Month: June 2006

Maybe. ATLANTA, June 19 (UPI) — Georgia Institute of Technology scientists say they’ve created a prototype device that can block digital video cameras from working in a specific area. The scientists say the prototype — which could be used to stymie unwanted use of video or still cameras — uses off-the-shelf equipment to scan for,…

In addition to braving gun-free New York over the weekend, I took the time and spent some money doing something I consider pretty much a patriotic duty. As I see it, if local journalists are going to buy guns in order to have them destroyed, someone has to remedy this imbalance of karma, right? So,…

Back in October, Ann Coulter was roundly criticized for this statement: Frankly, I’m not a big fan of the First Amendment. Considering the controversy that her own First Amendment exercises generate, it could be argued that the above was a bit reckless, and might even constitute biting the hand that feeds her, but then, controversy…

. . .[P]aleoconservatism is simply the faith of our fathers before we built that shelter for the neocon homeless booted out of their own house by the McGovernites, who appear, in retrospect, to have been more savvy than we thought. — Pat Buchanan While a lot of people are quite legitimately worked up about the…

First, let’s look at this wonderful interview with Leon Kass, courtesy of The American Enterprise. Dr. Kass has been out of the limelight for some little while now, but he more than makes up for his absence with this morose Q&A session, some of which is unintentionally hilarious. TAE: Tell us about your parents. Did…

Ray Baumgardner is not only lazy, but he’s making fun of the South Central Community Farm! I’m waiting for The Onion to write their fake news story about celebrity activists camping out in a Wal-Mart to prevent it from being torn down to make way for a community garden or solar-powered day care center for…

Not surprisingly, the expert quoted in the last post (one James Alan Fox), is a gun control advocate. Elsewhere, when he was specifically asked whether or not armed citizens might help prevent criminal rampages, he ducked the question: Yazoo City, Mississippi: As Chief Medical Examiner/Investigator for Yazoo County, Mississippi I have investigated a work place…

No matter where I go or what I do, there’s just no escaping discrimination in America. I rode the subway in New York yesterday, and saw the following sign posted prominently in every car: I didn’t have time to reflect much on the above (much less write a blog post) and was barely able to…

In my damn-near all-white school in the 9th grade, during a vocabulary lesson, my English teacher (doubtless annoyed by the new emotional charge the word had taken on) singled out a black student by asking him the following question: DO YOU DISCRIMINATE?” The kid was really nervous, and I remember thinking that it was unfair…

What is the culture war? Considering the unbridled contempt in which I hold it, you’d think I’d be capable of defining the thing I claim to abhor. (I’m really not capable of such a thing, because I can’t speak for what’s inside the minds of other people, but I should make a stab at it…

While I didn’t think I needed another example to supplement yesterday’s post, the front page of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer provided one anyway — another skirmish that is not over socialism per se, but which represents a tactic designed to keep people fighting each other over emotional issues — this time how and where to light…

Damn, but this piece by David Warren is good: The division between what is loosely called Left and Right, or ?liberal? and ?conservative?, which emerged in the 18th century, is no longer a shallow one. (“Left/Right” was the Continental divide, “liberal/conservative” the equivalent in the Anglosphere, for the two factions of the Enlightenment party.) It…

Thanks to Ed Cone, I’ve finally figured out why I keep getting inane comments like the one here (I haven’t been counting, but there are many more like it) which always point to a completely unrelated Fox News story. Silly, unsuspecting me! For, I tend to give all commenters the benefit of the doubt, and…

This Bildergerger roundup is from a blog which collect writings in which right wing anti-globalism, left-wing anti-globalism, the North American Union, and opposition to the war on terror are all conflated. John Birch Society meets Indymedia? Excerpt: now that the Straussian neocons control the levers over at the Pentagon, with their man Rumsfeld at the…

Poor Mayor Street can’t get no respect. I say this notwithstanding the fact that he has gotten very little respect in this blog, but I do try to be fair, and that means not shying away from agreeing with someone I normally disagree with. Obviously, I cannot spend all of my time looking for such…

Anyone who thinks backlash against political correctness is limited to signs in cheese steak shops should read this: Muslim women in the USA have been asking the public to accommodate their religious beliefs about modesty, a trend that some Muslims worry will provoke a backlash. In some recent examples: ? In Lincoln Park, Mich., Fitness…

One of the annoyances that most plagues me in life is the telephone. That’s because it has a way of ringing when I don’t want it to ring. Not that I dislike the people who are calling me; it’s just that when I am doing something which requires a lot of concentration, the phone has…

To follow up my post about the intra-party turmoil between leftist bloggers and mainstream Democrats (occasioned by Dick Polman’s analysis in the Philadelphia Inquirer) I thought it might be worth a look inside the minds of the bloggers said to be causing the trouble. Despite my abhorrence of labels, it’s tough to avoid them in…

Speaking of California, Jeff Soyer has some great news. The San Francisco gun ban is dead! A San Francisco judge struck it down. As Jeff points out, not all liberals want to disarm the public: My purpose in showing this thread is to point out that not all liberals or Democrats are anti-gun or gun…

I’m sure most film and TV fans are familiar with Michael Corleone’s “Every time I try to get out, they draaag me back in!” which was also echoed repeatedly in the Sopranos. As a transplanted naturalized Californian living on the East Coast, I spend a great deal of time wanting to return West, and scheming…