COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Which would you rather watch, Obama Campaigning or “Storage Wars”?

52 comments:

  1. Storage units: or as I like to say, "home."

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  2. I have to admit that there is absolutely nothing that I watch on ABC, NBC, CBS. I simply cannot stomach MSNBC. Nothing there. PBS, C-Span, CNBC and some HBO are about it. Most of my free curiosity time is spent elsewhere. However there are two small shows that fascinate me, “Pawn Stars” and “Storage Wars”. The plot is simple, a colorful group of characters bid and plot against each other and buy storage lockers with little idea about what they are buying. It is addictive, pleasantly mindless and fun.

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  3. Somehow this morning, the thought of posting anything about DC, Ted Nugent, US troops and Afghan body parts, Sarkosy, Colombian hookers and the dopes who would take a bullet for Obama, bored me before I started.

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  4. All you need to do is put the tvs in the storage unit, unable to afford that, the Mississippi.

    I'm waiting the the first internet release of I, Cartegena Hooker, Speak

    I hope to see it go all the way to the top.

    My wife was saying today, if Obama wins, America is finished.

    Omight be using coke, hence the need for the telepromter, on down times.

    There's always the woods, and the books. That was all there was before the above mentioned stuff, and things were certainly no worse.

    xxxxx

    Post the entire contents of The Varieties of Religious Experience for scientists in the crowd.

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  5. .

    Take all the worst periods in American history—Vietnam, the Great Depression, Prohibition. In every case, without fail, we have had a president as the head of state. Who has signed every single bad bill into law? A president. What about the president who got us into the Civil War? He was a president through and through, just like the rest of the presidents. The truth is, you look at every major crisis, flu epidemic, and time of civil strife, and who has been sitting in the Oval Office? A damn president.

    I'm sorry, but these are just the simple facts.

    I can think of five things off the top of my head that we need more than a president: better health care, less spam e-mail, more jobs, peace in the Middle East, and some way to organize all the clutter. I bet if I came up with 50 things America needs, "another president" wouldn't make the list. We need cheaper gas prices a lot more than we need to install some candidate who accumulates a majority of the electoral votes. Don't believe me? Put John Kerry, George W. Bush, and Cheap Gas on the ballot, and let's see who comes out on top.



    Let's Try Something Else

    .

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  6. God Gene:

    According to this hypothesis, the God gene (VMAT2) is a physiological arrangement that produces the sensations associated, by some, with mystic experiences, including the presence of God or others, or more specifically spirituality as a state of mind (i.e. it does not encode or cause belief in God itself in spite of the "God gene" moniker).

    Based on research by psychologist Robert Cloninger, this tendency toward spirituality is quantified by the self-transcendence scale, which is composed of three sub-sets: "self-forgetfulness" (as in the tendency to become totally absorbed in some activity, such as reading); "transpersonal identification" (a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe); and "mysticism" (an openness to believe things not literally provable, such as ESP). Cloninger suggests that taken together, these measurements are a reasonable way to quantify (make measurable) how spiritual someone is feeling.

    The self-transcendence measure was shown to be heritable by classical twin studies conducted by Lindon Eaves and Nicholas Martin. Interestingly, these studies show that specific religious beliefs (such as belief in Jesus) have no genetic basis and are instead memes, that is cultural units transmitted by non genetic means, as by imitation.

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  7. Charlie Rose strikes me as a strange bird but he gives consistently good interviews. Haven't watched him in awhile but he's still interviewing on PBS.

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  8. .

    To Bob aka Paul the Swede


    This is why I ignore your requests to trek to Las Vegas or take out the Black Rock of the Kaaba.


    "FU Paul the Swede"

    .

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  9. Onion staff should have their own reality show.

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  10. I, Cartegena Hooker, Speak

    We don't take no steenkin' VISA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  11. Kofi Annan today touted an agreement he has reached with Syria over how to handle the UN's 30-member advance monitoring team, outlining the "tasks and responsibilities" of the government. An Annan spokesman tells the AP that he's having "similar discussions" with rebels. The team is supposed to ensure that both sides are adhering to Annan's peace plan—which so far they're decidedly not doing. Indeed, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon today criticized the Syrian regime for failing to live up to its end of the bargain.

    In a letter to the Security Council, Ban called for the number of monitors to be upped to 300, the BBC reports. Nicolas Sarkozy went even further today, calling for humanitarian corridors to be set up throughout Syria to help the rebels. The wives of the British and German ambassadors, meanwhile, tried a different diplomatic tactic, issuing a YouTube video urging Asma Assad to "stop being a bystander" and convince her husband to stop the bloodshed, CNN reports. Though based on her emails, there's little chance of that.

    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    So the Syrian president's wife can do more these days than buy pricey candlesticks and chandeliers. Hacked emails reveal that Asma al-Assad, British-born wife of Bashar, also mocks the people of Homs (not long before hundreds died there) and jokes with friends that she is "the REAL dictator" in her family, the Telegraph reports. She also chats affectionately with family members and dabbles in talk about future overseas holidays.

    When mocking Homs, she circulated an email that listed silly answers to exam questions, like, "In which battle did Napoleon die?—His last battle." She wrote in the subject line: "A really bright Homsi student!" In other emails, she criticized ABC's edits of an interview with her husband and commended one of his speeches for being "very strong, no messing around." In a rare emotional moment, she seemed aware of the rising insurgency and wrote her husband: “If we are strong together, we will overcome this together ... I love you ...”

    <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

    Bashar al-Assad and The Ambassador's Daughter (Link)

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  12. Rightwing Attacks "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" as Anti-Western, Too Complex? (Link)

    Conservative critics and pundits are taking aim at Tomas Alfredson's brilliant new adaptation of John Le Carre's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," calling the film anti-western and criticizing its moral equivalence and suggesting the very thing that makes its worldview engaging and real -- its complexity -- is somehow incorrect.

    The latest attack can be read at the Daily Beast, with historian Andrew Roberts calling the film impeccably produced ("subtle, taut, intelligent, gripping"). but critizing the film and Le Carre for "his insistence on having moral complexity" and its "attempt to portray western democracy as being as morally compromised as Soviet Communism."

    Roberts singles out a few lines in the film, which suggest the West and East were both morally culpable. "We’re not so different, you and me. We've both spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. Don't you think it's time to recognize there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?"

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  13. I'd rather watch a 1950's test pattern than anything Obama.

    Hangtown Bob

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  14. Mitt Romney will give the commencement address next month at Liberty University, which touts itself as the "largest Christian University in the world."

    Liberty was founded in 1971 by the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., a nationally known televangelist whose outspoken style of fundamentalism often raised hackles on the left. Falwell died in 2007 and his son, Jerry Falwell Jr., is now president of the university.

    Romney's choice to address the school on May 12 is a sign that he is not taking the conservative Republican base for granted, but will continue to court these voters despite the fact that he is now the GOP's presumptive nominee for president.

    Link

    Liberty has done things recently to try to update its image. In 2010, the school put out a rap music video by graduate Jason Lewis, who goes by the name Humble Tip.

    The song lyrics include these lines: "Where the Spirit of The Lord is, that's my school/ No drugs, sex or drinking, we define what's cool/ A lot of people do not like us, but that's just fuel/ That helps the flame burn brighter, we refuse to lose."

    Video: "Put your happy face on."

    It's ... different.

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  15. You know there are stupid fucks and then there are some real dumb motherfuckers. This genius runs the table of bad decisions.

    CARTAGENA, Colombia — A Secret Service agent preparing for President Obama’s arrival at an international summit meeting and a single mother from Colombia who makes a living as a high-priced escort faced off in a room at the Hotel Caribe a week ago over how much he owed her for the previous night’s intercourse. “I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,’ ” the woman said in her first public comments on a dispute that would soon spiral into a full-blown scandal.

    The disagreement over her price — he offered $30 for services she thought they had agreed were worth more than 25 times that — set off a tense early morning quarrel in the hallway of the luxury hotel involving the woman, another prostitute, Colombian police officers arguing on the women’s behalf and American federal agents who tried but failed to keep the matter from escalating.

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  16. He can’t claim he mistook the exchange rate as hookers are usually in the dollar zone, Ben Franklins being their favorite president. He must must have offered her 10,000 pesos.

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  17. SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Apple Inc. AAPL -3.29% shares fell more than 3% Thursday after one of its major suppliers said capacity issues will weigh on its outlook for the year. Shares of Apple, the heaviest weighted stock on the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP -1.04% , fell 3.5% to $586.75 in recent activity. The drop comes after Qualcomm Inc. QCOM -6.38% , which makes key chips for Apple's iPhones, reported it is working to boost a shortage in manufacturing capacity.

    Let’s see; Qualcomm can’t keep up with the demand from Apple for iphone chips. My GAWWD Apple must be selling a lot of iphones, I better sell Appl.

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  18. Yeah, I read that story yesterday and that was my thought "What a stooopid fool for getting into that argument given his position in life".

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  19. Introverts, rejoice! A new app is pioneering a form of communication that doesn't require you to speak at all. The MotionPhone app, just released for the iPhone and re-released on the iPad, allows people to use their fingers to animate a series of abstract shapes set to music, and ultimately, communicate with one another on a more visceral level.

    "We all know how to talk and how to gesture, but it's a different form of communication that turns your gestures into animation," Scott Snibbe -- an interactive media artist and the creator of MotionPhone -- told us during SXSW. "It's quite magical because all the subtleties of your personality come out and turn into a kind of animated painting."

    Link

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  20. Is that like Tantric sex?

    Somebody ring up Sting.

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  21. Often associated with being anti-industrial, the Arts and Crafts Movement had dominated the field before the start of the Bauhaus in 1919. The Bauhaus’ focus was to merge design with industry, providing well designed products for the many.

    The Bauhaus not only impacted design and architecture on an international level, but also revolutionized the way design schools conceptualize education as a means of imparting an integrated design approach where form follows function.


    Infographic (Link)

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  22. Rather than storing up sexual energy, I prefer to pass out.

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  23. An inch. Where do we find these assholes?

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  24. "The Next Global Crash: Why You Should Fear the Commodities Bubble

    As playwright Arthur Miller once observed, "An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted." Most of the illusions that defined the last decade -- the notion that global growth had moved to a permanently higher plane, the hope that the Fed (or any central bank) could iron out the highs and lows of the business cycle -- are indeed spent. Yet one idea still has the power to capture the imagination of the markets: that the inexorable rise of China and other big developing economies will continue to drive a "commodity supercycle," a prolonged upward rise in the prices of commodities ranging from oil to copper and silver, to textiles, to corn and soybeans. This conviction is the main reason for the optimism about the prospects of the many countries that live off commodity exports, from Brazil to Argentina, and Australia to Canada.

    I call this illusion commodity.com, for it is strikingly similar in some ways to the mania for technology stocks that gripped the world in the late 1990s. At the height of the dotcom era, tech stocks comprised 30 percent of all the money invested in global markets. When the bubble finally burst, commodity stocks -- energy and materials -- rose to replace tech stocks as the investment of choice, and by early 2011 they accounted for 30 percent of the global stock markets. No bubble is a good bubble, and all leave some level of misery in their wakes. But the commodity.com era has had a larger and more negative impact on the global economy than the tech boom did.

    The hype has created a new industry that turns commodities into financial products that can be traded like stocks. Oil, wheat, and platinum used to be sold primarily as raw materials, and now they are sold largely as speculative investments. Copper is piling up in bonded warehouses not because the owners plan to use it to make wire, but because speculators are sitting on it, like gold, figuring that they can sell it one day for a huge profit. Daily trading in oil now dwarfs daily consumption of oil, running up prices. While rising prices for stocks--tech ones included--generally boost the economy, high prices for staples like oil impose unavoidable costs on businesses and consumers and act as a profound drag on the economy."


    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-next-global-crash-why-you-should-fear-the-commodities-bubble/255901/

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  25. And so you blow my cover. It's time for you to go. We had thought you could handle the position of company cabbie, what with your experience in Detroit, but you are not even that capable any longer, and how sad it is, given the memories of your past competence, to command you to hand in your two way SoulsRUsCab radio.

    Quirk Communication Device QCD

    And, thoughtlessly, you put your picture on one of the countries few remaining English language blogs.

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  26. Treinta dólares?

    TREINTA DÓLARES!

    Tú eres la puta.

    Tu madre es una puta.

    Su hijo es el hijo de puta.

    Voy a la de Obama Presidente!

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  27. India is aiming to complete a "nuclear triad," a system that would allow nuclear weapons to be delivered from air, land and sea.

    The missiles in the Agni series, which take their name from the Hindi word for fire, are the cornerstone of India's mobile land-based nuclear-delivery system.

    India's "Arihant" nuclear-powered submarine was launched in 2009 but still hasn't formally entered into active service. It is unclear whether India's range of fighter jets, which include Jaguar IS/IB, Mirage 200-H and Sukhoi-30 MKI models, are capable of carrying nuclear payloads.

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  28. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  29. Sean Trende has an important column that connects presidential job approval to reelection results. You really should read the whole thing, but here is the big take home point:

    [I]ncumbent elections have historically looked more like referenda than choices, and so far, this election is looking like one as well. Voters who approve of the incumbent largely vote for him; those that do not approve of the incumbent vote for the challenger, except in extreme circumstances.

    ...

    Obviously, he could still do it. He has plenty of time, but why should we be expecting that to happen?

    It is not like the experts are predicting the economy is going to take off between now and Election Day. Instead, we are going to get more of the same muddled growth at roughly 2-2.5 percent, far less than what is needed to reduce the deficit or create jobs.

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  30. Mr Lavrov, speaking at the Nato conference, accused the West of turning a blind eye to attacks by rebels, while pillorying the regime. "There are armed groups which are being supplied with weapons by outside countries, there have been terrorist bombings in Damascus and Aleppo.

    ...

    He claimed that the "so-called 'Friends of Syria'" group – which includes the US and Britain – was being "unhelpful" in promoting the peace process, saying that its uncritical support was encouraging the opposition not to compromise.

    "It is up to everyone to help the Kofi Annan plan," he said.

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  31. While Obama has subsequently shown about as much interest in controlling guns as he has in controlling the deficit, some detractors believe his inaction has been part of a careful strategy to lull gun owners into complacency. In a February appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre suggested that Obama won’t make any dramatic moves to disarm America until he is re-elected, at which point he will proceed to “destroy the Second Amendment.”

    The threat of a second term for Obama should keep the firearms industry humming throughout 2012, and if he wins, expect sales to shoot through the roof.

    All of which just shows how thoroughly the industry has won over the trigger fingers of America during the last decade. At this point, a victory for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum represents the anti-gun activist’s best hope of curbing the nation’s appetite for small-frame semiautomatic pistols.

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  32. On this day in 1897, the first ever Boston Marathon took place.

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  33. I have just been sacked from my new job in the Wines and Spirits section at Woolworths.

    A Moslem man came in and asked if I could recommend a good port.

    I said, Try Kuwait

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  34. I wouldn't have known Ted Nuugent from my deceased uncle but I remember Tubbs, who knew to draw down on punks.

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  35. "They sabotage the Annan plan and encourage Bashar al-Assad to intensify repression," Mr. Juppe told his fellow ministers in an address before the summit.

    The top French diplomat blamed Mr. Assad and his regime for the failure of the U.N. plan so far, and said the Syrian opposition has met its part of the plan.

    "The [opposition] groups on the ground, whose coordination is made very difficult by repression, have respected the cease-fire despite provocations from the Syrian authorities," he said. "We are running out of time.

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