Zeitgeist, the Movie

Ok, this one covers most of what you need to know about politics and religion. If you have never been exposed to this information before I guarantee it will blow your mind. *



* Even if you have, it will anyway. Click the screen icon for full screen viewing and enjoy!

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Republicans Love Porn

Republicans are known for: Family values? Clean livin'? Above prurient interest? Er... not so much. Republicans are the most voracious consumers of porn in the US. Expensive porn, too. The kind you have to go out of your way and pay for in order to get. The study is based on credit card purchases of porn website subscriptions.

Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

It only wasn't ten-out-of-ten because McCain lost the election.

Iraqis Don't Mind If You Kill Their Families

Iraqi's don't care much if you destroy their cities and slaughter their families, according to this guy, Fredrick W. Kagan. Fred's just one of the highly paid human pustules at the American Enterprise Institute.

Human Pustule Fred Kagan

It really is a shame there isn't some way to slaughter this guy's family, destroy his country and demolish his home and then put an assault rifle to his temple, just to see if he does any "bitching" about it. You know, to determine a baseline. To see if this non-bitching thing is only endemic to Iraqis like he says it is.

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But of course the madness will go on anyway

Oh, wow man, Immanuel Kant is completely full of shit.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2008) — Ohio State University scientists are finding that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the aging brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.

Their research suggests that the development of a legal drug that contains certain properties similar to those in marijuana might help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Though the exact cause of Alzheimer’s remains unknown, chronic inflammation in the brain is believed to contribute to memory impairment. Wenk’s work has already shown that a THC-like synthetic drug can improve memory in animals. The most recent research on rats indicates that at least three receptors in the brain are activated by the synthetic drug, which is similar to marijuana

Any new drug’s properties would resemble those of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive substance in the cannabis plant, but would not share its high-producing effects.

Or you could, you know, smoke some pot now and then.  If science took just half the energy they spend trying to take the magic out of pot and spent it on real problems the world would be a better place. But it's progress of a sort. I guess.

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Are they sure they want to go to Mars?

This occurs to me frequently when I try to plug in a cable and it won't reach where it has to go, or I drop it and it catches on the one thing behind the desk that could possibly snag it: If this happened in space, we'd all die.

Space is full of stuff that stands a good chance of killing you even if it's working correctly as far as you can tell. They've got another tube of lubricant so the whole mission might not be wasted over a trifle, but it emphasizes how far away the repair shop is when you're in space, even if it's only 100 miles up. And land 'o' goshen, but what makes them think they can build a spaceship that will last all the way to Mars and back when they can't even make a grease gun that works?
And I wouldn't want to be the one who lost her tool kit first day on the job. What a rookie... ah ha ha ha haaaa! With luck it won't drift back into the station and knock off anything important.

And speaking of science, there's some cool x-rays over at Wired. I had some fun with this one:

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Remind me: what century is this?

Did I say century? Because I meant millennium. From CNN:

Holocaust survivors to Mormons: Stop baptisms of dead Jews

Not that I care. According to my religion you are *all*deluded fools condemned to miserable pseudo-life.
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Never thought I'd see the day.

Congratulations to 52% of American voters.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. Gary Trudeau is a genius. His cousin was P.M. of Canada, you know. Oh yes, for a long time.

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