Month: March 2014

  • How’s that new peace paradigm workin’ for ya?

    I’m shocked… SHOCKED I tell you, to learn that the U.S., Russia talks have failed to ease the Ukraine crisis. PARIS—Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart appeared to make no major advances Sunday in a four-hour meeting aimed at easing the standoff over Ukraine, raising the specter of a prolonged crisis that…

  • Getting there

    The robot I’m building is coming along. Can’t wait till it does this.

  • What you produce is not yours

    For reasons I cannot fathom, the FDA has now declared war on the craft beer industry: As anyone who’s ever brewed their own beer knows, the process leaves a lot of excess … stuff. This goopy aftermath of the brewing process is known as “spent grain,” and it would generally go to waste. But many brewers…

  • Word wars

    According to a story in USA Today, some lowly airline employee is being excoriated for using the wrong terminology to describe people who can neither hear nor speak: A deaf couple from Texas demanded an apology from American Airlines after seeing a note on their luggage that read: “Please text. Deaf and dumb.” When Angela…

  • The Endocannabinoid System – A Video

    Eric sent me this link a while back but I have been busy and didn’t post it. It is time. The video came from Cannabis Planet. The video is excerpts from an interview with Dr. Christina Sanchez who is a molecular biologist at Compultense University in Madrid Spain. She found that THC does indeed kill…

  • The Hidden System In The Body

    There is a biological system hidden in the body. Why is it hidden? Because, although well known by researchers it is only taught in a minor way (if at all) in Medical Schools and not discussed at all in the popular press. What if I were to tell you that the Endocannabinoid system (or ECS):…

  • Why Tech Wages Stagnated

    This was sent to me by my #2 son who is currently living in Moscow managing a grocery store. My family has been in the grocery business since the early 1900s. I worked in the family store growing up. Too funny. And he is a UChicago graduate (with honors) – jobs are hard to find.…

  • They can do whatever they want

    Two more headlines serve as reminders. SWAT Team Raids Family Home After Finding Tea Leaves In The Garbage Innocent Man Gets Dead Wife and 25 Years in Jail; Lying Prosecutor Gets 10 Days in Prison The problem is that it’s incredibly difficult to hold these people accountable. As Glenn Reynolds said, “our criminal justice system…

  • Progress isn’t perfect

    I finally succumbed to economic pressure and got a new phone. Er, device. I like my new device for a number of reasons, but there is one major reason I don’t like it. Size. It is too big, and too vulnerable. I cannot carry it around freely in my pocket, not only because it is…

  • Vaccinations

    Interesting discussion going on at Reason about vaccination – should it be mandatory? The best answer? Holgar|3.25.14 @ 10:45PM|# I wonder how the people who feel “It’s my choice whether I vaccinate or not” feel about letting food service workers choose whether or not to wash their hands.

  • Shor Like To Ball

    Little Richard from back when dirty was clean. The original by Little Richard:

  • Follow The Drugs

    “Law enforcement always follows the drugs, because that leads to drug thugs no one cares about,” according to one former Federal official familiar with the case. “Following the money, which is much more effective, is discouraged, because it leads to the suits—bankers, politicians, law enforcement types—people with social and political clout.” Daniel Hopsicker at Mad…

  • STOP STOP STOP

    Yeah!

  • Crack

    Pat Buchanan in one of his rare useful observations says that the European experiment is cracking up. He does not mean binging on cocaine. But the most startling news on the nationalist front last week came in Venice and the Veneto region, where 89 percent of a large turnout in a non-binding referendum voted to…

  • Arbitrary, malicious and petty.

    This is the way the schools are being run today: (KMOV) – A mother trying to pick her special needs son up from school winds up in handcuffs and puts the school on lockdown. The furious mother came to News 4 claiming the school handled things all wrong. The incident took place at Walnut Groves…

  • Is snail mail a loophole?

    While Jimmy Carter is hardly known for his sense or insights, I was surprised earlier to see him say something that made sense. He claims that he uses snail mail to avoid NSA surveillance: Washington (AFP) – Former US president Jimmy Carter has admitted he uses snail mail to evade monitoring by the National Security…

  • The Arduino invasion

    As M. Simon recently advised me that his new goal involves the Arduino market, I thought a post was in order about these little devices, which are propagating a mini-revolution of sorts. They are incredibly cool, and smaller than a mobile phone, yet capable of doing just about whatever you want them to do. In…

  • “No good deed goes unpunished.” (Not satire.)

    To see a child helping a disturbed child with a serious problem and preventing him from killing or seriously injuring himself kind of renews my faith in humanity. You might think that a child who did this would be praised to the skies, if not rewarded. But you would be wrong. Instead of being rewarded…

  • Who will police the criminals in charge?

    “Our criminal justice system has become a crime.” So writes Glenn Reynolds in USA Today. Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Upon evidence that a crime has been committed — Professor Plum, found dead in the conservatory with a lead pipe on the floor next to him, say — the police commence an investigation. When…

  • Weee!

    The uninhibited Colombian president did not allow the flow of nature to interrupt the flow of his speech. Why don’t such things ever happen in the U.S.? And on the public health front, yesterday’s comedy is today’s science!