March Madness and Bear Stearns

My new article up at Pajamas Media.

How does a bird fly with two left wings?

Like this.



Thanks to MyDD for that.

Menage a trois!

A third mature bird has arrived upon the scene. At first I thought there may be some family reunion going on and all three using the nest. It seemed all three were flying around like one happy family. As I watched for a while I began to realize that one - presumably the female - would return to the nest and after a while another would alight with her. Soon after the third would come in to chase the second back out.

No good can come from this little Osprey Opera.

The contest seems to be one of endurance. Neither male is allowed to alight at the nest without the other swooping in and chasing him off. Then they soar hither and yon in various circles. Some high, some low. Neither seems particularly interested in getting too close to, or too far from, the other. Sometimes the female joins, sometimes she doesn't.

My best guess is that sooner of later one of the males will become too exhausted to continue the contest and fly off for some rest and that leaves the other as the victor and soon to be Proud Pappa. But that's just a guess. It ain't like I know sumpin'.

BTW, they made sure they got the obligatory plastic bag up there; a white one up there flapping in the wind. Personally, I don't like the look of it but they're the ones who have to live with it.

Sunday Links

Making it up as she goes.

Bendable, stretchable circuits.

More North Korean missiles.

Crusaders still in the Middle East.

The oldest European.

The earliest audio recording resurrected.

Project planning made simple.

Hold the hysteria.

The genetic causes of schizophrenia and autism partially discovered?

How to disagree.

Today's Best Political Comment...

...is from Conrad Black:

The Democrats and most of the national media seem not to have noticed that the defeatist truisms about Iraq have passed their sell-by date. Senator Clinton and Senator Obama seem to assume that the great majority of their countrymen recognize the Iraq expedition to have been a disaster and that that is the end of it.

The latest intelligence findings in Iraq, generally ignored by the national and world media, detailing Saddam Hussein’s long and extensive promotion of terrorism, leave the Republicans with plenty of room to reargue the casus belli. Iraq’s 75% reduction in violence, 30% increase in oil production, taming of al-Sadr and other factional leaders, and possibly the world’s highest annual economic growth rate since the upward “surge” in U.S. forces, seem not to have entered into the Democratic electoral strategy.

Americans don't like to lose.

Is it warming or cooling?

Temperature trends are not obeying IPCC models. This winter was (and is) a cold one. One winter does not a trend make, but since the 1998 El Nino (and increased water vapor emissions, a major Greenhouse gas), the lower atmosphere does not appear to be warming. You may now return to your regularly scheduled panic about the climate.

Taco Bell's Choice.

At this website you can either check out their new Fiesta Platters, or you can Direct Daniella.

And just try to get a good shot when she's with the parrot.

Friday Links

The inside story of the Surge.

Her list of lies.

The end of Tibet.

The campus rape myth.

Programming in R, the basics.

Sex in Japan.

Flying police robots in Miami.

Fitna the movie.

The end of capitalism?

Email of the future.

Fixing poverty in America.

50 movies guys should see before they die.

How to control the Internet.

A day already gone to the birds!

Yeesh! Get up earlier, move faster, fall further behind. By 7AM I was a ticked-off, steamin' screecher - already an hour and a half invested in the day's efforts and falling behind as I went. Fortunately I was able to work the aggravation out to a manageable level on the airdyne and treadmill.

When days start like this ya just gotta look for some way to salvage it. Well, fortunately for me, it was handed to me on the proverbial silver platter today. First off, after days if worrisome inactivity...

Let me back up. For days now My Osprey have done nuttin' more than hang out and squawk at one another. Squawk, squawk, squawk. You woulda thought they were taking part in the Runup To The Election fercryinoutloud. I'm quite sure that if we could somehow interpret their "conversation" it would have been an animated discussion with one of them wishing, since a full rebuild was required, to also relocate and the other insisting that they rebuild right there where they'd built their lives and raised their ospring.

Well, the Rebuild-In-Place Osprouse apparently won the argument 'cause they finally got their tailfeathers in gear and are hauling the heavy lumber. The frame of a nest is starting to take shape slowly but surely. So that makes me happy.

Then, not much more than a half-hour ago, as I pulled into the drive to get prepped to return to the rat race, there on the railing of my porch sat perched a red-tailed hawk. It flew away immediately but it was there pretty as you please. Darned fine lookin' birds those red-tails.

Wednesday Links

When the Chinese mask slips.

How I tamed my in-box.

Wall Street's crisis.

The Island of the Birds.

Obama's American search for roots.

10 oddball websites.

The liberation of Karmah.

Rodham Clinton under fire.

Even worse than gasoline for the environment?

Top 50 universities ranked by looks.

Is graphene the new silicon?

Obama and Bush are cousins.

More bandwidth through hyper-entangled photons.

Yet another dead reporter.

1968 was all demographics.

Record Companies, RIP

My newest post on Pajamas Media.

His Honor Weighs In

Having had some time to mull it over in my mind, I've discovered that what has turned out to be the most distressing thing for me in the latest Obama flap—I'm referring of course to the one over his anti-American white-hating pastor—was the callous way he threw his grandmother to the wolves. As far as I can make out, and I haven't looked into it thoroughly, this is the grandmother who more than any other single person raised the man. It's always comforting to discover that one's gut instincts are shared by people famous for their common sense.

Now to Obama's grandmother. There was a time spanning the 70's to the mid-90's when many blacks and whites in large American cities expressed the same feelings on street crime held by Obama's grandmother. Indeed, Reverend Jesse Jackson made similar comments in 1993 at a meeting of his organization, Operation Push, devoted to street crime. According to a November 29, 1993, article in the Chicago Sun-Times, he said, "'We must face the No. 1 critical issue of our day. It is youth crime in general and black-on-black crime in particular.' Then Jackson told the audience, 'There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved....After all we have been through,' he said. 'Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating.'"

Isn't that exactly what Obama's grandmother was referring to? To equate her fears, similar to Jesse Jackson's, with Wright's anti-American, anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-Israel rantings is despicable coming from a grandson. In today's vernacular, he threw her under the wheels of the bus to keep his presidential campaign rolling.
For shame.

The man has a point.

Super Delegates and the United States Constitution

The remaining months until the presidential election could prove interesting. Folks are getting perturbed and ponderously loud about it at an increasing rate.

Some of it will be downright amusing. As an example, just this morning I overheard a two gentleman commenting loudly. I wasn't within earshot long enough to have an idea of the full context of their discussion but it was clear they were agitated about the situation with the Democratic Party nominating process and how it violated Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

Said the First Gentleman, "The Constitution says that no senator or congressman can elect the president. But a lot of these Super Delegates are senators and congressman!"

I'll give First Gentleman credit for a half-ass statement. The Constitution does prohibit congressmen from being appointed electors for the "electoral college".

To the First Gentleman's comment, the Second Gentleman replied, "That's just like overturning the popular vote!" I guess that gets a full-ass.

Nice to hear My Fellow Americans discussing the finer points of our constitution.

The FARC and the congressman who loves them.

Remember the Colombians saying that the FARC was dealing with American go betweens who were promising great things when Obama got elected. We have some names. Envelop please.

A military strike three weeks ago killed Raúl Reyes, No. 2 in command of the FARC, Colombia's most notorious terrorist group. The Reyes hard drive reveals an ardent effort to do business directly with the FARC by Congressman James McGovern (D., Mass.), a leading opponent of the free-trade deal. Mr. McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia's elected and popular government.

Read the whole thing. And try not to swear too loudly. Think of the children.

The Long Defeat

You've gotta love David Brooks sometimes, even if he does shill for the NYT.

Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign....

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance....

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound....

John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness....

Why does she go on like this?...

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

Happy Easter

Listening to JS Bach and Handel this Easter Sunday, I am inclined to call BS on the militant atheism that has found voice in Chris Hitchens' work, among others. Don't get me wrong. I like and respect Chris's pungent commentary on many levels. I admire his writing style. But I think he is wasting his breath pushing atheism as a solution to the world's problems.

Think about this for a second:

At the end of every cantata Bach composed (and there were hundreds of them, because for years he composed them weekly on the Lutheran lectionary, just as his pastors composed their sermons) he wrote the initials, "SDG". SDG stood for "soli gloria deo", meaning "for the glory of god alone".

There is no body of music in all creation at once so prolific and so uniformly technically perfect and sublime.

What other deity (or non deity) but the God of Isaac, Abraham, Jacob and Jesus has inspired such musical creativity?

I surely cannot think of any.

And Bach was born on the first day of spring.

Sunday Links

Mark Steyn tears Obama a new one.

The oldest known asteroids.

More slaves than ever before.

Some very useful Windows utilities.

The atheist delusion.

Denver in detail (go to the Coors stadium outfield).

The gallery of arctic light.

Thoroughly modern do-gooders.

The best-conceived biological theories of brilliant men and mice oft go awry.

Time for a nuclear Syria too?

Like working for a ferret with a real bad thyroid condition.

A former intern describes his experience working for Michael Moore. As he is now in a hard place, he is selling his autographed copy of Downsize This on e-bay.

h/t: Tim Blair

Just What does 'Trondhjemite' Mean Anyway?

A year spent reading the OED??

For instance trondhjemite is defined as ‘Any leucocratic tonalite, esp. one in which the plagioclase is oligoclase’. I have my doubts as to whether anyone has ever thought to themselves ‘I wonder what trondhjemite means?’ But if someone did, and went to look it up in the OED, it seems unlikely that this definition would clear things up much.

Empty nesting...

Well, not exactly. The bird be there, the nest be gone. Gone. Nothing left 'cept for some bits of plastic bag flapping in the wind. The next few days will be interesting. Wish I could take them off and set up a tent.

Haven't seen the second half of the nesting pair yet. That's not unusual - tensions are normally high and nerves a bit frayed, for any species, by the time He and She reach the end of a long journey.

I know y'all think I'm nuts but I may lose sleep over this but I gotta tell ya, there ain't much I lose sleep over.

Arthur C Clarke, 1917-2008

My obituary for Clarke is up at Pajamas Media.

A bleg

Please share any knowledge or opinions of cordless, rechargeable lawnmowers any of y'all might have. The target property consists of two small "lawns" which, while roughly level are roughly bumpy also. One portion is mostly grass the other mostly weeds.

From what research I've been able to do so far, pricing seems reasonable but they may be surprisingly bulky and/or heavy (which is a concern for the target users here), but it is difficult to tell with out more comparison research.

Oh, by the way

Two days ago while on the evening dash to let the dog do her business I spotted what I thought might be one of My Ospreys on one of the non-nest towers.

Now, mind you, I've been very concerned. The nest took a pounding this winter and at least 50%, maybe as much as 75% of it is gone. It is a speck of what it once was. Very disconcerting... very.

Anyway, yesterday morning the bird - a bird anyway - was perched out on the boom for the nest tower. It didn't move during either spotting, though, so I couldn't be sure.

This evening on the doggy business dash there it was again. This time it was sitting in the remnants of the nest. But still it didn't move and I couldn't be certain. But then, at precisely the proper moment and in precisely the proper direction, and coming closer to the ground, it flew directly over me. In fact it shit nearly on my head. I'm tellin' y'all, those birds love me. I couldn't help myself, I waved and yelled, "Hello!" What a knucklehead I am.

Haven't spotted a second one yet. Hope all is well and there are two. If they decide to rebuild the nest there'll be a wealth of watching the runs to Osprey Depot.

Spring is in the air!

My Response to Senator Obama

Okay, Senator, so you can't disown or distance yourself from a man who said "God damn America", that the US was using HIV to commit genocide, and that the people (including acquaintances of mine) who died on 9/11 were just part of payback to the US from Hiroshima and Nagasaki --- which, just in passing, very possibly saved my father's life and resulted in my being born.

I appreciate your honest about this: you could have insincerely offered a repudiation.

Now, I hope you'll understand if I'm equally honest: I think Reverend Wrights statements are vile and evil, and I shall do my damnedest to see to it that someone who cannot repudiate a man who says these things won't be president.

Ross Douthat (March 17, 2008) - Denominations and Double Standards (Politics)

Ross Douthat (March 17, 2008) - Denominations and Double Standards (Politics): "Here's a thought experiment: Suppose John McCain were a member of Opus Dei. Or to push things a bit further, suppose he attended a schismatic Latin-Mass parish which had, among other things, bestowed an award on a Lefebvrite bishop given to anti-Semitic remarks. Do you think this would earn him media scrutiny, and make a difference in the Presidential race? Do you think it ought to? Your answer, I think, should go a long way toward determining how you think about the case of Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright."

5O Days

They finished assigning Super Tuesday delegates yesterday. It's been 50 days since Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) won the South Carolina primary and his campaign moved into its national phase. Fifty days ago was 10 days before Super Tuesday. At that time the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) believed that come the evening on February 5th their candidate would be celebrating a clear and convincing victory and would be well on her way to securing the Democratic Party nomination to be President of the United States in 2009.

They finished assigning Super Tuesday delegates yesterday. Right now the count of delegates won on Super Tuesday is 850 for Obama and 831 for Clinton according to the numbers RCP posts.

What then? There were 28 days and 11 contests until primaries in Texas and Ohio. Obama won them all and his delegate margin in those 11 stands at 287 to 162 with 5 delegates yet to be assigned.

Ohio and Texas provided a firewall after the fire. With 4 delegates yet to be assigned, Obama has 206 delegates to 205 for Clinton in the 6 states that voted on March 4th and since.

They finished assigning Super Tuesday delegates yesterday. Obama lost the contests in California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and American Samoa on Super Tuesday. He also, at the end of that day, was well on his way to securing the Democratic Party nomination to be President of the United States in 2009.

Obama also had a very good second round in Iowa yesterday. It's been 73 days since he finished first in the first round.

...and so it goes.

Can you imagine anything so ridiculous as majority rule? —Daffy Duck

First George McGivern, now David Mamet??

Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' by David Mamet: "This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it."

http://www.qando.net/ - David Mamet, George McGovern and Free People

http://www.qando.net/ - David Mamet, George McGovern and Free People: "There are many problems in the world, many things of which we should disapprove, many things we should seek to change. But government is force, and force should rarely be a tool of quick resort."

Commentary » Blog Archive » Shocked

Commentary » Blog Archive » Shocked: "So as we continue in this presidential election year, we should be wary of discounting evidence and overlooking the obvious. We know that the Clintons are ruthless and will do and say anything. So if Hillary is elected we shouldn’t be shocked by the next financial or personal scandal or the next vindictive crusade against her political opposition. We know that Barack Obama has zero executive experience and virtually no foreign policy expertise. So if he is elected he shouldn’t be shocked by executive incompetence or foreign policy blunders. We know John McCain does not always play well with others. So if he is elected we shouldn’t be shocked if he winds up in shouting matches with Congressional leaders. In short, if we kid ourselves less now, we’ll be less shocked later on."

Megan McArdle (March 12, 2008) - Eliot Spitzer resigns

Megan McArdle (March 12, 2008) - Eliot Spitzer resigns: "To be sure, many people--including, yes, me--are taking glee in Spitzer's downfall even though we think all his actions should be legal. There you are: having people you disagree with revealed as stunning hypocrites is emotionally satisfying. Plus there's a positive side (I mean, beyond New York State possibly getting a decent governor). If this makes everyone rethink our nation's ridiculous prostitution laws, Eliot Spitzer will finally have made a lasting positive contribution to his country."

As is often the case with Megan, you should read the whole thing.

Wednesday Links

Malicious code ran for two months at the Pentagon downloading information. (Guess where it went.)

How to communicate your weaknesses.

The coming plutonium shortage.

I can see what you see.

10 beautiful bridges.

Party down for murder!

Is oil demand drying up?

Trade demagoguing is for losers.

Catching a chunk of spacetime itself.

We don't need no stinkin' intelligence!

The philosopher's battery.

You just can't kill the beast.

Drugs in our drinking water.

Mark Twain on the Jews.

More Hobbits.

Are you nuts?

The Red Phone in Black and White - New York Times: "when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat."

I'm sorry, but this guy has written one too many papers on racial stuff.

Knock on wood

But so far this month there have been two American deaths in Iraq and only one of them was a combat death. Mosul really does seem to be the last battle and it doesn't seem nearly as intense there as it was two years ago. In a year or two, even the NY Times might notice how much things have calmed down.

Sunday Links

The future of chess?

My girlfriend the assassin.

Learning Python through videos.

How to smoke in Minnesota.

Blu-ray is doomed.

5 traits for leaders.

Chinese hackers get their site.


The ice man.

The latest CB radio.

One guilt too many.

Avalanches on Mars.

¡Yiddish Tango!

On my first trip to Argentina in 1994, beginning a mining job, I stayed at the old Sheraton in downtown Buenos Aires. Leaving my room for my first walk around downtown, I accidentally pushed the wrong button in the elevator. At the ballrooms above the lobby, the doors opened and I caught a glimpse of a huge, boisterous Jewish wedding reception. Too bad I wasn’t invited. As the doors closed, I realized that there was probably much more to this city than met the casual eye. The pogroms of the late 19^th century started the emigration of about 300,000 Russian and Eastern European Jews to Argentina, a pattern that persisted through the 30s. Most came to Buenos Aires, a town that in the decade before World War I had a per capita income as high as any European city. Mix the Afro-Argentine-Italian music of the stevedores and meat packers, some klezmer tunes, and a Buenos Aires nightclub and you get tangele - Yiddish tango.

Many tunes were straightforward romantic ballads much like their Hispanic counterparts, but some were clever parodies of those more melodramatic Argentine works that always threaten to teeter off to the ridiculous – a la Groucho and Margaret Dumont. Here is one called “Rivka Ben Zabes.” You don’t need to know Spanish or Yiddish to appreciate the kind of music this is satirizing. Tango spread to Yiddish theater in America and Europe and accompanied Jews to the camps. At least some of this immensely saddening music has been preserved. Argentina’s Jewish community began a slow decline after the war and the July 1994 Iranian bombing of Buenos Aires’ Israeli community center – which I heard from our office a mile or so away – triggered a gradual emigration to Europe, Israel, and America, accelerating with Argentina’s economic collapse in 2000 and an increase in traditional anti-Semitic (and anti-American) attitudes. But in recent years there has been a revival of Yiddish tango in America and Europe, led by tango singers like Lloica Czackis (above) and by shows like Una Noche Idishe in LA. It is often beautiful stuff.

I like this advertisement very much.

Oh for Gods' sakes.

Ramesh Ponnuru on NRO:

"Q: On ABC's 'This Week' on Feb. 17, in response to a question, 'Are you a 'read my lips' candidate, no new taxes?' you replied, 'No new taxes.' Did you mean that literally?

A: I'm not making a 'read my lips' statement in that I will not raise taxes. But I'm not saying I can envision a scenario where I would, OK? But I'm not making it a centerpiece in my campaign.

I want lower taxes. I want the family to keep more of their money.

So is the senator opening the door to raising taxes or not? Because it sure sounds as though he is. If he doesn't mean to open that door, he ought to close it now."

Yes, you're right, Ramesh. He's not putting himself in the position Bush(41) put himself in: promise not to raise taxes and then get screwed over politically by a potentially hostile Congress. On the other hand, it doesn't take an advanced degree in math to see that "want to lower taxes" means "not 'wants to raise taxes.'"

Freedom Means Responsibility - WSJ.com

Freedom Means Responsibility - WSJ.com: "Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else."

George McGovern?

George McGovern??

New PJM Post

Today's Health Insurance Ain't Insurance.

Already Instalinked, and I didn't even have to go whoring for the link this time.

Friday Links

Stopping train-hanging scalawags.

Free unabridged books online.

Two time zones to save power.

Moon rings.

More children please.

What I learned in jail.

The case for whaling.

13.73 billion years ago.

Live freer or die.

Not just a girl from Kansas (and Mercer Island).

The myth of the transparent society.

Viruses vs. brain tumors.

Speaking of vortices

It ain't just bees, birds, and bats, it is also things what got bumps. Fascinating.

Global-Warming Payola? - TierneyLab - Science - New York Times Blog

Global-Warming Payola? - TierneyLab - Science - New York Times Blog: "Do the critics really think there’s more money and glory to be won by doubting global warming than by going along with the majority?

I ask this question not because I doubt the integrity or competence of the researchers and environmental groups who are getting billions of dollars from government agencies, corporations, foundations and private donors concerned about climate change. If I write about prominent climate scientists like James Hansen of NASA, I don’t feel obliged to note how much research money they get — or how much extra money is going to their field because of the concerns they’ve raised about climate change."

Liberal Fascism on National Review Online

Liberal Fascism on National Review Online: "The fundamental insight of libertarianism is that the government is the government. It cannot be your mommy, your daddy, your big brother, your nanny, your friend, your buddy, your god, your salvation, your church or your conscience. It is the government. A big bureaucracy charged with certain responsibilities, some of which it is qualified to carry out, many of which it is not."

Wednesday Links

Cocktail party physics.

Two winnable wars.

Smart bombs clothes.

The phony rape crisis.

Harnessing life to make fuel from CO₂.

The Socialist Paradise as seen through lefty eyes.

Use the Vortex, Luke.

The US won't be Protestant much longer.

Diamonds in the sky.

Hurricanes in the Alps.

Sex tips for the shy young man. (NSFW!)

Nanoparticles to the rescue.

10 beautiful HDR pictures.

The gravity anomaly on space probes.

Military spending going up 18%? It must be the threat from Taiwan.

Below The Beltway » Blog Archive » Picture Of The Day: Earth And Moon As Seen From Mars

Below The Beltway » Blog Archive » Picture Of The Day: Earth And Moon As Seen From Mars

Infinitely cool. Also has the tag line of the week:

"I believe in the free speech that liberals used to believe in, and the economic freedom that conservatives used to believe in."

Hitler vs. Disney: can you see the difference?

There's a rumor going around that Hitler was an artist. Charles Henry seriously discounts it, with the eyes of a learned student of animation. It's an interesting angle on the occultist who tried to conquer Europe with the help of magical thinking, and failed.

Details, please

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Colombia's military has killed a top rebel leader and 16 of his comrades in a predawn air strike against his jungle camp in neighboring Ecuador, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said.

Hmm... Predawn airstrike, the base was fired upon from Columbian airspace. One wonders what sort of weapons were used and who supplied them. The implied accuracy is pretty good and reminiscent of ... certain other recent events.

Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen: "[T]he 'ultimate fear bomb' is not saying 'Barack Hussein Obama.' The 'ultimate fear bomb' is saying President Barack Hussein Obama."

Heh.

Instapundit.com: "HMM: Clinton Campaign Calls on Sen. Obama to Release Records and Correspondence Relating to Tony Rezko. Yep. Wouldn't want a nominee with a shady financial history."

Pajamas Media: Fascism is Seductive — to Liberals and Conservatives Alike

Pajamas Media: Fascism is Seductive — to Liberals and Conservatives Alike

My newest contribution at Pajamas Media.

Update: My favorite comment so far:

I don't disagree with your assertion that a classic conservative wouldn't flirt with fascism, I'm merely stating that we don't have any classic conservatives, we have Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians --> all of whom exhibit fascist behavior on occasion. Conversely, the Green Party will occasionally not exhibit fascist behavior.

Sunday Links

How to speak.

The best Oscar-less films.

The limits of quantum computing.

The audacity of hopelessness.

Blocking YouTube.

Ancient Greek computers.

Japanese roots.

Catching a cell-phone call on Jupiter.

The Navy of the future.

The future of reputation.

The democratic Web 2.0—isn't.