headline of the day
Obama Called ‘Skinny, Ghetto Crackhead’ On Fox News
12 Indicted On Hate Crimes Charges For Hair Cutting Assaults Led By Break-Off Amish Group
I think this is my favorite story of 2011.
protips for arguing
A must read list of intellectually honest and dishonest debate tactics. For example:
Accusation of taking a quote out of context: debater accuses opponent of taking a quote that makes the debater look bad out of context. All quotes are taken out of context—for two reasons: quoting the entire context would take too long and federal copyright law allows “fair use” quotes but not reproduction of the entire text. Taking a quote out of context is only wrong when the lack of the context misrepresents the author’s position. The classic example would be the movie review that says, “This movie is the best best example of a waste of film I have ever seen,” then gets quoted as “This movie is the best…I’ve ever seen.” Any debater who claims a quote misrepresents the author’s position must cite the one or more additional quotes from the same work that supply the missing context and thereby reveal the true meaning of the author, a meaning which is very different from the meaning conveyed by the original quote that they complained about. Furthermore, other unrelated quotes that just prove the speaker is a nice guy are irrelevant. The discussion is about the offending quotes, not whether the speaker is a good guy. The missing context must relate to, and change the meaning of, the statements objected to, not just serve as character witness material about the speaker or writer. Merely pointing out that the quote is not the entire text proves nothing. Indeed, if a search of the rest of the work reveals no additional quotes that show the original quote was misleading, the accusation itself is dishonest.
You know those people you hate getting into arguments with? It’s probably because they, willfully or not, ignore these sorts of distinctions. (via @interdome)
Memorandum
All:
Please disregard my recent emails. Forget about the phone messages, too. I know I sounded angry and excited, but I’ve had a chance to think things over and I don’t feel the same as I did when I said all of those hurtful words. I won’t apologize for the basis of my comments—I have a right to my own opinions, especially because they are correct—but regret your exposure to that barrage of toxicity. And the physical threats. You’ll notice I did not say “sorry.” That word is for the weak.
Reactions to the First iPod Announcement in 2001
Apple fans were not kind to Steve Jobs’ new digital product.
“iPoop… iCry. I was so hoping for something more.” –elitemacor
“Sounds very revolutionary to me. hey – heres an idea Apple – rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, why dont you spend a little more time sorting out your pathetically expensive and crap server line up? or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm? ” –Pants
“I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so stupid!” –WeezerX80
Hindsight is a bitch.
dear clusterflock
Opinions on center-mounted dashboard gauges in cars?
from the moderated comments
Well, Fuck me… your still as stupid as before.
pregnancy tourism for a master race
In the film, the lady tells us how she isn’t the first, and “definitely not the last” to travel this far to have an Aryan child, one who, she imagined, would grow up grateful for the gift of racially superior intelligence. She speaks of an organised system behind such pregnancy tourism, but refuses to elaborate. “It’s not wrong, what I’m doing,” she says, “I’m paying for what I want.”
The movie is called Achtung Baby: In Search of Purity, and is about German women travelling to Indian villages to get knocked up by men they believe are the last of the pure Aryans.
(via the browser)
quote out of context
My guess is, my pretty confident guess is that yet again, Churchill’s dictum will prove correct. Churchill says the United States does the right thing, but only after exhausting the alternatives.
Did you know Clusterflock would be illegal if run from the UK?
headline of the day
Toddlers won’t bother learning from you if you’re daft
The Daily Show – Face/Off
I’d buy that app.
Fuck it I’ve heard enough, I’m going to make some killer android app that listens to every word you hear and uses Google’s voice recognition shit and some semantic networks and logistic regression crap and fucking starts chirping at you whenever it detects someone is hitting on you, make it look like an incoming call from captain obvious or something. It make take a while to accumulate enough training data to detect every subtle hint but it should pick this one up pretty easily. #
One of the 5,661 comments on From Male Redditors: What are some hints females gave you, but you didn’t get them until after you had your chance?
Read more
Delicious
Brandon, Mississippi’s brilliant win against the Westboro Church loonies (via):
A couple of days before, one of them (Westboro protestors) ran his mouth at a Brandon gas station and got his arse waxed. Police were called and the beaten man could not give much of a description of who beat him. When they canvassed the station and spoke to the large crowd that had gathered around, no one seemed to remember anything about what had happened.
Rankin County handled this thing perfectly. There were many things that were put into place that most will never know about and at great expense to the county.
Most of the morons never made it out of their hotel parking lot. It seems that certain Rankin county pickup trucks were parked directly behind any car that had Kansas plates in the hotel parking lot and the drivers mysteriously disappeared until after the funeral was over. Police were called but their wrecker service was running behind and it was going to be a few hours before they could tow the trucks so the Kansas plated cars could get out.
A few made it to the funeral but were ushered away to be questioned about a crime they might have possibly been involved in. Turns out, after a few hours of questioning, that they were not involved and they were allowed to go on about their business.
Perspective
Liberty University, the evangelical private Christian school founded by dead apartheid-supporting bigot Jerry Falwell, received $445 million in federal financial aid last year. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the way, received $420 million from the federal government.
Pejoratives aside, it’s certainly clear where our priorities lie.
Zombie Sister Smackdown is Come For Her Flock
(Well, for Cindy anyway…)
tweet of the day
stay classy Rush
The Japanese have done so much to save the planet. He’s right. They’ve given us the Prius. Even now, refugees are still recycling their garbage, and yet Gaia levels them [laughs], just wipes them out. Wipes out their nuclear plants, all kinds of radiation. What kind of payback is this? That is an excellent question. They invented the Prius. In fact, where Gaia blew up is right where they make all these electric cars. That’s where the tsunami hit. All those brand new electric cars sitting there on the lot. I like the way this guy was thinking. It’s like — it’s like Gaia hit the Prius in [inaudible]. It’s like they were in the crosshairs, if we can use that word, it does. What is Gaia trying to tell us here? What is the mother of environmentalism trying to say with this hit?
stamps of disapproval
Twelve stamps by Heather K. Phillips, via Swissmiss.
This is a Metaphor for Something
(via)
Dwight Eisenhower writes to his brother
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
Somebody watered that tree.
Believe This or Piss Off
The new Alabama govenor has an interesting take on representative government:
Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister….
headline of the day, II
Noted Pick-Up Artist Allegedly Shoots A Woman In The Face
Equal Protection Men’s Club
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn’t think equal protection applies to women. Best comment so far:
If Scalia applies this logic to the 14th amendment, then he’d have to do the same for the 2nd.
I’m sure when they debated the 2nd amendment, it didn’t apply to much more than muskets. I doubt they had automatic weapons on their minds.
When we write laws now for automatic weapons, do we write in for the potential for laser pistols?
We need a constitutional amendment outlawing the potentiality of a Death Star. It could happen….
