April 2009 – Page 6 – The Unwanted Blog

It is time to arise again, to go forth and pillage!!

Hundreds of Brown students had asked the Providence school to stop observing Columbus Day, citing the explorer’s violent treatment of Native Americans. Reiko Koyama, a sophomore, says celebrating Columbus Day seemed inconsistent with Brown’s values.

The opening is now available to send a raiding party into Brown, and make them celebrate Bjarni Herjólfsson Day! They have shown that they are weak and open to attack. Burn their village, steal their gold, and treat their women with kindness and mercy, what with this being the 21st century and all. Vikings are barbarians, after all… not Islamists.

Still, take all their stuff. They’re hippies.

If you want to subject yourself to the depths of stoooopid that humans are able to produce…. look no further than this thread on the PETA forum.

I’ve been a vegan since I was 16 years old, after I decided I did’nt want to live off another animals pain. I recently rescued a cat from the pound. I don’t want to participate in the consumption of any meat, so I’ve been trying to get the cat to eat a diet of soy based substitutes but it just sniffs them a walks away.

I’ve been reading online that cats can selectively starve themselves and I’m worried it may get sick soon, but its not right for it to be able to live at another creatures expense. Does anyone know of any tried a proven methods to get a house cat onto a vegetarian diet?

Great googaly-moogaly. Trying to force a cat onto a vegan diet? What compounds the stupid is that this asshat isn’t universally taken to task for being an asshat. Instead, many of the PETA respondants actually support the idea.

Cats are carnivores. Attempts to make them vegetarians are ridiculous and arguably evil.

With rare exceptions, humans prefer the company of carnivores over herbivores. What are the two most popular pets in the west? Dogs and cats. We name our sports teams after carnivores… Wolves and Raptors and Lions and Tigers and Bears. Sometimes Rams and Stallions, but rarely Bunnies or Sheep or Cows. Of the mammals we eat, *what* mammals do we eat? We eat the herbivores. Cows. Guinea Pigs. Sheep. Goats. Pigs we eat in considerable abundance; they are, like us, omnivores, but generally not really hunters. But the afore-mentioned wolves and lions and tigers and bears? Not very often. Some cultures eat dogs and cats; but we in the west largely turn up our noses in shock at that, and often pass laws against it. Many people have pet rabbits… but we eat *those* with gusto.

Why this distinction?

Professional-goddam-courtesy, that’s why. We recognize ourselves in carnivores far more than we do in herbivores. There are good reasons for this… predators are, on the whole, smarter and more filled with personality than herbivores. What are our favorite critters of the sea? Probably dolphins and whales… every last one a predator, and many capable of having great fun torturing prey items like seals. As Larry Niven once pointed out, it doesn’t take a lot of smarts to sneak up on a leaf. And if you don’t need smarts, you generally don’t evolve smarts. Look into the eyes of a cat or a dog or a ferret, and you’ll see an individual looking back out at you. A soul, if you will. Look into the eyes of a cow. There ain’t nuthin’ there. No intelligence, no desire, no friggen’ dignity. It’s little more than a biological mechanism for turning grass into more cows.

The features that make us like cats and dogs are derived precisely from the features that make them good predators. Kitten and cat play are indistinguishable from hunting behavior. They enjoy the process of stalking another living critter, pouncing on it and smacking the crap out of it. Yes, it sucks for the mouse. But it’s fun for the cat. And it’s not a taught behavior… it’s built-in. If you take that away from them, you take from them their basic nature.

<>So abusing a cat by making it eat food that it *knows* is crap is an act deserving of a boot to the ass. Make a cow eat whatever you want. But dogs and cats… they’re different. Humans have spent the last 20,000 or so years turning wolves into dogs, and the last 5,000 or so years turning cats into, well, cats. Dogs we use to hunt for us, to protect our person and our property from other predators. Cats keep our property clear of smaller, but no less dangerous threats such as poisonous snakes, grain-devouring mice, and plague-spreading rats. They are ON OUR TEAM. Abusing them by forcing them to engage in bullcrap hippie-fascist food ideology is just… wrong.

According to US News and World Report:

It didn’t play out minute by minute on the nation’s television screens as so many other crises have, but the dramatic rescue of American hostage Richard Phillips on the high seas yesterday was still a defining moment for President Obama.

0bama does the absolute minimum he possibly could, and the press goes ga-ga. 0bama’s decision to allow the military to do its job was not a brave, difficult, courageous act of strong political will… it was the simplest decision possible. There was absolutely no conceivable upside for any other decision. So… 0bama’s ability to make blisteringly simple decisions is a “defining moment.”

In the 1980’s, the French studied the Hermes spaceplane… sort of the midpoint between the Dyna Soar and the Space Shuttle. It took them substantially longer than a decade to figure out that a reusable payload shroud is not that great of an idea. But they cranked out some spiffy artwork in the meantime. The art below came from a variety of magazine/journal articles, scanned quite a few years ago.

Huh. From the Times Online:

Samson Obama — one of the US President’s 11 half-brothers and sisters — is alleged to have been living illegally in Britain when he was arrested in Berkshire last November. A group of girls, one aged 13, told police a man approached them and followed them into a café a mile from the home of Samson Obama’s mother in Bracknell.

Mr Obama, 41, was questioned by Thames Valley Police for several hours, during which his fingerprints and a DNA sample were taken. He is alleged to have told detectives that he was Henry Aloo, a genuine asylum-seeker, but gave the address of his own mother, Kezia. Mr Obama denied any sexual assault, but is reported to have accepted an official caution for a public order offence. A caution is an admission of a criminal offence. Police were reported to have also discovered that Mr Obama had been living illegally in Britain for seven years.

But hey, enough about that. The news media needs to get back to wall-to-wall coverage of former VP-nominee Sarah Palin’s daughters ex-fiance! That’s real news!

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” was a short sci-fi story published in 1961. Like Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” it was set ina dystopian future that seemed, I’m sure, laughably unlikely… and like “Atlas,” now seems virtually here. In “Bergeron,” everyone is finally truly equal… because the government *makes* them equal. If you are better than the norm in any way, you are handicapped so that you *aren’t* better than the norm. If you’re strong, you’re made to constantly wear weights. If you’re attractive, you wear a goofy mask at all times. If you are smart, a headset is forever beeping and screeching in your ear to distract you. It’s the equality of lowest-common-denominator. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you find a copy and read it (such as online here). It gave the world the (sadly, rarely used for how appropriate it is) pejoritive term “handicapper general.”

It’s a short story, and a short movie (apparently about 25 minutes) is being made of it under the title “2081.” From the trailer, it looks to be pretty good.

Take a look at the trailer on Youtube and/or look at the movies website. And then ask yourself if it’s really going to take until 2081 before the world of Harrison Bergeron comes to an extraordinary person near you.

For just pennies a day you can feed the cute little kitties. Only you can prevent them from starving. Only a monster wouldn’t help keep the kitties from starving. You’re not a monster… are you??? Please go here and donate.

Forty seven year old Susan Boyle on “Britain’s Got Talent,” wants to be a professional singer. She’s goofy looking, she’s weird, she’s way past old as far as the entertainment industry is concerned. When she goes out onto the stage, pretty much everyone just laughs at her. Then she starts singing.

This sort of thing has happened before. Here’s to hoping that things work out as well for Susan Boyle.

A bit of artwork from Bell showing a design for a VTOL cargolifter capable of carrying and delivering via hoist while hovering a standard rail-roadable cargo module. No further data. Likely dates from the early 1960’s.

The wind blast from those ducts would have made that railyard an interesting place.

I’ve been here for four and a half years, and never went to see the “Spiral Jetty” until today. It’s an interesting place… but in retrospect, a VW Golf is *not* the best mode of transport to get there. The road starts out paved. Then it turns into a gravel road. Then it turns into a dirt road. Then it turns into a series of ruts. Then it turns into a boulder field. A Hummer would have been a better vehicle. Still, I got there…

I’ll need to return some weekday (when there aren’t so many other sightseers) with my aerial photography rig.