Don’t ask for no diamond rings.

If you’re so inclined, the website for our collective is: www.redpaperheart.com

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

You absolutely MUST watch this full screen with sound ON! Enjoy.

If you’ve visited Wikipedia today (or the Google homepage, or xkcd, or Wired, or WordPress) you’ll notice that they’re censoring their own sites to raise awareness for the SOPA and PIPA legislation.  From Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia. Instead, you will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, encouraging you to share your views with your representatives, and with each other on social media.

(Wikipedia has made available a page detailing why PIPA and SOPA are bad news).

xkcd.com also has a list of resources for some good (and easily digestible) information.

These are important pieces of legislation, and definitely merit contacting your representatives.  However (after you’ve educated yourself and done your part), if you’re in a pinch today and you absolutely need to read a Wikipedia article to understand Batesian mimicry or the etymology of goulash, there is a very easy workaround.  When you go to the article you want, you’ll notice it appear in your browser before Wikipedia’s SOPA/PIPA awareness page pops up.  Simply click the “stop” button in your browser after the article loads but before the awareness page pops up.  That’s it.

Lucky Numbers: 9, 12, 26, 37, 41, 43

I mostly can’t believe how much tin foil they have.

The guy on the right is my favorite.

Why would this irk me so much? Because Ron Paul as president could be one of the worst things to happen to America in a long time.

Make no mistake; Ron Paul is an extremist (just like his son).

This is straight from his Wikipedia page:

Paul is a proponent of Austrian School economics; he has authored six books on the subject, and displays pictures of Austrian School economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises (as well as of Grover Cleveland)^[85] on his office wall. He regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes;^[66] he cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period.^[19] He has pledged never to raise taxes^[203] and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit. Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels;^[90][204]financing government operations would be primarily by excise taxes and non-protectionist tariffs. He endorses eliminating most federal government agencies, terming them unnecessary bureaucracies. Paul has a consistent record as an inflation hawk^{[dead link]}, having warned of the threat of hyperinflation as far back as 1981.^[205] While Paul believes the longterm decrease of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power by inflation is attributable to its lack of any commodity backing, he does not endorse a “return” to a gold standard – as the U.S. government has established during the past – but instead prefers to eliminate legal tender laws and to remove the sales tax on gold and silver, so that the market may freely decide what type of monetary standard(s) there shall be.^[206] He also advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System.^[207]

And Andrew Sullivan even goes to great lengths to qualify his endorsement, by basically disavowing Paul’s entire platform:

Let me immediately say I do not support many of his nuttier policy proposals. I am not a doctrinaire libertarian. Paul’s campaign for greater oversight of the Fed is  great, but abolition of it is utopian and dangerous. A veto of anything but an immediately balanced budget would tip the US and the world into a serious downturn (a process to get there in one or two terms makes much more sense). Cutting taxes as he wants to is also fiscally irresponsible without spending cuts first. He adds deductions to the tax code rather than abolish them. His energy policy would intensify our reliance on carbon, not decrease it. He has no policy for the uninsured. There are times when he is rightly described as a crank. He has had associations in the past that are creepy when not downright ugly.

So why is this guy so popular? Well, first of all, the rest of the GOP field is really that bad. You have the politi-whore that is Mitt Romney, the buffoon Rick Perry, the sluttier politi-whore Newt Gingrich, and several flavors of fire-and-brimstone types, of which Rick Santorum is now the flavor of the month.

Next, you have this emotional response to Paul’s “intellectualism” and “incorruptibility” which is actually pretty silly when you think about it. His “intellectualism” stems from his staunch beliefs in very discredited theories about economics and property rights, as well as his ultra-strict contructionist views of the Constitution that would make even Clarence Thomas blush. And after you understand that his entire political philosophy is predicated on a series of very simple black-and-white rules, it’s not hard to realize that he’s been “incorruptible.” That’s like saying that a robot is incorruptible.

Finally, his foreign policy and stances on Bill of Rights-style issues are refreshing to a lot of conservatives after the wrong turn the GOP made during the Bush years. But make no mistake, this is merely an extension of his extreme views on the Constitution, and no more.

Ron Paul as President would be a disaster. His nickname of “Dr. No” would very quickly be morphed into “Dr. Veto” and the government would effectively shutdown. You thought we had standoffs in 2011? Imagine what 2013 would look like with a Paul Administration.

Scared yet?

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader who realized his family’s dream of turning his starving country into a minor nuclear-weapons power even as the isolated nation sank further into despotism, died on Saturday of a heart attack, according to the country’s state-run media.

[h/t] New York Times

Nuclear arms and extreme nationalism aside, it’s fair to say he was a crazy, crazy man.  From Wikipedia:

Kim was said to be a huge film fan, owning a collection of more than 20,000 video tapes and DVDs.^[111] His reported favorite movie franchises included Friday the 13th, Rambo, Godzilla, and Hong Kong action cinema,^[112] and any movie starring Elizabeth Taylor.^[113] He was the author of the book On the Art of the Cinema. In 1978, on Kim’s orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry.^[114]

…

Also an apparent golfer, North Korean state media reports that Kim routinely shot three or four holes-in-one per round.^[119] His official biography also claims that Kim composed six operas and enjoys staging elaborate musicals.^[120] Kim also referred to himself as an Internet expert.^[121]

She’s been naturally selected for video-game awesomeness.

I just came across this song and think its unbelievable. Had to share.

I was an adventurer once …

It’s an inspirational story about a compassionate social worker who instills positive change in a troubled teenager… while the kid is mugging him.

10 bajillion karma points for Julio Diaz.