Isaac Schrödinger

Full of win!

Steve Sailer writes about the US military which has become quite, er, liberal with its decorations. Just compare the photo of fabulous Petraeus there with, oh, some random guy from the Second World War.

Asian tigers

Tomorrow: Pakistan vs. India.

Who will win? Usually the team with the stronger bowling has the advantage. Thus, the Pakistanis have the edge. Though, history is not on their side since they have never defeated India in a World Cup match. Plus, India will be playing with added fury: defeat means knockout from the tournament. So, it should be very interesting.

Who knows, Afridi might even get a score that's positive!

Update
I was hoping for a thriller like the first final in 2007. Instead, the Pakistani batting crumbled and India had a comfortable target which they achieved with three overs to spare. Kohli, as usual, was solid. 

Now, the Pakistanis will face the Shane-Watson-powered Australians. I'd be very surprised if Pakistan manage to win that match.

T20I no. 277

Pakistan managed to win after their explosive top order committed collective suicide. They were reduced to 76/7. Umar Gul, of all people, provided the most spectacular batting performance of the match which in the end was just enough.

South Africa succumbed to spin but they also succumbed to two Umars who came of age. When Pakistan’s batsmen fritter away their opportunity, Umar Gul sometimes smites a few long balls as a release valve on everybody’s frustration.

More:

Dav Whatmore has work to do. He knows that. But his team are doing what they do best, strutting the fine and life-shortening line between success and failure.

It's very unlike the Australian way: crushing the opponents.

40% love the boot

Slate:

Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to ban the sale of 32-ounce sodas has hit up against some serious negative public opinion of late. First there was the Million Big Gulp March, in which a sprinkling of protestors showed up to protect the right to buy supersized beverages. More problematically for the mayor, a New York Times poll found that 60 percent of New Yorkers oppose the ban. The Times’ quote from Queens resident Bob Barocas bluntly summed up the opposition to the ban: “This is like the nanny state going off the wall.”

But fear not, there's always a better government solution.

Maybe it’s time to revisit a gentler approach to nudging New Yorkers to eat and drink more healthily by taxing sugar, fat, and other foods that help make America the fattest nation on earth.

That's the core view: Americans are children who need to be told what they can put in their fucking mouths gently nudged. I wonder what kind of nudging will take place when Obamacare comes into effect.

Probably the same

One has to give the guy points for honesty.

T20I no. 274

Bangladesh put up an impressive batting performance against Pakistan in the recent T20. They scored 175 runs in 20 overs. Given the bowling riches in the Pakistan team, that score should have been no more than 150.

No matter. The batsmen from Pakistan demolished the weak bowling attack from the Bangladeshis. The first wicked partnership of over a 100 runs practically sealed the win.

The Sperminator

The Daily Mail via Instapundit:

Chinese hospitals are introducing a new machine which can extract sperm for donors.

OMG.

A website which is selling the machine for $2,800 promoting it stating 'it can give patients very comfortable feeling.'

What exactly was wrong with the previous, er, method?

Dude!

Some greats make the funniest movies list here: The Big Lebowski, A Fish Called Wanda, and Grosse Pointe Blank.

Join the mob or die

Tambi Dude emailed this sad link:

Pakistani officials say they have opened an investigation into a businessman who has been accused of blasphemy after refusing to join protests over an anti-Islam video and allegedly trying to convince others also not to take part.

The land of the pure dumb.

Processed delight

Excellent use of photoshop at Chromasia. The perspective control and the deep red make the photo go BOOM.

A cut scene?

How the Dark Knight got his voice.

The journey begins

I consider it to be one of the greatest books ever written. Soon, we'll get to watch its translation on the big screen.

A well-dressed thug

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

"When some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected in such a way."

"My position is that freedom of expression, while it is a fundamental right and privilege, should not be abused by such people, by such a disgraceful and shameful act," he said.

He is referring to the anti-Islamic video. This guy, the appropriately named Ban, doesn't support freedom of expression since he doesn't comprehend the concept. Given his logic, the following statements cannot be "protected".

Muhammad, the man who over a billion Muslims think is a gold-standard role model, was an utter barbarian and a savage. Quite simply, Muhammad (Piss Be Upon Him) was an evil man.

Now, if Ban truly supported freedom of expression, then he would encourage those who disagree with me to fight back verbally. Start a blog, write to a newspaper or go on You Tube and tell the world just how and why I'm wrong. Of course, those who would like to slaughter me don't have any valid arguments on their side. That's why their only option to defeat those who speak the truth is to annihilate them.

This wretched, suffocating atmosphere currently exists in the Muslim world. Ban, instead of fighting against it, has just given them his approval. You see, it isn't the Islamic world that completely lacks any freedom of speech. It's that in the West, we have too much freedom.

Obama's doing fine

The Big Zero beats the last 11 American presidents.

Sentient being

A Transformers tatto! That's not going to look good with age.

Evil rises

Vox Day:

The Obama administration’s responsibility for the Libyan debacle is threefold. First, its support of the so-called Arab Spring was a disastrous strategic miscalculation. Ruthless dictators such as Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gadhafi had interests that were not necessarily in line with those of the United States, but neither were they particularly hostile to them anymore. And they both possessed a shared interest in keeping the global jihadists in line. As the assassination of J. Christopher Stevens less than one year after Gadhafi’s fall has shown, the removal of the restraining hands of the Arab dictators has freed the Muslim Brotherhood and inspired its cherished dream of a new caliphate.

Obama doesn't consider the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the problem. The coming years will paint him a bloody legacy.

USSA

Some religions are more equal than others.

Update
A classic profile in cravenness: The New York Times.

So not amused

That kitty is seriously pissed.

Crazy bitches

Kathy Shaidle:

Progressives either don’t know or care that a key component of Firestone’s theories turned out to be junk science of the most tragic sort. The Dialectic of Sex holds up the aforementioned Dr. Money’s findings on gender “fluidity” based upon his work with a twin named Bruce Reimer, whose penis had been rendered “unrescuable” during circumcision.

Dr. Money spied a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to test his radical theories in the real world. He assured Reimer’s parents that babies are born genderless, counseling them to raise Bruce as “Brenda.”

The result was terrible. The truth will out.

The next "Wall"?

On Virat Kohli:

When they first donned the Indian colours, the likes of Ms Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh were self-assured, resilient, fiercely talented and more. Today, though, Virat Kohli seems to have outmoded his predecessors in a manner that has made him the face of Indian cricket's next generation. He has scored 13 centuries in 90 ODI matches.

I've been impressed with his consistency. Pakistan has Umar Akmal and Shahid Afridi -- high impact players but sadly, and largely, unreliable. When they click, it's game over for the opposition but that is often too rare. Kohli almost always makes contributions to the team total. He's a player to watch over the next decade.

The best ever!

Jimmy Kimmel gets amusing reactions from people after they see the new iPhone.

Little brother of the D800

Nikon has announced the D600, a 24 megapixel full-frame camera. It's the lowest priced FX camera from them; only $2,100. Their previous 24 megapixel beast was priced at $8,000.

Spineless infidels

Jihad Watch:

Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thinks that it if Muslims respond to something with murderous violence, it is up to the non-Muslims to change the way they behave so as to accommodate them. And so eleven years after 9/11, terrorism well and truly won: now if any group wants anything, they know that all they have to do in order to get it is rampage and riot and kill.

The West has created quite a perverse incentive structure for itself.  

Also, this film didn't "spark violent protests." The film has been on YouTube since 2011. Someone found the film and thought it would serve as a pretext for attacks on Americans on September 11.

Precisely. Just like the Muhammad cartoons which weren't used as an excuse for mayhem for many months since so few people were aware. When some Muslims got hold of the drawings, they spread them in their world and then blamed the cartoonists for "inciting" violence.

Debt is not your friend

Katie Brotherton:

There is great irony in pursuing freedom through education only to be shackled by crushing debt.

What good is an education which doesn't illuminate the reality of modern life in the US? Simple knowledge of history and economics should be enough to show that tuition fees have seen an insane increase while salaries have been either stagnant or dropping thanks to inflation.

Link via Instapundit.

For those who see

The true nature of Islam is true!

Not equal

The Thinking Housewife:

The virility of black men is obviously a factor in their attractiveness to white women, just as the relative femininity of Asian women is attractive to white men.

A very good point.

The workers are doing fine

There has been a net increase of zero jobs in almost fours of the Obama presidency. It's stunning that the clown-in-chief is still popular enough to be running for a second term.

Link via Instapundit.

All you are belong to us!

That's basically what the Democrats seem to think.

Many wouldn't mind at all if profits were banned. One educated woman (ahem) says that we should have corporate losses.

Leave the tie alone

The Super Over is just silly. The result should have been simple: a tie!

The Aussies fought hard but the Pakistanis hold the edge when it comes to bowling. These two should perform well in the upcoming World Cup.

Trolltastic

A fellow named hidi left a comment on a post that's five years old:

Total bullshit. All of what you just said. Not one ounce of truth. I guess you are a white guy from the sates reporting on what uve heard in the news. Fox? CNN? I suggest you do your research from acutal people who know and live there.

Very amusing. My blog post about Islam and photography is "total bullshit". All of it! Yet, I quoted Islamic sources to showcase my point. Perhaps, hidi can point to some halal sources which shed a favorable light on art.

What say you, hidi?

Little fight from the Aussies

Cricinfo:

Akmal struck the only six of the match and finished unbeaten on 31 from 24 balls. He hit more boundaries on his own than the Australians did for their entire innings.

Ouch! The Aussies, surprisingly, haven't been doing well in T20Is.

Gimme gimme gimme!

America in only 50 years:

The growth of entitlement payments over the past half-century has been breathtaking. In 1960, U.S. government transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727% over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a year.

Stunning.

The Republicans have been worse than Democrats:

Notwithstanding the criticisms of "big government" that emanated from their Oval Offices from time to time, the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush presided over especially lavish expansions of the American entitlement state. Irrespective of the reputations and the rhetoric of the Democratic and Republican parties today, the empirical correspondence between Republican presidencies and turbocharged entitlement expenditures should underscore the unsettling truth that both political parties have, on the whole, been working together in an often unspoken consensus to fuel the explosion of entitlement spending.

The Greatest Ponzi Scheme of All Time will end. The only question is when.

Link via Instapundit.

The proper color

What a splendid idea:

Brazil’s government has enacted one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws, requiring public universities to reserve half of their admission spots for the largely poor students in the nation’s public schools and vastly increase the number of university students of African descent across the country.

Steve Sailer on this stupidity:

Brazil differs from the United States in that eligibility isn't simply based on self-declaration. They have panels to eyeball applicants, famously once putting identical twins in different categories. As I've mentioned before, it would make a good Brazilian reality TV show in which people try to look black enough to get into college and white enough to get past the velvet rope into an exclusive night club.

Marriage is elastic

It's a carnival:

Three Brazilians in love have their nation up in arms over whether their relationship, now enshrined in a three-way marriage, is legal. The public notary who conducted their marriage says there's no reason the threesome – or "thruple", as the internet has charmingly labelled it – shouldn't enjoy the same kinds of rights imparted upon two people who get hitched.

Vox Popoli:

As I pointed out, correctly, once you start messing around with the nouns in "one man + one woman", you eliminate all the grounds for not messing around with the numbers too. Besides, the multiculti idiots have no choice but to support polygamy, since their precious third-worlders both practice and demand it.

Thus feminism dies, the victim of its own political success.

Victory has defeated them.

Better than empty

A reader at The Thinking Housewife:

My husband and I are happy to be expecting our fourth child in seven years of marriage. Unfortunately, I rather dread telling most of my family members. We are Protestant, and the idea of “openness to life” has not been embraced for at least three generations, as far as I call tell. I wonder if you or any of your readers have clever answers to the questions I am sure to receive such as, “Oh no! What are you going to do?,” “You’re not having anymore after this, are you?!” and the ever popular, “You DO know how that happens, right?”

So sad. I don't get why strangers would even take the time to comment or ask such dumb questions. The sniping by relatives is even worse. As long as crushing debt or welfare is not applicable, then there ought not be any issue.

Kids are considered a blessing in my older culture. I grew up with five siblings. Some of my cousins have more. I can't think of a single negative comment directed at the parents for their large families.