Month: April 2014

  • Who can be trusted?

    If true (unfortunately, I have learned to trust almost no person or source), this is incredibly sleazy and cruel: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Marian Harris and her family had brought their dog, Sid, to the Camp Bowie Animal Clinic in May 2013 to deal with a common anal gland problem. When Sid seemed to be…

  • Are you an “adolescent young adult”?

    Pushing up the definition of childhood and adolescence into adulthood is not a new idea, but this one takes the cake: Patients out of childhood but not yet fully mature have physical, developmental and social needs that often go unrecognized by doctors, studies show. The adolescent-young adult group, dubbed “AYA,” ranges in age from about 13…

  • Fracking Helping American Manufacturing

    I read a LOT of stuff every day. And this caught my eye (from Supply Chain 24/7 – Reshoring). The overall manufacturing-cost structures of Mexico and the U.S. have significantly improved relative to nearly all other leading exporters across the globe. The key reasons were stable wage growth, sustained productivity gains, steady exchange rates, and…

  • President Asterisk***

    Yes, we’re up to three asterisks now.  We already knew Obama illegally used the IRS to suppress the Tea Party during the  2012 election, and that he flat-out lied about being able to keep your doctor or insurance (who thinks Obama would have won re-election if Obamacare took effect in 2012?  Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?), now…

  • Free Speech

    A stirring defense of McCarthyism.  Not sure Randall quite realizes everything he’s implicitly condoning, which easily covers the Hollywood Ten blacklist and openly political firings as well as having people remove your books from libraries and burn them. I always wonder how these people would have reacted to, say, firing people for criticizing the military…

  • Identity politics = groupthink = loss of identity

    A gay man is running for a California State Assembly seat. As might be expected, he is getting a lot of flak. But because he is running as a Republican, a lot of the flak is coming from Democrats: …DeMaio has been the target of homophobic attacks. But where are those attacks coming from? It’s…

  • Gorillas in the Mist, part 93672

    No, the Tea Party is not going to abandon the GOP, sorry to disappoint you WaPo readers. They’ve been building GOP officeholders at the state level for several years now. Hey kids, remember when the WaPo reported the Tea Party could “just as easily” fade away… in 2010? Remember the Coffee Party? Good times, good…

  • If the victim is the “trigger,” then the bully is blameless!

    Anyone remember the anti-bullying crusade? Bullying is evil and must be condemned whenever and wherever it occurs, right? Not so fast. A mother and her 9-year-old son say school officials won’t let him bring a My Little Pony bag to school. The boy and his mother say he’s getting shoved around because bullies think his…

  • How small can we get?

    After hearing about these things from a friend, I decided to get a Raspberry Pi. It is a genuine computer and I am using it right now to write this post. Took me less than a half an hour to set it up right out of the box. It is a bit slower than my…

  • Thought crime? Or just an immoral thought?

    The latest huge talking point on the left is that Cliven Bundy is a racist. This is supposed to mean what, precisely? The left considers everyone who isn’t on the left as being a racist, right? So why would it matter whether some old crank who is involved in a high profile argument with the…

  • “a hermetically sealed cultural and intellectual hothouse”

    I never trusted Jonathan Chait, and I think this Reason piece confirms that I was right: Over at New York Magazine, which today suffered a website crash that temporarily lowered Internet smug levels by a measurable degree, Jonathan Chaitmakes the bold claim that the Democratic Party is entering a period of dominance. His argument is partially rooted in…

  • Since when is it illegal to add booze to starch?

    Wanna make powdered alcohol in your kitchen? The recipe is quite simple. 1. Weigh out 100 grams of N-Zorbit into a mixing bowl. Because the powder is so fluffy and light, this will be a sizeable mound. 2. While whisking steadily, drizzle in 30 grams of high-proof spirit. I use Lemon Hart 151-proof rum. After…

  • Feels like a new pet is alive in the house. (No, seriously!)

    Since my last post on the subject, I finally had a breakthrough with my 3D metal printer. For weeks now, I have been trying every possible variation of every possible combination of every possible code setting in every possible firmware, and yesterday I finally managed to get lucky. Here it is, running G-code for an…

  • What part of “Congress shall make no law” don’t they understand?

    A bipartisan bill in Congress would prohibit “overzealous PhotoShopping” of models and celebrities: A new bill introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives aims at curbing overzealous photoshopping of models and celebrities in advertisements. Called the “Truth in Advertising Act,” the bill was co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida and Democratic Rep. Lois…

  • “every noose of a rejection letter”

    Until today, I had never heard a a rejection letter described as a noose, but I guess there’s a first for everything. A young woman is irate that her grades and test scores didn’t qualify her for admission to the University of Michigan, and she blames racism. Moreover, she claims that she has been rejected…

  • Progress?

    I have gotten the 3D metal printer I’ve been building to talk to the computer but as you can see, it’s not yet functional as a printer. Mechanically, the printer was built according to the specifications here. At this point I have spent countless hours going over the firmware looking for anything I might have…

  • She still IS

    How much more of this crap do we have to tolerate? A lot, it seems. And what am I supposed to do about it? Blame the Republicans? A lot of good that will do.  

  • Does air discriminate?

    A new study purportedly shows that people of color breathe air that is 38% more polluted than the air breathed by white people: A study released by the University of Minnesota this week indicated that people of color are exposed to air that is 38 percent more polluted than the air breathed by white people.…

  • Eric Holder Tells The Truth About Cannabis

    From: Eric Holder Admits to Putting Politics Ahead of Science on Medical Marijuana. I think that given what we have done in dealing with the whole Smart on Crime initiative and the executive actions that we have taken, that when it comes to rescheduling, I think this is something that should come from Congress,” Holder…

  • What makes a job easier?

    If you were a prison guard, would you rather guard violent criminals, or non-violent criminals? I think the answer is obvious. Prison guards like people who are easier to deal with, because it makes their job easier. (Forget for now the traditional nature of a prison guard’s job.) Well, how about if you were a…