Linky Links

Please follow the link below to check out this amazing video posted on one of my favorite blogs...

Aangirfan.blogspot.com

The truth is out there...

Oh Yeah!

Came across this today on PoliticsForum.org. It felt strangely appropriate...

THE IDEOLOGUE
There are two distinct varieties of Ideologue, conservative and liberal, but each being smug and self satisfied in his certitudes, they are really flip sides of the same coin. Though Ideologue's "opinions" merely represent a loose collection of intellectual conceits he is nonetheless astonished, bewildered and angered when his views are not immediately embraced as Truth. He regards honest disagreement as a form of cognitive dissonance that can only be cured by relentless propagandizing. The conservative iteration of Ideologue parades himself as a logical, clear thinker, while the liberal version trumpets his higher level of mental, spiritual and social awareness. Troglodyte is the natural ally of conservative Ideologue, and for liberal Ideologue it is Weenie. Whether conservative or liberal, Ideologue is a fierce, but very predictable Warrior.

Ignorance is Strength

Not content with ridiculous accents, traffic, hairdo altitude, and social class polarization, Long Island, NY is striving to lead the way in another area; privacy infringement. From the Buffalo News...

A wealthy Long Island village is planning an extensive network of security cameras that scan license plates to help reduce the number of property and home invasion crimes.

The 3.3-square mile North Shore community is home to 5,000 residents. The plan calls for 44 cameras to eventually be installed at the village's 19 entrances. That's about one camera for every 120 people.

Mayor Michael Kalnick tells Newsday the project is needed to protect residents.

The system runs the license plate scan through criminal databases and if a match is found immediately notifies police.

Initially, three cameras will be installed. One has been operating on a test basis for 18 months and police are using two mobile units on patrol cars.

It's not clear when the project will be completed.

Elitist much? Well, you can't blame the fine people of Kings Point. I mean, look at the rampant crime inflicting their humble dwellings as evidenced by THESE crime statistics. This is a neighborhood under siege, people!

I almost forgot...check out the income statistics HERE. Getting the picture?

Homer Evolution

Ya-Boo!

Holy Shit it's April.

I use Yahoo!. A lot. Force of habit, really. But I'm thinking of going cold turkey. I made the mistake of clicking on "Two Changes That Will Improve Your Odds of Retiring" today. This is what I found...

1. Working 5 More Years

Fie you could save $15,000 a year for each of those 5 years. The extra savings helps boost the plan barst, consider how much of an impact working five more years could have on your retirement. Let's assume you're 65 and have $1,000,000 in retirement assets. If you could earn 5% a year on those funds, your retirement plan would be worth about $1,275,000 at age 70, or about 28% more than at age 65. That means it could support almost 28% more in distributions.

Plus, let's assum

lance to $1,360,000, or about 36% more than at age 65.

By waiting five years, you've increased your retirement assets and potential retirement income by 36%.

2. Reducing Your Lifestyle

Now let's assume you also reduce your retirement lifestyle expectations by 15%. That means you'll need 15% less in savings to meet your goals.

• For a couple targeting $100,000 of retirement income, that means living on $15,000 less a year. A good rule of thumb for producing distributions in retirement is that every $5,000 worth of distributions will require about $100,000 of assets at age 70. If you reduce your lifestyle needs by $15,000 that means you need $300,000 less in assets to support your retirement.

You might not be happy about the prospects of a reduced lifestyle, but you may find it works just fine if you adjust your expectations. It really comes down to how important it is for you not to work. If that 15% reduction provides you with the freedom to retire, it may well be worth it.

No shit, really? If I work longer I'll end up with more money? So, I "will improve my odds of retiring" by...not retiring? Oh, and if I continue to sacrifice and lead a spartan existence, I will have enough money to not enjoy since I will be pissing and shitting myself by the time I do retire/am-deemed-unfit-for-work? Yaaaaaa HOOOOO-a-woooo! Assholes.

OMG, It's Full of Stars

Stardust spacecraft kickin' ass and takin' names. This photo was taken yesterday during a flyby of comet Temple 1.

Why does Stardust kick ass? This is why. Well, that and the awesome name. Ziggy.

Apples and Hand Grenades

From the New York Post yesterday...

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stirred up controversy in the Middle East yesterday by calling the crackpot gunman charged with shooting Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords an "extremist" -- but offered no evidence of a political agenda or a cause that would drive him to violence.

"We have extremists in my country. A wonderful, incredibly brave, young woman Congress member, Congresswoman Giffords, was just shot by an extremist in our country," Clinton said during a televised town hall-style meeting at a college in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Clinton brought up the slaughter by Jared Lee Loughner when questioned about why Americans appear to blame the entire Arab world for 9/11.

"We have the same kind of problems. So rather than standing off from each other, we should work to try prevent the extremists anywhere from being able to commit violence," she said.

"The extremists and their voices, the crazy voices that sometimes get on the TV, that's not who we are, that's not who you are, and what we have to do is get through that and make it clear that doesn't represent either American or Arab ideas or opinions," added Clinton

By stating that "We have extremists in my country" and "We [U.S. and the Arab world] have the same kind of problems," the Secretary of State makes an excellent point about how much the U.S. and the Arab world have in common, the common problems we face and the effective and humane manner in which we deal with those problems. Like the U.S., the Arab world is rife with examples of groups with opposing ideas and values calmly and successfully presenting their positions to a populace that is then allowed to give their lawful consent via a popular vote. Like the U.S., the Arab world is a model of peaceful transfers of power, non-violent political activism, and a free exchange of ideas. Oh wait...

And...



And...

And...

One mentally ill person does not a Jihad make. Lets not label all who reside in the Arab world as anything but people that just want to live their lives in peace, but let's not make silly comparisons. When Tea Party or ACORN folks start running into each others meetings strapped with grenades, then maybe we can talk. Otherwise, No, Hillary, we do not have the same kind of problems.

Uncle!

Apparently Nephew has been fibbing on his Facebook page about how "gangsta" he is. Uncle administers some tough love. Uncle rules.

Warning - Extremely Graphic/Gratifying Language.

I suppose everything that could be said has been said regarding the proposed removal of the word "nigger" from Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." Most editorials I have read denounce the removal of the word as needless censorship and an attempt to sanitize the past and conform a representative piece of work to the current era's feeble sensibilities and sensitivities.

This is all well and good, but what I find intensely interesting is the refusal of most editorials to actually use the word "nigger" to defend it's use in Huck Finn. Take good 'ole Rich Lowry's piece in the NY post today. While making a surprisingly eloquent argument, Lowry just can't bring himself to use the actual word, "nigger," instead relying on the safe euphemism we've all come to know and love, "N- word." He even takes the hangman approach, quoting a passage of the book by exchanging "nigger" with "n_ _ _ _ _." Incidentally, Lowry has no issue with spelling out the term "injun."

Really? Is there any recognition or understanding of the concept of "context" anywhere in the media, or society as a whole? Are we that pathetic that we have to be protected from seeing the word "nigger" written, even in a newspaper and under these circumstances? Sheesh.

Is there any hope for us? On a hunch, I took a look at the current Billboard 100 chart. Currently sitting at #17 - 'Lil Wayne's newest gem, "6 Foot, 7 Foot." Here's an excerpt of the lyrics...

black and white diamonds, f-ck segregation
f-ck that shit, my money up, you niggas just Honey Nut
Young Money running shit and you niggas just runner-ups

Am I missing something?

Perspective II

From the AP...

"The universe may glitter with far more stars than even Carl Sagan imagined when he rhapsodized about billions upon billions. A new study suggests there are a mind-blowing 300 sextillion of them, or three times as many as scientists previously calculated. That is a 3 followed by 23 zeros. Or 3 trillion times 100 billion."

And all in seven days! Actually six if you count (tee hee) biblical union rules...

"The estimate, contained in a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature, is based on findings that there are many more red dwarf stars — the most common star in the universe — than once thought."

Always thought that Red Dwarf would be a great name for a midget wrestler. Sorry, little person...

"But the research goes deeper than that. The study by Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum and Harvard astrophysicist Charlie Conroy questions a key assumption that astronomers often use: that most galaxies have the same properties as our Milky Way. And that conclusion is deeply unsettling to astronomers who want a more orderly cosmos. When scientists previously estimated the total number of stars, they assumed that all galaxies had the same ratio of dwarf stars as the Milky Way, which is spiral-shaped. Much of our understanding of the universe is based on observations made inside our own galaxy and then extrapolated to other galaxies"

We're not the norm! Ptolemy weeps. So how many stars ARE there in the Universe?

"When van Dokkum and Conroy crunched the incredibly big numbers, they found that it tripled the estimate of stars in the universe from 100 sextillion to 300 sextillion."

That's hot. Get it?

"'That's a huge number to grasp, even for astronomers who are used to dealing in light years and trillions', Conroy said."

"'It's fun because it gets you thinking about these large numbers,'" Conroy said. Conroy looked up how many cells are in the average human body — 50 trillion or so — and multiplied that by the 6 billion people on Earth. And he came up with about 300 sextillion."

"So the number of stars in the universe 'is equal to all the cells in the humans on Earth — a kind of funny coincidence,' Conroy said."

It always comes down to sex...

Bada Bing

I realize that I'm perseverating but...

I saw these (left) stickers on a beat up volkswagen today and I felt the need to follow up on my car-decal rant from last week.

So anyway, here we have fake bullet-holes. As I passed the aforementioned volkswagen and noticed the 30 or so of these stickers that made the car look as if it had been riddled a la Sonny Corleone on the causeway, I tried to imagine the state of mind, the rationale, if you will, that would lead one to placing these stickers on their car.

Perhaps it IS an homage to the Tattaglia clan, or maybe the old A-team ("See? I got shot at thirty times by an automatic weapon and not only am I alive, so's my ride!")

Or maybe it's something else.

Maybe it is an attempt to appear "gangsta." Maybe it's an attempt to relate and conform to a criminal lifestyle that, for some reason, has become the ideal. You know, the same ideal that causes professional athletes and musicians to illegally carry weapons despite that fact their fortunes would allow for a security detail on par with the Secret Service.

Or maybe it's me. Maybe I'm at the end of Youth and as I turn the corner to Middle-Age, I'm naturally adopting contempt for those just entering their youth. Maybe I'm becoming a grumpy old man shaking my fist at the TV and saying things like "Kids these days..." or "Get off my lawn!" while cracking open a can of Ensure. (The chocolate flavor's yummy.)

Nah. Screw that. Bullet-hole stickers are f#$%ed up. And I'm sorry, but the sticker hasn't been invented yet that will make you more "Gangsta."

Now REAL bullet-holes...

Sunday Funnies