Month: July 2008

  • Quiet

    Samizdata has a bit up on flying in old aircraft. War birds and commercial jobs. Here is a bit I added to the discussion: Way back in the dark ages (early 60s) I got to fly in a DC-3 that was carrying passengers. It was an experience. Conversation in the cabin was hopeless in flight.…

  • A League Of Its Own

    The New Republic has a pretty good article up explaining European misconceptions of America. The article especially looks at Obama’s recent German rallies and how those rallies feed European misconceptions. Europe’s favorite dream: a post-Bush America cut down to size and chastened, a meeker and more modest America, a more “European” (that is, a more…

  • Edge Of Seventeen

    My Daughter turned seventeen yesterday (25 July). This is in honor of her. Interestingly my father’s birthday was the same date. When she was born on that day it made him very happy.

  • Democrats Against Some Entitlements

    Eric in a post on the Obama birth certificate controversy asks a question of the utmost importance in this campaign. Aren’t Americans entitled to know the Truth? I believe it is the one entitlement program the Obama Democrats are totally against. Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • It Didn’t Work Out

    Well isn’t this special. Obama says a visit to wounded troops would be inappropriate. BERLIN (AP) – Sen. Barack Obama scrapped plans to visit wounded members of the armed forces in Germany as part of his overseas trip, a decision his spokesman said was made because the Democratic presidential candidate thought it would be inappropriate…

  • Today, Germany! Tomorrow, the World?

    The Inquirer has done it again. Their front page article about Obama’s Ich bin ein Obamanburg Gater! speech is not available at the Inquirer web site, which has this AP writetup. On today’s front page, though, is an earlier (apparently last night’s) version of this New York Times writeup, and all I wanted to do…

  • Without Lubrication

    In honor of Congressional restrictions on drilling for oil in America we have a new bumper sticker: Click on the image to order one or more bumper stickers. If you want to add the above image to a post, I explain how here. Thanks to Karl Egenberger of Envision Design/ Plum Creative Associates who did…

  • Streaming High Def Video

    I just came across a site with streaming High Definition Videos. Vreel. It looks very good with my 720p monitor. It must be awesome at 1080. Of course besides the high def monitor you will need a broadband connection. H/T zbarlici Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • What are they really hiding?

    The Obama birth certificate truthers (discussed in these posts) have suffered a setback in light of the discovery of a birth notice in the August 1961 Honululu Advertiser. However, they’re apparently gearing up with new questions, like “Have you noticed that there are no photos of Obama as an infant?” Actually, I don’t usually spend…

  • Customer “support”

    One of the worst aspects of moving has been the inordinate amount of time I have spent on hold. Seriously. Precious hours have been wasted. For whatever reason, the large telephone and Internet companies hire either incompetent Americans or people in foreign countries to supply “customer support.” Things have reached the point where I am…

  • The Birth Certificate

    I haven’t been following the Obama birth certificate kerfluffle, but other people have been. Including a guy who who claims to be a forensic document examiner. Let me start with a little background: Barack Obama may be on a world tour surrounded by a fawning media, but Sunday an expert in electronic document forensics released…

  • Yes, it is socialism, and yes, it is happening here

    Simon’s post about forced change being wasteful was so good that I’m glad I haven’t had time to blog. However, the whole issue of the government forcing change on people is a pet peeve, and I recently read a horror story about New Jersey (where else?) legislation forcing local governments to provide “affordable housing”: Actually,…

  • What Is The Rush?

    Commenter Pastorius commenting on my article on Moore’s Law suggested I have a look at this article by Ray Kurzweil on the accelerating rate of the rate of change. …a serious assessment of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential. In exponential growth, we find that a key measurement such as computational…

  • No Moore?

    We are about to come to the end of an era. Moore’s law is coming up against fundamental limits. Right now the smallest transistors require hundreds to thousands of atoms. It will hard to get transistors much smaller than that. In addition as transistors get smaller than that, overall circuits actually get slower and require…

  • This Is Going To Hurt

    H/T Instapundit

  • Only right wing nuts believe in socialism

    I’m thinking that yesterday’s post on the use of the phrase “the elite” omitted an important word from the discussion. A word that for the most part we are not allowed to use in polite political discussions. The S word. Via Glenn Reynolds I saw a very telling graph showing who pays the taxes —…

  • Yael Naim

    An interview with Yael Naim. The Macbook Air ad which sparked my interest in Yael. And this little bit which got me looking into all the above: She doesn’t look Jewish.

  • If we can put a drill in the earth….

    If (like me) you find the clich&eacute “If we can put a man on the moon…” annoying, don’t miss Rand Simberg’s “Energy Independence: Shooting for the Moon“: The problem was that, as already noted, Apollo cost a lot of money. So much so that after landing only six crews, we flew the last mission thirty-six…

  • Who are they? Part IV

    In a column titled “Hard to define, harder to shake,” Inquirer columnist Karen Heller slams the blogosphere as a “courtesy free sewer,” while taking issue with the word “elite”: Connecticut is elite. New Jersey, with the highest median income in the country, is not. All these designations change when viewed from a national perspective. Then…

  • The digital birth certificate truthers

    I just received an email claiming that there is now “irrefutable, empirical evidence” that “Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery.” Please. Spare me. I know I’ve said it before, but this crap is playing right into Obama’s hands, and I think it’s exactly what he wants. (Like the “Obama is a secret Muslim” routine….) I’m…