Month: October 2011

Yep. The above gentlemen have started a computer chip company. GreenArrays. And you thought making chips was a young man’s game? It is true the young guys can work harder. But old guys can work smarter. And with enough coffee, on occasion they can work just as hard. The chip company is more than old…

Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia says the drug laws were a mistake. “It was a great mistake to put routine drug offenses into the federal courts,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal went on to report Scalia’s belief that the laws forced Congress to enlarge the federal court system, and…

What is racism? The above question is virtually unanswerable, because racism has become more of a political term than a racial term. It has joined a whole host of words which have lost their original meaning and taken on political meanings that often defy basic logic.  In two earlier posts I struggled over which of the…

I don’t know why, but dumb ideas always seem to start in California and spread elsewhere. The latest is a demand that San Francisco restaurant patrons pay a mandatory 25% tip: SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF/99.7 Now) – It’s a question many of us ask when we go out to a restaurant. “How much should I tip?”…

We don’t usually do this sort of thing around here. You will note there is no donation button anywhere. I’m going to add one temporarily because I could use some help with a project. Think of this as sort of a kick starter for something that could prove useful in fairly short order. ====== As…

As Moe Lane documented in August, the DEA (the front line outfit in the War on Drugs) is a major partner in the “Fast and Furious” scandal, and wants to avoid at all costs being the fall guy: It would appear that the DEA does not want to be the fall guy in Operation Fast…

A commenter at my post

Glenn Greenwald is having a look at Steve Jobs and how illegal drugs ruined his life. It’s fascinating to juxtapose America’s reverence for Steve Jobs’ accomplishments and its draconian drug policy with this, from the New York Times‘ obituary of Jobs: [Jobs] told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three…

Now that Herman Cain has moved into the number two position, I thought I would try to ascertain his position on the War on Drugs. From an Atlantic interview: So what if the root cause is the demand for drugs here in the United States? If the root cause is demand in the United States,…

If they are to win in 2012, Republicans are going to need all the help they can get. Which is why I like the Occupy Wall Street protests. These utterly ridiculous and outrageous people — who in a fit of comical hubris are calling themselves “the 99%” — have even managed to generate a decidedly unsympathetic…

I got an e-mail today from some political organization complaining about the Solyndra deal in these terms. Start with labor costs. Thanks to the influence of labor unions, Solyndra paid its employees an average of about $100,000 per year. In China, a salary of $100,000 is unheard of. Most factory workers get paid about $.80…

Speaking of stepping in it, I would not want to do so wearing these: There is a raging controversy over these uglier-than-crocs shoes (which remind me of a Halloween monster outfit), but I am seeing them worn everywhere in Ann Arbor, and sales have increased tenfold in the past year. Hey, as long as I…

I don’t normally discuss my phobias in this blog, as such discussions usually strike me as self-centered and boring. But in a local park the other day, something happened which has not only inconvenienced me, but grossed me out by activating a phobia I cannot easily control. What happened was that while wearing my running…

I see by this statement that the private pot operations in California are seriously cutting into drug cartel profits. No wonder they needed a Haag to send the message. That is so ironic on so many levels. It is the government that keeps the real profiteers in business. Shouldn’t she be inspecting chopped liver or…

At about 1345z on 8 Oct 2011 my GA144 board booted. I’m going to have a beer and a nap and start in on the software after a good rest. Cross Posted at Power and Control

I realize my posts are few and far between these days compared to what they have been, but I’m utterly delighted, tickled pink, happier than a clam, etc. to see that Glenn Reynolds has interviewed Gary Johnson. The title is “A Libertarian Moment in the GOP? Gov. Gary Johnson On the Politics of the 2012 Election.”…

The small government party is at it again. The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) — even if the planned activities are…

Most of the time when I look at the polls to see how the various Republican presidential candidates are doing, I am trying to get a handle on which one seems to have the best statistical chance to beat Obama. That continues to be Mitt Romney, which really isn’t surprising. Today I decided to look…

I’m putting together a work bench to do experiments on the GA 144 processor. I dug my oscilloscope out of (warm, dry) storage and powered it up for about an hour. Everything was fine at the beginning and then I hear a crackling and smoke is pouring out of the unit. And you know how…

You’ve all heard about the current fuss. By definition, the top corporations in the Fortune 500 would be the epitome of evil, right? Especially, such malefactors of great wealth as number 35 on the list? So why are all these clueless Americans mourning the death of a key major mover and shaker in an evil world…