Coming to Kindle and Smashwords
November 2013
Jun 30, 2011
very cool...
Lego Barad-dûr: 50,000 Pieces, Two Months to Build, Pure Awesome
Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, is re-created out of Lego bricks.
Jun 29, 2011
now we got that out of the way..Where's my flying car!!!!!!
Kevin Grennan created this Robot Armpit prototype. There's more good stuff about his work with robots that smell scary in this We Make Money Not Art interview and profile, in honor of The Smell of Control: Fear, Focus, Trust, which deals with smell and robotics.
Jun 22, 2011
oh my stars and garters......
Stocks Of Socialized Countries Have Outperformed U.S. Since Reagan Era
Specifically, during the twenty five years after Ronald Reagan took office -- a pro-market honeymoon that Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review this week termed "the ascent of laissez-faire economic policies" -- French stock prices have performed significantly better than Americans ones, according to the report by Jon Bakija, Adam Cole, and Bradley Heim.
A further examination of the 39-year period extending from the end of the Nixon administration until 2008 shows the Swedish economy, known for its high taxes and heavy regulation, growing at a significantly higher rate than the US.
The authors conclude that big government might not actually stand in contradiction to a productive economy: "Countries with typically high levels of government involvement in the economy, such as Sweden, Denmark and Canada, do not appear to have experienced stifled economic growth relative to countries where government involvement is more limited, like the US," the report says.
With bastions of socialism -- Sweden Canada and France -- outpacing American market prices, does this mean it's time for Wall Streeters to start calling croissants "Freedom bagels?" Probably not.
According to Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow specializing in European economies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the disparity between the American and European markets might have more to do with the period in question than governmental forces.
"In 1981, [Francois] Mitterand was elected president of France, and the first thing he did was to nationalize a bunch of French businesses and most of the banking system," Kirkegaard explained. "But going forward, France has moved quite dramatically towards a market-oriented economy, though not anywhere near the scope of market and economic freedom as perceived in the U.S."
finally, now lets get to executing children there is quite a back log...
Milton Mathis, Convicted Killer, Executed In Texas Despite Evidence Of Retardation
Milton Mathis, 32, was sentenced to death in 1999, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution of the mentally retarded violated the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Intelligence tests, including one given by the Texas Department of Corrections in 2000, measured Mathis's IQ in the low 60s, well below the threshold for mild mental retardation as recognized by almost all states. In 2005, however, a Texas court rejected his claims of mental impairment, siding with prosecutors who characterized Mathis as a "street smart" criminal whose behavior indicated near-normal intelligence. Federal and
Jun 21, 2011
Jun 20, 2011
Jun 17, 2011
wha????
This 1943 Amazing Stories ad for an anally inserted vibrator "to treat prostatitis" is the male equivalent of those coded ads for phallic "neck massagers" that ran around the same time and later, gracing the pages of the Sears Catalog and others.
"This guy has scared the sh*t out of me since I was fifteen."
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
I live on the Maine coast in a two hundred year old farmhouse. When bad weather comes in it gets dark and we lose electricity alot. I was sitting with my family and reading by lanterns when I pulled down a copy of the Mountains of madness. I checked under my bed twice that night before turning in.....
Jun 13, 2011
true that....
Awesome Cthulhu bathroom graffiti
Sound advice scrawled on a bathroom wall by some anonymous H.P. Lovecraft fan
very cool....
Joseph sez, "This is an exclusive Lego set that you can purchase on the factory tour in Denmark. It has semi-functional injection molding mechanics. Really a neat toy."
Jun 12, 2011
Yes, but he wasn't a gay mobster....
Priest Accused Of Helping Mobster Hide Property 
— A Roman Catholic priest from the Diocese of Winona, Minn., has been placed on administrative leave after he was indicted in Chicago in an alleged scheme to help an imprisoned mobster conceal property from authorities.
Deacon Justin Green of the Winona Diocese says Bishop John Quinn has also suspended the Rev. Eugene Klein from his priestly duties. KAGE-AM in Winona reports it means he can't function as a priest.
Green says the diocese is fully cooperating with the investigation. He also says Quinn expresses deep sorrow over Klein's indictment.
Prosecutors Thursday said Klein ministered to Frank Calabrese at a prison in Springfield, Mo., where he allegedly participated in a scheme to recover a valuable violin from a home Calabrese once owned in Wisconsin. Calabrese is serving life for 13 murders.
Green says the diocese is fully cooperating with the investigation. He also says Quinn expresses deep sorrow over Klein's indictment.
Prosecutors Thursday said Klein ministered to Frank Calabrese at a prison in Springfield, Mo., where he allegedly participated in a scheme to recover a valuable violin from a home Calabrese once owned in Wisconsin. Calabrese is serving life for 13 murders.
Jun 10, 2011
You don't have a state income tax...go piss up a rope....
Kay Bailey Hutchison: Obama Has A 'Bias' Against Texas
"I see a bias in this administration against Texas… yes, I do see it in this administration, absolutely. We didn't get the help in the wildfires that I think any other state would have gotten," said Hutchison. "I think if you look at the things that have not happened in Texas, I think it is pretty clear that there is a bias against Texas. Even in the border issues we are not getting the help we should have from the federal government to secure the 1,200-mile border we have with Mexico. So I do think that a lot of the rhetoric has rubbed the administration wrong, and we have had to fight hard for our fair share."
"I see a bias in this administration against Texas… yes, I do see it in this administration, absolutely. We didn't get the help in the wildfires that I think any other state would have gotten," said Hutchison. "I think if you look at the things that have not happened in Texas, I think it is pretty clear that there is a bias against Texas. Even in the border issues we are not getting the help we should have from the federal government to secure the 1,200-mile border we have with Mexico. So I do think that a lot of the rhetoric has rubbed the administration wrong, and we have had to fight hard for our fair share."
wwjd? (vomit all over his sandals probably)
Churches Use 'Free Exercise' Defense To Block Abuse Cases
By Cecile S. Holmes
c. 2011 Religion News Service
(RNS) Jeremiah Scott was 11 when the abuse and molestation began in 1990 at the hands of an elder in his Mormon church in Portland, Ore. After the man died in 1995, Scott's mother sued the church in 1998 for putting her son at risk.
His mother said when she reported the abuse of Brother Frank Curtis to church authorities, she was told they already knew about it. Digging deeper, her attorneys discovered molestation claims against Curtis that stretched across state lines and went back decades.
But the church employed a unique legal defense: As a religious institution, church leaders said they were protected by the First Amendment's separation of church and state from having to surrender personnel files, victims' complaints or other documents.
Attorneys representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints argued its records were protected by clergy-penitent privilege and the First Amendment's protection of the "free exercise" of religion.
Though the case was eventually settled in 2001, journalist Lisa Davis says the case represents a profound misuse -- and misunderstanding -- of the freedoms afforded to religious institutions under the Constitution.
And while a $3 million settlement may have ended the case for Scott and Curtis, it did not resolve the sticky First Amendment issues, Davis argues in her recent book, "The Sins of Brother Curtis."
"Everything was a fight in the case," said Davis, who teaches journalism at Santa Clara University and who has written for media outlets in Phoenix and San Francisco.
"Most states have a provision for clergy confidentiality. The idea being that we want to allow people to unburden themselves to their religious leader. It's designed for a confessional situation. It's not designed for a person coming to any church leader saying I'm worried about my child."
Legal scholars say that nearly 10 years after the Catholic abuse scandal highlighted the depth and breadth of the abuse of minors, the lines of authority between church and state remain murky when it comes to criminal acts.
"As important as the constitutional grounding is, there is rarely a complete prohibition for wrongs committed within the four corners of the church," says Brent Walker, an attorney and head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
Legal scholars say church bodies -- from Catholic dioceses to entire denominations -- often try to use the First Amendment to block victims' attorneys from accessing internal documents. In a case now headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, a religious school has tried to use the First Amendment to stave off an employment discrimination suit filed by a teacher.
"There hasn't been much written about these First Amendment issues because the focus has been on the victims and the abuse," said Marci Hamilton, legal scholar at New York's Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.
Church attorneys tried to use the First Amendment to block prosecutors in several ways as the Catholic clergy sex abuse web unwound, said Leslie Griffin, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Houston.
"There were claims that a lot of the documents were protected and then we go into litigation," Griffin said. "Their reading of the First Amendment is that it allows no government interference of religion, no government intrusion, no government review."
In the Curtis case, other legal arguments emerged around the idea of redemption -- an idea that is as central to religious teaching as private confessions made between a priest and his bishop.
"Frank Curtis had been found out (as a molester) in the 1980s and had been excommunicated by the church when it was found out," Davis said. "But he went through a process of repentance and was re-baptized."
That redemption process again gave Curtis access to children as a Sunday school teacher and Scout leader. In court, LDS lawyers said the church had a constitutionally protected right to believe in Curtis' redemption.
"This became known as the clean slate argument. The idea was he had emerged after baptism with a clean slate," Davis said.
Citizens are free to believe whatever they like, Davis said, but actions are governed by the law. And while the Constitution protects belief, and sometimes practice, it does not protect criminal actions.
One question that courts will have to wrestle with, scholars say, is whether putting someone in a position of authority is an extension of belief. Up until about 20 years ago, most states assumed the First Amendment barred anyone from bringing a claim against clergy, said Hamilton, the New York scholar.
"That theory was ... you could not go after the church because of one bad apple," she said. "But the more we've learned about clergy abuse cases, the more we're learning about the role the churches have played in covering up abuse and furthering that abuse."
"As the courts have become more educated, they have come to understand that religious institutions have to be held liable, and that the First Amendment was never intended as a protection for this kind of behavior
c. 2011 Religion News Service
(RNS) Jeremiah Scott was 11 when the abuse and molestation began in 1990 at the hands of an elder in his Mormon church in Portland, Ore. After the man died in 1995, Scott's mother sued the church in 1998 for putting her son at risk.
His mother said when she reported the abuse of Brother Frank Curtis to church authorities, she was told they already knew about it. Digging deeper, her attorneys discovered molestation claims against Curtis that stretched across state lines and went back decades.
But the church employed a unique legal defense: As a religious institution, church leaders said they were protected by the First Amendment's separation of church and state from having to surrender personnel files, victims' complaints or other documents.
Attorneys representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints argued its records were protected by clergy-penitent privilege and the First Amendment's protection of the "free exercise" of religion.
Though the case was eventually settled in 2001, journalist Lisa Davis says the case represents a profound misuse -- and misunderstanding -- of the freedoms afforded to religious institutions under the Constitution.
And while a $3 million settlement may have ended the case for Scott and Curtis, it did not resolve the sticky First Amendment issues, Davis argues in her recent book, "The Sins of Brother Curtis."
"Everything was a fight in the case," said Davis, who teaches journalism at Santa Clara University and who has written for media outlets in Phoenix and San Francisco.
"Most states have a provision for clergy confidentiality. The idea being that we want to allow people to unburden themselves to their religious leader. It's designed for a confessional situation. It's not designed for a person coming to any church leader saying I'm worried about my child."
Legal scholars say that nearly 10 years after the Catholic abuse scandal highlighted the depth and breadth of the abuse of minors, the lines of authority between church and state remain murky when it comes to criminal acts.
"As important as the constitutional grounding is, there is rarely a complete prohibition for wrongs committed within the four corners of the church," says Brent Walker, an attorney and head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
Legal scholars say church bodies -- from Catholic dioceses to entire denominations -- often try to use the First Amendment to block victims' attorneys from accessing internal documents. In a case now headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, a religious school has tried to use the First Amendment to stave off an employment discrimination suit filed by a teacher.
"There hasn't been much written about these First Amendment issues because the focus has been on the victims and the abuse," said Marci Hamilton, legal scholar at New York's Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.
Church attorneys tried to use the First Amendment to block prosecutors in several ways as the Catholic clergy sex abuse web unwound, said Leslie Griffin, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Houston.
"There were claims that a lot of the documents were protected and then we go into litigation," Griffin said. "Their reading of the First Amendment is that it allows no government interference of religion, no government intrusion, no government review."
In the Curtis case, other legal arguments emerged around the idea of redemption -- an idea that is as central to religious teaching as private confessions made between a priest and his bishop.
"Frank Curtis had been found out (as a molester) in the 1980s and had been excommunicated by the church when it was found out," Davis said. "But he went through a process of repentance and was re-baptized."
That redemption process again gave Curtis access to children as a Sunday school teacher and Scout leader. In court, LDS lawyers said the church had a constitutionally protected right to believe in Curtis' redemption.
"This became known as the clean slate argument. The idea was he had emerged after baptism with a clean slate," Davis said.
Citizens are free to believe whatever they like, Davis said, but actions are governed by the law. And while the Constitution protects belief, and sometimes practice, it does not protect criminal actions.
One question that courts will have to wrestle with, scholars say, is whether putting someone in a position of authority is an extension of belief. Up until about 20 years ago, most states assumed the First Amendment barred anyone from bringing a claim against clergy, said Hamilton, the New York scholar.
"That theory was ... you could not go after the church because of one bad apple," she said. "But the more we've learned about clergy abuse cases, the more we're learning about the role the churches have played in covering up abuse and furthering that abuse."
"As the courts have become more educated, they have come to understand that religious institutions have to be held liable, and that the First Amendment was never intended as a protection for this kind of behavior
very cool, and distrubing....
Andrea Petrachi (AKA "Himatic") makes beautiful junkbot sculptures that incorporate creepy fragments of discarded dollies and toys.
really?
US right-wing blogs and radio hosts are apparently up in arms at a report in The Guardian stating that Margaret Thatcher won't meet with Sarah Palin. The report quotes Thatcher's "handlers" saying things like "Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts."
La Donna Hale Curzon, the host of Sarah Palin Radio, accused the Thatcher circle of disgracing the former prime minister. "Margaret Thatcher would never call a fellow Conservative, let alone Gov Palin 'nuts'," Hale Curzon tweeted. "Thatcher's handlers have disgraced the Iron Lady." The ally who criticised Palin said the Thatcher circle would not change their minds despite the backlash. "Margaret will not be meeting Sarah Palin. If necessary we will make sure that Margaret has an off day when Palin is in London
Jun 9, 2011
someone should beat this troll with a stick
35-year old Greg Fultz used a highway billboard to accuse his teenage girlfriend of having an abortion and thereby killing their child. With additional stalking accusations, defiance of a judicial order to remove the ad, and the New Mexico Right to Life Committee's public support of Fultz's attack on a barely-legal girl he refused to marry after knocking up, you'd think there'd at least be a degree of certainty involved. According to multiple sources, however, his girlfriend suffered a miscarriage
If I was a tranvestite I would so own these....
Customized Cthulhu high heels
High heeled shoes customized to look like Cthulhu. But for what nefarious purpose?
du du duh duh... du du duh duh ... (It's the music I hear in my head)
Comixology is selling digital copies (for iOS and Android) of the old Gold Key Star Trek comic book for 99 cents. How cool is this logo design?
Jun 8, 2011
This reminds me uncomfortably of the invasion of the body snatchers (the one with donald southerland)
When I was in Rarotonga, the house next to ours had two dogs that looked exactly like each other, except one had a Corgi body and one had a long legged dog body. This photo of a Corgi-Husky (Huski?) is so striking I think it might be fake.
two signs that the sun has not set on the british empire.....
Britain Bans ‘Human Centipede’ Sequel
Thatcher Will Not Meet Palin
AP Photo
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