Month: April 2006

Don’t know what a slide rule is for — Sam Cooke, 1960 I know it will seem a bit self-indulgent to write a second post about a post I just wrote, but forgive me, because this is therapy; not blogging. I just can’t remember any time in the past year when the act of writing…

If you didn’t like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, get ready. A Republican bill sponsored by — guess who — James Sensenbrenner, would (if the reports are correct) criminalize even fair use, and transform the DMCA into the most draconian copyright legislation in United States history. Some highlights from the proposed legislation (which has the…

Hatred of the item below can be a life altering experience. Does anyone still hate slide rules? I could only find a couple of people on the Internet who do. Commenting on Sci Fi writer Jerry Pournelle, this BBS commenter said: If you can’t do math, you’d hate slide rules. I was good in math…

While I was at UCLA last week, I stumbled onto an event I was unable to attend — “THE BLOGGERS PROJECT.” In keeping with my well-documented journalistic shortcomings, my reportorial coverage of the event sucked, and all I have is this lame picture of myself holding the advertisement: How might a blogger review such a…

According to a new study, inhalant abuse among young people is a serious problem: . . .one in five teenagers admits abusing household inhalants, like gas and glue, to get high. The president and CEO of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America says the most worrisome finding in the 2005 report is the decline in…

One of the driving forces behind the latest push for Internet censorship seems to be a former live webcam performer (aka a “camwhore“) named Justin Berry, who made quite a bit of money charging clients to watch him do things in front of his web cam. Now that Berry (with lots of MSM hype) claims…

There’s a saying that “all politics is local,” but it never ceases to amaze me the way national issues can literally reach out and touch things in my own backyard. Since returning from California, I’ve tried to keep up with the Mary McCarthy CIA leak story (one of the big stories of the weekend according…

Longtime blogger Jonathan V. Last (who once seemed to like blogging) seems to be on an anti-blogging kick, as evidenced by his editorial blast — titled Blog Humbug! — in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Among other things, I found it a little disturbing to see Last praise censorship advocate Andrew Keen’s anti-blogging broadside as a “substantive…

Yesterday I celebrated Earth Day by complaining about airport parking and recovering from jet lag. (Fortunately, Justin remembered.) But now, late as I am, I still want to share a couple of vital post-Earth Day thoughts which seem to have escaped coverage. One is that yesterday was not just Happy Earth Day, it was Happy…

This piece on mobbing (via Glenn Reynolds) has not done much to renew my faith in the human brain: When a mobbing occurs, that spirit of openness gets strangled by groupthink, bent on someone’s elimination. The Law of Group Polarization, formulated by Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago, says that…

I didn’t think much of it when I saw the headline ‘Pumps go dry at some gas stations…‘ posted on the Drudge Report. Little did I know it was on the electronic edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I left for Bethesda, MD the same day and to my consternation passed by gas station after gas…

An excerpt from When the Sleeper Wakes, first published in 1899. Emphases are mine… He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that harmonized With the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of this side projected a…

Cause it’s Earth Day again. Where did the time go? Without further ado, here’s last years Earth Day post, exhumed and propped up, all green and stinking. “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think…

I hate it when petty and mundane details (what we often call “little things”) dictate the quality of life, but sometimes the “little things” crowd out the bigger things to an extent that they can no longer be ignored. When that happens to me, then I feel that I have no alternative but to write…

The latest article posted over at the Mises Institute makes a point about recent smoking bans which I’ve been making for a long time. People yammer about all sorts of different aspects of the smoking debate, yet they somehow never manage to get around to discussing business owners. If I own a bar, it should…

Along the San Francisco waterfront, looking at Cupid’s bow: (A shame to be leaving, just as I was returning.)

Indisputably, I disagree. Your mileage may vary. You’re mile age May very. You are millage Mayberry. Obviously you (as defined by the relevant, irrelevant, irrefutable, and irredeemable authorities, entities, and establishments) lack perspective. The alternative is inconceivable. In other words, you cannot divide by zero, but only because of personal problems. Work it out for…

As the lack of spare time on this trip is unlike anything I’ve seen, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to get on line. I’m sitting here at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center in Pasadena, on a lovely Spring day. More time on the road than in Berkeley, last night in Los Angeles, and…

The Symbolic Systems Program is pleased to host the Singularity Summit at Stanford University, a rare gathering of thinkers to explore the rising impact of science and technology on society. The summit has been organized to further the understanding of a controversial idea ? the singularity scenario. This looks too good to miss. Pity I…

In 1970, Paul Ehrlich said this… I’m scared. I have a 14 year old daughter whom I love very much. I know a lot of young people, and their world is being destroyed. My world is being destroyed. I’m 37 and I’d kind of like to live to be 67 in a reasonably pleasant world,…