Overnight Open Thread (6-22-2014)

NH Marine Who Was Banned from Wearing Dress Uniform to Graduation Killed in Afghanistan

Last year Lance Cpl. Brandon Garabrant, 19, was not allowed to wear his dress uniform despite finishing boot camp before his high school graduation ceremony. He was killed last Friday by a roadside bomb. This is from a news report last year:

School officials say they have spoken with the student council, as well as with faculty members with military experience or who have family in the military.

The consensus is that all students should dress alike, and no one should be singled out.

"I think this is a celebration of a class much like a celebration of a team, a group that's been together," said Principal Brian Pickering.

Several school officials, including a member of the graduation committee, met with WBZ-TV today.

They say they are thrilled with Brandon's accomplishment but say graduation is about unity.

There is also concern that if an exception is made, it will open up the door to other requests down the road.

"You begin to wonder where to draw the line," said Pickering.

Hey how about you draw the line where you fucking draw the line? If you can't make a reasonable judgment about what's okay to wear at a mere high school graduation ceremony and stick to it, you're simply not capable of doing your job as principal.

When I graduated from HS in the 80s, there were several students who wore their dress uniforms during the ceremony. It wasn't a big deal - the commencement handout noted their ranks, they got extra applause and nobody gave a shit that they didn't look like the everyone else in cheap green nylon gowns.

Is Vladamir Putin Trolling AoSHQ?

Quite possibly as he's known to have professional trolls working Fox News, Huffington Post, The Blaze and World Net Daily.

In a report dated May 21, Internet Research Agency commercial director Svetlana Boiko discussed the progress of the trolling project's $75,000 trial period, which began April 10. The report says that during that period, the trolls left more than 2,500 comments on 30 different news websites, tweeted 1,220 times from 12 accounts, wrote 85 Facebook posts, posted 175 times in an unspecified number of forums, and made five bizarre YouTube videos attacking the U.S. government and Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.

Wait Harry Potter is a threat to the rodina?! Forget it - Putin's rolling trolling.

Judge Rules That The Second Amendment Doesn't Protect Hunting

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by a hunters' group that had challenged Pennsylvania's long-standing ban on Sunday hunting, saying she saw no proof the hunters' constitutionally protected rights were being harmed.

U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane made the ruling in a suit brought by the Lancaster County-based Hunters United for Sunday Hunting against the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the agency that enforces the state's game code.

Kane said she could find no proof that courts have extended Second Amendment protections to include recreational hunting. She also found that the hunters could not prove that the law unfairly discriminated between classes of hunters or that the ban on Sunday hunting violates their religious freedoms.

But, but, but I was always told by anti-gun activists that the 2nd Amendment only protected guns used for hunting and sports.

Watching the US Population Center of Gravity Move West

Note that there was big shift west between WWII and the 80s but not so much since then.

Wait - Watching Pr0n Might Not Shrink Your Brain

Quite possibly the issue is that men with smaller brains are simply unable to cut back on their porn watching.

Here's what's caused all the fuss. The researchers found that hours spent watching porn was negatively correlated with the amount of grey matter in a subcortical region near the front of the brain - the right striatum - that's known to be involved in the processing of reward (as well as lots of other things). In other words, men who said they spent more time watching porn tended to have a smaller amount of grey matter in this part of their brain. Also, the more avid porn viewers showed less activation in their left striatum when they looked at racy images, and they appeared to have reduced connectivity between their right striatum and their left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

...A further problem with correlational studies is not just that the causal direction can run either way, but that an unknown or uncontrolled third factor (and others) could be causally involved. In the case of this study, the elephant in the room is personality. Unsurprisingly, personality is linked with media use (including porn consumption) and with brain characteristics. Asking men how much porn they watch is a crude indicator of their extraversion, (lower) conscientiousness and desire for sensation seeking. For instance, men who watch porn in work hours tend to be less conscientious and more impulsive.

Fattest Man in the World Dies in Mexico at Age 48

At his peak Manuel Uribe was 1230 lbs but later with the help of doctors managed to slim down to 867 lbs. I remember watching a show years ago on him and it seems like he was on track to get down to merely obese. But it was also clear that his mother was a big part of the problem as she was constantly giving him forbidden food while he was bed-ridden.

Using Smartphones To Monitor Schizophrenics

Psychiatrists have realized that they can collect vast amounts of data about their patients using smartphone apps that passively monitor the patients as they go about their daily business. A prototype for schizophrenia patients is being tested out now on Long Island. The Crosscheck trial will look at behavior patterns (tracking movement, sleep, and conversations) and correlate them with the patient's reports of symptoms and moods; researchers hope the data will reveal the "signature" of a patient who is about relapse and therefore needs help.

Well meaning perhaps but I can't help but think of this Onion video:

Fictitious Movies That Hollywood Should Make Immediately

And I'm guessing that these would make far more money than the shitty remakes/reboots that Hollywood is stuck on at the moment. Hell I would gladly pre-pay for this one.

Weekly Commenter Standings

Top 10 commenters:
1 [784 comments] 'TangoNine' [110.08 posts/day]
2 [650 comments] 'Misanthropic Humanitarian '
3 [434 comments] 'Vic'
4 [414 comments] 'Anna Puma (+SmuD)'
5 [402 comments] 'AllenG (Dedicated Tenther), Ah, F it.'
6 [362 comments] '---'
7 [360 comments] 'Ricardo Kill'
8 [356 comments] ' Hello it's me Donna and I know nuthink!'
9 [337 comments] 'rickb223'
10 [311 comments] 'Nip Sip'

Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [69 names] 'The Political Hat' [9.86 socks/day]
2 [49 names] 'Buzzhead Andy'
3 [44 names] '5-baksov.ru'
4 [36 names] 'Buzzsaw90'
5 [35 names] 'fluffy'
6 [31 names] 'toms outlet'
7 [30 names] 'Nip Sip'
8 [29 names] 'Costanza Defense'
9 [29 names] 'Susan Olivia Cuthbertson-Klein'
10 [26 names] 'toby928(C)'

The group. Never heard of it.

Where it's at - the Twitter

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posted by Maetenloch at 10:23 PM

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