OK, the formal title of the movie is “Iron Sky”, but it’s really “Sarah Palin vs. Moon Nazis”. It was made in Finland, which was sort of the Soviet Hollywood when there was a Soviet — many of their films ended up on MST3K, where they were generally among the more watchable, in a somewhat drug-trip kind of way. And Iron Sky continues that trippiness, and does so with a heaping dose of awesome. I mean, come ON! Giant zeppelins, in space, holding fleets of Nazi saucers, and which also tug giant meteors to use as weapons against Earth? Deciding that if you don’t have time to get around the moon to fire your death cannon, you’ll just fire THROUGH the moon? Of course, the Earthers get cool toys, too, like nuclear armed battle spaceships.

This movie also features death by shoe, a moose head in the Oval Office, a cheap shot at North Korea (hey, if you can’t laugh at one of the most pathetically poor, desperate, and wretched nations on Earth, whose people are pretty much helpless victims of an insane monarchy, what CAN you laugh at?), dieselpunk computers and spacecraft, and one of the only Downfall spoof scenes that doesn’t actually involve using the footage from Downfall.

Not entirely sure why the Finns think the US will be holding a Presidential election in 2018, though. I mean, it’s not hard to look this up on Wikipedia. Maybe it’s a subtle spoof of how Americans get foreign politics wrong?

To be clear, this isn’t a “funny because it’s so bad” movie; it’s an intentional comedy. The trailers try to make that clear, but, let’s face it — we live in an era when satire is virtually impossible because reality continues to become unreal. This may explain the poor reviews — I think a lot of people were expecting an attempt at seriousness, not out-and-out farce. 

There’s nothing like reading an article about GIFs and somehow finding a link to a classic schizophrenic rant, or, a very good facsimile thereof (the fact there’s only one entry might indicate a troll; the truly mad can’t shut up. Yes, I do have a mirror. Why do you ask?)

(Please note that since the decimal system is arbitrary, you can test his hypothesis by noting that if you switch to a different numerical base, all of his patterns (which involve highly selective counting to begin with), simply vanish.)

 

The best part of this article is the comments, where we get a huge mass of sputtering incoherence from all sides of the political spectrum. Insufferably smug self righteousness from the left, random rants from the right, and placid amusement at the antics of the animals[1] from me. But I felt obliged to share my own addition to the intellectual discussion here:

I’m still trying to figure out how the UN could possibly be a threat to anything or organize any sort of conspiracy. The UN is basically a dumping ground for every tinpot politician’s indigent relatives and/or a way to reward big money campaign contributers with a vacation to a desirable country at taxpayer expense for a couple of years. The entire UN, working together (OK, those last four words make no sense when written in that order, I admit), could not pour piss out of a boot if you told them the instructions were on the heel. Five years after being given the task, they may manage to agree to form an exploratory committee to draft a working document regarding the creation of a multi-national agency dedicated to researching, analyzing, documenting, and evaluating various modes, means, and methods of evacuating urine from footwear, but they’ll need a few million more dollars for continued study in order to facilitate the development of a platform for continued discussion.

Let’s face it — as sources of world-dominating evil go, the UN is pretty much Paste Pot Pete rather than Galactus. 

Benny Hill said it best:

“When some poor nation’s in trouble,

And can do nothing, son,

That’s when the United Nations meets

To decide that nothing can be done.”

[1]HL Mencken was asked why, if he was so critical of America, did he still live here? He replied, “Why do men go to zoos?”. Caper for me, amusing beasts! Caper!

 

 

Headline on CNN:”Obama, Boehner, begin year end duel on taxes.”

Reading the article, this boils down to the two of them hurling platitudes at each other, because no one’s going to say the hard truth: We need to cut spending, a lot, and raise taxes, at least a little, and make paying the down the debt the highest priority, not appeasing any particular group of constituents. “NIMBY” has a fiscal equivelent:”NIMBA” — Not In My Back Account!

Now, here’s what a “duel on taxes” OUGHT to look like!

We could put in on pay-per-view, and pretty much end the need to raise taxes by raising revenue that way. 

 

 

 

 

I post this poem by Kipling.

“Here is nothing new nor aught unproven,” say the Trumpets

“Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed,
“It is the King–the King we schooled aforetime!”
(Trumpets in the marshes–in the eyot at Runnymede!)

“Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger,” peal the Trumpets,
“Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall,

“It is the King!”–inexorable Trumpets–
(Trumpets round the scaffold at the dawning by Whitehall!)

“He hath veiled the Crown and hid the Sceptre,” warn the Trumpets,
“He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will.
“Hard die the Kings–ah, hard–dooms hard!” declare the Trumpets,
(Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill!)

Ancient and Unteachable, abide–abide the Trumpets!
Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings
Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets–
Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings!

All we have of freedom, all we use or know–
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw–
Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law–

Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing,
Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King.

Till our fathers ‘stablished, after bloody years,
How our King is one with us, first among his peers.

So they bought us freedom–not at little cost–
Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost.

Over all things certain, this is sure indeed,
Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed.

Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure,
Whining “He is weak and far;” crying “Time shall cure.”

(Time himself is witness, till the battle joins,
Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people’s loins.)

Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace,
Suffer not the old King here or overseas.

They that beg us barter–wait his yielding mood–
Pledge the years we hold in trust–pawn our brother’s blood–

Howso’ great their clamour, whatso’er their claim,
Suffer not the old King under any name!

He shall mark our goings, question whence we came,
Set his guards about us, as in Freedom’s name.

Here is naught unproven–here is naught to learn,
It is written what shall fall if the King return.

He shall take a tribute; toll of all our ware;
He shall change our gold for arms–arms we may not bear.

He shall break his Judges if they cross his word;
He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord.

He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring
Watchers ‘neath our windows, lest we mock the King–

Hate and all divisions; hosts of hurrying spies;
Money poured in secret; carrion breeding flies.

Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay,
These shall deal our Justice: sell–deny–delay.

We shall drink dishonour, we shall eat abuse,
For the Land we look to–for the Tongue we use.

We shall take our station, dirt beneath his feet,
while his hired captains jeer us in the street.

Cruel in the shadow, crafty in the sun,
Far beyond his borders shall his teachings run.

Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled,
Laying on a new land evil of the old–

Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain–
All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again.

Here is naught at venture, random or untrue–
Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew.

Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid:
Step for step and word for word–so the old Kings did!

Step by step and word by word: who is ruled may read.
Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed–

All the right they promise–all the wrong they bring.
Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King!

Both candidates seek to increase the power of government; it cannot even be said they differ in HOW they wish to increase it, except in small ways. Both will continue to support torture, imprisonment without trial, and to hide their actions from public scrutiny under the guise of “executive privilege”. Both will continue to make war without Congressional approval, against nations which have attacked neither us nor any allies we have sworn to defend. Both will support the “war on drugs”, warrentless search and surveillance, and assassination by executive order of American citizens on American soil. (All of which began long before Obama was elected, to the hearty applause of conservatives who were fine with granting a WHITE guy that kind of power.)

On the issues that matter most to me — personal liberty — there’s not much choice to be had, though if forced, I’d have to say Romney is worse than Obama, in the same way that being broken on the wheel is worse than being torn apart by wild horses. Neither is good. But Romney has promised to enforce laws against “obscenity”, to support the Defense of Marriage Act, and to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will repeal abortion rights, and has allied himself with some of the most radical factions in the Republican party, while Obama has at least made an effort to pretend to distance himself from the radical left. (One of my standard tests for moral character is not “Does this person refrain from wrong-doing?”, because that’s a fool’s game, but, “Does this person at least have enough grasp on basic human decency to understand that what he’s doing is commonly seen as wrong?” It’s not “Do they randomly strangle strangers?” or not, it’s “Do they at least try to hide the bodies?” Obama understands he ought to at least appear ashamed of being associated with people like Rev. Wright, regardless of what he actually feels; Romney refuses to disavow people like Donald Trump.)

Neither candidate will do much, if anything, to change things in terms of economic liberty. Government spending will not be cut meaningfully, because every piece of pork has a powerful faction behind it. Taxes will not be cut meaningfully, because no one’s going to lend us more money and we can’t cut spending. Any budgetary changes will be over meaningless trivia like PBS, NASA, or some random piece of military hardware outdated a decade ago and kept in service due to kickbacks to the contractor. Any changes to regulations will be likewise trivial. Both candidates, and both parties, are controlled by existing power players, and the main function of regulations is to keep upstarts from joining the club. (If current FCC regulations on EMF were in place in the 1970s, there would never have been a personal computer. You can bet they won’t let something like THAT happen again! Look for 3D printers to be crushed under new laws and restrictions, no matter who is in office.) And, need I mention that “Obamacare” is just “Romneycare” on a Federal level, and that in a not-too-distant alternate reality, Romney would have been proudly campaigning, as a Republican, on a platform of “doing for the United States health system just what I did for Massachusetts”?

Actually, things are so wretched lately, this election merits TWO Kipling poems.

Macdonough’s Song 

Whether the State can loose and bind

In Heaven as well as on Earth:

If it be wiser to kill mankind

Before or after the birth–

These are matters of high concern

Where State-kept schoolmen are;

But Holy State (we have lived to learn)

Endeth in Holy War.

 

Whether The People be led by The Lord,

Or lured by the loudest throat:

If it be quicker to die by the sword

Or cheaper to die by vote–

These are things we have dealt with once,

(And they will not rise from their grave)

For Holy People, however it runs,

Endeth in wholly Slave.

 

Whatsoever, for any cause,

Seeketh to take or give

Power above or beyond the Laws,

Suffer it not to live!

Holy State or Holy King–

Or Holy People’s Will–

Have no truck with the senseless thing.

Order the guns and kill!

Saying –after–me:–

 

Once there was The People–Terror gave it birth;

Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth

Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, 0 ye slain!

Once there was The People–it shall never be again!

 

New site shows all comics sold/displayed at a given month in history. Here’s what was around when I graduated college. I still have those issues of Groo.

 

So, basically, the human brain uses pre-emptive multitasking instead of true multi-processing. It can execute either Empathy.exe or Rationality.exe, but not both concurrently.

I suspect further testing would show that not all people classify the same problems as “social” or “analytical”. This makes reaching a meaningful resolution difficult, as we would literally be executing two different programs against the same data, consistently producing different results that cannot be reconciled.

Yet more evidence, if any was needed, that the conflicts which consume our society are not about people not knowing the “facts”, but are the result of hard-wired neural patterns that are at least partially created the instant sperm meets egg.

 

Wow, a pair of “psychics” are shown to be nothing but skilled cold readers. Gosh. Who could have seen THAT coming? (Not them! Ha ha!)

 

So, the question now becomes, does Ms. Putt genuinely believe she’s psychic and not realize she’s simply good at reading people (a valuable skill in many situations and something most people would be proud of being good at), or does she know she doesn’t have psychic powers? I’m going to guess the former, because self-aware frauds know better than to show up for tests. (At least those tests run by magicians and other such experts in the bamboozling arts, as opposed to most scientists, who generally are as easy to dupe as anyone else — easier, in many cases, because scientists normally deal with a universe that can be very complex, but not actively deceptive. Science, in general, does not assume the subject of an experiment will consciously try to alter the outcome.)

re:Biggest Douche In The Universe

Checks date.

Not April First.

Oh. Bugger.

 

(Originally posted on stufffundieslike.com, reposted here.)

I would pay good money (well, sorta good… OK, not so good, gimme a break I don’t got much) to get on film the recorded response from any fundie preacher (the bigger, the better) to the following question:

“OK, so, we’ll assume you believe in the literal Biblical account of creation. You may or may not be aware that things like the Hubble deep field scan shows there’s hundreds of billions of galaxies, not stars, mind you, but galaxies in the universe, and that those galaxies have, on average, half a billion stars, and that in the last decade, we’ve come to realize that most of those stars have multiple planets. Now, according to Genesis, God created all of the lights in the sky on the fourth day, all of it, half a trillion galaxies, perhaps more, in under 24 hours. Now, OK, let’s accept that. That’s astounding. You look at the Hubble Deep Field, or any other such images, and you think, “This God did all that in a day…creation beyond what the human mind can hope to comprehend was brought into existence, an expanse of stars so vast that it cannot be accurately measured, merely guessed at, and we can see only the faintest echoes of most of it, only able to imagine the infinite beauty and variety of the quite literally trillions of planets which exist around all those stars. This God, this creator, who can do such things, with so little effort, a being of such incredible wisdom and power and artistry… this God, you believe, just killed 100 or so random people because he’s really upset that one guy stuck his shlong up another guy’s butt. That is what you believe? Yes or no?”