Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.14

Russia: We’ll Nuke ‘Aggressors’ First
You know what really warms the cockles of your heart? Hearing that Russia is changing its military doctrine to allow for "preventative" nuclear strikes....even against countries without nuclear capabilities. Hope you weren't looking to sell your house in Chechnya or Georgia, because I think "potential nuclear holocaust site" tends to drop the value. As a bonus: this ought to really help get Iran in line on attempts to build nuclear weapons.

Latter day taint
An article on Glenn Beck's taint. No, not that taint, just the way the Mormon Beck traipses the bizarre fringes of Mormonism, espouses the thoughts and works of Mormon conspiracy theorist Cleon Skousen, and how all of this might damage the Mormon church. Yes, Glenn Beck is weirder and more of a fringe delusionist than you previously thought. This man has no ceiling on his insanity. We're living in a golden age.

Does Baseball Need Umpires?
The Wall Street Journal looks into the history of blown calls in baseball, the Pitch-f/x zone evaluation system, and whether or not a T-1000 should replace the fat guy hunched over the catcher with a wide strike zone. Sure the system is 100% accurate, but do we really want the front lines of the robopocalyse to be at America's national pastime? All I want to know is if they can create a cyborg that can stop the Pirates from losing ninety+ games a year.

Cleverness is no more. This is a dumb Britain
TV's Jeremy Clarkson takes a moment out from the celebration of Monty Python's 40th anniversary to praise them and to lament how the base foundation of their humor, often based around word usage, snooty novels, art, and philosophy, is incapable of being understood by a populace that wears stupidity as a badge of honor. Surprisingly he's talking about the UK and not America, but I'm sure if he watched CBS's lineup of alleged comedy programs he'd add us in.

Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini
Mussolini got his start out in politics with a weekly wage of a 100 pounds from the MI5. In return for the cash he published pieces of support for Italy joining the allies in WWI and sent teams of young gentlemen to "debate" peace protesters with truncheons and clubs. I'm not much of a scholar on history, how'd all that work out?