Month: December 2009

  • The Birtherism Of A Nation

    The latest left wing meme is that Sarah Palin is a Birther. (She is not, but based on some sympathetic statements she made in a radio interview, numerous leftists have declared that she is — including those who subscribe to a crackpot theory of their own known as “Trig Birtherism.”) From “Is Sarah Palin a…

  • An issue I will not write about

    What a coincidence. A lot of people have been writing about something I vowed never to write about, as M. Simon Dave just did. Sean Kinsell “wasn’t going to post about it” but he finally did, saying that, Today, you can’t read any blog anywhere, it seems, without running into a discussion of [it]. I…

  • What The Hell Happened To Charles Johnson?

    Not that anyone knows, I just thought I should ask. UPDATE: I mean, wow.

  • Shakespeare 1, Monkeys 0

    …The theory is flawed. After one month – admittedly not an “infinite” amount of time – the monkeys had partially destroyed the machine, used it as a lavatory, and mostly typed the letter “s”. NOTE: On a related subject, my own blogging may be light due to similar issues.

  • “Societal hypocrisy.” A sin more sinful than sin itself!

    Via Glenn Reynolds, I learned that a woman named Joy Behar thinks that whether Tiger Woods is or is not a hypocrite depends not on whether he failed to uphold the values in which he believes, but whether or not he is “right wing.” “The “View’s” Behar: If Tiger Was A Right-Winger He Would Be…

  • “The innocent have nothing to fear…”

    Edward Lawson (who regular readers may recall is a dear old friend) was arrested not long ago in Newark, New Jersey for basically nothing. (A lot of manufactured, trumped up charges.) He discusses what happened here: EDWARD LAWSON from Picture America on Vimeo. For no reason that I can determine other than his appearance and…

  • “Heavage” and the urge to heave

    Maybe I’m too traditional, but men’s plunging necklines (exhibited in order to display what the fashionists call “heavage”) is something I can do without. Man cleavage — plunging necklines slit open to reveal chest hair, pectoral muscles, maybe more — is back. Until recently, male d&eacutecolletage was an androgynous fashion affectation limited mainly to sporadic…

  • The Current State Of Fusion

    Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log has the latest broad look at the state of Fusion. He discusses the state of laser fusion. The the $3.5 billion American National Ignition Facility seems to be doing well. But what excites me is that he has some indirect news on The Polywell Fusion Reactor experiments. The dark horse…

  • Massive International Scientific Fraud

    Auric Goldfinger? Not this time Mr. Bond. This time it is Climategate. Ah. Yes. Science Adviser to the President, John Holdren is a Climate Playah. Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding as “Climategate”. Obama Science Czar John…

  • Using budget cuts as a form of regimentation?

    Earlier I saw signs hanging on chains which blocked a brand new, otherwise perfectly passable sidewalk on the University of Michigan campus. The signs proclaimed “SIDEWALK CLOSED. NO WINTER MAINTENANCE” and yet there was absolutely no indication that any maintenance was needed. The only thing that’s changed is that the temperature has dropped into the…

  • More word hell

    Here’s a guy who speaks fake Chinese, fake French, fake Italian, fake Russian, fake Spanish, fake German and fake Japanese, in order to invite fellow fakers to reply by speaking in fake English. A tall order, but for those who wonder what our language sounds like to those who don’t speak it, here’s one girl…

  • Words are hell!

    Earlier I stumbled across the phrase “New York hostess” in a news article, and as I tend to be hypervigilant about sneaky new trends in language, I wondered precisely what the term meant. The hostess in question is a nightclub hostess named Rachel Uchitel. While “hostess” is not defined, it would see that it is…

  • Cracking down on cowards who avoid having their lives saved

    One of the things I most like about Michigan is that it’s a relatively car-friendly state. The speed limit is 70, which means that you can comfortably do 75 without having to worry about the cops. This touches on one of my pet annoyances about life on the East Coast — and I recently saw…

  • Something Is Rotten In Denmark

    And what is that something that is rotten in Denmark? Climate data? Nope. (although that is a likely candidate). The rot stems from the CO2 trade. Denmark is the centre of a comprehensive tax scam involving CO2 quotas, in which the cheats exploit a so-called ‘VAT carrousel’, reports Ekstra Bladet newspaper. Police and authorities in…

  • Fish gender is confusing, and gender confusion is fishy!

    I’ve been keeping aquarium fish for years, and I have long known that fish gender is nowhere near as starkly defined and inflexible as it is in higher animals. It has long been known that many species of fish can and do switch gender, sometimes routinely. The process is not well understood, though. Earlier Glenn…

  • ITER Back To The Drawing Board

    The ITER fusion test reactor project is getting a schedule review [pdf] because the project is seriously out of whack. The scientific and engineering team building the ITER fusion reactor failed to win an expected endorsement from the project’s governing council last week. The council, which represents the seven international partners in the project–China, the…

  • Where’s my Christmas stimulus?

    Is everyone ready for the Christmas season? I’m not. However, Sean Kinsell got me in the mood with this quote from Virginia Postrel on buying Christmas gifts: The problem of buying good presents for other people, even people you supposedly know well, illustrates that old familiar Hayekian concept, the knowledge problem. If you can’t even…

  • What To Do?

    I was reading the other day an article about the Angry Middle. Here is something I found in the article that rings true: It’s not a resurgent right wing that should trouble Obama’s party. Indeed, the stronger the right’s role in shaping the Republican message, the harder it will be for middle-of-the-road voters to use…