April 12, 2012

Soviet Era Guitars from Behind the Iron Curtain (warning: pic heavy)

Believe it or not, the USSR and COMECON produced guitars. They actually made some cool ones. As is the norm in Soviet art, they were OUT THERE.

BTW...I want one.

March 29, 2012

Need hope? Rev Jesse Jackson's "I am Somebody"

I am Somebody!
I am Somebody!
I may be poor,
But I am Somebody.
I may be young,
But I am Somebody.
I may be on welfare,
But I am Somebody.
I may be small,
But I am Somebody.
I may have made mistakes,
But I am Somebody.
My clothes are different,
My face is different,
My hair is different,
But I am Somebody.
I am black,
Brown,or white.
I speak a different language
But I must be respected,
Protected,
Never rejected.
I am God’s child!

The good Reverend and I might disagree on the existence of a god, but Rev Jackson is one of the few people who hasn't given into cynicism regarding MLK's Dream.

March 29, 2012

How I feel today about the impending Friday...

March 27, 2012

This article might explain our theistic friend's delusions...

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around. And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect&quot . Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

March 23, 2012

I want to be a walking clothing museum

I am buying all my new clothes pre owned

It is the way to go

There is lots of clothing out there that has been pre owned

Why sell yourself short?

Get that bowling shirt you LOVE for under $3

Be who you want to be, unconstrained by 'fashion dictates.'

If you want to wear Marmot Fleeces and good Jeans, the option is there.

Just don't buy new.

There is no need to.

March 22, 2012

Call me a gun grabber, I don't give a shit

Call me whatever NRA-fueled epithet you want to call me.

You are a coward, and you have no morals, ethics or empathy.

Get out of my face, coward.

The "Stand your ground" law is an open invatation for murder. The murder rate doubled since this law was enacted.

"Oh oh oh but I'm afwaid the meen ol' minowity might take away my steweo!"

Good. Now you know what it's like to BE a minority. The cops might take away your right to FREEDOM at any moment, just for "fitting the description."

Get rid of this vigilante law.

And stop jerking off to your damn guns already. They're pieces of METAL - they are a TOOL. Nothing more, nothing less.

March 20, 2012

"The Third Man" and Predator Drones

"Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?"

And that's where we are now. We, the Americans, the 'good guys' (although a history course will teach you we are anything but,) have decided that we are dots on the ground, and if we stop moving forever, it wouldn't mean a thing.

We are Harry Lime.

March 20, 2012

"They Thought They Were Free" - an excerpt

They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

March 15, 2012

Fellow Feminists: Yes, there is a war on women. Anyone who denies it is blind or not a feminist.

Many feminists might disagree with me, but I am a proud feminist.

And I can see the attempt by the right, right now, to control the conversation. They missed out on this during the second wave, mostly because of their utter ineptitude to take privacy and feminism seriously. But with Santorum the frothy Lube Guy and the recent sonogram rape bills that have passed, it is beyond clear that the GOP, and United Christianity in general, have launched a serious war on women.

What is the Democratic response? Spilled seed and Viagra bills. Granted, this is a good direction, but it needs follow-ups in the attacking of the sonogram rape bills. These need to be heard at a Federal Court, because they are patently anti-woman. Anti-female. Anti-human, if you ask me.

March 9, 2012

I do not understand how some straight men can't watch 'Brokeback Mountain"

I mean it's a fucking LOVE STORY

Doesn't matter that it is about guys, and so what if it is?

Don't you feel the same feelings about love?

Yeah, I'm a crumudgeon when it comes to love.

I think it's just a chemical cocktail.

But that's not saying that it isn't utterly transfixing.

When I first met my wife, there was a connection like I had never experienced with anyone before.

That's how I knew it was what is referred to as "love."

Of course love can sour, love can fade or love can persist.

Such is the intricacies of chaos theory.

But that's love, chaotic raw emotion....

So how could other men not get this?