Month: December 2006

Via Tim Blair, here’s something to ponder — a no environmental footprint weekend: On Friday December 8 at 8pm, turn off your house electricity. Switch off your gas hot water heater. Put your car keys away. Switch off your mobile and any other battery-powered devices, and unplug your landline phones. Don’t step foot into any…

There’s nothing like waking up and having the subject of a blog post staring you in the face. Right now I’m listening to helicopters for the second morning in a row. Twenty minutes ago, I went into my yard, pointed the camera skyward, and took this picture: There’s a huge manhunt here (and even some…

Afternoon sunlight in late Fall can do some very strange things. I was out until the sun had almost set, and when I returned and got out of my car, I saw that one of my favorite evergreen trees had suddenly turned half yellow! I was shocked for a moment, and thinking it must be…

As I have said before, I think distracted or incompetent driving ought to be illegal. (While it arguably is, few police officers would ticket a driver for “incompetence behind the wheel.”) Driving while talking on cell phones in such a way as to not pay attention to driving is one of my pet peeves, yet…

John Longenecker sees gun control as a fraudulent transfer of sovereignty and personal authority — from the people to those who would rule them: Attacks on guns are attacks on personal sovereignty to undermine the power of the People to remain in control over the country: gun control is an attack to wrest that control…

Is it just me, or are other bloggers noticing that comment spammers are doing an ever-better job of impersonating real human beings? Take this one: I can’t be bothered with anything recently. It’s not important. More or less nothing noteworthy going on right now, but I don’t care. I’ve pretty much been doing nothing. Shrug.…

Anyone seen “Blood Diamond“? I haven’t, but something about the timing of the film (Christmas, Kanye West) makes me suspect it’s a thinly disguised attack on the diamond industry. Not that I’m an advocate for the DeBeers family any more than I’m an advocate for WAL-MART, but there’s always something about piecemeal activist attacks on…

Connie du Toit is one of the few bloggers I know of who can transform being sick from the usual whining into an unusual insight. Traveling in India, she suddenly came down with a severe case of bronchitis with high fever and migraines — something which, while terribly inconvenient in the states, “became urgent and…

Speaking of hackery, I have a question: when elderly murderous tyrants are dying, what should journalists say about them? Are there rules? Is it, like “have respect for the anticipatorily deceased?” The reason I’m asking is because two elderly murderous tyrants are getting close to the being returned to their maker (if you believe they…

Yes, I’m afraid that’s what this is. And at the outset, let me admit that I am a hack. Because, what I am about to do is offer my factual opinion, even though I do not have the facts. On this issue, no one really does. So it’s hack against hack. And may the best…

In my research into the morality of trapping mice in the previous post, I stumbled onto a very interesting debate about the immorality of glue traps and the need to ban them. While the conventional AR philosophy holds that glue traps should be banned, the discussion devolved into a practical question of whether or not…

I’m confused as usual. Unless I am reading the laws incorrectly, in Pennsylvania the Fish and Game Code applies to many animals we might normally consider nuisances or vermin. Let’s start with some definitions of the animals subject to regulation: “Furbearers.” Unless otherwise modified by regulation of the commission, the term includes the badger, the…

Speaking of email (of which I occasionally complain), The Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin complains that she doesn’t get enough of it. Apparently, her readers have given up on asking her to mention the “good news” about Iraq: In a sign of the times (perhaps the gullible have finally realized Fox News is Fox Spin?), I’m no…

And some of it doesn’t make sense. A cartoon was just sent to me by this site where it appears along with a couple of anti-American cartoons — one of which shows Uncle Sam joyfully sawing the Iraq flag apart, and another showing Ambassador John Bolton, hands dripping blood, walking away from a prone figure…

We simply cannot get away with condemning some comedians who use racial slurs, while applauding others who do so. To engage in such selective condemnation gives rise to the kind of double-talk that creates moral confusion–and leads to further cracks in the nation’s racial divide. So argues the Conservative Voice’s Nathan Tabor in his discussion…

Catching up with the newspapers that piled up while I was away, I found myself drawn to Andrew Cassel’s article with a title as intriguing as the subject: “Revealed: Why understanding economics is hard.” If there’s one thing I like, it’s having something revealed of which I am woefully ignorant, and I have no training…