Month: June 2005

  • Time to play “Remedy of the Month”!
    (And it pays not to be an “eyesore” loser….)

    Here’s a picture of Susette Kelo’s house: That’s the same house that five Supreme Court justices recently ruled can be condemned, taken from Ms. Kelo, and handed over to private parties, so that local property tax revenues in New London, Connecticut can be enhanced. It looks like a fairly simple house to me, and I’m…

  • Peak Oil…Episode IV : A New Hope

    Via Green Car Congress, the following fascinating article… An international research consortium has successfully built a 300-kW pilot plant that uses solar energy to reduce zinc oxide to zinc. The zinc can be used in zinc-air batteries or be used to produce hydrogen by reacting it with water vapor. In both cases the zinc recombines…

  • Tempting targets?

    …the age of skyscrapers is at an end. It must now be considered an experimental building typology that has failed. Who will ever again feel safe and comfortable working 110 storeys above the ground? Or sixty storeys? Or even twenty-seven? — James Howard Kunstler Architecture, like education, is another one of those subjects beyond my…

  • Fanboy Ravings

    I just got back from seeing the new “War of the Worlds” movie, and I have to say that I’m stunned. As a long time fan of mindless alien invasion epics, I’m what you might call a discriminating consumer, and trust me, this one really delivers the goods. Hopefully, it permanently raises the bar for…

  • Life (and Death) at the Carnival

    This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Adam Gurri at Sophistpundit. There are many good posts, some great ones, lots of life, and some death. As is my habit, I’ll just mention a few that stood out for me. Considering that there are so many Carnivals these days, and so many new bloggers,…

  • Two incendiary years

    The Second Anniversary Edition of the great Bonfire of the Vanities has been posted by Kevin Aylward at Wizbang. This week’s theme? “I’ve Been Naughty, Please Spank Me….” I’m on my way out the door (so I can’t do them all the injustice they deserve), so I’ll only spank two — If you want to…

  • Demoted again!

    I just took this test, which says I’m 30: You Are 30 Years Old 30 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view – and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find…

  • Education is more exciting than I realized

    Even though I know nothing about education (and even less about a field of study called “Education”), I was frightened enough reading about the teaching of “Education” to write a post about it. That post (and many other, far-better-informed ones) now appears in this week’s Carnival of Education. I never thought I’d be so interested…

  • A book that invades privacy?

    A couple of book-related, um, issues… Not long ago, I speculated that Ed Klein, the author of “The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President,” (a mouthful of title, if ever there was one) might be working as a sort of secret agent for…

  • Who said Google has no Values?

    Google has regularly been receiving heavy criticism around the blogosphere — mostly quite deserved, and some of it coming from this blog. This time, I want to thank Google. (More properly, maybe it’s Google Values I should thank.) I get a fair amount of Google traffic, which is usually said to be bad, because it’s…

  • Speaking of absurd comparisons . . .

    Here’s San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom: “People like pit bulls, but there’s a reason we don’t have polar bears or mountain lions in the city.” Lions and pit bulls and bears, oh my! I see several problems with this comparison. Let’s start with the polar bears. San Francisco not only has them, they run sex…

  • Well, the Hitler comparisons were wearing thin . . .

    So I guess this had to be expected: ….Bush is truly a Trotskyite, a believer in permanent revolution. We have never had one as a president before. He wouldn’t understand that, but Wolfowitz would. He truly is. And he’s doing it — what he thinks he has to do, the revolutions he has to create,…

  • Feeding time at the aquarium

    A couple of photos from my trip to Camden yesterday:

  • I question the timing of my damage control

    In an awfully predicamenting embarassment, I just learned that Tom Brennan had tagged me with the book game before I was tagged by Matt Sheffield. But I already responded to Matt. The question now becomes what to do. Should I delete the previous book post and explain to Matt that I had a previous unknown…

  • I’m running this monkey farm now, Frankenstein!

    If you’re like me you’re a huge fan of George A. Romero’s living dead series. Then again, you’re probably not. At a party the other night a friend remarked that watching Night of the Living Dead with my running commentary enhanced the experience, which isn’t normally the case when some know-it-all fanboy won’t stop yapping.…

  • Political privacy in a crowded shopping center

    Troublemaker Eugene Volokh believes that you have just as much right to talk to someone over the telephone as you do in person! Critiquing Robin Wallace’s idea that it’s bad to discuss personal business in public, Professor Volokh distinguishes between rudeness (talking during performances or concerts) and simple discussions with friends or family: Now back…

  • RINOS smash stereotypes with new Carnival

    There’s a great new Carnival, certain to appeal to anyone who reads this blog (regardless of whether they agree with me). It’s called the “RINO Sightings Carnival,” (a product of the Raging Rinos — a group created by the Commissar): for secular and moderate conservatives who don?t drink the party Kool-Aid on issues such as…

  • Racism and terrorism in Atlanta?

    Has the specter of racism reared its ugly head in Atlanta? According to advocates for the homeless, the city’s proposal to place restrictions on panhandling is, well, white racism, and even terrorism: Clergy and advocates for the homeless railed against the proposal, calling it harsh, unconstitutional and uncharitable. Several cited the Bible, saying that begging…

  • Link free sausage (and other polite indigestibles)

    While Justin’s remarks about James Wolcott being a “Vienna Sausage twiddler” struck me as just a wee bit on the disrespectful side (after all, mocking a man’s dietary habits comes precariously close to resembling ad hominem), they were nonetheless highly amusing. And the more I thought it over, the more I realized that Wolcott is…

  • An Ascot Wearing Man

    Cultural micro-icon and probable ascot wearer James Wolcott is trolling for hits again. I shall oblige the greased (just a dab, please) vienna-sausage twiddler by taking him half-way seriously. More, and I might choke on a small bone. Whatever one might say about Heinlein’s talent and character, worldly he was not. No, of course not.…