South Of Heaven

How the GOP is eliminating rape

You thought that the big victories for the GOP would put them into gear cutting the deficit and ending all those illegals who are sapping the blood out of our country.

No, they are eliminating rape. By changing the definition.

Trafficking in outrage

 
I was trying to write a piece on Jared Loughner, but it’s difficult to make sense out of an insane man’s ramblings. My point was that having lots of talk from the right about using guns to resolve problems, even if they are only being metaphorical, is dangerous talk because not everyone can tell the difference. However, you can’t couch everything you say in order prevent the insane from misinterpreting you. Every few years some nut commits a horrible crime based on his interpretation of the Bible, and there are plenty of horrible crimes committed by sane people based on the Bible, for that matter.

 
The problem is that insanity is a relative thing. Byron Williams is sitting in a jail after a shootout with California state troopers. He was on his way to San Francisco to shoot lots of people at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU. His only real source of information about the Tides Foundation had to have been Glenn Beck. I’d never heard about the group. Beck, as is his manner, diagrammed how George Soros, today’s International Jew, was using the organization to destroy America.

 
Just for a moment, suppose Beck is absolutely correct and the Tides Foundation is working to destroy America. If you are really a patriot shouldn’t you want to do something about it?

Here is a video made by Loughner, strolling through the Pima Community College campus one night after he was kicked out and his parents had been told he wouldn’t be welcomed back until he’d passed a mental examination:

The guy sounds crazy, eh? He mentions mind control although he doesn’t go into detail about how the mind control works.

 
Let me introduce you to David Wynn Miller, a speaker on the rightwing circuit. One of his principle points is that government controls people by their control of language. It has something to do with adverbs. He also believes that adding hyphens and colons to your name makes you non-taxable in the eyes of the law. Thus, “:David-Wynn: Miller”. This theory hasn’t done well in court. According to Miller there is some connection to the Swiss postal service and the New World Order. He personally has claimed to be a judge and the King of Hawaii.

Miller also is associated with the sovereign citizen’s movement which has something to do with the Christian patriot movement and the Christian Identity movement and other fringe groups. These groups are anti-Semitic.

There is something about the right to print money, which I think brushes up against Ron Paul territory. That was another of Loughner’s obsessions, the illegality of US currency.

As far as I know, David Wynn Miller is not crazy. People come to listen to him speak at seminars. People believe him. People have gone to jail on tax fraud and other charges after trying to use his theories in court. Miller himself  believes that Loughner has visited his website because of some of the things that Loughner has said.

Here is an article that better connects the dots between the two.

(If you think that these theories about money are wacky, go here for an hour-long show about money. It answers questions like where the money went when your house lost half its value recently.)

While people are now sitting in jail for following his theories of tax law and how colons and hyphens makes one a non-taxable human, I don’t think he’s ever told anyone to shoot a Congressional representative.

 
But Sharron Angle, who failed to unseat Harry Reid last fall, said this:  "What is a little bit disconcerting and concerning is the inability for sporting goods stores to keep ammunition in stock ... That tells me the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of their government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways?" Since the Second Amendment is the right to bear arms, what the hell is she talking about? And why shouldn’t that be interpreted as shooting for what you can’t get in an election?

 
Sarah Palin, whose motto is “Don’t retreat, reload”, and who had Giffords’ Congressional seat targeted with a gunsight on her website, was outraged that anyone would in any way blame her for any rhetoric that might have pushed Loughner into shooting Giffords. And now that we are know more about Loughner, it’s pretty clear that he’s schizophrenic and was not processing information clearly, whether or not he visited Palin’s website.

But we know that Byron Williams was inspired by Glenn Beck. Here Beck talks about how he wants to kill Michael Moore. And he hears a voice asking him what would Jesus do. Just a joke, right?

Before anyone sends any apologies to Palin, take a look at a news story about her outrage. “Blood libel” historically is the accusation that Jews kidnapped and killed Christian children because they used their blood in the making of matzos. In discussing this horrible incident where the first Jewish Congressional representative in Arizona is targeted for assassination and a nine year-old girl was murdered, you’d think that Palin would have steered away from the term.

But that’s not what Palin is doing. Palin traffics in outrage, and I wouldn’t be surprised that she, or her handlers or speechwriter, specifically chose that term for precisely that reason. Her supporters around the country are all outraged that the liberal media is picking on her again, or some twaddle. And it serves on another level. For the anti-Semites who follow her using the term to defend herself gives those folks a good chuckle.

 

Merry Christmas

Nothing says the holidays like Awkward Family Photos.

This website has plenty of those bad photos that probably shouldn't have been saved, but were.

For ex, here is Catwoman with children at the beach:

 

Here's a Christmas photo, of a family wrapped up as presents:

 

Then there's the Star Trek family:

 
And if the kid can't blow out the candles Dad can whack them out:

 

And aren't these people a little too curious about the couple kissing?

 

And nothing says awkward like wedding pictures:

 
There seem to be hundreds of awkward photos on this site. A great way to spend a rainy or snowy afternoon.

And here's another song for the season:

Christmas For Cats

Merry Christmas!

Rude Pundit

The Rude Pundit's been around for some time now, being offensive and editorializing about the passing parade. I'd forgotten about him. Here he comments on the sudden outrage against Homeland Security and how we came to this.

While the right wants to blame President Obama, Janet Napolitano, or, fer fuck's sake, George Soros for all of this, remember that the testing of body scanners at airports and the implementation of widespread use began during the Bush administration. Yep, something else we can conveniently forget about that bastard. The Rapiscan backscatters (a shitty name) were first put into use in 2005: "Homeland Security has not identified the airports that will test backscatters. More than a dozen have been selected to test various new technologies." The first tests were done in Orlando in 2002 (the machines had been used in England already). In fact, discussions of the use of body scanners at airports went back to October 2001, according to the Washington Post then. Yup - it was Bush who wanted to see some bush. The enhanced pat-down is a new procedure, but you can bet the study on how to do it began before Janet Napolitano stepped foot in the HSA office.

Of course, if something idiotic and vaguely related to sex is occurring, the repressed right is gonna get all fucktarded about it. Peter LaBarbara of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (motto: "Yes, this organization actually exists") is afraid that the gays will get off on fondling people of the same sex: "The reality is, most traveling men would not want Barney Frank to pat them down at the airport security checkpoint...Neither would it be fair to assign Ellen DeGeneres to pat down female travelers." Yes, because women would much prefer to have Angelina Jolie finger their labia because that's not homoerotic at all. Seriously, is there any issue that the homophobic right can't contort to fit their demonizing agenda?

And that's the mild stuff.

Tuesday, touching all bases

 

A family in Georgia woke up to find a neighbor's buffalo in their pool.

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Sony is stopping the sales of the Walkman cassette players in Japan. This is not unexpected. However, elsewhere in the world you can still find them, says the LA Times.

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It rained all weekend but it was sunny Monday, so I was back to walking again. Sunday I'd gotten up at seven a.m. for the pre-pre-pre-game shows for football, and at nine at night I clicked off the post-game show for the last game. My back was stiff and sore from sitting for fourteen hours. It felt better after the walking, straightened it out.

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And finally, scientists have found that it takes a fifth of a second to fall in love.

A new meta-analysis study conducted by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second.

Results from Ortigue's team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image.

The findings raise the question: "Does the heart fall in love, or the brain?"

"That's a tricky question always," says Ortigue. "I would say the brain, but the heart is also related because the complex concept of love is formed by both bottom-up and top-down processes from the brain to the heart and vice versa. For instance, activation in some parts of the brain can generate stimulations to the heart, butterflies in the stomach. Some symptoms we sometimes feel as a manifestation of the heart may sometimes be coming from the brain."

Ortigue is an assistant professor of psychology and an adjunct assistant professor of neurology, both in The College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University.

Other researchers also found blood levels of nerve growth factor, or NGF, also increased. Those levels were significantly higher in couples who had just fallen in love. This molecule involved plays an important role in the social chemistry of humans, or the phenomenon 'love at first sight.' "These results confirm love has a scientific basis," says Ortigue.

The findings have major implications for neuroscience and mental health research because when love doesn't work out, it can be a significant cause of emotional stress and depression. "It's another probe into the brain and into the mind of a patient," says Ortigue. "By understanding why they fall in love and why they are so heartbroken, they can use new therapies." By identifying the parts of the brain stimulated by love, doctors and therapists can better understand the pains of love-sick patients.

The study also shows different parts of the brain fall for love. For example, unconditional love, such as that between a mother and a child, is sparked by the common and different brain areas, including the middle of the brain. Passionate love is sparked by the reward part of the brain, and also associative cognitive brain areas that have higher-order cognitive functions, such as body image.

 

It's Symmetrical Day

A big day in Vegas, too.

Parenthood would be easier

...if every parent were issued a hot glue gun when leaving the hospital with their child.

If you do not have a hot glue gun, go buy one now. Now. You need it. You might not know you need one, but you do. Or you will. At some point, your child will decide that the dinosaur diorama due tomorrow needs -- NEEDS -- rocks and trees and maybe some mossy looking stuff.

Or that the Halloween costume this year must be a parrot, a real-looking parrot with feathers. Lots and lots of individual feathers.

The answer? Hot glue gun.

Given our love of Halloween, we could not live without a glue gun. I can't think of a costume that we've made that hasn't included some hot glue to hem, bind, attach or otherwise hold stuff together instantly.

We're havin' a heatwave

Yeah.

It's been hot for the last few days. Really hot for the Bay Area, but not necessarily hot compared to if you live in, say, New Mexico or Florida. It actually broke ninety degrees here over the weekend. Still hot. The only two times I left the house yesterday was when I wheeled the trashcan out to the street before dawn this morning and when I wheeled it back into the garage this afternoon. When we have a heatwave I pretty much just lounge around until it's done. I actually thought about swimming in the pool, but managed to curtail those crazy urges.

Did laundry, to include washing Arabella's blanket on her little bed. Our little kitty, who we've had here for a few months, finally got the courage to spend the night upstairs with us Monday night. She's ventured to the top of the stairs and hung out with me in the man cave when I was working on music or just watching some sports thing on TV, but she'd never worked up the courage to go down the hall and actually sleep with us. Over the course of the night she'd hop up on our bed and look for cuddles. If someone rolled over she got spooked and hopped off the bed. A little while later she'd hop back up on the bed and announce herself with her "meh", as close as she gets to meow.

When we woke up this morning she woke up. She had apparently spent the last few hours of the night sleeping on the far side of the bedroom.

What Arabella really likes is curling up and sleeping on my crotch, and I watched two Steve Buscemi movies this afternoon (into the evening, interrupted by the Brown-Whitman debate) and Arabella spent a lot of quality time curled up and snoring in my crotch. Girlfriend insists that she's a lesbian because she's always cuddling with her, but to be honest Arabella gets her head scratches and pets from whoever is around.

The two Buscemi movies were "St. John of Vegas" and "Ghost World". They are both quirky movies revolving around quirky Buscemi characters. It was like a mini Buscemi quirkfest. The first one has Steve as an insurance investigator with a bad gambling habit who is sent to Las Vegas to investigate an insurance claim. Quirky. The second film, with with the hot Thora Birch and a younger Scarlett Johansson, is about a dorky middleaged guy and two mean quirky teenagers, one of whom gets tangled up with the quirky, dorky middleaged Buscemi.

In fact, there was so much quirk I may have gotten a quirk overdose.

In any case, I stayed out of the sun, did the laundry, reclined on the couch and let the kitty curl up in my crotch, and watched the quirky Thora Birch outquirk Steve Buscemi.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

News from my little town.

Another reason not to learn how to surf this week:

Police are warning beachgoers in one Northern California town to beware after witnesses spotted a great white shark devouring a sea lion near the shore.

Pacifica police Capt. Fernando Realyvasquez said that witnesses on Linda Mar Beach reported seeing the shark around 1 p.m. Monday about 200 yards offshore.

Realyvasquez said a surfer in the water at the time saw a large amount of blood in the water as the shark thrashed about with the sea lion in its mouth.

Witnesses estimated the shark was anywhere from 18 to 25 feet long. After the sighting, two men in a small boat drove up and down the beach warning swimmers to get out of the water.

Pacifica is a beachfront town about 10 miles south of San Francisco.

Problems with sand barriers

They may make things worse.

The frenzied response to the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has featured any number of wing-and-a-prayer options from engineers and elected officials. But the debate over a sand-barrier plan that skeptical scientists are referring to as "The Great Wall of Louisiana" has been the most politically charged.

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and angry parish presidents have hammered the Obama administration in past weeks over what they characterize as a glacial federal approval process for the state's plan to construct 128 miles of sand berms, dredging up 102 million cubic yards of seabed in the process, to bolster the state's barrier islands and absorb oil before it reaches sensitive coastal marshes.

The Army Corps of Engineers gave final approval last week to a scaled-down version of the project after rejecting the state's original proposal, which could have cost as much as $950 million and taken as long as nine months to build.

But as Jindal and other politicians celebrate the partial victory, coastal researchers warn that the project can't be built in time to help — even if it had been approved when first proposed last month. And scientists warn that it may have unforeseen consequences.

The berm system could reroute the spill up the Mississippi Delta, and it would be unlikely to survive even a mild storm during the current hurricane season.

It also will absorb the short supplies of sand badly needed for projects to restore the state's coastline, damaged by past hurricanes.

Heavy equipment, including barges and dredge lines, could interfere with nesting season, now at its peak, for protected bird species.

Even Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who ultimately approved the project, was lukewarm in his endorsement.

"There are a lot of doubts whether this is a valid oil spill response technique, given the length of construction and so forth," he said in announcing the first of six berm sites at Scofield Island, west of the Mississippi River. "We are not averse to attempting this as a prototype."

BP, which was ordered by Allen to pick up the estimated $360 million cost of the revised 45-mile-long berm project, washed its hands of the outcome. "The company will not assume liability for unintended consequences," said spokesman Mark Proegler. "We're counting on the government to make the right decisions."

Although the state signed contracts with a dredging firm, BP has yet to provide the funding.

"To date, BP has done a great job in sending us press releases and attorneys, but they haven't sent us any money to dredge," Jindal said Friday. "We are moving ahead without BP. We gave them two choices: They can either send us a check, get out of the way and let us start this work, or they can sign a contract and do it themselves. We are going ahead without them."

The Army Corps of Engineers has located a dredger. "We could see sand by Monday," Jindal said.

Jindal's frenetic pace is part of the state's gamble on the "worth-a-shot" approach to protecting its bays and bayous, 140 miles of which are coated in oil. So far, the state has built a "marsh fringe barrier," made up of sand plugs and small berms, in four coastal parishes, and has filled sea-bottom depressions with sandbags. Workers have strung tall, four-sided Hesco basket barriers in bays and laid more than 750 miles of booms throughout the four-state gulf region.

The use of sand berms to collect oil has been around for some time but has never been employed on this scale. Jindal has been the plan's most vociferous booster.

Louisiana has for decades been fighting a losing battle to reestablish its barrier islands, low-lying sand spits where natural shifting and erosion have been exacerbated by the channelization of the Mississippi and by recent catastrophic hurricanes. The Chandeleur Islands once extended almost to the Mississippi coast but lost 85% of their land mass in Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The looming tropical storm season has some scientists questioning the expenditure of money and resources on an experimental project. Although the berms will be 300 feet wide at their base, tapering to 25 feet at the top, a sand wall is not considered a robust structure.

The berms "will not survive even a low-intensity tropical storm in the northern gulf," said Jack Kindinger, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "If we have one next week, the berms will be gone. We have to be careful not to do more harm than good."

Kindinger said that the new barriers may increase tidal action in open water, which would boost the salinity in estuaries and alter the lives of marsh plants and wildlife.

In a similar manner, the project could inadvertently drive oil into the Mississippi sound, the Biloxi marshes and Lake Borgne, according to the Army Corps' analysis.

You'd think that Bobby Jindal, who is so against big government and federal spending, would be morally opposed to the feds spending a dime or doing anything to help Louisiana in this mess.