Morning Coffee (149)

Good day to you friends. How about we meet for some Coffee...? Little different format today, with plenty o'links and a more bitter Brew.

"There is a pleasure, sure in being mad, which none but madmen know."
I made a picture which should illustrate the above quote beautifully. It is a screen shot from Drudge, taken at 1210 on 19 January 2009. I did not edit it, but added the boxes to point your eyes to the pertinent. (Above quote by John Dryden.)

More evidence of madness? (This is MADNESS!! Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!!) (Amatuer, Amatuer Historian Note: 300 really annoys me.) Take a gander at this bit of...well, I don't know. I can't come up with an appropriate adjective. Just take a look. It's a video, made by Ashton Kutcher and it features all sorts of famous people, most of whom I no longer respect due to the obscene levels of sheepishness in their being. I challenge you to watch the entire thing. Watching the whole thing without turning a gun on myself was my pledge. What's YOUR pledge, fellow Kool-aid drinkers? (I find it funny that comments have been disabled for that vid. Dissent will not be tolerated.)

Global Warming: Myth or Fact:
Speaking of Kool-aid (Oh YEAH!), I just read an article by John Tomlinson that I find to be the perfect cap to my theory that Global Warming is a religious cult. Tomlinson says that we'd better pray for warming, because we just might be heading into another ice age. And speaking of perfect caps, Arctic ice seems to be back to 1979 levels, and Antarctic ice has increased by 5% since 1980. Oh, and global temperatures have dropped from a high in 1998 back to 1980 levels. Warming? I don't know. But atmospheric CO2 levels are rising, so warming it must be, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Insha'Allah? I guess...?:
It appears that the Algerian franchise of al-Qaida, al-Qaida in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb have been plagued by a particular problem that can only be described as divinely inspired. (GWOT Note: "The Base" does business like a McDonald's - you apply for a franchise and you can then use the name so long as you qualify it with "in the Land of" or something similar.) Yes, THE Plague, as in the Black Death. The Sun (yes, not most reputable of sources) reports that 40 al-Qaida fighters, who lack proper medical facilities and cleanliness in their training camps (i.e. caves), have died from the plague, which can be cured by the horrifically painful and exceedingly rare, nay, MYTHICAL, antibiotic. Despite praying five times a day, fasting during Ramadan, and pledging to kill infidels by the bunches, Allah appears to be generally unimpressed with AQLIM members.

Maybe it'll spread to Afghanistan.

Never fear, this will not become the Morning Coffee's style. I just wanted a break from the work-intensive nature of most MCs while still being able to throw out some information that you all might find interesting and/or humorous. Believe me, I'd miss the more cerebral style; it's far more scholarly than this.

Word of the Day: Narcolepsy (noun): A disorder characterized by uncontrollable bouts of sleepiness during the daytime, occasional loss of muscle power and paralysis, and hallucinations during sleep. (I thought they were called dreams.)

On This Day in History: The first electric lighting system using overhead wires begins service in Roselle, NJ. It is built by Thomas Edison (1883). Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube (1915). German zeppelins bomb Great Yarmouth and King's Lyn in the UK, making it the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target in history (1915). German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sends his telegram to Mexico, proposing an alliance against the US (1917). The US votes against joining the League of Nations (1920). Sixy-eight percent of all TVs in the US tune in to watch Lucy give birth on I Love Lucy (1953). Gerald Ford pardons Tokyo Rose (1977). The Apple Lisa, the first personal computer from Apple to have a graphical user interface and a mouse, is announced (1983).

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." - Marcus Aurelius.