Month: September 2015

  • Messing with the moon

    I watched last night’s much-ballyhooed eclipse and tried to photograph it with a couple of cameras, but it was a major pain in the ass. The biggest problem was the clouds. The moon seemed to keep going in and out of them — which of course the moon can’t. So, between the cloud cover and…

  • Beria would be envious

    Earlier a friend emailed me a link to a lovely headline about so-called precognitive policing — “Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes“: Mr. Brown, whose criminal record includes drug and assault charges, is at the center of an experiment taking place in dozens of police departments across the country, one…

  • “Debate is closed on this issue,” they explained…

    Some backward minds might find this simple question an interesting question: Why allow women in combat if we won’t allow them to compete alongside men in sport? […] While the U.S. Navy and Air Force are pledged to open all positions to women, and the Army is being coy, the Marines did a major study…

  • Maybe They Left For Earth In 1815

    Interesting, and if they detected the Industrial Revolution we might catch the departure ceremonies of their flight here: According to a paper Siemion authored last fall, a five-year campaign by the first phase of the SKA could allow scientists to survey more than 10,000 stars. When completed, the SKA could detect signals as faint as…

  • In love with batshit crazy

    Anyone who has been reading this blog over the years knows there are few people I abhor more than Michael Moore. I see him (and his films) as little more than a bloviating pile of putrescent Communist garbage. So imagine my shock and horror when I found myself in agreement with what he said about…

  • A ray of hope?

    Nick Gillespie highlighted one of the better moments in last night’s debate. Rand Paul did something few Republicans would dare do: he criticized the war on drugs. Paul couched his argument in 10th Amendment terms, saying that states should be allowed to experiment with different approaches to medical and recreational pot legalization, a radical idea…

  • Energy Is Money

    A comment I made in a discussion about energy and economics. Energy is money. Which makes you winder why long shots like this don’t get funded: An introduction to Proton-Boron Fusion. Yes the odds are 10 to 1 against. But if we hit that 1 it is energy for the next 10,000 years. Not to…

  • 14 years…

    I’ll never forget that awful day fourteen years ago. It’s had great staying power, as the occasion has furnished an endless supply of rationalizations to take away ever more freedom from Americans. (Ironic, because it was an attack on our freedom.) I’m glad to see that some students right here in Ann Arbor have not…

  • Miss(ing) thing(s) that matter

    No matter how much they might claim to be offended, Americans have always loved the exotic and unusual. This video — innocuous as it is today — is a perfect example from my childhood: And this heavily copyrighted video is a perfect example from today. http://on.today.com/1Q0M7K6 Whether a given person actually has a penis matters not…

  • All must obey my “religious freedom”!

    With all the talk lately about “religious freedom,” you might think that there would be some agreed-upon definition of what it is. But of course, you’d be wrong. American Civics is no longer taught, and few people have the slightest idea of what freedom of religion is. More and more, I am noticing that it…

  • Si Solum Esset Equus

    We now know what it must have been like reading Caligula’s biographer Is it possible server-gate will achieve the opposite of what Republicans want and make Hillary Clinton seem more personable—and popular? So far, at least, the emails released this week seem to evoke less a Foggy Bottom Machiavelli at work than a fairly ordinary…

  • The Trouble With Business

    A commenter calling himself silverer explains: I let my employees go. All nice people. I had to. Government is so oppressive, I just can’t do it anymore. All my costs of doing business constantly rises, mostly due to government mandates and regulations. Insurance is becoming a nightmare. They want to exclude everything. Every year the…