I admit - I do the same thing.

I read a lot. I buy a lot of books. I end up with a lot of junk.
I'm drowning in books. I have nearly 200 to give away on paperbackswap and people don't want them.

So, if I can't give them away, I save them and burn them periodically. If they are so worthless, why donate them? They just have to pay the dump to take them, so it hurts charity to donate worthless books.

Burning Books - I do the same thing....

Catonic wrote:
1970s film explaining how to teach "trainable persons" about sex. NSFW, of course (and you already clicked play, didn't you?)

20 minutes. Of course, I didn't watch all of it.

I have the DVD. It came in a lunchbox.

RE: YouTube - ABC of Sex Education for Trainable Persons (1975)

Pro-choice activists, if there are any left, ought be concerned about the wording on this decision.

"The government has "an interest in promoting respect for human life at all stages in the pregnancy," [That is clearly saying that they consider a fetus human life, isn't it?] said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the court. "The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice."

"Kennedy said the ban on partial-birth abortions may "encourage some women to carry the infant to full term, thus reducing the absolute number of late-term abortions."" [There's the true agenda, isn't it? On the bench?

I've known one woman to have one of these. She was very anti-choice. The baby that she so wanted was found at just under 7 months to have severe hydrocephalus and spinal bifida. She was told there was no question the child would be profoundly mentally retarded and would need life long institutional care. After a few weeks of prayer, her and her husband decided to have the procedure.

Late Term Abortion Ban Upheld by Supreme Court

It is almost funny - the guy took a taser from the cop and used it against him? Who's house WAS this - some super hero spy? Tough dude.

Homeowner had 'a right to resist'

George Noory and Alex Jones were trying to get a Nichols interview.

I'd love to see a lie detector test done.
Interestingly, the guy Nichols has said was involved from the FBI was the same guy responsible for the killings at Ruby Ridge.
In light of this, I don't quite know how to take the statement that he was involved.
I do think that it was THE Oklahoma bombings that stopped the big patriot/militia movement in the US.
I don't think these two guys acted totally alone.

Affidavit: McVeigh had high-level help

This is an excellent take on the situation, by a very ballsy Dion Dennis, an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in MA.

"First, we can see the historical and hysterical echoes of the 17th Century Salem witch trials. The two artists, the long-haired, bearded Belorussian immigrant Berdovsky and his sidekick, Stevens, stand publicly accused of producing, as defined by Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 266, Section 102, an "infernal machine." (Etymologically, the term "infernal" refers to Hell and the identities and products of the demons of said residence). So, like Arthur Miller's John Proctor, they will undoubtedly be asked to "make a deal" with official reality, to acknowledge their "infernal" (demonic) specific intent (as defined by the statute) and, in doing so, externalize the demons of the populace as they reaffirm the dominant symbolic order. [3] Contemporary ritual exorcisms will be performed in court, press conferences and press releases, and remixed and expanded by local and 24 hour news media, as they are archived for subsequent use. "

ATHF Boston Bomb Analysis - Puritan Remix? Psychology of a Witch Hunt?

The major problem in psychology is its lack of focus on explanation as opposed to description.

That problem is not confined to psychology.

How Steven Pinker Works

Christopher Hitchens writes in the latest issue of City Journal:

The most alarming sentences that I have read in a long time came from the pen of my fellow atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, at the end of a September Los Angeles Times column upbraiding American liberals for their masochistic attitude toward Islamist totalitarianism. Harris concluded:

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

As Martin Amis said in the essay [part 2, part 3] that prompted Steyn’s contempt: “What is one to do with thoughts like these?” How does one respond, in other words, when an enemy challenges not just your cherished values but additionally forces you to examine the very assumptions that have heretofore seemed to underpin those values?

See also this interview with Amis:

The novel I'm working on is blindingly autobiographical, but with an Islamic theme. It's called A Pregnant Widow, because at the end of a revolution you don't have a newborn child, you have a pregnant widow.

Facing the Islamist Menace

Decius wrote:

The attempt to require political bloggers to register as lobbyists previously reported by MemeStreams has been stripped out of the lobbying reform bill. The vote was 55 to 43 to defeat the provision. All 48 Republicans, as well as 7 Democrats, voted against requiring bloggers to register; all 43 votes in favor of keeping the registration provision were by Democrats.

Thank God. I tell you, the older I get, the more I see that (R) starting to appear next to my name on the ballot.

RE: Slashdot | Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated

Our good friends recently made a trip to Vegas and had 2 encounters with bedbugs in 2 different hotels.

Now I'd read about it, a bedbug epidemic - but you know how it is, until it happens to you or someone you are close to, it doesn't really, sink in? Yeah.

The first hotel was POSH - and it wasn't them, but a co-presenter at a conference. It happened in an expensive suite in a casino.

Then, on their way home, they stopped at a normal hotel - not the nicest but certainly not a dive - and the first thing they did was CHECK the bed when they went in the room - because they had got paranoid after that happened in Vegas.

Sure enough, there were bedbugs between the mattress and boxsprings there!

http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Entomology/entfacts/struct/ef636.htm

Tammy is saying that if they go anywhere else, they are camping. She's been traumatized I think.

Anyway, she was telling me you could see them, but I didn't know what quite what they look like, so I was looking it up. This link has pictures that seem to be what she was describing.

Watch where you sleep!

Warning - Watch out for Bedbugs