I just came in off the porch. I give my two tomato plants each a gallon and a half of water every day that it's hot, and it pays off in odd ways. At night, the plants transpire like crazy, filling the air above them with water vapor, and night breezes pick up the vapor and carry it along, chilling it and cooling everything off.

Jupiter is up, at about 10 o'clock in the night sky, below the celestial equator, big and bright and very easy to see.

I love the night.

A lot of the pharmaceutical products that first came out in the last 20 years fall into that category. And we could do without fast food establishments. The value of most other things, however, depend upon who is using them and for what purposes. For example, telephones are very useful, but they also make it possible for idiots to call up 911 and report stupid things, which ties up the dispatchers and makes for real problems when it comes to emergency responses. It's like fire: we've been using it for two million years to do all sorts of great things -- but it also gets used by pyros to do terrible things, and official torturers use it to do awful things to their victims. Fire gave us food we didn't have to have massive jaws to chew and digest and assmiliate, but it also gave us fast food, and you know where that takes us . . .

The word "sociopath" is generally used to mean what "psychopath" does, and is becoming a substitue for the latter, because it is more accurate. "Psychopath" means "one who exhibits a psychological pathology," and has been used to refer to anything from a standard mental illness to a serial killer. "Sociopath" means "one who exhibits social pathologies," and is used to refer to those who have no conscience and cannot develop one; who cannot love; whose perception of other people is like others' perception of mindless animate objects or computers, i.e., without souls and spirits; who have little or no understanding of why others who do what they do and therefore have trouble predicting what other people will do; and, more recently, who exhibit a hallmark neurological signature from as early as birth on that goes hand in hand with the previously described behavioral signatures. Because such people frequently become career criminals, even violent ones, it is used most often to mean, more or less, "dangerous repeat offender."

But the literal meaning of the term "sociopath," "one who exhibits social pathologies," could actually cover a whole host of syndromes ranging from various forms of autism to what psychologists refer to as neuroses to the common use of it to mean something like "dangerous repeat offender."( Read more... )

Before I get into it, let me preface this with two statements: 1) What I'm about to discuss does not include all libertarians, though it does include quite a few of them. And 2) I'm at least as damaged as a lot of those I'm about to describe, though I'm aware of it and do what I can about it. For example, I live alone, and will do so for the rest of my life, because in the past, all my face-to-face interactions and relationships with other human beings have gone and ended badly, my impact on them and their lives ranging from irritating to deadly. This has gone on literally since I was born, and while my intentions have been otherwise, the fact remains that I'm not good for other human beings, nor they for me, when it comes to real, live, face-to-face encounters. Even my written (snail-mail) correspondence with others has ultimately ended badly. And in at least one case, the results were deadly for someone I cared very much about. That was my fiance, who died in a car wreck three weeks before we were to have been married (I was 18 at the time) as he was coming back from his work on a construction project that he'd taken to finance our honeymoon to the motel he stayed at during the week. This was typical of the way my life has gone, and its impact on others. And my social skills are decidedly lacking or damaged when I'm in the physical presence of others. So I fit the picture I'm about to paint here, and can't claim I'm not talking about myself.

At any rate, as a group, whether or not they are members of the Libertarian Party (that's a different issue, and not relevant here), many of those who call themselves "libertarians"display a host of social pathologies, often egregious ones, that may be the reason why libertarians are still a minority in this country.( Read more... )

http://comics.com/9_chickweed_lane/

Check the strips from around July 3 to July 18 of this year. Much laughter.

IT'S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.

http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html

File under "Eccchhhhhh!"

A friend of mine says: "I have a sneaking suspicion that this has something to do with Sarah Palin's abrupt resignation ... she KNOWS it's the spoor of the Ancient Ones, which floated up to the surface when the seals of their submerged cities were broken! heh ..." -- Brendan Tripp (http://btripp.livejournal.com/)

http://www.startribune.com/world/51093862.html?elr=KArks:DCiUBcy7hUiacyKUUr

With the passing of such men history takes new turns. Let us hope there are more like him in the years to come, all over the world, good men and women who never let us forget the cost of both war and our liberty -- and the costs of losing either.

jordan179 - Cass Sunstein, the Pimple who would be our Censor-in-Chief

"As I'm sure you've heard if you follow the journal of the excellent cutelildrow (http://cutelildrow.livejournal.com/) in her post on Cass Sunstein (http://cutelildrow.livejournal.com/1810188.html) which references the New York Post editorial "Gag the Internet!" by Kyle Smith:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07112009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/gag_the_internet__178749.htm

you will be aware that Barack Obama has appointed a certain Cass Sunstein as head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. This sounds innocuous enough, until you discover that Cass Sunstein has already proposed nothing more or less than the criminalization of criticizing US public officials on the Internet. . . ." More: http://jordan179.livejournal.com/134080.html

Credit: Apollo 11 (http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-11/apollo-11.html), NASA



"After the most famous voyage of modern times, it was time to go home. After proving that humanity has the ability to go beyond the confines of planet Earth, the first humans to walk on another world -- Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin -- flew the ascent stage of their Lunar Module back to meet Michael Collins in the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. Pictured above on 1969 July 21, the ascending spaceship was captured by Collins making its approach, with the Moon below, and Earth far in the distance. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the first human moon landing. Recently, NASA's moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter sent back the first pictures of most of the Apollo landing sites -- including Apollo 11 -- with enough resolution to see the Lunar Module descent stages left behind. . . ." More: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090719.html

Check out the links on the original page linked above for much, much more.

I think, if I were to go back to school to get a PhD in anything, it would be the biology of monitor lizards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_lizard), and in particular, that of Komodo dragons. They go back to the Late Cretaceous, 90 million years ago; they probably gave rise to the mososaurs; and their relatives include the venomous reptiles and snakes -- they themselves are venomous, though mildly so, at least in terms of the effect on us of their bites. They are old and wise, and dream dragon dreams. I would love to get to know them better.