The world ends in insanity. Common sense looks a mayfly. All is hopeless, no daylight for us. (done yet? no.) Here begins the American descent into madness. (still? yup.) Huddle the young and smother the old as civility rounds the corner for psychosis.

Okay: have you seen it? That gadget? The omen? The bite counter? Jesus, Joseph and Mary, save me from a future replete with these:

Bite Counter is like a pedometer for your mouth
By Ron Barnett, USA TODAY

Researchers have developed a way to fight obesity by helping people answer one fundamental question: How many bites of food are you eating?

The Bite Counter, a wristwatch-shaped device being marketed to weight-loss clinics and fitness professionals, uses technology developed by a Clemson University team for the military to track body movements in clearing buildings of insurgents in Iraq says Adam Hoover, an electrical engineering professor who handled the technical aspects of the design.

Well, any free-marketeer worth her weight can see the dangers inherent in such an electronic thingie. Pretty much everybody knows what horror comes next. (Anyone? I’m stumped.)

One News Now, “Your Latest News from a Christian perspective,” broke the story:

The insanity of a ‘pedometer for the mouth’
Chris Woodward – OneNewsNow – 8/26/2011

A wife and mother of three says the invention of a new product that counts how many bites a person takes indicates society may have reached the point of insanity…

“That is very strange — and I think we have reached the point of insanity that someone has created that [device],” says Julie Gunlock, senior fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum.

Gunlock says this is one of many supposed “health-related” items now currently available that go overboard. “BMI report cards [Body Mass Index] for children . . “

You know what’s crazier? The IWF pushing a notion of national insanity using the example of harmless technology. What the hell are you ‘fellows’ supposed to be doing, again? “The Independent Women’s Forum is dedicated to building support for free markets, limited government, and individual responsibility.” Well, then, I take it back. Libertarians aren’t intellectually shiftless crotch-grabbers, Julie, so you go right ahead. Lecture us away. Anyone that would take the advice of a Ms. Gunlock would be sane.

What is wrong with the Conservative brain? Why is it so difficult for them to grasp reality? Why are stodgy people so easily unhinged? How is it they lose their minds so routinely? Isn’t it traumatic to be so whacked out?

No one really knows. Or they won’t admit to anything. But we do know they’ve got real problems. And those problems always eventually come our way, don’t they?

Space Cadet Obama’s ‘Sputnik’ Gaffe Says It All
by James Delingpole | 01/28/2011 | Human Events

Earth calling Barack. Earth calling Barack: Do you have any idea which country ultimately won the space race—and why?

This question goes to the heart of what was so wrong with the President’s State of the Union address.

Jimmy? That was the point of the ‘Win the Future’ address. Being faced with the Soviet success of Sputnik, we had to double our efforts if we were to put a man on the moon before they did:

“Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon,” he told congress. “The science wasn’t there yet. Nasa didn’t even exist.”

“But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets – we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.”

Instead of celebrating the freedom, prosperity, ingenuity, and natural abundance that enabled America to put the first man on the moon, Obama missed the point completely. He talked not of an “Apollo moment” or a “Mercury moment,” but of “our generation’s Sputnik moment.” That’s Sputnik, as in the bad guys.

Jimmy! JIMMY:

“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country or somewhere else.”

“It’s whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded. It’s whether we sustain the leadership that has made America not just a place on a map, but a light to the world.”

The ‘bad guys’ raised the stakes, but we took on the challenge and won. Because of that response, that re-commitment borne of our essential nature, we remain “a light to the world.” That’s the president’s message, Jimmy. Shouldn’t you have at least watched the speech? Shouldn’t you know something – anything — about what you’re criticizing?

. . we should ever be suspicious when a liberal starts singing the praises of the space race. Traditionally, space has been a conservative sphere, a place for God-fearing young men with buzz cuts and exemplary war records, oozing testosterone, dangerous patriotism, and an unhealthy love of weaponry, the most ostentatious embodiment of the vast “military-industrial complex” that young liberals are taught from an early age to fear and loathe.

Apparently not. Apparently, you can just make up all sorts of insane shit and get published on giant, well-trafficked Conservative websites. There, you will be treated as if you wrote the SPUTNIK entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Why not? Though you know absolutely squat about it? That sort of loose affiliation with reality makes for pointed lunatic criticism of sensible opponents. And now we’re getting to the matter, I think.

However, there are few things that get liberals more excited than an excuse to mobilize the entire nation in the service of a great cause. That’s “mobilize” as in “allow Big Government to take over everything . . “

Like a Space Race. Why bother, Jimmy? Does it hurt?

Well, if they were all watching, maybe she got nervous. Oh wait–it’s Twitter.

Mom Shellie Ross’ Tweet About Son’s Death Sparks Debate Over Use of Twitter During Tragedy
Mommy Bloggers Defend Ross’ Tweet, Saying Online Community Is a Support System

Amid tweets about the weather and her pets, mommy blogger Shellie Ross shocked many of her 5,000 followers with a message on Twitter they weren’t expecting to read.

“Fog is rolling in thick scared the birds back in the coop,” Ross tweeted at 5:22 p.m. on Monday.

At 5:23 p.m., her son called 911 to report that his brother, 2-year-old Bryson, was floating unconscious in the pool. Records show that the Brevard County Fire-Rescue paramedics arrived at Ross’ Mirrett Island, Fla., home at 5:38 p.m.

And 34 minutes later, at 6:12 p.m., Ross tweeted again. “Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.”

Nearly five hours later, after her son had been pronounced dead, Ross tweeted again.

“Remembering my million dollar baby,” she wrote. Ross included a photo of Bryson in the post, time-stamped at 11:08 p.m. A few minutes later, she posted another photo of her son . . .

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It’s March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich is as jumpy as an informant dodging the KGB. He begins to whisper, quietly but firmly.

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret. With the demise of the USSR, word of the system did leak out, but few people seemed to notice. In fact, though Yarynich and a former Minuteman launch officer named Bruce Blair have been writing about Perimeter since 1993 in numerous books and newspaper articles, its existence has not penetrated the public mind or the corridors of power. The Russians still won’t discuss it, and Americans at the highest levels—including former top officials at the State Department and White House—say they’ve never heard of it. When I recently told former CIA director James Woolsey that the USSR had built a doomsday device, his eyes grew cold. “I hope to God the Soviets were more sensible than that.” They weren’t.

[more]

For the new passers-by to the site, Tasers Kill: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

As I’ve written about before, over and over, Tasers give cops the illusion of technological power and control. Taser International pretends like it’s a magical weapon and, most deceptively, non-lethal. It’s absolutely lethal when the person is amped up, adrenalized, drugged out and/or psychotic. It kills, and it kills, and it kills. The victims here were lucky they were only physically and emotionally scarred.

Taser set petrol sniffer ablaze: police

The WA Police Commissioner will not change the force’s stun gun policy after a man caught fire when he was shot by a Taser in a remote Aboriginal community yesterday…

A police spokesman said the the man received third-degree burns to 10 per cent of his body, including burns to his throat.

Lawsuit: Cops tasered 3 kids, threatened one with sodomy

A shelter for adolescents in southern Illinois is suing the local sheriff’s office for what it describes as an unprovoked attack by two police officers on four children, three of whom were tasered, and one of whom was threatened with sodomy by a sheriff’s deputy.

According to AP, no criminal charges have been filed in the case, and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office says the deputies “acted appropriately.”

Everyone will have to have one, if they don’t already.
[Onion, by way of Eschaton.]