Carrie Fisher roasts George Lucas
April 28, 2009 – 11:55 | by Mark UrbinBloody fornicating brilliant. I’m betting she wrote this herself.
Tags: Carrie Fisher, George Lucas, Humor, roast, Science Fiction, SciFi, Star Wars, Video
| Posted in » Monday Book Pick: Princess of Wands
April 27, 2009 – 09:22 | by Mark UrbinPrincess of Wands by John Ringo
A slightly different hero than the genre usally sees in this modern day horror/adventure tale by NY Times best selling author John Ringo.
Barbara Everett is a Christian soccer mom from the southeastern United States. Who just happens to an expert in martial arts and combat shooting. Which comes in handy when Lovecraftian evil comes a calling on her quiet vacation spot. This book is actually a collection of several stories, including one that takes place mostly at a SciFi/Fantasy con. A lot of industry inside baseball in that one, which makes it way cool.
Tags: Baen Books, book, horror, John Ringo, Lovecraft, Martial Arts, Monday Book Pick, SciFi/Fantasy
Actual Science Alert!
April 26, 2009 – 20:32 | by Mark UrbinA warning to AGW cultists, actual science is used in video below to dispute Al Gore’s fear mongering.
Remember kids, Al Gore founded a company that sells “Carbon Credits.” Those are modern plenary indulgence payments to the AGW Cult the gullible make. Even the New York Times calls the practice a scam. If you are wondering why someone like Al Gore, former Senator and former Vice-President of the United States of America, is participating in an obvious scam based on junk science, I suggest you follow the advice of the man who wrote the screen play.
Update: Al Gore Lies to Congress. What else did he lie about?
Tags: AGW, AGW Cult, carbon credit, corruption, Earth Day, Environment, follow the money, Politics, scam
Boston University Tri-Service ROTC Pass in Review
April 26, 2009 – 11:44 | by Mark UrbinI was at the Boston University Tri-Service ROTC Pass in Review ceremony yesterday and got a lot of great photographs. Here is one that I think came out quite well.
Army Cadet with Saber
This photo is also posted on the Slices of Life Photography Blog.
There are more photographs of this event at Urbin Photography.
Update: November 3, 2009, I’ve learned that there is an ad on Facebook using this photograph, without my knowledge or permission, and with my copyright notice clearly cropped off. If you see this add on Facebook, could you please flag it as a copyright violation and send me a screenshot of it.
Tags: Add new tag, Boston, Boston University, Canon, digital photography, Photography, ROTC, Urbin Photography, US Army, US Military
An electric compact car
April 24, 2009 – 13:50 | by Mark UrbinA step down from the luxury ride of the Tesla Type S Sedan is the Aptera, a compact sized electric car, which looks like it just rolled off a SciFi movie set.
The first sales will be limited to California, and then Florida and Texas. Seriously, I don’t see this thing being able to handle a New England winter.
Tags: alternate fuel car, Electric Car, Environment, Technology
Friday B-Movie Pick: Dragnet
April 24, 2009 – 13:21 | by Mark UrbinDragnet
From 1987 comes this comic tribute to the 1950s television show. Staring Dan Aykroyd as the original Joe Friday’s nephew and Tom Hanks as his partner Pep Streebek.
Tags: Comedy, Friday B-Movie
Quote of the day
April 23, 2009 – 12:19 | by Mark Urbin“…status is not the American Conservative position. Rather, conservatives believe that change for change’s sake is folly. What kind of change? At what cost? For the liberals and progressives, everything was expendable, from tradition to individualism to “outdated” conceptions of freedom. These were all tired dogmas to be burned on the alters of the new age.”
Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
Dr. Pournelle points out a sad fact about this book and the majority of those who study political science:
Goldberg’s book is an anomaly: serious students of political science shouldn’t find anything here they didn’t already know. Alas, I had to say “shouldn’t”, because a very great number of people who consider themselves serious students of political science will be shocked and astonished to discover that Fascism, Progressivism, and modern American Liberalism have many intellectual roots in common. Roosevelt’s New Deal incorporated many elements of Italian Fascism, and in fact before the mid-30’s many Western statesmen had admiring things to say about Fascism and about Il Duce Mussolini who made the trains run on time and brought prosperity — or its illusion — to Italy. Goldberg documents all this as well as the Jacobin roots of both Fascism and Progressivism. The notion that human life can be improved by central planning and tinkering with the legal and economic system is the common thread to them all.
Tags: book, Fascist, fascist leftist, Liberal, Politics, Pournelle, Progressive
What did Pelosi know and when did she know it?
April 23, 2009 – 09:39 | by Mark UrbinAccording to the Wall Street Journal,
…members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of [enhanced interrogation techniques] since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses.
By “enhanced interrogation techniques”, the WSJ is referring to techniques that would be considered light hazing in most fraternities and sororities on major college campuses across the country.
Not only has our Dear Leader has, against the advice of the current and four prior CIA directors, told the Islamofascists exactly what to expect once captured, he has also “opened the door to possible prosecution of Justice Department attorneys who provided legal advice” on the hazing techniques used. The WSJ correctly identifies this as “It seems that he has capitulated to left-wing groups and some in Congress who are demanding show trials over this program.”
Now in the cooperative spirit of bi-partisanship that our Dear Leader talks so much about, any such investigations should a deep probe into the Congressional leaders who approved of the program, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. If Pelosi, Reid, and other key democrat congressional leaders are not included and prosecuted with the same vigor as any Justice Department staffers, Republican members of Congress, or former members of the GWB administration, then it will be clearly visible to citizens of the United States that the extremist left is engaging in a purely partisan Witch Hunt.
Update: To no rational thinking adults surprise, democrat “leader” Pelosi has flat out lied about her prior knowledge.
Tags: Barack Obama, culture of corruption, democrat, foreign policy, incompetent, Pelosi, Politics, Worst President Ever
Special Earth Day Video
April 22, 2009 – 21:42 | by Mark UrbinGeorge Carlin on “Saving the Planet.”
Bonus! Special Earth Day Book Pick!
Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy by Gwyneth Cravens
Tags: Earth Day, Environment, George Carlin, Humor, Video
Earth Day Predictions from 1970
April 22, 2009 – 10:04 | by Mark UrbinFrom I Hate the Media, here are actual quotes from the first celebration of Lenin’s Birthday back in 1970.
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” — Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
Ok, Ehrlich was sorta right on this, if you restrict his predictions to modern Communist China, where they are showing the typical communist/socialist contempt for the environment.
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Now we get to my personal favorite, although probably not Al Gore‘s…
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
More on the subject over at Reason Magazine.
Remember kids, Environmentalism Good, Watermelons Bad!
FYI, Watermelon: Thin layer of Green on the outside, Red to the Core!
Update: Thanks for Link Love from Rain in the Doorway, Ed Driscoll, Moe Lane, Atomic Fungus and the Blogonomicon.
Update: I just had to add this link to a very snarky list of thing to do in order to celebrate Lenin’s Birthday!
Tags: Earth Day, Environment, Lenin's Birthday, moonbat, predictions