminals don't obey gun bans, just like the Conn. shooter didn't obey myriad gun laws in the act of committing his crime. Thus, when law abiding citizens turned in their guns to comport with the ban, they left themselves in a state of defenselessness: in a position from which they were helpless when confronted by an armed individual, or gang of individuals.
