Author: Eric Scheie

A lot of ink has been spilled over the fact that a lot of oil has been spilled — and continues to be spilled — into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. President Obama was here in Ann Arbor not long after the explosion, and he said…

Much as I have been enjoying Linux, one of the biggest hassles I have had (more in some distros, and less in others) has been in the video streaming department. I previously discussed the Flashplayer problem, and a way to work around it, but the main reason for these problems is not technology per se,…

Congressman Tom Price has a piece about HR 5175, the so-called DISCLOSE Act. This is the Democrats’ retaliation for the Citizens United case, which ruled that there is still a First Amendment right to produce political films and held McCain-Feingold unconstitutional. Apparently, though, they want to get tough on bloggers and make them register and…

In the Drug War front, the situation in Mexico may have become completely uncontrollable, but not to worry! Our drug enforcement agents are continuing to launch raids on doctors in this country and charge them with overprescribing pain meds. The legal system being the way it is, a charge of overprescribing now translates into racketeering,…

In a post about the police raid in which a 7 year old girl was accidentally shot by an officer, I missed a horrifying detail which makes the incident more egregious. The SWAT team fired a flashbang grenade into the room in which the girl was sleeping. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the building…

Here’s an incident epitomizing the stubborn bureaucratic recalcitrance which has the most of the country in a deathlock and which fuels the Tea Party Movement. A notorious (and famously incompetent) Philadelphia principal who presided over the racist attacks on Chinese students — and who was found not even to be properly credentialed to be a…

Nothing like getting a good morning scolding — especially from an operating system. All I did was enter a very simple command sudo fdisk -l Which is only supposed to read the fdisk output (showing the layout of the hard drive). Anyway, because poor little Eric wasn’t logged in as root (even though I am…

Back from a well-deserved vacation, Glenn Reynolds said this: It’s amazing, though, how much more relaxed I am when I’m not being exposed to the latest outrage on the Internet . . . . That made me feel less crazy. Sometimes it feels like being online means round-the-clock exposure to constant “latest outrages.” And there…

In a comment to an earlier post, commenter Gringo said, I like hearing your computer tales. Talk about asking for it. If it’s tales you want, it’s tales you’ll get! So onto the latest tales. I have now installed and tried out innumerable Linux distributions in various old computers, and thanks to the tricky but…

Last night I watched a movie about Rwandan genocide that made me sick. Especially the scene showing hapless UN soldiers who had been ordered to withdraw being confronted by the doomed Tutsis they refused to protect. The Tutsis were already surrounded by gleeful Hutus waving machetes while gloating in anticipation. One Tutsi leader begged a…

Looks like it’s “I TOLD YOU SO” time. In a post not long ago, I noted that gay activist busybodies and anti-gay busybodies both share a similar mindset where it comes to privacy in matters of human sexual freedom. They don’t like it: There are gay activist busybodies who don’t believe in leaving people alone,…

Remember the computer I bought at the salvage yard for ten bucks? I’m on it right now, running Puppy Linux on the 128 Megabyte Compact Flash card, which I plugged into one of these: The computer’s BIOS is tricked into believing that the flash card is a primary Hitachi hard drive. Once again, the simplicity…

To my consternation, I just learned via an email from a friend that incoming students at UC Berkeley are being asked to provide DNA samples. Voluntarily, of course: Instead of the usual required summer-reading book, this year’s incoming freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, will get something quite different: a cotton swab on which…

Recently I wrote about the tragic accidental shooting of an innocent grandmother by a carjacking victim who happened to be a concealed carry permit holder, and who fired at the carjacker. At the time I said this: Imagine if the same criminal had robbed a police officer who was inside the same house, and managed…

This is my first post written on a solid state computer. I am running the elegantly minimalist Puppy Linux from a 128 Megabyte Compact Flash card inserted into the IDE adapter I bought (described and pictured here) which fools the laptop’s BIOS into thinking that there’s a real hard drive there. It’s shockingly quiet, and…

From time to time, my attention is drawn to an American political philosophy I consider downright scary, and that is “Declarationism.” What scares me is idea is that the Constitution is not actually the supreme law of the land (even though it plainly states that it is), but that it is actually subordinated to the…

This blog is now seven years old. And lo and behold, the “Culture War” has not only not ended, it’s become virtually impossible to define. Which makes my “work” easier and harder at the same time. That silly thing at the top still says “End the Culture War by Restoring Classical Values.” It was meant…

When I saw Glenn Reynolds’ link to a post titled “Is it His Katrina Yet?,” I assumed that it would be about the disastrous flooding in Nashville. Instead, it was about the oil spill. William A. Jacobson documents a horror story of “bungled permitting, delays in response, and understating the impact” and asks, What will…

I’m wondering about the ethics surrounding hard drives. I don’t mean legal ethics so much as personal ethics. I have bought a variety of computer parts on ebay and in a local building material salvage yard, and I seem to have this uncanny knack for winding up with hard drives just loaded with personal information…

While the “What is being gay?” poll I created in an earlier post did not mention bisexuality specifically, it was hardly my goal to erase the concept from discussion. Especially when I saw Eugene Volokh’s discussion of “bisexual erasure” (in the related context of Elena Kagan — whose sexuality seems undetermined): ….the great majority of…