COMMENTS TEMPORARILY CLOSED - MIGRATING FROM HALOSCAN/ECHO TO DISQUS
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
State Of The Union, 2012
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Labels: Politics
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Late Anniversary
Corporations are not people, but corporations are tools used by some people as a vehicle for exercising constitutional rights. The article describes a few unconscionable situations that woudl arise is that were not the case.
Labels: Law
Monday, January 23, 2012
Political Correctness Update
Labels: Curiosities
The Choice
Labels: Politics
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
I Was Off By One Year
Greece will attempt to balance its budget by selling Parthenon timeshares.
From AFP (emphasis added):
In a move bound to leave many Greeks and scholars aghast, Greece's culture ministry said Tuesday it will open up some of the debt-stricken country's most-cherished archaeological sites to advertising firms and other ventures.
The ministry says the move is a common-sense way of helping "facilitate" access to the country's ancient Greek ruins, and money generated would fund the upkeep and monitoring of sites. The first site to be opened would be the Acropolis.
Labels: Curiosities
Andrew Sullied
Posted by Alan at 9:10 AM |
Environmentalism Goes Barking Insane
Labels: Politics, Psychology
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Andrew Sullivan Is Nuts
The great conservative bugaboo, Obamacare, is also far more moderate than its critics have claimed. The Congressional Budget Office has projected it will reduce the deficit, not increase it dramatically
The CBO (and the White House) also significantly underestimated the 2010 and 2011 deficits - contrast the original projections with more recent number-crunching.
Labels: Politics
Another War On Speech: Victory
For background info, read the Electronic freedom Foundation's What’s Wrong With SOPA? report.
Labels: Politics
Monday, January 16, 2012
Happy Civil Rights Day!
In 2006 I mulled over the idea that instead of having a Martin Luther King Day we should have a Civil Rights Day, so that we can have a single holiday for all civil rights crusaders, and, for symbolic reasons, it shoudl be set on July 5, the day after we celebrate out nation's independence. As stated in that post, I had originally considered that Civil Rights Day replace Labor Day, but I have long since settled on the latter holiday giving way to Commerce Day, a day for celebrating all the contributors to our economy and not just labor.
A July 5 holiday for any reason is even a bigger pipe dream than Commerce Day, and the MLK Day tradition is already firmly entrenched, so from this day forward I will recognize the third Monday of January as Civil Rights Day. Dr. King will always get a little extra notice for being the one to inspire the holiday, but the table of honor will feature all civil rights leaders past and present.
Following is my original argument for the holiday:
For years I'd heard news stories about debates over whether or not to establish an official Martin Luther King holiday, and never did anyone report the arguments against. I always suspected that one was that we had way too many day-off-of-work holidays as it was. Having one three weeks after Christmas does seem a bit superfluous. MLK Day would be only the third national holiday named after a person, the others being Christmas and Columbus Day, commemorating the chief catalyst for Western culture and the chief catalyst for extending Western culture to the Americas. (In the case of the latter, make that Western cultures; English and Iberian influences were vastly different.) Some, I imagine, feel that only those rare individuals who have had such a radical impact should have holidays named for them. Dr. King isn't in that league; the only Americans who are are the Founders; their holiday is July 4.
Here's my argument against making January 15 [Update: MLK Day is celebrated on the third Monday of January, which happens to fall on the 15th in 2003] an official holiday: it's not fair to everyone else involved in the civil rights movement. Independence Day isn't just about one guy. We have a holiday for all those who made the Declaration of Independence happen. We should have a federal holiday called Civil Rights Day. It would be like Memorial Day, honoring leaders of past civil rights struggles instead of soldiers of past wars.
Labels: Blog traditions, Holidays
Monday, January 09, 2012
Just In Time For Valentines Day
Posted by Alan at 6:30 PM |
InstaRoundup
Posted by Alan at 5:50 PM |
Saturday, January 07, 2012
The Envelope, Please II
"If you want to divide that $240,000 into the amount of hours spent, I think you would find that the per hour was probably not much at all, considering the work that had to be done." - Former National Education Association President Reg Weaver, explaining why he deserves his $242,657 annual pension from the state of Illinois. (October 23 Chicago Tribune)
Somebody Answer Me This
Labels: Politics
Saturday, December 31, 2011
My First New Year's Resolution
I'm not going to hoard 100-watt bulbs. Instead, I'm buying two-socket lamp adapters. Take that, greenies!
For those who want to hoard, Ann has a link for 24-pack Sylvania 100-watt bulbs. Happy incandescent New Year!
Labels: Humor
Predictions For 2012
Ghost Hunters will claim to have footage of the ghost of Christopher Hitchens tormenting Kim Jong-Il at the North Korean leader's deathbed.
Turned down by the IMF, the Greek government will seek a bailout loan from the Kardashians.
Rumors of a brokered convention will arise when the RNC announces that its keynote speaker will be Howie Mandel.
An unknown party will hack into Barack Obama's teleprompter. Officials will discover the breach when the President utters the phrase "I can haz stimulus" during a Rose Garden speech.
J. J. Abrams will threaten to produce Lost: The Next Generation if Congress doesn't balance the budget.
At the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama will conclude his nomination acceptance speech with the words "Klaatu barada nikto," spurring new questions about teleprompter security and Obama's birth certificate.
Occupy Wall Street protesters will storm the Republican convention, only to recoil in horror as delegates approach them with soap-on-a-rope and garden hoses.
Turned down by the Kardashians, the Greek government will seek a bailout loan from Walmart.
As Congress becomes deadlocked over the budget, J. J. Abrams will call the House Speaker and say "I just signed Charlie Sheen."
The next President of the United States will be...uh, hold on, some Greek official just sent me an email about helping him with a cash transfer.
On Thanksgiving, an unknown party will hack Cowboy Stadium's "Jerrytron" to show the film Titanic, with high-quality CGI effects replacing the face of the ill-fated liner's captain with that of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. The entire population of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex will be questioned as suspects.
The Doomsday Prophecy won't come to pass, but J. J. Abrams will be doing lunch with Justin Bieber, Congress will unanimously pass a bill granting its members an antidepressant allowance, and Greece will ask Jim Cramer for some stock tips.
Labels: Humor
Friday, December 30, 2011
Adventures In Volokhland
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Did They Find Any DHARMA Hatches?
Posted by Alan at 8:25 PM |
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Holiday Surge
Labels: Business
The Envelope, Please I
“What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. [The] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons....The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.”
— New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in a September 11 posting to his NYTimes.com blog
The same quote also won the America Is the Real Evil Empire Award.
The Damn Those Conservatives Award illustrates the poisoning of the memory of 9/11 - but not by Krugman's formula:
“So when does SEAL Unit 6, or whatever it’s called, drop in on George Bush? Bush was responsible for a lot more death, innocent death, than bin Laden. Wasn’t he, or am I wrong here?”
— Left-wing radio host and former CNN producer Mike Malloy on The Mike Malloy Show, May 2.
The Ku Klux Con Job Award for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges is a doozy:
Clip from RNC ad: “Stop Obama and his union bosses today. The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.”
Host Lawrence O’Donnell: “The Republican Party is saying that the President of the United States has bosses, that the union bosses this President around, the unions boss him around. Does that sound to you like they are trying to consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course, of course a black man can’t be the real boss?”
Ex-Governor Jennifer Granholm (D-MI): “Wow, I hadn’t thought about the racial overtones....”
— MSNBC’s The Last Word, February 25.
To me, the phrase "Obama and his union bosses" insinuates that the bosses are in Obama's pocket, not the other way around - otherwise the ad would have referenced "Obama and his union boss bosses."
Maureen Dowd wins the Poison Tea Pot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble, in a column written well before Halloween, oddly enough:
“Tea Party budget-slashers....were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in Alien flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.”
— New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, August 3 column.
Go check out the rest!
Update: No, John Boehner did not get one of these in his stocking.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Directions To Mordor
Posted by Alan at 9:10 AM |
Snakes (And A Lot More) Almost On A Plane
Labels: Crime
Monday, December 26, 2011
Which Is Stranger?
Fiction: Occupy Wall Street: the Lego Set
Labels: Curiosities, Humor
Sunday, December 25, 2011
The Reasons For The Season
While Christmas is officially a celebration of the birth of Jesus, for much of the Western world December 25 has come to be a celebration of family and community. No other time of the year is so thoroughly saturated with images pointing to our highest hopes for such relationships - and no other time of the year so effectively highlights the difference between our ideals and the world as it really is. Jesus came to Earth to bridge not only the chasm between humanity and God, but also that rift that separates people from each other. Christmas reminds us that we live in a broken world, and it seeks to encourage us by showing us through religious and even many secular trappings how that brokenness can be fixed.
Best of holiday wishes to all my readers.
Labels: Blog traditions, Holidays
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Environmental Policy Finally Turns On Itself
Labels: Politics
Coming To A Theater Near You
Labels: Movies
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Farewell To A Tyrant
Labels: Obituaries
Hitch And Newt On The "War On Terror"
On naming the war, I think "War on Islamic Supremacism" is better than the alternatives offered by Lou Dobbs (cited) and Hitchens and in the video. I'm not changing the tag for these posts, though - this is the 115th post with the "War on Terror" tag.
Labels: War on Terror
Vaclav Havel (1936-2011)
Instapundit links a worthwhile 2003 essay by Matt Welch.
My Henderson Prize for the Advancement of Liberty tells the story of the Velvet Revolution.
Labels: Obituaries
Friday, December 16, 2011
I Nominate This For Israel's New National Anthem
Labels: Music
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
George Takei: Twilight Sucks
"[T]here is an ominous mutual threat to all science fiction. It is called Twilight and it's really, really bad. Gone is any sense of heroism, camaraderie or epic battle. In its place we have vampires that sparkle and moan and go to high school...there are no great stories, characters or profound life lessons to be had in Twilight. In Twilight, the only message that rings out loud and clear is, 'Does my boyfriend like me?' Let's band together to defeat this mutual threat."
To Takei, Twilight comes across as a mere soap opera that vents teenage girl anxieties. Maybe that's all it was meant to be. But he has higher aspirations for fantasy literature.
Labels: Culture
Sunday, December 11, 2011
The International Committee Of The Red Cross Responds To The Video Game Flap
Labels: Culture
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Sonic Blast From The Past
Random Thought
Labels: Random thoughts
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Day Of Infamy, Day Of Hope
Labels: Blog traditions, History
Monday, December 05, 2011
Pliocene Park
Just think of the restaurant possibilities...
Labels: Science
Saturday, December 03, 2011
See If I Ever Give A Dime To The Red Cross After This
At the 31st meeting of the International Committee of the Red Cross, held this week to discuss many issues in modern combat throughout the world, a smaller panel was convened to discuss videogames and the effect they have on the public. Specifically, the Red Cross investigated several games that depict modern warfare and examined whether the rules of the Geneva Conventions governing protections for wounded soldiers, civilian non-combatants, and prisoners of war should be applied to videogames.
Hat tip to Andrew Ian Dodge.
Update This ultra-realistic military video game should have no problem passing Geneva Convention muster.
Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks
Note: Onion videos are preceded by a commercial - and the one playing at the time of this posting is pretty amusing. The ad is slightly edited for time constraints - I found the entire ad on YouTube. The music playing is Camille Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Look Out Below
Labels: Curiosities
Silent Malarial Spirng
The article is six years old, but it tells the DDT tale quite effectively.
Labels: Science
Thursday, December 01, 2011
White Racism Is On The Decline In America
So how does that fit with the title of this post?
- A small-town church doesn't make the news unless it does something out of the ordinary.
- The church itself is divided over the policy. The article doesn't state the size of the church, but when the policy was put before the body, only 15 members voted. The measure passed by a 9-6 vote. Ironically, the policy is "intended to promote greater unity among the church body and the community we serve."
There's chance for an appeal, but in the long run Stella Harville and Ticha Chikuni don't have much of a personal stake:
[Dean] Harville said he plans to ask the conference of churches to which Gulnare Freewill Baptist belongs to overturn the vote.
Even if that happens, however, "I don't think I'll be able to go back there," his daughter said.
If it hasn't done so already, Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church is about to witness a church split. There is no way a church body stays together when there's this much division. I know people who save seen (and participated in) church exoduses. People look to church as an extended family; you can't pick your relatives, but you can pick the ones you hang out with.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Good Riddance
The bad news is that come 2013 the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Financial Services will be Maxine Waters.
Labels: Politics
Monday, November 28, 2011
Awesome
Labels: Cool stuff
Harold And Kumar Get A Defense Contract
Labels: Business
Thursday, November 24, 2011
The Play From Tonight's Cowboys-Dolphin Game That Everyone Will Remember
Posted by Alan at 11:15 PM |
A Year Of Thanksgiving
- Dom Meredith entertained us on the gridiron and behind the sports announcer's booth.
- U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords survived.
- Wisconsin takes one small step against union rent-seeking. So does Miami.
- The Second Amendment treks on.
- Osama bin Laden is out of commission.
- Donald trump will not run for President.
- The name of the prize is dubious and all, but Helmut Kohl is awarded for his role in German Reunification.
- The legacy of an honest bureaucrat is honored.
- Dallas Mavericks win their first NBA title.
- Geert Wilders is acquitted of "hate speech" charges.
- Peter Falk entertained us.
- Close encounter with shark doesn't get too close.
- No-knock raids were bound to one day force a homeowner to shoot a cop mistaken for an armed robber. It happened to Cory Maye, he was wrongfully convicted of murder, and after several years he finally wins his freedom.
- The FCC officially rejects the Fairness Doctrine, which is a good thing since the FCC abolished it in 1987.
- Woman punches bear, woman wins.
- Steve Jobs innovated.
- Texas Rangers win their second pennant.
- Let's not be thankful for the downfall of the Libyan tyrant until we see who his replacement is.
- Tom Easton and Virginia Postrel are honored with the Bastiat Prize for their achievements in economics journalism.
- Andy Rooney entertained us.
Labels: Blog traditions, Holidays
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
ClimateGate II
Labels: Science
Monday, November 21, 2011
Why Mitt Romney Will Not Be The Next President
Romney will either lose in the primaries, or he will lose in the general election.
Labels: Politics
Just In Time For Christmas
Labels: Curiosities
