Author: Simon

A friend of mine asked me to write something about the racially motivated attacks on white people at the Wisconsin State Fair. “It looked like they were just going after white guys, white people,” said Norb Roffers of Wind Lake in an interview with Newsradio 620 WTMJ. He left the State Fair Entrance near the…

That would be Halsted Street. Named after the founder of modern surgery. William Stewart Halsted. Who was a life long heroin addict. I propose we petition Chicago to change the street name. It sends a bad message to the kids. Cross Posted at Power and Control

A woman who met a man at a sex club had her car taken from her by him at gunpoint. SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – A woman had her car stolen at gunpoint in San Francisco early Friday morning by a man she met at a sex club in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, police said.…

In honor of Eric’s obsession with people’s obsession with what other people eat.

A little music for our time.

Ravi & Anoushka Shankar

For those of you who have a schizophrenic male relative it is something you live in fear of. He has a run in with police and doesn’t respond to police commands and the police take it personally. Reason magazine has the story, plus video and pictures that are just too horrific for me to repost.…

We sure got some crazy ‘Merkins about these days. Eric is discussing a few who want to put an end to egg eating because you know – an egg is a chicken – or something. Which reminded me of a little adventure I had when I was four or five. My dad once owned a…

The first minute and fifteen seconds are commercials. Then comes a bio of the guest, Niall Ferguson, which lasts until about three minutes and thirty seconds into the video. Then you get about twenty minutes of good stuff. The video was recorded in February. In the interim it looks like there may have been a…

I have an article up at ECN Magazine about some new innovations in chip design that look to reduce power requirements by a factor of twenty to one hundred for a given level of computing power. There is an example of this chip in production that can do over 90 Billion Instructions Per Second (BIPS)…

When I do an article on Christians and Drug Prohibition I invariably get a few Christians chiming in on how they are libertarian in political philosophy and don’t support the Drug War (good on ya mates). I’m Jewish. And a libertarian Republican. Your point is? Which is to say that I’m unrepresentative – but I’m…

The Congress (the House actually) authorizes spending. The President (effectively) signs the checks. The Social Security checks. And yes the money is there. It is in all those certificates in the Social Security Lock Box. He could start cashing those. If you don’t get a Social Security check next month it is because the President…

We do live in a society that is a masochists dream. A really weird place to be since I’m not into pain for recreation. What brought this post on is my ongoing series about Christians, ignorance, drugs, and the love of punishment. The last piece in the series An Education In Tolerance elicited some interesting…

In what appears to be an ongoing series commenter Thomas was spouting some popular misconceptions about drugs. I wanted to make more public my reply. With a few additions. Thomas, There is no such thing as addiction. If you are in pain you will take pain meds. When the pain goes away so does the…

Last night around 9:30 PM (local time) we had a heck of a windstorm in Rockford. A large branch of a tree is sitting on our front lawn. Since the tree is on city property I get to haul it out to the street and wait for the city to pick it up. The best…

There is an interesting discussion going on at my recent article Social Movement. Commenter Russ was saying that Christians might favor prohibition because they “see what drugs do”. Really what they see is what prohibition does. But never mind. Let us take a look at “what drugs do”. This is for you Russ: OK Russ.…

Talking about how the Federal Government doesn’t take in enough money seem to be all the rage this morning (well the New York Times did take the lead). “We as a society will either have to pay more for our government, accept less in government services and benefits, or both,” says Douglas Elmendorf, director of…

Jim Hoft has a nice article up about why the Norway shooter was not a Christian. And of course a load of commenters chimed in about Christian compassion. I will believe in Christian compassion when I see a call for an end to the pogrom on heroin users. Did you know that about 70% of…

Arnie Gunderson and friend explain why It Can Happen Here. From the blurb about the video at Arnie’s site: The well-known safety flaws of Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors have gained significant attention in the wake of the four reactor accidents at Fukushima, but a more insidious danger lurks. In this video nuclear engineers Arnie…

Dave has an outstanding post up dealing with the drug legalization question. I’m always interested in the comments as a very rough gauge of popular sentiment. A legalization fear I see a lot these days is based on “if we leave those people alone what will they do?” Of course the question started gaining a…