Get one while they last.

Just thought I'd give a shout out to a really good blog, that I had forgotten all about for a while until I just spotted the link on my own blogroll. There's lots of good stuff on there right now, though I especially want to draw attention to their posts on Google censorship in China.

Anyway, if you've never read RHOG before, it's definitely worth checking out, especially if a good sense of humor helps make our planet's descent into madness more palatable for you.

Who can use this to come up with the best title for Michael Moore?

Compete for such compelling prizes as ASFM's favorite snack foods. Not that we plan to award any, but you can compete for whatever you want.

This explains a lot

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view. Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.

The results were announced today.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

Bias on both sides
The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning.

The tests involved pairs of statements by the candidates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, that clearly contradicted each other. The test subjects were asked to consider and rate the discrepancy. Then they were presented with another statement that might explain away the contradiction. The scenario was repeated several times for each candidate.

A brain-scan technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen said.

Other relatively neutral candidates were introduced into the mix, such as the actor Tom Hanks. Importantly, both the Democrats and Republicans reacted to the contradictions of these characters in the same manner.

The findings could prove useful beyond the campaign trail.

"Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,'" Westen said.

The researchers will present the findings Saturday at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Is anybody else getting the urge to stock up on canned foods and guns and hideout in a bunker? Pledge your affiliation to the Angry Stick-figure Man militia in the comments to this post.

Don't miss this cartoon strip I caught over at Free Will.

A while back, I heard a Rabbi on Michael Medved's show making the case that Protestant Christianity is the form of religion that most lends itself to prosperity and and liberty in society as a whole. The Rabbi obviously still adhered to his own Jewish faith, so he probably doesn't think Protestant religions are the path to God, but the point was obviously about the social influences of religions on culture. I didn't get to listen to much of it as I was on a commute to my old job, and had to punch in right quickly, but what I heard I thought made a lot of sense.

Recently I have been thinking even more about this idea, and trying to apply it. Now, think about the crazy-ass Balkan area of Europe for a minute. You got lots and lots of religious conflict in that region. What religions are prominant in that area? Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, and Islam (a version of Islam much more liberal than that practiced in much of the Middle East, though that doesn't seem to prevent any of the factional fighting in the region). Notice anything these three religions have in common? They all really came to be established during the Middle Ages. You can certainly still see the mideivel influences in the religious artwork and architecture of these religions. Protestant Christianity, while I'm sure is just as full of nutty people as any major human belief system, finds its origins in the Rennaissance period of European history (as does the philosophy of capitalism, it's worth noting, not to be confused with the mindless accumulation of wealth that was actually mercantilism). I think the ideas that evolved out of the Rennaissance are really what make the major difference between a civilization worth living in, and, well, most of the rest of the world.

While there are some prevelant Eastern religions and philosophies that seem to pave the way well enough for a tolerable society, it seems that Protestant cultures lend themselves most readily to liberal (and I hope you all know by now what I mean when I use the term "liberal") thinking and tolerance. Oddly enough, more thoroughly secular societies have leant themselves to the worst genocides of human history, and even more tolerable secular societies don't seem capable of sustaining their population.

Protestantism is the dominant religious system in the United States, Britian (though I suppose even Protestant England still retains a great deal of feudalism's influence, as is readily observable in the fact that they still have a goddamned monarch, for Christ's sake), and Australia, arguably the most tolerable places to live in the Western world, and I think most of us would agree that the Western world is the most tolerable part of the world to live in. I think it is the combination of Rennaissance and Christian philosophy, and their influences, that makes a society more willing to reevaluate itself and improve itself.

I'm still kind of working on this train of thought, so any comments anyone can add to that would be appreciated. I was curious if anybody had any thoughts, assuming you agree with the premise to some degree, on how this train of thought might be applied to the rise of Fascism in Europe (Italy and Spain are both Catholic countries, Germany is a bit defiant of this train of thought as they are predominantly Protestant, France is Catholic, and while they didn't really have Fascism come to prominance from within as other countries did, they seemed to bend over for the Nazis a bit too readily)? I am not too familiar with the fighting between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, so maybe somebody could enlighten me a bit more in that regard, and whether it may contradict or bolster anything I have speculated about here. Also, what about Eastern philosophies that we may be less familiar with? What kind of political influences do you think they carry?

Finally, I thought I might throw Israel into the debate. Judaism obviously predates the Middle Ages. Does anyone think that Judeo philosophy has anything to do with Israel's amazing ability to prosper in the face of constant attack from without and within, constant restraints pushed on them by the international community, a fair amount of socialist economic policies, and a huge percentage of an economy -- whose only natural resource to begin with is Jewish people -- going towards the military? Am I biting off more than I can chew with the scope of this topic?

UPDATE: To throw more food for thought into the topic, the Vatican I believe has thrown its support behind evolution theory, which I presume means all Roman Catholics believe in evolution. Protestant faiths seem more resistant to evolution teaching. What about the teachings do you think provides for the discrepency? One reason I bring this up is because some of the earlier points of this post I realize could be interpreted as me accusing the Catholic church of being dogmatic in its teachings, and I don't mean to make such accusations (at least no moreso than a certain amount of dogmatism is prevelant in any political and/or religious movement).

Also, I think the structures of churches may be a factor. The Catholic church seems to have a more obvious hierarchical structure than other religions I am aware of. Now, I tend to have a hard time keeping track of all the different Protestant religions and which prominent religious figures belong to which organization, but it seems like with Protestantism you have a bunch of different wacky religious figures (leaders, speakers, whatever) all acting on their own crazy little agenda (Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Fred Phelps, Billy Graham, Kent Hovind, the occasional snake handling cult leader, and all manner of televangelists), which I think better resembles your typical free and dynamic, capitalist society, where every fringe and whim of society is catered to in some form or to some degree. That is not to say that the best way to run a government is also the best way to run a major religion (obviously it doesn't make a lot of sense for a religion to take a popular vote on whether the 7th Commandment should be adhered to, trust me, we've been down that path before on this blog).

Well, I think I can officially think of myself as a good person. Getting off school today, I changed the tire for a total stranger in the freezing fucking cold and snow, out in the school parking lot. The girl I helped had a Support Our Troops bumper sticker too.

Anyway, yeah, I rock!

Imagine there's no commies,
It's easy if you try,
No Castro east of us,
Above us only sky.
Imagine Solzhenitsyn
Never had to go to jail...

Imagine there's no gulags,
It isn't hard to do,
No commie thugs to die for,
No Hugo Chavez too,
Imagine Michael Moore-on
Weeping in a side of beef...

Man was born to own a Beemer,
Man was born to own a gun.
Throw your Che shirt in the trash and join us,
Blondes and capitalists have more fun.

Imagine no political famines,
I wonder if you can,
No de-kulakization
Wiping out nations of man,
Imagine 100 million murder victims
Suddenly all back in the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
But at least I own a gun,
Drop those Birkenstocks and join us,
Blondes and capitalists have more fun.

Updated! Because the world was waiting with bated breath for me to make this classic of mean-spirited laissez-faire agitprop more consistent with the real cheesy song as it appears in the wild, I corrected my omission of a chorus. However, since I don't like or care about the original, I assumed the structure from a Rick Springfield cover was correct. Now it's ready for all you Mean Old Republicans out there to take to Karaoke Night.

More Space Moose

LINK (DO NOT click unless you want to see Space Moose's penis, and lots of splattered fecal matter)

and just to stick it one more time to the politically correc-tards
LINK

Why do political opinions have to come in pre-packaged bundles? This is a great frustration to me, because this is supposed to be the United States of goddamn America, where we have freedom of choice and unbridled (yeah right) capitalism. This seems retarded to me. Why do people think they're "progressive" or "enlightened" thinkers, any side of the political spectrum, if they just went with the #4 ideological combo meal on the extra value menu that was presented before them?

While I have had my sappy sentimental moments of aspiring to be above political partisanship, I have been pretty unabashedly right-leaning in my collective internet presence. That said, I think Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Michael Savage, and Ann Coulter are all pretty nuts. No more nuts than anyone who would rather take partisan political snipes at the president than to breath an acknowledgment that radical Islam is a serious fucking threat, but anyone who thinks that gays entering into contractual obligations into monogomous relationships with each other is any kind of serious detriment to society needs to have their priorities checked (not to say all social conservative pundits are bad, as I think Michael Medved is excellent, even when I disagree with him). Now, I've said before that I think legal unions between gays should be semantically differentiated between a union between straights (look up "marriage" in any dictionary and tell me the term "gay marriage" isn't a contradiction), but seriously, I can not understand for the life of me why people get a hair up their ass about this. Now, way back in this post, which I think I count amongst my Mad Alchemist's Greatest Hits posts, I pointed out a lot of examples of how gay rights were observably improving in many respects since Republicans took over, but that's aside my point here. What I mean to say now is that it's obnoxious pundits on the right who are exacerbating this stereotype. It's a damn shame, because I've heard Rush Limbaugh take gay callers on his radio show, and he seemed to absolutely ooze support for the gay Right movement, but there's never any attention given to this. Let's not forget that failed, "far-right" Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was pretty supportive of gay rights, so Democrats who voted for Lyndon Johnson instead can sit silently in the corner, please. Also, there are a lot of great gay pundits on the right, a few of whom have blogs on the right-hand column over there, who have a damn sight more to offer to political discourse than some of the above mentioned pundits who only serve to piss off the opposition and not make any headway. Plus I think we all miss TUA's posting on this blog.

As usual, I've sidetracked myself from my main topic, so let's try to get back on course. Anyway, so... yeah... I hate socialism and political corectness, I think the right to keep and bear arms is the single most important right to preserving a free society, plus I think having a major portion of the world ruled by people with a medeival mindset and industrial age weopanry is not something that can be ignored forever. How can those views possibly be reconciled with any existing left-wing party that I am aware of, no matter how many views I may agree (to some extent or another). In all honesty I think I'm a pretty liberal guy, by traditional standards, and I in fact take great joy in offending some of the left-wingers I know by delving into the darker and more perverse recesses of my sense of humor. In fact, of the two message boards that I am semi-regular at, the "liberal" board has a number of perpetually offended, outraged, and indignant types, and I've gotten cold reactions for posting some moderately disturbing stuff on there (though there are some pretty cool lefties there, otherwise I would never come back to that board), while the right-wingers at the Kallini board seem to have no limit to their depths of debauchery, something we tend to take great pride in over there..

I think I'm a pretty open-minded guy. I've speant half of a class presentation on communism debunking negative stereotypes about communism that people in the class brought up, despite being a radical anarcho-libertarian in at least my utopian aspirations (of course, to me the horrifying part about communism is that communists think they're secular saints). I tend to try to view life through the philosophy that there is good and bad in every individual, group, event, and in anything. Human beings aren't perfect, so no human ideology will ever be perfect, thus I at least try to be aware of flaws in my own beliefs, and I actually do like having my beliefs (politely) held to scrutiny. In fact, I would honestly hate it if all I ever had was people telling me I was right all the time. The most fun arguments (though they could at times get tedious) I ever had on that lefty board was with the one member who was as big a nerd as I am (actually I should specify political nerdiness, as there was some serious Anime and Final Fantasy nerdiness on that board that I would have no part of). We'd basically scare everyone else away from those threads with our clashes of political egos, and we tended to both force each other to back peddle quite a bit as things went on, until we got bored and argued about something. Something I noticed of that person, and I hope it isn't equally true of me, though it's probably something that is difficult to perceive in one's self, is that if I wasn't posting much over there he would just revert to boring old cliched left-wing boilerplate, whereas when I pressed him he actually showed unique ideas of his own, and an earnest willingness to concede points, this was a dynamic, thoughtful individual. But here was a perfectly intelligent person, yet someone who loved to calloulsy cast off the "masses" of the population as mind-numbed sheep, and in the pressence of (less politically refined) like-minded people he would be easily lulled by the siren-song of group-think (I'm awfully pretentious today, aren't I?). Human flaws are universal, as are flaws of mass movement. In rallying together a mass movement that is worth a piss in a democratic election, every organization is dependant on its idiots. All I can really say to anyone is think for yourself, and challenge your beliefs. I think most of the people hear adhere to that already (if there's still anyone who reads this blog), but spread that way of thinking, even if it means actually humoring someone who harbors ideologies you resent. I think the internet has been an amazing tool for the dissemination on comeptition of different ideas (sure has helped open up my worldview), but at the same time there's an obnoxious number of me-too, echo chamber blogs, which I think this blog actually sort of was among at the time I started it, but I really had no idea what I was doing at the time, not that I have any sort of clear ideas now. I really feel like the information age has been the biggest boon to the right, first with talk radio and now with bloggers taking on the mainstream media hegemony (and by extension, the decades long Democrat stranglehold on the legislative branch), and I think spreading the notion of ideological competition in a free market of ideas will do more for the cause than sending out the talking-point-parrotting pundits to the frontlines. Also, I don't think it would hurt for us advocates of South Park philosophy to take the ClueBat(TM) to some of the deadweight on the right, and point out that terrorism is not being caused by gays, but by people who hate gays far more than any nutty American evangelical ever has! Well, except maybe this guy, but he gets a free pass on hate-mongering for being a Democrat. Anyway, maybe when that happens we'll start seeing a real push for more freedom in this country by the Republican party.

And, as it usually seems to happen in these lenghtier posts, I drifted semi-aimlessly from topic to topic, didn't hit a lot of the points I intended to and don't know how to work them in now either, and at this point I can't even remember what I even wrote and am too lazy to look over it. Geez, I suck, but if you've been reading my blog this long I imagine that doesn't bother you.

Four cities here in Texas made the "Meanest 20 Cities to the homeless," or whatever this list chooses to label them here. That's Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin! Har, even bluer-than-blue Austin made it!

To be fair, passing a law against strangers taking a dump on your porch seems sufficient to get a city on the list. Do you live in a Mean City?

Tee-hee-hee!

Nothing to see here. Move along.

...and why ANWR must be preserved, via Liberal Larry.

I came across this jaw-dropping essay by Mark Steyn (hat tip), and as much as I hope he's wrong, I have to say I really think he's got it. Linking to it on my part is not enough, I have to insist that every one of you who reads this blog read the essay in its entirety (it's sort of long, but once I stared reading it I could not stop). I know no superpower lasts forever, but I think I'd prefer India or even China as the emerging world power. Sadly, Steyn certainly makes the future Pan-Arab Empire sound like a very plausible reality.

UPDATE: If the above link isn't working, go here to read the Google cache.