There is such a post curdling up in the back of my brain somewhere. I just don't know if I want to bother with it.
Point is, it's not happening now. Call this "fair warning" and leave it at that.
* * *
I had to make sure this wasn't anyone I know because a lot of us tend to rant about how people are full of shit. (I'm assuming the redacted word is "shit". How should I know? Maybe the guy was saying "piss" or "fuck" or something, though "full of fuck" just doesn't sound quite right. Never mind.)
...it's not me, and it's not anyone I know, so it's all good.
* * *
So let me preface one link about child sexual behavior with this discussion of Kinsey's work:
Alfred Kinsey’s belief in child sexuality, with all of its impacts on children and society, now circles the globe, but a campaign to reveal the truth about his efforts to legitimize pedophilia is following right behind.The attempt to legitimize adult-child sex goes back to Kinsey's work in the 1950s. Actually, not just that, but all sorts of sexual behavior previously defined as either mental disorder or perversion has been legitimized by Kinsey--and if you look you can find plenty of examples of how Kinsey's work was fatally flawed, at least some of which was due to his efforts to legitimize his own sexual preferences.
I have noticed that people of a certain political/moral stripe regard sex as the ultimate do-all-be-all of human existence, and anything that interferes with sex and the enjoyment thereof is therefore horrible. Well: since they think that humans are just meat machines, apes who lost their pelts (and some even argue that we're not even actually sentient) there is nothing greater to aspire to.
What a sad, limited, dreary world those people inhabit.
...so what's wrong with this? I mean, if sex is the do-all-be-all, and we can't help ourselves because we're a bunch of meat machines flopping around in a deterministic universe without free will, why worry about how children comport themselves sexually?
Mr Geary said it was important not to blame children for the circumstances they were in.Okay: the porn is not seaching for kids' phones to infest. The kids themselves are looking for it because that's the kind of thing pubescent children do. They get these new weird urges and feelings and they try to figure out what the hell is going on, and given that they have these marvelous portable data terminals which can also take pictures and video and-and-and--
"It's not as if children are acting out more these days than they used to, it's just that the adult world is pushing this information at children much more vehemently than they ever did before and that's why it's become necessary...to cope with that," he said.
What the hell do you think kids are going do to?
The "adult world" isn't pushing shit. These kids are going out and looking for this stuff because they're curious, because they know it's available, and because there's currently no way to block adult content in phone browsers--as far as I know. And maybe there is and these kids' parents just don't care.
Parental supervision is still the A-number-one "killer app" for raising kids so that they know better than to "sext" or to sexually assault others. 'Cause that's the only way you're going to keep this kind of thing from happening and getting worse.
But of course you can never blame a parent for the child's actions; oh no, never, because that's not fair. The kid's an unholy terror? Why, I can't imagine where he gets that from! Frank and I never laid a finger on him. (Proudly:) He's never been spanked!
*sigh*
Meanwhile, they're not "pedophiles" any longer. Oh no, they're "minor-attracted people" and listing pedophilia as a disorder stigmatizes people who are victims of a "lifestyle choice".
* * *
Imagine--if Bush had signed the National Defense Authorization of 2011 into law--how that would have gone over. The suspension of posse comitatus alone is enough of a reason to condemn this shit, but when you add to it that the President now can (at least theoretically) imprison anyone he wants, any time, for any reason it becomes clear that this is nothing more than a total suspension of the Bill of Rights.
I don't trust anybody with that kind of power. Especially career politicians.
* * *
I'd wager this is right. Iran has been largely unhindered in its quest for nuclear weapons, and a "gun bomb" with U-235 is too easy to build.
...we may, in fact, be missing work they're doing on a plutonium weapon. A Pu bomb is more difficult to build only because implosion is finicky--but while a nuclear weapon is a precision instrument, it requires far less delicacy than manufacturing, say, multi-core microprocessors. In his novel Sum of All Fears Tom Clancy states that the precision needed to produce eyeglass lenses is all you need to make implosion happen.
If you're farsighted, you can buy reading glasses at the corner drugstore for a few bucks a pair. That's how hard it is to make eyeglass lenses when you've got CNC technology.
The point is, everyone focuses on a uranium weapon because it's simple to build; the hard part is enriching the uranium--but after you get to about 20% enriched it's significantly easier to make bomb-grade material.
And Iran's got 20% enriched uranium now.
But! Barack Hussein assures us that Iran is too small a country to be a threat, so all is well!
* * *
The loss of "women and children first" is an inevitable and predictable consequence of feminism. "Women have methodically attacked the concept of male duty and honor through every possible means for the past ninety years, and now they are whining that they don't get special treatment simply because a ship happens to be sinking."
Sorry, ladies, you cannot have it both ways. Either women are more important than men--in which case all the traditional stuff is in effect--or they are not, in which case it's "every man for himself".
* * *
Can you really argue with this? If you can, I strongly suspect you're one of those people who foolishly thinks, "That could never happen here!"
* * *
DOOM!
ObamaCare in action. Obama ordered a health insurance company to resciend its rate increases or face the consequences.
*
$100 billion to build a 130 mile railroad. That's a mere $769 million per mile. I'm sure that they can get it to $1 billion ($1,000 million) per mile. This is California! They can do it!
Hell, cost overruns from NIMBY lawsuits alone will probably do it. Meanwhile, there's absolutely no need whatsoever for this. If there were, it would already exist.
*
"On Saturday, the ship's captain was arrested and arrested, AFP reported." How bad do you have to screw up for them to arrest you twice? Damn!
According to news reports, two Canadians on the ship were Wingham, Ont., couple Alan and Laurie Willits. The couple made it to safety on dry land.Maybe he "was arrested and arrested", like the captain.
Laurie told CNN that she and her husband were watching a magic show at the time of the collision.
"All of a sudden, the lights flashed and the boat tipped like it was turning, but it didn't return to level," Laurie told CNN, describing the moment the ship ran aground. "And then we heard a scraping noise to the left of the ship and my husband said, 'We're sliding off our seats...something's wrong.' And the magician disappeared, that was the funny part."
EDIT Maybe he was the captain. /EDIT
*
QE 3 is on its way! More inflation-that's-not-actually-inflation because our betters in D.C. say so!
*
Tomorrow may be a bad day for the stock markets since five Euro nations are expected to receive debt downgrades this evening. Italy, Spain, and Portugal are to drop two notches (from A to BBB+) while France and Austria are going down one notch (from AAA to AA+).
...but everything's peachy because the Dow is only down by fifty points. What am I worried about?
*
"Get ready for the avalanche of 'all is well!' stories as the MSM goes into overdrive trying to get their boyfriend re-elected." CEO's are going to HIRE this year!
The hiring reflects optimism among CEOs that the economy will continue to strengthen and more workers will be needed to meet demand. It may signal an end to a lockdown on job growth following the financial crisis that lingered even after the recession ended in June 2009, with economists estimating more new jobs created this year than any time since 2006.It has nothing to do with most upper-echelon corporate officers being good Democrats or anything of the sort. And those economists are never, never wrong, either! Look at all the growth and stability they predicted! No one has said a word about "unexpected" being overused to describe how the economy has been going!
I've said it and said it, and am saying it now: regardless of reality, the official unemployment rate in the United States will be below 8% before November.
*
Government Motors has an Edsel on its hands. Ah, the Chevy Volt: GM's answer to a question NOBODY ASKED.
*
Mercedes uses Ernesto Guevara in its latest ads. Che was a murderous thug, nothing more, nothing less.
*
Japan is boned. What is never said in any article like this is how socialist Japan is. It's at about the same level as Europe is; Japan has crushing taxation and the cost of living is not exactly low.
The only thing the government there can think to do is to raise taxes--it's what happens when you reach the endgame of socialism--but it's not going to work for long. Taxation stifles economic growth and Japan is already on the wrong side of the Laffer curve.
* * *
No Bible study this week--pastor and his family are on vacation--and so the only two pressing matters are choir practice on Wednesday night and therapy on Thursday.
When I went to therapy last week I went with the intention of cutting back to a session every other week, solely because it felt like I was in some kind of holding pattern.
...but I have been resistant to therapy for several weeks, anyway. I really doubt it's sheer coincidence that every week my sleep schedule has magially arranged itself so that I happen to be falling down tired at therapy time even though the day before and the day after I'm fine. You know?
I know that I'm resisting it, and I also know that's the time when you really need to go, because obviously there's something that needs fixing that the subconscious doesn't want even to look at.
Though I'm switched if I know what it is.
The therapist seemed intrigued by something I can't remember and began asking me all kinds of questions about it, and nothing pisses me off more than my own damn brain playing tricks on me. I've never had this kind of problem before, and the fact that I'm hiding things from myself means that I am nowhere near as "better" as I thought I was. So, in fact, I need to keep going every week.
The mental image that came to mind during the therapy session--which I do remember--is of a cold, dreary day during that interminable period where the Blue Bomb was parked in the garage, undrivable due to a bad cam. Was it late 1983, or early 1984? I don't know why, but this is what I remembered while I was talking. No events, just the setting. *sigh* I don't know; and I can't remember anything specific from that time period anyway.
Of course, if it's something really painful, then that's not terribly surprising. But considering that I can remember a lot of really painful things with perfect clarity, I have no firkin' clue what it could possibly be. Hell, the image is probably nothing but misdirection, considering that my brain is already playing tricks on me.
Argh etc.
* * *
Karl Denninger once again lays out the facts of our economic situation. There isn't enough money in the world--LITERALLY--to continue "business as usual" the way it's gone for the past half-century.
According to the criteria he lays out in that article I think I could survive handily for the two-week period he mentions; in fact that's what I consider to be the "most likely scenario" and have built my preparations around it. I can stretch that out to a month (or more) if I'm allowed to go deer hunting when I need meat, but if civil order were to break down that far, well--I don't know exactly where my guns are, so I'd have either to go find them or borrow a couple from Og (assuming he was amenable, which is not a safe assumption should things go that far into the shitter. He quite properly would have to look out for himself, his wife, and his daughter first with everything else a distant second).
Probably I could survive without hunting if I could get meat from somewhere. Living on beans and rice is possible but I'd be constantly worried about an attack of hypoglycemia.
I don't know.
* * *
What I do know: I really want to get after Katawa Shoujo since there's nothing else on my plate at the moment. There's nothing else I feel like doing, anyway; I do have some household chores that need attending to but the world's not going to end if I don't get the dishes into the washer until this evening.
* * *
It's above 40 and the snow is melting; I can periodically hear icicles falling off the gutters and if it rains the snow will disappear pretty quickly.
I don't really care. It's cold and miserable and I don't want to do anything anyway. To heck with it.