Gone for a month

Pretty soon here I’ll be busy moving into a new apartment, traveling to see my sister’s wedding, and taking a vacation. The Den will be vacant during this time. See you in about a month!

Your one-stop news source

Den of Hydralisks is committed to bringing you the most shocking and exciting news of the day. Such as a report published in Pravda that “Dead people grow no huge claws and no long hair as they lie still in their graves.“

Den of Hydralisks brings you the news you want to hear. What is the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island in the world? Den of Hydralisks has the answer.

But Den of Hydralisks goes the second mile, sending our reporters off to faraway websites to lift images acquired and scanned by others for your viewing pleasure.

And Den of Hydralisks goes a step beyond to bring you all the relevant information you might need in order to plan a vacation with your family to that island lake island lake island.

(Must-see attractions: water
Items you should bring along: a towel
Useful phrases for communicating with the locals: stand at the highest point and shout at the top of your lungs anything you please)

Den of Hydralisks delivers the scoops no one else will. Den of Hydralisks was the first and only to report that Blizzard has confirmed Archons will be returning in Starcraft 2.

We bring you the news *before* it breaks. Such as an unconfirmed rumor that Maki Goto’s new album scheduled for release in September will be titled How to use SEXY (Den of Hydralisks is not making this unconfirmed rumor up). And Den of Hydralisks answers all your relevant questions about it. “Am I the only one who thinks Maki Goto looks like a horse?” Answer: no

Den of Hydralisks cuts through the spin to get at the heart of issues. Is global warming really happening? Den of Hydralisks has no idea, but here’s Al Gore’s email address: mastermind@allofcyberspace.me

But most importantly, Den of Hydralisks brings you the news you need to know.

The stories that make a difference.

The stories that impact our lives.

The stories that touch our lives.

In-depth analysis of the most meaningful, historically significant events of our day.

The Matchmaking Manifesto

Face it, most people are ugly. The result of an uneven distribution of good looks, or good personality for that matter, across the social landscape is that most people end up frustrated, lonely, miserable. They end up alienated.

Think of all the people you know who can never find their true love because all the hot dates are going to either Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. (in the year 2005, dates between either one of those two with another member of the sexually attractive elite accounted for 25% of all dates nationwide) And among those who do manage to settle down with someone, disappointment will claim the better part of these relationships; it is statistically manifest that most relationships do not last.

The free market of romantic attraction does a *horrible* job of making people happy in relationships — this is an indisputable fact. All of this will change when the revolution begins.

It was necessary for an unregulated economy of social hooking-up to precede this next phase in history which we will soon see. A centrally-planned system of matchmaking will put an end to the suffering that inevitably results from an uncontrolled market of sexual attraction. All romance will be regulated by the dating proletariat themselves, and each person assigned a romantic partner according to his needs. This may require that some of the more attractive people be assigned as partners to people they would otherwise not choose, but everyone will be happier in the end, you will see.

With the means of attraction removed from the control of the reigning bourgeoisie of good-looking gals and dudes, the class society we now live under, in which some people have an easier time finding love than others, will be abolished, and we will have entered the final phase in history. No longer will Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie be allowed to exploit the rest of us!

Oh, there is one more thing.

In order to facilitate the coming of this revolution, it may be necessary to break a few eggs. Yes, I mean that all persons now involved in a romantic relationship will have to be separated. All existing couples will have to be split. All existing marriages will have to be broken up. This will all be for the best, you will see.

edit: changed the title

Best political quiz yet

Saw this on Dean’s World. You don’t want to miss it!

What Breed of Liberal are you? (an excerpt from How to Win a Fight with a Conservative by Daniel Kurtzman)

Or this one!

What Breed of Conservative are you? (an excerpt from How to Win a Fight with a Liberal by Daniel Kurtzman)

I have a hunch the result one gets hinges most on the “naked pyramid” question, much like one’s actual voting preferences tends to hinge on such a question. So think carefully!

So those Iranians think they can…

Behold. Islamist kids in Iran are making agitprop video games.

The “Rescue the Nuke Scientist” video game, designed by the Union of Students Islamic Association, was described by its creators as a response to a U.S.-based company’s “Assault on Iran” game, which depicts an American attack on an Iranian nuclear facility.

“This is our defense against the enemy’s cultural onslaught,” Mohammad Taqi Fakhrian, a leader of the student group, told reporters Monday.

To complete the game successfully, players have to enter Israel to rescue the nuclear scientists, kill U.S. and Israeli troops and seize their laptops containing secret information.

This is good news. Very good news indeed. A society hooked on video games is a society headed for collapse, as the Japanese, who infiltrated the West decades ago with this corrupting opium, understood all too well. Look at us now. Our kids are fat and undisciplined and they think emo is cool.

On the other hand, we are very very good at these video games. At least I know I am. (you should see how high I can get Mario to jump) It looks like Iranian kids won’t even have that to say for themselves:

“We tried to promote the idea of defense, sacrifice and martyrdom in this game,” Fakhrian said.

Martyrdom? As in don’t sweat it if you fail the mission? As in please try to concentrate less on objectives, tactics, winning, and other such Godless things, but instead concentrate on that lavish cloud waiting for you in Paradise with the 70 wives and 70 virgins sitting thereon? (As if virgins they truly will be. As if Mohammed, the last messenger and prophet, won’t already have had them all. Ha!)

Patton said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” You know what this means? It means Balloq’s staff is too long. It means

THEY’RE DIGGING IN THE WRONG PLACE.

Carry on, my Iranian friends, carry on. I will gladly welcome the contest between any US soldier and any Iranian soldier, joysticks in hand, on the field of digital battle.

H/T to Raw Feed

David Petraeus, chickenhawk extraordinaire

David Petraeus, commanding general of multi-national forces in Iraq said on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday that “there has been considerable progress” against Al-qaeda. (As if someone in his position would know!) This statement by Petraeus, who we now know to have been a Bush plant, flies contrary to the established wisdom we already have from senator Harry Reid, who was able to definitively declare the surge a failure even before it had begun. (pretty impressive, eh?)

Petraeus qualified his statement, as he tends to qualify his statements, by noting the difficulties that remain, the challenges yet to be overcome, that it is “too soon to tell” this or that. Too soon to tell? Ha! Then how exactly do you explain the revelations, divinations, and crystal ball soothsayings of Harry Reid, Mister Petraeus? Heh? Got an answer for that? Didn’t think so.

What is wrong with our uniformed baby-killers these days?? Why are they not listening to our congressman at home to know what is sort of maybe possibly take-a-wild-guessly happening on the ground in Iraq? If our generals won’t listen to our politicians, especially those politicians in the Democrat party, there is no way we are going to lose this war as quickly as we deserve to.

It gets worse. Petraeus, whose name sounds a bit like the word “petroleum”–hmmmm, ever notice that?, went on to carry water for the Bush administration and positive-minded Americans everywhere by saying “I think everybody is very determined to try to do the very best that we can to accomplish this mission.” Arggggh. It just makes one want to bury one’s face in one’s hands to watch this pointless war edge on and on ever closer to victory when all along we possess the power to throw in the sponge at any time, thus making our sacrifices all for naught at the reasonable trade-off of getting more Democrat politicians seats in office come election time.

You should all be good at this by now, but allow me to translate more spin coming from our esteemed commanding murderer for those who may be new.

• “We have achieved what we believe is a reasonable degree of tactical momentum on the ground.”

Translation: We killed more babies this month than the month before.

• “We have an enormous responsibility because of course we did liberate this country.”

Translation: There is still some oil left in the ground and we need to finish plundering it if we can.

• “Our leaders and our troopers ‘get it’ about what it is we are trying to accomplish here in a way that certainly was not the case at the outset or perhaps even a year or two into this endeavor.”

Translation: Our leaders and troopers are now required to take mandatory courses on Big Oil industry profit maximization, and to own stock in Halliburton.

This tears it. I say it’s high time we

*** IMPEACH PETRAEUS!!!!!!! ***

Impeach that Bush-licking goose-stepper and put Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi in his place. Either one of those two would do a far more admirable job of losing this war in an efficient, timely manner than Petraeus ever could.

Fellow citizens of the Divides States of Bu$hmeriKa, I urge you to join me in calling for the impeachment of General Petraeus!

And let’s also impeach Hugh Hewitt while we’re at it!

Jimmy Carter, American hero

If you’ve paid a modicum of attention to American history since the 1970’s you, like most Americans old enough and mature enough to operate a vending machine to buy a can of Sprite unsupervised, have probably been under the false yet popular impression that Jimmy Carter was not a great, great man. This might make you reassess.

Douglas Adams, power atheist

This excerpt is from an interview with Douglas Adams published in American Atheist some time ago. I think it rules.

I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically.

God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.

You should read the whole interview, just like you should read anything by Douglas Adams. (well…maybe not the fifth book in the Hitchhiker “trilogy”; you can probably skip that one!) I was tickled even though he devotes most of it to attacking my own position of agnosticism, rather effectively I must admit. His is the kind of logic that could possibly bring me around to the atheist point of view.

Say, there are some religious folks who read this blog I think. (half or so have got to be kin because my daily hit count suggests that half or so of my readership has got to be kin :D) Anyone want to take a stab at refuting the above passage by Adams on logical grounds? He’s calling you guys the arrogant ones. You gonna take that from him?

Two headlines that go together

This:

Study praises China’s paper recycling

China’s booming recycling industry is helping to slow the destruction of forests worldwide, providing a strong market for wastepaper that mostly comes from the United States and Europe according to a study released Friday.

And this:

Beijing steamed buns include cardboard

Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said.

Steampunk watches

Go to Akihabara News to see more.

If you don’t “get it” you’re trying too hard. Look, here’s the definition of steampunk. As for what kind of geeked-out society goes to such lengths to build authentic, usable, marketable objects from a time period that never existed, I can’t help you with that.