"Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying." - Aldous Huxley

The faces of the Yes on 1 campaigners in Maine as they hear the election results:

Reddit.com | Comment: "When prop 8 passed in California, there was a shot of the reaction from the campaign headquarters. I'll never forget this. At the center of the image was a guy in a suit throwing both hands up, mouth agape in pure jubilation of victory. It was as if he's just won the Lotto. I just couldn't understand how someone could be so thrilled about having gotten so little. What did he get? Nothing. How did his life change? Will he not have to get up for work in the morning? Are his bills any cheaper? Has a loved one who was sick been cured? Does he get more money, video games, blowjobs, or whatever he likes to do in his spare time? He gets nothing. It was all because it felt so good to hurt someone."

excuse me. excuse me. i've got to be direct, if i'm wrong please correct. you're standing on my neck.

Afghanistan passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

The Guardian | Afghanistan passes 'barbaric' law diminishing women's rights

Now I can let these dream killers kill my self esteem-or use my arrogance as steam to power my dreams!!!

Rapper Kanye West does not read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one that he would like you to buy and read. [...]

His book is 52 pages -- some blank, others with just a few words -- and offers his optimistic philosophy on life. One two-page section reads, "Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react!" Another page reads "I hate the word hate!"

"This is a collection of thoughts and theories," West, 31, said in an interview about his spiral-bound volume, which was written with J. Sakiya Sandifer.

West said he put his thoughts in a book because "I get paraphrased and misquoted all the time." He calls his wisdom "Kanye-isms."

"My favorite one is 'Get used to being used,'" he said.

"I feel like to misuse, overuse or abuse someone is negative. To use is necessary and if you can't be used, then you are useless."

So does he fancy himself a modern-day Confucius?

"I'm trying to end the confusion," he said, laughing and adding, "I'm gonna put that on the next album."

Reuters | "Proud Non-Reader" Kanye West Turns Author

"I'm expressin' with my full capabilities, And now I'm livin' in correctional facilities." - NWA

"Humor is also a way of saying something serious." – Mark Twain

the only ones you have to fear are the people who tell you to be afraid.

and i'm proud to be an...

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.
The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls. [...]

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema
image: Brian Viveros

...Miner describes the Nacirema, a little-known tribe living in North America between Canada and Mexico. The way in which he writes about the curious practices that this group performs distances readers from the fact that the North American group described actually corresponds to modern-day Americans of the mid-1950s.

chemical food

"This is a hamburger from McDonalds that I purchased in 1996.

That was 12 years ago."

i love a computer

"Alan Mathison Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician and cryptographer.  Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, although it was never actually built. In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers. [...]

"Turing was homosexual, and at that time homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom and regarded as a mental illness and subject to criminal sanctions. In 1952, Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old recent acquaintance of his, helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house, and Turing went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray, and a crime having been identified and settled, they were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted of the same crime Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years before. [...]

"On 8 June 1954, his cleaner found him dead; the previous day, he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death was established by a post-mortem. Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. Others suggest that Turing was re-enacting a scene from "Snow White", his favourite fairy tale. Because Turing's homosexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested. His remains were cremated at Woking crematorium on 12 June 1954."

Wikipedia: Alan Turing

"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere." - G.K. Chesterton

Fox News Airs Altered Photos of NY Times Reporters

california, here we come!

A guard wearing a one-size-too-big military uniform salutes my driver through the gate at the grand entrance to Orange County. Suddenly we’re transported from China to, well, somewhere else. Where, exactly, is hard to say. It would be strange enough if Orange County, this gated community near the Beijing airport, were the straight-up replica of Southern California it claims to be. But it is stranger than that. The development, 45 minutes up the freeway from Beijing’s better-known Forbidden City, has the appearance of a Disney theme park where someone mixed up all the different sections—a smidgen of Epcot’s faux Paris intermingled with Main Street U.S.A.’s Americana. At Orange County, California-style ranch houses sit alongside English Tudors and a French-style formal garden complete with stately fountains (turned off for the winter). The street signs of weathered wood held together with rusty spikes conjure the Old West of Durango while the community clubhouse, called the Rive Gauche Town Center, has a mansard roof typical of a French country estate. The totem poles inside recall the Pacific Northwest and the fireplace mantlepiece is carved in the shape of English-language books, including Hamlet, Macbeth, and the erroneously titled Moby-Dock. So far from the West, the distinctions between France and America, let alone Colorado and California, get lost. (The Chinese would surely have a similar laugh at our expense for the popularity of “pan-Asian” restaurants Stateside.) I requested a Sunday tour, hoping that people would be enjoying the one-day Chinese weekend in their yards. But here in Orange County, China, just days after Christmas, it is not exactly rollerblading weather. The fake lake is frozen solid. A brave, bundled-up grandmother takes a baby carriage out for stroll. But for most, weekend fresh air is what you get when you walk from your home to your SUV. Though distinctly lacking in warm California sun, Orange County’s promotional brochures tout it as “flown over fresh to Beijing,” and even “pure American.” And there is at least some truth in advertising. The project, whose 143-unit first phase opened in 2001 at a ceremony including American diplomats and McDonald’s cheeseburgers, was designed by a trio of design firms from California’s Orange County, headed by Bassenian Lagoni Architects, a leading designer of McMansions that has been dubbed one of the most influential architects you’ve never heard of by The Wall Street Journal.

Welcome to the O.C.

i just don't want to die without a few scars

My Beautiful Mommy is a new kids book about plastic surgery. It was written by Michael Salzhauer, a plastic surgeon in Bal Harbour, Florida. Salzhauer says he came up with the idea to help parents explain cosmetic procedures to their children. From Newsweek:

 "My Beautiful Mommy" is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist. 

"The text doesn't mention the breast augmentation, but the illustrations intentionally show Mom's breasts to be fuller and higher. "I tried to skirt that issue in the text itself," says Salzhauer. "The tummy lends itself to an easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can't fit into your clothes. The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old."

[Mommy 2.0]

"This is our island. It’s a good island. Until the grown-ups come to fetch us we’ll have fun."

First came Next, the MTV dating show most notable for the great care participants take in crafting casually cruel brushoff lines. Then followed Parental Control, the MTV dating show on which adults set up their children on rendezvous with prospective new paramours and trade insults with their current ones. And then MTV Exposed spurted onto the air, a lively little number featuring daters secretly monitored by lie detectors. Taking cues from each of these uplifting programs—and also from Fantasy Island, Brian De Palma films, and police stakeouts—The X Effect marks a logical step downward. This one combines a dating show and a divorce complaint.

[MTV's 'The X Effect,' Reviewed]

title: lord of the flies quote

criticism

and the argument ends there

a poll of 2,455 u.s. adults found that 82 percent of those surveyed believed in god, 79 percent believed in miracles, 62 percent believed in hell and the devil, 42 percent believed in darwin's theory of evolution.

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