Month: May 2013

Ever wonder why there is such a major push to both militarize the police, and simultaneously demilitarize — even disarm — the military? I think Bill Quick may have touched on the answer. Soldiers expect that they may have to kill enemies of the nation. Cops expect that they may have to kill civilian criminals. They…

Remember the cacophony in 2011 when most of the country’s leading liberals — including Vice President Joe Biden — were loudly calling Tea Party supporters “terrorists.” I do, and I posted about it several times, because I think it is the height of irresponsibility to accuse people of terrorism simply because they think the government…

Short ARM Holdings is the title of an article at Seeking Alpha. It is about ARM computers. What did you think it was about? 😉

Am I alone in finding it extremely annoying to still be forced to use fax technology in this day and age? I have found that often when I have to have dealings with entrenched bureaucracies (typically government or academia), they will absolutely NOT accept emailed documents. Even simple letters; if it contains anything that has…

I enjoyed reading this complaint from a gay man who is sick of being bitch-slapped by gay activists: The rush to embrace and console every gay man who comes out is infantilizing and condescending—but it’s a script written and promoted by GLAAD and reinforced by a sanctimonious establishment of gay men that rewards those who play…

Using the procedures discussed here and here (which I skeptically suspected might be Internet disinformation), I just used a welder to zap the “dead” (meaning no longer chargeable with the charging unit) battery packs for my rechargeable cordless drill by injecting direct current at high amperage. To my utter amazement, this immediately brought a battery…

White Rabbit on a Theremin and should you care to get technical Theremin Tech. I had a few ideas of my own about mixers, VCAs and the like. Which got me looking and following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. With the words as sung by Grace.

Failing to translate from English to Spanish is being called discrimination in a lawsuit. Ribota said she was injured at work because she couldn’t read a warning sign that was in English. “If I could speak English I wouldn’t have the problems that exist,” said Ribota. Last week 12 custodians from the Auraria Campus filed…

After a couple decades of near-zero growth, Japan finally elected a government that promised to get the hell out of the so-called “liquidity trap” (low growth coupled with low interest rates) by raising the inflation target from 1% to 2%.  Did it work?  Well… Lars Christensen: This is yet another very strong prove that monetary…

Right now I am on the road in Illinois, so I won’t have much time for posting. But earlier (as I tried to enjoy a cup of coffee at a local motel), my relative tranquility was suddenly interrupted by a man who walked into the hotel’s free continental breakfast area in the middle of highly…

I was intrigued to read (in Reason) about “The GOP Civil War Over Libertarianism” “This battle for the soul of the Republican Party [is] between people who are actually interested in cutting the size of government and…an establishment that is more scared,” says Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch. “I think, right now, this is…

As if more evidence were needed that the public school system is dysfunctional beyond belief, I read that two school boys were suspended for pretending pencils were guns: Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with…

The Daily Mail (UK) has an article up about endocannabinoids. Cannabis-like chemical could help keep couch potatoes slim. The break out of “endocannabinoid” into major publications has begun. And the Brits are ahead in the race.

I have been doing more thinking about the article in the local paper about the 4:20 meeting of the local chapter of NORML/Americans For Safe Access recounted at Cannabis talk here will lighten up sooner or later. The newspaper article galled me because I think that it perpetuates stoner stereotypes in its subtext. A stereotype…

I did the very first interview with a LEAP Officer which can be found at Interview With A Police Officer. Also at Winds of Change. At 5:39 into the video there is a discussion of the corrupting influence of the War On Drugs On Police. Radley Balko also discusses that at Boston And Militarism: The…

Reading this gave me a wry chuckle: all digital communications – meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like – are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is. What about the Fourth Amendment, you ask? That’s long…

From NASA Video Tech Briefs NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) launched in February 2010 with the goal of understanding the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth, focusing on measurements of the interior of the Sun, the Sun’s magnetic field, the hot plasma of the solar corona, and the irradiance that creates the…

Los Angeles City Council member Bill Rosendahl: “I thanked God… …medical marijuana has saved my life.” I don’t understand why the endocannabinoid system isn’t better appreciated. NIH: Endocannabinoids in the immune system and cancer. Modulation of the endocannabinoid system interferes with cancer cell proliferation either by inhibiting mitogenic autocrine/paracrine loops or by directly inducing apoptosis….…

Made a 12 inch long steel airplane from rough plans, to which I added a scaled, nine cylinder rotary engine I designed from tiny hardware parts. Behind the engine is a clock mechanism. (As you can see, the photo was taken at a little after 9:30.) The second hand is the propeller.  The landing gear…

An uncle of the Boston bombers, Ruslan Tsarni, was married to the daughter of Graham Fuller. From the link: He served 20 years as an operations officer in the CIA. Assignments include postings in: Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong.[10] In 1982, the CIA appointed him National Intelligence Officer for…