Monday, July 30, 2007

3 Feet High and Rising

Stole this from Giraffe's blog. He has an outdoor cam and has posted some pics from it. Go check it out!



As for the title, its really more like 20 feet but I felt the need to give some props to De La Soul.

Important release from the

Society for Evil Overlords . . .

Recently, the Society For Evil Overlords has noticed a regrettable decline in the availability and quality of fanatical henchmen, evil priests, and willing sacrificial victims. We wish to correct this growing problem by submitting the following general guidelines for Cultists.

- Pick one faith and stay with it. Dilettantism is the mark of the amateur.

- Avoid needless embarrassment. Practise the correct pronunciation of your deity's name in the privacy of your own room before chanting it in public. Flash cards are often helpful.

- Never invoke anything bigger than your head.

- Avoid all kabbalistic jewelry over ten pounds in weight-- it attracts unwelcome attention from tourists, policemen, various supernatural creatures, and can be downright dangerous during thunderstorms.

- Citronella candles may not be used in rituals. I cannot stress this enough. Pastel-colored candles in the shape of cute animals are like beacons to the Powers of Darkness.

- Always keep your kit with you: candles, chalk, incense, silver knife, Thug-gee cord, service revolver, garlic, Yellow Sign, cab fare, condoms, and change.

- NEVER be the cultist that goes to rough up the hero(es). Ransacking hotel rooms is probably safe, but going 'round to beat up the good guys is a sure route to the bottom of the Thames.

- When the Black Mass goes awry, stay away from the Evil Priest. Enraged demons always go for the pompous.

- Don't gloat.

- If you can't resist gloating, don't reveal your plans.

- If you do gloat and reveal your plans, don't leave the hero(es) to die slowly. They don't.

- If you gloat, reveal your plans, and leave the hero(es) to die slowly, don't have the audacity to look surprised when they turn up at the last moment to foil your evil plot.

- The hero (or heroes) will always show up at the last possible moment to foil your plans. With this in mind, start half an hour early-- they hate that.

- Plan ahead by selecting ceremonial robes that are easy to run in while still affording ample concealment.

- Never screw anything whose genetic structure you are not absolutely comfortable with.

- Never admit to screwing anything whose genetic structure you are not absolutely comfortable with.

- When a religious artifact begins emitting light, CLOSE YOUR EYES. Thousands of cultists could be saved every year if they'd just remember this simple safety tip.

- When mutilating cattle, avoid the ones with testicles.

- During ritual sacrificing, taking bits home for later is now generally considered "bad form."

- Blood tests are now required for all sacrificial victims before the ritual. The effects of HIV+ offerings on the average malefic deity have never been witnessed by anyone living, or even intact.

- Contrary to historical belief, drugs and invocations do not mix. When the shit comes down, it is vitally necessary to be able to discern between the gibbering monstrosity to throw the holy water on and the gibbering monstrosity that will fade away after a few hours, some B-complex, and a good hot bath.

- Never play strip Tarot.

- Piety and belief are powerful things, and few forces in nature can stand against one who is true to his faith, his god, and his own soul. However, it is also true that the gods tend to side with the heaviest artillery, so be prepared change sides at the drop of a hat.

- For those situations where a fresh, living sacrifice is just not feasible (or even possible), the lower ranks of demons can be fooled by microwaving a previously-frozen chunk of ex-victim and cleverly jiggling it. However, a mock victim sculpted from Spam(TM) is right out.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Upcoming Oil Spike?

Lifted from the latest Mogambo Guru column
The Financial Times reports that Goldman Sachs figures demand for oil is 1 million barrels higher and supply is 1 million barrels lower than last summer, and "prices could surge to $95 a barrel within six months without increased production" from OPEC.
Certainly something to look into. Keep an eye on the saber-rattling as that will also cause oil to go up.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Tom Cryer Acquitted

No doubt you all have heard of the acquittal of Tom Cryer in his Federal Tax case.

What do you mean you haven't heard of this case? This WAS on all the news outlets wasn't it? It wasn't? How did that happen? I thought they were a "watchdog" to protect us from abuses by the government! (Haha, yeah right!)

Tom Cryer is an attorney in Louisiana who has practiced law for 34 years. Several years ago a friend of his told him that there is no income tax law that requires the average American to pay an income tax. Tom wanted to keep his friend from getting himself into trouble so he decided to research the issue. It took him a total of two years to go over all of the law as well as the case law. Mr Cryer found that indeed there is no law. As is often the case the IRS took him to court. Read more on that on this previous post of mine.

WND reports that Tom Cryer was acquitted on July 11th.
The jury in U.S. District Court in Louisiana voted 12-0 to find Cryer, of Shreveport, not guilty of failure to file income taxes for two years. He had been indicted in 2006 on charges of failing to pay $73,000 to the IRS in 2000 and 2001. The next step in his personal case will be up to the IRS and prosecutors, if they choose to continue the issue, he said.
Anyone interested further in his case can visit his website at TruthAttack.org

Cryer also released a video here

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Claudia Black

AKA Eye Candy
She might not be your type but she sure is mine!






Monday, July 23, 2007

Oh Darn!

A sexual assault suspect arrested after pro-life protesters gave police a photograph showing his vehicle at an abortion clinic where his victim reported getting an abortion has been found dead.

Authorities in Bryant, Ark., have confirmed to WND that Jeffrey Dean Cheshier, 41, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound by deputies in Garland County who responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle in a private driveway.


Cheshier had been arrested after Angela Michael, who runs Small Victories with her husband and children, was able to document for police the fact that Cheshier's vehicle was at an abortion clinic in Granite City, Ill., at the time the victim reportedly claimed to have been taken there for an abortion.


Poor man is dead! What a shame! What a horrendous loss of life!

Good riddance!

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Eight Things About Me

Sorry Birdie. Things have been crazy, both at work and at the Bachelor Pad!

First Thing: Pine cones are my sworn enemy!

Second Thing: I often get heartburn when I stay up all night. YaY for working the night shift!

Third Thing: I've carried one weapon or another every day for the past twenty years.

Fourth Thing: I LOVE to ride bikes! My best one day ride (that I kept track of) was 54 miles but I would say the hardest was about 45 miles as it included about 8 miles of going up a mountain pass. That ride did include going back down those same 8 miles but it was rather disappointing as I had hoped it would be faster.

Fifth Thing: I am a coke addict! I drink way way too much of it.

Sixth Thing: I am also a Ron Paul Junkie.

Seventh Thing: [This one left blank due to the 5th Amendment]

Eighth Thing: I want to get a pilots license. Flying is just awesome!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Hemp = Devil Weed?

I just came across an article about how hemp and marijuana came to be outlawed. As you may already know, both were legal until the 1930s when the "disease" of "reefer Madness" was made up to scare people about drugs. Worse, this scare tactic was thought up by those who stood to benefit financially from its being outlawed.

William Randolph Hearst was a tycoon with large holdings in paper mills and timber was being threatened by recent advancements in machinery to process hemp. The processing of hemp had been a labor intensive ordeal which at various times was handled by slaves or prisoners. New machinery was threatening to make hemp paper the premiere choice for newspapers due to its greater strength, durability and its resistance to yellowing. The DuPont corporation had recently introduced a new synthetic fiber for making rope and was likewise motivated to hinder or destroy their competition. Hearst and DuPont joined forces with the one entity capable of destroying competition from a long standing product. The Federal Government. Henry Anslinger, the first head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, joined in the fight

Due to this attack on hemp and marijuana, the mayor of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia, created a commission to undergo a six year study of the drug. However, the LaGuardia commission's findings were not consistent with the image Hearst, DuPont and Anslinger were trying to convey. Only halfway throught the six year study which eventually reported that “marijuana caused no violence at all and cit[ed] other positive results,” the smear campaign was begun. Anslinger had three full years to discredit the commission and was quite successful at it. As a result the commission's findings were dismissed by the public.

As a result of this pairing of big corporations with big government America remains the only industrialized country where it is illegal to grow hemp. This is despite previous government findings that one acre of hemp could replace 4.1 acres of timber for wood pulp. It is also more environmentally friendly as its processing need not use chemicals like bleach. There is also the potential for hemp to be used to produce clothing, food, oils (both edible and combustible) and plastics (some auto body parts are made from hemp)

Ron Paul, long the only sane voice in DC, recently introduced a bill, The Industrial Hemp Farming Act, that would get the Fed Gov out of the way and allow the crop to be grown in accordance to State law.

More information on hemp can be found at WikiPedia

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Blacks and the US Murder Rate

Browsing the web I came across a statement that if no for blacks the US murder rate would be very similar to European rates. An interesting theory. True? Lets find out.

We will look at FBI stats for murder by offender for 2004 & 2005
2004
Whites: 5339
Blacks: 5608
Other: 271
Unknown: 4717
Total 15935
Rate per 100,000: 5.5
2005
Whites: 5452
Blacks: 6379
Other: 299
Unknown: 4899
Total: 17029
Rate per 100,000: 5.6

As for population, in 2005 there were an estimated 296,410,404 people in this country. White comprising 80.2% and blacks 12.8%. Of interest is the fact that hispanics are often counted in as whites as there is no separate category for them.

I am going to make a basic initial assumption that the "unknown offenders" are broken up per the % of population, which adds to the totals as follows
2004: Whites - 3783 Blacks 604
2005: Whites - 3929 Blacks 627
There are serious problems with this assumption and this is somewhat corrected for later.

Some observations: Adding these totals, (with assumptions) the offender rate would be for Whites 57.24% and 55.08% and for Blacks 38.98% and 41.14% for 2004 & 2005 respectively. With this in mind Blacks commit murder as much as 3.2 times greater than the percentage of population would suggest.

So the murder rate, by offender, minus those committed by blacks would be an adjusted to 3.28 per 100,000 for 2004 and 3.38 for 2005. However, leaving the black population in the census figures while removing the crime rate skews the numbers slightly. So removing the black population from the census figure would give a slightly higher rate of 3.76 for 2004 and 3.87 for 2005. However if one follows through with the 3-3.2 times greater than population this would lower the per 100,000 rate to 3.16 and 3.24.

How does this compare with Europe? Last I could find for the UK* was 2.03, France 1.64, Spain 1.25, Germany .98 and Italy 1.23. In other words, this person recognized the disparity in crime rates but took his conclusion a little further than the facts would support.

*It should be noted that the UK doesn't count something as a crime if there isn't a conviction. Therefore their statistics are rather unreliable.

Your Score: Robot


You are 85% Rational, 28% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 14% Arrogant.




You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don't bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. You are not like the robots they show in the movies. Movie robots are make-believe, because they always get all personable and likeable after being struck by lightning, or they are cold, cruel killing machines. In all reality, though, you are much more boring than all that. Real robots just sit there, doing their stupid jobs, and doing little else. If you get struck by lightning, you won't develop a winning personality and heart of gold. (Robots don't have hearts, silly, and if they did, they would probably be made of steel, not gold.) You also won't be likely to terrorize humanity by becoming an ultra-violent killing machine sent into the past to kill the mother of a child who will lead a rebellion against machines, because that movie was dumb as hell, and because real robots don't kill--they horribly maim at best, and they don't even do that on purpose. Real robots are boringly kind and all too rarely try to kill people. In all my years, my laptop has only attacked me once, and that was only because my brother threw it at me. In short, your personality defect is that you don't really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit. Or if someone throws a pie at you. Pies sure are delicious.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.


Compatibility:
Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.


Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.


Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline

Thursday, July 12, 2007

GalaxyZoo

Hat Tip to Waterboy (who still needs his own blog)

GalaxyZoo is a project to classify approximately 1 million different galaxies as to whether they are elliptical or spiral and, if spiral, which direction they are spinning. Not a difficult task but truly a monumental one. And a project that is right up my alley!

If you need me just look up as my head will be in the clouds (or higher!)

Rudy Giuliani - Urban Legend

The following video was produced by the International Association of Fire Fighters. In it the IAFF exposes "America's Mayor" for the fraud that he is. Rudy has absolutely nothing if not 9/11 and if that is stripped away from him he, like McCain, will fall.

A short synopsis. In 1993 it was learned in the first Trade Center Tower attack that the FDNY radios did not work. In March of 2001 the FDNY finally got new radios. These radios were from a no-bid contract and were found defective in the very first week and pulled from service. No new radios were obtained.

After the Towers fell the Fire Fighters were removing the rubble and bodies as they came across them. There was gold stored in the Towers, some $200 million worth. Once that gold was removed Rudy pulled the Fire Fighters and ordered in the heavy equipment to remove the debris and bodies and send them to the dump. The Fire Fighters marched in protest of this move by Giuliani, so Giuliani did what any good mayor would do. Giuliani had them arrested.

A public outcry was required to release them and get the Fire Dept. back on the job.



This is "America's Mayor." It is hard to imagine a less competent person in the Oval Office, but Giuliani is attempting just that. Check out Rudy-UrbanLegend.com for more info.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Upcoming Research Project

Blogger has now allowed me to put a title in, Hurrah!

This post is edited due to the dates of said research having changed. Actually, it has been delayed for an unspecified period of time.

Sorry for the "premature exhortation." I wanted to change this earlier but I wasn't able to edit this from work.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Pajamas Media, Part 2

Last week I wrote of the Pajamas Media poll and how they discount Ron Paul in favor of, well, anyone else. This week, quite unsurprisingly, was no different.
In the twenty-third week, Rudy Giuliani regained the lead on the Republican side, Richardson continued in first place for the Democrats.
When I checked Sunday night, Giuliani had over 1800 votes and was ahead of Ron Paul and Fred Thompson. So at first glance, their teeny blurb looks correct, but then Pajamas follows up with this
Pajamas Media found more evidence of spam voting by supporters of several candidates. Those votes have been discounted.
Who of the top three candidates was receiving spam voting? Apparently it was Giuliani as his vote total was reduced some 1500, down to an official 333. Fred Thompson, the uncandidate, polled over 2.5 times greater at 869, and Ron Paul who is the clear internet favorite polled at 1765.

Pajamas Media had a chance for some journalistic integrity and to gain some credibility on this issue. They could have noted how Ron Paul recently pulled in a larger crowd than the Iowan's for Tax Reform Republican forum (1000 vs 600) and said, perhaps Dr. Paul's support in phone polls is being understated, which is why we consistently show higher numbers for him. They could have gone that far, or they simply could have said, after adjusting for multiple votes Giuliani polled 3rd which is where he has been on our poll for quite some time. Instead they awarded Giuliani a bronze medal and declared it to be gold, despite the fact that everyone can see that it isn't.

***Update***
Later on Monday Pajama's changed the first paragraph to read
In the twenty-third week, Ron Paul expanded his lead among the Republicans, and Richardson continued in first place for the Democrats.
Better late than never I guess.