Category: Uncategorized

Physics World reports that 20 Nobel laureates are asking Bush to work with Congress to restore funding for science that that was cut in the 2008 budget. Two fields financed by the Department of Energy have been particularly badly hit, with funding for high-energy physics falling to $688m — some 12% less than Bush had…

I’ll be out until late tonight, so I thought I’d write an uncharacteristically short post consisting mainly of links, with few comments. (It kills me, because I always want to say more. But OTOH, blogging is supposed to be done like this, isn’t it?) Glenn Reynolds links John McWhorter’s discussion of Hillary Clinton which reaches…

George Stephanopoulos says Hillary is negotiating the Vice Presidential spot: ABC’s chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos told Charles Gibson on “World News” that Clinton is staying in the race to negotiate a spot on the Democratic ticket in November. If he is right, this changes the conventional wisdom a bit. What I’m wondering is why…

Yesterday, I was rendered unconscious by intravenous administration of a drug called Propofol. The oddest thing about it is that I can remember every detail except the moment it was administered. No memory of what it felt like, no “drifting off,” nothing like that. The IV line had been set up and was flowing, and…

The above image is from a Pew Research Center Report on where the voters are vs where the candidates are. What surprised me most was that the center of gravity in America was Center Right (RINO territory) according to Pew. Althouse of Althouse and Jeralyn Meritt of TalkLeft had a dust up and Jeralyn thinks…

Click on the image for an explanation and more hot images. For a more in depth explanation see World’s Simplest Fusion Reactor Revisited. The image was created by Torulf Greek a biologist from Sweden.

But Glenn Reynolds did pick an extremely bad day to tantalize me with food. Normally I wouldn’t have whined about hunger, but it just so happens that I’ve been starving for over 30 hours, and I won’t be allowed to eat until tonight. Not that it’s all that big of a deal; it’s that I…

I like to joke about Bill Clinton when he gets into his “Angry Satyr” mode, and the picture of him in the Globe article I discussed yesterday is one of the best illustrations I’ve seen of that. It is funny, and it isn’t. There’s something a bit sad about seeing him this way, and I…

Some major doom-and-gloom for Republicans, from Newt Gingrich: Senator McCain is currently running ahead of the Republican congressional ballot by about 16 percentage points. But there are two reasons that this extraordinary personal achievement should not comfort congressional Republicans. First, McCain’s lead is a sign of the gap between the McCain brand of independence and…

It looks like Hillary won Indiana, and the polls have not yet closed in North Carolina. I won’t be live blogging the results, but Pajamas Media has great coverage, including Stephen Green’s Drunkblogging and Bill Bradley’s Special Coverage. And constantly updated coverage here. I’d be very surprised if Hillary didn’t hold her lead in Indiana,…

Coco is sleek and svelte, and has been compared to both Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak. She’s wonderful dog, but my only disagreement with her is that she’s a Hillary supporter. That’s not surprising, though. Because, being a pit bull, Coco admires grit and stamina, and Hillary Clinton has that. Moreover, Hillary is a female,…

Richard Nebel tells about plans for commercializing the Bussard Fusion Reactor (BFR) at Talk Polywell. Richard starts off discussing who owns the BFR technology and patents. DOD is The Department of Defense. Currently the US Navy is funding the research. …EMC2 owns the patents and the commercialization rights. DOD retains the right to use the…

While suicide is a very poor way of coping with federal racketeering charges, I have to say that I’m somewhat sympathetic to Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who left a suicide note explaining that she couldn’t face spending 6-8 years in prison: “However, I cannot live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what both you and…

In a piece titled “Obama Rebounds From the Wright Stuff,” Bill Bradley said something that worried me: Yesterday’s CBS poll has even better news for Obama, showing him opening up a lead on Clinton again and also leading John McCain. This is a pattern we saw a while back when Wright’s sometimes incendiary sermonizing became…

Confused by the interpretation of unemployment statistics? Then b y all means don’t miss Tim Worstall’s Pajama Media piece on the subject. Worstall wonders whether some unemployment can be a good thing, and points out (gasp!) that some people actually choose not to work! ….places where people have looked at the employment to population ratio…

Yesterday (while contemplating a new Hillary Clinton comedy book that Dr. Helen linked), I opined that maybe there was a “bright side”: Maybe Clinton II will conflate the annals of history into the annals of comedy. Today I see evidence of what can only be called a rush to conflation, headlined, “Hillary Laughs at Limbaugh…

This is a picture of Obama’s close associate Bill “Bomber” Ayers. He looks so wimpy for a bomber. Let me see if I can decipher the captions. Let me start with the top one. The group was dealing with the past with a kind of amnesia about violent actions. Bill Ayers recollected his adventurous violence…

The murder of a Philadelphia police officer during a bank robbery continues to dominate the front page of the Inquirer. As it turns out, all three of the robber/murderers are convicted robbers who have served time. From today’s account: Police charged a journeyman boxer with murder and issued a warrant yesterday for an alleged accomplice…

Real class warfare has always been the upper classes against the masses. Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School in a speech to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference lays it out: And so, yeah, we will continue the War on Drugs for a while until everybody sees its patent bankruptcy. But, let…

Can you cut a hole through a 3×5 index card large enough to walk through? I hate to say this, because it sounds so trite, but yes you can! It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t know the “trick” (which isn’t a trick at all), and I was going to make a…