I propose a card game. I’ll shuffle an ordinary deck of cards and turn up the cards in pairs. If both cards in a given pair are black, I’ll give them to you. If both are red, I’ll take them. And if one is black and one red, then we’ll put them aside, belonging to no one.

You pay a dollar for the privilege of playing the game, and then we’ll go through the whole deck. When the game is over, if you have no more cards than I do, you pay nothing. But for every card that you have more than I, I’ll pay you 3 dollars. Should you play this game?

Click for solution …

El Planeta por muuuuuuuuucho. El Nada fue durante años el que tenía 'caché literario' y el Herralde el que servía de 'presentación' en sociedad de un cierto tipo de libros. El Primavera es una tontería, puro premio... estacional. Es decir, en Planeta vieron el hueco y decidieron cubrirlo sacándose un premio de la manga en unos meses en los que no había ninguno importante y adjudicándoselo a Espasa, que habían comprado haría un lustro antes. Con eso y todo y aún cuando ha habido premiados del Planeta que han funcionado nada y menos -sin ir más lejos, los de este año. Aunque haya habido pegadas grandes antes, María de la Pau Jener no se comió un colín y el de Fernando Savater comenzó bien hasta que la gente empezó a leérselo- tienen siempre un público fijo que lo quiere porque es el libro que toca, por colección o por decoración. El éxito de los premios se nota muy bien en si continúan publicando finalistas o no. El Primavera lo perdió en 2012, el Herralde y el Nadal en 2010, el Alfaguara no lo tuvo nunca, el Fernando Lara cuando la finalista es mejor que la ganadora. Lo más divertido es que luego están los que han desaparecido que se dividen en dos: Los que eran realmente útiles porque no buscaban una comercialización, dándose el premio a obra publicada (que suelen ser muy divertidos de pervertir, como el Fastenrath o el Tigre Juan) y los que tienen un propósito comercial así que imagínate lo que tiene que ser que lo eliminen. Y aquí es a donde quería yo llegar: El Segundo Mayor Premio de España en Dotación (pasta) y, por tanto, el 3º del mundo. De manos del grupo Random House y sus mariachis del momento. El monumental, grotesto y nunca bien vendido Premio Torrevieja. Un asunto que bordeaba lo hilarante porque jamás vendió bien -¡Hasta Planeta logró a ratos que funcionara el Primavera!- y mira que el Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja lo intentaba. Entre 2001 y 2011 probaron de casi todo. Autores conocidos (Javier Reverte, Juan José Armas Marcelo), añadir un finalista -de 2004 a 2009- que llegó a vender más que el ganador (Javier Sierra, Andrés Pascual) (Zoé Valdés, César Vidal, Jorge Bucay) autores de género reconocidos (José Carlos Somoza, que fue el que funcionó menos mal) y pícaros que cuando descubren que han vendido un defecación de mosca aún se ponen dignos y reivindicativos (Juan Gómez-Jurado), los que venían de otro lado (Álex Rovira y Francesc Miralles firmando a cuatro manos o el antes mencionado Bucay), para volver a intentar ponerse dignos (Gustavo Martín Garzo) y disparar la última salva con un clásico todoterreno (Jordi Sierra i Fabra) para convencerles finalmente de que no había nada que hacer. Toda su historia fue esperpéntica. Lo crean pagando poco más de 360 mil €uros al ganador para ser "el mejor dotado" y antes de que termine el año el Planeta dobla a 600 mil para descojonarse de ellos, De esos 360 (+125 del finalista) ¡la mitad la pone el Ayuntamiento de Torrevieja por la 'promoción internacional'! Unas risas.

Shortly after meeting my wife, she introduced me to the nuanced meaning that the Spanish word nervio had acquired in the lexicon of her family. As used in their Chilean home, the word could be defined as a feeling of such intense affection that one trembles or grits his teeth with restraint so as not to harm the object of his affection. I have heard others allude to the sensation in seemingly bizarre phrases such as, "It's so cute [that] I want to squeeze it to death." I often ask people about nervio. For those like me who have experienced it frequently throughout their lives, a complete definition is unnecessary and the word fills a void in their vocabulary. With others, my description is often greeted with bewilderment. Having never felt such a sensation, it is hard for them to imagine.

More? Tagalog's gigil, corporal cuddling, and some scientific insights into the "cute aggression" phenomenon

O candidato naronés e a lista que lidera, apoiada pola cúpula do partido, vence con claridade no proceso para elixir os órganos de dirección da formación no país. 

El Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN) ha suspendido la intervención Excreta horas antes de su celebración en su aula de Biología. La institución pública ha decidido cancelar la performance, un proyecto escénico de Laura Corcuera y Mónica Cofiño, que estaba considerado como el momento cumbre de la exposición dedicada a la mierda, que desde el 19 de noviembre se puede visitar en el centro.

El detonante de la decisión, comunicada por teléfono ayer a última de hora de la tarde a las dos artistas, ha sido la publicación en la cuenta personal de Twitter de Corcuera de un par de imágenes de las dos artistas, de cuclillas, en posición de defecar dentro del monumento a la Constitución de 1978, situado en los jardines del museo.

Pilar López, directora de Programas Públicos del MNCN, considera que no han censurado la acción y sitúa el conflicto en la falta de sintonía con el mensaje lanzado. “La comunicación previa del proyecto por una de las partes no ha sido consensuada y con una orientación distinta a la original. Se escapa de lo que se pretendía transmitir. Entiendo que no se ha censurado, la orientación de la performance ha acabado por no coincidir con la línea de trabajo y los objetivos del museo”, ha explicado a El Confidencial.

Actuación desmedida

Por su parte, Corcuera lamenta por dos motivos la decisión tomada. “Esto es una paletada, no se me ocurre otra palabra más suave para definirlo. Nos da mucha pena porque la gente no va a poder ver la performance y porque era una apuesta muy inteligente por parte del museo y con esta actuación desmedida su imagen sale perjudicada”.

En su defensa, la artista arguye que las imágenes de la polémica “eran poéticas, en un escenario precioso que permitía una lectura semiótica en consonancia con la performance y su intención de resignificar: el monumento como retrete y la mierda como abono para algo nuevo, un concepto muy positivo”.

López argumenta que el papel de la institución científica no es la intervención en cuestiones que pueden ser consideradas políticas. “Puedes decir que el sistema es una mierda, y en eso podríamos estar de acuerdo, pero el contexto de la exposición no es ése sino la transmisión del conocimiento científico a la sociedad, no es nuestro papel hacer juicios de valor. El mensaje del museo no es ése”.

Contra la libertad de expresión

Corcuera evalúa  lo que más le ha dolido de la cancelación. “Como artistas, es humillante tener que explicar por teléfono lo que era esta performance cuando te llaman para decirte que se suspende. Debes confiar en el trabajo que encargas. Nosotras no nos metemos en lo que hacen los científicos”.

También añade que decidió borrar el tuit de la polémica de su cuenta personal: “Pensé que era una tontería que eso pudiese ser el motivo de la suspensión. Se han cagado, nunca mejor dicho”. Y remata, con indignación: “Éste es un país franquista y poder hacer algo así era demasiado bonito para ser verdad”.

En principio, las dos partes celebrarán el lunes un encuentro presencial para tratar la suspensión, aunque no parece que compartan ni siquiera el orden del día. Desde el museo indican que se trata de reorientar el proyecto y ver si de algún modo se podría llevar a cabo la performance mientras que las artistas acudirán a la reunión con la intención de cobrar todo el trabajo realizado hasta el viernes. 

Jayne

Happy Valentine's Day!  Mix compiled by Greg Germani.

1-Tommy Collins - I Made The Prison Band
2-Bonnie Owens - My Hi-Fi To Cry By
3-Eddie Noack - Honeymoon With The Blues
4-Dal Perkins - Here's To The Girls
5-Cal Smith - To Save My Wife
6-Jack Eirwin - My Wife Is In Your Hands
7-Carl Butler & Pearl - Throw A Little Dirt
8-Johnny Sea - My Baby Walks All Over Me
9-Don Speer - Slave To The Bottle
10-Ernest Tubb - Wine Me Up
11-Buck Owens - Satan's Gotta Get Along Without Me
12-Rockin' "Rudy" Hansen - Mambo Queen
13-Deke Dickerson - I'm Gonna Live Some Before I Die
14-Billy Mure - Jambalaya
15-Bob Atcher - Down With The Feminine Gender
16-Porter Wagoner - I'll Go Down Swingin'
17-George Jones - Half Of Me Is Gone
18-Grandpa Jones - Half Of Me Is Gone
19-Bobbi Kaye - Don't Let Me Want Him
20-Carl Butler & Pearl - It's Called Cheating
21-Bonnie Owens - How Can Our Cheating Be Wrong?
22-Jimmie Lumsden - This Cheating Game
23-Bert Parker - The Tavern Across The Street
24-Ernest Ashworth - The DJ Cried
25-Walt Jr & The Country Division
26-Billy Larkin - The Devil In Mrs. Jones
27-Gene McKown - Keeper Of The Heartaches
28-Charlie Louvin - You Finally Said Something Good...
29-Willis Brothers - Good Girl Bad
30-Red "Suitcase" Simpson - Hey, Bin Laden
31-Jimmy Snyder - Our Boys In Viet Nam Are Coming Home
32-Two Dollar Pistols - That Someone Isn't Me

As chosen by Ira Glass.

Illustration by Jordan Bruner/ jordanbruner.net. Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed.

Need help saying something that's hard to say? Videos 4 U can help.

Last September, This American Life producers issued a call for listeners who needed to tell someone something but were having trouble saying it. A woman named Maia submitted her request: she'd been with her boyfriend Alex for eight years, but neither one had ever said "I love you."

This video by This American Life's amazing Bianca Giaever is Maia's way of finally saying those three little words.

youtube.com / Via thisamericanlife.org

"21 Chump Street"

A high school kid falls for his fellow student--who turns out to be an undercover cop. Link

Via thisamericanlife.org

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I need HOW many dice???

Maybe your persistent friend (who is probably also a Dungeon Master) wore you down, or perhaps you've always been slightly curious, but for whatever reason, you are starting a game of D&D. Be wary young adventurer, embarking on this fantastical journey is no easy feat.

Nick Klein / Creative Commons / Via Flickr: kleinnick

Stage 1: Personal acceptance that you'll be playing the nerdiest game known to man

After careful deliberation you decide that the worst case scenario is that you'll be playing a game with your friends, and that doesn't actually sound all that bad. Who knows, it'll probably be really fun!

Paramount TV

Stage 2: We're are all going on an imaginary adventure!

Yaaaaaaay! You don't know what this make-believe realm has in store for you but you're excited!

DreamWorks Pictures

Stage 3: Daydreaming about your character (the possibilities are endless!)

Sexy panther queen warrior-sorceress? NO ONE CAN STOP YOU.

Just kidding. There are no sexy panther queen warrior-sorceresses allowed. :(

Logo TV / Via gif-weenus.com

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Celebramos el XV aniversario del nacimiento de LPD, en el Día de los Enamorados

If you’re in need of a last minute card for Valentine’s Day, and want to alienate the one you love and possibly never see them again, you might as well give them one of these ecards, written with the help of awful Tinder messages. To really tell that special someone, “let’s fuck you who’re.”

They were created by writer Jason Mustian (who you might remember also created TL;DR Wikipedia and PornHub Comments On Stock Photos). So you have him to thank for the dissolution of your marriage or whatever.

[h/t Distractify]

When the Academy Awards are handed out, history will be made.

I’m not referring to the Oscars that particular films might win, but our embrace of their narratives of history. If “American Sniper” gathers a fistful of statues, even more people will see a film that presents a skewed view of the Iraq war. If the “Imitation Game” gets lucky, a lot more people will watch a movie that erroneously portrays Alan Turing as a social idiot. If “Selma” catches some of the limelight, more people may believe that Lyndon Johnson wasn’t entirely supportive of Martin Luther King.

This year’s controversy over films and history has led to a dismissive shrug from cultural critics who wearily tell us that movies are just movies, you shouldn’t take their versions of truth to heart, just enjoy the show. “Going to a Hollywood movie for a history lesson is like going to a brothel for a lecture in philosophy,” wrote Esquire’s Stephen Marche. “You’re in the wrong place.” A.O. Scott, the New York Times film critic, tweeted for the hard of understanding, “FEATURE FILMS ARE NOT HISTORY. THEY ARE HISTORICAL FICTION.”

They are right — Hollywood is not a classroom. The problem, however, is that movies, despite the bonfires of distortion in many of them, can shape our understanding of political events just as much as think tank reports or Pulitzer-winning books. For instance, a lot of major movies are taught in schools. It is disingenuous for the screening room cognoscenti to pretend that films are of no political consequence and shouldn’t be critiqued for historical accuracy — and that’s particularly true for war films.

As Don Gomez, a soldier and blogger, wrote about “Zero Dark Thirty,” which portrayed torture as playing a crucial role in finding Osama bin Laden, “Filmmakers can always deflect criticism by saying ‘It’s a movie, not a documentary,’ which is true. But that ignores the reality of how it will be consumed — how they know it will be marketed and consumed.” And guess what — opinion polls show a majority of Americans think torture worked, just as ZDT said it did, even though an exhaustive Senate report concluded it did not.

A recent study conducted by Notre Dame researchers Todd Adkins and Jeremiah J. Castle indicated that movies are more effective in shaping political opinion than cable news or political ads. In the study, different audiences were exposed to different films and the evolution of their political beliefs was tested before and afterwards; there were statistically significant shifts. “Viewers come expecting to be entertained and are not prepared to encounter and evaluate political messages as they would during campaign advertisements or network news programs,” the authors wrote — meaning that viewers are not aware they are being targeted with political messages, so they are more likely to be persuaded by what they see on the screen.

I’m not really concerned about “The Imitation Game” or “Selma” or for that matter, “Argo” or “The King’s Speech,” because nobody is going to die from the wrong lessons they might impart (and it’s not clear that “Selma” was wrong). It’s probably true, as The Guardian said of “Braveheart,” that it’s a “great big steaming haggis of lies” — but the present-day costs of its liberties with the truth are negligible. However, when it comes to blockbuster tales about our ongoing wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, the wrong lessons are deadly. If, as “American Sniper” suggests, people believe that Iraq was filled with crazed savages who had no reason to attack the foreign army in their midst, we risk engaging in more warfare in the region, because fighting sub-human Muslim fanatics is far easier to justify than killing and maiming innocent civilians, which is a lot of what actually happened.

There is another problem with the “calm down it’s just a movie” attitude — it is chiefly used to protect narratives that confirm our prejudices. When Oliver Stone’s “J.F.K.” came out in 1991, it received coast-to-coast jeers for suggesting a conspiracy behind President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. “What is fact and what isn’t is not always easy to tell,” Vincent Canby wrote in the Times, calling out the movie’s “unsubstantiated data.” Director Oliver Stone, deeply at odds with conventional wisdom, was eviscerated for his “paranoid fantasy,” as Charles Krauthammer wrote at the time. Yet Clint Eastwood, whose “American Sniper” conforms with traditional notions of patriotism and heroism, gets a pass from historical scrutiny because, as his defenders say, it’s only a film.

Rutgers historian Richard Heffner noted that the furor over “J.F.K.” showed that filmmakers like Stone had hit a sensitive nerve — they were becoming “our nation’s leading storytellers,” and the Academy Awards rather than the Pulitzer Prizes were becoming the go-to accolades for our new historians (Heffner wasn’t entirely happy about this). By all means, let movies engage history — this is a wonderful thing — but their narratives of violence should not be spared a confrontation with the truth.

Zero Dark Thirty Photo: Sony Pictures

The post Oscars Make History, So Hollywood’s War Stories Need To Be True appeared first on The Intercept.

The struggle was real.

Survive purely on ramen and incredibly cheap beer.

i.imgur.com

Having to be THIS resourceful.

i.imgur.com

Not worrying about the passed-out-shirtless-dude-on-the-bathroom-floor's well-being.

s3.amazonaws.com

Stealing someone's pet while blackout drunk.

i.imgur.com

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The 13th Floor Elevators — one of the most influential psychedelic rock bands — is reuniting for the Levitation festival in Austin, Texas. All living original members will be performing together for the first time since 1967, including Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall, John Ike Walton, and Ronnie Leatherman.

They’ll be performing on May 10, and are promising “special guests,” which could potentially include some of the other bands in the festival’s lineup (The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, Primal Scream, Thee Oh Sees, Mac DeMarco).

“Well, you try to find out what the different structural levels of the universe are so you go on this trip to understand that,” Electric Jug player Tommy Hall told The Austin Chronicle, “Eventually, you realize that you have to go back to the beginning and figure out what caused it all. So that’s why this [reunion] has taken so long.”

Well, all right.

[h/t Pitchfork]

J.K. Rowling thought of everything.

The first time Snape speaks to Harry, he asks, "Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

According to the Victorian language of flowers, asphodel is a type of lily meaning "my regrets follow you to the grave" and wormwood means "absence" and symbolizes bitter sorrow. So we could interpret the meaning of Snape's question as "I bitterly regret Lily's death."

Warner Bros. / Via tomhiddles.tumblr.com

In Philosopher's Stone, the Weasley twins managed to hit Quirrell in the back of the head with snowballs.

Meaning they hit Voldemort right in the face.

votecrowleyforhell.tumblr.com

The entrance to Dumbledore's office...

...is literally a Griffin door.

mugglenet.com

Many believe Hedwig's namesake Saint Hedwig is the patron saint of orphaned children.

But she is actually the patron saint of dead children (St Jerome Emiliani is the patron saint of orphans). Looked at this way, perhaps Rowling named Harry's owl Hedwig to signify she was there to protect him from death... or perhaps she was a clue to Harry's eventual fate in The Deathly Hallows from the very beginning.

Warner Bros.

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Terrorífica sesión de viernes no apta para cardíacos. Monstruos de leyenda y otros seres innombrables se dan cita en nuestra fiesta de catacumba. Playlist; (sintonía) Messer Chups (Tremolo from the crypt), The Munsters (Down in the basement), Bobby Boris Picket (Graveyard shift), Gene Moss (Drac the knife), Frankie Stein and his Ghouls (Lullaby of ghost land), The Ghouls (Little old lady from Transylvania), The Tomkos (The spook), The Deadly Ones (Raunchy), Morgus and the Ghouls (Morgus the magnificent), The Upperclassmen (Cha cha with the zombies), The Castle Kings (You can get him Frankesntein), Dinah Shore (Scene of the crime), Hutch Davie and his Honky Tonkers (Gwendolyn and the werewolf), Jan Davis (Watusi zombie), Johnny Fever (Zombie), Lavern Baker (Voodoo voodoo), Jack and Jim (The midnight monsters hop), Southern Culture on the Skids (Goo goo muck), Los Straitjackets (Ghoul on the hill), Frankie Stein and the Ghouls (A hearse is not a home) y John Zacherle (I’m a ghoul from Wolverton moun). 

 

 

 

pro choice



pro life





South-east Asian beach bar menu


(no kiddies inside tho)

read more

Pay for a game once and then own it and play as much as you want! It’s the revolution we’ve all been waiting for! I can’t believe no one came up with this sooner—wait.

Mobile game makers have long been trying to bring back the magic of the arcade by charging people for features in games they already own. Instead of buying a game outright, many games are now pay-as-you-go experiences in what is probably the last part of the ’80s that anyone wanted back.

Now Apple is taking a stand with their new “pay once and play” App Store showcase which features great games you can pay for up front and then play to your heart’s content. Of course, these games already existed, but Apple has put them front and center in the App Store’s Featured section with a very “tell us how you really feel” text description:

Enjoy hours of uninterrupted fun with complete experiences spanning the App Store’s most beloved genres. Packed with thrills and unforgettable moments, these powerhouse games belong in every collection.

So if you want to try some games that aren’t trying to squeeze you for every last quarter you’ve got like the frustratingly unfair arcade machines of your youth, you now know exactly where to look.

(via Forbes, image via screenshot)

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Por Ignacio Murillo, Furillo / Redacción CIBASS

Ignacio Murillo, Furillo, el autor más “especial” de todo el sector tebeístico nacional vuelve a CIBASS con la segunda entrega de su serie “Furilladas“, en esta ocasión en la forma de una interesante reflexión sobre aspectos de la vida cotidiana en la que sin duda alguna todos deberíamos meditar alguna vez. Conceptos como la familia, la comunicación en pareja, la gestión de la progenie y la convivencia con nuestras mascotas. Sí, elementos fundamentales sobre los que nuestro artista de cabecera seguramente quiera hacernos pensar teniendo en cuenta la importancia de la toma de decisiones o tal vez incluso desee llevarnos todavía más allá: desde aquí dudamos de si nuestro admirado Furillo quiere ponernos en el cruce de caminos entre el libre albedrío y el determinismo, seguramente para invitarnos a deducir nuestra postura propia ante semejante conflicto filosófico. ¡Que gamberro este Furillo! 

En cualquier caso, para su segunda entrega la redacción de CIBASS se pone seria, forma en linea recta y sube sus sables al cielo. Nos ponemos fanzineros para mostrar el capítulo de hoy. Que ustedes lo disfruten. Y por supuesto intenten no perderse su último trabajo: Nosotros llegamos primero, disponible en Autsaider Cómics.

Timeline Challenge, acepta el desafío

Llega una nueva versión del juego de cartas diseñado por Frédéric Henry, con el título de “Timeline Challenge” Usando el mismo principio, en está ocasión el juego contará con novedades. El título será publicado por Asmodee en una edición en francés durante 2015. Timeline Challenge es un juego de cartas para 2 a 10 jugadores […]

La entrada Timeline Challenge, acepta el desafío aparece primero en LudoNoticias, todo sobre juegos de mesa y simulación.

Andrea Chiarvesio y Gianluca Santopietro, 2014 – Stratelibri (Devir) Kingsburg es uno de mis juegos familiares favoritos, y el Gran Cthulhu es una de mis deidades malignas favoritas pero, por alguna razón, no estaba seguro de cómo iba a quedar la mezcla. Pero bueno, también parecía que iba a ser herejía eso de un juego de […]

(Image: CBS)

Caleb Everett, Damián E. Blasi and Seán G. Roberts recently published the results of their research into common characteristics of languages based on native climate. They conclude that as languages evolve, their dominant sounds reflect the climates where they develop. In particular, humidity plays a major role. Tonal languages are more likely to develop in wet climates. Science Daily explains that:

. . . languages with complex tones --those that use three or more tones for sound contrast -- are much more likely to occur in humid regions of the world, while languages with simple tone occur more frequently in desiccated regions, whether frigid areas or dry deserts. […]

One explanation, supported by extensive experimental data discussed in the study, is that inhaling dry air causes laryngeal dehydration and decreases vocal fold elasticity. It's probably more difficult to achieve complex tones in arid climates--particularly very cold ones--when contrasted to warmer and more humid climates. The result is that deviations of sounds, including increased jitter and shimmer, are associated with very cold or desiccated climates, the study says.

-via Seriously, Science?

By CRACKED Readers  Published: February 13th, 2015 

The journey of a food intolerant and an intolerable foodie. I'm Kate McCartney and I'm Kate McLennan and we're women! Welcome to The Katering Show!

Mexicana Festiana
Ethical Eating
We Quit Sugar
Thermomix
Food Porn
Christmas

For more than a century, the signature sound of New Orleans has been the brass band — at once a source of celebration, collective expression, and community pride. On February 10, Smithsonian Folkways released New Orleans Brass Bands: Through the Streets of the City, bringing together for the first time in one recording three musical generations that represent three dominant styles of brass bands. The 15-track, newly recorded collection spans the full spectrum of New Orleans brass band music, both as it exists today and extending back through the tradition’s history. Featured are the classic sound of the Liberty Brass Band, the modern-yet-traditional Treme Brass Band, and the funk, rap, and “bounce” influenced Hot 8 Brass Band. Together, they offer…

320 kbps | 165 MB  UL | HF | MC ** FLAC

…a dynamic portrait of this vibrant and distinctively American tradition.

01. Liberty Brass Band – Paul Barbarin’s Second Line (4:13)
02. Treme Brass Band – The Sheik of Araby (3:41)
03. Liberty Brass Band – Panama (5:24)
04. Liberty Brass Band – Liberty Funeral March (4:52)
05. Hot 8 Brass Band – Steamin’ Blues (3:35)
06. Treme Brass Band – We Shall Walk Through the Streets of the City (4:11)
07. Hot 8 Brass Band – Keepin’ It Funky (6:42)
08. Liberty Brass Band – Old Rugged Cross (5:40)
09. Treme Brass Band – Grazing in the Grass (4:45)
10. Hot 8 Brass Band – New Orleans (After the City) (6:47)
11. Treme Brass Band – Give Me My Money Back (4:09)
12. Liberty Brass Band – Lily of the Valley (3:22)
13. Hot 8 Brass Band – Shake It and Break It (4:32)
14. Treme Brass Band – Amazing Grace (3:42)
15. Liberty Brass Band – Whoopin’ Blues (4:02)

Unha empresa de Cerdido impulsa a primeira gran produción de arandeiras galegas. Reconverteuse tras devastar o furacán Klaus en 2009 a súa produción de camelias.

DILI, EAST TIMOR—It’s about time to do a premature autopsy on Islamic State (IS). It’s not quite dead, but the flies are buzzing, the thought-pieces are a-stinkin’, and the smell is impossible to ignore. It’s clear enough: Islamic State, the hope of middle-class Wahaabis around the world and darling of way too many idiot Western Leftists, is dying—wailing away like a soprano, but still dying.

What’s odd is how many people who should know better are mourning its passing. Mark Twain said long ago that “rapscallions and dead beats is the kind…good people takes the most interest in”—which is why, no matter how crazy-evil IS got, there was guaranteed to be a do-gooder on hand to tell us how misunderstood they were. Islamic State put a Jordanian pilot in a cage, doused him with kerosene, and set him on fire, videoing the whole thing from multiple camera angles. You’d think that’d be a pretty simple call for editorial writers: “Burning a man in a cage…thumbs up or thumbs down? Hmmmm….” And after they had a thunk, a surprising percentage of the Anglo brain trust told us we had no right to condemn IS for this pyro-snuff video.

Great ethicists like Bill Moyers and Chauncey de Vega, from Daily Kos, were on hand before the BBQ was over to tell us we had no right to condemn IS’s line cooks. Here’s Chauncey sermonizing the masses:

ISIS burned Muadh al Kasasbeh, a captured Jordian fighter pilot, to death. They doused him with an accelerant. His captors set him on fire. Muadh al Kasasbeh desperately tried to put out the flames. ISIS recorded Muadh al Kasasbeh’s immolation, produced a video designed to intimidate their enemies, and then circulated it online.

ISIS’s burning alive of Muadh al Kasasbeh has been denounced as an act of savagery, barbarism, and wanton cruelty–one from the “dark ages” and not of the modern world.

American Exceptionalism blinds those who share its gaze to uncomfortable facts and truths about their own country.

What Chauncey means (or thinks he means) by “American exceptionalism” is that we are above such things. But look at what he actually does here: After a very flat, brief summary of the IS burning-man video, he wrenches the topic to the only context he knows or cares about: America and its sins of the past. I would call that a classic demonstration of American exceptionalism—no, let’s call it what it is, American narcissism—at its worst. For people like Chauncey’s fans or Moyers’s admirers, nothing that happens outside the US matters at all. Only our sins are important. So a man burned alive in the Syrian desert becomes nothing but an excuse for a sermon on American History X, because only America matters, only America’s sins are real.

Kinda patronizing, Chauncey. Kinda chauvinistic, even.

Bill Moyers, the smug homophobic snitch, in with a typically sly bit of self-praise in classic Bradbury prose, “The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree.”

Moyers’ sermon on how a guy burned in Syria is nothing compared to our American sins is actually worse than Chauncey’s, because at least Chauncey doesn’t imagine he’s some kind of prose-meister. Moyers, as you can see from that title “The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree,” actually imagines he’s a great writer, as he pulls the same lame move, wrenching the topic back to America in the early 20^th century, away from Syria in the 21^st in a flood of maudlin drivel about a Deep South Baptist college where Moyers once interviewed for a job.

Try imagining Chauncey or Bill minimizing an IDF phosphorus bombing in Gaza the way they trivialize this IS pyro video. Phosphorus burns people alive just as horrifically as kerosene, but would Moyers or de Vega trivialize Palestinian kids burnt alive with phosphorus by saying, “Remember the KKK! We’re just as bad!” Never. Because everyone would scream, quite rightly, that they were trivializing the IDF’s atrocity.

But both these fools spend thousands of words trivializing IS snuff movies, because…ah, it’s too stupid to paraphrase, but it goes something like this: “The US is the root of all evil, so IS is only acting out because it’s a victim. We did something bad to it somehow.”

The people who fight for Islamic State are not victims. Well, we’re all victims, if you want; we’re all gonna die, we’re all confused, we all had weird childhoods…but the groups that make up Islamic State are some of the most privileged, arrogant, and unsympathetic demographics in the entire Muslim world.

There are two groups involved in Islamic State: First, the core strength, the Sunni Arabs in Iraq; second, the much-hyped “foreign fighters” from outside the Iraq/Syria war zone.

Let’s start with the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, because they’re much more important to Islamic State’s combat power than the foreign fighters. Islamic State grew out of Al Qaeda Iraq, a nasty sectarian militia that massacred Shi’ite Arabs from the South for the crime of thinking they had finally won a chance to control Iraq, where they are the majority. When Islamic State says “Islamic,” they mean “Sunni,” and God help you if you’re some other kind of Muslim. The project is not universalist, but local and sectarian; always was, always will be.

And it came out of nothing more than sullen resentment at being dethroned as the brutal bosses of Iraq. Until 2003, Sunni Arabs—Saddam’s people—had run the country with no more than a few tokens from the Shia and Christian minorities (and nobody at all from the non-Arab Kurds, whom they simply hated outright).

Sunni Arabs have never been more than a third of the population of Iraq, perhaps no more than 28% (because Iraq’s Kurds, who were excluded from power when Sunni Arabs dominated the country, are counted as Sunni in religious breakdowns of the Iraqi population). But the Sunni Arabs, who dominated the key central zone of the country, had been in total control of everything that mattered (including Baghdad, the capital and great prize) for so many generations that they came to see their domination, and exclusion of the Shia, as the norm.

The Shia, who are at least 60% of the Iraqi population, did not agree, and expressed their dissatisfaction with protests, peaceful and otherwise, all of which were put down with mass torture and murder. The Kurds, who as non-Arabs were viewed with even greater contempt by the Sunni elite, were subjected to systematic extermination attempts, including the Halabja gas attack. I’ve been to the museum commemorating that attack, and to the Red Museum in Suleimaniya, and once you’ve seen those places, the notion that Saddam’s people are victims tends to make you want to puke. They were a brutal, arrogant minority tribe, just like the whites of South Africa or the American South. In fact, if people like Chauncey de Vega or Bill Moyers were capable of making serious historical analogies, they’d realize that the true analogy between Iraq’s Sunni-Arab militias and the American South is actually a group founded by the Prince of Darkness himself, Nathan Bedford Forrest. A little clot of thugs called the KKK.

Like Iraq’s Sunni Arabs after 2003, Bedford’s Confederate vets had always ruled through extreme violence. After the great defeat of 1865, which drove the weaker minds among the Confederates right round the bend, so deep was their conviction of their own superiority, Forrest started a terror network, the KKK, which used officers from the beaten army as its nucleus.

Same motive: Former masters, accustomed to ruling through sheer terror, defeated on the battlefield, resorting to what they do best: ultra-violence and exemplary torture-murder, to reassert control of a newly uppity population they’re used to ordering around.

That’s what Islamic State’s Iraqi roots are: Bitter, defeated Sunni using religion as a handy pretext to win back control of the country they consider theirs, and theirs alone. Only fools like Moyers and de Vega seriously imagine that gang has anything to do with preserving the honor of Islam.

Obviously this doesn’t mean the invasion of 2003 was a good idea. I said back then it was a rotten idea, for America, and lost the chance to be very rich by saying so back when it wasn’t cool. I’ve paid my dues and then some, panning that dumb-ass move. But the fact that our invasion was a bad idea does not in any way suggest that the Saddam clique we toppled were, or are, the fucking good guys, ok?

Like all historical analogies, this one is imperfect, but it’s a damn sight closer to the truth than imagining that the sectarian murderers of Islamic State are a bunch of pitiable victims.

And as for the second group contributing fighters to IS, the hugely over-hyped “foreign fighters,” they’re not victims either. Most are ordinary bored young men who want a war. Two things to remember about these “foreign fighters,” who’ve had more un-earned media time than anyone since the skinheads of the 1990s:

1. They’re not nearly as numerous, powerful, or important as they’re made out to be;
2. They’re not nearly as anomalous or weird as they’re made out to be.

Number 1 is particularly important. Jihadis? What jihadis? That’s a myth, as the Russians would say. A tiny boutique hobby. Tiny numbers, compared to the pool of possibles. Still, we can find something of interest in this tiny quantity, as the broke tweeker said about the turned-out baggie.

Key fact about foreign-fighter stats: More jihadis in IS are from Belgium than from Indonesia.

Now that is a weird stat. How is it even possible? I’ll tell you in one quick quote:

“It’s boring in Belgium.”

Remember that line. It was spoken by a typical jihadi who left his boring Belgian life, sheltered by the pious, bland welfare state, to kill and die in Syria. Boredom and easy travel sent these guys on their way, not oppression. A hard look at where the foreign fighters come from will show that.

Take Indonesia, by far the biggest Muslim-majority country on the planet. There are about 238 million people in Indonesia, and 88% (209 million) are Muslim. The Indonesian population skews very young, and when you break it down by age and gender, you end up with at least 40 million males of military age from Muslim backgrounds. That’s the available pool of jihadi recruits.

So, how many jihadis has Indonesia contributed to Islamic State?

About 60, maybe 70. Not 70 thousand, you understand; 70 guys. A miserable two-digit total, about a platoon and a half. Hell, let’s be generous and double that figure, make it 140 men. Triple it! Fine with me! It’s still going to amount to something very close to zero-point-zero Indonesian volunteers in Iraq/Syria.

It’s not that Indonesia is short on militant Islam. There are plenty of homegrown Indonesian groups, some of them extremely violent—remember the Bali Bombings of 2002, when a couple of hundred party kids were burned alive? That was an all-Indonesian production, and there was plenty of sympathy for the bombers. It also means that would-be jihadis in Indonesia have plenty of local groups to join. They’re too poor to go to Syria, it’s too far away, and they have opportunities nearer home.

Those same considerations keep young Muslim men from a whole tier of poor countries from contributing to IS. Take Yemen. You’d expect Yemen to provide a huge contingent to IS, because Yemenis are hands-down the toughest Arabs. But there are very few Yemenis in IS, fewer per capita than from the UK, France, or Belgium. That, again, is a very odd stat.

And you see the same thing with a whole tier of poor, distant Muslim countries. How many IS volunteers from Kazakhstan? From Sudan? From Pakistan? Same answer in every case: Damn few, too few to show up in the charts at all.

And the same reasons keep these numbers down: Poverty, distance, fighting to be done close to home.

So who does join IS from far away? Let’s look at an outlier in the other direction: Belgium.

Everything about Belgium says it shouldn’t be making any significant contribution to the jihad in Iraq/Syria. First, the total population is tiny, less than 11 million people, and unlike the Indonesian population it skews very old. The total number of males of military age in Belgium is less than one million, or about two percent of the equivalent in Indonesia. And unlike Indonesia, Belgium is not a Muslim-majority nation. In fact, only six percent of Belgium is Muslim—call it 600,000 people. Let’s say that the Muslim minority in Belgium skews younger than the general population, as recent immigrant minorities usually do. That still means a total pool of something like 70,000. But from that tiny pool, Belgium has sent at least 350 volunteers to Islamic State.

Of course, that’s still a tiny number. It’s worth repeating that all these numbers are ridiculously small, considering the pool of Muslim young men who could be taking up jihad. But Belgium is still an anomaly, producing way too many IS volunteers. Never mind what’s wrong with Kansas, what’s up with Belgium?

Two things: first, that comment “it’s boring in Belgium.” Why is it boring? Consider the huge change in Europe after the great de-fanging of 1945. For certain countries, going o’er the waves to kill and die had been part of the national tradition for generations. Look at which countries relied most heavily on those foreign imperial ambitions in the early 20^th century, and you get a surprising match-up with the non-Muslim majority countries with the highest rate of Islamic State volunteers. The states with the highest per capita rates are the ones that formed part of the most aggressive overseas empires of the last century: Turkey, England, France, and Belgium. All these countries have suffered a sudden shrinkage, from ruling distant outposts to maybe, if you’re lucky, getting an office job in the boring ol’ home country, such as it is, what’s left of it.

Up until the middle of the 20^th century, a British, French, or Belgian male who’d attained his eighteenth birthday would have a chance of lording it over somebody far away in the hot countries, with a weapon in his hand, a man to be feared and obeyed. Not a nice dream, maybe, but let’s be honest enough to admit that it’s not exactly an uncommon one, either, especially among males in their late teens—and IS recruits, by the way, skew very young.

The dream was there for the white British and French and Belgian young men; why is it surprising that it should persist among a later generation of brown young men from those same cities (though quite a lot of white young men in those countries have converted and joined IS as well).

In fact, skin color, or “race,” as Americans call it, isn’t the point at all. As usual, this is culture, not genes. This is the persistent dream of “fighting o’er the waves,” as Oi boys used to sing, and it has the same old appeal, in the same old cities of coastal Europe. Fighting for Islam, fighting for Empire…who cares, when you’re seventeen and barely made it through high school? What matters is going somewhere and scaring people, shooting ’em, coming back with some cool stories. Let’s not romanticize this species of ours. Maybe you went to a posh private high school, but I didn’t, and believe me, I’m being too kind to our kind.

It’s easy to miss this persistent cultural trend, because it’s taboo in contemporary Western Europe, at least in polite society. But researchers are starting to realize that the myth that countries like Belgium were “reluctant imperialists” is, uh, crap—that in fact, most people, and especially the young males who would get to go abroad and shoot people, loved the idea.

Compare that dream with the less aggressive European states of the 20^th century, like Spain and Italy. Their contributions to Islamic State has been tiny, especially in view of the huge Muslim community in those countries. How many IS fighters have come from Italy? Fifty. Five-zero.

Italy has a population of 1.5 million Muslims, poor humble people who are glad to get across the Mediterranean without drowing. Poor humble people are not jihadis; that’s an arrogant, middle-class phenomenon. Those 50 IS volunteers means that only one out of every 30,000 Italian Muslims has made jihad to Syria. You see the same low rates in the European countries without the tradition of recent, aggressive overseas Imperial careers.

The trend shows up outside Europe, with the most aggressively and recently imperial countries producing the biggest and nastiest jihadi contingents. Australia, product of very recent Imperial ambitions, has sent at least 250 jihadis to Syria from an Australian Muslim population of about 475,000, less than a third of Italy’s. Australia, pound for pound, is probably the last and most aggressive cultural expression of the sea-oriented European imperial drive, so it shouldn’t be a particular surprise that its Muslim population has produced some of the nastiest, most brutal jihadis ever to grace an Islamic State slave auction.

But no matter how you can make the percentages dance around here, you have to come back, sooner or later, to the numbers. And the numbers of foreign fighters are too low to matter in military terms. Foreign fighters are a huge liability in public-relations terms, as I’ve said before, especially when they consist of wealthy lumpen converts from the Sydney suburbs telling Syrians (whose ancestors knew the Prophet) how to be Muslim. The “foreign fighters” are an obnoxious nuisance, and a belated, kind of pathetic echo of generations of Western European male fantasies, but that’s all they are.

They’re not the good guys, or anything close to it. In fact, the whole lot of them, whether there are 30,000 or 100,000 of them raping and massacring their way to Raqqa, aren’t worth the life of the heroic socialist fighting woman who died at their hands just as Kobane was being liberated.

She’s the life we should be celebrating here, but I’ve learned better than to expect any respect for real socialist fighters like her from the fools who pass for leftists in America. All you can ask of these morons, the Chauncey de Vegas and Bill Moyerzez, is just shut the fuck up.

[illustration by Brad Jonas]