Instantaneous Notoriety

Did y'all see this guy who slipped off of, and was de-pants-ed by a ski lift?

Well I just came across it.

Apparently the guy was stuck up there, dangling, for 15 minutes or so before he was saved and re-clad. Meanwhile, other skiers took digital pics, giggled, and later uploaded them to the World Wide Web!

He suffered harsh *exposure*; and there are jokes aplenty about his *ski pole*, etc.

This poor man just wanted to hit the slopes that afternoon. He had no idea he'd end up becoming the butt of like millions of web jokes! See google if you're sufficiently small-minded to pile on.

It's not nearly as bad, but sort of similar to Steve Bartman whose life also irrevocably changed in an instant.

I guess we really shouldn't laugh (too loudly). In this hyper-digital age, such tragedy could befall anyone of us, at any time.

We should all ask ourselves how we'd measure up....in the freezing cold to boot!

What'll We Do Next Year?

My wife laments that we never really did a *scrapbook* for our babies.

I told her that much of their progress has been preserved on this blog!

Since we just finished Kumon's Grade 3 Math series, I figured that it was time to take a snapshot of this past 12-13 months accumulated *work*:



I also stacked them here for easier reading.



As always, any pic can be enlarged by clicking on it.

There are 25 books there - even the Prince, only 4.75 years old, can tell you that at 80 pages apiece....that he labored through about 2,000 worksheets between last summer and this one!

For the record, he did finish yet another book today. AND, my otherwise perfect wife whined that the books she did with him were omitted - chiefly a few Gifted and Talents books (by Flash Kids Editors).

I'm going to take a week or so off before resuming the Grade 4 math workbooks. I'm really trying to get my son as passionate about spelling and composition as he is about arithmetic. All day long he's asking me questions, "Dad, what's 90 times 50?...What's 2 million times 2 million?"

[I think he fired that last question after reading an article about Obama's new *public option*!]

I've started quizzing him on how to spell words we come across and but so far he's putting up a little resistance. After all, math was made relevant from *counting money*. THAT piqued his interest at first. If you remember, I kept giving him my change so long as he could count it accurately. So right now I am amidst figuring out how to make spelling properly (and expanding his vocabulary) an efficient and passionate undertaking.

Just as I was typing this it dawned on me that we could play Scrabble, or, one of my childhood favorites, Big Boggle!

THIS is why I blog. It forces me to think when otherwise I'd be vegetating in front of the color TV!

I'll get those games from my mother....as I'm sure she never through them out.

Google Diversity Training

The following are screenshots of Google search suggestions:









































Not for anything, but WASPS got ripped the most here.

Every other ethnicity may be irksome in some way or another (or another still), but the very *existence* of White Angle-Saxon Protestants has been called into question!

Male Progression, And Retrogression

I've covered this area before, but here I wanted to put them all in sequence.

This way, young boys can readily see the pathetic, neanderthal outline of their future!






Apparently, judging by Google search suggestions, when men become 'old coots':

They FINALLY wake up no more engorged than they went to sleep.

And they transform from active, deceitful antagonists to sleepy, every-sense-offending oddities.

I can't wait!



I wonder where their pants will ride up to in their dotage....all the way up to their crotch, perhaps?

See also - Life Backwards.

The Wisdom Of Web Crowds

Some addled youth on Yahoo Answers wonders whether or not he is gay. He's only 14 and admits that he finds himself looking at a certain part of the male anatomy.

And here was the winning *answer*:



Bam!

That joker even has a funny name!

Click the graphic to enlarge if illegible.

Shocking Development

From Drudge:





Not only is it going to miss Boston, maximum winds are down to 35 mph.

It weakened AND blew out to sea. Just as I assured y'all!

See - Be Fearful OF Alarmists.

Not A Participatory Sport, IMO

In honor of it being a Saturday night....how about spectating a little juvenile machismo?

This most definitely is not my kind of *sport*, and the guy is....totally nuts.

Nonetheless I found the secular music inspired, and the stunts amazing. Enjoy:



I've watched it twice already!

Knee-Slapper

I am NOT referring to the crudity on that graphic; I just needed the pic....

Click here for a funny post about Kfell country.

"Homeschooling" Censored At The Boston Globe

Over the last couple of days, after posting a comment on a vapid Boston Globe article titled - Pressure Cooker Kindergarten....I have received a substantial number of blog hits. Here's what I said:

Massachusetts is a pretty tough place to have a discussion about education. Just look, even though as I type this comment, this article is the *most e-mailed* story in the Globe....yet there are only a whopping THREE comments posted!

People here know nothing about education. First and foremost they believe that learning is something that happens in a specified place (school) for a specified time (12-16 years). But they couldn't possibly be more wrong. Ever wonder why the 'older set' here can't even figure out how to get both their cable box and their television power on concurrently?

Ans. - They are *lapsed-learners*.

Learning is ideally a lifelong, everyday, self-directed process. Grades and degrees have never been more worthless in history than they are today.

My son is 4.75 years old. Instead of spending roughly 2 hours per day getting him ready for and transporting him to preschool - as everyone else sheepishly does....I utilize that time to teach him myself. He's fully literate, using his own email account, googling everyday, and numerate beyond anyone's wildest expectations. After only a single year of my tutelage he's gone from tracing letters and numbers to the point where multiplication and division (long, with remainders) are cake; he's fluent in negative numbers, primes, a bit of geometry, triangular numbers, factorials, and even pre-algebra. Just before dinner tonight he randomly hollered at me that "29 and 31 were twin primes". Yet most of his age-mates around town who are *socialized* by pre-school can barely say hello to adults.

My son is hardly smarter than other kids his age. The difference is his days are spent with a complete-sentence-wielding, competent adult...and doing *work* each morning after breakfast for 1-2 hours. We do this every single day no matter the holiday or the season. It's efficient; it's green(!); it generates serious educational momentum; and the results speak for themselves. He'll be done 6th grade math this winter, and yet won't be legally eligible for kindergarten until six months later.

You guys can jawbone ad nauseam about the *optimal* ways to teach kids nonsense in K-12 hoosegows - but meaningful improvements will remain elusive. Y'all need to study the history of age-segregated, government education instead of blindly accepting the institutional status quo. Y'all need to start comparing your results to those of homeschoolers and other *alternative* methods of education - instead of just looking at facsimile schools *one town over*.

There have been many societies throughout history which achieved near 100% literacy. Meanwhile Boston has what, 20% of its students categorized as *special ed* by rent-seeking specialists?

For those few of you out there with open minds...to learn about the untold history of factory schooling:

http://marginalizingmorons.blogspot.com/search?q=gatto

And for more on how I educate my brood:

http://marginalizingmorons.blogspot.com/search/label/homeschooling

There were a few responses by other commenters:





And someone actually called me *pretentious....a neo-pagan...quasi-libertarian* before the grand finale assertion that my kids *were ugly*.

So at least a few people called me an outright *liar* and those comments I really do cherish. Throughout my life, people have always had a hard time determining whether or not what I said is *serious* or not. Even my wife is once in a while totally bewildered. Curiously, the only one on the planet whom I can never fool is my 4.75 year old son - PrinceC-Nut!

Just now I went to the comment section of that article again only to discover that some Boston Globe satrap deleted my initial comment!

Why?!?!?!

What could have been so offensive about mentioning homeschooling and how I educate my son?

Those illiberal clowns there spend a whole lot of time deleting comments these days. Here is how they used to do it:



But now they expunge all trace of the comment - lest anyone realize how many comments they actually delete! Probably a good half of the comments I see, or have been seeing until now, have been trenchant ripostes to their *journalism*. There's no way the Globies are going to stand for that. It took a lot of hard work to whittle their readership down to a bankruptcy-inducing nothing....they'll be darned to let some pajama-clad, basement-dwelling blogger-types come in, adulterate their agitprop, and possibly widen the scope of their audience!

Note that despite my comment being deleted, I was still able to reproduce it here on this post.

You see, these clowns are predictable; I generally save, right away, all substantial comments that I make on account of Moron predictability - especially in hostile territory!

See also:

Boston Globe - A New Nadir.

Hard Evidence Smacks Globies In The Face!

Newspapers - There Goes *Internet Growth*

America No More

Some of my cop-loving readers (Taylor?) will enjoy this one:

We All Grieve In Different Ways

My blog has received numerous hits today from people googling for the following image:



Given that that man was buried today....I'm guessing the googlers were *mourners*, no?

See also - Holier Than Thou - Marginalizing Extreme Moderates.

Gratuitous Eco-Evangelism

I just got an email from somebody which had the following *footer*:



For the record, I almost never print anything out. When I look up driving directions, I go so far as to grab a scrap of paper and transcribe the map. Those pricey toners just go too fast.

So I certainly don't need anyone invoking *the environment* as a reason not to print out an email ON MY PRINTER.

How about I create my own preachy email footer?

Follow Jesus or you'll burn in hell!

I seriously doubt many people would enjoy seeing that admonition every single time I write them.

My wife informs me that at her company, that same message is now appended to every corporate email. This I can sort of understand because the aggregate toner and paper wage slaves probably waste.

And she also informs me that she STILL just prints whatever the heck she wants!

*Saving trees* is in neither her job description nor our religion.

Atta girl!

Ensuring Catastrophe

Recently Massachusetts has made the news due to the fact that it has the most expensive healthcare in the nation - an astounding $13,788 to insure a family of four. See my prior post here.

I just got off the phone with my brother who recently moved overseas. On the way out, he changed his legal US address from Virginia, to our parents' house in Central Massachusetts.

In doing so, his catastrophic healthcare insurance premium skyrocketed over 100%.

It went from $90 to a whopping $210 per month!

Sick Parents

Somewhere in California....where else?

Be Fearful OF Alarmists

That's the *alarmism* du jour - that some tropical storm is going to hit graze Boston this weekend. In fact that was precisely the breathless line atop Drudge today, "Boston in path...."

How much you want to bet that it DOESN'T hit us???

It will *weaken* (already admitted now in the latest weather update!)....and it will without a doubt get pushed out to sea.

Last week, before heading to the Hamptons the outlook was also bleak. They had rain coming everyday from Wednesday through Sunday at a 30-40% chance. That was also on account of an incoming tropical storm I believe. Yet we weren't hit by a single freakin' raindrop!

Heck, I was on the cusp of cancelling my trip down there if I saw one slight downtick (say to 50% chance) in the forecast. Thank God I didn't.

Look at it this way, every business is conflicted. Wall Streeters, morticians, and plumbers alike will never be fully honest with their *customers*.

The same holds for the alarmists in the weather business - they are simply selling *worry* to a bunch of empty-skulled, idle worrywarts.

You know, they are targeting those Morons who still run out to buy milk, bread, and eggs at the ring of a weatherman's bell.

Look how much utter crap is relentlessly marketed to the lumpen masses: the idea of long term investing, of homeownership, worthless college degrees, over-priced insurance policies, innumerable *crises* that further empower those who should rightfully be hung, etc.

I'm sure someone could handily do a *study* on how much time people waste following and fretting about forecasted storms and how little their lives were ACTUALLY affected by what eventually transpired. I'm sure the efficiency loss would be off-the-charts.

Do yourselves all a giant favor - turn off the TV, never look at newspaper again, and forget about those dubious weather forecasts. Eliminate all the clatter and mind pollutants in your lives and I promise you the sky will never seem bluer.

I know for a fact that this blog has opened and changed the minds of others on sundry topics.

But I've yet to hear of anyone I've convinced to expunge all *daily news* from their informational diets. Nonetheless, I'll keep preaching and praying for those of you who keep sending me links to *breaking news*!

Most of y'all will have wimped out on my homeschooling recommendation for a variety of reasons. I fully understand that one. Now bear in mind that I recommend a media *blackout* just as much as I trumpet the education of one's own brood.

And it's unlikely any of you clowns can come up with a good enough excuse not to try this one. Give it a go for a week at least and get back to me. You'll undoubtedly see that while in your bunker....you missed ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of importance.

Kfell....is that your hand I see up?

C'mon bro....just one week. Do it before football season starts!

That's right, *sports* are taboo as well. There'll be no checking of Red Sox or Yankees' scores! Admittedly this particular move is what they would call in yoga-speak an *advanced modification*.

George Foreman - God In My Corner

This week, upon the recommendation of my SIL, I read that book.

Being the age that I am (35) I only knew George Foreman as a fat old boxer who came out of retirement and lucked into winning the heavyweight boxing title at the 'old coot' age of 45 back in 1994.

But it turns out the man has quite the interesting life story.

When he was 28 he had a near-death experience after which he claimed to have experienced hell and seen Jesus.

On the spot he quit boxing, at the near peak of his career, walked away from fame and fortune, mended his ways, and became a street corner preacher. Seriously! Who among us knew?

I don't want to summarize his life story here but will say this. George Foreman grew up dirt poor and actually took to mugging to subsist. He was a drunken hood well into his teens before he even discovered boxing. George was Mike Tyson before Mike Tyson!

And not only did Foreman walk away from his lucrative income in boxing, he was also victimized by *bad investments*. His confidantes stole and squandered all of his earnings. So this man who climbed his way out of poverty fell right back into it. He could have gone back to boxing at any time but wouldn't; he was a man of God now.

Only years later, George would resume boxing and re-climb the sport's highest perch....and the George Foreman Grill would make him financially him whole again to the tune of tens of millions. It goes without saying that few among us have gone from rags-to-riches-to-rags and then back-to-riches.



Primarily, this book is one of spiritual journey - I would highly recommend it for anyone at all interested in Christianity. But there's more to this autobiography than the proselytizing, and the peaks and valleys of celebrity. George Foreman may seem like a punch-drunk simpleton but there's so much more to the man. He's a latent intellectual who not only rethought his life's purpose; he's also chiseled out well-developed ideas on personal and public relations. Furthermore, George displayed real savvy in reinventing his boxing style (from cold-blooded bruiser to plodding strategist) and conducting his slow-and-steady return to prominence. He studied the failed comebacks of all the former boxing greats and realized that they all tried to challenge the new champs too soon. You'd think anyone who returned to the ring at age 38 would be antsy and have one eye on their biological clock. But not Foreman - he was one exceptional dude.





One interesting bit of trivia from the book concerned Foreman's highly publicized loss to Muhammad Ali in the Rumble In The Jungle - the one in which Foreman lost on the referee's *quick count*.

In George's autobiography, he admits to giving that same referee $25,000 before the fight. He was convinced (by others) that this had to be done to insure the ref didn't use his discretion, which he has plenty of, to simply disqualify George on a technicality. Years after the fight, after George had become good friends with his once-hated opponent, Muhammad Ali admitted to him that he too had paid off the referee upfront with $35,000.

How very Goldman Sachs of them both!

[Goldman simply donates to both political parties - as do many other *rational* corporations.]

Joan Rivers - Garbage Incarnate

One night last week while in the Hamptons I was completely bookless and could not sleep. So I went and laid down in front of the color television in the wee hours.

I caught a bit of *The Roast of Joan Rivers*, a comedy channel special where a bunch of comedians got on stage and ripped each other apart.

I was totally appalled at the language that was permitted. That's not a premium channel, is it?

I heard Joan use the word c*nt and joke about giving Mel Gibson a blowj*b.

Here's more as catalogued by the PTC:

• Joan Rivers comes out on stage holding hands with six little kids of different nationalities and says that Brad and Angelina are having a yard sale. She pulls at one little girl and says: "This one speaks English, say something!" The girl doesn't speak but then Joan says: "That's [bleeped ‘f***ing’] enough." She shoves at the line of kids and says: "All right, kids, go make jewelry!" Behind the kids' backs, she flips her middle finger and says: "I hate children."

• Gilbert Gottfried: "Anyone who has listened to the Howard Stern show has heard Robin talk about being molested by her father. She won't shut up about it. She's very proud of it. But what Robin Quivers conveniently leaves out of her delightful anecdote is that even as a kid she was so ugly that her father would close his eyes and fantasize about her sister... who was no looker herself I might add... and when he was done pillaging that homely daughter he used to whisper ‘don't tell anyone,’ because he was embarrassed. Oh the shame that that poor man must have felt having to hide the fact that his molestation standards were so low."

• JEFF ROSS: "Nip-tuck. What the (bleeped f***)? This isn't a roast this is an autopsy. ... Have you seen you new YouTube video? ‘Forget Matt Damon, I (bleeped f***ed) Charlie Chaplin.’ ... But all kidding aside Joan, I think you're incredibly sexy. I would (bleeped f***) you like there's no tomorrow. Because for you that's a distinct possibility. ... [talking about Kathy Griffith] Wow, look at that. When did Howdy Doody (bleeped f***) Pippi Longstocking? Holy s***. Kathy Griffin, I wouldn't (bleeped f***) you with Chastity Bono's new dick. ... [referring to Carl Reiner] Actually, tonight I should call you van because you're sitting in between a dick and dyke. ... You're amazing Joan. Forty years of telling it like it is. You got the biggest balls in the business and Joan her whole life all she wanted to just be considered one of the guys. And good new is, your doctor says you're only three surgeries away."

Roast Master Kathy Griffin

The PTC (see link above) listed the corporate sponsors of that event which include: Apple, Sony, Visa, Subaru, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, and sundry other household names. I say 'good luck' to them with their boycott. These corporations are amoral, rational, profit-maximizing entities. They simply cannot cast moral judgment on advertising opportunities. It's all about cost and ROI.

Why Big Science Is A Joke Today

It's been shown that *scientists* today are the most intellectually monolithic voting block. They vote for the *same party* (take a wild guess) even more consistently than African-Americans - well over 90% of the time.

So in a convoluted sense they are right that there is *no debate* on scientific issues like anthropogenic climate change....and the utility of the metric system.

Why exactly is there no debate?

That's a discussion for when we have more time.

But today I want you to click here and read (skim by necessity) one scientist's efforts to simply add a comment to some published academic research that he thought was bunk.

A quarter of the way through that litany I thought for sure it was rank hyperbole - if not a joke. But Prof. Rick Trebino claims it's a real life play-by-play of what happened to him when an academic journal published a paper that pretty much contradicted his life's work.

All I have to say is "WOW".

Let this be a reminder that one should always look askance at *what researchers and scientists* sell us these days.

Remember, they are not really scientists in the true sense of the word.

With their rank censorship and obscurantism, they are better described as today's high priests of information.

I submit that Big Government should not in any way shape or form be subsidizing *research* and that every flaw, communicative and otherwise, within today's scientific community descends from that fundamental corruption.

But again, add that on my list yesterday of outrages so far from the public consciousness that they don't stand a chance of ever being debated - no less rectified.

UPDATE - I changed "anthropomorphic" to "anthropogenic". See comments.

Can't Argue In An Inverted World, With Morons

So some Moron at the Washington Post just penned an intellectually bankrupt article on homeschooling. The absolute tripe that Big Media churns out these days is so deplorable I'm literally pained to read it.

Three Smart Rules for Home School Regulation

Homeschooling is the sleeping giant of the American education system. There are at least 1.7 million children being taught at home, a rough estimate because good data is hard to find and the number has been growing about 9 percent a year for the last decade. Home-schooling parents and their concerns don’t show up often in our debates over public schooling. They are too busy getting through the day, both making a living and teaching their children. We will likely hear more from them as they serve a larger and larger portion of the nation’s schoolchildren.

Some public school educators I know are uneasy about this. They don’t know home-schooling families well. They worry those kids are being ill-served by well-meaning but inexperienced parents....

WHOA right there!

Who the bleep put *public school educators* in charge of MY CHILDREN???

Given that most of them come from the second lowest quintile of academic performance themselves....the fact that they have ANY KIDS under their charge is scary enough.

Now they get an opinion on homeschoolers that should be weighed in possible homeschooling regulation????

Putting aside my personal homeschooling stance, this article's very premise is hollowed out of all logic.

This is what kills me. People today simply cannot think for themselves - of course, mostly on account of their Big Education upbringing.

At this moment, pols and pundits are arguing over which mortgage securities should be *bailed out* or made whole by newly minted currency. Meanwhile, the argument that Big Government has no place WHATSOEVER in the housing market can't even get an audience.

At this moment, pols, pundits, and narrow-brained doctors are arguing over big, super-big, or ginormous government run healthcare. Meanwhile, the intellectually superior notion that medicine would be completely fine on its own in a de-politicized market can't get any play either.

And, getting back to this ludicrous article, it's not enough for me or anyone else to wax indignant and assert that the government agents of Big Education have no dominion over the education of my children.

No, it's totally backwards.

It's me and the rest of us taxpayers who are in charge of *public school educators*!

And, not for anything, this *inversion of power*, and the havoc it would wreak, was predicted from the get-go.

From one of my favorite John Taylor Gatto excerpts:

In 1839, thirteen years before the first successful school compulsion law was passed in the United States, a perpetual critic of Boston Whig (Mann’s own party) leadership charged that pro-posals to erect German-style teacher seminaries in this country were a thinly disguised attack on local and popular autonomy. The critic Brownson allowed that state regulation of teaching licenses was a necessary preliminary only if school were intended to serve as a psychological control mechanism for the state and as a screen for a controlled economy. If that was the game truly afoot, said Brownson, it should be reckoned an act of treason.

"Where the whole tendency of education is to create obedience," Brownson said, "all teachers must be pliant tools of government. Such a system of education is not inconsistent with the theory of Prussian society but the thing is wholly inadmissible here." He further argued that "according to our theory the people are wiser than the government. Here the people do not look to the government for light, for instruction, but the government looks to the people. The people give law to the government." He concluded that "to entrust government with the power of determining education which our children shall receive is entrusting our servant with the power of the master. The fundamental difference between the United States and Prussia has been overlooked by the board of education and its supporters."

Perry Update

So guess what this is:



That is a screen shot of some weird website that total dork Perry Eidelbus has redirected all of my links (to him) to.

In other words, if anytime someone on this blog clicks one of the links I've posted to his blog, he blocks access to his site by rerouting the user to goatse.cx - whatever that is.

Check it out, click on Perry's site - http://eidelblog.blogspot.com/.

See what I mean?

At first I thought something had gone awry. But I followed my suspicions and found this in the coding of his blog:



Click to enlarge that graphic. Apparently it's just my blog and that charicediva.com/chariceonline.com - a rather large web forum - that he's blacklisted.

This tactic for sure is somewhat clever and a tad humorous because it can potentially frustrate readers. But still, a little thought reveals how stupid this redirect is.

First of all, if someone was bashing me unfairly, and I actually cared about the opinions of others, I would very much want the basher to link directly to my site. This way clear-thinking readers could make up their own mind as to who is off-the-mark or the bigger a$$hole. Obviously, the prospects of such balanced dialogue induce:



....impalpable shrinkage for Perry Eidelbus.

He hides like a *frightened turtle*!

Secondly, I can, and usually do, paste a sufficient amount of his text right onto my own posts. I'll bet that only a few of my readers even click on the links to his site.

Thirdly, I'm now just going to post instructions on my *Perry posts* as to how one can easily circumvent his *frightened turtle* prophylactic.

It can be achieved by, instead of left-clicking on a link to his blog, *right click* on it. Then copy the shortcut and paste it in a new browser tab or window.

For those of you unfamiliar with this pal punching bag of mine, check out these posts:

Mail-Order Bride - An End Around

Mail-Order Bride Fulminations

Pissant Newlyweds

Fedex Would Have Been Faster

Marginalizing Perry Eidelbus

Despite supposedly getting married this clown is as immature as ever. He's getting into all sorts of altercations, yet again. Also,look what I discovered on his Amazon Wishlist:



Fancy pens, a tie clip, cuff links,.....AND LEGO video games!

Wow. I didn't know that geeks could be so metrosexual.