Month: April 2014

  • Attack the techies! (Latest Commie fad.)

    There have been a number of attacks on techies in the San Francisco Bay Area recently, and I just saw this one linked on Drudge: SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A man said he had his Google Glass snatched of his face and smashed to the ground in San Francisco’s Mission District Friday evening. 20-year-old…

  • A new word, and a new way of thinking

    I learned a new word today. “Kyriarchy.” Kyriarchy (“rule by a lord”; from the Greek ??????/kyrios “lord or master” and ????/arche “authority, leadership”) is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word itself is a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to describe interconnected, interacting, and…

  • Just In Case You Were Wondering

    The above is what I have been into lately and my excuse for light blogging. It is a little microcontroller board based on the NXP LPC1114. Full board details, ordering information, and documentation are available at LPC1114 Devl. This all came about because there was a project I wanted to do. But I needed some…

  • Attacking and vilifying a speaker is wrong, but it does not make the speaker right!

    A meme that will not die in certain quarters is the idea that the Nazis — and Adolf Hitler — were gay. It’s not an exaggeration to say homofascist because the German Nazi Party was homosexual, Hitler was a homosexual, the top Nazi leadership, all of them were homosexuals…they were creating a homosexual special race…It…

  • Should the Feds enforce the law?

    A recent news item about a rapidly escalating showdown between federal agents and cattle ranchers reminded me of a recent post which raised some philosophical questions. I don’t think oppressive or tyrannical laws should be enforced. But from there it gets complicated.

  • Whatever happened to Postmodernism?

    I’m curious about something. Postmodernism has held sway in academia for years, right? Morality has long since been so thoroughly deconstructed that anyone making an argument based on morality could be expected to be laughed out of the classrooms or faculty lounges at most modern American universities. Morality varies from person to person, culture to…

  • Ending Pot Prohibition Is A Failure

    According to vaunted Right Wing THINKER David Frum. An Australian study of identical twins found that a twin who started using cannabis before age 17 was 3 times more likely to attempt suicide than the twin who did not.People in Colorado had good reason to worry about teen drug use. Colorado voters had approved a…

  • The Mayor and Makers In Rockford

    Opportunity in the Making. from Our City, Our Story on Vimeo. Some other links of interest on the subject: Can the Maker Movement Re-Make America? With Help from Etsy, a Small-City Mayor Brings the Maker Movement to the Classroom Lawrence J. Morrissey Another Video More Video OurCityOurStory.com – about Rockford This post came about because…

  • Are there no incentives to be nice?

    I’m hardly obsessed with cell phone etiquette, but I recently complained about assholes pacing the aisles of crowded locker rooms while talking on the cell phone (this despite it being against the rules which are only meant to be obeyed by nice people). I guess I should consider myself lucky that the asshole in the…

  • From bad to worse?

    I hate it when I make a semi-sarcastic comment in a dark mood, only to see my sentiment confirmed, but here’s what I said: Little wonder so many conservatives love the War on Drugs. Which was in response to M. Simon’s comment: The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business…

  • Vox Stultus

    So, Ezra Klein is going to make news better. He’s going to do that by assiduously avoiding the sort of problems that plague data analysis, leading to incorrect conclusions because of politics.  Great news for libertarians, right?  After all, we’re slaves to neither tradition nor feelings — libertarians, moreso than any other political orientation, are…

  • Government assholes keep out!

    Despite what some of our commenters might think, no one likes excrement. (Well, except a few exceptions who prove the general rule.) So it is not surprising that most people don’t like dog excrement. I don’t like it, and as I try to abide by the Golden Rule, I pick up my dog’s poop. A…

  • Flash Mob Justice

    Either scripts and active content are not permitted to run or Adobe Flash Player version10.0.0 or greater is not installed. I dunno. If I was to say anything about this I’d have to say that racial harmony in America is farther away than ever. See: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the…

  • Deja vu all over again

    For ages now, I have been complaining about a political pattern. Democrats pass unworkable socialistic plans, and then Republicans step in to make them work: That last post about health care forces me to ask a couple of philosophical questions about Republicans. It seems to be a given that Republicans devote inordinate amounts of time to…

  • Doctors Strongly Favor Medical Cannabis

    WebMD Which did the poll has the results. 69% say it can help with certain treatments and conditions. 67% say it should be a medical option for patients. 56% support making it legal nationwide. 50% of doctors in states where it is not legal say it should be legal in their states. 52% of doctors…

  • Where is Hannibal Lecter when we need him?

    I thought I was alone in noticing a very annoying habit, but it looks like I am not. Anyway, earlier in my (very crowded) gym I noticed something I have noticed repeatedly: assholes pace back and forth in the aisles of the locker room. Why? Because they are on the phone, that’s why. Normal people…

  • The War On LGBT Is Back

    And who better to lead it than Vladimir Putin? Says Pat Buchanan in a piece entitled “Whose Side Is God On Now?” This writer was startled to read in the Jan-Feb. newsletter from the social conservative World Council of Families in Rockford, Ill., that, of the “ten best trends” in the world in 2013, number…

  • Your property is not yours!

    A militarized federal team raided and ransacked the house of a 91 year old man. His crime? Official FBI swine thought that he might have “cultural property”: FBI agents Wednesday removed “thousands” of cultural artifacts, including American Indian items, from the private collection of a 91-year-old Rush County man who had acquired them over the…

  • What Churchill never said…

    Well, Barack Obama (the president I don’t like) was here in Ann Arbor for a speech today, and I didn’t go. I went out in the front yard and watched the high-tech helicopters for a little while, but the fuss bores me. Perhaps I am getting too old. However, I have some young friends who…