Oh look…a message from the Social Security Administration asking me to review my annual statement which they have helpfully enclosed as a ZIP attachment. Three messages actually. Addressed to three different mail accounts of mine. One comes from…
inetnum: 212.232.0.0 - 212.232.7.255
netname: DIGCOMM-PPPOE
descr: PPPoE Pool
remarks: INFRA-AW
country: RU
admin-c: SDV452-RIPE
tech-c: SDV452-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: MNT-DIGCOMM
source: RIPE # Filtered
person: Denis Shatskikh
address: per. Kupyansky 7, Voronezh, Russia
mnt-by: MNT-DIGCOMM
phone: +7-473-265-4114
nic-hdl: SDV452-RIPE
source: RIPE # Filtered
% Information related to '212.232.0.0/20AS13178'
route: 212.232.0.0/20
descr: Digital communications, LTD
origin: AS13178
mnt-by: MNT-DIGCOMM
source: RIPE # Filtered
One from rcdelectric.com and one from…
inetnum: 114.108.192.0 - 114.108.255.255
netname: SKYBB8-PH
descr: SkyBroadband
country: PH
admin-c: VMDB1-AP
tech-c: VMDB1-AP
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks: Used for broadband
mnt-by: APNIC-HM
mnt-lower: MAINT-SKYBB8-PH
mnt-routes: MAINT-SKYBB8-PH
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
remarks: This object can only be updated by APNIC hostmasters.
remarks: To update this object, please contact APNIC
remarks: hostmasters and include your organisation's account
remarks: name in the subject line.
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080521
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20100507
source: APNIC
route: 114.108.200.0/22
descr: SKYBroadband-Resi
origin: AS23944
mnt-by: MAINT-PH-SKYBB8
changed: cmgalicia@skycable.com 20080718
source: APNIC
route: 114.108.192.0/18
descr: SKYBroadband
origin: AS23944
mnt-by: MAINT-PH-SKYBB8
changed: cmgalicia@skycable.com 20100226
source: APNIC
role: Vanessa Maria Dolores Bueno
address: 409 P.Guevarra Street cor Ibanez San Juan City
country: PH
phone: +63-2-6369276
e-mail: vcbueno@skycable.com
admin-c: VMDB1-AP
tech-c: VMDB1-AP
nic-hdl: VMDB1-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-SKYBB8-PH
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080521
source: APNIC
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20080521
I had no idea the Social Security Administration used the services of so many different companies to stay in touch with its account holders. The enclosed ZIPs didn’t set off my anti-virus software either. No I didn’t open them.
Also, a notice from DHL about the package I must have forgotten that I ordered…
The courier company was not able deliver your parcel by your address.
You may pickup the parcel at our post office personality,
The shipping label is attached to this e-mail.
Please print this label to get this package at our post office.
This one comes from the DHL offices at…
inetnum: 95.84.32.0 - 95.84.63.255
netname: SAN
descr: Network of Saratov branch of OJSC "Volgatelecom"
country: RU
admin-c: AVB35-RIPE
tech-c: AVB35-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: MNT-SAN
source: RIPE # Filtered
person: Alexey V Bogdanov
address: JSC "VolgaTelecom", Saratov Branch Office
address: Mirny pereulok 11/13 410000 Saratov Russia
e-mail: avb@san.ru
phone: +7 8452 757575
nic-hdl: AVB35-RIPE
source: RIPE # Filtered
% Information related to '95.84.0.0/18AS39229'
route: 95.84.0.0/18
descr: SAN route object
origin: AS39229
mnt-by: mnt-san
source: RIPE # Filtered
Another ZIP attachment that didn’t set off my anti-virus. Also…I got an email greeting card! From my dearest anonymous friend at…
inetnum: 117.192.0.0 - 117.255.255.255
netname: BSNLNET
descr: NIB (National Internet Backbone)
descr: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
descr: 8th Floor,148-B,Statesman House, Barakhamba Road, descr: New Delhi-110001
country: IN
admin-c: NC83-AP
tech-c: CDN1-AP
remarks: IP Addresses for Multiplay network
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
remarks: This object can only be updated by APNIC hostmasters.
remarks: To update this object, please contact APNIC
remarks: hostmasters and include your organisation's account
remarks: name in the subject line.
remarks: -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20070801
mnt-by: APNIC-HM
mnt-lower: MAINT-IN-DOT
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
source: APNIC
role: NS Cell
address: Internet Cell
address: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
address: 8th Floor,148-B Statesman House
address: Barakhamba Road, New Delhi - 110 001
country: IN
phone: +91-11-23734057
phone: +91-11-23710183
fax-no: +91-11-23734052
e-mail: hostmaster@sancharnet.in
e-mail: abuse@bsnl.in
admin-c: CGMD1-AP
tech-c: DT197-AP
nic-hdl: NC83-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-IN-DOT
changed: dnwplg@sancharnet.in 20030120
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20071227
source: APNIC
role: CGM Data Networks
address: CTS Compound
address: Netaji Nagar
address: New Delhi- 110 023
country: IN
phone: +91-11-24106782
phone: +91-11-24102119
fax-no: +91-11-26116783
fax-no: +91-11-26887888
e-mail: dnwplg@sancharnet.in
e-mail: hostmaster@sancharnet.in
admin-c: CGMD1-AP
tech-c: DT197-AP
tech-c: BH155-AP
nic-hdl: CDN1-AP
mnt-by: MAINT-IN-DOT
changed: dnwplg@sancharnet.in 20030120
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20071227
source: APNIC
This one did set off the anti-virus. Project managers take note: this is what happens when you outsource your software development projects to India. Outsource to the Russians instead, they’re Much Better. And you can trust them now that they’re not communists anymore!
Another Reason To Keep Processed Foods Out Of Your Kitchen
I’m beginning to regret my decision to buy a small chest freezer for Casa del Garrett last year. First it was my nephew, who went from a small, husky kind of kid into a lean and really handsome young man, simply by relentlessly cutting out all the processed food products from his diet.
He didn’t go vegetarian, but every bit of meat he eats nowadays he buys as cuts from the meat department, not as a frozen ready-made entree, and he cooks it up himself. Same with all his veggies…no frozen entrees, no canned or packaged this or that. Nothing ready-made in his diet. Nothing. Everything he eats starts with the basic ingredients and he cleans, cuts and cooks it all himself. And it made a big, no, an Amazing difference in his body mass and energy levels.
I’ve tried to learn from his example, but old habits die hard. I still, for instance, feed from the bags of ready made french fries I keep in my chest freezer. But since I went to visit my brother last year, and saw with my own eyes what my nephew’s no-processed-foods diet has done for him, I’ve stopped buying TV dinners and other frozen entrees. That’s huge for me. I am old enough to remember when TV dinners came in aluminum trays, and they’ve been an absolute staple of my diet for decades. No more.
Just last night I discovered another reason to keep crap like that out of the kitchen: you never know who’s making what you’re eating…
HOLLAND, Mich. – A community group that is trying to make Holland more accepting of gay people planned to meet Wednesday, July 28, to decide how to respond to a full-page advertisement in the local daily newspaper that one of its leaders said included “blatant untruths” about gay people.
The ad, which was sponsored by the Family Research Council and Request Foods and published July 23 in The Holland Sentinel, made reference to efforts toward broadening the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The Holland City Council has referred the measure to its Human Resources Commission for review.
The ad stated that “pro-homosexual activists” were trying to give Holland gays and lesbians “special protections” under employment discrimination laws and called homosexuality a choice that is “harmful to individuals and to society.”
The ad contained the usual FRC lies about gay people. Alex McEwen over at Huffington Post details some of it…
To recap, The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality is a fraudulent piece of work with many problems in regards to veracity including:
1. Ten Mythsrepeats the lie that the Robert Spitzer study proves that homosexuality is changeable, excluding the fact that Spitzer has said on more than one occasion that his research was being distorted.
2. Ten Myths utilizes the work of the organization National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). The website Truth Wins Out calls NARTH a discredited “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality.
3. Most importantly, Ten Myths intentionally distorts information to make it seem that negative behaviors, i.e. drug and alcohol abuse, are indicative of the LGBT orientation. The pamphlet accomplishes this by citing data in regards to the LGBT community and such negative behaviors while omitting the fact that much of the data places the blame on homophobia for these negative behaviors.
I’ll only note in passing the FRC ad says on the one hand “homosexuals experience considerably higher levels of mental illness and substance abuse then heterosexuals. A detailed review of the research has shown that “no other group of comparable size in society experiences such intense and widespread pathology.” And yet… “Research shows that homosexuals actually have significantly higher levels of educational attainment then the general public, while the findings on homosexual income are mixed.” You have no idea how hard it is to be a pathological drug addicted substance abusing ivy leaguer and still manage all that hedge fund money. I just don’t know how I do it.
But note their sponsor. Request Foods is one of those zillions of faceless little sub-contractors to the big food companies, whose products could be anywhere in the food chain and you, the consumer won’t necessarily know it because they keep their client lists a Very Big secret.
What is known so far, is that Campbells Soup is one of their biggest customers. But if you’re thinking that Request’s CEO Jack DeWitt is just a wee bit misinformed about his gay neighbors, some basically decent fellow who just happened to witlessly buy into FRC’s steaming anti-gay crock-o-bigot-shit, let me show you the product Jack is proud to call his very own: Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home Frozen Entrees…
The frozen entree that comes with a little family blessing “table talk” card that families “can use to start discussions during mealtime.” Sweet!
The Mary Ellen’s brand and family of products are the brainchild of Request Foods President, Jack DeWitt and his wife Mary (Mary Ellen DeWitt). “Mary always wanted our family to be together at dinner time. It’s where many of life’s lessons are learned. We would share our feelings and make time for one another, even on the busiest days. People are so busy today, taking kids to soccer practice and band concerts. Dinner ought to be a time when everyone can sit and talk and enjoy a healthy meal together,” explains Mr. DeWitt.
The “table talk” cards were developed by Dan Seaborn’s ministry Winning at Home, whose primary focus is to provide every family the joy of “winning at home.” Seaborn is an international speaker, author, radio commentator and pastor. “With all the studies affirming the importance of family development, Request Foods, with its introduction and expansion of Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home, is in the forefront of a rising new strategy to assist and strengthen families,” Seaborn said.
It’s not just the food that’s processed, sterilized, pre-packaged and frozen, it’s the piety. Pity the poor kids whose parents buy this…food product.
The response to Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home has been incredible! John from Illinois says: “As a single father of two teens, many times I don’t find time to prepare a good meal. I serve frozen meals at times to help with meal planning and time management. We found the product similar to a recipe we enjoy. I will continue to buy your product, as it is a food item we would buy anyway, but now we have the thoughts on the cards to look forward to. I’m off to check out your website, imagining how many families will be blessed by your message and how many will turn to God because of your witness.”
Joe from Georgia writes: “My wife and I were doing some grocery shopping in Wal-Mart and picked up one of your entrees. We got home and opened the box and out popped this card with Scripture on it. I was amazed I read it to my wife and began looking closer at the box. It had one of my favorite Scriptures on it (Proverbs 3:5-6). We enjoyed the meal, and we will be going back for more of Mary Ellen’s entrees because we were so impressed that you and your company have the courage to be open about your relationship with Christ. You’re a witness to others who desperately need to hear about Him today. It was good to be reminded that I need to order my day so my family and I can have some quality time together at the dinner table.”
Well if I was a kid in those households I know I could hardly wait for dinner time…
…to End. But Request Food’s motto is We make your brand…Better... So I guess even Jesus’s own words can be improved through the latest techniques in processed food manufacture.
Request Foods is one of the nation’s largest custom-prepared frozen food companies. Their mission is to honor God in all they do, to help people develop, and to pursue excellence. “It is our hope and prayer that Mary Ellen’s Blessings at Home entrees will bring busy families back together to share the blessings of a home-cooked meal and the fellowship of each other’s company,” said Mr. DeWitt.
I have a suggestion. If you want to bring families together Mr. DeWitt, you can start by healing the wounds you’ve been gouging with your bare hands into families with gay family members. Then start healing the wounds you’ve slashed into your community. We are your neighbors Mr. DeWitt. Stop spitting in our faces. At least stop expecting us to thank you for saving our immortal souls while you’re teaching our families to hate us.
And…if your goal is “to encourage confident, creative team members by demonstrating respect for every individual”, and that “maintaining a supportive working environment enables everyone to work to their utmost potential”, you can start by assuring you gay employees they won’t be tossed out of a job simply because they are gay, and further, that you don’t actually think they’re the human garbage that FRC ad and its supporting pamphlet says they are.
And…if you want your “…team members to think of their positions as gratifying and enjoyable.” you can at the very least tell your “team members”, your gay employees, and their co-workers, that they’re not working for you just to earn you money to give to the FRC so they can spit in their faces.
And finally…how does someone turn the bible into a collection of frozen entree dinner time fortune cookies and lecture their neighbors about the quality of their private lives with a straight face? You got lucky numbers on the backs of those cards too? I strongly suggest you pay a little less attention to the care of your neighbor’s souls Mr. DeWitt and start looking hard at your own. It’s clearly been neglected for a long, long time. In fact it’s looking a tad…frozen.
Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin catches a little bird tweeting…
“You know a counterfeit is a counterfeit when the happiness and freedom it initially promised ends up leading to deeper bondage…”
– Tweet from Exodus International president Alan Chambers
As Jim says, those of us who have watched the ex-gay movement know the language and what Alan is calling “counterfeit” there is what anyone capable of seeing the people for the homosexuals would call love…except of course homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Our relationships, the lives same-sex couples make together, the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows that are the stories of lives lived together in love and contentment…it’s really just fakery on our parts. And not very good fakery at that. We’re just, as Orson Scott Card once put it, “playing at house”. A second-rate counterfeit of the real thing only heterosexuals are capable of. That rush of delight when the one you love smiles into your eyes…the way your heart beats a little faster when they take your hand in theirs…it isn’t love. Perhaps it was the meatloaf.
Nice. So let me see if I understand… He can just flat-out deny the authenticity of our intimate relationships and that’s his godly prerogative. But when we deny the authenticity of his unctuous “love” for us homosexual reprobates…when we question whether gay people entering into opposite sex relationships is a healthy thing, let alone an honest thing, let alone a decent thing, let alone “change”… well then We’re being hateful.
But I suspect a lot of gay people who’ve spent some time in Alan’s little corner of the Anti-Gay Industrial Complex, and came out of it more heart-wounded then they went in, a tad lighter in the wallet and just as gay as when they signed on the dotted line, can say they know a few things now that they didn’t know before about what a deeper bondage feels like. And…counterfeit change, counterfeit heterosexuality, counterfeit psychoanalysis, counterfeit piety, counterfeit sympathy, counterfeit support…and especially counterfeit “love”.
I think part of the reason Glenn Beck’s 912 Project opts for the term “values” rather than “virtues” is because virtues take work. They require practice to acquire as habits.
This is not what the 912 Project is for. It is not a group or “movement” of people who have chosen to practice these 12 virtues in order to acquire them as habits. It is not a group that seeks to learn or to embody those virtues at all.
Look at that list again: Honesty, reverence, hope, thrift, humility, charity, sincerity, moderation, hard work, courage, personal responsibility, gratitude.
Does any of that characterize the agenda or the practice or the visible habit of Beck’s tea partying mobs? Were any of these virtues on display in the town-hall disruptions, in the angry marches or the signs carried under Beck’s “912” banner? Was there even a hint that these gatherings were composed of people even slightly interested in such virtues?
This is why Beck’s list of “12 values” can’t withstand comparison to the first similar-seeming list that comes to mind, the Boy Scout Law. The Boy Scouts of America isn’t my favorite organization as I’m not a fan of either homophobia nor vacuous civil religion, but I am a big fan of that Scout Law:
A Scout is: Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
Against such there is no law.
The 12 virtues listed there are at first glance quite similar to Beck’s, but the differences are telling. The Scout Law begins “A Scout is“…
Is verses waving them around like a damn flag. This is the single most telling thing about the culture warriors. They yap, yap, yap about Values…but they don’t ever act like they have any. And there’s a reason for that. Values are to them as weapons to wield against the Faceless Other…not things that actually sustain and guide. Values aren’t a part of your bedrock, they’re rhetorical tools to use as needed and discard like a Kleenex afterward.
Platte County School District 1 trustees voted 4-3 to keep the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” banners down at Wheatland High and West Elementary.
The schools were two of 25 in Colorado and Wyoming taking part in the program.
One of the sponsors listed on the banner is the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado. Wheatland board members and parents took issue with that, according to the district.
Un…
Joe Fabian, [another] board member, said he believes the Anti-Defamation League is pushing an “agenda that is pro-gay marriage”…
Deux…
…and that the community of Wheatland is not supportive of that.
Trois…
“They wouldn’t want the organization, the Anti-Defamation League, dictating to their children that an alternate lifestyle is a normal lifestyle,” he said.
Quatre…
He implied students who were not supportive of the banner suffered discrimination.
Cinq…
He spoke of a “moral attitude by the community” and indoctrination of students.
Six…
“I don’t believe (homosexuality) is a normal lifestyle…
Sept…
…but I don’t have anything against them,” he said.
First they sold out the gays, and we said nothing because we weren’t gay. Then they sold out the liberals and we said nothing because we weren’t liberals. Then they sold out the progressives and we said nothing because we were moderates. Then they sold out the moderates and we said nothing because we were moderates. Then they started loosing elections…
I have grown up in a home where Martha Stewart Living is one of the most oft-read magazines and, since I was old enough to truly appreciate weddings, have been a faithful purchaser of Martha Stewart Weddings.
Deux…
However, I feel I would be remiss if I did not share my great disappointment with the current issue. As part of the large portion of the population who strongly believes marriage should be between one man and one woman, I was rather taken aback to see a homosexual wedding featured in the Winter 2010 issue.
Trois…
I may not always agree with the lifestyles and life choices made by all the people featured in every publication I read, but I do not appreciate picking up my favorite magazine to see photographs of homosexual couples being affectionate.
Quatre…
For someone who believes that same-sex marriage is wrong, such articles and/or photos are offensive – and something I certainly would never knowingly pay money for.
Cinq…
I understand that one reader’s views, opinions, and purchases can not change the course of an entire magazine. However, I believe that I speak for a majority. A very large majority.
Six…
As marriage amendments protecting marriage as between one man and one woman have been passed across the country, the facts speak for themselves – America as a nation does not support same-sex marriages.
Sept…
Note: I just wanted to clarify that I don’t hate homosexuals. I actually know a couple gay and lesbian people and they’re great folks.
Via Atrios… Digby has a good post up about Hippie Randism and Libertarian Lefties that goes into something I’ve wanted to discuss more. A libertarian isn’t a Randiod and either one of these could occasionally seem to resemble either a conservative or liberal. Or to put it another way, and speaking of Whole Food’s hippy climate change denying champion of absolute corporate deregulation and union busting, just because someone looks and acts like a granola organic liberal progressive New Age self-actualization holistic health guru that doesn’t mean they aren’t a right wing asshole when it comes to the prerogatives of massive corporate money. Here, Digby quotes the Times profile…
In the early eighties, Mackey told a reporter, “The union is like having herpes. It doesn’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover.” (That quote, to Mackey’s dismay, won’t go away, either.) His disdain for contemporary unionism is ideological, as well as self-serving. Like many who have come before, he says that it was only when he started a business—when he had to meet payroll and deal with government red tape—that his political and economic views, fed on readings of Friedman, Rand, and the Austrians, veered to the right. But there is also a psychological dimension. It derives in large part from a tendency, common among smart people, to presume that everyone in the world either does or should think as he does—to take for granted that people can (or want to) strike his patented balance of enlightenment and self-interest. It sometimes sounds as if he believed that, if every company had him at the helm, there would be no need for unions or health-care reform, and that therefore every company should have someone like him, and that therefore there should be no unions or health-care reform. In other words, because he runs a business a certain way, others will, can, and should, and so the safeguards that have evolved over the generations to protect against human venality—against, say, greedy, bullying bosses—are no longer necessary. The logic is as sound as the presumption is preposterous.
Digby goes on to say…
He’s a libertarian who identifies culturally with the left. He’s into New Age religion and self-actualization and believes in holistic health practices, clean food etc. But he’s not a left libertarian. These things get confusing, but it’s important to make the distinction.
Basically, this guy is a standard issue right libertarian which means that he is a free market fundamentalist, hates unions, hates government and extols the virtues of the John Galts like himself, although he believes in a sort of corporate paternalism that requires him to look after the parasites (workers) in some rudimentary fashion. He is also a believer in civil liberties and drug legalization. (I assume that since he’s a Paul supporter, he’s also critical of the Fed.) There are quite a few of these folks out there who seem like your liberal next door, more than you might realize. Hollywood, for instance, is full of them. I worked for a few. Many of them even think they’re liberals and will vote for Democrats on social issues. But when it comes to taxing the wealthy and regulating business they might as well be Dick Cheney.
There is, of course, an actual left libertarianism and it is best articulated by Noam Chomsky, not some wealthy twit like Mackey…
It gets confusing, and I suppose it will only get more so as the republican party degenerates further and further into theocracy and outright populist-nationalist lunacy. Others have noted how the 2010 edition of the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference is going to be sponsored in part by the John Birch Society…they of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Was A Communist fame. If this is what the republican party wants to become then don’t be surprised to see people fleeing from it into a lot of factions and libertarianism is a very popular label to wear in some circles. But that’s really all it is in most of them. Just a convenient label the wearer hopes means I’m Really Not A Right Wing Asshole…Honest…
There are Lefty Libertarians. They think government shouldn’t regulate business and shouldn’t regulate morality. There are Right Wing Libertarians. They think government shouldn’t regulate business and states should regulate morality but not the federal government since it had the unmitigated gall to desegregate the schools. And then there are the Randoids. Rand herself and her intellectual spawn Leonard Peikoff absolutely loathed the libertarians. There are mixes and matches (call them mashups if you will…) of all three and then some. There are almost certainly for example, John Birch Libertarians and John Birch Randoids. Probably some of these shop at Whole Foods and look outwardly like hippies.
I like to think of it as that little corner of the Twilight Zone where which way is up depends on which ideology you’ve bought into. The problem with all of these is they have very little interest in how things actually work, and why things can and do fail. It’s all about the ideology. So in one very real sense there isn’t much to practical difference between any of them. But don’t try to tell a Lutheran that they’re more or less like an Episcopalian just with different vestments.
It’s going to be a fun decade, with the republicans leading the way to a political landscape where parties begin are more and more like religious movements, then conversations about how to…you know…actually govern…
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
Wherein The Children Of Rand And The Children Of Marx Commiserate With One Another And Then Have A Round Of Drinks…
Smokin’ hot essay in this month’s GQ by John Ritter on Ayn Rand’s influence on college students, bankers, financiers, chairmen of the Federal Reserve, and other people who need to have their certainties smacked out of them from time to time for the good of the rest of us. I know, because I used to be one of them…
A weirdly specific thing happens with the books of Ayn Rand. It’s not just the what of the books, but when a reader discovers them—almost always during the first or second year of college. Rand grabs a reader at a time of maximum vulnerability and malleability, when he’s getting his first accurate sense of how he measures up in the world in terms of intellect and talent. The longing to regard oneself as misunderstood and underrated can be powerful; the temptation to project oneself as such, irresistible…
Sort of. Not everyone likes thinking of themselves as misunderstood. I sure didn’t. But I never blamed being taken for a weird little geek on being misunderstood because I knew I was one. Being raised in a Baptist household the first person you always blame for just about everything, let alone not fitting in, is yourself.
It was after leaving my church and coming out to myself as gay that I first read Rand. But in retrospect, clearly, all those days spent in church listening to fire and brimstone pulpit thumping had left their mark on me. I craved moral certainty, and admired the firebrand moralist who spoke to those certainties. If I have a weakness to this day that’s it. But at 20 the bible had long since lost its power as a moral instrument. It was still interesting in its echo from a distant time kinda way, but no longer authoritative. I wandered aimlessly in a kind of existential stupor, unwilling to rest my moral values on religious absolutes that I knew perfectly well were nothing more then the bar stool prejudices of various pulpit thumpers, but unable to find another moral compass to guide my way. Reason and morality it seemed, were two different things.
Two books shook me out of my moral fog then, almost one after the other. In retrospect, both were terribly flawed teachers. And yet they left me with concepts I still value to this day. The first was Robert Audrey’s African Genesis. I found a tattered copy of it in a corner of a warehouse I once worked in, wrinkled and discarded, and picking it up and reading the first page of it…
Not in innocence, and not in Asia was mankind born…
…I had to take the thing home. I absolutely devoured it. And from Audry I gleaned the idea that the forces that move within our consciousness actually are understandable and manageable…but only if we seriously study our evolutionary past. To construct workable human societies, and moral codes that actually and really benefit us, we need to undertake an almost brutal, unromantic, understanding of ourselves and that means looking also to the past which brought us forth. Not to do so would be akin to trying to build a bridge with no understanding of the nature of the materials you’re constructing it from…
We are not so unique as we would like to believe. And if man in a time of need seeks deeper knowledge concerning himself, then he must explore those animal horizons from which we have made our quick little march.
Yes. Yes. And Yes. I still passionately believe this is true. Let it be said that a lot of naturalists and anthropologists really hate Audrey for his overwrought image of humans as killer apes. But you can discard that part of it…our understanding of the human ancestors is much improved since he wrote that book…and still respect the basic idea. We are, each of us, in body and consciousness, living histories of millions of years of life on earth. To make a better life for ourselves in the here and now, we need to understand that history.
The second book was Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. As John Ritter writes…
The days during which that 19-year-old has Rand’s worldview vectored into his cerebral cortex are feverish and sleepless. Days of beautiful affliction during which the intransigence of others—roommates, a coed the patient has been hitting on, professors, parents, everyone—are shown to be the product of their shortcomings, their idiocy and sublimated envy of the patient’s intelligence and talent… One day you’ve got a bright young kid dutifully connecting the dots of his liberal-arts education; the next, he’s got Roark and Galt in the marrow and has become…an insufferable asshole.
Well…kind of. I never thought of my friends as idiots. But I suspect I did turn into a bit of a jerk because that’s what happens to people when they become True Believers. Suddenly everything made sense! The world was powered by the rational human intellect! Everything that denied the mind was anti-life! Capitalism wasn’t merely the most productive economic system ever invented, it was the only Moral one! To take possession of your own life and live it for the good of your Self was the highest virtue! Here was an ideology that appealed to my inner geek and my inner pulpit thumper both. I am certain there was a period in my life when I couldn’t speak two words without going off about Randian ideology. It’s amazing I still have friends from that period.
People wonder how it is that so many gays become Randians since Rand herself was a vitriolic homophobe. But Rand’s morality of sex, that enjoying sex for its own sake was not only moral, but was morally validated by a couple’s mutual pleasure in each other’s bodies, is very appealing to a people who are taught to feel ashamed of any hint of sexual desire in themselves the moment puberty hits them. I saw Rand’s morality as a reasoned and high minded rejection of the notion of original sin drilled into me all throughout my Baptist childhood, that our bodies, that our feelings of sexual desire, were evidence of humanity’s fallen state. And it seemed to validate any sexual relationship, gay or straight, that sprang from mutual appreciation of the best within each other, body and soul. Rand declared that sexual joy for its own sake, taken between two people who wholeheartedly and completely desire each other was a righteous thing. And a lot of gay people, myself included, said ‘Amen!’
But therein, for me at least, lay the seeds of discontent as well. Rand taught that human emotions were the unconscious sum of the workings of our rational mind. This led her to view homosexuality as the result of bad thinking…faulty premises as she liked to put everything that didn’t fit into her philosophy. It led her acolyte and lover Nathanial Brandon to suggest in one essay that gay men were gay because they’d been subconsciously made afraid of women from being taught to idealize them but not desire them. Huh? As any gay person knows, and especially any gay person who ever tried to psychoanalyze themselves straight, your sexual orientation isn’t something you think yourself into. Or out of. And here was Rand and her "collective" dispensing pop psychology crap about homosexuality that not only gay folk themselves, but actual researchers, had known for decades was claptrap. We don’t think ourselves into our sexual orientations, they just are. But that kind of thinking about human consciousness was anathema to Rand.
How I managed to embrace an ideology that regarded human consciousness as entirely the province of the rational mind after reading and embracing Audrey I cannot explain. But there it was. Eventually the ideas I gleaned from Audrey did come back to me. I think it was while reading a statement of Rand’s that she was neither a supporter nor denier of the theory of evolution. Well of course, because evolution throws a great big monkey wrench into her model of human consciousness which acknowledged only the human capacity for rational thinking. Rand’s human being was every bit the separate creation that Adam was in Genesis. And that is not what a human being is. The moment I read her statement on evolution it got me to thinking about all the other ways I’d had to forgive Rand for making pronouncements about this and that which just seemed…well…stupid.
And that was how I found my way out the door to her church. The one thing I took from her that I still keep close to my heart to this day is the idea that morality must be reason-based. It must withstand the test of truth, conform to the evidence, logically and objectively work to benefit our lives. Oh that Rand herself had held to this idea, when championing her notion that unfettered capitialism is the only moral system.
Unfortunately…for all of us…she didn’t. And neither have her intellectual heirs…
This is because there are boys and girls among us who have never overcome the Randian infection. The Galt speech continues to ring in their ears for years like a maddening tinnitus, turning each of them into what next year’s Physicians’ Desk Reference will (undoubtedly) term an Ayn Rand Asshole (ARA). They constitute a relatively small percentage of Rand readers, these ARAs. But they make their reading count. Thanks to them, the Rand Experience is no longer limited to those who have read the books. It’s metastasized. You, me, all of us, we’re living it. Because it’s the ARA Army of antigovernment-antiregulation puritans who have spent the past three decades gleefully pulling the cooling rods out of the American economy. For a while, it got very big and very hot. Then it popped. And now the rest of us have to spend the next decade scaling the slippery slopes of the huge suppurative crater that was left behind.
Feeling fisted by the Invisible Hand of the Market lo these past fifteen months? Lost a job lately? Or half the value of your 401(k)? Or a home? All three? Been wondering whence the too-long-ascendant political and economic ideas and forces behind Greenspanism, John Thainism, blind Wall Street plunder, bankruptcy, credit-default swaps, Bernie Madoff, and the ensuing Cannibalism in the Streets? Then you, sir, need to give thanks to Ayn Rand Assholes everywhere—as well as the steely loins from which they sprang.
Reading Ritter’s GQ essay gave me a feeling (yes Ayn…a Feeling…) reminiscent of that moment gay folk experience when they discover they’re not the only ones like themselves. Well…if even Alan Greenspan can admit now, while standing there in the center of the wreakage of our ecomony, that perhaps he was wrong about all that deregulation stuff, maybe we’ll see some other big names come out of the closet as ex-Randian. We could be in for lots more fun denunciations of Randian claptrap.
There is a third book I discovered well after Audrey and Rand, which I still hold dear to my heart. Jacob Bronowski’s Science and Human Values. Bronowski clarified for me how knowledge, being a Process of discovery and refinement of models, was also at its core a deeply personal and creative act. He brought me to an understanding I really needed, about how the work of both scientists and artists had the same creative root, thereby bringing my inner techno geek and my inner art geek finally to some degree of peace with one another. But more importantly, he showed me how to get past my need for certainty. There is no perfect God’s eye view to be found, either in the bible or in Atlas Shrugged. Our knowledge exists in an area of imprecision we can never fully eliminate. Call it the Uncertainty Principal or, as Brownoski suggested in The Ascent of Man, the Principal of Tolerance if you like, but there is no God’s eye view. Quantum physics has proven that literally. But that does not mean we can never really know anything. It means we have to always bear in mind that area of uncertianty always tied up in our understandings, and that knowledge is a process of test and refinement, and not a thing we can safely stop questioning. We have to always take care to ask ourselves what we know, and how we know it. Always.
If I had to point to one thing that sums Rand up in her entirety for me it would be this: She wrote in Atlas Shrugged, "I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. FIRE, a dangerous force, tamed at his finger tips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come out from such hours. When a man thinks there is a spot of fire alive in his mind – and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression." Thereby turning cigarettes into a symbol for fans of her and her philosophy. It is a beautiful, eloquant image…the act of thinking, the hand holding fire. In 1974 Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer, quit smoking at that time, and never once for the rest of her life warned her readers about the dangers of cigarettes. When someone gives you, the artist, their love wholeheartedly, you need to love them back.
Pastor Joe Fuiten, who at first seems to be among Washington’s more sane Christian fanatics, concedes that the campaign to reject Referendum 71 has "fallen short of the glory of God." In a statement posted over at the Tacoma News Tribune in response to an editorial (posted in full after the jump), Fuiten blames his former brothers-in-bigotry—Gary Randall and Larry Stickney—for disappointing the Lord and for failing to oppress the gays.
Fuiten dives into a tirade against his former cohort Randall for being exactly what The Stranger exposed Randall to be long ago: a greedy bigot who takes money from naive evangelicals and puts little of their contributions into the campaign. Today, Fuiten writes, "On August 28th, Mr. Randall promised ‘All income is spent directly on printing, mailing, Internet promotion and going forward, media ads and expenses, rather than salaries or consulting fees.’ We were promised ‘Radio ads are running and more are on the way.’ As it turned out, according to the PDC reports, virtually nothing was spent on media ads and precious little on anything else."
What caught my attention reading the right reverend’s rant was he asked something in it I’ve just about Never heard any of these gutter crawling bigots for Jesus ask themselves in the aftermath of any of these anti-gay electoral battles:
Randall claimed the referendum was a miracle from God, but I have to wonder at that. In the Bible, the miracles of the loaves and fishes fed 5,000 with 12 baskets left over. In this "miracle" we didn’t have enough money to fund television ads but the gays had millions.
In the Bible, a miracle raised one who was sick. In this "miracle" our strategy was sick and then died in the election. I suppose such miraculous claims are made to hype up the faithful to work harder and give more. It just seems like the "miracle" that Randall claimed fell a bit short of its biblical counterparts.
Was the referendum an effort blessed by God? Did the Kingdom of God advance because of the effort? I have not heard of people giving their lives to Jesus.
[Emphasis mine…] This is a question I used to hear so often asked by the Baptists I grew up with that seeing it there in that bigot’s rant startled me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any anti-gay crusader ask that question after gay bashing a few hundred thousand or so of their neighbors at the ballot box. Did people come to Jesus? Were souls saved?
It’s been decades since I’ve heard preachers talk like that. Not just that taking their measure by the goal of winning souls to Christ, but to even question one’s actions in that light in the aftermath of battle…it’s startling in its utter abnormality. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of these knuckle-draggers question whether or not they did anyone or anything any damn good beyond putting the homos back in their place and seldom even that since The Homosexual Menace usually just dusts itself off and gets right back to attacking the sanctity of marriage and family and morality.
Did we do anyone any damn good? Who’s asking? Yes, it’s true, for the moment same-sex couples aren’t entirely strangers before the law in Washington state. But gay folk and their families…their parents, their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts, and all their friends, and all their loved ones, know that nearly half of the people who bothered to cast a ballot wanted their ring fingers cut off and I have a hunch that making homosexuals into scapegoats for every one of their straight neighbor’s cheap failures of moral character hasn’t done a whole fuck of a lot to bring anyone to Christ.
But it sure has made the sorry lot of you feel so fucking righteous though, hasn’t it? Until all the dust settles and the Homosexual Menace lays quietly on the floor nursing its wounds and you catch a glimpse of something that looks like a human being in it and everything gets quiet for a little while until you can work yourselves back up into a righteous frenzy again, so you don’t have to see that glimpse of something human in the Homosexual Menace again. Did anyone give their life to Jesus? Hahahahaha! Since when did that matter?
I did hear from a non-Christian friend commenting about one of his friends. He wrote, "I noticed the anger building in him, and tried to soften his approach, but he’s fed up. Referendum 71 has turned him against Christians." Neither is a Christian.
Well then I guess they’re not your neighbors then either, are they reverend?
Michael Duvall is a conservative Republican state representative from Orange County, California. While waiting for the start of a legislative hearing in July, the 54-year-old married father of two and family values champion began describing, for the benefit of a colleague seated next to him, his ongoing affairs with two different women. In very graphic detail.
For instance:
She wears little eye-patch underwear. So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday–a lot! And so she’ll, she’s all, ‘I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you’re dripping out of me!’ So messy!
Oh how lovely. Haven’t I already seen this movie?
As the OC Weekly reports, 
Duvall has "blasted" efforts to promote gay marriage, and got a 100 percent score from the Capitol Resource Institute, which describes its mission as to "educate, advocate, protect, and defend family-friendly policies in the California state legislature". In March, a spokeswoman for the group called Duvall "a consistent trooper for the conservative causes," adding that "for the last two years, he has voted time and time again to protect and preserve family values in California."
See…this kind of thing is funny for a while (oh look at what just popped out of another conservative’s closet…!), but then it gets so soul wearying. I really need to remember that morality and values and honor and decency really do represent more in our lives then convenient hooks to drive the rubes to the polls with…that there is more to the human status then this runt represents.
People need to look…really look…at what’s motivating all those moral crusaders of the right, waving scarecrows bearing their neighbor’s faces. They’re just pushing your buttons because they know it works. And why is that?
In July 2008, hotelier and developer Doug Manchester donated $125,000 to help gather signatures for a proposition that would ban same-sex marriage in California. The early money was crucial to getting the initiative—which ultimately passed—on the ballot. At the time, he told The New York Times that he made the donation because of “my Catholic faith and longtime affiliation with the Catholic Church,” which preferred that marriage remain between a man and a woman. Indeed, the Catholic Church has vehemently opposed gay marriage. Then again, it’s also not too keen on divorce.
On Oct. 9, 2008, Manchester ended 43 years, eight months and nine days of marriage to Elizabeth Manchester by moving out of their La Jolla abode. The couple spent the next several months trying to reach a quiet settlement on how best to distribute millions of dollars in cash and other assets. In July, those talks totally broke down, and Doug started playing financial hardball with Elizabeth, allegedly draining the couple’s shared accounts and stealing her mail…
Let me guess…it was all those same-sex marriages the California supreme court allowed to stand that caused their divorce. Manchester was a critical player in the battle over Proposition 8. Specifically, he provided a big chunk of the cash that helped it get on the ballot…
Developer Doug Manchester and other prominent San Diego County businessmen have given significant financial support to an initiative that would ban same-sex marriage targeted for the November statewide ballot.
Manchester’s $125,000 donation has prompted a gay-rights activist to urge a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the Manchester-owned San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.
In addition to Manchester, Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500; Robert Hoehn, owner of Hoehn Motors in Carlsbad, has given $25,000; and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, state records show.
Manchester said he was motivated by his strong Catholic faith.
“I personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman,” he said.
Donations from San Diego residents make up a significant part of the $1 million raised for the initiative.
That has allowed the campaign to hire professional signature gatherers to help collect the 700,000 signatures needed to qualify the constitutional amendment for the ballot, said Andrew Pugno, an attorney for Protectmarriage.com, which is sponsoring the amendment.
So now this prize bigot, after forcibly divorcing thousands of same sex couples in California, is having himself a messy divorce. Sweet. I hope your wife drags you over a bed of hot nails Doug. I hope she makes your life a living hell. And if you ever find yourself wondering why your private life has become so much fun and games for so many total strangers who don’t know you from Adam, go ask the jackass you see every morning in the bathroom mirror who it was that turned marriage into a scorched earth battleground and see if he doesn’t laugh in your face like I’m laughing in your face.
Jones And Yarhouse: We Will Report The Outcome No Matter How Embarrassing Our Badly Skewed Data Is To The Folks Who Are Paying Us For It
Last week the APA released its report on ex-gay therapy, to a somewhat muted response from the charlatans of the ex-gay political machine. Oh yes…we’re so very happy that the APA acknowledges that a patient’s religious needs must be taken into account, they said, politely skimming over the overwhelming evidence that trying to force gay people into straight jackets harms them deeply. You had to expect they wouldn’t leave it at that.
Now comes the "final" release of the Jones and Yarhouse "study" of ex-gay "therapy"…touted in that well known scientific peer reviewed publication, the Baptist Press…
Sure it does. You read through the brief article for a while and, of course, you see little nuggets like this one pop out at you:
Jones expressed frustration that the APA task force didn’t take their 2007 study seriously.
"They selectively apply rigorous scientific standards," he said…
Yes. Of course. It’s all a consperacy of the scientists to further the militant homosexual agenda. Oh…have I meantioned that Exodus paid Jones and Yarhouse for their labors? Naturally that didn’t affect their scientific rigorousity I’m sure.
Or…not…
While Jones and Yarhouse’s study appears to be very well designed, it quickly falls apart on execution. The sample size was disappointingly small, too small for an effective retrospective study. They told a reporter from Christianity Today that they had hoped to recruit some three hundred participants, but they found “many Exodus ministries mysteriously uncooperative.” They only wound up with 98 at the beginning of the study (72 men and 26 women), a population they describe as “respectably large.” Yet it is half the size of Spitzer’s 2003 study.
Jones and Yarhouse wanted to limit their study’s participants to those who were in their first year of ex-gay ministry. But when they found that they were having trouble getting enough people to participate (they only found 57 subject who met this criteria), they expanded their study to include 41 subjects who had been involved in ex-gay ministries for between one to three years. The participants who had been in ex-gay ministries for less than a year are referred to as “Phase 1″ subpopulation, and the 41 who were added to increase the sample size were labeled the “Phase 2″ subpopulation.
This poses two critically important problems. First, we just saw Jones and Yarhouse explain that the whole reason they did a prospective study was to reduce the faulty memories of “change experiences that happened in their pasts” — errors which can occur when asking people to go back as far as three years to assess their beginning points on the Kinsey and Shively-DeCecco scales. This was the very problem that Jones and Yarhouse hoped to avoid in designing a prospective longitudinal study, but in the end nearly half of their results ended up being based on retrospective responses.
[Emphasis mine] So basically their data was corrupted by the same half-assed sloppiness of the Spitzer study. Oh but wait…it gets better. Again from Burroway…
Whenever a longitudinal study is being conducted over a period of several years, there are always dropouts along the way. This is common and to be expected. That makes it all the more important to begin the study with a large population. Unfortunately, this one wasn’t terribly large to begin with; it started out at less than half the size of Spitzer’s 2003 study. Jones and Yarhouse report that:
Over time, our sample eroded from 98 subjects at our initial Time 1 assessment to 85 at Time 2 and 73 at Time 3, which is a Time 1 to Time 3 retention rate of 74.5%. This retention rate compares favorable to that of the best “gold standard” longitudinal studies. For example, the widely respected and amply funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health study reported a retention rate from Time 1 to Time 3 of 73% for their enormous sample.
The Add Health Study Jones and Yarhouse cite began with 20,745 in 1996, ending with 15,170 during Wave 3 in 2001-2002. But this retention rate of 73% was spread over some 5-6 years, not the three to four years of Jones and Yarhouse’s study.
What’s more, the Add Health study undertook a rigorous investigation of their dropouts (PDF: 228KB/17 pages) and concluded that the dropouts affected their results by less than 1 percent. Jones and Yarhouse didn’t assess the impact of their dropouts, but they did say this:
We know from direct conversation that a few subjects decided to accept gay identity and did not believe that we would honestly report data on their experience. On the other hand, we know from direct conversations that we lost other subjects who believed themselves healed of all homosexual inclinations and who withdrew from the study because continued participation reminded them of the very negative experiences they had had as homosexuals. Generally speaking, as is typical, we lost subjects for unknown reasons.
Remember, Jones and Yarhouse described those “experiencing difficulty with change would be likely to get frustrated or discouraged early on and drop out of the change process.” And so assessing the dropouts becomes critically important, because unlike the Add Health study, the very reason for dropping out of this study may have direct bearing on both questions the study was designed to address: Do people change, and are they harmed by the process? With as much as a quarter of the initial population dropping out potentially for reasons directly related to the study’s questions, this missing analysis represents a likely critical failure, one which could potentially invalidate the study’s conclusions.
[Emphasis mine] Harm…what harm? We didn’t speak to anyone who was harmed…
But look a tad more closely at what Jones and Yarhouse "know"…
On the other hand, we know from direct conversations that we lost other subjects who believed themselves healed of all homosexual inclinations and who withdrew from the study because continued participation reminded them of the very negative experiences they had had as homosexuals.
Healed. Healed. They believed themselves healed. Not cured. Not changed. But…healed. This is the language of religion, not science. And now you know where Jones and Yarhouse were coming from, and why they were good with allowing data into their study that could only weaken it from a scientific point of view.
It didn’t matter. They needed bodies to get a big enough sample size that they could plausibly go on with it and give the kook pews something they could wave around and claim that scientists were conspiring against them on behalf of the godless homosexual menace. They would have known going into it, that the APA would regard their study as flawed because they engineered the flaws into it themselves. Anyone who was serious about it would have gone back to their funding and told them they couldn’t do it without more first year subjects (a lot more), and more participation from the drop-outs. But they kept on with it anyway. Because knowing whether or not ex-gay therapy works wasn’t the point. Knowing whether or not it harms the very people it purports to help wasn’t the point. Having something to wave back at the APA was the point. That promise that they would report the results whether or not they embarrassed Exodus was as empty as the promise that "change is possible". Neither one had a money back guarantee.
[Update…] Yarhouse is identified Here, as an evangelical psychologist and graduate of Regent University. Regent is Pat Robertson’s baby. This man is as likely to be objective about ex-gay therapy as he is to be a flying pig. Jones is of Wheaton College, which is described by The Princeton Review’s Best 351 Colleges thusly: "If the integration of faith and learning is what you want out of a college, Wheaton is arguably the best school in the nation with a Christ-based worldview." Well this team really looks like a couple of objective researchers to me…
[Update again…] Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin goes another round with this "study"…finds it not too much different from the previous round…
In short, the Jones and Yarhouse study was funded and fully supported by Exodus and conducted by two researchers who were avid supporters of ex-gay ministries. They wanted to study 300 participants, but after more than a year, they could only find 57 willing to participate. They then changed the rules for acceptance in order to increase the total to 98. After following this sample for 4 years, 25 dropped out. Of the remainder, only 11 reported “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment.” Another 17 decided that a lifetime of celibacy was good enough.
It Would Have Worked Too, If It Wasn’t For You Meddling Kids…
Captain Obvious has a message for all you ATM thieves out there. If you’re planning on planting one of your fake ATM bank card skimming machines inside a hotel lobby, don’t do it at one that’s hosting a hacker’s conference…
As the conference was kicking off a few days ago, attendees noticed that at ATM placed in the Riviera Hotel, which plays host to the annual event, didn’t quite look right, according to a senior conference organizer who identified himself only as Priest. "They looked at the screen where there would normally be a camera," he said. "It was a little bit too dark, so someone shined a flashlight in there and there was a PC."
This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.
