Author: Eric Scheie

I don’t know what the hell is wrong with Google these days, but I suspect determined spammers may be using it to prevent people from finding out who they are, and even retaliating against people who stand up to them. I have been inundated with spam every day which the spam detector cannot block, but…

While this might not rise to the level of a conspiracy theory, I am more than a little annoyed by the untimely heroin overdose death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, because I think he was one of the most talented actors around and I enjoyed his work. So this is a selfish post. I am pissed…

The government thinks it’s just fine to use drones to spy upon the citizenry, but as to citizens using it for their own purposes, no way! The Federal Aviation Administration is shooting down one brewery’s idea to deliver beer by drone: Lakemaid Beer is brewed in Stevens Point, Wis., and distributed to several states in…

Yes, it happens in the United States. Especially when academia is involved: The accused student is judged not by a jury of his peers but instead by a three-person panel consisting of two administrators and one student “chosen from a specially trained pool of panelists.” Columbia doesn’t reveal what this special training entails, but based on…

Eric Holder can’t explain the constitutional basis of President Obama’s stated plan to get around Congress by issuing executive orders. Attorney General Eric Holder couldn’t explain the constitutional basis for executive orders such as President Obama’s delay of the employer mandate because he hasn’t read the legal analysis — or at least, hasn’t seen it…

I just took another one of those tests that float around — this one is called the Social Attitude Test. This test is adapted from Hans Eysenck’s own political inventory which was developed after extensive empirical investigations in the 20th Century. Some of the questions were so loaded with assumptions that there was no way…

I’ve been watching Obama’s State of the Union address. Beats me why. It’s more of a performance than a speech. Reading from a teleprompter a cliche-ridden speech that’s been scripted by specialists in the art of psychological manipulation while pretending to be folksy and in touch with regular people is, I have to admit, something…

Well, I thought I’d try my luck at writing a post on the new mobile device (not while driving in the snow).I suspect that putting in links would be a bit of a challenge, so I won’t even attempt that. It’s slow and laborious, but I guess it’s better than not being able to do…

I only wish there were more of them.

I am still trying to transition from Windows XP to Windows 7, and while I can do it, there is one huge issue I cannot solve, and that is the fonts. Perhaps I have been using XP for too long, but I have grown so accustomed to the fonts that the new ones in 7…

This picture has gone viral. History intrigues people, especially when it is history, and even more especially when it is shocking history. And let’s face it, it really is a shock for most modern Americans to consider that in those days, one could walk into a drugstore and, without so much as a prescription, buy…

A Justin Bieber fan I am not. That I assure you. In fact, just yesterday I “shared” the following image on Facebook: Not having a clue about today’s news, my caption was, “If we can save just one Justin Bieber fan…” Simple, gentle, snark, not intended as a putdown of anyone. I probably should have…

Another image I found on Facebook, which purports to be a Fox News screenshot: Anyone regular reader of this blog probably realizes that I have thought that about marijuana before I ever heard of Barack Obama. That Barack Obama might think the same thing is irrelevant to my thought processes, and what he thinks has…

A nice little image I found floating around on Facebook.   More and more people are catching on to something which should have been obvious. (Er, at least as obvious as it was to the founders.)

Well this just plain sucks: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) predicted Sunday that lawmakers who favored shutting down the bulk collection of telephone metadata would not be successful in their efforts as Congress weighs potential reforms to the nation’s controversial intelligence programs. “I don’t believe so,” Feinstein said during an appearance on NBC’s…

As if I needed a reminder of how much the Culture War sucks, M. Simon’s post did it for me. I have been saying for quite some time that the Democrats would be using marijuana prohibition as a pivot in at least the next two elections given that the Republican base is avowedly prohibitionist. I…

Lately, people — especially those who have the power to tell others what to do or imagine themselves charged with telling them what to think — are absolutely freaking out about marijuana. TV celebrity and former prosecutor Nancy Grace is hopping mad: On Tuesday, Nancy Grace claimed that people on marijuana shoot, stab and strangle…

M. Simon emailed me a link about a wonderful new technology I’d read about before, which is, simply, PRINTING A HOUSE. When I was a kid, they painted houses; now they print them, which is wonderful. The savings are dramatic in the extreme, but as Simon warns, The real problem with housing is not structure. It…

Sheet metal screws can save your life! The streets and sidewalks are covered with sheets of ice, and I have to walk the dogs. Worse yet, a new storm descended on Ann Arbor, dumping fresh snow all over the ice. There is no way to know where or how to walk, and it is so…

For years I have been a holdout against the new mobile devices, feeling ever more curmudgeonly as everyone around me has a “device” instead of just a phone. I’ve been ridiculed. My phone has been ridiculed. I admit, it is a relic. It is so old that the outside color (once black) has been worn…