Month: February 2012
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I’m Entitled To A Correction
Just for Leap Day let me set the record straight. I wrote Obama Says: Take Me Seriously. It is misattributed to Dave at the post and here. Corrected in the comments though. I blame it on leaping bits. Some of which died in the leap over the cliff. And were buried in a suitable place…
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Another Leap Year, another perverted and demonic Four Year Plan?
Happy Leap Year Day! You know you’re getting a little long in the tooth as a blogger when it’s your third consecutive bout of Leap Year Day blogging, but archives are archives, and I thought I would celebrate Leap Year Day by looking at the previous two Classical Values Leap Year Days, and maybe engage…
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Married to Mayhem
Tyler Cowen notes the odd treatment of Arab dictators’ wives, in this instance Asma Assad. Hey, it’s all fun and shopping until her husband starts shelling Homs. Maybe a reality show? Unfortunately, as we’re seeing in Libya, Egypt, etc., the area’s pathology and Obama’s apathy are such that the revolutions in the Mideast are not…
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Oddities
Here’s an interesting exit poll from the MI primary: Santurom wins decisively among those who strongly support the Tea Party… and those who strongly oppose the Tea Party. The explanation, of course, is that Santorum is winning self-described Democrats by 3:1. Romney is up by 4.4% with 63% in, so it looks like he’s going…
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Vote against the Rick Santorum – Michael Moore axis of weasel!
It’s election day here in Michigan, and while I have not officially endorsed anyone, this headline reminded me who NOT to vote for: Santorum robocall makes appeal to Michigan’s Democrats for votes Democrat chicanery is one thing (anyone who doubts for one moment that there is a well-orchestrated Democrats for Santorum effort should read this) but…
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Delusions Of Control
Delusions of control depend on a system operating with regularity – linear systems. The trouble is that large systems are only linear within a range and small perturbations can become amplified due to local positive feedback. Which is to say that noise is always a problem. But noise contains information and if you suppress it…
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Hate is hate, except when it’s “friendly”!
In the gym the other day, I felt a bit uncomfortable because two men nearby were using the n-word. That ugly and “forbidden” word was being freely used by one man “against” the other, although not in a hostile manner. I probably shouldn’t have been concerned, because these two men were clearly friends and the fact…
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Shoring up the lines?
Earlier I had a shocking (to me) thought. I am now wondering whether the OWS movement served to disrupt what had been the Tea Party’s burgeoning cross-cultural appeal. As I have noted in old and tedious posts, there is a great deal of overlap between class war and culture war. So much so that the distinctions…
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Melting the ice is nice
About six minutes into this rather slow song, the aging Jerry Garcia (who had had innumerable meltdowns and about a year to live) finally manages to persuade himself to open up, and he plays his guitar poignantly and will soulful brilliance. Just another of many such nights, but he made it count. The oddest thing…
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Digging It
Willis Eschenbach has a beautiful post up about the death of a crazy man. A man of the streets who lived life on his own terms. You should read the whole thing. Let me start you off with his opening. I’ve had the privilege of living in a wide variety of countries and societies. And…
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Bleating Against Amazon
This is the part of this blog where Sarah takes off the gloves, turns the picture of Heinlein to the wall* so he won’t be shocked by what she’s about to say, and then speaks in the way she learned when fishwives argued near her. You’ve been warned. There is a lot to be said…
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The Party Platform
What platform do both parties run under? “We know how to run your life better than those other guys.” Well. Really. No you don’t.
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It’s not funny! It’s hysterical!
It has become so easy to create hysteria that sometimes I worry that humor itself is endangered, to say nothing of free speech. We’ve all heard the apocryphal story about the man who was arrested in an airport because he saw a friend named Jack and yelled “HI JACK!” The moral lesson was never to…
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No Expectations
When I was a road warrior this was my traveling song. Yeah. “Put me on a plane.”
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Who is responsible?
An understandably distraught mother is suing the University of California and the Berkeley Student Cooperative because her son (who rented a room in a coop) had a heart attack and suffered brain damage after taking drugs: The mother of a UC Berkeley student left severely brain-damaged in 2010 after a drug overdose at a campus…
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“Courageous” attacks on underwear fall short
This is America, right? And in America, we have the absolute right under the First Amendment to make fun of anyone we want, including Christians, Jews, Atheists, Mormons, Scientologists, and Muslims. (Etc.) Or am I wrong? …the worrying thing is what the judge (Mark Martin) seems to have said at the trial, based on what appears to…
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“We must have done the right thing — look how far you’ve come!”
M. Simon had a rather brilliant post about PTSD the other day, and rather than leave a comment I thought a new post was in order. The topic is abused children: Revolutionaries and outlaws have a thing in common. They tend to be abused children. They have in common a grievance against a civilization that…
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My gain, with no pain!
As I don’t have anything to say that I haven’t said before about the R race (and anything I say might make things worse), I thought I would review a product I consider excellent. A few weeks ago, Glenn Reynolds noted that Amazon was offering “bestsellers in running shoes.” That got my attention, because I have…
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With respect to Satan
What is religion? That sounds like a stupid question, but the word is used so much and so often that its meaning seems to be taken for granted. I say this because last night I wrote a flippant post titled “Entertaining Satanic thoughts” and this morning I am more baffled than entertained. It’s like, whether…
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Entertaining Satanic thoughts
I’ve been thinking about who to endorse for president. Considering that “America is Satan,” and considering that “a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan,” it might be a no-brainer. I have no idea what would possess me to have such thoughts suddenly and without warning pop into my evil mind… Perhaps I watched…