A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

And he just did it again.

In a 27-page memorandum, [Laith] Alebbini’s lawyers called what he did a “thought crime.”

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His lawyers explain that he just didn’t understand what he was reading. Stuff like this.

The clear difference between Muslims and the corrupt and deviant Jews and Christians is that Muslims are not ashamed of abiding by the rules sent down from their Lord regarding war and enforcement of divine law. So if it were the Muslims, instead of the Crusaders, who had fought the Japanese and Vietnamese or invaded the lands of the Native Americans, there would have been no regrets in killing and enslaving those therein. And since those mujahidin would have done so bound by the Law, they would have been thorough and without some “politically correct’ need to apologize years later. The Japanese, for example, would have been forcefully converted to Islam from their pagan ways—and if they stubbornly declined, perhaps another nuke would change their mind. The Vietnamese would likewise be offered Islam or beds of napalm. As for the Native Americans—after the slaughter of their men, those who favor small-pox to surrendering to their Lord—then the Muslims would have taken their surviving women and children as slaves, raising the children as model Muslims and impregnating their women to produce a new generation of mujahidin. As for the treacherous Jews of Europe and elsewhere —those who would betray their covenant —then their post-pubescent males would face a slaughter that would make the Holocaust sound like a bedtime story, as their women would be made to serve their husbands’ and their fathers’ killers.

[Quoted here.]

… killed in the Ethiopian Air crash, excerpts from an interview she gave about her two seasons at Port Lockroy, Britain’s most southerly post office. Auffret was – like so many people on that flight – an adventurer, an environmentalist, and a moralist.

As the sun never sets, days are long, but always enjoyable. The team wakes up around 7 a.m. – my morning alarm was the sound of penguins calling and snowy sheathbills knocking at the window. A typical day during high season very much revolves around ship visits – there would be two a day and sometimes a sailing yacht at lunch time. One or more of us would go on board the vessel first thing for a pre-landing briefing and perhaps breakfast – fans of bacon and eggs were always keen to get on board for this!

… Living conditions are pretty basic – there is no running water, only one gas heater in the team’s living quarters, and you may get one shower a week on a visiting ship if you’re lucky. You also need to be able to live with just a small number of people, yet also be very sociable, as you meet about 300 people a day.

When I left, I really missed the light and the tranquility of the island, and the absence of phones and internet. On base you can be connected to what is actually around you without the constant distraction of the online world.

…does a much better job than UD (her effort here) responding to a NYT column urging repatriation of ISIS members:

Bryant Neal Viñas writes that the United States should take back “those Western foreign fighters who do not have ‘blood on their hands’ — didn’t kill any coalition forces overseas — and are willing to admit they made mistakes.” This definition of ISIS’s crimes erases women’s participation in this conflict as both victims and victimizers.

By focusing on combat with coalition forces, Mr. Viñas conveniently ignores the kidnapping, rape, torture and enslavement of Iraqi and Syrian women. He also doesn’t acknowledge that both willingly and by force, thousands of women mobilized for ISIS.

Most of these women will not meet the international legal threshold of “foreign fighter,” but they were essential to ISIS’s ideological and operational missions. The women of ISIS served as wives and mothers, yes, but also as propagandists, members of a brutal morality police, slave owners and, toward the end, even combatants.

Rabbi Susan Silverman told me she was pushed to the ground and ended up banging her head on the Jerusalem stone. An ultra-Orthodox teenage girl went to kick her in the head, Rabbi Silverman said, and was only stopped when the rabbi’s 24-year-old daughter screamed at her…

[One of the violent ultra-Orthodox young girls in the crowd said that] it hurts them to see Reform Jews practicing Judaism in a way they are sure, they tell me, God does not like. That they love God so much that they deny their own desires — like singing out loud in public — to show Him their devotion. That they turned out that morning because their rabbis told them to.

Once Israel allows the girls not merely to kick but to chop off the infidels’ heads (in a way, they are sure, God likes), the country will have made itself a second home for all of the displaced ISIS ladies, who seem to share this haredi girl’s sadomasochistic authoritarian world view. Problem of where to put the displaced soldiers of the lord solved.

What? Different religions? Don’t make me laugh. Read any interview with any ISette. They know jackshit about Islam. They’ll feel right at home.

Former football player loses no-show $100,000 university job after second DWI. Your education taxes at work.

So Mr UD and I went back and forth a bit on the meaning of this most unusual sign in the pharmacy owned by Steven Henson’s comrade in crime (Henson, an MD, was just sentenced to life in prison). Ebube Otuonye’s trial date has not yet been set.

UD‘s theory was all about money: Knowing he had a captive desperate audience for the oxys, Otuonye figured out a way to make a real killing by forcing Witchita’s addicts to cough up extra money for non-necessities. Mr UD disagreed: “The guy knows the DEA is watching for proportions of pain pills sold relative to non-pain pills. He’s trying to hide the numbers.”

… following all the different dirt being kicked up in the Philip Esformes trial (earlier posts about the pious Esformes family here). Paying off all of Miami to help him run his rotten to the core nursing homes! Telling one of his comrades in crime to kill himself so as not to have to testify against him! Hiding frail baffled old people when his paid-off tipsters told him an inspection was about to happen! Giving Penn’s basketball coach three hundred thousand dollars to lie and say Esformes Jr was so talented at the game he should be admitted to the school!

Jerome Allen, while awaiting sentencing for taking bribes, took the stand in the Esformes trial yesterday.

Allen said that the son was not qualified to play varsity basketball at Penn. He said he lied to the prestigious university about the son’s qualifications because he had been bribed by Esformes during a series of trips to Miami in 2013. He testified that the father gave him $10,000 in cash each time, the money tucked into a brown envelope stuffed inside a plastic bag, during their meetings in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel… In total, Esformes paid Allen about $75,000 in cash bribes and an additional $220,000 in wire transfers into the coach’s bank account between 2013 and 2015.

Esformes’ lawyer said

Esformes’ son has maintained a nearly 3.6 GPA at UPenn, made the Dean’s List at Penn and plans to graduate from the Wharton School with the class of 2019.

But he failed to mention who Esformes has been paying to take the kid’s courses.

… hanging out with work buddies. Poor thing.

Fuckin up the local economy, man.

… Texas style!

LOL

The New York Times brings to mind that famous headline, as its editorial board finally addresses, with anger, the refusal of many of New York’s ultraorthodox to educate or to vaccinate their children.

As New York City has finally begun to exercise oversight over ultra-Orthodox yeshivas that have graduated students without a basic education, some of those Jewish schools have defied city health department scrutiny and helped to feed a measles outbreak. Forty children have contracted measles in recent months, all of the cases linked to a single Brooklyn yeshiva that ignored an order from city health officials to prevent children who hadn’t been vaccinated from attending classes.

And yet a community with staggering rates of law-breaking, indifference to public welfare, and plain old pathology continues to lobby aggressively – and basically successfully – for less and less oversight by the government. Remember Christopher Hitchens on Jerry Falwell and others: You can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if you’ll just get yourself called Reverend. Here getting yourself called Rabbi allows the most extraordinary offenses against health, education, and welfare.

For decades, the communities have largely been allowed to evade government oversight, thanks to politicians who have enjoyed their support as one of the state’s most powerful voting blocs. The price of that support has been largely paid by Orthodox children.

SOS often wonders: What did they mean? What were they, uh, grasping toward? Impeccable?

“I wanted to learn more about the ideology. I’m a political science major, global business minor. I like politics. I like travel, world events. That’s what I wanted to do,” he said.