Month: December 2009

Over the years, many readers have caught me committing one or another of my innumerable errors — whether in spelling, grammar, getting names and dates wrong, or various combinations thereof. While I usually appreciate being corrected, what sometimes annoys me is when someone becomes indignant over an error having little or nothing to do with…

President Obama’s Oslo acceptance speech has drawn surprising praise from conservatives (including Sarah Palin), and I have to say that I too liked what he said about the use of force being “not only necessary but morally justified.” It’s already being called the “Obama Doctrine” – a notion that foreign policy is a struggle of…

President Barack Obama has told the Republicans to “stop trying to frighten the American people.” Surely he jests. There are a lot of things that might be said about the Republicans, but right now they are no position to frighten the American people. They couldn’t frighten their way out of a paper bag. This is…

Why on earth anyone would want to see such a thing, I don’t know. But it’s some sort of tradition in certain parts of the blogosphere, so this morning I took a picture which is not only The View From My Window, it also doubles as My View of Global Warming. Yes, it was 13…

Can anyone tell me what the hell is going on with Barack Obama? I mean, when he was in Saudi Arabia and Japan, he bowed obsequiously before the monarchs, yet in Norway — which honored him with an undeserved Nobel Prize — he has snubbed the the king, and nearly everyone else over there. Naturally,…

In a case which I think epitomizes what is wrong with today’s tort system, the daughter of a woman killed in an accident caused by a driver talking on a cell phone has sued Samsung (the phone manufacturer) and the wireless provider. She hopes to prove that the companies should have foreseen the dangers and…

WARNING: Some of these videos might not be safe for work. (Depends on how anthropomorphic your boss is.) Did you know that YouTube was alleged to have censored robot sex? I didn’t, and I find myself a bit perturbed, not only because the video in question is pretty amusing, but as far as I am…

The Washington Examiner looks at the EPA’s so-called “Endangerment Ruling” and concludes that “Obama has launched a thermonuclear warhead aimed directly at the very heart of congressional authority“: The EPA Endangerment Ruling assigns to the agency authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions not included under that law’s purview. Indeed, when the original…

As M. Simon’s post on magick reminded me of the practical impediments to willing something to happen (or not), my thoughts drifted back to that marvelous demonstration of magical impotence in 1967, during which the Pentagon failed to levitate as the demonstrators hoped. And as my thoughts further, um, drifted to the recent snow, I…

Unfortunately, I have no friends beyond the visible universe with which to test the quantum “many-worlds” interpretation of relativity’s claims of possible time travel… but I’m still pretty sure decoherence is irreversible. So even if you could use a distant (~200B LY) intermediary to, say, pass yourself tomorrow’s lottery numbers via quantum entanglement and the…

I. “DEFINITION.” MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons”, pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations” — these sentences — in the “magical language” i.e. that which…

According to a GOP senate aide, the Senate health care bill is dangerously close to passing. Reid suggested Monday that the Senate endgame may be near. “We’re there,” he reportedly said. A Senate GOP aide said, “At the beginning of this debate the Democrats were 3 to 4 votes shy of passing this bill. They…

Yep. Not only have we had the leak of the CRU Data. We now have in addition a big leak from the Copenhagen Climate Summit. It seems as if Clancy or some one like him has decided to sing. Maybe a lot of Clancys. The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing…

Buffalo Springfield Cross Posted at Power and Control

This post by Steven den Beste helps explain why it is that some people — those driven by teleological thinking — tend to be far more intolerant of disagreement than others. Teleologists inherently don’t believe in unintended side effects when it comes to implementing their idealistic policies. Obviously it should be possible to provide free…

I was and remain a big fan of Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom. Oh, Fareed, why hast thou forsaken facts? He seemed to be implying that the struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan were not the crucial path to America’s long-term security. He explained that challenges at home — economic growth, technological innovation, education reform…

Maybe I don’t pay as much attention to these things as I should, but until I clicked on Glenn Reynolds link, I hadn’t really heard of “Spanx” (which sounds vaguely sexual as well as vaguely violent, in a sexual sort of way) — and thus never considered whether the product might mean the end of…

The fate of the Senate healthcare bill may well depend on today’s vote on an anti-abortion amendment: A pep talk by President Obama wasn’t enough to give Senate Democrats the votes they needed to pass a massive health care overhaul, but a Monday vote on abortion funding could determine whether the legislation survives. Senate Majority…

Those who worry about the Tenth Amendment should sink their teeth into this long and disturbing look at the birth of the animal disease regulation industry. Many Americans became convinced that only the federal government could enforce the collective action needed for success. Preventing the spread of contagious diseases required creating an authority with the…

Today is the 68th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — a horrible event which should always be remembered, and which always has been annually commemorated by whatever president has occupied the Oval Office. I haven’t read news reports or other blog entries about whether the current occupant plans to do anything or…