Speaking of "better late than never," my home state of Iowa finally took an anti-dueling provision out of its state constitution in 1992!

http://books.google.com/books?id=H2ijf4vJrOsC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=%22iowa+constitution%22+1992+duel&source=web&ots=drSpAfvlAe&sig=9okIklBlKQ76L-JBetwZ702IHuY&hl=en

Actually, Evidence, God created the rainbow as a promise that a Great Flood would never come again. Genesis 9:13, pally.

I, for one, welcome our rapidly evolving lizard masters.

James: A belief in a higher power is much different from a belief in creationism. There are millions of thoughtful, intelligent, and reasonable people who are religious and still readily accept that all the evidence points to evolution.

Being a creationist is not an act of faith. It is an active denial of the evidence all around you, and an active refusal to engage yourself with knowledge and exploration of the world God made (for the sake of argument).

Suggesting that God placed evidence of an ongoing and ancient process all around us while reassuring us it’s all meaningless next to some folktales is nothing short of madness. It’s akin to jumping off a bridge because the Bible doesn’t say anything about gravity.

I'm in lurve with that site. And a contributor!

If you're looking for a downer, and who's not, check out this page for more on today's pet monkey trade.

http://www.ippl.org/apr-03-23.html

Despite the sadness of the text, please note that this link is chock-full of hilarity. There are AWESOME pictures of idiots holding a monkey up to their infant. And, there's this priceless bit of information: "In December 2002 a man arriving in Los Angeles on a flight from Thailand was caught with two smuggled monkeys in his pants."

Elf et al, let me be perfectly clear: I made the point to sound terribly clever, and I completely agree that the Air Force was headsmackingly stupid for picking that slogan.

Also, you must think in Russian. Must... think... in Russian...

1) The post title kind of ruins the schadenfreude anyway. :)

2) Ironically, the song you're referring to so mysteriously was adopted as the national anthem in 1922 and the lyrics were written in the 1840s, long before the Nazis ruined it for everybody.

Its original meaning wasn't a call for Germans to be "above all" other nations, but for the ideal of a free, democratic, united Germany to be "above all" the petty, tyrannical monarchies that governed a divided German people in the 1840s. For that reason, it was banned by most German monarchies. It was adopted as the national anthem by the liberal Weimar Republic, who believed they'd left behind arbitrary despotism and finally reached the idealist goal of a united and democratic Deutschland.

That's nothing - you should hear Slipknot's cover of "Amazing Grace."

Scientists are also working on a jalapeno pepper that doesn't burn your tongue, a non-acidic grapefruit, and removing all that unpleasant excitement from orgasms.

I'm seeing the cowboy picture again. While this is hilarious, I'm sure it's also a mistake.

Still: AWESOME.

"It would indeed have been racist if the author tried to illustrate value judgments based on race. Clearly not the case."

Actually, Unusual Suspect, I might point out that the Anglo-Saxon sits atop this chart, black people at the bottom, and other sorts of fellows (women, obviously, being outside the scope of the author's discussion) in the middle.

It's pretty obvious that the subtext here is that the races are presented in order of civilization.

SPOILER: The Freemasons imprison Swamp Thing in a mental institution, but he is rescued by Mina Harker and disappears to seed life throughout the universe.

Ah, the construction of race. I remember fondly the days when Germans were barely white people.

“Why should Pennsylvania … become a Colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?” [1751]

Franklin had even harsher words for German “frauleins”:

“The German Women are generally so disagreable to an English Eye, that it would require great Portions [of wealth] to induce Englishmen to marry them.” [1753]

And now Allied High Command may have to cancel Operation Buttsex!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/03/nxword03.xml

If you think you're going to try to destroy my belief in Marsquatch, well, you've got another think coming.

Of course, all this talk of extraterrestrials is just to distract Americans from our government's attempts to colonize the Hollow Earth.

I'm disappointed in the store. For every dollar a Malawian could make banging together these sugar-powered contraptions, he could make a hundred selling them to eco-hipsters in America.

(And yes, if you want to buy one, they'll make sure it's shipped to America by a solar-powered blimp made from recycled shopping bags.)

Seriously, though- great tips here for living in a post-collapse world.

I ran across Mercer a year or so back and blogged about him nailing Iowa's Governor Vilsack on the 24-hour clock.

A staffer for the governor was quick to respond; he was there that day and Vilsack was definitely in on the joke.

Huckabee's a bit sharper than Vilsack and I'm sure he was just playing along as well.

Absimiliard:

To be fair, there's a lot the Democrats can't get done without pissing off the centrist independent who holds the key to their Senate majority- Joe Lieberman.

If the Dems had even one more seat, they wouldn't have to kowtow to the esteemed gentleman from Connecticut (who was far enough from the Dem mainstream to get the boot in the 2006 primary) and we'd see Dems acting like Dems- instead of like Lieberman.

I'm extremely disappointed to see this here. I could eat up pages disputing every one of these points.

Hunter-gatherers live a "tough life"? Anyone who's seen the numbers knows the truth; hunter-gatherers have it easy (until slavering hordes of "cultured" farmers slaughter them and take their land).

Culture follows agriculture? Yeah- for the tiny sliver of the population with leisure time. Hunter-gatherers have loads of time to dance, make art, and reflect on life. A lot more than an average Mesopotamian peasant.

Irrigation favors autocracy, not community. And even if it did, how does communal labor favor loners any more than a priest-king? And how does either favor a loner over a hunter-gatherer society that gives each person an average range of a dozen square miles?

I'm stopping there for now, but COME ON. This guy obviously got tenure in the Edwardian era. His "history" is dated, unscientific, biased crap. It doesn't belong on BB except as flamebait.

TNH, the numbers in the graphic refer to a trip overseas. And as I noted, Clinton's entourage on other occasions was smaller.

This document (http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1999/eb1092199.htm) is unfortunately from the Senate Republican Policy Committee. I only cite this because it cites a GAO report which I've been too lazy to dig up.

June:

First, two women affirm life by throwing themselves at each other in a passionate embrace.

Then, one of the women devastatingly deconstructs the intertwined concepts of hygiene, food, and modern convenience by doing something horrible into a cup.

The two women explore this concept further. At this point, many viewers look away in fear as their ontological assumptions are shaken to the core.

Just when the viewer is on the verge of assimilating this critique and passively accepting it as just another Debordian spectacle, the two women launch themselves into a Dionysian celebration of the body that calls- nay, commands- the viewer to join them in their abandon. My body reacted as theirs did- the most visceral piece of interactive art I have ever experienced.

At the end of the video, the two women kneel and smile into the camera, their final action a defiant echo of their first transgression.

Are they brave? Are they debased? Their art challenges us to look past such dualities. It asks us to experience disgust as joy, to see despair as play. It asks us to examine ourselves as humans.

Most of all, it will fucking make you puke. Jesus, don't watch it.

As absurd as this graphic is, Bush's entourage isn't out of scale. When Clinton went to Africa in 1998, he was accompanied by- drum roll, please- 1,302 people from thirteen different agencies (902 of these were military or Secret Service personnel). It should be noted that Clinton's total entourage on other, shorter trips in 1998 was generally around 500.

The crazy really gets rolling at around 1:30, right after the crowd starts mocking the unbelievably phallic design for the Raja's "Invincible University".

I can't believe people don't buy this stuff by the vat. Of course then, the government would place a huge tax on it, and then we'd get an underground vinegar economy, and spammers would send out emails about "che4p v1neg4r!!!!"

Unusual Suspect:

I have to agree. Check out this quote from Vicki's Amazon page:

"In 1988 I was approached by FAMILY CIRCLE magazine to write "grown-up" tips. It was a wonderful opportunity... I learned about so many things you can do with baking soda, vinegar and other items we all have around the house... My favorite tip? Usually the newest one sent me or I have read."

I'm willing to bet she didn't spend a lot of time in a lab coat testing out her discoveries. Once again, we're suckers for the propaganda of Big Vinegar.

So the government would launch autonomous software to destroy illegal sites by robbing its own citizens blind?

I guess it's still more ethical than the CIA's drug smuggling.

Dammit, when is someone going to translate this into LOLcat? Or a flowchart?

If you want to see just how starkly the Salem tragedy was caused by economic and social tensions, check out this map of the homes of the accusers and accused-

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/salemwitchtrials/life/divisions.html