by ·Comments Off on Scientific Experiment

Among the many horrific experiments conducted by the nazis on their prisoners during WWII, a whole set of them focused on hypothermia: hapless Russian POW were put into icy water baths until they collapsed, then attempts to reanimate them using more or less scientific means were made.

Unlike most of their other pseudo-scientific experiments, this one actually had some kind of vaguely reachable goal: improve the life expectancy of the average Luftwaffe pilot forced into a sudden scuba-diving trip in the English Channel. Quite a problem at the time, especially among German tourists returning home from a leisure flight over London.

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I used to read MeFi every once in a while, the same way as I used to read Slashdot a long time ago…

This particular thread is a perfect illustration of why I stopped reading both. In one or the other, you could sum up every single thread thusly:

  1. Random guy posts unsupported statement, presenting it as news accompanied by dubious piece of media and trolling comment, then leaves never to be heard again on the thread.
  2. Dozens of people pick up the thing and take it at complete face value, post immediate emotional replies without ever questioning the information itself.
  3. A few hundred more share pathetically uninformed, yet strongly assertive, insights on a topic they had obviously never heard of until that day.
  4. Three people post interesting, thoughtful, carefully researched post explaining why the whole thread makes absolutely no sense and why most of the previous posters ought to read the news once in their life.
  5. Sensible posters get royally ignored, quickly give up in face of the ridiculously steep road that needs to be walked back to sanity.
  6. More ignorant posts pour in.
  7. Thread invariably degenerates into canonical Holy War for the remaining 3000 comments (most of which are only monosyllabic rebuttal to the previous ones, by then).

Mmmn, sounds familiar?

And yea, I know I am quite late on that train of world news, but it’s not like they’ve stopped killing each other in the meantime…

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And now, award time for most moronic idea of the month, with automatic entrance to the yearly draw.

If you are gonna be cheap enough that you keep old bottles of top-shelf vodka prominently disposed behind your bar to try and give it that international hip flair it quite obviously hasn’t… At least:

  1. Make sure your new barmaid is aware they aren’t the real thing.
  2. When picking a transparent liquid to refill the bottles with, use water, not fucking bleach.

by ·Comments Off on Please surrender any dangerous items and last remaining shred of privacy…

Like we really needed this to realize how much of a police state the US of A has become:

Logan Airport deploys snitch-squad

[…]

At the security checkpoints, screening supervisors have a score sheet with a list of behaviors on it. If a passenger hits a certain number, a law enforcement officer will be notified to question the person.

Let me guess: along with the score sheet comes a set of color samples to match appropriately any evil dark-skin foreigner, I mean “suspect”…

And to the gregarious hordes of concerned citizens braying about how they don’t mind any further trampling of their personal liberties, as long as it can somehow “make them feel safe”, I think it bears repeating once again the ubiquitous quote (attributed to Franklin by most, although it also seems to have been uttered by Jackson in a slightly different version):

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

by ·Comments Off on Get the STDs, not the Sex…

The trend in modern sexually-repressed conservative america these days, is to brainwash teenagers into proudly pledging abstinence, vowing to preserve their precious virginity for that special day where they’ll tie the knot… or get invited by the priest to join one of his exclusive, altar-boys-only, mass after-party…

In effect, promising to keep doing what they’d be doing anyway. That is: not getting any, for the entire duration of their ungrateful puberty phase.

After all, they are only following official government policy regarding “abstinence as the only viable way to prevent STDs“.

Well the bad news for the proud virgins is that, on top of not getting laid, they do catch sexually-transmitted diseases, as shown by a recent study of the sex lives of 12,000 US adolescents .

How can you catch an STD while — allegedly — not having sex?

Well, that’s the miracle of statistics (and hypocritical bigotry):

The data was gathered from young people aged 12 to 18 who were questioned again six years later.

According to the study, the STD rates were:

Whites who pledged virginity 2.8% – did not 3.5%

Blacks: pledgers 18.1% – non-pledgers 20.3%

Asians: pledgers 10.5% – non-pledgers 5.6%

Hispanics: pledgers 6.7% – non-pledgers 8.6%

The study’s authors say that from a statistical point of view, the rates are the same for both groups.

The explanation for these numbers does not take a genius or a statistician to figure out:

A good number of those teenager who had hastily claimed they’d never consider doing such icky sticky things, must have quickly changed their mind, once the acne wore out and they found out they actually could get a date… And when it got there, I guess it was too late to consider trading Sunday School for Sex-Ed…

Hence proving once more what most experts have been saying all along: shunning sex-ed in favor of abstinence campaigns is not only gonna produce more morbidly stuck-up conservative morons, it will also help spreading AIDS and other STDs.

by ·Comments Off on Who needs Professional Comedians…

… when you have that:

Japan Another Babylon
Posted 05 November 2003 – 11:39 AM
All of these things seem to be happening in Japan. Japan is possibly another babylon. Japan has frequent earthquakes too. Maybe also a sign. All of the worlds technology seems to thrive from Japan. The funny thing is, is that I feel led to goto the Japanese people. I am pursueing that right now. In the near future I plan on transfering within my company to Japan. God has laid them on my heart. I am currently studying japanese, and God has put me in contact with at least 3 japanese people who are in the US or Japan. Japan in very wicked, I don’t need to go into the Violence or sexuality they portray blatently in there movies and ANIME. As I stated in my “matrix” theory. Japan is a very industrialized nation. They have almost no forest left, everyone lives in apt. technology has taken over thier lives. And I fear America will soon be in the same boat. Pray for me as I strive to do Gods will, and reach out to the japanese people.

OK. Granted making fun of hardcore literal-minded christians is like shooting fish in a holy water font. Especially the kind who do not mind using the word “wicked” in its non-second-degree, we’ll-burn-you-to-the-stake, medieval acception, while keeping a straight face.

But nonetheless, it’s refreshing to know that there are people out there with real concerns about the direction things are going in this world and the soul of these “poor unsaved Asian people”.

And by the way, which country do you think has the highest statistics for murders, robberies, violent crimes and other nasty things most definitely reproved by the official christian rules book and by any decent gentleman in general? And in what segment of this population can we find the most vociferous proponents of unregulated gun ownership?

Yea, that’s what I thought too.

by ·Comments Off on クリスマス魂

If I hear one more mashed-up xmas carols mix-cd, I’m gonna puke all over your freakin’ hello-kitty-decorated christmas trees, OK?

Ah Joy of Christmas, this long awaited time of peace, harmony and crass commercialism…

But let’s not get overly negative. After all, I’ll take pachinko employees flyering in zebra-print santa uniforms any day over Walmart’s cheap plastic dancing santas and nauseating hallmark cards. And talking about Wal-Mart, I still have a hard time getting over this stupid news bit relating that walmart christmas sale’s stampede, about a week ago. Though the woman supposedly “badly injured” apparently turns out to be a serial-faker, I don’t think I could imagine a more degrading story to go with an injury. God: I’d sooner tell the medics how I accidentally burnt my nuts in a freak late-night naked arc-welding accident, rather than having to tell how I got trampled by a herd of middle-aged obese Floridian housewives while clutching at some discounted taiwanese DVD player, lying on the floor of the local walmart.

Well, according to the news, she recovered quickly and the gentle employees at walmart kept her one of the coveted discounted DVD player. I guess we all get the kind of heartwarming christmas stories we deserve…

by ·Comments Off on Another David’s Blog

Since I now host an install of MT on my own servers, I offered my friend David R., a Frenchman who lives in SF, to set him up with his own blog (link removed: blog taken offline), knowing he would certainly have interesting things to say.
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