I would so play this.
You can read more about the effort here but it's pretty bloody cool.
Labels: computers, drek is excited, space, video games
Or, the thoughts of several frustrated intellectuals on Sociology, Gaming, Science, Politics, Science Fiction, Religion, and whatever the hell else strikes their fancy. There is absolutely no reason why you should read this blog. None. Seriously. Go hit your back button. It's up in the upper left-hand corner of your browser... it says "Back." Don't say we didn't warn you.
Labels: computers, drek is excited, space, video games
Yet another panel of scientists has found no evidence that a popular vaccine causes autism. But despite the scientists’ best efforts, their report is unlikely to have any impact on the frustrating debate about the safety of these crucial medicines.
“The M.M.R. vaccine doesn’t cause autism, and the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t,” Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, the chairwoman of the panel, assembled by the Institute of Medicine, said in an interview. She was referring to a combination against measles, mumps and rubella that has long been a focus of concern from some parents’ groups.
The panel did conclude, however, that there are risks to getting the chickenpox vaccine that can arise years after vaccination. People who have had the vaccine can develop pneumonia, meningitis or hepatitis years later if the virus used in the vaccine reawakens because an unrelated health problem, like cancer, has compromised their immune systems.
The same problems are far more likely in patients who are infected naturally at some point in their lives with chickenpox, since varicella zoster, the virus that causes chickenpox, can live dormant in nerve cells for decades. Shingles, a painful eruption of skin blisters that usually affects the aged, is generally caused by this Lazarus-like ability of varicella zoster.
Sallie Bernard, president of SafeMinds, a group that contends there is a link between vaccines and autism, said the latest report from the Institute of Medicine excluded important research and found in many cases that not enough research had been done to answer important questions.
“I think this report says that the science is inadequate, and yet we’re giving more and more vaccines to our kids, and we really don’t know what their safety profile is,” Ms. Bernard said. “I think that’s alarming.”
Labels: drek is sad, medicine, news, vaccines
"Noah expelling waste" is almost the entirety of this book. It could be the title. So why would they leave out how Molly has him attached ass-to-mouth to Hollis in a terrible Human Centipede experiment?!
"What time zone is Nevada?" Danny called out toward the trailer's kitchenette. His watch was a Rolex knockoff and it wasn't easy to reset, so whenever he was traveling he always put off messing with it for as long as possible. This, however, was shaping up to be a day when he'd need to know the time.
The message had been from the missing man, the one named Elmer.
There was to be another meeting this afternoon, the real meeting this time, at which the weapon would be exchanged for the money, and some final brainstorming would take place on the eve of tomorrow's planned bombing in downtown Las Vegas. The rendezvous was set for 5 P.M., out somewhere in the desert so far from civilization that only a latitude and longitude were provided as a guide to get there.
Between the two of them Danny was more capable on the computer, so it had been entrusted to him to plan the route to this remote location through a visit to MapQuest.
While Kearns was in the bathroom Danny had logged onto his favorite anonymous e-mailing site and fired off a quick text update to his staff in Chicago, with a copy to Molly and a short list of other trusted compatriots.
* FYI ONLY DO NOT FORWARD DELETE AFTER READING *
Big mtg today, Monday PM, southern
Nevada. If you don't hear from me by
Wednesday I'm probably dead*, and this is
where to hunt for the body:
Lat 37[degrees]39'54.34"N Long 116[degrees]56'31.48"W
> S T A Y A W A Y from Nevada TFN <
db
* I wish I was kidding [formatting original. Yes, really. And yes, I am too lazy to look up how to make the symbol for "degrees"]
The message was safely gone, the browser history deleted, and the map to the meeting location printed out and ready by the time Kearns returned to the room.
He [Stuart] turned back and hurried to the front door of the trailer, unlocked it and held it open, called inside, and gestured for half a minute until that moth-eaten cat appeared and scampered past him out into the barren yard.
This was a thing any person might do if they owned a pet and knew they'd be away on a trip until late tomorrow. But, and it was hard just then to put his finger on precisely why, it certainly seemed to Danny like this man thought he might be going away for an awful lot longer than that.
Labels: The Overton Window
I don't think that people who live according to the bible need to be rehabilitated* but it sure would be nice if they stopped trying to throttle the life out of every entertainment genre imaginable.
* Whatever the hell that would even mean in this context.
Labels: Drek is Amused, humor, religion
When I saw that "some other video" link, I was expecting a Rickroll. Now I can't stop imagining that "Danny Bailey" is a cover identity of Rick Astley.
I'm seeing Vanilla Ice as "Stuart", Debbie Gibson as "Molly", Dolly Parton as "Mrs. Ross", and for "Noah", a young Kasey Kasem.
Could Jimi have faked his death to become "Hollis"?
A small fragment of his awareness saw everything clearly from a mute corner of his mind, but that part had given up trying to rouse the rest of him. Noah still lay where Molly had left him, not exactly asleep but a long way from consciousness.
His nightmares had grown infrequent as he'd gotten older, but they'd always been the same. No slow-motion chases, shambling zombies, or yellow eyes peering from an open closet door; the running theme of his nocturnal terrors was nothing so elaborate. In every one he was simply trapped, always held by something crushing and inescapable as his life slowly drained away. Buried alive in a tight pine coffin, pinned and smothering beneath a pillow pressed to his face by powerful hands, caught under the crush of an avalanche, terrified and helpless and knowing he'd already begun to die.
This was the part where he knew he had to wake up, because if he didn't he was sure the dream would kill him.
He looked down and watched the gradual pierce of a hypodermic needle, but felt only a distant pressure and then a chill trickling up the vessel as the plunger was pushed to its stop. The room had begun a slow spin with him at its center.
The doctor snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Noah? Can you tell me what year it is?"
"Where am I?"
"You're safe. What's your mother's maiden name, do you know that?" She had a stethescope to his chest, and her attention was on the face of her wristwatch.
"Wilson. Jaime Wilson." He felt his head beginning to clear.
"I got here on Saturday night." A few others had gathered around and he noticed them exchanging a look when they heard this answer. "What happened? How long have I been out?"
"It's Monday, about noon," the woman said.
Monday, about noon; he'd been dead to the world for forty hours.
"Your father wants to see you," she said.
Labels: The Overton Window
Labels: Drek is Serious, sociology
Did Adolf Hitler rewrite the Bible?
Did Adolf Hitler rewrite the Bible?
Elimination of the Jews in Nazi Germany was not confined to the Holocaust. It also took the form of rewriting the New Testament to ‘dejudaize’ it, i.e. to remove references to Judaism and to recast Jesus as an Aryan, generating what has been called the ‘Nazi Bible’. This has been the subject of some sensational and substantially erroneous claims, including that the project was Hitler’s brainchild.
When what God has said in His inspired Word, the Bible, is disregarded by those who claim to be Christians, there is no logical limit to the errors or indeed the blasphemy to which this opens the door.
Today many pastors and theologians think they are doing the church a favour by substituting theistic evolution for recent Creation in Genesis, and by denying that the biblical accounts of the Flood and Babel are part of Earth’s true history. However, such persons have no authority to censor the Word of God in this way, any more than the liberal German Christians had to dejudaize it.
Without exception, all attempts to marry Christianity to the worldview of unbelievers contravenes biblical authority, and subverts the faith of Christians. At the same time, it cuts no ice with atheists and agnostics. Just as the Nazis whom Grundmann was trying to impress treated him with disdain, many anti-theists have nothing but contempt for Christians who do not believe their own Holy Book.
Labels: conservapedia, Drek is Amused, nazis
"It's a long story." "It's a long drive."
Hey, the authors took pity on us by closing the chapter!
Imagine if they'd kept going: the long story told to us in detail by the narrator (because the authors certainly wouldn't bother using dialog). Shudder.
But would it be worse to have Left-Behind-esque narration of the long drive? "Stuart adjusted the lighting on the dashboard, then glanced at the speedometer. He eased off the gas slightly, then checked the rear-view mirror." etc etc
These people should have a mindless-drivel-off.
Stuart Kearns, it turned out, had been in quite a different position a decade before.
He'd [Stu] worked in the top levels of counterterrorism with a man named John O'Neill (1), the agent who'd been one of the most persistent voices of concern over the grave danger posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s.
That's when he'd [O'Neill] taken his new position as head of security at the World Trade Center in New York City. His first day on the job was about three weeks before the day he died a hero: September 11, 2001.
Stuart Kearns' FBI career had likewise been derailed by his outspokenness and his association with O'Neill, but he'd stubbornly chosen to try to ride out the storm rather than quitting.
At the top of the off-ramp there was little indication of anything of interest beyond advertisements for nearby food, gas, and lodging. Oh, and an eye-catching billboard for the Pussycat Ranch. [emphasis added]
"A beer in a can in a house trailer with another dude and a beer in a Nevada brothel are two totally different things, and right now I need the second one."
Surprisingly enough, Kearns didn't put up a fight. He followed the signs along the circuitous route to the place without complaining, and pulled up into a parking spot near the end of the lot in front.
"Aren't you coming in?" [Danny asked]
"No, I don't think so. Fake or not, I'm not going to leave an atomic bomb unattended in the parking lot of a roadhouse."
"What can I do for you?" she asked.
"That's a loaded question in a place like this, isn't it?"
She frowned a bit and looked at him a little closer. "Do I know you, mister?"
"What's your name?" he asked.
"My name's Tiffany." Her eyes lit up suddenly. "You're that guy," she whispered, "on the Internet, in that video."
In her room in back he gave his new friend an autograph and his last ten dollars, and that bought him five minutes alone with her cell phone.
As he composed the text message to Molly Ross he began to realize how little intelligence he actually had to pass along.
He knew the code name of this operation he'd become involved in; he'd seen it on the paperwork they'd made him sign upon his release from jail. He knew when it was going down, and where. And he knew something was going wrong, and that the downward slide might be just beginning.
molly-
spread the word --- stay away from las vegas monday
FBI sting op --> *exigent*
be safe
xoxo
db
Labels: The Overton Window
Let's go back to the beginning — all the way to Adam and Eve, and to the question: Did they exist, and did all of humanity descend from that single pair?
According to the Bible (Genesis 2:7), this is how humanity began: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." God then called the man Adam, and later created Eve from Adam's rib.
Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe this account. It's a central tenet for much of conservative Christianity, from evangelicals to confessional churches such as the Christian Reformed Church.
But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."
Several other well known theologians at Christian universities have been forced out; some see a parallel to a previous time when science conflicted with religious doctrine.
"The evolution controversy today is, I think, a Galileo moment," says Karl Giberson, who authored several books trying to reconcile Christianity and evolution, including The Language of Science and Faith, with Francis Collins.
Giberson — who taught physics at Eastern Nazarene College until his views became too uncomfortable in Christian academia — says Protestants who question Adam and Eve are akin to Galileo in the 1600s, who defied Catholic Church doctrine by stating that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Galileo was condemned by the church, and it took more than three centuries for the Vatican to express regret at its error.
"When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face," Giberson says. "The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it."
Labels: Drek is Amazed, evolution, news, religion
Labels: The Overton Window
Labels: astronomy, Drek is Amused, global warming, science, YouTube