Category: Uncategorized

From José Guardia, I learned about a new anti-smoking campaign in France, which obviously hopes to shock young people into not smoking by means of disturbing images. The slogan is this: “To smoke is to be a slave of tobacco” I agree with José that the message is powerful. All the more so because of…

I had a disturbing thought earlier when Veeshir left a comment pointing out that a commenter (who calls himself “Steve”) appeared to be soliciting links. I remembered that in an earlier post, the same commenter had solicited a link from another blogger, even though that blogger had not even left a comment. So I did…

Fox News is reporting that there is to be a redo of climate data. At a meeting on Monday of about 150 climate scientists, representatives of Britain’s weather office quietly proposed that the world’s climatologists start all over again to produce a new trove of global temperature data that is open to public scrutiny and…

One of the things I learned during my brief experience in sales years ago was never to attack a competing product. Not, that is, if you want to sell your product. I was skeptical, so at one point I actually tried what I was warned not to do, and sure enough, the guy started defending…

I first heard about Twitter back in 2007 — back when I attempted to “live-blog” the September 2007 Republican debate at Morgan State University, and I believe it was Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association who told me about the new phenomenon. I’m all for communication, but at the time it didn’t make much…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I just watched “The Failure of Anti-Money Laundering Laws” — a very disturbing video about money laundering. The facts and figures are appalling. As Dan Mitchell of the CATO Institute shows, over 18 million “suspicious transactions” are monitored annually, yet this yields only 900 or so actual money-laundering convictions. Not only are…

This morning I was treated to a marvelous new conspiracy theory, which is being promoted by Spain’s socialist government: “Spain Blames Economic Crisis on ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Conspiracy.” I try to be thorough and fair-minded about these things, so I thought that the best place to start would be by taking a look at some actual Anglo-Saxons.…

I really don’t understand how Stephen Green managed to drunk-blog this morning’s Tiger Woods apologia, but he did. There is not enough alcohol in the world to get me through such a thing. But alcohol is a funny, perhaps cosmic, thing. After drinking a few glasses of wine, I remembered Stephen’s bravery, and I thought…

As Allahpundit noted in his post about CPAC booing the speaker who condemned the gay conservative group, there was another issue that caused tension. Gambling. The tensions didn’t end [with the gay issue]. Along the back wall 2004 World Poker Champion Greg Raymer stood waiting for a talk radio interview. “Focus on the Family considers…

I realize that I should have called this post “Words that cause confusion,” except blog posts are supposed to have eye-catching titles, aren’t they? Anyway, a couple of things I read today reminded me of two dishonest words that especially offend me, because of their inherently argumentative nature as well as their tendency to distort…

Does it seem strange to anyone else that after months and months of falling poll numbers mostly because of negative public reaction to Obamacare, Obama now wants a summit to focus more attention on… Obamacare? It’s like he wants his party out of power as quickly as possible. You’d almost think we elected someone with…

The Democrats have a plan. And Bill Clinton is its leader. The Tea Party is getting too strong. It is changing the outcome of elections. Seriously. Scott Brown in Massachusets? Shaking in his boots. Big Government has learned that Clintonistas are plotting a “push/pull” strategy. They plan to identify 7-8 national figures active in the…

While it hadn’t occurred to me that the Tea Parties were racist, the fact that Keith Olbermann brought it up made me think back to the local Tea Party I attended in Northville, Michigan. At the time, I didn’t pay any attention to the race of the protesters, because, well, taxation is not about race.…

Under what I think is a highly questionable category of “CELEBRITY FEUDS,” TMZ has an article titled “Mitt Romney’s Alleged Attacker — Major Rap Star” which claims that the guy involved in a violent airplane altercation with presidential aspirant Mitt Romney was rapper Sky Blu of the group LMFAO. In a video interview (called a…

I was reading a story about how the US Navy exchanges officers and men with other Navies. Royal Navy Lt. Angus Essenhigh, a navigation officer, was part of that exchange. He was part of ship’s company on the USS Winston Churchill. How fitting. Essenhigh found this out when he tried to lay one of his…

We have some new Climate e-mails to peruse. This one is from the fourth pdf. I transcribed it by hand so if you find any errors let me know. Subject: Re: Fwd: US temperature correction graphic and file From:Reto Ruedy Date:Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:30:24 -0400 To:James Hansen CC:Makiko Sato , gavin@e-mail, klo@e-mail Jim, I…

Is this a case of a kamikaze pilot or just a flight gone wrong? A low-flying small plane crashed into an office building that houses the Internal Revenue Service in Texas on Thursday, and officials said they were investigating whether it was an intentional act by the pilot. The U.S. law enforcement officials said authorities…

Bill Quick has a very thoughtful essay with which I generally agree, although I was a bit confused by the essay’s title — which characterized the “Tea Party Principles” as “the call for fiscal conservatism and respect for traditional values.” Because I write this blog, the above puts me in the position of having to…

It looks like the never ending attempt to get high has brought new suppliers to the market. Government official pretend to be outraged. There may be nothing like the real thing, but some industrious marijuana users have seized on an obscure but easily accessible substance that mimics the drug’s effects on the brain — creating…

My friend Famulus is building an open source Polywell with super Conducting magnets. It would be the first superconducting Polywell in the world as far as anyone knows. Follow the link to see pretty pictures of the plan. Here he discusses power supplies for the coils. All very impressive. I wish I was there. There…