Heh. If I note that on the linked page, there are six pictures of hot women and one of a hot man, am I just being annoying?
No, that would be funny. So DON'T DO IT.
Forget the contestants, the judges are a winners. But that would be a conflict-of-interest, wouldn't it?
I don't think he was -- or at least I didn't notice him.
He's on the front page as getting a 10 from Marisa Miller.
Eh, he didn't make the cut otherwise. Take it up with Miller.
Zidane is hot, and I'm not just saying that because he's a muslim brother.
The Berber and the Lur have a special closeness.
Also, Leinart? He wasn't even the best-looking quarterback on the Cardinals' roster.
best-looking quarterback on the Cardinals' roster
Great visual. You're a Kurt Warner man?
All you white people look the same to me.
I'd go with Leinart.
In the backfield, sure. At the Mineshaft? No way.
The patriarchy's been fisting you, Ogged?
No wonder you're like that.
Apo, you crazy.
I've only had time to go through the women so far, but the judge's comments strike me as irritatingly vacuous.
Dunno about best-looking athletes, but that webpage is an eyesore.
Of course the comments are vacuous -- they're swimsuit models.
Those are not very flattering pictures of any of those athletes. I've seen pictures of the few I recognize looking much cuter than these.
Speaking of vacuous and unflattering, anyone else been watching this trainwreck of a thread over at Jim Henley's place, in which Mona tries to argue that drafting civilians to fight the Civil War is a greater evil than chattel slavery because of ... gangrene?
2 questions:
Why is it that soccer players are so much cuter than, say, baseball or football players?
and
Nevermind pretty people, which athletes are truly hideous? I nominate Ray Parlour and Julian Tavarez
I've been following that thread too, JM. Every time I think I can't be surprised by libertarians on the 'net, I get proved wrong.
29: Willie "ET" McGee is the canonical response.
27: I recall libertarians like Mona from the Nineties. Sometimes it's useful to be reminded that, though the absurdities of the Bush Era have made them one's unlikely political allies for the moment, they're still as ridiculous as ever. At least there are better sorts of libertarian to be had.
Re: the objectification -- can anyone explain to me what Beckham is doing at #2 on the list?
But Henley is so sane! And is hospital gangrene the only awful historical disease she's ever read about?
I do sort of wonder if Henley's noticed that thread and what he thinks about it.
He's probably noticed it (how could he not?) and decided to stay out. I can't help hoping he agrees she's gone off the deep end.
As to your question about Beckham, the judges are all bikini models, hence the high marks for medium-attractive surfers.
Sometimes it's useful to be reminded that, though the absurdities of the Bush Era have made them one's unlikely political allies for the moment, they're still as ridiculous as ever.
Luckily, there's also Megan McArdle, to remind us of the other libertarians, the ones who are as ridiculous as ever and *still* aren't political allies.
I know it is surprising, but Mona does not seem to be thinking positions through. OK, no draft in the Civil War. The war lasts longer and causes further suffering, and either the Union wins no difference to history except the longer war, or the Conferderacy wins. If the counterfactual occurs, slavery is expanded, blah blah. And this is better, how?
In the backfield, sure. At the Mineshaft? No way.
Remind me again of the difference between the backfield and the Mineshaft?
Thank God for Megan, indeed.
38: Actually, I think Mona's reasoning is of the hardline "anti-statist" variety:
1) Abe Lincoln lets the CSA secede,
2) ,
3) Everyone lives happily ever after and the slave are freed.
Beckham needs no explication. Who does, is the vaguely Neanderthal-looking Rafael Nadal - not just on the list, but a perfect 10? The ancient truth: chicks dig dudes who look quirky, dudes dig chicks who look like Farrah Fawcett.
So right about Nadal. One of the few people I find genuinely revolting.
I've found the ways she's dealt with my questions pretty hilarious.
I ask her if she would've been okay with the Utah Basin being a Mormon theocratic state, and she says she was against forcing the Mormons to give up polygamy to join the Union. (Brother Brigham would've been very happy never to join the Union; after the Civil War, that wasn't an option.)
I ask her about quarantine, in the context of the Black Plague, and she replies that she's in favor of "neutralising" the weapon of a person's body. (Entire cities of sick and healthy were sealed, necessarily on pain of death.)
I would clarify my questions, except for that Reek of Wrongness* about her argumentation. She's not going to listen to anyone at this point.
__
*I just picked up Diana Wynne-Jones Rough Guide to Fantasy-Land, on the recommendation of the Intertubes somewhere. Oh man, she nails the entire genre.
41: Are you crazy? Nadal would be super hot if only he didn't look like a twelve-year-old. He needs to spend more time in the sun without a hat.
Oh good. I was starting to worry that Ogged and I had the same taste in men.
40: You can see Leonard's gotten to that point, despite Doug M. (who's been through this argument more times, and in more exacting detail than anyone else on that thread) pointing out just how badly he's wrong.
I don't actually think Mona's making that argument. I think her argument is more of the "the lesser of two evils is still evil" variety.
after the Civil War, that wasn't an option
Once one pillar of barbarism came down, the other had to fall.
The Union was just envious of our huge tracts of land.
Surely Nadal's looking like a twelve year old is integral to the perceived hotness. That doesn't require explicating like Beckham does. (I buy JM's surferish looks-plus-bikini models explanation, sort of, but isn't Jesse Palmer a better example of that?) Also, Tom Brady looks like a soul-devouring minion of Cthulhu.
43: If you like DWJ I'm assuming you'll have already seen this?
46: Yeah, that's probably fair.
48. Only because their castle had burned down, fell over and sunk into the swamp.
That's why the desert looked so damned good!
DS, I must have seen that Evil Overlord list floating around at some point, but this is the first time I've read through it. Some of them are quite good. The problem of course is that if you scrupulously avoid all of the clichés, you end up with, like, a Ken Loach film.
As it happens, it's a little known fact that Ken Loach is in fact an Evil Overlord who manufactured that list with the purpose of turning all films into clones of his own.
(The Wind That Shakes The Barley is quite a good film, as it happens.)
I need to use the phrase "as it happens" more.
I love that Evil Overlord list, and it always reminds me of Evil Overmom.
46: Sweet Christmas. Between that and the Scalzi trainwreck, Doug M. has been a busy man.
Jesus, Reggie Bush is good looking. In the Confederacy, not so much.
57: I'm always at a loss for words when told that.
Here's the other wreck. Highlights include 297 and 466.
Then why do you want to see them wrecked?
It's late, and I'm Becksin big-time after the KU win, but somewhere out there in the tubes is the MO anti-stem cell initiative commercial which featured Kurt Warner looking like an extra from "Prisonbreak." If you're going to have a comparison, show him now, not when he was Jesus's bff. Warner appeared along with other such great "Christian" athletes as Jeff Suppan and Mike Sweeney, who, please god, any god, will be traded this season before he once again is incapacitated by Satan's minions. You know, hamstrings and suchlike.
Apo, 24 hours from now, Roy will be crying like a baby when NC loses. Rock Chalk!
Your fellas are gonna need to bring a better game than they brought against Southern Illinois.
Seriously though, I don't think USC has the horses to keep up with Carolina, nor the guards to consistently enforce a slower tempo. Georgetown is the trickier matchup, assuming both teams advance. If we can get Hibbert and Green in foul trouble (that is, pound it inside to Hansbrough over and over), we should be Final Four bound.
That High Clearing thread is like all the most pointless internet arguments ever in one place.
Last week, I walked past a guy making a DiLorenzo-style anti-Abe rant over his cell phone. While I unlocked my bicycle, he angrily denounced the abuses of the Lincoln Administration (He mentioned The Gangs of New York, too.), asserted that Lincoln was widely hated at the time, failed to remember what Booth shouted after he shot Lincoln, and then--I swear to God--complained that everyone now was too distracted by "Lindsay Lohan and all that garbage" to be as outraged as he.
"Hey," I said. "But we do know that the phrase is 'Sic semper tyrannis'."
People get outraged about a guy who died 140 years ago?
People get outraged about a guy who died 140 years ago?
I don't have a problem with that. Utter ignorance about the history of organizations and ideas is much more of a problem. I suppose if I had to contend with American Carlists, it'd be different.
#66. Apparently so. The guy wasn't some 19 yr old student, either. He looked old enough to know better. Mostly, I think he was just indulging in a little imaginary moral high ground while trying to impress whoever he was talking to. Or he might've been crazy.
Boston Corbett, who'd belonged to an honest-to-God Gang of New York, probably was distracted by Lindsay Lohan. A trial of Booth might have saved the other, comical conspirators. I remember the photos of the hangings were the subject of an issue of Life in 1965. I'll bet Biohazard remembers.
Utter ignorance about the history of organizations and ideas is much more of a problem.
Agreed, but still. I don't have a *problem* with it; I just don't get it. I mean, I find the people who are still all pissed off about the people opposing the Vietnam War to be baffling. The ones still upset about something from a century before that seem like they're from another planet.
"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."
Dare I suggest that slavery could have been ended nonviolently?
Historical counterfactuals are too nightmarishly complex for historians to deal with, let alone historically naive philosophers like me. I'll just note that the civil war was only a partial victory, as slavery was replaced by Jim Crow. It actually took the non-violent civil rights movement to bring full citizenship to blacks. I think someone could at least write a plausible parallel history novel in which the CSA is allowed to secede and then is gradually picked apart by indirect support of slave uprisings and economic isolation.
The ones still upset about something from a century before that seem like they're from another planet.
No middle-easterner are you.
slave uprisings
Which tend to be violent.
69: I remember. What I mostly remember tho', is the difference between "That was ONLY 100 years ago" vs "That was 100 years ago". The echoes of Civil War gunfire were still quite loud when I moved to The Heart of Dixie in '67.
That Gangs of New York stuff really depresses me. It's a brilliant film, but apparently there's a certain brand of idiot who doesn't understand the difference between representing anti-Union sentiment and endorsing it.
72: the civil war was only a partial victory, as slavery was replaced by Jim Crow.
Basically, the history of anti-slavery is a history of partial victories. (British abolitionism was followed by imperialism in Africa, the Lei Aurea in Brazil was followed by the Paulista planters' republic, the Haitian revolution was followed by French attempts at reconquest that killed its best leaders and left it mired in debt, etc.) Jim Crow was horrible, but it was a step up from slavery. Among other things, it made more literate Blacks possible, which basically made the civil rights movement possible.
There probably are possible scenarios in which slavery could have ended nonviolently in the States. Most of them would, I suspect, have to have happened before the secession crisis of Lincoln's day and involved more reasonable Democrats than, say, Polk. With the twin issues of preserving the Republic and slavery on the table, I think it's mostly crankish sentiment that expects Lincoln not to have used force.
What, is this the Respectful Death Announcement thread now? Because this is all kinds of awesome, especially for the 300 fans among us, and I won't let a pesky discussion of Serious Issues stop me.
I am going to have to post the black kitten of respectful death announcements, seems like. ("I see a kitten and I want to paint it blaa-ack...")
79: No, this is the thread I meant to post it to, because I was trying to get the beefcake thread back on topic with my callous disregard for the dead.
("I see a kitten and I want to paint it blaa-ack...")
That made me laugh out loud. I am so lame. (And no, I do not come in gold.)
63-64:
Well, 24 hours it is, and Roy and the boys are still standing, though a bit wobbly. Damned impressive performance.
The KU/UCLA game should be fun (and how long will it take for Larry Brown's name to come up? 10 minutes tops, I say). NC/Georgetown looks to be a bruiser. Hansford may lose the rest of his teeth by the end of that one. Onward, to Atlanta, and glory!
