We haven’t talked much about Alex Chiu recently…probably because we’ve exhausted most of what could be talked about.
I did run across this clip of him (allegedly) singing. The resolution is bad, so it could be some kind of imposter.
I’m not sure how prevalent the survivalist movement is outside the United States. “Survivalists” or “preppers” focus heavily on being self-sufficient in case of the inability of society to function as normal. They will focus on preparing by storing massive amounts of supplies, being able to grow or hunt food, and other useful skills.
Naturally, they need to be good with a gun. How else will they can defend their stuff from the hordes of people who are starving because they didn’t prepare for Apocalypse?
Much like any group of people, survivalists are targeted by various companies, salesmen, or hucksters who think they can make some money off them.
From the plausible (“You can buy heirloom seeds from us”) to the dubious (“Dollars will be worthless after the apocalypse. You can use our gold coins to trade for stuff!”), there are any number of angles used to pitch to survivalists.
And then there’s Jason Richards.
Do not pay attention to the “6 minutes” he mentions in the second sentence of his video (which you can’t rewind). It must be more than half an hour. I did not bother to finish the whole thing and I am still unclear as to exactly what he’s selling and how much it will cost.
He is excellent at making assertions and calling it proof.
He believes the United States imports 1/3 of its food because it can’t grow enough food.
He thinks supermarkets were cleared of supplies after Harold Camping’s failed Tribulation predictions.
He asserts that having to share a half-empty supermarket with 600,000 people is a plausible scenario in the near future.
His grasp of spelling and grammar is also shaky…food was not “rationalized” during World War 2, it was “rationed”.
Just to be safe, though, if you don’t want to get in a violent bloodbath with your neighbors over the last scrap of bread, buy this guy’s stuff.
Lesson 2: A vital part of commentating on sports is to criticize the playcalling with the benefit of hindsight. You should ignore the fact that even good coaching decisions have a chance to fail.
This is especially effective when you point out that you agreed with the initial call, making you a hypocrite.
Let’s look at ESPN’s Pat Yasinskas’ blog to give us a perfect example:
When Mike Smith first decided to go for it on fourth-and-inches in overtime, I liked the call. I thought it was gutsy and ambitious. After watching Michael Turner get stuffed, I changed my mind. Smith should have punted and taken his chances with his defense.
Hey, no one said sports commentary had to make any sense.
So there’s this calendar with a whole bunch of Zen sayings. While many make some sort of sense, others sound like they were uttered by a dude on magical mushrooms who wanted to sound wise.
Some of these quotes are actual Zen statements (per the calendar), others are meaningless crap that I made up. Can you tell which are which?
1. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.
2. To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
3. Wind, water, mind. One who masters the heart can no longer take harm.
4. Wanting nothing with all your heart stop the stream. When the world dissolves everything becomes clear.
5. An Autumn night…don’t think your life didn’t matter.
6. To one who waits, the tree gains existence.
7. Generally, faith is like spring mist at first. Be brave at the vanishing point.
8. Hollowness can only result from existence.
9. Neither stone, nor water, nor the sky raises the forest.
10. If the greatest cold does not penetrate into our bones, how will the fragrance of the plum blossoms pervade the entire universe?
So I did not dress as Tim Tebow. It was really Natasha Fatale from Rocky & Bullwinkle:
Unfortunately, I do not have more pictures or a video at this time, which would have showed off my heels and sexy legs.
I donned this costume over two weekends. The first time had the additional benefit of make-up. A couple people were actually fooled enough to very briefly mistake me for a female.
A few females also expressed dismay that my legs were better than theirs, and it didn’t seem like they were completely joking. I don’t know whether to be flattered or not.
With the recent demise of Qaddafi/Gaddafi/Khadafi, USCF members everywhere muttered to themselves, “Yeah, yeah, but what does that have to do with my life as a chess player?”
Glad you asked! It turns out that the current FIDE President seems to have been a bit of a fan of the Libyan strongman:
And the eccentric Russian politician Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who is also the head of the World Chess Federation, said that Colonel Gaddafi’s death was a “tragedy” but that he died as a martyr and would be reincarnated.
Mr Ilyumzhinov made a surreal mission to Tripoli in June, where he met with Colonel Gaddafi as an unofficial mediator and played a game of chess with him. Yesterday, he said in a Russian newspaper interview that he had spoken to the Libyan leader numerous times on the phone since. He claimed that Colonel Gaddafi had not been scared of death: “Not a bit! He believed in reincarnation.”
Not that you’d expect anything else from someone who claims aliens visit him and let him on their spaceship and that chess originated from an alien civilization.
Visiting rushlimbaugh.com, it’s no surprise (or crime) that the stories have a conservative slant.
What I didn’t expect is an obviously deceptive front page headline that highlights Limbaugh’s ignorance.
Limbaugh’s claim is obvious: Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians (transcript from the show). Nicely feeds into the “Obama is a secret Muslim” belief without saying so.
Limbaugh goes on to claim the LRA is Christian and fighting for a democracy within Uganda. Making sure, of course, that his listeners get the message “Obama is trying to wipe out Christians”.
At the end of the transcript, there was this:
Is that right? The Lord’s Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We’re gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys — and they claim to be Christians.
As well informed as Limbaugh claims he is, it’s odd he doesn’t know anything about Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. They have been operating for over two decades and show up in the news from time to time.
Even if he didn’t know anything about them, it takes a minute of research to find out why the LRA is considered a “bad guy”.
The US troops will have permission to operate in Uganda so it’s not an “invasion”. The LRA is also not Christian in the sense that most people in the States understand Christianity.
Limbaugh is a great entertainer, but sacrifices presenting the full truth to hold his audience.
So here’s the content of an email I received:
%%model_name%% will be in a LIVE modelcast on %%date_and_time%%.
Chat with %%model_name%% during the show at ********.com. Offer your kinky suggestions and get some personal attention. Buy some Kinks now and put the show on your calendar.
Check out %%model_name%%’s profile.
How did they know these things??? I always thought %%model_name%% was the hottest girl ever!
The subject line of the email was “Test Message”, which is what got me to actually view the email.
For those of you that have been living under a rock (meme-wise), a scene from the movie Downfall has been endlessly parodied on the Interwebs.
Here’s my unnecessary chess-related contribution to the babble. Just in time for the June Chess Carnival, which will be hosted by resurrected chess blogger Robert Pearson (aka, the chess personality formerly known as Wahrheit)
ERROR: Your password must be between eight and twelve characters in length and must begin with a numeric character and contain one of the following special characters: “~”, “!”, “@”, “#”, “$”, “%”, “^”, “&”, “*”, “(“, “)”, “-”, “_”, “+”, “=”, “{“, “}”, “[", "]“, “”, “|”, “;”, “:”, “/”, “?”, “.”. No character can be repeated consecutively more than two times.
The sad part is that I use multiple passwords that are considered “strong” by anyone’s algorithm and was going to use one of them. But none would pass this.
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