In Assyrian/Babylonian: 

Egyptian:    or

From Virtual Secrets.

In no particular viewpoint…

• Richard Dawkins - Religious mole?
  I think there’s a good possibility.  Apparently he’s pretty grating in person.  But it seems that of all the atheist types I know, the only ones that promote Dawkins are the real asses.  The normal atheists keep away from Dawkins like the plague, they want nothing to do with him.
• Evolution - Do you feel offended about being descended from monkeys?
  Oh definitely not.  Why?  Simple.  The future.  In 10 million years mankind went from swinging ape to what we are now.  Just in the past 4 thousand years we’ve had civilization.  Last hundred years electricity, cars, electronics, computers, etc.
  But just imagine another two thousand years out.  Five thousand.  One hundred thousand years out.  Just think about how evolved humans may be.  Sure you can be one of those people who think we’ll be extinct by then.  Keep dreaming…
  I always thought the major failing of most science fiction was that it was only based in the next thousand years.  Frank Herbert’s Dune is based about twenty one thousand years out, but almost no other author explores that far ahead.

Built my shed today.  In 5.5 hours.  Still have to paint and a little bit of trim and cleanup, but it looks incredibly good.

Bought it from Cedarshed.com through Lowes.  Incredibly easy to assemble, went together like like you hoped it would.  2 person job but no one section is very heavy.

It’s not often that something you buy like this goes according to plan, but I give these guys several thumbs up.

N.J. town’s residents boo group homes for children

CHERRY HILL, N.J. – Two group homes for children with emotional and behavioral problems will likely not come to Cherry Hill because public opposition to them is so intense.
An overflow crowd of more than 350 people filled the township council room Thursday and nearly all made it clear they were dead set against the homes coming into the Brookfield and Cherry Hill Estates neighborhoods.
People shouted, “Not in my backyard.”
Others shouted, “Send the kids to Mars.”
Some suggested putting them on a farm in an isolated area.
State legislators and officials from the New Jersey Department of Children and Families who were in attendance to answer people’s questions said it was clear the children would not be welcomed into the neighborhoods.
“In my 12 years of government this is the ugliest public meeting I have ever been at,” said Assemblyman Louis D. Greenwald, D-Camden. “It’s the saddest meeting I have ever seen.”

Yeah, that’s pretty damn pathetic.  None of the children would be sex offenders or convicted of crimes.  They’d be supervised 24×7.  They’re in group homes because they’ve been abused and neglected, and need training, support, and therapy so they can move on with their lives.  And now residents of Cherry Hill would probably be happy enough having them put down like stray animals.

Would anyone notice or care if Cherry Hill was wiped off the face of the map along with all its residents? 

 Here’s your standard garden variety seven deadly sins.

Lust

Gluttony

Greed

Sloth

Wrath

Envy

Pride

They’re all pretty bad, but some are worse than others.  Historically Pride is shown as the worst, since they say all others flow from that.

But I really do think they shortchanged Greed. Greed is listed as merely the accumulation of wealth.  Expand out the definition of Greed to things that you do to feed your inner desires, and Greed takes over lust, gluttony, sloth, and envy.

I’d say in today’s society, Greed is the greatest sin.  Not for merely the obvious reasons of CEOs screwing everyone. 

Running the red light because you’re in a hurry is an example of greed:  your needs and desires to not wait 30 seconds at the light are more important than others who now have to wait.

Basically any time you do not consider the needs of others in search of your base pleasure is pure greed.  Lets use… uhhh… my neighbors as an example.  It seems every interaction we have with them shows their personal greed.  They have a rottweiler.  They refuse to correct the dogs behavior when he barks, very loudly, all the time when he is outside.  The wife’s excuse is that it might make the dog feel bad if they corrected him by using a shock collar, or swatting him on the nose when he barks constantly.  I found this out after I called the Humane Society to report that I couldn’t talk on a conference call, in my home office, because of the background barking.  They couldn’t hear me over the noise.  So when the HS called the neighbors, the wife came over all indignant because we turned them in.  See?  That’s greed.  She never once apologized even that the dog barked but they weren’t going to do anything about it.  Nope, it was our fault that we had a problem apparently.  Because we have a hard time even hearing our TV set sometimes.  But its a violation of the dog’s rights to not let it out well after 11pm or before 7am so it can bark up a storm.  What the wife did not know is that when I talked to the HS and gave them the address, they said, “Oh, we know that address, people complain all the time but won’t leave their names, so we can’t file a complaint.”  So I left our name and told her to file the complaint, which meant the wife came over to yell at me.

Apparently their kids are just as bad.  All the other neighbors we talk to refer to this couple as the token white trash and their kids are allowed to do anything they want.  Which means in the playground they’re little bastards with no control, and all the other parents hate it when they’re out, as it always causes problems.  Our issue is that of course they’re the family with the trampoline right up against the fence.  That their kids jump and play on, yelling and screaming, at 11:30 at night while the parents get all liquored up partying in their basement.

But oh my god, if anyone every says anything, they’re the victims. That everyone is out to get them.

Their complete inability to empathize with their neighbors is horrible.  Two of their neighbors have babies.  And this dog’s barking isn’t something you just hear, it is something that will awake you from a sound sleep as an adult.  What is wrong with people like this?  What major malfunction is happening in their brains? 

We recently had to put together an album for our adoption process… there are several sites out there to make your digital images into a cool album you can hold and keep. I thought I would share what I found… (more…)

Kids need homes… you hear it, I have heard there are heartbreaking commercials announcing it… and of course celebrities are importing their children. (more…)

But only pro-global warming scientists bit by the Y2k bug.

One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or “jump” in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000. 

These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight” that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place.  1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.  Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events. 

From DailyTech.  I do like the part about how Hansen will NOT release any algorithms used to swindle convince everyone of global warming.  Surely the code is perfectly bug free and built to not advance any particular ideological viewpoint would it? 

Question for all you physical security experts.

Why is it that every time you see a bank/convenience store get robbed, and they have video, the pictures are taken from the absolutely worst angle imaginable.  Way up in some corner so you see stuff like this.

Why doesn’t anyone put the camera on the wall facing the cash register and door entrances head on?  So you may actually see, well, a face?

Every time the left gets a military member to come out with atrocities they committed for whatever reason, pretty soon it comes out to be a lie.  Such as when the guy only made it through a couple weeks of boot camp.  But have them show up at the door of a left-wing magazine wearing fatigues with a made up story, and “they want to believe!” so much they’ll fall head over heels.

The Weekly Standard has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed “Shock Troops” article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous “Baghdad Diarist” columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only “a smidgen of truth,” in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

“An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.”

According to the military source, Beauchamp’s recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military’s investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, “I’m willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name.”

 So… he pretty much rolled over on the first question it sounds like.  “Is your name…” “Yes! Yes!  Its all a lie!  All of it!”

What the hell are the quotes around kill for?  Should part of this article say “Wink wink nudge nudge know what I mean?”

Three men: a project manager, a software engineer, and a hardware engineer are helping out on a project. About midweek they decide to walk up and down the beach during their lunch hour. Halfway up the beach, they stumbled upon a lamp. As they rub the lamp a genie appears and says “Normally I would grant you three wishes, but since there are three of you, I will grant you each one wish.”

The hardware engineer went first. “I would like to spend the rest of my life living in a huge house in St. Thomas with no money worries.” The genie granted him his wish and sent him on off to St. Thomas.

The software engineer went next. “I would like to spend the rest of my life living on a huge yacht cruising the Mediterranean with no money worries.” The genie granted him his wish and sent him off to the Mediterranean.

Last, but not least, it was the project manager’s turn. “And what would your wish be?” asked the genie.

“I want them both back after lunch” replied the project manager.

A suspended University of Delaware student accused of offending classmates with a Web page of sex jokes has filed a civil rights lawsuit seeking to be reinstated.

Maciej Murakowski, 19, of Newark and his attorney, David L. Finger, believe the sophomore was targeted by nervous school officials in the wake of shootings at Virginia Tech.

The Web page had been up for months without any apparent problem until April 19, three days after 32 people were killed by a mentally disturbed student in Blacksburg, Va. That night, Murakowski’s parents were called and he was barred from campus.

The school required Murakowski to get a letter from a “licensed mental health provider” certifying that he was not a threat to himself or others, which he did.

He was then briefly allowed to return to classes, but barred from his dorm room. He was ultimately suspended for at least a semester because the Web page was deemed “disruptive.”

Jokes about sex is disruptive enough to remove this kid from school and ban him from his dorm?  Wow, what pure power this guy has.  By simply writing jokes on a web page, he is so damn dangerous that he needs a shrink to testify that he won’t kill dozens of people.

“He was [suspended] because his writing supposedly upset another student, even though at a hearing he produced several female witnesses who said the writing didn’t bother them,” said Finger.

And once again… some people’s lives are so absolutely wonderful that a simple web page is the biggest threat to their existence.  I’m thinking this other student who is upset should be the one visiting a shrink.  Or maybe forced to watch a season of Carlos Mencia.

Once a doctor certified that Murakowski was not a threat, the incident should have been over, said Mark Goodman of the Student Press Law Center in Virginia. “I think the law is very clear, the First Amendment doesn’t allow the university to punish a student for expressing views they find offensive,” he said.

University officials declined to comment Thursday.

Murakowski’s low-tech text Web site, which has since been moved from a UD server to a private server, is still available online, as is his defense of his writing.

Here is the site that is so utterly horrible that this guy needs to be banned. Actually, its a little in poor taste, but it wouldn’t be funny otherwise. 

In the suit filed in U.S. District Court last week, Murakowski seeks reinstatement, a clean record, credit for classes he missed and damages. Finger said the sometimes silly, sometimes dark and sexually charged humor may have been in bad taste and immature, but was clearly intended as satire.

A psychologist found Murakowski was not a threat to himself or others. “Some of his writings are insensitive and … while I certainly do not condone such expressions, I do not believe that they reflect any potential for physically acting out against any member of any of the groups referenced in your letter to Mr. Murakowski,” Dr. Philip R. Braun wrote to school officials, according to the suit.

Awwww insensitive.  Oh wait, insensitive is a class 1 felony now, isn’t it?

But after briefly letting Murakowski return to classes, he was suspended in May following a hearing for violating the school’s Disruptive Conduct Policy.

The suspension pointed to his site, describing the content as “degrading, demeaning and violent toward women … even some pieces that may start out wittily or humorously continue to descend into nothing more than a violent end or violent solution,” according to court papers. School officials said he would have to reapply through the office of admissions if he wanted to return to UD. If allowed back, he would be barred from student housing.

The lawsuit alleges the university appeared to violate its own policies regarding free speech and treated Murakowski differently than others involved in similar disputes.

Free speech on campus.  Only allowed to be offensive if you’re protesting something on the right.  You can’t even try to be funny anymore without worrying about the thought police stepping in and kicking you out of school for a joke.  Maybe something like:

What’s the difference between a Porsche and 200 dead babies?  I don’t have a Porsche in my garage.

Yeah, pretty sick huh.  But if you don’t find it the least bit humorous at least for a second or two, then something is seriously wrong with you.

But hey Maciej, don’t worry.  I got kicked out of that shithole school also because their engineering department is a complete joke.  Their professors (not the SAs) never heard of the fact that digital electronic circuits can be simplified to algebra equations for the inputs and outputs.  And that solving a simple equation is easier than those damn charts they try to make you do.  So by exposing their ignorance you’d also get booted out.

Read the rest of the story that should make you cringe.

Anyway, the guys site is pretty darn funny.  Why the iPhone sucks.  And this gem on pirates:

Goals
The primary goal of any Pirates ship is to procure ‘booty,’ (the professional term for valuables, such as gold, gems, and narcotics) and wenches,’ (the professional term for bitches). It is up to the captain of each individual ship to decide the best way for his ship to obtain booty and wenches. Typically, the captain opts for ‘looting’ and ‘pillaging,’ Pirate terms for organizing various fundraising events (such as bake sales and bachelor auctions) and robbing the shit out of people, respectively.

Sorry for the crappy picture.  That’s a Lexus.  She has had her left arm out the window the entire time chain smoking.  How she went through so many smokes in just a few short miles was amazing.  Of course each was thrown out the window.

These few short miles, she’s driving slow in the left lane of a multi-lane highway.

Talking on her cell phone the entire damn time.  Someone let me know how she was handling the steering wheel?

I want to get bumper stickers made up that say “Cell Phone Driver equals Drunk Driver” because studies have proven that talking on a cell phone is completely equivalent to drunk driving, except cell drivers go even faster! Faced with that evidence, why isn’t cell phone driving treated like drunk driving? It is the same crime, driving while impaired. Same results too, most drunks drive home just fine and don’t get into accidents. But at the same rate, drunks and cell drivers cause accidents that normally wouldn’t have happened.

 That is the question that should be asked to every single protester and cowardly politician.

DENVER - Gov. Bill Ritter got more than he bargained for when he entertained questions Wednesday from 30 Iraqi teenagers touring the United States.
Speaking to the students, the Democratic governor explained that he believes the U.S. invasion of Iraq was preemptive and that America’s presence has greatly jeopardized” security in the country.
Do you know the real situation over there? the students asked.

Uh-oh… these questions weren’t carefully vetted in advance!

The students, whose identities are being kept secret for fear of retaliation when they return home, told Ritter the last thing they want is the immediate exit of U.S. forces — a view the governor said he’s also heard from Jordanian officials.
Saying unguarded cities and towns are far more dangerous than they’ve been described in the American media, the students peppered Ritter with questions about whether he would pull U.S. troops out if it meant more Iraqi civilians would get killed.
It’s a bad situation. It’s a very bad situation,” one boy told the governor. We need someone to help us.”
Near the end of about 10 minutes of questions, Ritter told the students: I’m not a person who is trying to defend the position of the United States going to Iraq . . . but I think innocent Iraqis deserve a chance at peace and safety.”

Worst 10 minutes of any Democrat’s life.  Explaining to the victims why they are cowards.

The General Assembly passed a resolution earlier this year calling for an end to the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Because it was a resolution rather than a bill, Ritter did not have to sign or veto it.
After the meeting with Ritter at the state Capitol, several of the Iraqi teenagers said regardless of how they felt about the initial U.S. invasion, the troops are needed now.
Militias most often target villages where U.S. troops are not stationed, several said.
One boy said the U.S. needs to concentrate on closing off Iraq’s borders so that terrorists can’t enter the country.
Another boy said America must make the Iraqi government be more honest with the people and explain where the country’s money and resources are going.

Kind of amazing.  These kids know more about foreign policy than our elected “leaders” who aren’t in any way affected by this nice clean antiseptic war in the first place.  But because power is involved, they’re all pandering to whatever gets them more votes.

I don’t think any of them want the troops to withdraw,” said 14-year-old Rachel Sabey, whose family is one of several in the Denver area hosting the students while they are in Colorado learning about local government.
Judging Ritter’s answers, one girl said that foreign policy wasn’t his job, and a boy added that Ritter, like most American leaders, only knows what he hears from major media sources.
They know the upper level of the situation. They don’t know in deep,” the boy said.
The group will depart soon for Virginia and Washington, D.C., where it will study civics.
The trip to Colorado was organized through the Baghdad-Denver Region Partnership, a program of Sister Cities International, and funded largely by the U.S. State Department.

Lets say this again:

Judging Ritter’s answers, one girl said that foreign policy wasn’t his job, and a boy added that Ritter, like most American leaders, only knows what he hears from major media sources.

Ahhhhh… one more time, that sounded so nice…

Judging Ritter’s answers, one girl said that foreign policy wasn’t his job, and a boy added that Ritter, like most American leaders, only knows what he hears from major media sources.

There you go.  Speak truth to power and all that bull.  “Duhhh… I watched NBC/CBS/CNN and saw something go boom.  Then they told me the war was lost. So obviously that’s true because the media would never lie to me.”

Talkin’ about deaf people using ipods

That kind of behavior — an ignorance by the user of volume levels and surroundings — is more odious than the low buzz of the iPod, Kahney said.”Did anyone ever complain about the noise coming from a Walkman or a CD player?” he said. “Unless you’re in a quiet environment, you’re really gonna have to strain to hear any kind of noise from somebody else’s iPod.”

Our world, he said, has become freakishly quiet. “It’s not noise pollution — it’s noise absence. And I find it almost more disturbing and upsetting than I did loud noise. It’s sort of unnatural.”

Our world has become freakishly quiet?  Does anyone actually believe that crap?  We’re assaulted every day more and more by loud noises and garish sights.