Month: December 2009

  • It took 40 years, but it’s crystal clear now

    Finally! The moment I’ve been waiting for since 1969. A friend emailed me a link to the supposedly “misheard” lyrics of Joe Cocker at Woodstock singing “With A Little Help From My Friends.” I’m not sure Joe’s lyrics were so much misheard as they were unintelligible and in need of interpretation, but whoever it was…

  • Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your doom!

    It’s beginning to look as if the end is imminent. The end of the decade, that is. While I don’t like the idea of a mandatory “recap” of important stories or events of the year (much less “the decade”), I think it’s probably worth pointing out that I am sick and tired of being doomed.…

  • What Darwin Never Knew

    What Darwin Never Knew is the link to the NOVA video. It is based on the following books: Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • Saving Money, Lives, and Human Civilization

    A couple gems from Glenn Reynolds. First, on finance: I decide how much money to save, and it goes into a money market account, automatically every month. The key is that this account is for money to go into, not to come out of, except for major purchases (like a house or car) or emergencies.…

  • From The IPCC

    The IPCC has some interesting things to say about water vapor and clouds: Recent studies reaffirm that the spread of climate sensitivity estimates among models arises primarily from inter-model differences in cloud feedbacks. The shortwave impact of changes in boundary-layer clouds, and to a lesser extent midlevel clouds, constitutes the largest contributor to inter-model differences…

  • Creative therapy that works!

    While I earlier ridiculed art therapy for terrorists, it was mainly because I don’t think it worked out as it might have been intended. But OTOH, I don’t believe in stifling people’s creativity. And after being inspired by a comment to an earlier post, I came up with a new idea which would allow the…

  • Getting high is bad, but getting high without consequences is evil!

    There’s an old saying that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and that was my reaction to the idea of a safe alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers: The synthetic alcohol, being developed from chemicals related to Valium, works like alcohol on nerves in the brain that provide a…

  • The total disintegration of nearly everything

    When I looked at the inner side of a pot lid the other day, I thought it looked like one of Salvador Dali’s rhinocerotic creations (a collection of which I featured in this particularly obsessive post). Dali thought that almost everything could be deconstructed and broken down into rhinoceros horn shapes, including human beings and…

  • No more art therapy! This time, we mean it!

    I’m glad to see (via Glenn Reynolds) that President Obama is calling for some sort of crackdown on Yemeni terrorists, because so far, things seem to have gone quite well for them. Yemen’s Foreign Minister has complained that there are hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives who may be planning attacks like the recent one, and that…

  • Terrorist rejected by Britain given visa to U.S.

    According to this report, terrorist suspect Umar Abdulmutallab was refused a new visa by Britain and placed on a watch list. Today Alan Johnson confirmed Abdulmutallab had been refused a new visa and placed on a watch list last May after applying for a bogus course. Mr Johnson said: “If you are on our watch…

  • Why punish the passengers? (A dumb question….)

    I hate to be repetitive, but reading things like the new TSA regulations really burns me up: 1. During flight, the aircraft operator must ensure that the following procedures are followed: 1. Passengers must remain in seats beginning 1 hour prior to arrival at destination. 2. Passenger access to carry-on baggage is prohibited beginning 1…

  • Work within the system! For change!

    Yesterday, Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano was reported as saying that the “system” worked. Today, she says the system failed: A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context. “Our system did not work in this instance,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “No one is…

  • egalitarianism for asses

    Gerald Posner examines the horrendous bureaucratic flaws that allowed Nigerian terrorist bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to waltz onto an incoming flight to the United States, and asks a question on many people’s minds: How did someone whose father, the recently retired chairman of Nigeria’s First Bank, apparently warned American embassy officials several weeks ago that…

  • Meanwhile in Ann Arbor…

    I hate to sound like one of those NIMBY types, but when I read about the terrorist who tried to blow up the incoming flight with a suicide bomb, I was not terribly happy to learn that it nearly happened right over Detroit. While I’m delighted that there are heroes like Jasper Schuringa (more here),…

  • Prostitution Services

    Andrew Cockburn, who is not a conservative politically, has a few words about what is really behind the global warming scam. You will note that the piece appears on Counter Punch which is not in any way shape or form associated with American Conservative thought. Shortly before the Copenhagen summit the proponents of anthropogenic –…

  • Happy Boxing Day!

    Christmas has kept me offline for the past few days, but now that I am back and finally have a couple of minutes, I thought I would show off some Christmas gifts. As you can see, Coco likes to be involved in the Boxing Day unboxing ceremony: The unwrapped gifts: From left to right, two…

  • Merry Christmas!

    I second this post! (What are you doing here?) Me, I’m back after a long drive to avoid driving in the snowstorm that’s on the way. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday.

  • A Free Market In Health Care

    From Ron Bailey, the best piece on health care I’ve seen all year: What would the results look like? It’s impossible to predict all the specifics, but here’s one partial vision of what markets might bring us. The typical American might purchase high-deductible insurance policies that cover expensive treatments for chronic diseases such as heart…

  • A Mathematical Education

    Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • Just Words

    There has been a discussion in the comment section of Watts Up With That about the use of tow vs toe in the phrase “Toe the line”. It means not exceeding bounds or limits. A commenter there said: Aaagh! I can’t stand it any longer! The phrase is “toeing the line” i.e. “not stepping over…