Month: May 2007

The fire storm that erupted over the Army’s rules about e-mails and blogging has lead to new rules. …the Army has issued a clarification that assures: In no way will every blog post/update a Soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor and Operations Security…

Over the weekend I agreed to do this week’s RINO Sightings Carnival, which wasn’t all that easy, as I tried to come up with some sort of coherent theme. It’s not easy to tie together different posts from different people and it’s always a challenge. (Once I tried to do it with RINO horns; another…

While many Americans might not be aware of it, today, May 8, is still known as V-E Day. That’s Victory in Europe. Yay! Yes, 62 years ago today, President Truman proclaimed victory in Europe. In Russia, it’s still celebrated by parades in Red Square: The parade, to mark the 62nd anniversary of Russia’s victory over…

This is a simulation of the magnetic field in the WB-6 Bussard Fusion Reactor. A picture of the WB-6 can be found here. It was done by Indrek. He posted it to the IEC Fusion Newsgroup. His simulation is logarithmic with 32 steps. Each step is 1.433 times the size of the previous step. It…

Warning: This is a personal and (for me, at least) a highly emotional post. Much as I hate it when a political topic becomes personal, there’s no way for me to avoid the fact that it has, and I feel I’m under a duty to disclose why I feel so strongly about this issue, and…

Writing in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Garance Franke-Ruta argues that the age of consent should be raised — for “providing erotic content”: It is time to raise the age of consent from 18 to 21 — “consent,” in this case, referring not to sexual relations but to providing erotic content on film. Current federal laws…

I first heard about Mischa Berlinski’s Fieldwork on a Glenn and Helen podcast in which they interviewed the author. Until today, I never bought the book, although the interview helped inspire a long post about Naga headhunters. Distracted by other things in the past couple of months, I had all but forgotten about the Berlinski…

After just writing a post explaining why I don’t watch television, now it’s time for a true confession. I watched the Republican presidential, um, debate. At least, that’s what they said it was. I tried to watch it out of a strange sense of nagging “duty” — as I thought that I might be morally…

Commenter “Heather” (in this post by Jules Crittenden) reminded me why I don’t watch television: I remember seeing a news photo of a little Vietnamese girl running down the road, because she had been/was being attacked with napalm. That was the iconic photo of the Vietnam war, the one that decided a lot of people…

(Sorry if the title sounds imitative of the Connie Francis song, but occasionally I’m stung by spontaneous outbursts of nostalgia.) Perhaps I should have titled this post “where the disappearing bee stories aren’t” because the more the bees don’t disappear, the more the disappearing bee stories do. I guess it’s tough to get people to…

KC Johnson at Durham in Wonderland is discussing hate mail. Specifically hate mail recieved by some of the professors involved in the Duke Hoax. The latest example of creatively interpreting what constitutes “harassing” e-mails comes from the newly elected chairwoman of the Academic Council, Paula (“No to Due Process”) McClain. A Free Republic reader sent…

This is an old video of the original song by the Diamonds, which in 1957 reached number 2 on the charts. It’s downright campy, in a charmingly naive sort of way. Amazingly, these guys are still alive, and if you’re curious, here’s a more recent video.

Reading over my post on animal euthanasia (in the context of the AB 1634 mandatory spay and neuter bill), it occured to me that people might think that when I refered to “the manufacture of new morality” that I was being unduly argumentative. Having given the matter some thought, I am convinced that if anything,…

Wonderful discussion going on at Dr. Sanity’s about shame cultures, why they tend to despotism, and why their war on the West could lead to unfortunate consequences. Especially for them. The Dr. not being an avid historian gives Dresden as an example of what Americans are capable of. Commenter Simon-Peter sets her straight and proves…

Justin had a thought about AB 1634 (more infra — here, here, here, here, and here) which seemed to merit a post all by itself. However, if I wait around for Justin to write it, AB 1634 may have been passed and signed into law. So I thought now would be a good time to…

Is 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 f3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 99 bf an illegal hex number? Nope. I made a transcription error. So what is all the excitement? Inquiring minds want to know. THE MPAA is having a go at erasing the fairly public HD-DVD processing key number from the…

I don’t know whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for office as a recent article in New York Magazine suggests he is, but he’s setting two philosophical straw-men against each other, and claiming that it’s either one or the other: “There is an ancient struggle between two separate philosophies, warring for control of the…

The Army is effectively shutting down Army blogs. This is stupid. Sgt Mom says something like: “What did you expect? It is all about Power and Control.” (see how easy it is to get a link from me? LOL) We need more information from the Army, not less. So what do they do? Put a…

And if I wasn’t such a silly libertarian, I’d want something done about people who annoy me by asking me for money! A good example was an email I got earlier from ebay, cleverly designed to make it appear that I had just bought something, even though I hadn’t. While it was only a minor…