Most of the Vulcan kids didn’t like Spock because he was half human…He was very lonely and no one understood him…But it was only the need for popularity that was ruining his happiness. – Leonard Nimoy
This was such an incredibly busy week for links, I’m not going to waste much of your time in this introduction except to point out that the SCOTUS rejected the publishers’ demands for control of the secondary market in Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley, the case discussed in last week’s second video; this means that for now, resale businesses (including flea markets, thrift stores, pawnshops and businesses that buy, sell and trade books, movies, music, games, etc) are still legal, though not free to operate without government harassment. Our top contributor this week was Radley Balko, who sent every link down to the first video (an excellent parody of conspiracy theory videos which he also provided). The second video was called to my attention by Popehat, who also contributed “librarians”. The other links between the videos were supplied by Jesse Walker (“McDonald’s” and “ad-blocking”), Luscious Lani (“garbage can”), Wil Wheaton’s cat (“redshirts”), Mike Siegel (“book covers”), Aspasia (“nose pusher”), Grace (“deportation”), and Marginal Utilite (“drug war benefits”).
- Citywide panic over an umbrella.
- I thought The Onion only featured parodies?
- The nauseating sound of an academic licking the boots of power.
- Bureaucrats crack down on the scourge of employing autistic teenagers.
- “…It’s prudent and wise to protect children” by warrantless raids over Facebook photos.
- One of Obama’s secret service agents could be a reptilian Zionist alien Illuminati shapeshifter.
- “Prosecutors acknowledged the detectives had misbehaved but depicted them as likable scamps.”
- Wonderful 1968 advice letter from Leonard Nimoy to a biracial teenage girl who asked how young Spock coped with bigotry.
- Original McDonald’s menu included tamales & “aristocratic hamburgers”.
- Hungry homeless man cited for “disturbing contents of a garbage can.”
- Red shirts are less dangerous than previously believed.
- 20 embarrassingly bad book covers for classic novels.
- “I’m going to push your nose through your brain.”
- Woman faces deportation for barking dogs.
- Canadian government muzzles librarians.
- 15 benefits of the “War on Drugs”.
- An early attempt at ad-blocking.
- This week’s edition of “Fascism in Action”.
- Jack Parsons, rocket scientist and sorcerer.
- Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever (rape edition).
- Why “gender differences” may actually reflect societal progress.
- A new short-short story by Neil Gaiman, “Down To a Sunless Sea“.
- What if Nic Cage was every single one of the original 151 Pokemon?
- Judge refuses to allow dozens of past incidents as evidence in case against murderous cops because it would take too long.
- “If you want the government to truncate his rights because you judge him as ‘the other’, then realize that you’re giving the government full license to truncate your rights too.”
From the Archives
- No intentional parody could mock journalistic credulity and police self-contradiction as well as this incompetently-written mess does.
- In India, a sex worker’s child can be prosecuted if he doesn’t move away from home and support himself the day he turns 18.
- New Long Island police commissioner is “on the same page” as the DA who blames whores for being murdered.
- In reality, men nearly always say “I love you” first and it’s women who shun commitment.
- “The nudes of art are not so distant from pornography as prudish pedants pretend.”
- Statistics disprove prohibitionist claims about “trafficking” in Amsterdam.
- Dr. Hernando Chaves: there’s nothing wrong with seeing a sex worker.
- Some men use honest cash rather than trickery to obtain their first sex.
- The time Nicholas Kristof, master of doublethink, sent me a lot of traffic.
- The 19th-century Chinese whore who became the greatest pirate ever.
- South African police punish sex workers for daring to demand rights.
- Yet another Asian prostitute study confirms what we already know.
- The asinine waste of funds that was the Anna Gristina prosecution.
- “Moral Panics in the Last Decade” has one conspicuous omission.
- “Last Rescue in Siam”, a cute spoof made by Thai sex workers.
- How trafficking fetishists imagine themselves as white knights.
- The “gateway” fallacy is a perennial favorite of prohibitionists’.
- The many parallels between our era and the Victorian.
- A few journalists begin to question prohibitionist lies.
- How to recognize police doubletalk in news articles.
- Impotent Swedish politician caught hiring a hooker.
- My two previous columns for the vernal equinox.
- A statement from two human books.
- Another truck-driving serial killer.
- The truth about Foxconn.
- Death of a hypocrite.
Leonard Nimoy … WOW.
(no – it did NOT make me cry!) 😛
Outstanding letter. It’s wonderful to see how much different things are today than they were over 40 years ago.
You’ve all probably seen this much more recent letter — it even reached the Daily Fail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294281/Dads-touching-letter-accepting-gay-son-goes-viral.html
The Daily News article could have fit very well in The Onion.
>Why “gender differences” may actually reflect societal progress.
One can read the actual study here: http://roseproject.no/?page_id=39 (english)
It is also mentioned in the documentary series, Hjernevask, which is made on the basis of The Blank Slate (Steven Pinker). http://genusnytt.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/se-hjernevask-avsloja-genusmyterna/
>In reality, men nearly always say “I love you” first and it’s women who shun commitment.
You seem to have exaggerated it. Your own link reports the number 70%, which is not “nearly always”, although it is more than 50%.
I consider those links to be “hooks”, so I often use hyperbole in them to encourage clicking. 😉
About the last link: Even if people don’t care about justice, there is one more argument for a strong public defender office – OJ Simpson. He got away with it, not because he hired the five most expensive criminal lawyers in the country, but because the LAPD and prosecutor’s office together left gaps in the trail of evidence that *any* good lawyer could drive a truck through. And if they did that poorly in a case where, as soon as the victims were identified, it was clearly likely that they’d be facing million dollar lawyers on national TV, how low are their standards when the suspect is Joe Schmoe and his PD? If the PD’s were competent and funded sufficiently to actually defend a case, the LAPD and prosecutors would have soon learned better.
I really am catching up, slowly but surely. When I’ve caught up with everything else, I’ll come back and start catching up with the LINKS posts.