21st Century Digital Boy

Look, I don’t care what any of you scientists have to say, with your lab coats and your science, but the drummer is never, ever the smartest person in the room.

Ha! Top that, mister empirical evidence science guy!

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

If I read the article right, the 100-word summation is,

People spent too much money on McMansions in the burbs, then defaulted en masse and split; this leads to an overall decline. In the mean time, everyone now wants to live in hip “walkable” urban areas (closer to where they work) despite the considerable price premium; but as oil causes everything to get more expensive, there is no price advantage for the suburbs anymore. Land-grabs and difficulty in retasking means there’s no easy solution to the big suburban developments that are growing empty over time. The upside is that walkable urban environments may make people healthier and control population growth.

I note a few things from this. We left our apartment in Merrifield as a pair of mondo condo buildings were under construction and a giant urban development project was planned (to create, you guessed it, a walkable town center-type development), to move to the ‘burbs. At the time, we knew that the market was headed down, and it seemed a safer bet: we’d rather be stuck in the burbs for 5 years, say, than get stuck in a condo we simply can’t unload. Conventional wisdom says condos are a harder property to get out of; if we outgrew it (or just wanted to move) before the market was ready, we would be stuck. Now, arguably, the condo was the safe bet and the suburban townhome the risk.

I don’t regret heading to the ‘burbs. I do think it’s now going to take a lot more work to make the strategy pay off: we’ll have to upgrade the house faster, for example, to ensure it’s competitive against other homes in the area should we want to get the hell out, or, settle in for the longer haul and hope a market correction just happens.

The Dulles Rail Project (and Tysons rail) is essentially dead, but if the logic of the article is correct, it would end up being a potent rejuvenator of the ailing Loudoun and Fairfax suburbs: get people the fuck out of their cars, shuffle them around by modern mass transit, let them walk around. But NoVA wisdom rejects this, of course: only brown people use mass transit, so everyone recoils at the thought of their precious tax dollars being used to benefit those people. (File under, “pouring money into food stamps is a better economic boost than mailing out checks, but try getting anyone to give money to brown people”).

No, no, don’t read any history, I’m sure you’ve got things under control:

Winning an aerial dogfight ranks right up there with mounting a cavalry charge as required skill for today’s military.

Sherman, set the wayback machine for 1973:

The F-4’s biggest weakness, as it was initially designed, was its lack of an internal cannon. … The lack of cannon was finally addressed by adding an internally mounted 20 millimeter M61 Vulcan on the F-4E.

(Via)

It should be noted we still issue bayonets and pistols to infantry, because sometimes, no matter how archaic and outdated and silly that seems - you have a night-vision scope and laser designator on your M4 after all - sometimes you have to stab a motherfucker in the neck. It’s war, it happens.

This has been all over the blag-o-trons, and it’s more of the dumb attempts that pass for “thought” in the right wing.

It’s transparent crap, eg no one is complaining that Best Buy is not pushing Jesus. You can find endless examples, really, of how Christmas is - and has been for as long as I can remember, back to the days of the Cabbage Patch riots in the early 80’s - an utterly secular holiday focused on merchandising and about 15 irritating songs.

Actually it’s probably true that such relentless consumerism was decried even then, but without an omnipresent international media machine (and blag-o-trons!) no one really got heard, just the occasional sermon on Sundays leading up to Christmas.

My favorite part is how they’d react to Muslim and Jewish families celebrating Christmas: I used to work with a guy (a Muslim) who gave his kids Xmas presents largely so they’d have something to talk about with their little school peeps; I’ve heard of something similar happening in Jewish families. Celebrate your religious faith and take a day off to unwrap a present.

I suppose they’d say he’s lucky he’s here, and not Saudi Arabia, where he’d be killed for such blasphemy; on the other hand I’m sure he’s part of the sinister War on God.

Anyway, I’ll be sure and ask on the progress on burning all your Christians to death at the next Big Atheist Planning Meeting. Cause that’s what you think is going on, right?

The AP (according to CNN.com) says:
Police say autopsy results show Colorado church gunman Matthew Murray killed himself.

So when the hero lady said “God guided me”, I guess it’s fair to retort “… but not into the 10-ring, huh?”

(after-the-fact laugh riot here)

Mis bolas. Aspírelas.

Look, I wanted you guys to vote for the red, sexy book. See? Red book, I’m dictator for life, but it’s sexy. I wrote a sexy number right on the cover! But no, you wanted the blue book. To go with your blue balls, mi amigo. Yes. OH, YES, I went there. You can’t aspire to be dictator-for-life, without going there, mi amigo.

Critics: Toned down ‘Manhunt 2′ still too violent

Child advocates are urging parents not to buy “Manhunt 2,” a video game whose characters kill and torture using implements ranging from glass and shovels to a fuse box and a toilet.

I like your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Made for the Nintendo Wii,

So instead of hitting triangle-star-r1 in a Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs/Mountain Dew twitch fest, you actually beat fuckers to death with a shovel. I love you.

“There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the ‘execution kills,’ but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature.”

“In my opinion, it’s the most senselessly violent and offensive thing I’ve ever watched,” said James Steyer,

In the meantime, let’s have a national debate about acceptable levels of casual sadism.

Steyer, who has not seen the version of the game being released this week, was talking about an unrated version that has been circulating free on the Internet since August.

Dude, wait, what? Why don’t I already own this? Anon fails.

That version contains more violence and sexually explicit content than the one being released commercially, including a scene where a man’s testicles are mutilated with a pliers.

Did I already make a torture joke? Shit. What’s Google have to say?

Results 1 - 10 of about 41,500 for testicles pliers .

Sounds about right.

“It’s disgusting,” Steyer said. “It’s so violent, it struck me personally as pornographic violence.”

Best kind, AMIRITE?

Similarly, the pliers-and-genitalia scene isn’t in the official version, but players may use pliers to torture.

Of course they can. (Results 1 - 10 of about 120,000 for pliers torture.)

Basically, this is the greatest game ever. I’m running out after work and getting this.

UN nuclear chief attacks hostile US claims on Iran:

UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding “fuel to the fire” with recent bellicose rhetoric.

This is the same shit they said about Iraq and its extensive WMDs, and clearly it was all liberal media lies.

*blank stare*

Can someone please explain this to me? Please? In your explanation please include material as to why this isn’t complete and total dumbfuckery.

Near as I can tell, it goes like this:

1. Ottoman Empire kills Armenians. Lots and lots of Armenians.
2. Ottoman Empire falls, Ataturk founds the modern secular nation of Turkey, its founding principles entirely opposite from the Ottoman Empire.
3. 70-something years later, we decide to call the Turks assholes for what the Ottomans did, esp. considering there’s probably no one alive (or, very very few at any rate) who committed the crimes, or shit, even witnessed them. Ostensibly this is acceptable because, an Ottoman (as in “citizen of the Ottoman Empire”) was/is a Turk (as in “ethnically of or related to the peoples that live in and around the modern nation of Turkey”).

Am I close? Boner’s right: let the historians debate the label, leave shit from 70 years ago (and OF ANOTHER GOVERNMENT ENTIRELY) out of today’s foreign policy decisions.

Everyone was so dead-set on him speaking, but oh, the gems:

Asked about widely documented government abuse of women and homosexuals in his country, Ahmadinejad said, “We don’t have homosexuals” in Iran, and that women did have freedoms.

It used to be that people with extreme (read: TOTALLY FUCKIN NUTS) views were encouraged to speak freely, cause all you end up doing is making them look that much more nuts.

Maybe it doesn’t suit the script, because it makes him sound just plain fuckin’ crazy nuts (thus, pitiable) instead of Hitler-like evil who needs to be bombed RIGHT FUCKING OMG NOW NOW NOW NOW, but I for one like having him speak. Kooks should be forced out into the light: after all vermin fear the dark.