Just read the bit about Dawkins' takedown of the 14-year-old clock-building kid. Jesus Christ.

Sam Harris seems to believe that torture is okay, so long as we're torturing people who are obviously guilty and dangerous (because the government says they are). Funny, how we can imagine clever hypotheticals (the "ticking timebomb" scenario) that justify us torturing them, but never the other way around. Not sure…

Yesterday I got Amazon ads for Donald Trump's books, in that thread about the Trump Halloween costume. Doesn't seem like they have their finger on the pulse of their audience.

Pretty dumb controversy…but it's a pretty great photo.

We need to return to the days when all movies were based on tired Saturday Night Live sketches.

I wouldn't push this logic too far. There are cool people who like shitty music…shitty people who like shitty music…shitty people who like cool music…and cool people who like cool music. (Everyone believes they belong to this final category, of course.)

Chomsky on Adam Smith: "He's pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But…

In a broader historical sense (from classical Greece to the Middle Ages), the idea of "making money" was thought to be degrading and shameful, like prostitution.

Youtube has the 45-minute show that originally aired (1999, crappy quality). There was no official accompanying CD release, as far as I know. The bootleg is a couple of hours…it's a hoot, as Waits is a consummate bullshit artist.

SEED! PLEEEEEEASE SEED!!!!

"Shit Hits the Fans" is really an official/authorized bootleg, so maybe it didn't make the list for that reason. The story goes: a fan taped the show, then the Mats commandeered the tape and released it themselves…so everyone who has this tape bought it legally through the Mats, not the bootlegger.

I don't have many bootlegs that I actually listen to, but I like: Tom Waits, "Complete VH1 Storytellers"…Replacements, "Shower, Shit, and Shave"…Neil Young, "Carnegie Hall 1970"…and Hüsker Dü, "Complete Zen Arcade Outtakes" (which will only seem essential if you're obsessed with this album, as I am).

I didn't know that transparent aluminum is a real thing. Unless you wrote that Wiki entry just now, to fool me and support your kooky argument.

I believe that Star Trek also predicted that a Eugenics War (Khan) would rip the world apart in the 1990s.

Alpha Flight!!! (Can't happen, I know, because they're Canadian, but I dare to dream.)

For me, there seems to be a crazy amount of stuff to watch right now, but only because my standards have lowered over the years. I used to watch just the A-list TV (Sopranos, Mad Men)…but now I'm plugged into every fucking B- and C-list zombie/superhero/Viking show…and I blame the AV Club, for telling me about this…

Let's aim that smug sense of superiority in the right direction: toward the Scientologists. What a bunch of fucking idiots! [Community restored.]

It's hard to compare how awful each of the options would be…sort of like asking, would you rather have brain cancer or stomach cancer?

His policies, and words, and ideas, and style, and personality, and actions, and general being aside…

http://www.yandy.com/Sexy-C…