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Congrats to Al Gore for winning the Nobel prize, anything that can help. You can see it as pacifism against the war on the environment by greedy industries. Last year's winner was a banker by the way.

I expect a lot of foaming at the mouth from the usual suspects. Yes, yes, we know, everyone has a liberal agenda, Europe, Canada, New York, Mainstream Media, Nobel prizes, scientists, intellectuals, artists, Michael Moore, etc. We're all out to get you because we just just hate freedom so much.

I guess that leaves you Big gas companies, Alabama and country music. The shining lights of civilization.

Now, they'll probably point to the fact that he uses jets to move around the country and have a big house. Well, if he didn't, conservatives would attack him as someone who doesn't understand problems of the modern world and call him irrelevant, or a "dirty hippie".

You can't argue with people who are just rationalizing at any cost an emotional point of view that is already made up.

Funny how they dish out their opinions with bravado and arrogance, completely ignoring the fact that their party mismanaged the country with rabid partisanship for the past 6 years.

And when confronted with this, they look at you and ask "well, how are YOU going to fix it?".

Young people now think christianity has gone to hell

There's a surprisingly unified sense between young adults, both inside and outside the faith, that the divisive, judgmental authoritarianism that's dominated Evangelical Christianity for the past 30 years has run its course.

Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences (...) Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy. Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.

Homo politicus: brain function of liberals, conservatives differs Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances.

If you have seen the movie The Last King of Scotland, you're probably aware that some poor african countries are governed by batshiat crazy lunatics acting like bratty kids with the power of an army to do their bidding. And it seems, the poorer the country, the worse the leadership. One such country is Zimbabwe. The dictator, Mugabe, has such a poor knowledge of economics, he is forcing price cuts on goods in order to try and control an inflation that he probably created. The result? Shops don't make a profit and are unable to restock their businesses, leaving nothing to buy and sell, with most investors scrambling to flee the country. Of course, they blame it all on whities and foreign business interests. Watch for the follow up article about how the country has created the first economical black hole known to man.

Former US Surgeon General Richard Carmona was censored in his speeches on matters that didn't match the rigid political and religious ideology of the Bush administration. They politicizes every aspect of government they could get their hands on: NASA, EPA, scientific studies, CIA & other intel agencies, DOJ & the US attorneys. Party first, country last. Agenda before science.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,"

That's a consistent stance from right wing religious wackos: ignore facts that do not fit your predefined doctrine. I like to call them "functional retards".

Why George W. Bush ceased to be the President of all americans, by Keith Olbermann. Some conservatives wonder why the left and the moderates are not supportive of this president and they consider this to be disloyal. Well, the fact that when they did support him after the 2001 attacks, it got thrown back to their faces with partisanship, cronyism, corruption, incompetence and very divisive politics. Blind loyalty to the party trumped competency and diversity of ideas.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

Scientists start working on free, online catalog of all Earth's 1.8 million documented species. But don't let it fool you. That's another project from liberal scientists trying to get grants by alarming the population. Get your facts straight, McDonald says species that can't be eaten between two slices of bread are not really animals, but hallucinations from starving people who haven't eaten enough hamburgers. It's also well documented in the Bible. You are immoral if you believe otherwise and should get out of this proud country founded on the principle that only big corporations and the Bible have the truth. At the very least, they should teach this to young students so they get both sides of the issue. Are you so afraid to let them decide on their own?

/lol

The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time

I just read the interview with BusinessWeek of Google CEO Schmidt with some people comparing them to Microsoft in terms of power and arrogance. Maybe the effect of Google's popularity on some people may seem like the same monopoly, but these two companies are fundamentally different in their attitudes from the beginning. Microsoft had many predatory practices on the verge of being unethical that stifled innovations, Google is very innovative and actually forces their competitors to keep up by always offering MORE to users.

Jeez, not long ago we had like 2 megs of space on hotmail or yahoo mail. Maybe Google is not the same cutesy, nerdy outfit anymore they were 5 years ago, but the comparison is WAY unfair. Most good things that came from Google (uncluttered search interface, adsense for even the little guys, free software goodies, experimental free services, etc.) would never have come from Microsoft's corporate culture.

Remember Newt Gingrich, that politician who led the famous "moral revolution" when republicans were taking over the congress, ending up creating a witch hunt against Clinton's indiscretions? Well he actually was having an affair during the Clinton probe. Newt was cheating on his second wife at the time. And the second wife was at one time the person he was cheating on his first wife with. Clinton wasn't perfect but this is so typical of republican's hypocrisy regarding their precious flavor of morality.

Cronyism and the philosophy of rewarding loyalty over competence continues as the Bush administration is expected to nominate the chief lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, Michael Baroody, a person with a history of opposing strong safety regulation, to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It's not like they could have learned from their previous repeated mistakes of placing incompetents who have views in diametrical opposition to their functions in FEMA, the UN or NASA.

Incredible story of a skydiver falls as his parachute failed to fully open, all caught on his helmet video camera. He evens says bye to his friends, certain to die on impact, but incredibly, he survived. As George Carlin once said, why would jump out of a perfectly good working airplane?

How come suddenly everyone is jumping through hoops not to offend muslims? You get a pussified Europe begging the Middle-East for mercy after the cartoons scandals when they should have told them to shove it and accept freedom of expression, and now China is banning images of pigs in advertising to avoid offending their muslim minority. It's the year of the pig for crying out loud! I think it's up to the muslims to adapt to a modern, rational world.

Viacom Inc. asked YouTube to remove more than 100,000 clips from its popular site. So many good memorable segments would be decaying in their useless archives if it wasn't for youtube.. these dinosaurs are aggravating. It's free publicity, and you get to watch something funny when you want and how you want. Just because your medium and business model are approaching obsolescence doesn't mean the best recourse is to lash out like the music companies.

We needed a tech company (Apple with iTunes) to finally create a real decent service for distributing online music, the same will happen with video I'm sure. All their efforts are spent on trying to maximize their profit while providing shiatty services... none of it is spent on trying to actually give people what they want AND make some reasonable money with it.

The Bush administration is finally getting some heat for their attempts at manipulating the media about global warming:

The hearing focused on allegations that White House officials for years have micromanaged the government's climate programs and has closely controlled what scientists have been allowed to tell the public. (...) At the House hearing, two private advocacy groups produced a survey of 279 government climate scientists showing that many of them say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the climate threat. Their complaints ranged from a challenge to using the phrase "global warming" to raising uncertainty on issues on which most scientists basically agree, to keeping scientists from talking to the media.

10 Shopping Tricks That Stores Hate. I got seduced with an extended guarantee once for a digital camera, and I regret it.

A 65 years old woman saves her husband of 50 years from a mountain lion while hiking by beating the animal up with a 4-inch-diameter log. My favorite quote:

The lion eventually let go and, with blood on its snout, stood staring at the woman. She screamed and waved the log until the animal walked away.

That's one tough lady.

The greatest martial moments in movies. Yes, the actual sequences. It's pretty cool.