'Walking corpse syndrome': mental disorder when people think they're zombies

"But some zombies won't take their disguises off at the end of the weekend: they're victims of an uncommon neuropsychiatric disorder known as Cotard delusion, or walking corpse syndrome.

Sufferers think they have died, that their flesh is rotting, or even that they have lost a vital organ."

Socialism and Reality

Must read (the whole thing) at American Thinker.

"Despite the history of failure, every new generation of adherents to socialist ideology believe that they can make this arrangement work and maintain their unwritten agreement with the citizenry.

But the reality is that they cannot, as the economic engine of capitalism will not continue to produce wealth if it is increasingly put under the thumb of bureaucrats and central planners inevitably attempting not only to institute governmental management of the economy, but also to regulate the day-to-day activities of all citizens. The motivation of the producer class will be stifled, and they will either drop out, join the dependent class, or simply move on to other, more hospitable countries -- a reality more in play than ever in today's global economy.

In due course, centralized governments will, as history has shown, turn to excessive and unsustainable borrowing, as well as inflation, to finance their societal obligations. The contract between the statists and the citizens who were promised cradle-to-grave security cannot be maintained, as the economic underpinning of this arrangement will quickly erode."

A Coming Government Shutdown?

Pajamas Media:

"...the presumed GOP congressional majority and the party’s somewhat likely Senate majority will be spending much of the next two years in a knock-down, drag-out fiscal fight with President Obama, his party, and his press apparatchiks. With the battle lines already being drawn, it becomes difficult to imagine how this gets resolved without a repeat of the federal government shutdown the country experienced in 1995. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but if it happens, the outcome needs to be different from 15 years ago."

Friday (posted on Sunday) stuff

Vintage Ideas of Space Travel.

 

20 Untranslatable Words from Around the World.

 

5 Strangest Vehicles Ever Made.

 

Halloween for pets.

 

Average teen sends 3,339 texts per month.

 

Why smart people drink more alcohol.

 

Some Disturbing Antique Exercise Equipment.

 

Pictures of water balloons without the balloons.

 

Size does matter.

 

The record-breaking belly button fluff collection.

Winners of a microscopic photo contest.

 

Watch These Impossible Gears Turn.

 

The Worst Driving Songs of All Time (So Far).  Vaguely related: Driver thanks man who hit him on purpose.

 

Christopher Columbus cleared of importing syphilis from the Americas to Europe.

Today in history: Earth was created 6,014 years ago

Allowing for a combination of subsequent calendar adjustments, today is - according to Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656) - the 6,014th anniversary of the creation of the earth at 9 A.M. on 26 October 4004 B.C.

The Left's war on the economy

Obama may be losing the War on Terror, but his War on the Economy is headed full speed ahead. The joblessness, the unemployment rolls and an economic in which the only people still making money are in the government, in public sector unions or on Wall Street is no accident. It was the intended result all along. 

...

Contrary to the liberal worldview, most Americans didn’t want to be on the dole, they wanted a working economy. And the popular wisdom among them today is that Obama is a well-meaning failure. Most Americans will go to the polls and vote based on that popular wisdom. They generally don’t hate Obama, yet they don’t think that he or his party are up to the job either. 

But Obama didn’t fail. Obama succeeded. He succeeded at doing exactly what he was supposed to do. Damage the American economy in order to undermine the country’s status as a Great Power and the independence of the average American from his government. The goal of this party and this man was never to oversee an economic recovery. And why would it have been? Obama and his allies on the left believe that a prosperous economy is the root of all evil, and the chief obstacle to the people embracing a government mandate for socialism.

For many over 55, recession strips away savings, jobs

USA Today: A growing number of Americans age 55 and older have put their retirement dreams on hold as they face a dismal financial reality: The recession has forced many into unemployment, stripped away years of their savings or dramatically reduced incomes during what they had hoped would be their final high-earning years.

Greece Likely to Default By 2013 as Debts Remain

Greece is likely to default over the next three years because budget-cutting won’t be enough to reduce the nation’s debt burden, Pacific Investment Management Co. Chief Executive Officer Mohamed A. El-Erian said.

Sears has been taken over by zombies

Sears has been taken over by zombies.

Today in History: Agincourt, the charge of the Light Brigade and Leyte Gulf

This is certainly a day for battles! 

He which hath no stomach for this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made

And crowns for convoy put into his purse:

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the feast of Crispin:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see his old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,

And say "Tomorrow is Saint Crispin":

Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars

And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names

Familiar in his mouth as household words:

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us on Saint Crispin's day.*

- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

  (King Henry V, Act 4, Sc. 3)  

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

"Forward the Light Brigade!"

"Charge for the gund!" he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

"Forward the Light Brigade!"

Was there a man dismay'd?

Not tho' the soldier knew

Someone had blunder'd

Their's not to make reply,

Their's not to reason why,

Their's but to do or die:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volley'd and thunder;d.

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honor the charge they made,

Honor the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 ("The Charge of the Light Brigade," stanzas 1, 2, 3, and 6)

Our ships have been salvaged and are retiring at high speed toward the Japanese fleet.

- Admiral William Halsey (1882-1959)

  (remark, 26 October 1944, in response to an enemy report that his 3rd Fleet had been sunk or was fleeing Leyte Gulf.)                               

Today is the 495th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, when the English under King Henry V defeated the French on St. Crispin's Day (25 October) of that year.  Henry (1387-1422) followed his father King Henry IV to the throne in 1413 and two years later announced his claim to the French throne and rekindled the Hundred Years War by invading Normandy.  In a post-battle compromise, Henry later married Catherine of Valois and was named by France's Charles VI as his successor, but Henry's untimely death to illness in 1422 prevented him from assuming the French kingship.  In Shakespeare's famous passage above, Henry rouses his troops for the conflict the night before Agincourt.

This is also the 156th anniversary of the "the charge of the Light Brigade" at the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854.  Although of relatively little importance in the larger context of the Crimean War, Balaclava has emerged as its most famous encounter because of Tennyson's poem, which immortalizes the brave, but foolhardy, British light cavalry assault on massed Russian guns and infantry at the end of a shallow valley near Sevastapol.  Of the 673 men who started out, 118 were killed outright, and only 195 remained on horseback at the end of the encounter.  French marshall Pierre Bosquet, who observed the action, famously remarked,

"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le guerre."

(It is magnificent, but it is not war.)

And finally, today is the 66th anniversary of the largest naval encounter of World War II in the Pacific, the Battle of Leyte Gulf (which actually lasted from 23 to 26 October 1944), in which the U.S. Third and Seventh Fleets decisively defeated the Japanese Combined Fleet after the latter sortied in an attempt to destroy the forces supporting the ongoing Allied invasion of the Philippine Islands.  The U.S. victory at Leyte Gulf essentially destroyed the Japanese Navy as a fighting force, and its remnants posed little threat for the remaining months of the war.)

 * N.B. Saint Crispin's day honors the memory of two Christian twins - Crispin and Crispinian - who were martyred by the Romans in Britain, ca. A.D. 286.

(via Ed's Quotation of the Day, distributed via email only)

In Chicago, stimulus weatherization money buys shoddy work, widespread fraud

In Obama's Chicago, stimulus weatherization money buys shoddy work, widespread fraud:

 

Department inspectors visited 15 homes that were being weatherized by CEDA and paid for by stimulus funds. "We found that 14 of the 15 homes…failed final inspection because of poor workmanship and/or inadequate initial assessments," the report says. In eight of the homes, CEDA had come up with unworkable and ineffective plans -- like putting attic insulation in a house with a leaky roof. In ten of the homes, "contractors billed for labor charges that had not been incurred and for materials that had not been installed." The report calls billing problems "pervasive," with seven of ten contractors being cited for erroneous invoicing. And the department found "a 62 percent final inspection error rate" when CEDA inspectors reviewed their own work.

Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., has just one donor from his district

Examiner, quoting Politico:

"With a potentially competitive race developing back home in Minnesota’s 8th District, Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar collected a contribution from just one resident of the district between June 22 and Sept. 30, according to a federal election report filed Wednesday.

Jane Robbins of Pine City gave Oberstar $500 on Aug. 22.

Other than that, all of his contributions came from political action committees, Native American tribes or individual donors in other districts and states."

Oberstar is behind:

The infrastructure bill: FedEx vs. UPS

The uses and abuses of infrastructure legislation.

Friday stuff

15 facts about Halloween.

 

Six scientists tell us about the most accurate science fiction in their fields.

 

Excellent vintage squid illustrations.  At the same site (one of my favorites), illustrations of Vesuvius erupting in the 1700's.
Real Carrots Are Purple. Orange Carrots Are Mutants.

Cameras Attached to Birds, more.

 

The highest-paid athlete of all time.

List of Weird Phobias

Gallery of carnivorous plants

 

Libretto: “Chicken versus Egg”.

Why squirrels masturbate (maybe NSFW).
Should We Clone Neanderthals?

Mega Millions Lottery simulator.

 

Scotch tape is a tiny particle accelerator.
Brain damage might help gamblers.

Whale poop pumps up ocean health.

 

This Is What A Mobile Phone Looked Like In 1964...And There Were Over A Million Of Them.

 

The Weird & Colorful World of Fungi.

The infrastructure bill: FedEx vs. UPS

The uses and abuses of infrastructure legislation.

Federal Judge Allows Suit Against Health Care Law to Proceed

 Federal Judge Allows Multi-State Suit Against Health Care Law to Proceed.

President Obama and Education Politics As Usual

Cato:

President Obama has seemingly made an entire mountain range out of his Race-to-the-Top reform molehill, while he’s gotten more or less a free pass on all he’s done to enrich the status quo. And now, with big midterm losses looming for his party, he appears to be reverting to one of the easiest political ploys in the book: Claim the GOP will cut funding to education and, in so doing, hurt innocent children and cripple the nation’s economic future. 

Check out the graph below to see how much all that spending has helped "the children":

Post Office Shows Where U.S. Is Headed

Bloomberg reports:

To understand where the advocates of big government will take this country, look at the U.S. Postal Service.

Start with the fact the Postal Service is a great jobs machine, employing 712,000 people at an average annual compensation, including wages and benefits, of $83,000. And those hefty pay checks are a great source of political contributions for Democrats. In 2010, almost 90 percent of the approximately $4 million contributed to campaigns by postal unions went to Democrats. Take a guess where much of the opposition to reform comes from.

But high-priced labor, which accounts each year for about 80 percent of costs, leads to high-priced mail services, and even higher costs for taxpayers. Over the past 10 years, the price of a stamp has risen from 33 cents to 44 cents, exceeding the inflation rate at a time when computerization should have been leading to big cost savings.

via Newsalert

Boehner's 'Plan B' for ObamaCare

When it comes to repealing ObamaCare, plan B for John Boehner (R., Ohio) will be more important than plan A. 

Plan A, of course, is to repeal the new health-care law whole hog. If Republicans take the House in next month's elections, they will surely introduce—and pass—a bill to do so. The question is: What happens when that bill then goes nowhere in the Senate, where even a Republican majority will not be large enough to rebuff a filibuster, much less override a presidential veto?

That's where plan B comes in.

It's the birthday of the US Navy

On 13 October 1775, the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, authorized the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise off our coasts to interdict British supply ships.

The beginning of the Navy hymn:

Eternal father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep;

O hear us when we cry to thee,

For those in peril on the sea. 

Does Paying Your Mortgage Make You a Good Person, or a Stupid Person?

Time Mag.

10 years ago today: The USS Cole

Cassy Fiano:  "10 years ago today, two Al Qaeda terrorists pulled alongside the USS Cole during a routine refueling in Aden, Yemen and detonated a suicide bomb...

17 sailors were killed. 39 more were wounded. The 17 sailors who died left behind 11 children." 

Of course, the Obama administration has halted prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the attack.

Who's Against Library Volunteers? Teachers Unions

Boston Globe: The teachers’ union in Bridgewater and Raynham has filed a labor grievance that could block volunteers from keeping the school district’s libraries open.

WaPo notices public pension problems

Years behind the rest of the world.