Hi there, people! Nicetaseeya.

Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

While queuing up a Pokemon video on the family's computer upstairs, Michael turned to me and remarked crisply, "As you can see, I don't really like Allan." When I asked if that was really true, he said: "Yes. It's true," then added tonelessly, "I hate him."

Glancing down a second later, he noticed my digital tape recorder on the table. "Did you record that?" he asked. I said that I had. He stared at me briefly before turning back to the video. When a sudden noise from the other room caused me to glance away, Michael seized the opportunity to grab the recorder and press the erase button. (Waschbusch later noted that such a calculated reprisal was unusual in a 9-year-old, who would normally go for the recorder immediately or simply whine and sulk.)

The Childhood Psychopath: Bad Seed or Bad Parents?

Nine-year-old Jeffrey Bailey, Jr. pushed a three-year-old friend into the deep part of a motel pool in Florida in 1986. He wanted to see someone drown. As the boy sank to the bottom, Jeffrey pulled up a chair to watch. When it was finished, he went home. When he was questioned, he was more engaged in being the center of attention than in any kind of remorse for what he had done. About the murder he was nonchalant.

Bush and Blair found guilty of war crimes for Iraq attack

A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation's former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of "crimes against peace" and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal — which featured an American law professor as one of its chief prosecutors — has no formal enforcement power.

Wealthy Americans queue up to surrender US passports in Bern

Rich Americans renouncing US citizenship rose sevenfold since UBS AG whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld triggered a crackdown on tax evasion four years ago.

About 1,780 expatriates gave up their nationality at US embassies last year, up from 235 in 2008, according to Andy Sundberg, secretary of Geneva's Overseas American Academy, citing figures from the government's Federal Register. The embassy in Bern, the Swiss capital, redeployed staff to clear a backlog as Americans queued to relinquish their passports.

Eduardo Saverin renounces U.S. citizenship ahead of Facebook IPO

In a blow to Uncle Sam, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship ahead of the company’s hotly anticipated initial public offering.

Facebook is expected to make its public stock market debut on May 18. The company priced its shares in the $28 to $35 range last week, and will raise as much as $11.8 billion with a $96 billion valuation through its offering.

Bachmann Accused of "Treason" for Swiss Citizenship

Michele Bachmann's short-lived experiment as a Swiss citizen ended awkwardly this week, when her beloved philosophy of American exceptionalism came back to bite her in the tushy. It turns out the far right concluded that her brief bout of dual citizenship made her anti-American. Remember that this is the congresswoman who skyrocketed to fame on an accusation that Barack Obama was anti-American. Oh, the irony!

(Money quotes:

More recently, Bachmann's famously disorganized office changed this account, claiming that she's actually been a dual citizen since she married Marcus in 1978, and that it happened "automatically," as if without her consent. Whatever.

And my personal favorite,

A former Bachmann congressional staffer told POLITICO that the congresswoman sometimes acts "impulsively" and suggests that she must have registered for citizenship without considering all consequences.

You don't say.

I really can't stop laughing at this one. For an article with (slightly) less snark and a few more facts, go here.

Emotion Can Shut Down High-Level Mental Processes Without Our Knowledge, in Our Native Language

Psychologists at Bangor University believe that they have glimpsed for the first time, a process that takes place deep within our unconscious brain, where primal reactions interact with higher mental processes. Writing in the Journal of Neuroscience, they identify a reaction to negative language inputs which shuts down unconscious processing.

Researchers find thinking in a foreign language causes people to make more rational decisions

In a study with implications for businesspeople in a global economy, researchers at the University of Chicago have found that people make more rational decisions when they think through a problem in a non-native tongue.

Child’s letter to KVUE meteorologist goes viral

Some day when I become supreme Ultra-Lord of the universe I will not make you a slave, you will live in my 200 story castle where unicorn servants will feed you doughnuts off their horns. [...] Thank you again for teaching us about meteoroligy, you're more awesome than a monkey wearing a tuxedo made out of bacon riding a cyborg unicorn with a lightsaber for the horn on the tip of a space shuttle closing in on Mars while ingulfed in flames.

RIP Dick Clark

Believing that men will act in their own best interest is not cynicism, but sheerest optimism; in reality men do not meet so high a standard. -- Less Wrong

So, I'm really, really sorry that I haven't been updating. I said I'd start again around the beginning of this year, and then Stuff Happened, and LJ has been the last thing on my mind.

We're selling the house. This has involved paying out a ton of money and workmen swarming over it, to do things that M and I mostly can't do or just find more efficient to pay someone else to do, so they've been building up. We don't have the tools to take down the dead trees in the back, for example. And even for silly things, like repainting the trim on the second story: The workmen can show up, prop a ladder up to the window, and paint it. That's because they're tall men with commensurate arm reach. I'm an average-height woman who hates ladders; I have to climb down and move the ladder halfway through the painting process so that I can reach the other half of the window. My husband is shorter than I am, and has shorter arms proportional to his height; he either has to lean out to dangerous stretches or move the ladder three times to paint the same window trim. And have I mentioned that we both hate ladders?

But the upkeep isn't the reason we're leaving. Remember M's eye injuries? We still don't know what's wrong. We will likely never know what's wrong. It turns out that it's standard for people to have lots of small variances which aren't marked enough or intense enough or common enough to get labeled a "syndrome". M's "symptoms" are just part of the standard deviation of human existence. His eye problems still mean that it's dangerous for him to drive home at night, especially since his main routes are either currently festooned with flashing lights or about to be. Yay construction!

His parents are unhappy about our "choice" to sell the house, because they view it as financially irresponsible to sell a house only seven or so years after you've bought it. I swear to god I don't know what planet these people are living on. They have seen him partly incapacitated after a minor injury but they don't seem to have connected "can't see in bright light" with "can't drive past construction lights or even a police car at night without going painfully blind" with "it is not SAFE for him to live where he does, since most every time he comes home on this well-patrolled piece of highway that is scheduled to be widened, he drives past precisely those lights that mean he can't see any more".

I want to tell them that if they're willing to pay the rent for an apartment in Round Rock for him to stay in during the work week, then we won't sell the house. But until then, since M periodically cannot drive at night, they can SHUT THE FUCK UP about the choices we're making to accommodate his medical condition.

I don't think that's the sort of thing one is supposed to say (out loud) to one's In-Laws, but I'm on the verge. I am on the motherfucking verge.

We're having the final Moviegasm this weekend. We currently have one working toilet and no way to show movies. I haven't promoted it or published the menu. The house is a wreck. Tomorrow, I am taking a health-insurance-challenged friend to the ER in the morning (UTI, which has spread to kidney and bladder infections because she's been too poor to have it treated and I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL HURT THE NEXT PERSON I see earnestly explaining why America shouldn't have single payer insurance like every other First World country does) and my dog to the vet in the afternoon (for the auto immune disorder, not for the arthritis) and calling local people to offer them lots of money to clean my floors. I may not be at home when these local people show up.

We've accidentally, again, scheduled a Moviegasm for Easter weekend, which automatically decreases attendance. It's also the first day of Passover, so we're having traditional Passover foods (matzah! kugel! charoset! brisket!) but I haven't had time to explain the theme to most people yet. This oughta be fun.

So. Yeah, Stuff. I still have political opinions but I rarely have time to express them.

Please, ghods, may that change.

Someone's been using Wikipedia as a creative writing format again.

So an Oklahoma Senator (Republican, natch) has introduced a law that aborted human fetuses cannot be used in food products.

To my mind, the money quote from the article is

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Pat El-Hinnawy said: "FDA is not aware of this particular concern."

followed closely by:

The executive director of the anti-abortion group Oklahomans for Life, which has successfully pushed some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country through the state's GOP-controlled Legislature, also said he had never heard of human fetuses being used in food research.

"I don't know anything about that," said Tony Lauinger.

Regardless. The Senator in question found "suggestions" online that led him to believe such a ban is necessary.

There is significant historical precedent for accusation of murdering Christian children for food.

So here's the poll:

Poll #1813833
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 27

Is this bill

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

. . .

"The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority."

The drumbeats for war are getting louder:

U.S. District Court Rules Iran Behind 9/11 Attacks

A federal district court in Manhattan [on December 23rd] entered a historic ruling that reveals new facts about Iran's support of al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled ... that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case.

Thousands of US troops deploying to Israel

Without much media attention, thousands of American troops are being deployed to Israel, and Iranian officials believe that this is the latest and most blatant warning that the US will soon be attacking Tehran.

And if Mossad has done half the things they've been accused of so far this year, it's been a busy January: Magnetic bomb kills nuclear scientist in Iran; Israel accused

Two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and wounding two people on Wednesday, a semiofficial news agency reported. The attack in Tehran bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program. It is certain to reinforce authorities' claims of widening clandestine operations by Western powers and allies to try to cripple nuclear advancements.

In other news, India Reports Completely Drug-Resistant TB

Forbes Magazine literally calls maximizing shareholder value the dumbest idea in the world. And of course they're right.

Britain is making plans for the collapse of the Euro, and they're modeling their plans after natural disaster planning: Britain would give the euro collapse a full natural-disaster-like treatment to the crisis, sending planes, boats, and automobiles to evacuate its citizens who would potentially be "sleeping at airports with no money and no means of getting home" after being unable to access their locked-down bank accounts.

U.S. Asks Journals to Censor Flu Study

This is a new twist on the peer review process. The U.S. government has asked the journals Science and Nature not to publish crucial details of biomedical experiments that created an extremely transmissible form of bird flu. The National Science Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity does not want terrorists to get hold of "experimental details and mutation data that would enable the replication of the experiment." Essentially, the papers show the way the virus can evolve into a form which is easily spread through coughing and sneezing. Coincidentally, Hong Kong has begun slaughtering thousands of birds after a chicken tested positive for the H5N1 virus.

Happy New year, y'all.

BRB, going to Indiana.

Welcome to post-racial Texas

Isaac Newton's Personal Notebooks Go Digital

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas; Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface

Why Do People Defend Unjust, Inept, and Corrupt Systems?

Why do we stick up for a system or institution we live in—a government, company, or marriage—even when anyone else can see it is failing miserably? Why do we resist change even when the system is corrupt or unjust? A new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, illuminates the conditions under which we're motivated to defend the status quo—a process called "system justification."

System justification isn't the same as acquiescence, explains Aaron C. Kay, a psychologist at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, who co-authored the paper with University of Waterloo graduate student Justin Friesen. "It's pro-active. When someone comes to justify the status quo, they also come to see it as what should be."

In related news: If Walmart Paid its 1.4 Million U.S. Workers a Living Wage, it Would Result in Almost No Pain for the Average Customer

The average Walmart customer would pay just 46 cents more per shopping trip, or around $12 extra dollars each year.

Two Muslim men keep Jewish tradition alive in Brooklyn

Quick, Prescription, Homemade Steampunk Goggles

Still have no time. I'm sick. Again. Also sick and tired of being sick. I'll try to get back in the swing of things next year.

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Consider this an announcement of long periods of radio silence to come. Sorry 'bout that. I went from busy weekends to moviegasm (it was awesome) to visiting inlaws to busy weekends to sick to (upcoming) busy weekends and holiday "cheer".

Here's a poem by Charles Bukowski to help you get through the nights:

a child's bedtime story

unsaid, said the snail.
untold, said the tortoise.
doesn't matter, said the tiger.
obey me, said the father.
be loyal, said the country.
watch me climb, said the vine.
doesn't matter, said the tiger.
untold, said the tortoise,
unsaid, said the snail.
I'll run, said the mouse.
I'll hide, said the cat.
I'll fly, said the sparrow.
I’ll swim, said the whale.
obey and be loyal, said the
father and
everybody shut up! roared the
Queen.

the night came and all
the lights went out
as the cities
burned.

now, go to
sleep.

It looks like Bloomberg achieved his goal. There is now violence in New York; protesters clashing with police, streets shut down, a real mess.

You can keep up to date on it real time here, if you care to.

And if my first sentence sounded weirdly melodramatic, well, let me say that I've thought it over, and I cannot imagine what else his goal might have been, given his choices. How else could this possibly have turned out?

This sentence just cracks me up: Food poisoning of some sort remains a possibility for the incident, but initially appears unlikely as those who were sick ate different meals at different times in different places before the game.