Author: Eric Scheie

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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…

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…

Yeah!

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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!

This amazing tale of ritual sex and cannibalism beats most of the horror stories floating around today. Except it took place in 1961, and the victim was Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson Rockefeller. A Harvard scholar, he had traveled to an isolated part of New Guinea to study primitive art, and ended up ritually butchered and…

A lot of people think that the War on Sudafed is simply an inconvenience for Sudafed purchasers. Similar to the way they’ve become accustomed to being delayed and searched at airports, Americans just shrug their shoulders and let the pharmacy employees enter their drivers license information into government databases, so that illicit meth lab operators…