Month: May 2006

  • Flush a libertarian and find a luddite!

    I don’t like to think of myself as a Luddite, but yesterday’s experience with a high tech toilet hardly endeared me to the idea of modernizing and revolutionizing Every Last Personal Thing. At O’Hare Airport I made the mistake of going to the bathroom and entering a sit-down toilet stall. First I was a bit…

  • Late but not forgotten

    I’m back, and trying to get caught up from my trip. While I was in Rockford, I did not forget Memorial Day, and I visited a cemetery. But, I wanted to do something to help living veterans, and via Glenn Reynolds, I found Chicago Boyz link to the Wounded Warriors Hospital Fund, to which I…

  • A conservative argument against the “War On Drugs”

    I’m subscribed to receive a daily article from the rather radical Libertarians over at the Mises Institute. I don’t always agree with the folks at Mises–in fact, I often find quite a few of their views disagreeable. Nonetheless, their scholarship is impeccable, and their articles are always thought provoking and informative. I was a touch…

  • Bus blogging from Rockford to O’Hare

    What could be more exciting than riding a bus from Rockford to Chicago O’Hare Airport? Riding on a bus while writing a post about it, that’s what! There’s a line of rush-hour traffic as far as I can see, and the bus just lurches and stops, lurches and stops, so it’s tougher to sleep than…

  • Nasty Little Bits Of Rifkin: A Sampler

    Rod Adams runs an informative and gentlemanly blog called Atomic Insights. Mr. Adams is a nuclear engineer and a former submariner in the U.S. navy. His blog’s primary focus is fission power and its potential benefits. It was through Mr. Adams and his blog that I discovered Kirk Sorenson’s superlative Energy From Thorium blog. It…

  • The Most Beautiful Building I’ve Ever Seen

    Well, actually no. It isn’t. But it is the most beautiful skyscraper constructed in the last five years, that I’m personally aware of. I suppose I could have missed one. Anyway, it’s called “Turning Torso” and it’s located in Malm?, Sweden. Taste is always subjective of course, so you may find it’s not something you…

  • An Interesting Hypothesis

    Older readers may recall Nevil Shute as the author of On The Beach, or perhaps less famously, No Highway. Both books were eventually translated into films, starring Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart respectively. At the peak of his writing career he was a fairly well known man of letters. But much earlier in his career,…

  • Light Of Other Days

    Hitachi announced their latest, smallest RFID a few months ago, and I’ve just recently become aware of it. You can click here to see it. I believe it would be worth your while to do so. By way of comparison, here is its bigger, older brother. When I first heard of RFID technology, the devices…

  • Banana nanny republic?

    As luck would have it, I’ve had only one chance to get online so far, and that was on a hotel computer which would not allow me to access this blog — not the main page nor anything else. So I couldn’t even write a post complaining about it until now. A content filtering service…

  • Who needs answers when you’ve got words?

    There is violence. There is violence built into the system. This is obvious. There is violence built out of the system. This also is obvious. There is a reason for the violence. This is non-obvious. The reason is the system. Coincidentally, there is no system. Realize. Exclusively, that which can be truly said to exist…

  • On the road

    I am spending Memorial Day weekend in the Midwest, and I’ll be doing a lot of traveling (starting right now) so posting will be nonexistent to light. My reading material for the plane consists of two cheerful books: Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, by Joshua Wolf Shenk; and Pontius…

  • Don’t stay home from the poll!

    If (like me) you feel that the latest bipartisan bribery scandal is just too much after much too much, do not despair! For you have not been disenfranchised, and you don’t have to boycott anything. Instead, tou can make your voice heard! Simply take The Commissar’s Dennis Hastert poll (which I won’t spoil here; just…

  • Trapped by authority?

    Local trains are not running because of an Amtrak power breakdown which has in turn shut down SEPTA train lines in the Philadelphia area as well as on the New Jersey transit system. Naturally, infuriated commuters who were stranded on the trains wanted to get off and find other means of transportation to work. But…

  • Punishing the Republican leadership?

    A brief word on the well-organized movement by conservative activists (Richard Viguerie being a good example) to punish the Republicans by staying home in November. Ostensibly this will punish the Republicans who voted the wrong way on guest worker amnesty and against the wall, because they will not be re-elected, and their seats will go…

  • In case of emergency, contact customer support at 1-800-555-BUSY!

    Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer has a front page story headlined “Closer to a Safety Target” which hails new developments in so-called “smart gun” technology: As police in Philadelphia struggle to stop a scourge of shootings, some New Jersey engineers say they are closing in on a “smart” solution: a gun that can be fired only by…

  • Excuse me, but is anyone in charge?

    The recent incident involving two Saudi men who boarded a school bus, frightened children and then gave police conflicting stories (see this report linked by Glenn Reynolds) aroused my curiosity. When I researched the story further, I saw that the two men were here as a result of a huge new exchange program: The UA…

  • Who’s afraid of the big bad Republicans?

    Big national chains are bad, and local ownership is good, right? Not necessarily. It depends on who the local parties are — and whom you ask. Huge headlines today confirm that the Philadelphia Inquirer has been bought by a consortium of local businesspeople. Here’s a look at who they are: One sells cars and another…

  • Judging a cover by its book?

    Stanford professor Joel Beinin, the subject of severe criticism in a recent book by David Horowitz, has sued Horowitz and his publisher — not for the claims Horowitz makes in his book, but for using his picture in a collage on the book cover: Beinin acknowledges that his lawsuit doesn’t tackle the more profound issues…

  • The “I” word

    Impeach President Bush? Ideologically, I’ve never been more than a lukewarm supporter of the president, as I’m a libertarian who has simply learned to swallow my pride, hold my nose, and vote for what I perceived (rightly or wrongly) was the best way to slow down socialism at a galloping pace — at least back…

  • Dangerous extremism? Or a sign of the times?

    From an LA Times article about an organization called “Mothers Against Illegal Aliens,” I read one of the wildest proposals I’ve seen in a long time: “I’m not a radical. All I want is for them to enforce the law.” Sigh. Dangerous extremism is nothing new. I’m sure cooler heads will prevail. But shouldn’t the…