Month: December 2004

Someone I never heard of before (but found indirectly via InstaPundit) has hurt Puff’s feelings: …. it would have been better had Seipp not been too lazy and intellectually torpid to note this fact before penning her tedious crippled-pit-bull-with-brain-trauma attack piece. It?s bad enough that her horrid writing style typically consists of not only spitting…

A judge has upheld an Arizona law which requires proof of citizenship for welfare benefits. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? Who but a citizen is entitled to the benefits of citizenship? So then what do we do about immigration? The President has a plan, scoffed at by defeatists, which the Tucson Citizen finds hopeful:…

Every creature that comes into being ought to have the right to its individual genetic makeup. — Jeremy Rifkin Via Drudge, I see that cloning of pets (a topic I’ve discussed before, and which Jeff Soyer has discussed repeatedly) has now gotten the attention of the official moralizers. While I think cloning your pet is…

I am not a warblogger, but I’ll make an exception here to juxtapose two quotes which are getting plenty of attention. To the extent the blogosphere can dispel the propaganda cover willingly provided by the Left, people on the home front can help the soldiers in the field. It is necessary to link the war…

The debate over academic freedom brings me back to the topic of unoriginal thinking (which I touched on last week when I discussed young people who think thoughts which are not their own, but which are believed to be “cool”). Conservative students are discovering that not only is it not cool to be conservative, but…

For those who don’t know much about Kwanzaa, Swanky Conservative has a fun post, which asks some good questions: This holiday doesn?t make sense. I see a celebration started by a convicted torturer and radical that proliferated and became legitimized out of liberal white guilt. That may sound harsh, but if there is a need…

This time of year, I should be glad I don’t have children. Not long before the current story about cell phones and DNA broke, there was a huge recall of costume jewelry because some of it contained lead. Lead, of course, is an automatically terrifying substance, even though it used to be in most plumbing,…

Steve Outing of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies has published his first of two articles on ‘What Mainstream Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers.’ I haven’t read it all, but some of you may be intrigued to hear that he suggests blogging ethics to be downright Libertarian (though I should be transparent and tell you…

Well, frostbite hasn’t claimed my fingers, but all things considered I’d rather be in California right now. This is ridiculously cold, nothing works properly (the car’s transmission would barely go into gear and everything’s dehydrated) and it makes me feel like a damned whining crybaby complaining about it, but to do last minute Christmas shopping…

Via Joe Gandelman (at Dean’s World) I see a pleasant reminder that the election is over: that this election could not be over soon enough for me, since to do a credible weblog I had to write about main campaign issues and developments to keep the site updated and relevant…which meant ignoring some other big…

A good Tort Law exam question appeared in today’s news: A New York truck driver who police believe was driving drunk struck and killed a Hamilton Township, N.J., man yesterday as he took a sobriety test after being stopped on Route 130 in Bordentown Township, police said. When police stopped Shane Gildersleeve of Valatie, N.Y.,…

Here’s something communitarians of all persuasions can seize upon in blaming everyone except the guilty: Shocking sex acts in schools Philadelphia students as young as 5 are being caught in a variety of situations – even the rape of classmates. The district has hired abuse counselors to intervene. By Susan Snyder Inquirer Staff Writer At…

I read you can’t escape (whether from life, death or the blogosphere) and this test confirms that hypothesis with flying colors. Which David Bowie are you? Via the Flea, who’s also Berlin-era Bowie. Channeling withdrawal and depression is what makes life good. And inescapable. UPDATE: Drawn out horse now has a complaint few will understand.

There won’t be any posting from me until possibly tonight, as I recently discovered that Christmas is a week away, and I need to send out cards and take care of much-neglected holiday-related stuff. As a logical person and as someone who barely manages to call himself a Christian (despite the fact that many would…

Late news (April, 04), but still news to me. The association of cats with humankind has been pushed back a few thousand years. Researchers have often given Egyptians living around 4,000 years ago credit for having first domesticated wildcats and then bred the tame felines. However, discoveries on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus indicate that…

The statistics I cited in the last post will serve as a pretty good illustration of how science can be contaminated when people look for what they want instead of objectively pursuing the truth. An anti-gun activist will see guns as the primary cause of murder, while a feminist will see men as the cause…

Because the point is often made that guns cause murder and other crime, I thought I’d take a look at some statistics in the hope of drawing some serious scientific conclusions. I’ll start with some statistics I found in a 1999 study, “An Analysis of Variables Affecting the Clearance of Homicides: A Multistate Study” by…

Speaking of political fashion, I met someone at a party who seemed very interested in me until I made the mistake of saying I was a member of the National Rifle Association. Eyes which had been wide open with dilated pupils turned to narrow, pinpoint slits, and I was promptly discarded as a piece of…

A couple of thoughts on thought. Thoughts are too often like fashion. I hate fashion, but I don’t hate thought, which means I hate most thought even though I love thought. How the hell can I hope to explain a nonsensical utterance like the above? Might as well start somewhere. A few weeks ago, I…

Via Bill Quick, I see a wonderful opportunity for wolves who like to dress in sheep’s clothing (hmmm…. maybe that’s only-in-San Francisco sheep in wolves’ clothing….): San Francisco supervisors want voters to approve a sweeping handgun ban that would prohibit almost everyone except law enforcement officers, security guards and military members from possessing firearms in…