Month: January 2013

  • Is newer necessarily better?

    Thinking I would “upgrade” the quality of my television viewing, I decided to replace my old, “outmoded” 30 inch flat screen HD CRT, and I bought a new 42″ LED HDTV. When I turned it on I thought I was going crazy. The picture was bigger, but blurrier. A lot blurrier. Jerkier too. And the…

  • We don’t need no stinkin’ warrants!

    Obviously believing that the 4th Amendment does not apply to them, the DEA is demanding access to patients’ supposedly “private” medical records: The Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to access private prescription records of patients in Oregon without a warrant, despite a state law forbidding it from doing so. The ACLU and its Oregon affiliate…

  • How Many Pot Smokers In America?

    Huffington Post has a graphic up showing about 2,980 metric tons of pot confiscated in 2009. Let us assume that the authorities get 10% of the traffic. So multiply that by 9 to get the total consumption. That gives 26,820 metric tons consumed. A metric ton is about 2,200 lbs. So that is roughly 59,000,000…

  • If our government derives its just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, how did we come to be ruled by an unelected librarian?

    When I saw this story linked by a Facebook friend — that in a few days it will be a federal crime to unlock your smartphone — I honestly thought it was a joke. Wrong. That’s right, starting this weekend it is illegal to unlock new phones to make them available on other carriers. I have deep…

  • Here Is What I Would Do

    There is an opinion piece about immigration that I made this comment to (in part as a response to other commenters): So let me see. We can not prevent smuggling of goods (neither could the USSR) but we can prevent the smuggling of people? “Conservatives” are insane. What would I do? Make it easier to…

  • Pigou vs. Pigout

    Glenn further advances his outstanding notion of a post-gov’t-employment tax, aka the “Reynolds Surtax“.  Some people, especially those with a lot to lose (e.g. gov’t officials, lobbyists, and those they regulate)  are going to call this a gimmick, but it’s really something that should be taken very seriously — when DC is the only non-fracking…

  • Must they condemn what they also subsidize?

    I’m sick as a dog and running a 101.3 fever with chills, so I haven’t been up to my normal energy levels, nor am I feeling as rational as I might like. But earlier my attention was drawn again to the so-called “obesity epidemic.” Yeah, it’s in quotes because although I may think that voluntary…

  • Banking On Bankers

  • “Emotions are what really count in this world.”

    I’d like to contrast two interesting statements about emotion. One is the above (from a left-wing policy wonk). The other is from a guy I respect, Glenn Reynolds: Resort to theatrical efforts at emotional blackmail is an admission that you have no intellectual arguments. True as that is, it certainly does not stop emotional blackmail,…

  • Afghanistan Politics

    Jack Rice – CIA. Jack Rice, at his core, is a story teller. As an award winning journalist and correspondent, he has chased stories around the world. He is an journalist, former CIA Officer and Nationally Syndicated Talk Show Host. McCoy – The Politics of Heroin Chiang Kai-shek and the Drug Warlords of the Golden…

  • Drumming

    I also liked this belly dancer and the little hitch move she does with her hips. And this one:

  • No Longer A Spectator Sport

    The second best way to protect yourself from gang violence is to end Prohibition.

  • Ban

    One side argues that banning “xxx” substance will eliminate all the negatives of that substance. The other side argues it will multiply them. The other side is correct. We have a one party state. Two factions. Inspired by this comment.

  • Is it possible to keep Google out of my life, or am I dreaming?

    Now that Google is officially in bed with government gun grabbers, I’m perplexed about what to do. I don’t want to support the company, and I would like to do anything possible to let them know about it. However, they are a Goliath, and I do not even rise to the level of a David…

  • Beer kills!

    It’s a documented fact. No really. Kenner Police say a man died inside a beer cooler at a convenient store on Airline Drive overnight, but no one knew he was there until they found his very cold body this morning. Earlier I said that this sounded cool to me, but now I’m thinking about serious…

  • I wanna be forever one! So where’s my teddy bear?

    Isn’t it weird the way one thing leads to another? I mean, I clicked on Glenn Reynolds’ link to an article about extending life to 800 years (which can already be done with yeast), and then that led me to a piece about monster teddy bears. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the guy…

  • I learn something every day

    And while I never heard of such a thing before, I now know that (at least according to Wikipedia) there is a term called “Microrape”: Characterized by predatory non-physical prurient communications with the intent to penetrate the victim’s emotional security on the basis of heteronormative impositions. I’m just curious how one might penetrate someone’s emotional…

  • Speaking of “the easy availability of foolish laws”…

    Funny thing that in a recent post about inane laws I would say that I “wish we could do something about the easy availability of foolish laws” only to see one of the silliest laws I have yet to see proposed: Rep. Mitch Greenlick, from Portland, is sponsoring a bill that makes cigarettes a Schedule III controlled substance,…

  • Inequality and Iniquity

    Great article here on “A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity” by Luigi Zingales,  esp the Pigouvian angle. It was also heartening to read the other day that some at the Fed are arguing for the end of TBTF — the revolving door between regulators and regulated has gotten so…

  • Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the vilest of us all?

    There’s a bit of a debate going on over whether not hurling personal insults at people constitutes letting liberals dictate the terms of debate. Having lived in leftie college towns for most of my life, I know what life under the liberal thought police is like; hence I deliberately ran for office as a Republican…