Holly Kennedy: "What if this is it, Gerry? What if this is all there is to our life? You have to have a plan. Why do I have to be the responsible grown up who worries? Why can't I be the cute, carefree Irish guy who sings all the time?" Gerry Kennedy: "Because you can't sing without making dogs bark?"

See his New Rules here

NEWSFLASH
News.com.au reports that:

Michael Yon reports on the after effects of Operation Arrowhead Ripper

For the last four months a debate has ranged on this forum over the Clayton's choice offered by the current US electoral system.

A year ago and a half ago, an infamous 5-4 US Supreme Court decision (The Kelo v. New London, Conn.) upheld a municipality's right to use eminent domain to take private property for redevelopment by a private, profit-making concern.

Welcome into the mind of a racist academic. Dr Kamau Rashidi Kambon

FYI for Americans who don't know, Rainbow was a '70s era British TV show for kids made by the ITN network. Click

Perusing the NZ Herald the other day I saw the picture of the lovely looking lass who heads up this article.

Reading the article just about caused me to start banging my head against the wall. It's about the shortage of good 20-30 year-old men in the country and thus there is an excess of single women, the beauty in the headline is a victim of this terrible calamity. Or is she?

Intensive care to save to save families

Some choice quotes from this report:

"Intensive family therapy - which can include removing members from their home - is one option the Social Development Ministry is examining as it works to deal with dysfunctional homes in which drug and welfare dependency is rife.

Freedom is not free is a non-patisan US charity set-up to raise money to help ease the load for wounded warriors as they make the transition back to civilian life. Currently, Freedom is not free is selling a calendar which may err... "interest" the ladies and many of the lads on this website.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,216481,00.html

Proof that common sense is another thing you can't get from a Stone...

How time flies when you aren't being irradiated by accidents at government-owned & operated nuclear power stations. If you are old enough you might recall the day in 1986 (01:23 a.m. on April 26 to be exact) when the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant blew up. Note that unlike the privately-owned & profit-making civilian reactors in the West, this Russian reactor was built without a containment building. Another great example of Nanny-state working for the public good...

Once again, the Main Stream Media has been caught in a lie. Hot on the heels of Memo-gate and plagiarism at the NYT comes the story that Reuters has been distributing doctored photographs of Israel's campaign to evict Hezbollah from Lebanon. The story is summarized best by Cox and Forkum. (Tips hat to Peter Cresswell.)

<<<NEWS FLASH>>>

Actually, George Carlin didn’t write the rules that were originally posted here. It has been pointed out to me that Bill Maher invented the "New Rules" comic device. These particular rules aired on Bill's Real Time program. It aired on HBO between March and September 2005.

You can actually read Bill's rules "New Rules" here.

You can read the rules that used to be posted here at this website.

And well you should read them, because there are some bloody funny ones there. But don't take my word for it, I've posted by favourite rules below.

All that remains is to offer a red-faced mea culpa.  I offer my apologies to Bill Maher and George Carlin for misattributing their work and for posting something without checking the copyright issues around it. I shall now go and eat some boiled Brussels sprouts as punishment.

Let this be a lesson to the rest of you. Never believe any E-mail you receive from an Australian. Those bloody sheep-shagging sons’s of sheep-rustlers couldn't lie straight in bed.

"A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having."

There are many aspects of V for Vendetta that will warm the cockles of the Objectivist heart. Set in post-apocalyptic Britain, the story unfolds with an innocent citizen, out after curfew, is beset by three special police officers ("Finger-men") intent on gang raping her. Out of the midnight mist appears a caped figure in a Guy Fawkes mask, a vicious fight ensues and the masked man prevails.

Here's an exercise for your Wednesday morning: Type in www.solohq.com and try to determine whence the message announcing the rise of SOLO-Passion from the ashes of SOLOHQ has gone. You will see Joe Rowland's RoR announcement, but nothing about Linz or SOLO-P.

Disclaimer: I, Robert Winefield - author of this post, do solemnly acknowledge that Joe is under no legal obligation to afford SOLO-Passion advertising space on his website. Mind you, I didn't go to RoR by choice! I navigated to www.solohq.com - previous location of a joint venture between Joe Rowlands and Lindsay Perigo.

This is only an observation. I am reserving my judgement because I don't have the vocabulary to express my true feelings without being obscene.

From Foxnews:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,187542,00.html

"AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, the so-called "butcher of the Balkans" being tried for war crimes after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed during his country's breakup, was found dead Saturday in his prison cell. He was 64."

I was never a supporter of Bill Clinton's 1999 punitive campaign against Serbia. The reason? I couldn't figure out who the good guys were! Dyed in the wool ethnic-Serbian ex-commies on one side fought the less-well armed Bosnian-Herzegovinian Croats and Bosniaks on the other - when they weren't fighting each other that is. And, to add to the fun, the Lillie-white uniformed UN "peace-keeping" forces spent most of their time trying to avoid being shot. Not an easy thing to do when some moron in New York decides you must scorn camouflage because your so-called mission requires you to be highly visible in a combat zone.

"The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer" - Victor Borge.

The evening I spent captivated by Victor Borge, as he performed in front of a packed house in Hamilton's Founders Theatre, is one of the highlights of my life. At one point Victor attempted to play his finely polished Steinway but kept falling from his piano bench (Victor was 80-odd when I saw him). Exasperated, he opened the lid of the bench, pulled out a seat belt, and buckled himself in. Thus secured, he completed the excerpt by Brahms and then stood to accept the rapturous applause with a bow. As he bowed the little concert hall filled with laughter, for the piano bench was still attached to his backside.

For those who don't know, I've been banished to Lawrence, Kansas, USA for my sins as a scientist (i.e. being dumb enough to become one).That poses a slight problem in that my loved ones are well out of shouting distance on the other side of the world.  This is what the telephone, telegraph, and radio were invented for, I hear you say.  'Tis true - and very fine inventions they all are - but there is now something much better: the Internet!  Now, before you tell me that you know about that one already, do you know of a piece of software called Skype?  Skype (www.skype.com) is a wonderful piece of software that allows me to place videophone calls to my parents in New Zealand for free!

There are some catches though.  For the videophone calls, both parties will need a computer with a broad-band/hi-speed connection, a sound-card, a microphone, and a web-cam.  This isn't a huge problem because most modern computers have this anyway.  You download and install Skype (for Mac OSX or Windows XP - though the webcam feature only works on the PC at the moment), create your Skype identity and you may place "calls" to any other customer with a similar computer set-up, anywhere in the world, free of charge.

For a small fee, you can upgrade Skype to call mobile and land-line phones and you can even set up "local" telephone numbers anywhere in the world.  The beauty of this is that you can have a telephone number in the USA, without residing in that country...  [Pause for business opportunities to sink in!]

Now I'm sure that Skype has competitors, and this little review has nothing to say about them because I haven't tried them yet.  However, I have used Skype extensively and I can vouch for the fact that, in terms of long-distance and international calls placed from a fixed address, it exceeds the quality of any conventional telephone service available in Kansas - that includes SBC/AT&T, T-mobile, and MCI.

In summary, it's just the thing for certain New Zealand-based objectivists in the process of setting up a sanctuary for "homeless" Objectivists

Photo shot Feb 15th (I think) in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Hat tips:
http://kolthoff.blogspot.com and N-TV.de: URL=http://www.n-tv.de/634520.html.