Month: August 2012

  • Reptilian humanoids taking over? Please, someone tell me this is not happening!

    This post started out as an email to Sarah, but the more I thought about the implications, the more I thought I should share it on the blog instead. A friend informed me about a fascinating conspiracy theory I had never heard of before, and what I read reminded me that if I want to stay…

  • Make my day you guys

    This is not live blogging, but Marco Rubio’s speech at the GOP convention is just blowing me away. He is saying what needs to be said and in a way that few say it, and I liked hearing him speak in Spanish. He is passionately, personally articulate in a way that inspires, especially about American…

  • Ask Not For Whom The Electric Pen Scratches

    Whoa, hey, come on guys, it’s not like they were campaign bundlers or something. Can you really expect our historically awesome President to personally sign so many letters? He has an incredibly busy schedule of golf and fundraising! He’s important! The grieving families of our soldiers should just be happy (proud, even) that they got…

  • When tiny magnets are outlawed, only outlaws will have tiny magnets

    An ominous development I heard about today is a perfect example of the dynamics of power addiction that M. Simon mentioned in his latest post. In case you hadn’t heard, the federal government is trying to ban the sale of certain tiny magnets — not to children (they’ve already done that), but to adults. The…

  • The Most Dangerous Addiction

    “I deplore brutality”, he said. “It’s not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize the mistreatment is a deliberate attack…

  • Hi neighbor!

    I was tortured with this earlier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzXaFbxDcM Honestly, until tonight I hadn’t known such fiendishness existed.

  • Engine Engineering

    I just saw this engine at an electronics magazine site. Not the magazine that hosts my blog. But good is good. Note that JP8 is more or less diesel fuel. And check of the size of that 5KW generator. And 2HP per pound? That is very good. I’d like to see one running with a…

  • Let Them Starve

    Spengler has a new post up at Asia Times on the new government in Egypt. The policy of the new government is starvation. Egypt spends roughly US$25 billion a year on fuel, and the present subsidy of 95.5 Egyptian pounds is a life-and-death matter for the Egyptian poor. According to the Wall Street Journal on…

  • Happy Birthday Glenn Reynolds!

    Yes, I just checked and today is Glenn Reynolds‘ birthday. It’s going on ten years now that I’ve been a daily blogger. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. (Which is to be expected, because the blog is a chronicle of my life.) But the important thing is that I get to say whatever…

  • Is it immoral to eat perfectly edible scientists?

    From a friend, here’s some food for thought. Of course, by calling someone’s thoughts and ideas “food,” right there I used one of those sneaky expressions intended to both simplify and persuade. Instead of saying “I read and liked this article, and I think you should read it too, because you would benefit from it,”…

  • Don’t read this post

    No seriously. Watch this instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gx41asPdsc&feature=g-all-u It may give you a better idea of what’s at stake in the upcoming election. The speaker — Bruce Herschensohn — has more foreign policy experience than anyone I know of alive today. Unlike most people who shoot off their mouths, he knows what he is talking about.

  • My modest contribution to today’s “disturbance”

    It saw sweltering today, but in spite of the heat, I decided to go see Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan at a rally in Commerce, Michigan. It’s about 40 minutes away, but I’m not a “RAH RAH” type, and I normally wouldn’t have gone, but when I learned that the Democrats were having an “email…

  • A pointless hollow point

    A friend sent me a link to yet another conspiracy-mongering InfoWars article linked by Drudge, claiming that the purchase of 174,000 hollow point bullets by the Social Security Administration constitutes an ominous preparation for “unrest.” Social Security Administration To Purchase 174 Thousand Rounds Of Hollow Point Bullets Preparing for civil unrest? Ammunition to be delivered…

  • Defending a tiny child, and talking back to Goliath

    As a longtime Wolverine fan, I feel particularly obligated to respond to a news item about an Oklahoma kindergartner who has been banned from wearing a University of Michigan T-shirt toschool. It’s not as if the school dress code banned all T-shirts, which might be understandable.Rather, the Michigan T-shirt ban reflects the official dress code…

  • Phyllis Diller, 1917-2012

    I am so sorry to see that Phyllis Diller has died. She was a comic genius. Ms. Diller, who became famous for telling jokes that mocked her odd looks, her aversion to housekeeping and a husband she called Fang, was far from the first woman to do stand-up comedy. But she was one of the…

  • Worries about a “rape loophole” are anything but new

    While it has become a huge political debate, I was not surprised at all by Congressman Todd Akin’s remark about “legitimate rape.” [The remark] has prompted a rare moment of bipartisan unity as Americans of all political stripes ask: What in hell is “legitimate rape?” Not surprisingly Akin quickly issued a backtracking statement. In reviewing…

  • Perplexing Priorities

    Quick question. Does anyone know why it costs so much more to use the online usps.com “Print Shipping Labels” service than it does to take your item down to a physical post office? I am returning a small electronic item to Canada, and the Canadian postage label read $2.80. I wanted to simply send it…

  • Birds of a feather prey together

    Yesterday I made friends with a Cockatoo named Angel, who was so friendly that I thought she wanted to go home with me: And today I paid a visit to the Raptor Center to look at my friends there. They have a Barn Owl (Tyto alba) which I have inappropriately given the inappropriate name of…

  • The silence of my caterpillar

    Earlier I caught one of these guys chomping on my tomatoes: I had noticed some of the stems and tops had been chewed off, but I blamed the squirrels which have plagued me. Yet at the same time, this didn’t seem like squirrel behavior; even if they had chewed on the tops of the plants,…

  • Death Or Ice Cream

    This is not a post about writing, but it is a post about reading – or a post about fiction and reality, humanity and myth. There is a way in which fiction forms our mind.  Shakespeare has, after all, been accused of inventing modern men with modern emotions.  Then, through the immense popularity of is…