Month: April 2010

While I don’t know how socialist a country has to become before it stops working, I think we’re fixing to find out pretty soon unless something happens to reverse the tide. But I learned something fascinating in the past couple of days which made me wonder how entrenched a particular well-entrenched technology industry might become…

While reading a review of the book Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History I came across this interesting tit bit (British spelling). Then there’s the year 1620, when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth. Instead of seeing this as the first great turning point in the nation’s colonial history,…

I have found that sometimes the best way to determine whether you’re really sick of something is to “take a break” from it. I haven’t written about politics for the last few days because I am so sick to death of it, and while you might think that taking a break from something you hate…

Ann Arbor is a college town, and is generally pretty quiet except when there are big football games. That makes this neighborhood a bit of a zoo, but it’s not too bad. However, in the year and ten months I have been here, I have never seen anything quite like what’s going on right now.…

The Democrats appear to be adopting another losing position when it comes to the Banking Bill. With crucial midterm elections nearing, Democrats have lost the advantage they’ve held for years as the party the public trusts to steer the economy. I wonder if that loss of trust has anything to do with the banking bill…

No, I do not advocate such a thing, but that was a very popular leftist slogan in the late ’60s and early ’70s. There were buttons, posters, songs, and films. Take a look at this vintage 1968 film, and see the kids singing “OFF THE PIGS!” I don’t think anyone was ever prosecuted for using…

They say that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and while I hate to foolishly insist on consistency, I nonetheless found my consistently foolish inner hobgoblin was activated by Dr. Helen’s PJM insightful piece about society’s very different attitudes toward genital assaults on males as opposed to genital assaults on females. no…

Via Katherine Mangu-Ward, I read this fun fact: Regional alcohol prohibition begat national income taxes which begat national prohibition It’s all quite well documented at Smithsonian magazine: The ASL’s [Anti Saloon League’s] state-by-state campaign was reasonably effective, particularly in the South. But in 1913, two events led the organization to adopt a new strategy. First,…

Here’s something that strikes me as being of interest to very few readers, but I never know…. In my ongoing struggle to make an old clunker laptop (a Dell C600 with an 850MHz CPU) into a modern, fast-running Internet machine, I have been experimenting with different Linux distributions. As I mentioned in an earlier post,…

Yesterday’s post about society’s denial of mental illness drew some very thoughtful comments which reflect the apples-versus-oranges, libertarian-versus-communitarian nature of this debate. I’m not even sure it’s a debate, as people have such widely diverging views which come from different directions. Are these people — those belonging to dysfunctional, unwashed and hallucinatory classes — suffering…

I note that Barnes and Nobel is offering the Nook e-Reader. I wonder if it is safe for children? I wonder what they were thinking? I can just hear the conversations: “Not tonight dear, but the Nook e is fully charged.” Amazon sells them if you have to have a look: Barnes and Noble NOOK…

When I read this story I suspected there was more to it than was being reported: (04-21) 18:28 PDT Bellingham, Wash. (AP) — Police said a Cost Cutter store employee was punched in the mouth after he confronted a customer about his body odor. Police spokesman Mark Young told The Bellingham Herald that police went…

As I sit here playing with my wirelessly-networked Linux laptop and perusing the other nineteen networks that are within range of my wireless card, a thought occurred to me. One of the networks is unsecured, which means I could easily get on it. Not that I want to use someone else’s bandwidth, mind you, but…

Over the years, I’ve had fun ridiculing nonsensical phrases that get bandied about by the left, such as “POVERTY IS VIOLENCE.” But it never occurred to me that anyone would attempt to link skepticism to violence until I saw this editorial by Rush Limbaugh: The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama…

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I wrote a post about the refusal of the LA Times to release a much-sought video tape which showed Barack Obama at a dinner honoring the notorious former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. At the time I speculated that it was probably because Ayers was there —…

Arizona has become a Birther State. Not full fledged so far. Only the Arizona House has passed the bill. Even by the measure of Arizona’s long history of conservatism, the past week has been extraordinary. In the past six days, the legislature has passed the nation’s strictest anti-illegal immigration bill, a law permitting concealed weapons,…

Via Ann Althouse, a writer who takes himself far too seriously lays viciously into her, then indicts bloggers in general: We who labor at turning dead trees into public knowledge feel some obligation to make the sacrifice of the atmosphere-cleansing, oxygen-producing creatures worthwhile. It’s possible that the theoretical infinity of cyberspace encourages throwing whatever is…

I know I shouldn’t watch TV, but in the wee hours of the morning the other night, I woke up, went downstairs and turned on the damned thing in the hope of inducing drowsiness. As I flipped through the channels, my attention was drawn to one of those sensationalistic animal attack programs, this one being…

Politics is a real drag, and I hate it. But last night I dragged myself to a Tea Party meeting and fund raiser. I wasn’t in the greatest mood, and I have a long history of being immensely turned off by political meetings of any sort. Still, this weird sense of duty made me go…