Shortly after Lindsay Lohan was busted on suspicion of drunk driving and drug possession her father and a parade of Hollywood celebrities made sobbing, heart wrenching pleas on the Larry King show for public understanding of Lohan's ordeal.

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I get the creeps whenever I hear a politician confabulate 9/11 and the Iraq War. I think that the Global War on Terror is the 21st Century "commie scare." I disdain deceptive Democrats as much as I disdain neocon Republicans. Yet I'm a Wall Street Journal Junkie.

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From the boardroom to the sports and entertainment world, and from the city to the country, upper, middle and lower classes are all represented. The gangster edge of hip hop - rappers like DMX - has intersected with the dog fighting culture.

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The G-spot is the Loch Ness monster of sex. Does it really exist? Where is it? Why are some women’s G-spot smaller or larger than others? A doctor claims he's invented the "G-Shot", a medical procedure that enlarges the elusive G-spot.

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It serves three basic political functions. It diverts public attention from the disaster in Iraq and the social crisis within the US, justifies a foreign policy based on militarism and war, and provides a pretext for police state measures at home.   more »

Daft Punk’s idiosyncratic qualities can be found aplenty in Electroma.

The plot is breathtakingly simple. Two robots, who you assume are Bangalter and de Homem Christo, but are in fact played by actors Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich, drive through the south-western American landscape in a Ferrari 412.

They arrive at a small town in Inyo County, California, where the residents are also robot-like but are living a perfectly becalmed suburban existence. The ‘hero robots’, though, appear to want something more.

They drive up to a hi-tech facility where liquid latex is poured over their heads and meticulously shaped into human faces (and they actually do resemble our Daft Punk heroes).

As the ‘humans’ stroll through the small town, the robo-residents are nonplussed. When the duo’s faces start to melt in the sun, the locals realise they’re fake and chase after them.   more »

Gramsci argued that “no social order could sustain itself over the long run primarily on a foundation of organized state power… on the contrary the inclination of a ruling class to rely upon repression and violence was a sign of weakness rather than strength.

What contributed to real political durability was the scope of popular support or ideological consent.”

Rather than using force to make workers submit to degrading jobs, corporations can call their wage-slaves “associates” or give them prizes for selling the most french fries.

Further, a ruling class can train the future workforce in seemingly benign social institutions; schools, for example, teach us to be competitive, to submit to authority, to stifle our creativity, to put up with boring and pointless labor.   more »

Bush's tactics are as follows:

Never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy.

Never leave room for alternatives.

Never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong.

People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one.

And if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Above all, keep on spinning.   more »

Every time the dogs were served food, the person who served the food was wearing a lab coat. Therefore, the dogs reacted as if food was on its way whenever they saw a lab coat.

In a series of experiments, Pavlov then tried to figure out how these phenomena were linked. For example, he struck a bell when the dogs were fed.

If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling. More...

Replace the bell with endless TV 'news' telling us to be fearful of the next terrorist strike and you realise that fear is a conditioned response.

We're programmed to be scared. The essence of a modern warfare State.   more »