Daguerreotype of Judge Samuel Putnam, 1768-1853, Lowell Family Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard.

Daguerreotype of Sarah Putnam, Lowell Family Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard.

Hat tip to My Ear Trumpet.

From those wags at the Republican National Committee.

Via Selfish Soup.

We have hipster friends in Seattle allegedly so afflicted, and this video really strikes a chord.

Feeling homophobic? Here’s a highly politically incorrect game to play.

The Sacramento Bee reports on an obviously tongue-in-cheek ballot initiative in California which is bound to drive the Left Coast’s resident fruits and nuts into a tizzy.

An attorney from Huntington Beach, [Matt] McLaughlin in late February spent $200 to propose a ballot measure that authorizes the killing of gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head,” or “any other convenient method.”

McLaughlin’s “Sodomite Suppression Act” now is testing the limits of free speech. …

[T]he measure is likely to proceed to the signature-gathering stage. At the moment, its fate rests with state Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is charged with writing a title and summary for the proposal. Legal experts say she has little choice but to let the process continue and that McLaughlin is unlikely to face professional repercussions.

Joking about shooting Gays, of course, isn’t very nice. But neither is foisting Gay Marriage on an unwilling America through judicial legislation based on preposterous constitutional interpretations, and neither is it very nice when people lose their jobs for donating to support Proposition 8, nor is it very nice when private individuals are ordered by left-wing courts to violate their private convictions and render support to Gay Marriage.

Resistance to tyranny over the private opinions of Americans has only risen to the rude joking stage, but you never know, one day as the reach and extent of coercion proceeds and the forms it takes multiplies, resistance may proceed beyond joking.

Carnufex carolinensis

The Guardian has news of the discovery of a very large, bipedal crocodile which once inhabited the Carolinas.

Scientists have unearthed fossils in the United States of a big land-dwelling crocodile that lived about 231 million years ago, walked on its hind legs and was a top land predator right before the first dinosaurs appeared.

Transported back to the Triassic Period, what would a person experience upon encountering this agile, roughly 9-foot-long (about 3 meter-long), 5-foot-tall (about 1.5 meter-tall) beast with a long skull and blade-like teeth?

“Abject terror,” said North Carolina State University paleontologist Lindsay Zanno, who led the research published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Climb up the nearest tree,” advised North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences paleontologist Vince Schneider.

The creature is named Carnufex carolinensis, meaning “Carolina butcher,” for its menacing features. It was a very early member of the crocodile lineage and was unlike today’s beasts. It was not aquatic and not a quadruped, instead prowling on two legs in the warm equatorial region that North Carolina was at the time.

The Telegraph reports that A new genetic map of Britain shows that there has been little movement between areas of Britain which were former tribal kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon England.

Britons are still living in the same ‘tribes’ that they did in the 7th Century, Oxford University has found after an astonishing study into our genetic make-up.

Archaeologists and geneticists were amazed to find that genetically similar individuals inhabit the same areas they did following the Anglo-Saxon invasion, following the fall of the Roman Empire.

In fact, a map showing tribes of Britain in 600AD is almost identical to a new chart showing genetic variability throughout the UK, suggesting that local communities have stayed put for the past 1415 years.

Many people in Britain claim to feel a strong sense of regional identity and scientists say they the new study proves that the link to birthplace is DNA deep.

The most striking genetic split can be seen between people living in Cornwall and Devon, where the division lies exactly along the county border. It means that people living on either side of the River Tamar, which separates the two counties, have different DNA.

Read the whole thing.

Northwestern University girls brave freezing weather to go through a Home Guard rifle drill on the campus in Evanston, Illinois on January 11, 1942.
From left to right are: Jeanne Paul, age 18, of Oak Park, Illinois,; Virginia Paisley, 18, of Lakewood, Ohio; Marian Walsh, 19, also from Lakewood; Sarah Robinson, 20, of Jonesboro, Arkansas,; Elizabeth Cooper, 17, of Chicago; Harriet Ginsberg, 17.

Duffleblog today brings us this moving coming out story from one brave soul who took a long look into the mirror and finally came honestly to terms with his [its] in-born sexual identity.

I have finally found the strength to admit it.

I was 12 years old when I realized that I’m not really a man at heart, but rather a 19 foot, 10.5 inch long gatling gun strapped onto a 24,959 pound airframe.

All my life has been a lie but I’m setting that right today. I was designed to kill Soviet tanks. From now on, call me “Warthog.” That’s my real name.

I’m having plastic surgeons attach a GAU-8 Avenger 30 milimeter rotary cannon, 1,200 pounds of titanium armor, and two General Electric TF34-GE-100 turbofan engines to my body. Sgt. Major Fairchild said I’m fucking stupid and I can’t be a jet, but I’m beautiful and I am a goddamn jet.

If the Army won’t pay for me to get the surgery, I’m just going to bring in Code Pink and point out that that Manning loser is getting hormones and he’s in prison so why shouldn’t a perfectly well-adjusted and honorably serving soldier have the right to be who they truly are, a metal killing machine?

I am so sick and tired of being oppressed. Now we A-10’s are on Congress’s chopping block. It’s sickening to see all the white cisgender nazi shitlords literally raping my people with their actions.

It’s my right to spray 2,100 to 4,200 depleted uranium rounds per minute at both soft and hard targets and if you don’t support me and my transformation then you’re an aerialphobe and need to check your weapon platform privilege.

Guardian:

Archaeologists and anthropologists say they have positively identified fragments from the body of literary giant who died in 1616 in Madrid.

The remains of literary giant Miguel de Cervantes have been found nearly four centuries after his death, a team of Spanish researchers has said.

“He’s there,” historian Fernando de Prado told the Guardian on Tuesday, referencing fragmented bones found in the floor of the crypt. “We know that some of these bones belong to Cervantes.”

The high-profile search for the remains of one of western literature’s most famous figures began last April, with a team of nearly 30 people peering under the soil of Madrid’s Convento de las Monjas Trinitarias Descalzas with infrared cameras, 3D scanners and ground-penetrating radar.

Born near Madrid in 1547, Cervantes had requested to be buried in the modest redbrick convent after the religious order helped secure his release from pirates. When he died in 1616 – just a year after publishing the second part of Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha – records show his wish was granted. But the exact location of his burial place was lost after the convent was rebuilt in the late 17th century.

During their search, researchers identified 33 alcoves where the bones could have been stored. Their quest began to look less quixotic earlier this year when part of a casket bearing the author’s initials was found in the convent’s crypt.

Read the whole thing.