Campanastan

Why Adults Should Be Banned From Wearing Halloween Costumes

Minister of Humor Marty Ennis provided these decadent Halloween costumes to demonstrate the utter depravity of Western culture. Such dress would never be tolerated in Campanastan! No words are necessary. 

Note that all of the offenders are men.

 

 
 

And while you're trick-or-treating, have something to eat!

 

 
Oh yeah - happy birthday, Nevada! Remember Chic Hecht this Tuesday!

"From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us!" -- Scottish proverb

So You Think You're Special? Try Being One of 75,491,735,358

Lest you think you are someone special try using BBC's tool to discover where you fit in the panoply of human existence.

Yes, I am the 75,491,735,358th human to have ever lived, and when I was born, I was the 2,480,775,909th person alive on Earth.

Maybe that's special after all!

If you also enter your country and gender you can get more information. Here is what I got:

What's next? The global population will continue to increase during your lifetime and beyond, reaching 10 billion by 2083. However, the rate of growth is expected to slow. Little of the current growth is happening in developed countries like yours.

Longer lives: Working-age people like you will be supporting increasing numbers of older people during the next decades. By 2050, there will be just 2.2 people of working age supporting every person aged 65 or older in the developed world. In Europe, this will drop to just two.

Battle for resources: It is estimated that your group of the richest countries consumes double the resources used by the rest of the world. The UN estimates that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us.

Did you know? The average family size globally has declined by half since 1950 - from five children to the current 2.5.

The site also told me that 4,136 people had been born since I entered the site.

Bringing attention to the 7 billionth person is good. It will focus our attention on the issue of increasing population and its ramifications.

So how's this for a wish? Hard to believe Prince Phillip said this. Click on the yellow text for more quotes about population control. 

“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. -- Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh

Good Riddance to a Relic of the Cold War

This morning on NPR I heard a story about the dismantling of the final blockbuster nuclear weapon in the USA's arsenal: a 9-megaton bunker buster known as the B-53. The story related how these weapons were the size of a minivan (see below), weighed 4.5 tons, and could obliterate all life within 9 miles of ground zero and spread radiation for hundreds of square miles. Only two could be carried aboard a B-52, and during the height of the Cold War, 24 of these things were always in the air ready to take out the Soviet Union.

Years ago I was involved in the nuclear weapons program. Read about it here.

Here is a PDF of a lecture on the effects of nuclear weapons and the classic text by Glasstone and

Dolan,The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Here is an online version of the 1977 edition. Above is a picture of the 'Strangelove Slide Rule', the circular 'Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer' that came with the Glasstone and Dolan book. I still have mine! John Walker has an online version of the computer.   

 Talk about macabre displacement behavior! Enjoy, if you can.

"They're not 'bombs'; they are 'devices'! They are only called 'bombs' when we drop them from the sky." -  an especially irritating Lawrence Livermore physicist, educating yours truly on the correct nomenclature for nuclear devices, c. 1979

Science Scams America

Ah, those crafty scientists....Aasif Mandvi gets to the truth.

The Daily Show
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  "Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them." -- Mark Twain

Anonymous Gets the Colbert Treatment

Stephen Colbert is up to his old tricks....from Disclose.tv. 

Disclose.tv - colbert report about anonymous Video

"Way before Watergate, senior administration officials hid behind anonymity." - Bob Woodward

The World According to Some Republican Presidential Candidates (and Lots of Americans!)

Thanks to Hannah Gosnell. Too close to the truth.

Click to enlarge.

Huntsman would get this right, maybe Gingrich and Romney. Cain? Not unless the country involved had a Godfather's Pizza.

"Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth." - Will Rogers 

The 1% Strikes Back: Smithers, Release the Hounds!

Got this from Joe Romm's Climate Progress blog. And here's an article from The Onion.

"Wall Street needs more Fonzie, less Ponzi" -- @webmonkees

What Fairy Tales Taught Us

Thanks to Anna Bandfield via Neyda Abreu-Schienke 

 Good ol' Walt Disney!

"The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do." ~ Andrew Carnegie (thanks to Anna Bandfield)

Barry Blitt's 'The Book of Life'; Steve Jobs Day

Here is the cover of the current (17 October 2011) issue of The New Yorker by Barry Blitt entitled, 'The Book of Life'.

Wonder what St. Peter is reading? Maybe Gov. Jerry Brown's proclamation that today is 'Steve Jobs Day' in California.

Here is a tribute video using only sounds from Apple products and Jobs' voice. It's a great memorial.

 

"Death is the only destination we all share...Death is very likely the single best invention of life...Stay hungry, stay foolish." - Steve Jobs

Swank, Van Damme, Vanessa Mae, and Seal: Suckin' Up to Da Man in Chechnya

Movie stars Hillary Swank (two-time Best Actress) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (is he still a star?), violinist Vanessa Mae, and British musician Seal (WTF?) are taking heat for appearing at the gala birthday party in Grozny honoring Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov, a corrupt, brutal thug who runs Chechnya.

Swank has since apologized for her gaffe and claims she did not know of Kadyrov's reputation, although that charge is refuted (see following video) by a human rights group. She will give her fee to charity. The other stars have not yet apologized or offered to return/donate their fees.

Seal said he did it "for the Chechen people and not Kadyrov's inner circle." Nice try!

Here is the video of the news report from Al-Jazeera English:

 

Here is Swank's 'performance':

  

Way to go, guys!

"I deeply regret attending this event. If I had full understanding of what the event was apparently intended to be, I would never have gone." -- Hillary Swank

[Translation: "I got over a million bucks to attend this; I'd be a fuckin' moron not to take the gig. Unfortunately, I got called out and so I'm now sorry I got caught speaking at this bozo's birthday party. I'm also firing my publicist, who has the intelligence of a small soap dish."]

Happy Columbus Day!

And then there is this from William Easterly's Facebook page.

"When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, 'Ours.' "  ~Vine Deloria, Jr.

Connecting the Dots: Steve Jobs' Remarkable 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

This is one of the most remarkable, inspriational speeches I've ever heard. Read the text.

Here is the video's link.

 

 "Stay hungry, stay foolish." - Steve Jobs

Hank Williams, Jr. - First Amendment Savant

Are you ready for some Hank Williams, Jr.? NOT!

Poor Hank! That corporate behemoth, ESPN, has trampled on his First Amendment rights! Yes, even people like Hank Williams, Jr. are afforded the right to free speech. Unfortunately, despite Williams' complaints, the First Amendment does not apply in this case. Maybe he has a legal case against ESPN, but it's not a free speech issue.

So what happened to turn ol' Hank into a legal scholar? Seems he compared Obama to Adolf Hitler.

From Richard Deitsch's story:

ESPN is no longer ready for Hank Williams Jr.

The network parted ways with the country singer this morning in the wake of his comments on the Fox News morning show "FOX and Friends" in which he used an analogy to Adolf Hitler while discussing President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden playing golf with House Speaker John Boehner and Ohio's Republican Governor, John Kasich.

"We have decided to part ways with Hank Williams, Jr," ESPN said in a statement. "We appreciate his contributions over the past years. The success of Monday Night Football has always been about the games and that will continue."

I'm not actually clear that he directly compared Obama to Adolf Hitler, but that's not the issue. ESPN is within its rights to terminate its business relationship with Williams.

Hank went on, claiming it was his decision to leave:

"After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision," he wrote on his website. "By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It's been a great run."

And he issued these statements:

Williams had issued two statements on the subject after he was suspended. "I have always been very passionate about Politics and Sports and this time it got the Best or Worst of me," Williams wrote on his website on Tuesday. "The thought of the Leaders of both Parties Jukin and High Fiven on a Golf course, while so many Families are Struggling to get by simply made me Boil over and make a Dumb statement and I am very Sorry if it Offended anyone. I would like to Thank all my supporters. This was Not written by some Publicist." 

Williams went on to say that he plans to run for the Senate in 2012 as a Republican from Tennessee.

Can't wait, Hank.

“I'd love to spit some Beechnut in that dude's eye and shoot him with my ole forty-five." - Hank Williams, Jr.

Napoleon Dynamite Rides Again!

For those who are Napoleon Dynamite fans comes word that it will be resurrected as an animated series starting Spring 2012. The original actors will provide the voices.

Perhaps a movie sequel is in the offing.

Here's an article about the series from The Salt Lake Tribune.

"How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains? Well, if coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we’d have been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind. You better believe things had been different. I’d have gone pro in a heartbeat. I’d be making millions of dollars and living in a big ol’ mansion somewhere, soaking it up in a hot tub with my soul mate." - Uncle Rico

Rethinking Illegal Immigration

Unless you're related to these guys, STFU!

Thanks to Joe Dellapenna.

"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian." - Pat Paulsen

Wherefore Art Thou, Country Joe and the Fish?

Could use them right about now, cause I feel like I'm fixin' to die.

 

"There's plenty of good money to be made
By supplying the army with the tools of trade."
                             - Country Joe McDonald