|
|
Monday, June 30th, 2008
| |
3:25 pm
|
"I’m happy to tell you there is very little in this world that I believe in. Listening to the comedians who comment on political, social, and cultural issues, I notice most of their material reflects an underlying belief that somehow things were better once and that with just a little effort we could set them right again. They’re looking for solutions, and rooting for particular results, and I think that necessarily limits the tone and substance of what they say. They’re talented and funny people, but they’re nothing more than cheerleaders attached to a specific, wished-for outcome.
I don’t feel so confined. I frankly don’t give a fuck how it all turns out in this country – or anywhere else, for that matter. I think the human game was up a long time ago (when the high priests and traders took over), and now we’re just playing out the string. And, that is, of course, precisely what I find so amusing: the slow circling of the drain by a once promising species, and the sappy, ever-more-desperate belief in this country that there is actually some sort of “American Dream,” which has merely been misplaced.
The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don’t belong; it doesn’t include me, and it never has. No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.
So, if you read something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in “issues” is merely to point out how badly we’re doing, not to suggest a way we might do better. Don’t confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they “ought to be.” And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there’s a solution, you’re part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope!"
-George Carlin "Brain Droppings"
|
|
(blah blah blah)
|
| Monday, March 19th, 2007
| |
7:29 pm - 25 years ago today
|
|
| Monday, December 25th, 2006
| |
12:09 pm - Happy Festivus
|
"Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!"
current music: airing of grievances
|
|
(1 insult | blah blah blah)
|
| Friday, December 22nd, 2006
| |
12:06 pm - Komodo Christ
|
Virgin Komodo dragon is expecting
POSTED: 4:04 p.m. EST, December 20, 2006
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Flora, a pregnant Komodo dragon living in a British zoo, is expecting eight babies in what scientists said on Wednesday could be a Christmas virgin birth.
Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. Other lizards do this, but scientists only recently found that Komodo dragons do too.
"Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way," Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo in England said in an interview.
He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.
Parthenogenesis has occurred in other lizard species, but Buley and his team said this was the first time it has been shown in Komodo dragons -- the world's largest lizards.
Scientists at Liverpool University in northern England discovered Flora had had no male help after doing genetic tests on three eggs that collapsed after being put in an incubator.
The tests on the embryos and on Flora, her sister and other dragons confirmed that Komodo dragons can reproduce through self-fertilization.
"Those genetic tests confirmed absolutely that Flora was both the mother and the father of the embryos. It completely blew us away because it [parthenogenesis] has never been seen in such a large species," Buley explained.
A Komodo dragon at London Zoo gave birth earlier this year after being separated from males for more than two years.
Scientists thought she had been able to store sperm from her earlier encounter with a male, but after hearing about Flora's eggs researchers conducted tests which showed her eggs were also produced without male help.
"You have two institutions within a few short months of each other having a previously unheard of event. It is really quite unprecedented," said Buley.
The scientists, reporting the discovery in the science journal Nature, said it could help them understand how reptiles colonize new areas.
A female dragon could, for instance, swim to another island and establish a new colony on her own.
"The genetics of self-fertilization in lizards means that all her hatchlings would have to be male. These would grow up to mate with their own mother and therefore, within one generation, there would potentially be a population able to reproduce normally on the new island," Buley said.
Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/20/uk.komodo.reut/index.html
current music: Jucifer "Hennin Hardine"
|
|
(1 insult | blah blah blah)
|
| Thursday, December 7th, 2006
| |
3:50 am
|
|
| Friday, December 1st, 2006
| |
6:40 pm
|
I have no idea what this means, but I find the huge, pixellated headbanging Butthead mildly amusing:
current music: Seinfeld on tv
|
|
(blah blah blah)
|
| Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
| |
1:25 am
|
One of the all-time great moments in television history (incomplete though unfortunately). Not as great as Fear performing on Saturday Night Live, but close:
The NYHC episode of the Phil Donahue Show from 1985
Lots of ridiculousness, great quotes, general incoherence, clueless older people, etc. with all of your favorite mid 80's NYHC psychopaths.
Stigma (looking very "Travis Bickle") as usual steals the show with this mindbending quote:
"We just speak of social unrest. Conflict of interest, which, in turmoil, brings controversy. And it speaks for itself."
Try wrapping your brain around that one...
current music: Mercyful Fate "Doomed by the Living Dead"
|
|
(1 insult | blah blah blah)
|
| Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
| |
9:13 pm
|
|
| Monday, November 6th, 2006
| |
7:20 pm
|
|
| Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
| |
7:52 am - Cliff Burton
|
|
| Tuesday, September 26th, 2006
| |
6:10 pm - 23 years ago today
|
Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow on September 26, 1983, a time when the Cold War was at a peak. It was Lt. Col. Petrov's responsibility to observe the satellite early warning network and notify his superiors of any impending nuclear missile attack against the USSR. In the event of such an attack, the Soviet Union's strategy was to launch an immediate all-out nuclear counter-attack against the United States, as the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction required.
Just past midnight, at 00:40 hrs, the bunker's computers indicated that an American missile was heading toward the Soviet Union. Lt. Col. Petrov reasoned that a computer error had occurred, since the United States was not likely to launch just one missile if it were attacking the Soviet Union — it would launch many simultaneously. Also, the satellite system's reliability had in the past been questioned, so he dismissed the warning as a false alarm, concluding that no missile had actually been launched by the United States.
A short time later the computers indicated that a second missile had been launched, followed by a third, a fourth and a fifth. Petrov still felt that the computer system was wrong, but there was no other source of information with which to confirm his suspicions. The Soviet Union's land radar was not capable of detecting missiles beyond the horizon, so by the time land radar could positively identify the threat, it would be too late.
Petrov's dilemma was this: if he was disregarding a real attack, then the Soviet Union would be devastated by nuclear weapons without any warning or chance to retaliate, and he would have failed at his duty. On the other hand, if he were to report a non-existent attack, his superiors might launch an equally catastrophic assault against their enemies. In either case, millions of people would die.
Understanding that if he were wrong, nuclear missiles would soon be raining down on the Soviet Union, Petrov decided to trust his intuition and declare the system's indications to be a false alarm. After a short while, it was apparent that his instincts were right. There were no approaching missiles. The crisis put him under immense pressure and stress, yet Petrov's judgement had been sound. A full-scale nuclear war had been averted.
Aftermath
Despite having prevented potential nuclear disaster, by refusing to acknowledge the computer system's warnings Lt. Col. Petrov had disobeyed his orders and defied military protocol. He later underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his actions during the distressing ordeal, the result of which was that they no longer considered him a reliable military officer.
The Soviet military did not punish Petrov for his actions, but did not reward or honor him either. His actions had revealed imperfections in the Soviet military system which showed his superiors in a bad light. He was given a reprimand, officially for the improper filing of paperwork, and his once-promising military career came to an end. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post and ultimately retired from the military.
Petrov is now a pensioner, spending his retirement in relative poverty in the town of Fryazino. He has said he does not regard himself as a hero for what he did that day, but nevertheless, on May 21, 2004, the San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens gave Colonel Petrov its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and US$1000 in recognition of the part he played in averting a catastrophe.
In January 2006 Petrov traveled to the United States where he was honored in a meeting at the United Nations in New York City. There the Association of World Citizens presented Petrov with a second special World Citizen Award. The following day Petrov met with American journalist Walter Cronkite at his CBS office in New York City. That interview, in addition to other highlights of Petrov’s trip to the United States, will be included in the documentary film The Man Who Saved the World, which is expected to be released in late 2006.
Circumstances behind the incident
The false alarm involving Petrov occurred at a time of severely strained relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Only three weeks earlier, the Soviet military had shot down a Korean passenger jet that had wandered into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board, including many Americans (Korean Air flight 007). The KGB sent a flash message to its operatives in the West, warning them to prepare for possible nuclear war, according to CNN.
With conditions so volatile at the time of the false alarm, if Petrov actually had declared the nuclear attack warnings to be valid, with the Soviet leadership accepting his decision as fact, a mistaken massive nuclear attack by the Soviet Union would undoubtedly have been followed by a devastating response from the Pentagon. Because of Petrov's actions, however, any possibility of nuclear war that day was stopped long before it reached this point.
Skepticism
On the same day Petrov was honored at the United Nations in New York City, the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations issued a press release contending that a single individual would be incapable of starting or preventing a nuclear war, stating in part: "Under no circumstances a decision to use nuclear weapons could be made or even considered in the Soviet Union (Russia) or in the United States on the basis of data from a single source or a system. For this to happen, a confirmation is necessary from several systems: ground-based radars, early warning satellites, intelligence reports, etc."
However, some Cold War analysts question whether this protocol would have been strictly followed in the case of the missile attack warning involving Stanislav Petrov. Because of the state of mind of the Soviet leadership in 1983, along with distressing intelligence reports, the Soviet leadership appeared seriously concerned that there would eventually be a surprise nuclear missile attack by the United States. Bruce Blair, an expert on Cold War nuclear strategies, now president of the World Security Institute in Washington, D.C., says that the U.S.–Soviet relationship "had deteriorated to the point where the Soviet Union as a system — not just the Kremlin, not just Andropov, not just the KGB — but as a system, was geared to expect an attack and to retaliate very quickly to it. It was on hair-trigger alert. It was very nervous and prone to mistakes and accidents... The false alarm that happened on Petrov’s watch could not have come at a more dangerous, intense phase in U.S.–Soviet relations." In a nationally televised interview, Blair said, "The Russians saw a U.S. government preparing for a first strike, headed by a President capable of ordering a first strike." Regarding the incident involving Petrov, he said, "I think that this is the closest we've come to accidental nuclear war."
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former KGB chief of foreign counterintelligence who knew Soviet leader Yuri Andropov well, says that Andropov's distrust of American leaders was profound. It is conceivable that if Petrov had declared the satellite warnings to be valid, such an erroneous report could have provoked the Soviet leadership into becoming bellicose. Says Kalugin, "The danger was in the Soviet leadership thinking, 'The Americans may attack, so we better attack first.'"
Petrov has said he does not regard himself as a hero for what he did that day. In an interview for the documentary film The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World, Petrov says, "All that happened didn't matter to me — it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that's all. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. 'So what did you do?' she asked me. I did nothing."
Source: en.wikipedia.org
current music: Sarcofago "Satanas"
|
|
(2 insults | blah blah blah)
|
| Wednesday, September 13th, 2006
| |
2:15 pm
|
I generally don't read Vice, but there's occasionally some funny stories in it, such as this one, taken from this page: Vice
Agnostic Timezones
Agnostic Front were on tour and they were due to play in my town, whose name I’m not going to tell you because I’m scared of the guy that’s in this story. Apparently their guitarist Vinnie Stigma isn’t exactly a rocket scientist and he woke up in the van headed to the show freaking out. He thought he slept way too late. So he yelled at Steve Martin, who was driving at the time, “What fucking time is it? When is the show?” and Steve goes, “Relax Vinnie, we don’t go on until nine.” That’s when Vinnie totally loses it and screams, “IT’S 8:99 YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. IT’S 8:99!!!”
The radio was on 89.9 FM.
JIMBO JIMBERTON
current music: Deceased "Robotic Village"
|
|
(blah blah blah)
|
| Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
| |
9:25 pm
|
20 years ago today Black Flag played their final show. One cannot overstate their importance in music. Not just as a musical influence, but also in every other way: from how they toured, to putting out their own records independently, to the types of places they played shows, to the other bands they helped out (particularly on their label, SST Records), etc. They were the most important American band since The Ramones. And not just on hardcore and punk, but on everything from metal to indie rock.
Everything up through 1985 is essential:
NERVOUS BREAKDOWN 7" (SST, 1978)
JEALOUS AGAIN 12" EP (SST, 1980)
SIX PACK 7" (SST, 1981)
LOUIE LOUIE 7" (Posh Boy, 1981)
DAMAGED LP (Unicorn, 1981)
TV PARTY 7" (Unicorn, 1981)
EVERYTHING WENT BLACK 2xLP (SST, 1983)
MY WAR LP (SST, 1983)
FAMILY MAN LP (SST, 1984)
SLIP IT IN LP (SST, 1984)
LIVE 84 LP (SST, 1984)
LOOSE NUT LP (SST, 1985)
THE PROCESS OF WEEDING OUT 12" EP (SST, 1985)
IN MY HEAD LP (SST, 1985)
WHO'S GOT THE 10½? LP(SST, 1986)
I CAN SEE YOU 12" EP (SST, 1989)
|
|
(2 insults | blah blah blah)
|
| Friday, April 21st, 2006
| |
11:52 am
|
|
| Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
| |
4:19 am
|
World population hits 6.5 billion
Rapid growth occurring where it can be least afforded, researchers say
By Leonard David
LiveScience
Updated: 7:15 p.m. ET Feb. 25, 2006
A population milestone has been set on this jam-packed planet.
At 7:16 p.m. ET on Saturday, the population here on this good Earth hit 6.5 billion people, according to projections.
Along with this forecast, an analysis by the International Programs Center at the U.S. Census Bureau points to another factoid, Robert Bernstein of the Bureau's Public Information Center advised LiveScience. Mark this on your calendar: Some six years from now, on Oct. 18, 2012 at 4:36 p.m. ET, the Earth will be home to 7 billion folks.
These are estimates, of course, but clear trends emerge from the data behind them.
Population profile
A report issued by the Bureau in March 2004 noted that world population hit the 6 billion mark in June 1999. "This figure is over 3.5 times the size of the Earth's population at the beginning of the 20th century and roughly double its size in 1960," the study explained.
Even more striking is that the time required for the global population to grow from 5 billion to 6 billion — just a dozen years — was shorter than the interval between any of the previous billions.
On average, 4.4 people are born every second.
The population on Earth today is nearly four times the number in 1900. Behind that phenomenal global increase is a vast gulf in birth and death rates among the world's countries. But according to population experts, this gulf is not a simple divide that perpetuates the status quo among the have and have-not nations.
Birth dearth
"What is worrisome about this demographic divide is not the differences among nations' population growth rates, but the disparities associated with these trends ... disparities in living standards, health, and economic prospects," explained Mary Kent, co-author along with Carl Haub, of a Population Reference Bureau report issued last month titled "Global Demographic Divide."
Kent, editor of the Population Bulletin, and Haub, a senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, reported that news of declining population in Europe fueled concern about a global "birth dearth," but there is continuing population growth in developing countries. The question, they asked, is which demographic trend is the world facing?
"The reality is that both trends are occurring," Haub said. "The dramatic fertility decline during the 20th century coincided with improved health, access to family planning, economic development, and urbanization."
Kent and Haub also reported that most countries will experience population growth through 2050, as the world adds a projected 3 billion more people to the total.
Remarkably, despite the many new developments over the past 50 years, one fact looks very much the same, explained Kent and Haub: Populations are growing most rapidly where such growth can be afforded the least — an observation that has changed little over time, they said.
© 2006 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
© 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11545564/
current mood: doomed
current music: "Excalibur" on TV
|
|
(blah blah blah)
|
| Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
| |
9:01 am - R.I.P. Tom "Pig Champion" Roberts 1958-2006
|
|
| Sunday, December 25th, 2005
| |
2:17 pm
|
|
| Saturday, December 24th, 2005
| |
12:42 pm - Today, I celebrate the birth of MY messiah
|
LEMMY
Born 60 years ago today on December 24, 1945 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire
current music: Motorhead "On Parole"
|
|
(1 insult | blah blah blah)
|
| |
12:25 pm - Holiday spirit...
|
|
| Thursday, December 22nd, 2005
| |
6:56 am - 20 years
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
the_outsider's journal
