Month: April 2007

  • The Objective – Iraq

    This is the next piece in my look at our war strategy in Iraq. What is our objective in Iraq? It looks like we have a lot of them. The establishment of an Iraqi liberal democracy. Fighting a guerilla war. Establishing a viable Iraqi economy that is not based on oil socialism. Building/rebuilding infrastructure. Increasing…

  • A better campus alternative in New Jersey

    While in New Jersey yesterday, I skipped Hillary Clinton’s Rutgers affair (which didn’t seem to go over all that well with the team…), and I drove to the beautiful Ramapo College campus, in Mahwah, right near New Jersey’s border with New York state. I arrived at sunset, and managed to take a picture of this…

  • On the road…

    I just got back from the funeral of a friend, and I’ll be gone the rest of the day. As I’m not one to blog while driving, blogging will naturally be rendered almost impossible, until maybe very late at night. While on the road, though, I expect to be having a great time with a…

  • Testing

    Did you know that your soap can test positive for contraband by some field drug test kits? Don Bolles, drummer for the legendary punk band the Germs, was going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with his girlfriend, 21-year-old Cat Scandal, after picking her up for “a day off” from drug rehab, on April 4, when…

  • Don’t Be A Living Fossil

    I am a big Airplane fan (career as well as musical interest). So I was listening to some of what is available on the various video stores and came upon this “Crown of Creation” version from 1968. It is really good. It is done live not lip synched. So I’m listening to the words. And…

  • Why facts should matter (even on the Internet)

    A comment from John Burgess (left to my earlier post about the horrendous double murder in Tennessee) highlights an important point about information gathering. As he points out, it’s “not a perfect art”: Things make their way into stories from weird sources. In this particular instance, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ms Williams did, in…

  • Drill Teams

    Little Green Footballs put up this excellent video of the US Marines Silent Drill Team. The silent part means that no commands are given to initiate various actions as is done in normal squad manuvers. Commands like “About Face”, “Forward, March”, “Attention”, “Present Arms”, etc. Which of course got me to thinking about my days…

  • Still no links (but at least there’s now a Wiki argument!)

    There’s an interesting debate at Wikipedia about the recent Wikipedia entry about the shocking double rape and murder case I posted about yesterday. The Wiki entry makes the same allegations of pre-mortem sexual mutilation I was unable to verify — that the man’s penis and woman’s breast were cut off while both victims were alive…

  • the dead men who weren’t men

    I keep noticing a cyclical process in which news drives speculation, and speculation then fuels opinion. Much as I get tired of seeing it repeated, I’m not immune from the process. As I just told a friend in an email, I keep wondering why Seung Cho wasn’t simply jumped on by all these doomed people…

  • A “could have been” hate crime?

    Considering the stuff I’ve been reading lately, it must be the season for misinformation. Unless the police and the medical examiner are lying, yet another media report I relied on and discussed has turned out to be substantially untrue: DETROIT — Andrew Anthos, the elderly gay man whose death was attributed to a vicious hate…

  • Good News – Fusion Project Funded

    Mark of Ask Mark reports that because of Dr Bussard‘s winning the Outstanding Technology of the Year Award for 2006 and his widely reported Google talk the US Navy has decided to fund the final year of the his contract. (I contacted my Congress critter with no obvious result. However, maybe others had better results.)…

  • Horrendous crime, double standard, missing details

    Speaking of unverifiable details, Michael Gaynor at the Conservative Voice writes about the gruesome kidnaping, rape and murder of a couple in Knoxville, Tennessee, and complains that not only are the MSM ignoring the story, but that even the local media are not supplying the missing details: ….for the Channon Christian/Chris Newsom case, The New…

  • Gun Control Means Hitting Your Target

    Commenter linearthinker of Random Traverse just gave me a heads up about free down loads of Stopping Power [pdf] by J. Neil Schulman. It is about 900K. You can read more about J. Neil’s horrible birthday (16 April) and why he decided to make his book free at Free Republic. Cross Posted at Power and…

  • “Allahhu Akbar” in SLC?

    After linking my post from yesterday, Clayton Cramer learned more about the reported yelling of “AllahuAkbar” (which I linked and quoted from the Toronto Blade). This allegation is specifically disputed by KSL TV: Was 18-year-old Suljmen Talovic yelling, “Allah Akbar, God is Great,” while shooting people? KSL found out: no. Robin Snyder/SLCPD: “We have no…

  • psychology of the shooter

    For some time, I’ve complained that mentally ill people in obvious need of treatment roam the streets at will. But what is mental illness? What should be the treatment for what? Right now, a lot of attention is being focused on Cho Seung-Hui, who, as Dr. Helen observes, is considered a “text book case of…

  • Who is to blame?

    I keep reading about people trying to “score political points” (link via Michelle Malkin) in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, and once again, I am drawn to this “sound advice few will take“: “If you want to get through the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre in a healthier way, don’t watch the…

  • hair raising economic schemes

    I was a bit shocked to see John Edwards’ $400.00 haircuts being defended by Glenn Reynolds, although Glenn cites his own reasons: Maybe it’s because people are always dissing my haircut. Okay, by “people” I mean “snarky blog commenters, but still….” Fortunately for me, I’m not on TV and I tend to shun video, which…

  • Pass the lard! And don’t praise the ammunition!

    In the last post I ridiculed the idea that saying “Hallelujah!” might offend anyone. Not so fast. I almost forgot that almost anything can be taken as racially insensitive. Or inflammatory: ALBANY, April 13 — Raoul Felder, a celebrity divorce lawyer who is chairman of a state commission that oversees judges, has been given a…

  • Can “responsible journalism” become irresponsible?

    My power finally came back on over an hour ago. I’m tempted to exclaim “Hallelujah!” And what the hell? I will say “Hallelujah!” But you have to be careful with religious exclamations these days. Saying “Allahu Akbar” might be taken the wrong way because I’m not a Muslim. (Ironically, though, no one cares whether I’m…

  • In The Right Hands

    Yesterday the Reuters spin on the Virginia Tech story was too many guns In The Wrong Hands. Today the spin is different. Not enough guns in the right hands: Advocates of gun ownership rights saw Monday’s massacre as evidence of the need to relax gun laws rather than tighten them. “All the school shootings that…