Month: October 2007

I would have forgotten it was Columbus Day but for the fact that Glenn Reynolds linked this post from Jules Crittenden who exults in the politically incorrect glories of going to work: Columbus Day may be the most unPC holiday of the year. That’s why I intend to celebrate it doing the most unPC thing…

Sorry, but sometimes I get confused by language. And this time, I’m even more confused than the last time. The Philadelphia Inquirer seems to have joined Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson in using the word “assassinations” to describe the murder of two Loomis guards by ex-convict Mustafa Ali in last week’s ATM robbery: Before killing two…

While looking into into the Enron CO2 trading swindle I found this interesting tit-bit. The expressive term ‘Baptist-bootlegger’ derives from the days of prohibition. Under prohibition bootleggers and those who transported and supplied illegal alcohol made fortunes. One such entrepreneur was Joseph Kennedy whose second son, John, became US President in 1961. The bootleggers had…

Photo of Boys with a Stuffed Pig by Michael Totten © 2007 My friend Michael Totten has an article up, The Peace Corps With Muscle, that I have linked to several times in the comments here at Classical Values. So I thought it was time to do a front pager and look at how the…

Well maybe not. Ann Althouse posted some incredibly cool pictures of freeze-dried rats and bats, and dried rattlesnake heads (all for sale in a store). They looked familiar. So familiar that I’m 99% sure they were the same rats and mice that I saw when I was in New York on Thursday night — in…

A short post by Dr. Helen linked this longer post at Maggies farm about a man who decided to evaluate an attractive woman in purely economic terms (as a “depreciating asset”): I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see…

Gateway Pundit has a bit on anti-Columbus Day protesters in Colorado. You know “the evil white man destroyed the noble Indians and we therefor wish to atone for the sins of our ancestors” types. Have I got news for them. The Indians fought wars with each other all the time for territory. The white man…

I complain a lot about the anti-gun mentality among Philadelphia city officials, and one of my pet peeves is the totally disingenuous attempt to label people with concealed carry permits as part of the problem. Police Commissioner Johnson has complained that his police officers are “outnumbered” by them. Now, via Newsbusters, I see that CNN…

Despite my regular concerns with the Philadelphia Inquirer (especially when I perceive anti-gun bias creeping into news reports), I’m a loyal subscriber, as I think a daily newspaper is a fundamentally important part of a civil society. I like the Inquirer’s online presence, regular linking of blogs, and most of all, the fact that the…

Jim Webb held hearings on The Mass Incarceration of American citizens. America imprisons a larger percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world. Lets look at the figures. These are from 2005. America 737 per 100,000. Russia per 611 per 100,000. Cuba 487 per 100,000. China 118 per 100,000. Canada 107 per…

I agree with Ron Paul on a lot of issues. This is one of those issues. I do think he is wrong about Iraq. Nobody is perfect.

The Briefing Room has a report on the connection between Enron and Carbon Trading. Amidst the talk about the benefits that Kyoto Protocol is supposed to promote, it is perhaps forgotten especially amongst the greenies how Kyoto was born in the corridors of very big business. The name Enron has all but faded from our…

While it might possibly be mean-spirited of me to publish this post, the stuff I stumble across never ceases to amaze me. I try to be fair, and so does Coco. So, after I saw Glenn Reynolds’ post about Mitt Romney’s laugh being more annoying than Hillary Clinton’s laugh, it occurred to me that it…

The Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller Virtual Institute has an interesting graph that I wish more people were aware of. Fuller noticed while reviewing available global statistics that as an area’s per capita energy consumption increased, the average birth rate for that area decreased! This fact has held true for every country of the world as it…

Oh yes. And Media Matters is “not political.” (Only a supporter of the “RIGHT WING RADICAL AGENDA” would differ with these truths.) I wish more political analysts were willing to state the obvious as Deroy Murdock has. Clinton is a hardened socialist, despite the mainstream media’s efforts to portray her as a “centrist” merely because…

Lubos Motl has a piece up on the unprecedented thinning of Arctic Ice. He points to this paper which claims the cause is a shift in sea circulation patterns. The extent of Arctic perennial sea ice, the year-round ice cover, was significantly reduced between March 2005 and March 2007 by 1.08 × 10E6 km2, a…

K.C. Johnson of Durham in Wonderland is retiring from regular posting at his blog. He did as much as a human could to get the story out of the railroading of the three Duke Lacrosse players by disgraced District Attorney Michael Nifong. He follows in the path of another intrepid Professor who stood athwart history…

I tried to start my day by catching up with urgent news in the morning paper. It’s arguable that this is not the way I should start my day, for I have a hyperactive imagination which can sometimes be set off by the slightest use of a wrong word here, or a hint of editorial…

This young lady is from Rockford, Illinois. She composed the piece.

Hoots has an excellent post up on the happenings in Burma with lots of links. He quotes from the New York Times. Natural gas from Myanmar, which generates 20 percent of all electricity in Thailand, keeps the lights on in Bangkok. The gas, which this year will cost about $2.8 billion, is the largest single…