Is This Your Hat?
10 years ago
Miscellaneous thoughts on politics, people, math, science and other cool (if sometimes frustrating) stuff from somewhere near my favorite coffee shop.
Mrs. Palin is well within her rights to feel persecuted. Since the Saturday bloodbath, members of the liberal commentariat have spoken in a unified voice, charging her and other conservatives with being indirectly or somehow directly responsible for the lunatic actions of accused gunman Jared Loughner. Typical of blood libel, the attack against Mrs. Palin is a false charge intended to generate anger made by people with a political agenda. They have made these claims boldly without evidence and without censure or consequence.Within her rights or not, Palin and the rest of conservatopia are going to feel persecuted. We get it guys. That's what you do.
This is simply the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers.
The chief prosecutor in his home city of Milan said the Italian prime minister had been formally placed under investigation on suspicion of having sex with an underage prostitute. He was also accused of abusing his position to pressure the police.Say what you will about US officials from, yes, across the political spectrum. I can't think of anyone whose "wandering genital syndrome" has gone this far out of hand. So to speak. I can't tell if he's trying to look contrite and ashamed, or if he's smirking.
Customer: “Where are the pregnancy test kits?”Or how about this, from The Daily What:
Me: “Over there, by the condoms.”
Customer: “If I knew where the condoms were, I wouldn’t need the pregnancy test!”
Somewhat Apropos Of The Previous Post of the Day: Palmetto State Armory’s limited edition AR-15 lower receiver engraved with Rep. Joe Wilson infamous anti-Obama outburst “you lie” is an awesome, timely idea that couldn’t possibly backfire.The editor notes that either the offer has been removed, or given the limited edition, has already sold out. And the "Previous Post" referenced? Why, Sarah Palin's "blood libel" comment, of course. (Here's the NYT report.) Okay, I'll admit it: I had to go look this one up myself. Turns out, I was aware of the myth, folklore... hey, "libel" is actually a pretty good word for it. But I guess I wasn't aware that that particular phrase was so firmly linked to those particular nasty rumors. The Wikipedia article is not for the faint-hearted or weak stomached. Not for the descriptions of acts, which, awful as they are, are fictional, but for the fact that a human being would accuse other human beings of doing such things.
These garnets were extracted from ant sand. Garnet is paramagnetic and can be separated from its surroundings in sand with a strong magnet. These garnets range in size from 1mm to 5mm in diameter. There are presumably larger garnets in the soil in this area, but with ant sand you are limited to things ants can lift and carry.
A nine-year-old girl lies in the morgue. A member of Congress faces a lifetime of struggle to recover from a bullet in the brain. A city is bracing itself for a string of funerals as it tries to fathom the carnage. But Trent Humphries says there is another innocent victim left by Jared Lee Loughner's killing of six people and wounding of 14 others in his assassination attempt against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It is his Tea Party movement and, more particularly, his family. The killings, he says, are evolving into a conspiracy to destroy his organisation and silence criticism of the government.And here's an example of the life-threatening vitriol that has sent a whack-a-loon political fiasco into the ICU:
"It's time to change your message of hate. If not, get out of politics because the American people are not going to take it any longer. We want our country back."Brain damage is such a sad thing. But the subsequent delusions can be breathtaking in their grandeur.
Top Ten Tuesdays: How are we reacting to the Arizona shooting?
"It is a very tragic event. Even more tragic is to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. I do not believe for one second that they endorse democrats being murdered. How stupid to think so. I do not like democratic ideas but I do not want one single democrat to ever be murdered!!!!"Now think about that. Six people are dead. A congressional representative faces an uncertain future- the damage to her brain was much worse than I imagined a person might survive. The bullet traveled from the back to the front of her left lobe; this was not just a skull-grazing injury. One of the dead was a nine-year-old girl, pictured above, Christina Taylor Green, whose birthday was September 11, 2001. She had been featured in a book named "Faces of Hope," which contained portraits of 50 children, one from each state, born on that fateful day. She was interested in politics as a solution to human and social problems, and was taken to meet Giffords by a neighbor who thought she would enjoy the experience. Ironically, the levels of paranoia and fear whipped up by a certain side of the US political spectrum in the aftermath of her birth date have, without any real doubt, played some role- potentially small, possibly large, we simply don't know yet- in ending this child's life. And that of five others.