Month: October 2013

  • What The Tea Party Is

    This sums up perfectly what virtually no one on the left understands about the Tea Party. The feuding between business groups and Tea Party Republicans is just beginning. Trade associations and conservative groups that clashed bitterly over the government shutdown and the debt-ceiling hike will soon be on opposite sides in fights over the U.S.…

  • We have to pass it, to find out what’s in it

    The definition of a stool sample.

  • Happy Halloween!

    I just finished carving my annual jack-o-lantern, just in the nick of time before the sun set. As to my costume, I couldn’t quite to get the thing properly zipped, so my face is stuck.   Ouch!

  • Punishing B for the crimes of A

    How would you feel if you had done nothing wrong, but because of someone else’s crime, you were stripped of accomplishments you had earned legitimately? I’d be plenty pissed off, and I would not rest until the situation was corrected. Like most other people, a certain percentage of teachers and professors engage in dreadful behavior…

  • Hot Swapping Code

    Hot Swapping is not a sexual term. Follow the link for a moderately comprehensive definition. And Hot Swap Controllers are not people directing an orgy. I do wonder though if there are Male and Female Mating Connectors involved. H/T Weasel Zippers

  • Obamacare is unfair!

    Unless of course you are exempt from math. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsVqOe07cdY MORE: They knew.

  • Which is more important? Overlap or divergence?

    A commenter to my last post pointed out a study which focuses on the divisions between libertarians and social conservatives, and I found this chart interesting: While it looks like there is a lot of divergence between Libertarians and the “Christian right,” the interesting thing is the way both are able to work with and…

  • smell of burning flesh and young girls trying on faces

    Some poetry from SF cira 1969. The original scan should you actually care to read it. And the other side of the page (slightly defaced by my kids a long time ago) for historical accuracy.

  • Must every revolution devour its own?

    In his discussion of the war between conservative and moderate Republicans David Freddoso (the editor of Conservative Intelligence) is squarely on the side of the conservatives. However, he warns about a new trend: A new trend becoming almost alarmingly mainstream among conservative activists is to find RINO-ism in every shadow. The football equivalent would be…

  • Lou Reed Has Died

  • The comedy gets funnier

    A lot of people have had fun ridiculing the Obamacare website, and I especially enjoyed Jon Stewart’s take on it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7InS-xW1LCI I have not visited the dysfunctional site, because I don’t want to, and (fortunately) don’t need to. As Megan McArdle pointed out, though, those who have finally gotten through and managed to sign on…

  • Climate Breaking Peer Review

    Pointman’s latest. It is a hoot. And devilish clever. It has just occurred to me (1125z) that I should add a quote from the piece to get readers interested. Here goes: Wol is a person I admire of the highest personal integrity combined with great moral fibre and a true believer in the essential wholesomeness…

  • Who is winning the latest war?

    There are those who still think that we should be fighting the war on drugs. I wonder what they think about the war on privacy: Remember Lavabit and Silent Circle, the encrypted email providers that closed their doors because they faced government pressure to enable government snooping on their customers (Silent Circle still offers other…

  • Nostalgia is a choice!

    Just got back from hearing Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli performed by Andras Schiff. It is a marvelously obsessive piece, which takes a fairly simple theme and expands, contracts, and spins it into something which seems to straddle the fence between music and what I suspect might have been Beethoven reflecting on…

  • Unfixable

    Reason Magazine thinks the Federal Obamacare signup site is unfixable. Josh Barro, who is basically supportive of the law, writes that “there’s no reason not to level with the public right now, unless the truth is so horrible and the website is so un-fixable that Obama administration officials can’t bring themselves to discuss the matter…

  • The Hillary You Never Knew

          Well I never knew her that way. And I hope I never do. Eric though, may have met her. Original link from a comment at Reason.

  • Was The Failure Intentional?

    Is the failure of the ACA Online presence intentional? New York state’s guaranteed issue and community rating rules—the two regulations that limit how insurers can charge based on health history and require them to sell policies to all comers—took effect in 1994. At the time, there were about 752,000 policyholders in the state’s individual market,…

  • God hates flags, II?

    In light of the highly emotional uproar over natural occurrences at Mt. Rushmore, I wonder what the WND crowd might make of the fact that all the American flags on the moon have turned white. (The same thing would have happened to the flags here, but never mind…)

  • Calling all UFO fans

    Quick question. Can anyone tell me what in the world (or out of the world) this contraption is? It measures about 16″ and is labeled “Brookstone” on the back. When you plug it in, those four black things (cushions inserted into plastic collars) rotate at different times and at different rates. Above each rotating object,…

  • Explanation For The ACA Debacle