Dithyramb

Funny beer commercial

A funny commercial

Damn scary.

Mark Steyn on...

Warm-mongers and cheeseburger-imperialists

Russia sends bomber planes to fly over U.S. Airbase in Guam

Russia resumes nuke bomber sorties

Russia's strategic bombers have resumed the Soviet Union's Cold War practice of flying long-haul missions to areas patrolled by NATO and the United States, generals said on Thursday.

A Russian bomber flew over a U.S. military base on the Pacific island of Guam on Wednesday and "exchanged smiles" with U.S. pilots who had scrambled to track it, said Maj. Gen. Pavel Androsov, head of long-range aviation in the Russian air force.

The Race for the North Pole continues

Canada announces a new military base in the arctic

"The race to secure subsurface rights to the Arctic seabed heated up when Russia sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole last week. The United States and Norway also have competing claims in the vast Arctic region, where a US study suggests as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden."

Wine-opener

If you ever need a wine-opener...

Still hope for Firefly-fans?

Via Noodlefood: an interview with josh wheedon.

Russians claim land under the North pole by using filmfootage from the Titanic

Ilta-Sanomat reveals embarrasing error in Reuters feed on Russian North Pole sub expedition

"Images presented by the Reuters news agency last Thursday, purporting to show the Finnish-built MIR-1 and MIR-2 submersibles during a recent Russian scientific expedition to the sea bed 4.3 kilometres below the Geographic North Pole, have been shown to be something else again.

     The pictures did indeed show MIR-1 and MIR-2 in action, but the submersibles were actually employed at the time in location filming at the scene of the wreck of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic, and not under the polar ice-cap.
     Those who have seen James Cameron's blockbuster movie Titanic (1997) will also have recognised the footage, as Cameron used the same shots in certain sequences of his epic about the 1912 disaster that were set in modern times.
     The images were picked up by numerous media outlets around the world, Helsingin Sanomat among them, and were inserted into news stories as evidence of the successful expedition. Nobody raised any eyebrows.
    
At least, not until one Finnish reader, a 13-year-old boy from Kemi named Waltteri Seretin, made just this "Cameron connection", and contacted the late-edition tabloid Ilta-Sanomat. The newspaper ran the story prominently in its Thursday edition."

Russia humiliated. Or so it seems:

As the story of the faux pictures broke and spread to other countries, there were those who jumped to the hasty conclusion that in fact the entire Russian Academy of Sciences' expedition was a hoax. It was even thought briefly that the planting of a titanium Russian flag on the sea-bed - seen as a symbolic claim on the area, which is rich in natural resources - was the product of clever image manipulation.
     Things are probably not that dramatic: it merely seems that someone at the normally meticulous news agency arrived at a wrong conclusion of their own about the images and they were mislabelled or left without any captions at all.
     The incident is doubly embarrassing for Reuters since it follows on from a case last August in which the news agency published an image by a freelancer of Israeli bombings in Lebanon that had been dramatised using photo manipulation, with the addition of smoke rising from allegedly burning buildings. After that gaffe, Reuters promised to tighten up its controls on material being put out in its name.

Still this is quite a setback for a Russia that is flexing its muscles and trying to regain former "glory" where loosing face is not acceptable.

Neoconservative foreign policy

For some insight into American foreign policy and its faults read A neoconservative foreign policy: an atopsy by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein

I prefer listening to lectures on my Ipod...

From Allen's Image Adjusment via The Primacy of Awesome

"A few weeks ago, Nick Provenzo posted about the bookstore's distribution strategy, especially the fact that even the free lectures must be heard from one's computer and cannot be downloaded to a portable audio player. I would like to see ARI offer a subscription service for the bookstore similar to what Urge and Napster, etc. are doing. For example, if someone is giving ten bucks a month to ARI they could download lectures an hour or under in length to either an itunes player or Windows Media player AND a portable player such as a Zen or Ipod. If they are giving twenty bucks perhaps they can listen to the longer lectures, etc, etc. I know the Institute strives for more ways to create consistent monthly income. I think this would be a great way to do just that."

Great Idea. I second this motion!

Norwegian Armed forces heading off to Iceland

Norwegian Army heads to Iceland

"After the USA shut its military base in Iceland, Norway has had a special NATO responsibility to defend the island's military interests, through an agreement signed this April. The upcoming exercise is the first concrete expression of Norway's responsibility, and military personnel and planes will this week head to the island nation."

Better to have our forces in Iceland than in the F**k%ng  Sudan (Which is a yet another vicious UN-backed plan for self-immolation).

Are you a feminist?

You Are 56% Feminist

You aren't a total traditionalist when it comes to gender roles. But you're no feminist either. You generally think that women should be treated as equals, but you're not convinced the world should be gender neutral.

Are You a Feminist?

Ayn Rand Bookstore Sale

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Ayn Rand Bookstore
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DAVID HARRIMAN AUDIOCASSETTE SALE

Discounts starting at 50% on David Harriman audiocassette titles!
 
Sale prices available through September 16, 2007

Ayn Rand Bookstore Sale

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Ayn Rand Bookstore
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CLEARANCE SALE

Discounts starting at 50% on John Ridpath audiocassette titles!

Sale prices available through September 2, 2007

Expansionist Russia

Russia plants the flag at the North Pole

Christopher Hitchens - God is not Great

I just bought Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great. I have read the first chapter and my initial reaction is: This is going to be classic work in the genre of religious criticism.

Harry Potter & the deathly hallows reimagined

Via Noodlefood:
What would Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows have looked like if written by another author than J.K. Rowling.

ARI Press Release

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release U.S. Negotiates with Iran, Iran Wins August 1, 2007 Irvine, CA--Recent talks between Iran and the United States resulted in an agreement to hold further talks and create a "subcommittee" to deal with Iraqi security. For America and Iran, this outcome is seen as a qualified success, promising mutual advantages. "But these talks are an unqualified success for Iran," said Elan Journo, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.  "Iran is the flagrant aggressor--in its backing of Iraqi insurgents who murder American troops and in its decades-long terror war on America and the West. Iran helps fuel the hellish chaos in Iraq--it is the self-righteous arsonist that U.S. diplomats absurdly hope to recruit as a fire-fighter. These talks grant Iran an undeserved moral legitimacy as a civilized, peace-seeking regime. Iran's hostile goals--'death to America'--and its murder of our citizens are made to seem reasonable differences of opinion. Iran is elevated to an equal moral footing with its victims. "Since Teheran knows its hostility will be met with words and bribes, rather than punished with bombs, it has nothing to fear from continuing its aggression. Indeed, as the U.S. ambassador to Iran stated: 'over the roughly two months since our last meetings, we have actually seen militia-related activity that can be attributed to Iranian support go up, and not down.' "That Iran feels it has a free hand to unleash its wrath on U.S. troops in Iraq--and broadly, to continue its other aggressive goals, such as acquiring nuclear weapons--is the inevitable result of such appeasing negotiations. For the United States merely to recognize Iran as worthy of negotiations--let alone offer it bribes--is a moral capitulation." ###  ### ###

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved. Op-eds, press releases and letters to the editor produced by the Ayn Rand Institute are submitted to hundreds of newspapers, radio stations and Web sites across the United States and abroad, and are made possible thanks to voluntary contributions. If you would like to help support ARI's efforts, please make an online contribution at http://www.aynrand.org/support. This release is copyrighted by the Ayn Rand Institute, and cannot be reprinted without permission except for non-commercial, self-study or educational purposes. We encourage you to forward this release to friends, family, associates or interested parties who would want to receive it for these purposes only. Any reproduction of this release must contain the above copyright notice. Those interested in reprinting or redistributing this release for any other purposes should contact [email protected]. This release may not be forwarded to media for publication.

Prager & Hitchens vs Ibrahim Hooper (CAIR)

Response from Jihad watch