Category: Uncategorized

The Department of Energy is giving out grants. Research grants. DOE Secretary Steven Chu recently announced recipients from across the nation will receive about $85 million in total funding for five-year research grants. Under the program, university-based researchers will receive at least $150,000 per year to cover summer salary and research expenses. Awards were given…

Just about everyone across the political spectrum has sounded off about Sarah Palin (who has predictably been praised and denounced for her appearance at the Tea Party Convention), and all the while I have remained silent. Perhaps too suspiciously silent, perhaps not. In an earlier email to M. Simon, I explained why I didn’t want…

While I enjoy history, it’s always humbling, because there’s no way to know everything about everything. The most that can be hoped for is to know a little bit about as much as you can in the time you have on this earth. But that, of course, is never “enough” for there are always countless…

Jonah Goldberg wants to play a guessing game. I’m thinking of a military leader who seized power in his country by stirring up populist rage against foreigners and foreign powers and promising a sweeping program of national-socialism. He claims that he is the true expression of the will of his people and is using every…

It looks like the Grateful Dead will live on in business schools. Oddly enough, the Dead’s influence on the business world may turn out to be a significant part of its legacy. Without intending to–while intending, in fact, to do just the opposite–the band pioneered ideas and practices that were subsequently embraced by corporate America.…

They who seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of rulers… Call this New Order, but it is not new and it is not order – FDR The irony? FDR was not going to do the job by setting taskmasters over us. At least not…

Eric S. Raymond (whom I greatly respect) took umbrage at this statement from Bill Whittle (whom I also greatly respect): Of course, the media coverage has tried very hard to portray the normal, average, every-day Americans of the Tea party rallies as dangerous and angry racists and Wal-Mart knuckle-draggers, while identifying the mass-produced signs, the…

During the 2008 Presidential Campaign there were folks out there who said: “the worse the better”. They were very unhappy with Mr. Obama. They were not thrilled by McCain and only the advent of Palin sent even a spark of joy to their political hearts. Their political theory was – if we elect some one…

While I have discussed RU-486 (mifepristone, or “miffy”) in previous posts, my thoughts turned to the drug again in light of this statistic: A medical abortion is a type of non-surgical abortion in which an abortifacient is used to induce voluntary miscarriage. Safe and effective abortifacients for use in the first trimester became available in…

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 I also like the following interview of Breitbart done by Instapundit. You can see several of the themes he presented in his speech previewed here. Part 2 And just to add to the mix, here is Bill Whittle on how Breitbart splashed on to the scene. H/T Andrew Marcus…

You can’t be an image President unless you can control all the information sources. And even that is not possible. There are leakages. The best you can hope for in this age of the Internet is about 30 to 60 days. Long enough to win an election campaign. And thus we have a quote from…

I can think of few people more deserving of Christopher Hitchen’s vitriolic wrath than Gore Vidal. Once a talented writer, the latter has clearly degenerated into a tawdry peddler of ridiculous crackpot conspiracy claims. …in an article headlined “Vidal Loco”, Hitchens launches a stinging attack on Vidal, claiming that the events of 9/11 “accentuated a…

Anthony Watts has a great article up on how he changed out a fixture that used a CFL Flood Lamp to one using an LED lamp. Anthony bought 5 LED fixtures and got a deal. He paid $80.00 each for them. So let us run some numbers. LAMPPRICEOPERATING HOURSWATTS Cree LED Lighting LR6-GU24 White 6$80.0050,00012…

In a fit of homesickness, earlier I was thinking about surly service in favorite decrepit Chinese restaurants I have known over the years. (For some reason the two tend to go hand in hand.) In Berkeley, some of my fondest drunken memories involved Robbie’s Chinese American Hofbrau, which used to be on Telegraph Avenue. The…

Eric of Classical Values sent me this link via e-mail about the Tea Party Convention held Saturday. I was particularly struck by this comment: RueTheDay says: The whole Teaparty Movement is a fraud. Charging $600 for tickets to the Tea Party Convention, so attendees can eat steak and lobster at the Opryland while listening to…

To what class should Barack Obama be assigned? That is not an easy question to answer, because while it’s clear that he is now at the top of the political and “intellectual” ruling class elite, his background cannot easily be characterized in ordinary class terms as we understand them (or, as we once understood them).…

Since Eric put up a mystery doo wop song, I thought it might be nice to put up a song that was no mystery and that has over a million YouTube hits. For you young whipper snappers here is a wiki on doo wop. Note: whipper snapper may have been derived from whipster. And if…

Earlier today I found a longtime favorite doo-wop song that I’ve listened to for years recently uploaded to YouTube. Hardly a video, but it does have a cute picture, and I also think it’s cute that it has only had 23 views! The song is the mysterious “Oh You,” by an obscure doo-wop group called…

Yuri Besmenov was a KGB Agent. You can watch more of Yuri at YouTube. H/T Big Journalism Cross Posted at Power and Control

From time to time, I write posts about Salvador Dalí. However, I tend to move on from one thing to another, and unfortunately, this blog doesn’t have categories, so things get lost. Last night I collected and cross-posted the Dal&iacute posts into a blog I started years ago, but neglected, Daliblog.com. I don’t know whether…