Five Important Things Women Must Know About Effeminate Men

It's been a while, but I needed to rant. Today, some of my ButtFace Facebook friends posted a link to this blog post, apparently written by a "man" whose man card, in my opinion, has long since expired. It was posted on the terribly misnamed "good men project" website. A quick glance at the testosterone-free titles of the other articles posted on the front page of this utterly effeminate blog confirmed that this is yet another attempt to emasculate what little is left of true manliness in our culture. Here is a small sampling of the kind of articles this site has to offer: 

"Not Failure But Courage: Parenting a Special Child. Steve Edwards wonders why our culture makes it so difficult for parents to ask for help."

Lisberger... a prophet?

I watch the 1982 movie Tron with my kids last night. They'd never seen it, and I hadn't seen it for probably 20+ years. It wasn't nearly as good as I remembered thinking it was when I was a kid, but it also wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. There was, in fact, one exchange of dialogue that was rather prophetic:

Dr. Walter Gibbs: ...computers are just machines; they can't think.
Alan Bradley: Some programs will be thinking soon.
Dr. Walter Gibbs: Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop.
(from IMDB)

And By The Way...

From Fallen State

Hypocrites Left And Right

It never ceases to amaze me how hypocritical most of the mindless drones in this country are. When a Democrat is president, he can do no right, according to the Republicans. When a Republican is president, he can do no right, according to the Democrats. What's worse is that most R-drones and D-drones are completely blind to this reality.

Hey, bed-wetting Democrats, don't you remember how much crap you gave Bush for the whole "Mission Accomplished" thing? So why are you now insisting that Obama be given lauds for the killing of OBL? Oh, and by the way, what ever happened to your anti-war protests? Your president is involved in even more illegal wars than your favorite punching bag, Bushitler. Oh yeah, and why aren't you blaming Obama and his buddies in Big Oil for high gas prices--higher than they ever were under Bush?

Hey, empty-headed Republicans, you don't get a free pass either. If Bush got so many kudos for "successfully prosecuting the War on Terror" without ever setting foot on the battlefield, how come you won't give Obama the same credit for OBL being killed on his watch? And why are you bitching about Libya when you were 100% behind Iraq and Afghanistan? And where were your economic complaints when Bush shoved TARP down our throats?

You're all a bunch of hypocritical buffoons, and that is why I refuse to associate myself with either of your stupid political parties. It's hard enough voting for one of your idiots; don't expect me to give my time and treasure to support your party.

Synchronicity... again...

Several years ago, we made the decision to begin, bit by bit, to prep a bit. We're hardly what you'd call "preppers" but we realized after 9/11 that Alaska is in a pretty precarious spot if anything big were ever to happen. So, we decided that, as our first order of business, we should acquire at least enough MREs to feed the family for a week in an emergency. I did a bit of research and finally settled on ordering a couple cases of Wornick Eversafe MREs from Long Life Food Depot. That was late August of 2005. I placed the order, but not before Hurricane Katrina hit. My order took a couple months to be fulfilled.

Oh Noze! We're All Gonna Die!

Yeah, that's the basic content of half the emails and ButtFace FaceBook posts from my reactionary friends and family (the ones referred to in my last post as pessimistic suckers) regarding the Japanese reactors.

In the interest of spreading more level-headed information (as opposed to the ignorant crap at Prison Planet*), here is the email message I composed to some of my wild-eyed family members today:

I'd recommend taking anything on Prison Planet with a grain of salt. They tend toward the sensational and are notorious for playing fast and loose with the facts. Just to put this all into perspective, here is a trio of informational sites, from folks that know something about nuclear power (which the Prison Planet guy clearly does not) and are closely monitoring the situation:

It's P. T. Barnum's world

"This curmudgeon fellow
really annoys me."

As I get older, I've learned to (usually) bite my tongue when this happens, but it's nearly every day I hear someone say (or read it posted online) something that only a sucker would repeat. The list of these offenses is as long as my arm, and getting longer every day, but they all have the same root cause: a complete and utter lack of critical thinking skills. The Public Miseducation System has been nearly a complete success. Virtually nobody can think any more. Nobody even tries to think, because they believe that they are "thinking" when they regurgitate whatever it is they read online, or saw on television, or heard on the radio. This is not a left vs. right issue; it's not Republican vs. Democrat. It's a complete inability of the vast majority of people in this culture to think, to question their own assumptions, to "trust but verify" no matter the source. It's the result of intellectual laziness coupled with a subtle kind of arrogance: laziness, because most people will simply not lift a finger to verify the veracity of a "fact" they've been fed; arrogance, because, despite the knowledge that they haven't done so, most people believe they have actually thought through their beliefs and practices.

I often find myself guilty of the same crime. I will realize that something I have heretofore accepted unquestioningly may or may not be the truth. I've taken to reading a lot of stuff that I completely disagree with, in the interest of actually proving to myself that I know what I believe and have considered the opposing viewpoints. My own pursuit of truth has cost me personally, but one thing my parents instilled in me from the earliest age was that truth is its own reward, and the cost of truth is irrelevant.

Truth has an enemy: the sucker.

For the record...

There was a post on FriendFace ButtFace FaceBook some time ago that contained a bunch of misinformation half-truths lies. To set the record straight:

1. The integrated circuit was conceived in Britain by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer. The Intel 4004 was developed by Federico Faggin and Ted Hoff of Intel, and Masatoshi Shima of Busicom. It was released November 15, 1971.
2. Windows NT was developed between 1989 and 1993 by Dave Cutler et al of DEC.
3. The first paper on firewall technology was published by DEC in 1988. Packet filtering was developed by Bill Cheswick and Steve Bellovin of Bell Labs. Third-generation firewalls were developed in 1989-1990 at Bell Labs by Dave Presetto, Janardan Sharma, Kshitij Nigam.
4. Cellular technology was invented by Bell Labs. Sweden had the first small cellular network in 1956. The USSR had one in 1958. The first public cellular phone network was in Finland in 1971. The modern cell phone was invented by Motorola in 1973; Martin Cooper made the first call on April 3, 1973.

Quit complaining and enjoy the life God's given you

I can't remember where I got this, so I can't give credit where credit is due, but it's worth watching. One of my pet peeves is people bitching and moaning about how bad things are, how horrible the industrial revolution was, and how modern technology has actually made life worse. I've always called bullcrap on this notion, which is almost always voiced the loudest by hypocrites who fully enjoy all the benefits of living in modern society: medicine, computers, the internet, automobiles, and so on. Mr. Rosling backs me up:



In the same vein, but more entertaining:

I was going to post something about the trivium and quadrivium...

...but I decided against it. Instead, I stoked up the fire in the woodstove and made our (the kids' and my) favorite comfort food for lunch: mac & cheese with hot dogs. Yep, that's right: mama is out and about, and papa is feeding the kids. Sadly for them, my culinary repertoire is primarily grill-centric.


I say "sadly" only from the perspective of the parent that realizes the lunch he just made for his children is not exactly what those skinny dieticians would call "healthy" -- but then again, I can't recall the last time I looked at a dietician and thought, "You know, she looks really healthy." Nope. Every dietician I've ever known or met looked like an extra from one of those "Feed the Poor African Kids" commercials Sally Struthers used to do on TV when I was a kid. I look at them and immediately think, "This person will not do well in an economic collapse." They've got no stored body fat, so if they start going hungry, their body will immediately start consuming muscle mass instead of utilizing the body fat that God designed for exactly that sort of situation.

Gotta get this offa my chest...

...and since I've got exactly ONE follower, it won't much matter what I say here, will it? Here goes...

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!

I mean, I get it that Joe Miller wasn't a strong candidate. He was of a lower caliber than Sarah Palin, I think, and I don't care much for her. But you ditched him in favor of Teh Crown Princess Lisa MooCOWski?!!! You had to write her name in to do it too! And I've analyzed the votes. It wasn't Democraps that put her over the top. Take my district, for example:

Registered voters: 2021
Cards cast: 965
As an aside to the 55% of you who didn't bother to show up: why bother registering to vote, when you're too damned lazy to actually exercise that right? Seriously, why? Does it make you feel better to have a voter registration card in your wallet?