The Nut Point of View

Free College

2007-01-06T12:49:00.000-05:00

I know I've completely abandoned this place and no one will ever read this, but this is too interesting not to post. Apparently MIT has decided to make ALL their courses that happened over the past few years available online. Now if you have an urge to learn pretty much anything about anything, you can just download a whole course. This seems to me to completely eliminate the need to go to college when you can DL courses from a better college for free, but people still insist on you have that pesky degree....

Why a "Jury of your peers" Sucks

2006-10-24T22:57:00.000-04:00

I found this quote on the JREF forum and was struck by how true it is. So here you go, ladies and gentlemen, an excerpt from Mark Twain's "Roughing It" on the concept of a jury in America.

I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, [N.B. - Virginia City, Nevada, not the commonwealth of Virginia] which we call a jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America:

"Have you heard of this homicide?"

"Yes."

"Have you held conversations upon the subject?"

"Yes."

"Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?"

"Yes."

"Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?"

"Yes."

"We do not want you."

A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligence and unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standing, were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that sworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice.

When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men was impaneled--a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in the streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were the same thing.

The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect?

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs. Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty and equal chance with fools and miscreants? Is it right to show the present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated-- every effort I make to save the country "misses fire."

The Best Attack Ad Ever

2006-10-10T23:25:00.000-04:00

Ladies and gentleman, the contest is over, everyone can just quit trying, the best attack ad ever has been found. Now I'm perfectly aware that everything in it is a serious misrepresentation of the truth at best, but for sheer hilarity and shamelessness this one takes the proverbial cake.

See it Go

2006-09-27T23:05:00.000-04:00

Yes, I am, in fact, still alive. Anyways, today 7-11 announced it was no longer using Citgo gasoline

Convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc. is dropping Venezuela-backed Citgo as its gasoline supplier at more than 2,100 locations and switching to its own brand of fuel.

The retailer said Wednesday it will purchase fuel from several distributors, including Tower Energy Group of Torrance, Calif., Sinclair Oil of Salt Lake City, and Houston-based Frontier Oil Corp.

This is why I love the free market. First Hugo Chavez comes over here to trash Bush and generally make a fool out of himself. Now, without any government intervention whatsoever, companies are punishing him by no longer buying oil from Citgo, a Venezuelan company. This is a prime example of how the free market can operate when left to its own devices. People are happy, businesses are happy, and Chavez is still a fool.

The Pope v Muslims

2006-09-17T12:55:00.000-04:00

I am sure most of you have heard the Pope's recent comments on muslims. Of course his comments weren't even his own, but a quote from a 14th century emperor. The quote he used was:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Now, normally I have absolutely no use whatsoever for the Pope. However, in this instance, his point was essentially correct. Muhammad spread Islam with the sword personally and encourage others to do. There's really no getting around it. The truly hilarious thing is all of this is the reaction of Muslims worldwide. Many have responded by firebombing churches, burning the Pope in effigie, and showing up at rallies calling for the Pope's head and protesting, among other things, freedom. It is almost as if they are TRYING to prove the Pope correct. Basically they've responded to the accusation that they are violent with a "take that back or I'll kill you," apparently missing the irony of the whole situation. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, although I don't think there's much of a chance that the Pope will stick by his guns for very long. Hopefully one day they'll be someone who will pick up the gauntlet from the Pope and Danish Cartoon publishers and actually stand up for their freedom to criticize Islam no matter how violent the muslims get.

Local MMA Documentary

2006-09-11T13:23:00.000-04:00

Here's a short documentary about local MMA fighter Mike Varner. I train at the same gym as him and this gives some insight as to what life is like at the Boneyard.

Crikey

2006-09-04T13:24:00.000-04:00

I know it will sadden you all to learn that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, has died

Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and conservationist known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” was killed Monday by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44.
[...]
“He came on top of the stingray and the stingray’s barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart,” said Stainton, who was on board Irwin’s boat at the time.

Here we have further proof of the danger of doing collosally stupid jobs. I guess he should have just stuck to crocodiles.

I Never Liked Pluto Anyway...

2006-08-24T14:53:00.000-04:00

Well, it is official, Pluto is no longer a planet.

Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930.

Pluto is now officially a dwarf planet. And not even the largest dwarf planet (that would be UB313). So that's it, screw Pluto, Pluto is gone. Kids in science classes worldwide can now take heart in the fact that they only have to build a crappy model of 8 planets instead of 9.

Next You're Going to Tell Me OJ is Innocent....

2006-08-16T23:03:00.000-04:00

There was a breakthrough today in, believe it or not, the Jon Benet Ramsey case.

A former schoolteacher was arrested in Thailand in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey — a surprise breakthrough in a lurid, decade-old murder mystery that had cast a cloud of suspicion over her own parents.

Federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the suspect who was arrested Wednesday as John Mark Karr, a 42-year-old American, and one law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Boulder police had tracked him down online.

This is absolutely unreal. Did anyone even seriously believe the police where still working on this? This has made-for-TV movie written all over it (if there hasn't been one already). If this pans out and parents were truly innocent then a lot of people, myself included, are going to have a nice big helping of crow.

Victory for Stupidy in Virginia

2006-08-16T14:21:00.000-04:00

"Alternative medicine" is about to take another life in Virginia.

A 16-year-old cancer patient's legal fight ended in victory Wednesday when his family's attorneys and social services officials reached an agreement that would allow him to forgo chemotherapy.
[...]

Last summer, the teen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system considered very treatable in its early stages. He was so debilitated by three months of chemotherapy that he declined a second, more intensive round that doctors recommended early this year.

He since has been using an alternative herbal treatment called the Hoxsey method, the sale of which was banned in the United States in 1960.

First off, being the believer in freedom that I am, I fully support the right of this kid and his parents to do something so suicidal as stopping chemotherapy. It's the kids life and his choice. The real villian in this story is the Mexican clinic where he has been "treated" with some sort of herbal remedy or another. Now, as we all know, "alternative medacine" is just a euphamism for "quackery that doesn't work." And, as usual, they are telling this kid that he can be cured through whatever useless procedures they feel like performing.

Some people may want to blame the kid and his family for being stupid. This is obviously true to an extent, but when people are faced with the possibility of death they tend to believe anyone who offers them hope. That is what this clinic is doing. They're preying on the desperate and hopeless. They do not have a cure for cancer, they are frauds and scam artists like the rest of the "alternative medacine" crowd. I hold these people beneath contempt and hope this kid and his family come to their senses before it's too late.

Cease Fire

2006-08-13T14:23:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure most of you know, we are mere hours away from the most useless cease fire ever! There are many, many, problems with the cease fire. The major one being that it is really impossible to have a cease fire with a terrorist group. Lots of members of the group operate independently and I don't think the so-called Hezbollah leadership could stop them if they wanted to. Aside for that glaring error, the cease fire also manages not to even remotely solve anything in the first place. It does not require the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers (which should have been the first god damn thing on the list), nor does it make any provisions for disarming Hezbollah. The U.N. "peace-keeping" force that will be inserted into southern Lebanon doesn't have the authority to do much of anything. There job is essentially to stand around and watch everything go to shit again. All this cease fire does is buy Hezbollah time to get rearmed and reorganized before they attack Israel again. And you can bet when that happens we will once again have a dramatic outcry about how agressive Israel is being when they respond. I can not fathom why Israel would accept this deal aside from the fact that they obviously need to get themselves a new Prime Minister.

Fake Photos: New York Times Style

2006-08-08T23:20:00.000-04:00

More staged photos coming out of Lebanon. This time courtesy of the New York Times. This discovery comes from Gateway Pundit

Here's an image showing would would appear to be a dead body

However, another picture from the same sequence show this man rising from the dead!

Note the shorts on both men. So either the Lebanese are rising from the dead (in which case Israel is pretty screwed), or we once again have deliberately staged photos coming out of Lebanon and swallowed by the supposedly reliable and objective mainstream media.

Fake Reuters Link Round-Up

2006-08-06T22:44:00.000-04:00

More doctored photos and false captions have surfaced. Here's the current list:

- Another Fake Reuters Photo from Lebanon
-Extreme Makeover: Beruit Edition
-More False Captions

These are just the ones that have been found in the day since the original fake smoke photos appeared. Expect more to surface during the next few days.

Reuters is Lying to You

2006-08-06T18:06:00.000-04:00

Reuters news agency was caught red-handed forging a photo Ynetnews of Israel bombing Lebanon.

A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.

The photograph showed two very heavy plumes of black smoke billowing from buildings in Beirut after an Air Force attack on the Lebanese capital. Reuters has since withdrawn the photograph from its website, along a message admitting that the image was distorted, and an apology to editors.

And trust in the media continues to plummet. We are long past the point where the media can be trusted to be objective, especially when it comes to Israel. It is one thing to selectively report events, but outright photo forgery is taking it to the a new level. Below are the two photos (the second being the real one):

The first photo was clearly photoshopped so it would look as if more damage had been done. The smoke was clearly "cloned" along with part of a building. This is more evident in this GIF courtesy of Little Green Footballs:

Not only was this a clear forgery, but a forgery so bad that it was discovered by untrained people writing blogs. The only way this could have slipped past the photo editor is if he did not look at it or did not care. We have officially reached the point where blogs written by random people outside the news agencies have greater accuracy than the news agencies themselves. At least the bloggers are up front about their bias...

I Am No Longer With Stupid

2006-08-05T23:44:00.000-04:00

Scientists on Germany are working on an anti-stupid pill.

Hans-Hilger Ropers, director at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, has tested a pill thwarting hyperactivity in certain brain nerve cells, helping stabilise short-term memory and improve attentiveness.

"With mice and fruit flies we were able to eliminate the loss of short-term memory," Ropers, 62, is quoted saying in the German newspaper, which has dubbed it the "world's first anti-stupidity pill."

Finally, there is hope for West Bridgewater High School

Pallywood

2006-08-02T17:38:00.000-04:00

I know many of you have probably seen these movies, but they're worth seeing again. With Hezbollah screaming to the high hills that Israel is directly targetting civilians and giving ridiculous body counts, it is good to remember that terrorist organizations are not above staging the news. Since most of the footage the Western media gets is provided by freelance cameramen living in the area, it is not all that difficult to do. Many of these cameramen have no problem filming whatever it is the terrorist group wants filmed. There are already some instances of potential staged news in Lebanon (see here and here).

Aside from completely fake news, there is the problem of blatant lying on Hezbollah's part. This mostly consists of "We weren't firing rockets from [insert place] and the Israelis viciously attack it anyways." By the time anyone has time to prove it wrong, the media has already published it as the truth as moved on. An example of this is the recent controversy over the bombing of Qana. Hezbollah claimed they weren't firing from there and the media reported it as gospel. However, this video, which was just released, shows rockets clearly being fired from within the residential area. I'm sure Hezbollah will claim they were fireworks for the children or something, and the media will again eat it up if they even bother to ask in the first place.

Fat Free

2006-08-02T17:21:00.000-04:00

Scientists have developed a vaccine that may one day be used to prevent obesity

US researchers have developed a vaccine which prevents weight gain in rats, offering clues about human treatments.

The vaccine prompts the body to produce antibodies against ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger and weight gain.

Here we have it folks, something that fifty years ago would have been the most useless vaccine ever created. Now it may one day allow people to eat as many Krispy Kremes as they damn well please. Far be it for anyone to change their habits and stop stuffing themselves with food, we can just vaccinate against it. Apparently all of the worlds real diseases have been cured so the researchers had time to work on this.

Hezbollah: Timeline

2006-08-01T01:54:00.000-04:00

Here is a timeline of various Hezbollah attacks

July 19, 1982: The president of the American University in Beirut, Davis S. Dodge, is kidnapped. Hezbollah is believed to be behind this and most of the other 30 Westerners kidnapped over the next ten years.

April 18, 1983: Hezbollah attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut with a car bomb, killing 63 people, 17 of whom were American citizens.

Oct. 23, 1983: The group attacks U.S. Marine barracks with a truck bomb, killing 241 American military personnel stationed in Beirut as part of a peace-keeping force. A separate attack against the French military compound in Beirut kills 58.

Sept. 20, 1984: The group attacks the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut with a car bomb, killing 2 Americans and 22 others.

Click the link for the full timeline. Given this long history of violence, how is it possible that some people deny that Hezbollah are terrorists? Even the European Union has refused to list Hezbollah as a terrorist groups. When is car bombing an embassy not considered terrorism? It is a direct attack on civilians that serves no military purpose. That is essentially the textbook definition of terrorism. I do not know how we can live in the information age and still be surronded by so many "useful idiots."

Nuclear Iran

2006-07-28T23:42:00.000-04:00

And people wonder why I say the U.N. is useless.

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council reached a deal Friday on a resolution that would give Iran until the end of August to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.
[...]
Because of Russian and Chinese demands, the text is weaker than earlier drafts, which would have made the threat of sanctions immediate. The draft now essentially requires the council to hold further discussions before it considers sanctions.

So the United Nations hands Iran yet another completely useless deadline. You know what they'll do if Iran doesn't stop by August? Absolutely nothing of course. Maybe they'll send another sternly worded letter. The sheer useless and impotence of this organization continues to amaze me.

Interesting Footsteps

2006-07-27T23:37:00.000-04:00

Human footprints dating back 20,000 years have been found in Austalia.

About 20,000 years ago, humans trekked along the margins of a shallow lake in Australia, leaving behind records of their passage in the soft, wet sand.
[...]
The discovery, detailed in a recent issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, represents the largest collection of Pleistocene human footprints in the world, and the only footprints from that era ever found in Australia.

It's amazing what science continues to uncover. Of course, some people will tell you that humanity is only 6,000 years old. You know what difference this discovery will make to those people? None at all. Faced with incontrovertible evidence that they are wrong, they will look the other way and continue proclaiming their correctness. That is the difference between science and religion.

It All Depends on the Voice

2006-07-26T23:11:00.000-04:00

Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in a bathtub bathtub, was found not guilty today by reason of insanity. The full story on this can be found here. The interesting part of this case (aside from the whole drowning in a bathtub thing) is the reason she is supposedly insane. Yates claimed Satan spoke to her and that she killed her children so that they would go to heaven. This is in contrast to another case, also in Texas, where a woman killed her children because she said God told her to. While Yates was found insane, this woman was convicted. Presumably, the logic of this is that God wouldn't tell you to do anything bad, but Satan might. It would seem the difference between freedom and life in prison depends entirely on which imaginary voice you claim to have in your head. Remember that next time you need to commit murder in Texas.

Lebanon Gets a Little Smaller

2006-07-25T22:39:00.000-04:00

As reported here , Israel is plans to occupy part of Lebanon:

Almost two weeks into its military assault on Hezbollah, Israel said Tuesday that it would occupy a strip inside southern Lebanon with ground troops until an international force could take its place. The announcement raised the prospect of a more protracted Israeli involvement in Lebanon than the political and military leadership previously signaled or publicly sought.

Officials have talked about limited raids into Lebanon but now they seem ready to commit ground forces for at least weeks, if not months. They said the zone would be much smaller than the swath of southern Lebanon roughly 15 miles deep that Israel occupied for nearly two decades before withdrawing in 2000.

This is sure to cause various European leaders, some Democrats, and various leftist groups around the world to go completely nuts. It will not belong before we hear more cries of "End the Occupation!" and long-winded diatribes about how this whole war was orchestrated as a land-grab by "the zionists." Obviously this could not be further from the truth. It has become necessary to to treat Lebanon like an unruly child. Israel gave Lebanon back their southern portion in 2000, and here we are six years later with Hezbollah using it as a launching pad to attack Israel. It is like giving a child toy baseball bat and being forced to take it away when they start hitting people with it. Lebanon has proven it can not be trusted to contain Hezbollah and Israel can not afford to let Hezbollah camp out on its border. Therefore, it is necessary for Israel (or a UN security force) to occupy the area until Hezbollah is forcibly dismantled.

Are the Democrats Even Trying Anymore?

2006-07-24T23:11:00.000-04:00

The Democrats are considering making Nancy Pelosi the Speaker...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is a favorite lightning rod for Republican congressional contestants who are warning voters that if Democrats win back the House of Representatives in November, Pelosi is likely to become speaker of the House.

For those of you who have never heard of her, Nancy Pelosi is the personification of the crazy Democrat. At any given time there are a few people in both parties in the House that are absolutely insane. It is a side effect of having the House of Representatives change so often, be elected by so few, and be ignored by the majority of Americans. The bottomline is that it's not really that hard for a few quacks to sneak in. Nancy Pelosi is one of those quacks. Think back to various strange things you've heard Democrats say over the past few years. Chances are, many of them were said by Nancy Pelosi.

It speaks volumes when Republicans are winning local elections simply by dropping her name. This is the person the Democrats think is going to lead them to victory in the House? This is their answer to Newt Gingrich in '94? Baffling. Going into November, Bush's historically low approval ratings and Iraq in general should, in theory, combine to give the Democrats at least a few more House and Senate seats. However, if anyone can screw that up it is the Democrats. Judging by their tentative plan to elavate Pelosi to Speaker of the House (3rd in line for the Presidency) they are well on their way.

Hezbollah! Wooooo!

2006-07-23T23:30:00.000-04:00

Taken From Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons

Recently there have been a wealth of pro-Hezbollah demonstrations around to the country. To be fair, most of them have been in California. One such event has been chronicled by zombie here. While I, of course, fully support the right of people and organizations to hold events like this, I sometimes can't help but wonder what the fuck is wrong with these people. Is their memory that short and selective that they can not remember that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization? Do they know and just not care? Are that many people really terrorist sympathsizers? Mostly to keep my faith in humanity up, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I am going to assume that most of the people who attend pro-Hezbollah rallies are simply joiners. They are people who will join a cause because it's trendy in their area (or not trendy if they want to feel like rebels). I refuse to believe that all of them understand the whole situation and still choose to side with terrorists. These rallies are a haven for weak-minded followers of all stripes. However, as much as pro-terrorist demonstrations irk me, I am comforted by the fact that I live in a country where things like that are allowed.

Hardly Clerkin'

2006-07-22T22:05:00.000-04:00

This is the moment I know all of you have been breathlessly waiting for, my thoughts on Clerks II. I have long been a fan of the original Clerks. A lot of that is probably due to the fact that I have essentially the same job as the "Clerks" and run into similar psycopaths. While Clerks II probably isn't better than the original it is still a good movie in its own right. The jokes on the whole are hilarious with few if any falling flat. I'm fairly certain I will be using excerpts from the "porch monkey" conversation in general conversation for the forseeable future. Some of the jokes were so sick, twisted, and hilarious that I can not fathom how they managed to get an R.

I didn't enjoy the dramatic moments in Clerks II as much as I did in the original. However, that may be due to the fact that I can't relate to them yet. Clerks focused on the pains of being in your 20s which I can obviously relate to. Clerks II is about the problems faced by those in the 30s, so it may take me another decade or so to fully appreciate the serious moments of the film. This is a minor complaint though as it did not really take away from my overall enjoyment of the film. If Kevin Smith made 50 movies that just consisted of Dante and Randal working, I would most likely see and enjoy them all. The characters are just great and everyone can relate to life at work. The ending of the movie was satisfying and a fitting end to the series. Bringing Soul Asylum back was an excellent touch. Overall, Clerks II is hilarious and we should all be thankful Smith decided against killing Dante at the end of the first one.