Via www.beautiesltd.com:
Bow Tie of the Week
Posted by acilius on February 8, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/02/08/bow-tie-of-the-week/
The austerity of height
“The austerity of height shamed back the vulgar baggage of our cares. In the place of consequence it set freedom, power to be alone, to slip the escort of our manufactured selves; a rest and forgetfulness of the chains of being.”
-T.E. Lawrence
Posted by vthunderlad on January 19, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/01/19/the-austerity-of-height/
The Hell Is “Qat” ?
Is Qat something like Khat or Quat? Isn’t that a drug ingested for a stimulant effect?
If no one knows from first hand knowledge, maybe we can look it up!
Posted by vthunderlad on January 9, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/01/09/the-hell-is-qat/
Indiana makes Slate.com!
A former US Solicitor General teams up with a guy named Srinivas to show that Indiana’s voting regulations make no sense.
Posted by acilius on January 8, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/01/08/indiana-makes-slatecom/
Farting 2008: Qualitative, Global, Rising?
There is little doubt that continued research around issues of flatus is poised to bear unusually productive fruit in the newly-sprung year. From the Bilbao School’s creeping renaissance in statistical modeling to the sharp blasts of iconoclastic reappraisal of sheer number crunching from Russian sources, the internationalization of interest in the field is no longer at all subtle. Moreover, this broadening of input, far from being a deadly influence, has accompanied a distinct bloating in subscriber numbers of previously obscure mailing lists like Smelt Quarterly, Analytical Perspectives on Aromas, and the more mainstream yet well-credentialed WAFT. The variety and quality of ripe, fresh voices in the discipline may include some that are perceived as barking or droning, certainly. This review of completed (and momentarily held back) releases in the literature of “farting” attempts to show, regardless, that a cacophony of production is precisely the motivation needed to bring fresh air to a scholarly community often prone to excessive restraint.
Posted by vthunderlad on January 2, 2008
https://losthunderlads.com/2008/01/02/farting-2008-qualitative-global-rising/
Extreme Decision 2008 – Primaries
So what about the candidates?
Not an attempt to persuade, rather an unhelpful blathering of dropped from a helicopter on a snowboard-, restauranteur pioneer of Pripyat, Ukraine-style observations of their current standing. In other words, more of what you see on TV, only bloggy-style:
- Obama: Speaks very well, in line with values of many, yet enough folks are still too prejudiced and others are secretly afraid he won’t stand up against a Republican monster.
- Biden: Oh, please! This is where I put the expression “jacking your dick” because it belongs somewhere.
- Edwards: Doesn’t inspire enough passion. He articulates many things people want done but no one believes he can get them done.
- Richardson: Seems like he’d be a solid cabinet member once Clinton wins.
- Kucinich: Another place, another time…
- Clinton: Tremendous lead among mainstream and corporate interests. Not offensive enough to drive off everyone else who’s pissed and demands change.
- Paul: Attacked viciously because he loudly proclaims the popular will on major issues. Can’t have that! Very good chance he’ll be a 3rd party spoiler and screw everything up for the Democrats.
- Giuliani: Charisma and bald confidence will get you a lot of places (see Bush Jr.) but there’s plenty more mud headed his way. Not acceptable to the loud minorities of Republicans, too vulnerable on too much.
- Romney: 3-way furball between these last. Slip-ups will dog Romney and prejudice will play a role here, probably wrongly. (There are a lot of bizarre Christians who are decent people in their private lives and who insist on screwing up the private lives of others, he doesn’t deserve singling out for those qualities)
- Huckabee: The kind of unkind conservative Republicans love. McCain’s biggest competition from the values voters. Could make it.
- McCain: Momentum will build when the media realizes all that hugging with Bush means “Old Freaky” has plenty of support where he needs it. The aroma of a “comeback” story will be intoxicating. A survivor, a veteran, and a dirk-carrying operator with the best chance.
Posted by vthunderlad on December 24, 2007
https://losthunderlads.com/2007/12/24/extreme-decision-2008-primaries/
Cute Shit
If you’re in the mood for some cute shit, click here:
If you can get over the whole cutesy aspect of the thing,
you realize you’ve discovered the answer to the question:
What happens to people who don’t have 24/7 access to a channel
specializing in trashy films like ‘The Patriot’ starring Mel Gibson.
And the answer, of course, is that they turn to religion as a convenient
pretext for playing silly-ass little games with (if not destroying)
other people’s lives…and then congratulating
themselves for their own piety! Look, goddammit:
Jacking your dick to images of Mel Gibson’s long musket makes you a
disgusting pervert. But it’s not reprehensible like making a fifty-some-year-old
woman submit to a series of lashes for essentially no reason except she was
stupid enough to come to your country and try to help educate small children.
Posted by lefalcon on November 29, 2007
https://losthunderlads.com/2007/11/29/cute-shit/
Crackpot Realism
Via antiwar.com:
In 1958, the New Left sociologist C. Wright Mills made a seminal contribution to political science in his book The Causes of World War Three by introducing the concept of “crackpot realism.” He applied the notion specifically to the intellectual outlook of top government officials, especially the ones known as the “serious people,” who have proven their capacity for dealing with important practical affairs by, say, managing a giant corporation, such as Halliburton or G. D. Searle, or a huge educational institution, such as Texas A&M University or the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Mills’s key insight was that although such people have indeed been movers and shakers, they have moved and shaken within such a constricted milieu of experience and training that in most respects they are fools. Despite having developed supreme confidence in their own judgment and a corresponding contempt for other people’s views, they are astonishingly ignorant of many workaday aspects of the world and bewildered in the face of unexpected difficulties. As government leaders responsible for matters of war and peace, they have a tendency to paint themselves into corners of their own making and, then, seeing no way out, to conclude that their only escape lies in dropping bombs on somebody. As Mills observed, “instead of the unknown fear, the anxiety without end, some men of the higher circles prefer the simplification of known catastrophe.”
From Robert Higgs (a crackpot himself, but one who was capable of writing a good column) at http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs68.html.
Posted by acilius on November 20, 2007
https://losthunderlads.com/2007/11/20/crackpot-realism/
The American Conservative, 5 November 2007
A particularly good issue of this always-surprising publication.
The cover story, “The myth of the oil weapon,” explains why the market is a better guarantor of a steady flow of oil to western states than military force could ever be. “Secular Fundamentalists” offers a pitying account of a recent convention of atheists. “The Creativity Conceit” picks up one of the magazine’s recurring themes, that Americans have no inherent advantage over people of other nationalities in intellectual work and that research and development operations are likelier to follow production facilities than production facilities are to rise up as a consequence of a concentration of R & D shops. “There’s something about Barry” describes recent attempts by advocates of every possible shade of American political opinion to claim the late Barry Goldwater as a precursor, then argues that he was essentially a man of his time, not a prophet of any current movement. Elsewhere in the issue, Pat Buchanan points out that Rudolph Giuliani disagrees with him on every political issue of the day; Daniel Larison argues that our government can be honest about the Armenian genocide of 1915 only if we are willing to end our alliance with Turkey, which is to say, if we are willing to renounce our single most important startegic asset in the middle east; Philip Giraldi reports on a belief, apparently widespread among his former co-workers at the CIA, that Dick Cheney is directing the US government from an underground command post attached to his house; John Laughland says nice things about Vladimir Putin; Ted Galen Carpenter analyzes the misunderstandings among the leaders of the USA, China, and Taiwan, warning that war between the US and China is quite likely as long as the US continues to interject itself into the China/ Taiwan standoff; and A C Gancarski praises Bruce Springsteen’s latest album, among other things for its echoes of Magnetic Fields’ song “Born on a Train” and Green Day’s “Wake Me When September Ends.”
Posted by acilius on November 4, 2007
https://losthunderlads.com/2007/11/04/the-american-conservative-5-november-2007/
The Nation, 22 Oct/ 29 Oct/ 5 Nov 2007
Three issues in one posting.
The most notable pieces in both of the October issues were book reviews. In the 22 October issue, Daniel Lazare reviews Mearsheimer and Walt, concluding that their methodology is incoherent, their assumptions about US foreign policy naively optimistic, and their work as a whole a specimen of “a new form of nativism that sees foreigners and their domestic allies as a big source of America’s problems and believes that the country would be better off if it could eradicate such influences.” The 29 October issue reviews Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the latest book by Vthunderlad’s favorite Chalmers Johnson (author of Blowback.) Stephen Holmes finds Johnson’s comparison of the USA with ancient Rome far-fetched and the concept of “blowback” marred by an “inherent slipperiness.” These weaknesses, Holmes claims, make it difficult to take Johnson altogether seriously, for all that “Nemesis is a serious contribution to contemporary debates, richly repaying careful study.”
In the 5 November issue, Alexander Cockburn cites the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore as yet another example of the moral bankruptcy of the Swedish Academy; James Ledbetter hails the publication of a volume of Karl Marx’ columns for the New York Tribune; and Russ Baker and Adam Federman look at one of Hillary Clinton’s more alarming moneymen.
Posted by acilius on October 29, 2007
https://losthunderlads.com/2007/10/29/the-nation-22-oct-29-oct-5-nov-2007/
Who writes this?
acilius
believer1
lefalcon
losthunderlads
vthunderlad
Panther Red 
