Month: April 2017

 
From PZ Myers:

We’ve had a run of good movies over the last couple of weeks here in Morris. Well,
“good” in the sense of thought-provoking and well made, but actually they were both reduced to simple, small-scale ideas executed terrifyingly.

Get Out has been getting all these rave reviews, and they’re deserved — it’s a horror movie that races along, and actually is horrifying. However, if you’re expecting an innovative story, you’re going to be disappointed: this is the old degenerate-family-in-remote-location-murdering-people story. You’ve already seen it in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, even crappy cheap ripoffs like that House of Wax movie with Paris Hilton. The only twist here is that the evil family is white — wait, no, they’re always white. The twist here is that they’re not inbred redneck hillbillies, they’re nice, normal-on-the-outside prosperous upper-class white professional people who live in a lovely, tasteful mansion in the country. Also, there is no Final Girl, but instead, a Final Black Man. Otherwise, it’s a perfect fit to the standard template for this kind of movie.

It does its job, though.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

According to an email I received yesterday, my present life is NOT how I present it within the pages of this blog. A Christian man by the name Nathan Smith says I am lying when I say I am happy. He also says my life is absent of compassion, freedom, and happiness, despite me saying differently. Smith challenges my manhood, saying that if I truly was a brave man I would ask a cognitive behaviorist to render their opinion on my written work. You mean the secular psychologist I see every two weeks, the man who reads my writing and encourages me to keep telling my story?

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From The Intersection of Madness and Reality:

Whatever anyone may feel about them, protests are not situations of jest, imitation, or uninformed parody. Protests deal with people’s lives on different levels. If the protest doesn’t typically deal with wellbeing, it deals with the right to life. With that understood, protests are not something that should be imitated for the sake of promoting anything. This type of act only makes a mockery of serious situations that should not be touched.

Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi. I am beginning to question the intellect of your marketing department

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Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

 
From Green Eagle:

And guess which one it is. Here’s a hint, from Fareed Zakaria on CNN, that bastion of the liberal press:

“I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” last night”

And here, I thought he became President when he cheated his way into enough electoral votes, or when he was sworn in on January 20th, or most recently when he managed to read a speech to Congress, in between episodes of making an ass out of himself. But no, I guess it took the meaningless bombing of an air field in some country filled with brown people, after arranging with two vicious dictators that it would do no real damage, for Trump to become President for real.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

There is something wrong and unsettling in a culture in which a large segment of its population demonizes its highest achievers and greatest benefactors as villains. Such is the case with the anti-economic inequality movement.

A “report” emerged that purports to calculate that the “World’s eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%.”

…

The problem with these kinds of surveys is that they fail to properly calculate wealth. That is, they fail to calculate the value of the created wealth put into the hands of consumers. This survey, like many others, fails to distinguish between money, which is a claim on wealth, and real wealth—the goods and services that money can buy. You can’t just consider wealth held in the form of shares of stock or bank accounts or dollar bills or even gold coins. You must consider the big picture. A little introspection quickly exposes the fallacies behind reports like this one. Here’s what I mean.

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From Michael John Scott, Florida Certified Firearms Instructor at MadMikesAmerica:

A National Rifle Association (NRA) employee was hospitalized Thursday after accidentally shooting himself during firearms training at NRA headquarters in Virginia, NBC Washington reports.

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