H.I.M.

Whatever you do, don't see HIM live. They suck.

UPDATE: Maybe this is why the singer was so weak that night.

Can't... feel... legs...

A bunch of us went up to Brian Head Resort in Utah today. I went with the purpose to learn how to snowboard. Most of the others in our small group were already competent boarders or skiers. I've never done either, although its always been something I have wanted to start.

Regardless of the snowstorm conditions and my now aching legs it was a blast and something I am definitely going to start doing regularly. In the first day I gathered the ability to learn most of the basics of snowboarding. I can actually go down the entire slope without falling, although at a none too fast speed. I can for the most part control my direction, although making sharp right turns often leaves me eating snow. Getting off the ski lift unscathed is still one challenge that must await another day however.

We already have several more trips planned. This is going to be a painful winter.

Because it is enjoyable

Reason's Hit and Run blog has some highlights from a cover page article in the New Scientist which answers the question of why we choose to alter our consciousness by injecting chemicals.

Pleasure, excitement, therapy, novelty: seen in this light, the pursuit of intoxication looks very different from its standard portrayal as a pathological drive that must be suppressed before it leads to harm, addiction, and squalor. Yet the mainstream debate on drugs, alcohol, and tobacco seems unable to acknowledge that there is anything positive at all to say about intoxication. Instead it is locked into a sterile argument between prohibitionists and those who want to reduce the harmful effects by, for example, making heroin available on prescription. Both groups start from the belief that psychoactive substances are inherently harmful but disagree on what to do about it.

I'll need to try and get my hands on the full article. It may introduce some new ideas and concepts into the drug debate, many of which I can deploy in discussions against my 'drugs are evil' friends.

IQ battle: Bush vs. Kerry

Steve Sailor researches deep into the theory that Kerry is smarter than the Bush. He uncovers some interesting results. While he doesn't adamantly prove that Bush is smarter than Kerry, he certainly points to there being no evidence that Kerry is smarter than Bush. The final concluding paragraphs are especially interesting.

The subtle difference between Bush and Kerry in two words: Bush is competitive and Kerry is ambitious.

Bush, by nature and by upbringing in the hyper-rivalrous Bush-Walker clan, is driven by a need to win.

If he'd been born into a family where his father owned the biggest junkyard in town, he'd be scrapping to own the biggest junkyards in two towns. By chance, he happened to be born into a family where to earn top honors requires him to win not one, but two Presidential elections. This helps explain the President's striking lack of interest in the content of his job—being President is just a means to an end (of beating his Dad).

For Kerry, in contrast, being President is the end, the goal of the last 45 years of his life. He came from a family background where this burning ambition to be President was unlikely but hardly unthinkable, just unusual. At prep school, his naked flame of ambition made him a bit of an outsider among the sons of the hyper-rich who strove for nonchalance.

In Vietnam, Kerry was certainly brave, and relatively few men on his boat ended up hating him (which is an above average performance for an officer in Vietnam). But he was always a glory hog. In the Senate, he has mostly seemed to bide his time, being liberal enough to get re-elected in Massachusetts, but keeping a low enough profile that the GOP couldn't hang the "Massachusetts Liberal" moniker on him as effectively as they did on Michael Dukakis.

Kerry has generally tried to portray himself as an intellectual, which has been a successful strategy for him in college-crowded Massachusetts.

In contrast, the only election Bush ever lost was a 1978 Congressional race in the Texas Panhandle, where his opponent made fun of Bush for having degrees from Yale and Harvard.

Bush resolved never to get out-dumbed again.

Soon we shall see whether Kerry can beat him by trying to outsmart him.

Obviously he didn't. Does America vote for the dumber president? Are we afraid or unwilling to have someone intellectually superior to ourselves?

And for a really wild theory: Does Bush know all this and purposely does nothing to refute any low intelligence perceptions of himself?

No more m&m's on TV

...At least in Britain. Advertisements for the unhealthy variety of foods are being banned in Britain. Children will now be protected from seeing large m&m characters faint from enounters with Santa Claus.

I really can't speak too much of the volume of junk food advertising in Britain, but it makes up quite a bit of the market here. All the wonderful things such as Burger King, Coke, Sprite, M&M's will no longer be able to buy television spots during children's programming. How much advertising revenue are television stations going to lose? How much money are junk food companies going to lose by not being able to advertise to consumers? But on the upside, this law will make lazy kids stop consuming Pringles and Sprite and race outside and excerice... Right?

Yes, these are the people that insult George Bush and our country's government.

...And yes, this is the government our democrats want to be more like.

UPDATE: Here's another article on this subject which details more of their traffic light scheme for foods.

Sugar, salt and fat-laden foods such as sweets or burgers will display red labels on their packaging to signify they should be eaten sparingly, with 'virtuous' foods such as vegetables marked green to encourage their consumption.

Foods such as cheese, high in fat but nutritious, will be labelled amber.

From this day forth, no Brit may poke fun at our color coded terror alert system.

Don't fuck the South

Neal Pollack responds to the popular "Fuck the South" site.

Anti-intellectial liberalism

This is an interesting article on the liberal environment on college campuses.

The problem is that the simple trappings of deliberation make academics think that they've reached an opinion through reasoned debate -- instead of, in part, through an irrational social dynamic. The opinion takes on the status of a norm. Extreme views appear to be logical extensions of principles that everyone more or less shares, and extremists gain a larger influence than their numbers merit. If participants left the enclave, their beliefs would moderate, and they would be more open to the beliefs of others. But with the conferences, quarterlies, and committee meetings suffused with extreme positions, they're stuck with abiding by the convictions of their most passionate brethren.

At a recent colloqium here in the physics department a speaker mentioned before beginning his talk of how scary election tuesday was and, not to my surprise, he he recieved a large amount of laughter from the audience. I wanted to pipe up with "Well, it could have been even scarier, John Kerry could have been elected" but, of course, I would have been flayed alive for that comment so I kept quiet.

Darkness Becomes

BigDumbFace, aka Wes Borland, has spawned forth a new anthem of evil burning rotten pestilence. Go download it now.

Guilty!

Finally this stupid trial is over. Maybe the news networks can return to more relevant issues.

Dawn of a new civilization

Does this foretell what greatness awaits us? I await anxiously.

Rethinking moral values

Whether or not the issue of moral values was the deciding factor in this election, it certainly has reared its head and angered many many people. At first it angered me as well. Bush certainly had the edge on Kerry on many issues. So there were countless other reasons to vote for Bush instead of Kerry. How can people vote on moral values? How can people vote to force their stinking moral values on me? I see anti-gay marriage legislation passing in 11 states and that is just angering. Why do people care if gays are getting married? And how in the world do these laws pass so strongly, as high as 80%? All this really boggles my mind.

Democrats, of course, are up in arms about this. They have morals. What makes republican moral values better than a democrat's sense of morality? Gays have the right to live and get married if they want to. How can people vote away the rights of a group of people?

Last night, however, an event occured that has made me rethink this issue of moral values. I attended a death metal concert, and I was wearing a nice blasphemous shirt with the band 'God Dethroned' emblazened in spikey evil letters. After the concert, which was at the upscale casino Mandalay Bay, we stopped by one of the cafes in there to grab a bite to eat. Well, we are a rather vulgar group, and foul obscenities often pour from our mouths. After awhile two women were seated at a table near us and immediately I noticed the older woman looking at my shirt often. I never really saw a look of disgust, but she was looking at it. I began to think about how much we must have been bothering them with our vulgar language and more or less rude behavior. They come to Mandalay Bay, a highly respectable casino, and they are forced to hear foul language from some hooligan looking young adults.

That really started to make me think of the other side of the moral values issue. Are we forcing our moral values onto them? Just because I think it's fine and dandy to swear up a storm doesn't mean that they think its ok. Don't these people have a right to sit in an upper class cafe in peace and not be forced to listen to obscenities? They never actually confronted us, but it made me wonder what if they had? Now, we are a polite enough bunch that we would have toned it down, but many many many other people would have said something to the effect of "Fuck you, its freedom of speech."

What if I were walking down the streets of San Francisco. Do I want to be confronted by a gang of gay men wearing nothing but thongs? No, I don't. And if it happened and I said to them "Go away, I don't want to see that," they would most likely respond with "I'm gay and proud of it, you can't make us go away." Who in this situation is forcing their moral values on who? Am I forcing my conservative values on them because I don't want to see homosexual men prancing almost naked in the streets? Or are they forcing their values on me by trying to make me accept that what they are doing should be regarded as normal human behavior?

Can we really argue without hypocrisy that these conservatives that voted so strongly on moral issues are forcing their beliefs onto us when there is more sex and foul language on TV then ever. Parents can't turn on the radio without hearing Howard Stern tell a woman how many men they've had sex with. Even worse, whenever conservatives try to stem the onslaught of liberal values they get labeled prudish and old fashioned. Liberals are just as guilty as conservatives of forcing their moral values onto others.

Voting on moral issues was the voice of conservatives telling the liberals that they reject the morals of Hollywood. The left controls the media. All the television shows, movies, advertising, and music are mainly dominated by liberal values. Can anyone really blame conservatives for putting their foot down and saying "Enough of this, we don't want to see this." Banning gay marriage was not the voice of people saying they reject gay people, but a more overarching rejection of the liberal values being forced onto them through the media.

Pat Buchanan has spoken of a culture war. George Bush lead the charge of the religious right and John Kerry waved the Hollywood war banner. Were the 2004 elections the first major battle in an upcoming gruesome war?

If so, this decade could prove to be very interesting...

UPDATE: Who in this scenario is shoving harder?

Elemental plight

As if the public needs another reason to be biased against Dungeons & Dragons.

Film site Empire Online, is reporting that a third film based on Dungeons & Dragons is in development by Zinc Entertainment, a division of Joel Silver's Silver Pictures. The filming of "Dungeons & Dragons 2: The Elemental Might has just finished and Warner Bros. is set to release the film next year in the U.S. and internationally through third party agencies.

The Wizards' employee that argued for this must have rolled a 20 on his 'bluff' check.

It's all up to them

Smoking bans are ridiculous. The decision for smoking and non-smoking should be entirely left to the owner. In my regular daily activities, the only place I encounter second hand smoke is at bars. If I was overly concerned about my health, I would not be going to a bar and pouring alcohol down my throat. If I never went to a bar or casino, I would hardly notice smokers at all. And I live in Las Vegas, where smoking is a daily vitamin of most inhabitants. If I go to a restaurant, there already exists the opportunity to be seated in a non-smoking area. Laws are not required to protect me from second-hand smoke.

Although California and New York will most likely never allow the consumer the choice to spend money at a place that allows smoking, the people of Toledo, Ohio recently voted to relax their smoking ban regulations.

If there is a demand for a complete smoke free enviroment, it will be created naturally by the market. As one owner ponders whether or not to allow smoking within his establisment:

He'll keep the lounge intact, he said, but as for the main bar, he'll let his customers decide whether to make it smoke-free.

"I'm 90 percent sure it'll go smoke-free," he said. "Still, there's a chance. It's all up to them."

Imagine that, let the consumers decide how and where they spend their money.

Now its personal...

I've garnered a large dislike for Michael Moore over the past few years, but one line in particular from his response to the election is the last straw.

Once again we are reminded that the buckeye is a nut, and not just any old nut -- a poisonous nut. A great nation was felled by a poisonous nut. May Ohio State pay dearly this Saturday when it faces Michigan.

Fuck you Michael Moore. And it was Michigan State, not the Michigan Wolverines that we played today. Michael Moore even hails from Michigan, he shouldn't make this slip up.

In the eyes of Michael Moore, these are the patriots of America.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that Michael Moore wishes the collapse of our country.

A middle finger

One great thing resulting from this election is that it angers people like this.

...Although it makes people like this very happy.

The one finger salute to the first outweighs the gloating of the latter.

Badnarik bust

Well, I was certainly wrong in that I expected Badnarik to make a strong showing this election and possibly even cause problems for Bush's chances at re-election. He managed to only squeek out 0.3% of the popular vote.

Here in Nevada, he recieved fewer votes than "None of the above." The libertarian for our senate seat got 3 times the amount of votes as Badnarik.

Even in New Mexico, where it was claimed he was polling as high as 5% at one time, his final tally barely topped 2000 votes.

Children of Bodom = good

Children of Bodom are touring. Go see them! In fact, go buy 2 tickets just in case you lose one. They don't get a very long set, but its like being kicked in the jimmy by a pregnant horse. That's how metal they are! You cannot miss this band live.