Oklahoma: Filling in the Blank

So why am I even here in Oklahoma? Why do I continue to live in a state that can’t even kill people on purpose cleanly, accept federal dollars to improve the health care provided to its citizens, resist electing the most extreme kind of dumb-asses the country has to offer, etc?

It’s simple: I was born here, my kids live here and if I were to just write the state off… well, the terrorists would win.

It wasn’t but a year or two ago when a co-worker came to me to ask if it wasn’t true that “Obamacare” required that children be injected with a microchip (“the Mark of the Beast”). 70+ percent of the voters approved a statewide referendum to prohibit ‘Sharia Law’ here. As many people that claim, nationally, their belief that the Hebrew God created the world less than 10,000 years ago, I’d bet that almost twice as many Oklahomans believe the same. If a plurality of my statesmen aren’t home-schoolers that are ‘hooked on phonics’, they wish they had the patience/resources to be.

Oklahoma’s people are largely an ignorant and fearful folk: they fear negroes (especially the President), non-European immigrants, change, secular anything,  books, the commie United Nations, most new ideas and the Big Scary World.  Believe me, I know about Oklahoma. I was born here, grew up here and stayed here.

Believe me: it was not always this FUCKING STUPID A PLACE TO LIVE.   No, the Dark Flame of Ignorance has been carefully tended and stoked to make Oklahoma a Beacon of Idiocy:

• Governor Mary Frick’n Fallin, the adulterous darling of the Tea Party, has been paid to oppose damned near everything that could make things better for this state while her spoiled brat daughter openly mocks Native Americans
• Senator James Mountain Inhofe, who has for years been a global laughing-stock over his conspiratorial thinking on human sexuality, climate change and the dang-nabbed 20th Century in general
• The numb-skull state representative that put a 10 Commandments monument on the grounds of the capitol but couldn’t get the spelling right
• Another cretin on the state payroll that campaigned against using human fetuses in food products
• The list goes on and on!

So why am I still living in Oklahoma?

Some amazing things have happened here.
I have fond memories of ‘liquor by the wink’.
Once upon a time, we had the highest per capita membership in the Communist Party in the nation.
Cannabis was once the number one cash crop.
The musicians are amazing here.
The state bird, the scissor-tail flycatcher, is cool.
Gas prices are low.
Maybe I’m too lazy to move and if I did only the Crazies would be left!

Fuck Governor Fallin and all her kind.
Fuck the followers of Oral Roberts and his fellow travellers.
Fuck the Koch Brothers and their veinal scheming.
Fuck all the manipulators of well-meaning Okies! Their hearts are pure, but —

I’m staying here to fill in the blank, the blank that they told me to erase and write something else in (but I won’t!).
I’m staying here to remind them of every time they are so terribly wrong that they pretend like they weren’t.
I’m the fly that stays clear of their patent medicine ointment.
I’m no Tom Joad, but for crying out loud, if people like me left this state, what would be left besides the easily led?
I am an Oklahoman, and I’m  staying here whether they like it or not: I want to rub them the wrong way.

Maybe I’m staying just to annoy the rest of ‘us’… because ‘we’ need to be annoyed.
What they’ve done to us shouldn’t be forgiven or forgotten or excused.
Those bastards did it for money and power and greed, straight up.
I wanna be here to watch the payback, if it ever comes.

 

 

Happy Easter and Other Stuff

Look out, Leonardo, I’m adding a new nerd-crush! The obscure genius of Cornelius Drebbel: Renaissance “engeneere” or “vulgar mechanic”?

Truth is one of the first casualties of War. Russian press harangued the Kiev transitional government as being controlled by neo-nazis, then leaflets demanding that Jews register were reported in pro-Russian province.A UN report urges all parties to knock it off because people will do horrendous things when they think they are right.

In other news, Mike Huckabee compares the U.S. unfavorably to North Korea. Sharp as a knot-hole, that guy!

“Afghan opium cultivation has reached a record level, with more than 200,000 hectares planted with the poppy for the first time, the United Nations says“.

Bloomberg has a nice visual presentation, “How Americans Die“, that gives pause for thought. Why is suicide taking such a huge statistical slice out of most age groups?

The (non)persecution of the Goddists: If you can get a New Jersey vanity license plate that reads “BAPTIST,” why not one that reads “8THEIST”? (The answer is ‘you can, but you have to be willing to sue’).

Research on coaxial lasers shows promise in triggering rain and lightning on demand.

If only they were furriners, dagnabbit! The cos-play convention of armed lunatics in support of Cliven Bundy’s decades-long criminal activity offers a unique opportunity for federal authorities to identify and interdict a butt-load of domestic terrorists. I’m sure the opportunity will be wasted.

 

A Quiet Sunday Post

{Much has been in transition here at Elwood Manor: a job change, obligatory after-work coursework of an unhelpful nature, various demands on my limited resources and some general readjustments. These have conspired to limit my inane stream of posts, but I’ve caught up on things (for now at least), so here’s a meager offering of tidbits I’ve found interesting of late}.

Slate’s feature on Your Inner Fish looks at why religious nutjobs Creationists hate the Tiktaalik. This Devonian example of tetrapod evolution had both lungs and gills, could probably do push-ups and had a face only a mother tiktaalik could love.  Is it because it’s a prime example of an organism transitioning between life in the water and life on land, or that it was discovered pretty much where geology and evolutionary theory predicted it would be that pisses them off so?

In other news of the backward, they’re still trying to overturn the consensus that the Earth orbits the Sun. You can’t make this stuff up… which is what makes a parody like this one so damned cutting! It only hurts because it comes out of Kansas!

Lots of sturm und drang over a scrap of ancient papyrus in which there is discussion of Jesus’ wife. My reading of the fragments makes it sound more like a hypothetical discussion, for what it’s worth, though I seem to remember Sunday School discussions indicating that Jesus wouldn’t have been called ‘rabbi’ (teacher) unless he was married. So He could walk on water, but marriage is a bridge too far for some? Given the Paulian attitude toward women (and sex in general), it’s amazing that this religion found any foothold at all.

Of course you don’t have to be a backwoods snake-handler to screw with science, as Greg Schiller can attest. He’s the science teacher at LA’s Cortines School of Visual & Performing Arts who was suspended in February because some idiot thought two of his students’ science projects looked “dangerous”. Maybe it’s only a coincidence that Greg Schiller is also the teachers union representative at the school and had been dealing with disagreements with administrators over updating the employment agreement under which the faculty works? Parents and students are rallying around Mr. Schiller. Let’s hope they can overcome the LA school system’s apparent stupidity and/or duplicity.

The Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL is one of the really big software DOH!s in recent memory. XKCD gave the best quick explanation out there. Heartbleed.com has a long-form exploration.   Bloomberg reports that the NSA had exploited the bug for years, but the NSA denies it (predictably). We all know that the NSA never lies and is always right, right?

 

Selecting for Extremophiles

Missed delivery note of the future, thanks to Amazon Prime Air.

SPACE BUGS! Say hello to Tersicoccus phoenicis, “isolated in two different clean rooms, and nowhere else”. It’s so genetically novel they are calling it a new bacteria genus. And it’s prossibly already hitched a ride to Mars.

Theres a nice bit on selecting for the uber-woodchuck. NPR interview with William Alexander  about his book, The $64 Tomato.

China’s “Jade Rabbit” lunar rover is on it’s way! Packed with a ground-piercing radar, cameras, spectrometers and plutonium-powered heaters, the rover lifted off at 1730 GMT (12:30 p.m. EST) Sunday.

The new ‘flying jellyfish’ drone video just reminds me of a film I saw in health class as a child.

For the first time, genetic information has been copied inside a simple synthetic cell designed to mimic primordial life. Happy/scared time!

Sorry, but for a great number of reasons humans aren’t at all likely to be chimp-pig hybrids as a kooky paper claims. PZ Meyers has thoughts on the MFAP Hypothesis. The peer-review process hangs it’s head in shame!

South Park provides this amazingly concise explanation of evolution:

Humans are extremophiles too, my friend! Listen to Rick Santorum make a First Amendment argument in favor of religious discrimination and be amazed!

Here’s a mashup of GOP trogs citing the Bible to deny climate change, featuring Oklahoma’s gift to comedy, Sen. James Mountain Inhofe. Kind of explains a lot, don’t you think?

And Jeb Bush confirms he hasn’t the honesty or reasoning skills to be president by accusing that Socialist Kenyan president of closing the Vatican Embassy in retaliation for Catholic opposition to the ACA. Ironically, the process of moving the embassy from its current location to the compound at the U.S. Embassy to Italy began under Jeb’s brother, President George W. Bush and will save $1.4 million a year. IT’S TRANNY!

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, this little amusement for you:

Something Slimy This Way Comes

Well, there is “fraud”, and then there’s “employer-enabled fraud”. What I saw yesterday looked like the latter type.

I’ve written before about The Management Family’s infatuation with sleazy, scammy MLM schemes. It’s like an addiction with these people. We’ve been internally spammed about everything from real estate to weight loss products, magical rubber bracelets and a “full-body MOLECULAR cleanse!” over the last few years.

So, last week we got this weirdly worded, crudely formatted, all-employee email about a supposed ‘benefit meeting’:

Good Afternoon Everyone,

 Legal Shield Benefit Meeting !!!

We will be having a benefit meeting in the
Lunch Room on October 30, 2013.
We will be having 2 meeting that day
                        11:30 & 12:30.
Lunch will be provided for all that attend the meeting.
There will be a  “FLAT SCREEN T.V. GIVEAWAY”

Everyone that attends the meeting will have a chance to WIN…. The FLAT SCREEN T.V.
We will have the drawing at the end of the 2^nd meeting.

If you plan on attending the meeting, I  will be posting a flyer at the time clocks with a sign-up sheet in order to get head count for lunch that day.

      FLAT SCREEN
      GIVEAWAY !  

                 WIN IT!!  

        NEED TO BE @ LUNCH & LEARN
      WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013
                    FREE LUNCH
               11:30AM & 12:30 pm
             NICE “HOLIDAY GIFT” 

And I’m left thinking “Gee, I’ve never been to a legitimate benefit meeting that had to offer free pizza and a door prize drawing before. Do you think it might be a scam?” It was hard not to speculate on some sort of connection between these outside scammers and The Management, given the rosy presentation and history of MLM addiction in The Management Family.

Yep, the scam-artists formerly known as “Pre-Paid Legal” (PPL) are now doing business as “LegalShield™”. Apparently people were starting to get wise to them so they changed their name. I sure can’t fault them for that logic! How are you going to keep fleecing the rubes if you don’t change your name occasionally?

See, I’ve had dealings with PPL in the past. Their crack lawyer failed to handle a simple, bogus, out of statute collection action a few years back, leaving me stuck with a default judgement. I found out about this little back-stab two years later when nothing could be done about it, and when I complained to PPL the answer I got was a simple ‘fuck you’.

Yeah, I know all about these vile ass-clowns.

So, of course I went to the ‘benefit meeting’, and as I listened to The Management put in a good word for the scammer’s product before the pitch-man started his spiel, it made me feel more than a little sick.

Then the pitch-man took the hand-off and started stoking paranoia about how the law was out to get us, and how O.J. only went to jail when he ran out of money, and how LegalShield™ was going to save all our asses! LegalShield™ would make 80% of our traffic tickets magically go away! We could drunk-drive with confidence and be safe from vehicular homicide charges, because they’d handle everything! Child custody and child support worries would be a thing of the past! It was all covered by LegalShield™. Just sign on the dotted line… suckers!

As he was lining up his closing spiel I had to bring up my experience with his firm. Of course his stammered answer was “that could never happen now”. I stood up, expressed my opinion that this was a fraudulent representation for a bogus product/service/company and I walked out of the meeting.

Sure, I looked like the asshole that bad-mouthed the nice man that brought free pizza and a chance to win a TV: so be it. When the victims realize just how far the verbal representations made by the sleazy pitch-man are from what PPL-LegalShield™ membership actually provides they’ll really want to cock-punch that guy; I’ll happily hold him down while they do.

Hats off to Eric, who made a point of asking to see the actual contract… and, wouldn’t you know that the pitch-man didn’t seem to have one with him! ‘HEY TRUST ME, THAT’S ALL AVAILABLE ON-LINE!‘, said the nice man that brought free pizza and gived a chance to win a free TV. What an ethical cockroach! But I know he still snagged at least two victims that didn’t bother to see what they were paying for before signing up, and I fear there may have been more victims that swallowed his deceptive presentation.

Here’s some info on this “legitimate business” at MediaMoogle and ConsumerAffairs. I’d take it as a bad sign when such a vast number of complaints about PPL-LegalShield™ are made by their former sales force that got screwed on their commissions and so forth. When they treat their sellers that shitty, just imagine how good being a client must feel (obligatory LOL).

This YouTube user has a few thoughts on the quality of services provided to him by PPL-LegalShield™. His follow up video covers the very disreputable efforts to suppress his negative review of this very disreputable firm. This is pretty much par for the course when dealing with this mob of MLM vermin.

Gods and Monsters

Dark Horse has launched a new comic book series where atheist superheroes protect the Earth from supernatural forces they don’t even believe in.

Here’s 11 horror movies that are incredibly scary because of what they say about humanity. I thought they all were!

Rare non-face palm news out of Indian Territory! The first 24 hour automated library in the U.S. has been installed in Norman OK!

The robot apocalypse has been postponed! In front of dozens of journalists yesterday in Hong Kong, DARPA’s 330 pound Atlas robot lost its balance and broke its ankle during a demonstration of walking.

Law of Urination: all mammals empty their bladders over the same duration.

A new study published in the American Journal of Medicine finds that heavy pot smokers tend to be slimmer than former marijuana users and non-smokers. So that’s what happened to my 30 inch waist!

Poor children are now the majority in American public schools in South, West. Standardized testing won’t fix that.

Yes, Evil Knievel endorsed a scooter-chair in his declining years. Sad, isn’t it?

Authority > Leadership. “Authority in the Village from Italy to Ireland“.

There’s an interesting “sedition petition” that’s got over 40,000 signatures.

At a loss for words? Try the Tea party Insult Generator! It’s powered by actual insults spewed on John Boehner’s Facebook wall!

Beloved Imbeciles

“The righteous hates falsehood, but the wicked brings shame and disgrace” – (Proverbs 13:5). Yea and verily, my own district’s Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Pekoe and Orange Pekoe) issued the following statement on his vote to continue the government shutdown Wednesday night:

I voted ‘No’ on the bill to raise the debt ceiling without any spending controls and fund the government without providing any relief to millions of Americans being harmed by Obamacare. The President’s policy of funding all of the government or none of the government violates the principles of a representative republic and is devastating to a nation historically governed by consensus.

Yep, them Obamacare casualties are just littering the streets, aren’t they?  This kind of hyperbole, coupled with the fact that Bridenstine is known to be able to both read and write, is why I conclude that he is a very lazy liar that just doesn’t care to sound even a little credible. Because, hey, TYRANNY!, right?

Mr. Bridenstine doesn’t seem to comprehend that, under the Constitution of this representative democracy, there are just two ways to undo the Affordable Care Act (since the Supreme Court has already killed the “declare it unconstitutional” gambit):

1. Pass a bill in congress to overturn the ACA, and have the president sign it into law, or
2. Pass a bill in congress to overturn the ACA, have the president veto it, then override the veto by two-thirds vote in both houses of congress

It’s a little odd to have to explain this to a congressman, even a spurious ‘wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross‘ rookie like Bridenstine, but he’s just a mendacious little tool and not an overly bright one at that. Go Okie voters!

Rep. Tom Cole was the only member of Oklahoma’s all-Republican delegation voting to re-open the government. I’ve lauded Rep. Cole in the past for being the most pragmatic member of the Oklahoma delegation, by far. We might not agree on much, but with Cole you won’t get an argument about the sky being “up” or 2+2 being equal to 4. This sets him head and shoulders above the rest.

On the other hand, in the Senate, crazy old Tom Coburn (R-Rampant Lesbian) was among the 18 senators who voted against the measure. Sen. Jim Inhofe, recovering from surgery to remove a scientific hoax, was unable to vote but released this statement:

The president has taken care of his pet projects while letting the most foundational elements of the Constitution — from budgeting to national security — sit on the back burner. Because of his leadership, we have operated from one crisis to the next. It happened once again when he and Majority Leader (Harry) Reid held Congress hostage with the debt ceiling in order to forge a deal that falls short of anything worthy of conservative support. It’s time this ends and my colleagues face the overdue discussion on the scope and size of federal government.

Does that parse as being as disconnected from reality to you as it did for me? Maybe it was only the Demerol talking, though with Inhofe how would you ever know?

The Big Fall and the Big Fail

It’s been one year since Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner made the highest jump of all time. The Red Bull Stratos project was part science, part adventure, and of course part caffeinated beverage promotion overload.

31 Levitating Vehicles From the Dawn of the Hovercraft. Hey, I remember the GEM-1 from the Weekly Reader!

“The People of the West”, a 3rd century Chinese report, lists products of interest from the Roman Empire.

Ingo Potrykus developed “Golden Rice” to combat blindness and death in children by supplying 60 per cent of the vitamin A they need in a typical daily helping of rice. He’d like to live long enough to see it save lives despite protests over GM crops.

By side-stepping IP security, a pair of researchers have uncovered more than two dozen vulnerabilities in products used in critical infrastructure systems that would allow attackers to crash or hijack the servers controlling electric substations and water systems.

Oxford University genetics professor’s DNA tests on “yeti” hair samples gathered in the Himalayas are a “100% match” with an ancient polar bear sample that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago – a time when the polar bear and closely related brown bear were separating as different species.

Problem-Solving Parrots Understand Cause and Effect. Scientists speculate two factors may influence why some animal species are smarter than others: how cognitively demanding it is for the animals to obtain food and the social complexity of the animals’ society.

Here’s a slightly dated gallery of non-problem solving parrots… I think they are related to the dodo, somehow.

Aren’t you glad to know they make (non-alcoholic) wine for cats? Nyan Nyan Nouveau.

Clues to the origin of language: a stuffed python on a fishing line has revealed that chimpanzee alarm calls have intentional meaning rather than being involuntary expressions of emotion (as seen in lower primates like jackanapesis teapartius).

The ancients had gods and pyramids to tame the sky’s mystery. We have Star Axis, a masterpiece forty years in the making.

The Houston Chronicle is suffering some regret over its endorsement of Ted Cruz, the poor dears!

Lord Humungus would like to put all this recent unpleasantness aside, at least until January. And he wants a certain head, for decorative/ceremonial purposes.

Mr. Cause, meet Mr. Effect

The movie we’ve all been waiting for! “Hell No!”, the sensible horror movie.

Right out of “Creepshow“: Russian team recovered a half-tonne chunk of the space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk earlier this year, but they broke it.

What fact do you accept intellectually, but still feels “wrong” to you? It’s quite a discussion over at Reddit.

A herpes drug can make people with renal failure insist they are dead – a condition called Cotard’s syndrome – and may provide insights into consciousness.

Here’s what the fox really says, Ylvis.

Connecticut College students and a professor of neuroscience have found “America’s favorite cookie” is just as addictive as cocaine – and just like most humans, rats go for the middle first.

Donkey Baseball (which is, as the name implies, baseball played while riding on donkeys) became a popular fad in the 1930s. In 1934, William Beck became the first fatality for the fledgling sport.

How the Bible and YouTube are fueling the next frontier of password cracking.

A drug similar to ketamine has been shown to work as an antidepressant, without the psychosis-like side effects associated with the party drug.

Billionaire businessman Richard Branson last week spoke on CNN against the ‘War on Drugs’, labeling it “an abject failure”. Speaking in purely business terms, Branson said that if he “had a company that had failed for 60 years I would have closed it down 59 years ago”.

Q: How many cops does it take to throw a suspect down a flight of stairs? A: None; he tripped. More police-state fun! 

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” -Mark Twain

Besides the train-wreck the GOP and their fellow travelers are causing, the U.S. really doesn’t have a debt crisis. What we do have is a crazy crisis!

More than half of low-wage workers employed by U.S. fast-food restaurants rely on public assistance to get by, possibly due to laughably low wages.

So, let me get this straight: you voted for werewolves to dismantle the government and now you can’t get any help? SD ranchers demand to know “Where’s that gubbermint we voted against?”. Pardon my shocking lack of sympathy.

Here’s the plotting of the “Putz Putsch” conspirators, caught on video. Shipping all those teabagger pukes to Gitmo is better than they deserve.

Painting a Rosier Picture

A study of hand prints on cave walls suggests much of Paleolithic cave art was created by women, a Penn State archaeologist says.

The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe is an enthralling new history that argues that Druids created a sophisticated ancient society to rival the Romans.

Just over a thousand years ago, someone sealed up a chamber in a cave outside the oasis town of Dunhuang, on the edge of the Gobi Desert in western China. The chamber was filled with more than five hundred cubic feet of bundled manuscripts. Discovered in 1900, the manuscripts are now being carefully digitized… because that’s what we do with old manuscripts.

Today viral jokes spread by email, Twitter, or blogs. But in 1910, jokes went viral by telegraph.

A loving look back on the age of airships from The Atlantic.

Is the term “dickhead” more endocentric than exocentric? One linguist’s opinion.

There’s always fun reading at The Poison Review! Take, for instance, “Is that a jellyfish on your leg or are you just glad to see me?  Priapism and Irukandji Syndrome“.

Get ready for the new, improved botulinum H!

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which ‘support the possibility’ the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.

Not winning! New WaPo/ABC Poll: 74% of Americans Disapprove of GOP Shutdown Craziness.

False equivalence: how ‘balance’ makes the media dangerously dumb. We’ve seen it in climate change reporting; we see it in shutdown coverage.

“On letters from climate-change deniers” carefully explains the Los Angeles Times’ decision to not print letters to the editor that dispute global warming: “it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy”.

Aorta-gate! Senator Jim Inhofe falls prey to liberal Hollywood “Theory of Circulation” hoax, gets bypass surgery from Illuminati “doctors”!

“Veterans Slam Tea Party Politicians For Hijacking Protest Against War Memorial Closures“. Apparently, failed teabag-rats will even turn on veterans when they need a publicity fix.

Shocking terrorist attack on GOP office! These evildoers will stop at nothing!

Nature Plays Her Little Jokes

From the “You Know Nature Hates You When Department”! Absurd Creature of the Week: This Prehistoric Elephant Had a Huge Spork for a Mouth.

Breaking News! Kid Not Getting In Strange Van For Anything Less Than King-Size Bar (TheOnion)

A new ‘shape memory’ metal  is reported in the journal Nature.

Five ways to rob a bank using the internet.

In which Vitriol is put to the Test -or- how perverse is that incentive, anyway? All hail Wondermark!

A neato permaculture site: Permies (Thanks, Terry!) and here’s how to make acorn flour.

A whacko conspiracy site: Presscore. It’s Canadian but completely uncivil! Maybe they want us to think they’re Canadian, hmmmm….

Insights into the Personalities of Conspiracy Theorists: distrust of authority and low agreeableness are among factors underlying the willingness to believe.

Goblinbooks is always a favorite with me. The quote is from Carpenter’s Halloween, in case you didn’t recognize it, and the face is from under some mossy rock I guess.. Scary!