Month: September 2012

Reading this made me not sure whether to laugh or cry: Knowing her legal position was unsound, and that traditional forms of law could not constitutionally be used to suppress critical examination of religion, Secretary Clinton further explained the administration’s commitment “to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t…

Fouad Ajami (senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution) looks at a vexing question:Why is the Muslim world so easily offended? It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled. It is inside those fortresses, the gullible…

First came the apologies. And now comes the censorship: Obama administration officials said Thursday that they have asked YouTube to review the video [that reportedly set off the embassy attacks] and determine whether it violates the site’s terms of service, according to people close to the situation but not authorized to comment. I agree 200% with…

This looks really bad. It appears that once again, the U.S. was warned, and did nothing: The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal. American officials believe the attack was planned, but…

A few months ago, I bought a 750 GB hard drive on Craigslist from a total stranger for five bucks. He met me on a public street and handed it to me.  I took it home and (no surprise) it didn’t work. What the hell. But I noticed that a ferrite-core inductor on the PCB…

Reading the various reports on yesterday’s (or does yesterday’s date mean anything anymore?) savage murder of Americans including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, it is not at all clear to me that this was a spontaneous attack motivated by an obscure anti-Muslim video.  Some analysts think the attack was a well-planned terrorist strike, with the video…

Today is a beautiful day. Beautiful enough to double the poignancy of the memory of what happened 11 years ago on what had begun as a beautiful day. I will never forget my New York brother in law (who witnessed the 9/11 attack) said when I finally talked to him. “It was a really nice…

This country is in dreadful economic trouble and there is an election coming. One might think that the most important issue would be the economy and what to do about it, and voters would be thinking along these lines in order to decide which man is more likely to help boost the economy. But no.…

The government is soliciting. The only kind of fusion project that fills the requirements is a Polywell Fusion reactor. Hot damn.

Sorry to sound sarcastic, but who would have ever imagined that this might happen? Amid a medical and law enforcement crackdown on opiate prescription pill abuse, rising street prices and manufacturer reformulations that make pain pills harder to abuse, addicts are increasingly turning to heroin —cheaper, easier to obtain and extremely potent, police and drug…

Anyone who has ever kept any of the various parrots knows how emotional they can be, and how adept they are at infuriating people they don’t like. (I had one that used to bite me — hard — if he didn’t like my visitors.) If this story is correct (and I have no reason to…

I’m designing up a storm and working to create another computer revolution. If you have been missing me the feeling is mutual. But The Work Comes First.

I’m fascinated by R.E.M.’s claim that it somehow has a right to ideologically police the players of its music. The American rock band R.E.M. on Thursday demanded that Fox News “cease and desist” using their song “Losing My Religion” during its coverage of the Democratic National Convention. “R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion’ was used in the…

I loved this headline: Denialist Democrats The party of government refuses to even entertain the possibility that we can no longer afford it Such huffing and puffing by the Dems would be very entertaining comedy if it weren’t for the fact that if they are elected, they will hold the country’s “future” in their hands.…

Damn, I’m falling behind. More behind than I would like. A good friend asked me what I thought of Michelle Obama’s speech last night from a rhetorical point of view. Hey what the hell; I did major in Rhetoric, so I felt a tad guilty for not having watched the speech. I don’t like speeches…

There’s been a lot of uproar over Michelle Obama’s recent remarks about mandatory contraception coverage. Here’s what she said: “Because we passed health reform–health insurance–people need to understand that insurance companies will have to cover preventative care, things like contraception and cancer screenings, things like prenatal care, and they have to do it at no…

Here’s the drunk conservative hippie hater Jack Kerouac, interviewed on William F. Buckley’s show: His colleague William S. Burroughs attempts to explain what Kerouac had done, even though he had no idea he was doing it. “Absolutely unprecedented. There’s never been anything like it before. Penetrating the Arab countries, which was really a hermetic society.”…

Well this is totally weird. According to Lew Rockwell, Paul’s former chief of staff, agents first questioned the pilot’s credentials, then insisted the passengers and plane be searched for explosives. TSA agents did not cite any specific threat, but insinuated the Paul family was a threat to Mitt Romney, claiming the nominee “might be nearby.”…

I find it hard to believe anyone is actually stupid enough to believe in the implied neutrality of these “nonpartisan fact-checking articles.” They’re just MSM outlets, which generally go about 90% Dem, and who thinks they tried to balance GOP and Dem viewpoints in their fact-checking functions? Not likely. Those wishing to unseat Obama need…

Glenn Reynolds links a post about how hating whiteness and white self hatred are becoming standard lefty fare: By now, the increasingly creepy tendency of using the word “white” as a glib insult has become well established in left-wing commentary. […] Among progressives, low-rent snark like “frighteningly white” is required to prove you are part…