Lena and I are now fairly convinced that we had Swine Flu the weekend of Porcfest. She works in Manhattan and uses a lot of public transportation, and got sick earlier in the week. I started feeling it Thursday night, felt better Saturday evening, but didn’t fully recover until around Tuesday.

At the time I didn’t think much of it, but in retrospect it was more intense than my usual flu, and what the hell else was going around the area in June?

I realize now that I should have told more people that I was sick out of courtesy, and so they would know why I was so scarce. But I was having too good of a time and didn’t want to complain. My bad.

If I did have Swine Flu, it would mean several good things:

1) It adds to my badass cred. I did a presentation as part of a 2 hour panel, gave multiple interviews, and vertically climbed a tree to retrieve a marshmallow stick at Porcfest. Then I moved into a new apartment over the next few days. While infected with 2009 Terror.

2) I feel more obligated to make Swine Flu jokes. (It’s obviously a government conspiracy – Swine/Porc? Clearly a code word.)

3) I’ve built up immunity and am now slightly more indestructible.

4) If at least two people at Porcfest had Swine Flu, and nobody even went to the hospital, then it’s not that big of a deal. I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly sanitary when I’m camping, and Rogers didn’t have handsoap in the bathrooms.

darianworden.com

White House science advisor John Holdren wrote a book on population control measures in 1977. It includes a number of ideas that don’t take individual rights into account whatsoever.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the oposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock…Again, there is no sign of such an agent on the horizon. And the risk of serious, unforeseen side effects would, in our opinion, militate against the use of any such agent, even though this plan has the advantage of avoiding the need for socioeconomic pressures that might tend to discriminate against particular groups or penalize children.

Who talks seriously about poisoning the water supplies? Is General Ripper going to have to replace this clown?

This isn’t the first we heard of a Holdren mad scientist idea. From April:

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed.

One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort…

So this guy’s had ideas about controlling global fertility and recently discussed intentional anthropogenic climate change.

Why doesn’t Obama just use common ground with the Pope to pump up the Junior Anti-Sex League? Or is that not quite evil enough?

In a truly freed market, technology and entrepreneurialism can improve life for everyone except powerlusting maniacs. But the Obama administration talks of taking political control to its planetary extreme – in ways that even the Bush Supervillain Administration didn’t speak of.

H/T Dan Patrick

I try to be lenient when it comes to grammar rules, because language evolves and its purpose is to communicate, not to satisfy dogma. But there is such a thing as bad writing.

Unless the strategy for this Facebook ad is to get people to click it just to find out what the hell it’s trying to say, I’d tag it FAIL.

Alexander Cockburn reviews the mass murdering life of superstatist Robert McNamara.

Robert McNamara, who died yesterday, July 6, served as Kennedy’s , then as Johnson’s defense secretary. He contributed more than most to the slaughter of 3.4 million Vietnamese (his own estimate). He went on to run the World Bank, where he presided over the impoverishment, eviction from their lands and death of many millions more round the world.

Just as George Kennan, one of the architects of the Cold War, helped bolt together the ramshackle scaffolding of bogus claims that provided the rationalization for Harry Truman’s great “arms scare” in 1948, launching the postwar arms race, McNamara tugged his forelock and said “Aye, aye, Sir” when Kennedy, campaigning against Nxon in the late 1950s attacked the Eisenhower/Nixon administration for having allowed a “missile gap” to develop that had now delivered America naked and helpless into the grip of the Soviet Union.

This was the biggest lie in the history of threat inflation and remains so to this day…

McNamara played a crucial, enabling role in the arms race in nuclear missiles…

H/T Jim Davidson via Facebook.

If you’re in an action movie, someone’s going to get killed. These tips will help you make sure it won’t be you.

1. Have weapons. Who’s going to pay to see problems solved without violence? Not your audience. You’d best be prepared to do some damage.

2. Don’t leave a gun next to a fallen enemy. Just because the guy you shot is on the ground doesn’t mean he can’t hurt you. How lazy do you have to be to leave guns lying all over the place anyway?

3. Wear safety glasses when facing biker gangs or other highway marauders. Mad Max films show how they wreck people by throwing car parts at windshields. Safety glasses won’t guarantee you’ll keep control of your vehicle, but they’re better than nothing. Remember, on the post-collapse highways of battle, it’s safety first!

4. Do flips. Projectiles cannot hit a movie hero whose body is flipping over – even if she’s moving in a straight line.

5. Don’t be the overly cocky guy. He usually dies.

6. Don’t go to the bathroom when cameras are rolling. If you’re filmed in the bathroom it probably means something bad will happen to you there. Go when everyone’s distracted by something important the other characters are doing.

7. Weapons are most effective when used in conjunction with snappy one-liners. But remember what Shakespeare said: brevity is the sole of potency. If you talk for too long, someone might shut you up with a bullet.

darianworden.com

Click the picture to get full-size.

Pics of the table by Kevin Dean

Nick and Darian on Free Talk Live 6/27 by Kevin Dean

A photo on flickr

I found a great pic of me in an Armor4Activists photobucket album. Not only was I completely unaware of pictures being taken, but I also had no idea there was plant matter stuck to my arm.

There probably would have been more photos of me, but I spent a lot of time laying in my tent trying to not have the flu.

My blog does not appear to compress large photos well. Click the picture to get full-size.

The crowd gathers. There were more people once we got underway.

There was an engaging question-and-answer section.

As you can see, this was a very serious event.

These pictures were taken by Lena.