Month: July 2011

Dave has an outstanding post up dealing with the drug legalization question. I’m always interested in the comments as a very rough gauge of popular sentiment. A legalization fear I see a lot these days is based on “if we leave those people alone what will they do?” Of course the question started gaining a…

I have been alerted to a social problem. Not a very severe one. But it has IMO a relatively simple technical solution. So I’m designing. I expect to be done in about two or three more weeks including schematics and board layouts. When it is done I’m going to announce it and try to raise…

Today I drove 905 miles from Los Angeles to Santa Rosa, New Mexico. The drive took over 14 hours and I’m beat. A couple of pictures from the road. Rolling through Albuquerque at dusk: And a full moon bouncing with the night traffic. Once things look like that, it’s time to sleep. I’m sure I…

So, I’ve been following the debt-limit debate fairly closely, especially at Megan’s, and I’m struck by two claims that have virtually no basis in reality but have  somehow achieved a strange ubiquity. First is the notion that reaching the debt limit means default.  In fact, not only are revenues are about ten times interest payments,…

James Taranto, one of the web’s best writers and clearest thinkers, on drug legalization: Since we live in the real world and not Libertarianland, it’s unreasonable to think that legalization of drugs would not result in at least some of the sort of government expansion of the sort Greenwald desires. Thus we continue to lean…

Obama’s down 8 to a generic Republican …among registered voters.  He’s down 10 among indepenents, so he’s probably down ~12 among likelies.  Wow. That’s a lot of ground to make up while the economy slips into recession under the weight of his Keynesian/statist policy failures.  I’m not sure he even understands the effect of PPACA, stricter enviromental…

I’m barely able to keep track of the news while on the road, but as usual it isn’t good. Major jockeying over the budget, not much inspiration coming from any of the GOP candidates (although this report seems like good news), a looming “Carmageddon” this weekend (which I will try to avoid), and at home…

Let’s be realistic:  contra Michael Tomasky, Michele Bachmann can’t possibly be elected President of the United States. She doesn’t pal around with terrorists, have a racist pastor as her spiritual adviser, a card-carrying Communist as her mentor, an illegal immigrant aunt, a property she purchased with the help of a convicted felon political fixer, or…

Since the readers here have been so helpful with advice, I wondered whether anyone has any experience with keeping raccoons away from fish ponds. Coco seems to have been sleeping on the job, and a raccoon ran amok recently. I know you can cover the whole pond with half inch hardware cloth, but that kind…

One of the most difficult aspects of blogging on the road (typically from cafes with WiFi) is GLARE! Right now I am having trouble seeing my screen at all, much less reading what’s on it. Unless you score an indoor seat, the sunlight makes seeing a laptop screen nearly impossible. Even in the shade, because…

I have about ten minutes to be online at an Internet cafe this morning, which does not allow for much analysis.  However, I did see this lttle critter yesterday, and I was overcome by its pathos and angst. Almost seems it wants to be alive in spite of the obvious (often monstrous) realities which that…

I’m pretty sure Glenn suggested the 50% surtax on people leaving gov’t for the private sector at least partly in jest, but the more I think about the idea the more it seems to deserve serious consideration. There is a huge problem in Washington with regulatory capture; it affects everything from Fannie and Freddie to…

As it happens, right now I am over 2400 miles away from home. Not much to say, but here’s a picture I took alongside the road: And here I am with “California Dog”:   And that’s all the time I have for laptop bloging.

Instapundit has a bit up by a nuclear “expert” who says that Going Nuclear Is Safe and Right: Michigan Professor. If you follow the link to the original article, you will find video and text. In the video the “expert” says that shutting down the nuclear industry in Germany, Italy and Switzerland is a very…

Sometimes as a parent, you have to take a step back and wonder “Did I cause this?  What caused this?  And… if the world finds out… will they surround the house and throw stones through the windows?” One of these moments was when I found out my older son was doing a comic called Ninja…

Iowahawk tweeted the POTUS during the town hall, but responses were not forthcoming. Sample queries: Let’s say instead of winning the future, we end up in a tie. Do we then go to sudden death overtime? Would you get tougher with Iran if you knew they were working with Scott Walker? My own questions of…

“ETEC” is one of those wonderful sounding acronyms they use to describe a well-funded Atlanta Public School reform program. Atlanta Public Schools and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $10 million investment in the next phase of the district’s 10-year-old school reform program – the Effective Teacher in Every Classroom (ETEC) Initiative. The…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I saw Michael Barone’s analysis of a Sixth Circuit decision overturning Michigan’s Civil Rights Initiative: It’s racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination. That’s the bottom line of a decision issued Friday, just before the Fourth of July weekend, by the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The case was…

The bounty on dopers has reached such incredible heights that the Drug Warriors are now killing old men for operating funds. The invaders who murdered Hampton, Virginia resident William Cooper swiped about $900 in cash. They seized his gun collection. They took the Lexus from his driveway. By some oversight they neglected to extract the…

I don’t know how many of you know I’ve been nominated/a finalist for half a dozen awards or so over my career.  My very first book was a finalist for the Mythopoeic, and Soul of Fire AND A Death In Gascony were finalists for a Colorado Book Award. This is why I didn’t get too excited…