Wednesday, July 30, 2008

"Insulting my intelligence and my standards will not win me over."

Yow. This is from a Democrat:


Getting not one bill passed in the first 6 years of his career in not inspiring. Having Emil Jones hand him the ball 26 times on the one-yard line in order to make Obama a United States Senator does not cut it either. What deals he made, he did to benefit no one but himself. He never worked long enough in either Senate to help the people who elected him. Andy, I could never imagine you taking credit for legislation someone else slaved over. Starting in his community organizing days he claimed sole responsibility for other people's accomplishments all for the purpose to boosting his career.

In terms of the campaign itself, I had the opportunity to witness his methods up close. During the primaries I was in 6 states, 2 of which had caucuses; it was not clean. El Paso was a joke with the Obama campaign stealing the caucus packets, locking supporters out - Intimidation 101, 102 and 103. Fair elections do not seem to be a priority in my birth state. No other machine exists from the days of Boss Tweed, but Chicago's. How many elected officials are in jail?They are the joke of the nation. It is called the Chicago machine for good reason.

It was clear that what I saw and experienced was not a fluke or isolated incidents, but coordinated, deliberate and arrogant. I got to see him and his organization for who he is and what it is - not inspiring, to say the least. Not something I would have, in business, endorsed in any way.


Definitely read the whole thing.

Wednesday Links



Are you Gay?

The audacity of hubris.

Practical jetpacks are almost here.

Stiffing our allies to favor our rivals.

The blinding light.

The Democrats are winning the battle of staging.

Building the quantum simulator.

Oil at $500/barrel?

The Devil's Business Dictionary, in pictures.

The first trans-national President.

Hope for Alzheimer's.

Educational growth, or its opposite, and economics.

Introducing the Sphere.

Russia's continuing legal nihilism.

The real psychic paper.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Today's Social Horror


The Corner on National Review Online: "Save the Males, for heaven's sake. This Washington Post piece on three 16-year-old girls shopping for bikinis in Tyson's Corner is begging for a dad to be on the scene. Mom's no help — one of them provides financial assistance because a teenage girl just has to have a bikini, you know. 'Bikinis are more popular because they're sexier. They draw a guy's attention.' Where's dad to just say no?"


Because, apparently, when she was growing up sixteen year old girls didn't want boy's attention.

I'm guessing she grew up on Mars.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Friday Links



Don't invest your billions in Russia.

Maliki casts his vote.

A man's van is no longer his castle.

The right to conversion?

Water weirdness may be due to quantum weirdness.

The Sixties are always with us.

Tobacco to heal cancer?

The end of the Reagan revolution.

Is NASA hiding the aliens?

Don't be greenwashed.

I am the world; I am the President.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Obama scraps visit to wounded troops

Germany yes, troops no. Apparently the thought of doing something like this privately never crossed their minds.
Obama had been planning to go to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany before a flight to Paris. Gibbs said the stop was canceled because Obama decided "it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign."


On the other hand:
MITCHELL: Let me just say something about the message management. He didn’t have reporters with him, he didn’t have a press pool, he didn’t do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in. You’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military, and what some would call fake interviews, because they’re not interviews from a journalist. So, there’s a real press issue here. Politically it’s smart as can be. But we’ve not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before.


The politics of change.

Thursday Links


The housing fiasco that Uncle Sam built.

Can the French go back to work?

Honor killings in Georgia?

Watermelon in lieu of Viagra?

Oxytocin and autism.

Economic chicken littles still wrong.

Normalizing your database isn't normal.

A tale of two flip-floppers.

The world's fastest train.

A promising new HIV drug.

Eventually all Europeans will hate Obama too.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Wednesday Links


We weren't duped, but who cares anymore?

Female and male memory mechanisms are genetically different.

Gordon Brown and the Chinese Mata Haris.

The trams of France.

The Apple Computer of electric car companies.

Why every woman is a "10" from the male perspective.

The most dangerous country.

Chinese Barnums taking advantage of American suckers.

The growth of the Intermountain West.

Robots finding illegal immigrants.

Is the research paper tail getting shorter?

Fighting obesity with bread?

The point of maximum danger to the world economy.

A tribe found with no sense of number whatsoever. Is "innate mathematical sense" nonsense?

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Sunday Links



The falling stock of the weak horse.

Waterdrops for all.

Losing the fight over gas prices.

15 sites to cut your operating costs.

Cognition nutrition.

The audacity of narcissism.

The lazy programmer's guide.

Leopard vs. crocodile—caught on camera.

The coming age of government activism.

Cold fusion researcher found to be guilty of scientific misconduct.

Hezbollah's true colors.

From sawdust to biofuel.

France's broken and immoral social model.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Friday Links



The best places to have cancer.

Socialism gone amok.

Turns out we're Cro-Magnons, not Neanderthals.

The worst inflation since 1982.

The alternative to American power.

Beware the rave-laser.

Is it an oil bubble?

Rich or funny?

A good use of Wordle. (H/T: Barry Ritholz)

Peering through the Earth to view the sky.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Thursday Links


Is the war over?

Struck by lightning, she lives to tell the tale (and show you the video).

Is mocking now a thing of the past?

When you want those moquitoes to bite you.

The illegal immigrant criminal network exposed.

Chariot racing redux?

Why the race is tied.

Dark Knight raises the bar.

A baffling economy.

Burgers in Paris.

Is the US broke?

The saga continues: AOL + Microsoft? Is MapQuest the new Maps.Live?

Sex with her brother?

The latest in sweeteners.

Can you crack the mysterious missive?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Speaking Sense

The blunt fact is this. In Iraq, al Qaeda is on the ropes, and the Shiite militias are badly off-balance. Now is exactly the time to continue the pressure to keep them from regaining their equilibrium. It need not, and probably will not, require large numbers of American casualties to keep this pressure on. But it will require a considerable number of American troops through 2009. ....

The benefits to the U.S. from seeing the fight through to the end far outweigh the likely costs. For one thing, Iraqis have shown their determination to increase their oil output, currently averaging 2.5 million barrels a day, as fast as they can – something that can only happen if their country is secure.

Kagen, Kagen, and Keane at the WSJ

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Baseball

The game, in both the short term sense and the long term sense, is not as interesting as the introduction ceremonies of the All-Star Game were.

That was one heck of a ceremony for us baseball fans!

All the living Hall of Famers at each of the positions meeting today's All Stars. What a sight! Very good. Even Sheryl Crow singing the National Anthem couldn't put a dent in it.

Excellent! Nothing short of excellent.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Sunday Links



We're not leaving.

China and Russia protect Mugabe.

How the brain changes coordinates.

Phil Gramm is right.

Autism and the miswired brain.

The $5 trillion mess.

Half a million years of chat.

The ruthlessly imposed illusion of calm in Tibet.

The best movie endings ever.

Radical Islam is not compatible with French values.

Artificial photosynthesis through nanotubes?

China is fueling war in Darfur.

The great biofuels con.

Friday, July 11, 2008

No Country For Old Men

What to make of articles such as this? Especially when juxtaposed with this. Can a nation be both cancerous and vibrantly healthy? (Both articles ht Arts & Letters Daily. And both articles from The New Republic.)

Friday Links



Spare us the sob stories.

Goodbye air pollution, hello warming?

Hire your personal farmer.

Leadership and honesty personified.

The coming of big data to the desktop.

Chinese spying is growing in the US.

Erotic furniture.

A record drought in Colorado.

Dissent in Iran.

There's just not enough room on this planet for all three of us.

Is it just hot air?

Have sex, go to jail for six years.

All talk and no substance; all praise where praise is due.

The high priest of peak oil.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Liberal Fascism on National Review Online

Liberal Fascism on National Review Online: "I simply don't think the woeful state of popular ignorance should be considered a powerful argument against the accuracy of historical truth."

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Wednesday Links



How to save the Republicans.

All that data that Google has been collecting on you for years?—it now belongs to any government that needs it.

Is Pakistan's ISI flexing its muscles in Afghanistan?

"Not only is self-righteousness a standard part of his work, it’s what he’s selling."

The human rorschach test.

The new Hitler, or the new Lincoln?

Why the world's best technology company will win Yahoo.

Litvinenko was murdered by the Russian state.

30 offshore windfarms.

The McCain campaign in turmoil.

The future of mind-machine control.

Introducing Stealthnet.

Already piling up the spin.

A huge stockpile of uranium from Saddam's (non-existent) WMD nuclear program shipped to Canada.

Gas prices by county.

The other vice-presidential woman.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

A Bleg

Sitting around on the patio following a nice dinner a friend who is an Obbamamaniac mentioned, offhandedly, that US troops in and after Iraq and Afghanistan are being given very high levels of, for lack of any educated term, mind/mood drugs. This passed quickly while I wasn't paying close attention to that speaker and it only sunk in later, so I never had an opportunity to question the source or meaning. But I gather that he was suggesting that US troops (and, presumably, other allied troops) are having high levels of psychological problems.

I've searched a bit and found no mention of this. My initial thought is to suspect that it is along the lines of the "US troops committing suicide" exaggerations but since I'm not seeing anything about it I'm wondering where the heck it came from. Has anyone heard this coming from their loon buddies or seen this in the leftist press or anywhere else?

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Invesco Field, Denver, August 2008?



Okay, I admit it. Obama is starting to freak me out.

Sunday Links



General Relativity confirmed, again.

Exhibitionists in Turkey.

Giving his party whiplash.

Happy and not so happy countries.

An angry crowd of 50,000 people, containing priests and monks, protests....American beef(?).

Giving birth at the ripe old age of 70—to twins!

Gold to hit $2,000?

A death penalty for blogging.

Bring back the airships.

235 mpg.

Who runs the world.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

What she said.

five feet of fury.: "And for chrissakes: STOP JUST QUOTING Pastor Niemoller about 'doing nothing' -- and DO SOMETHING next time -- the VERY next time -- you hesitate to express your opinion because you're afraid of the thought police."

Friday, July 04, 2008

Friday Links



The rising flood of militant Islam in Pakistan.

Could the long tail theory be wrong after all?

The state of the woman-as-victim narrative, 2008.

The first images of the Solar System's invisible frontier.

The three great American ideas.

Herpes uses microRNA to hide.

Optimism is growing in Iraq.

The flat atom and its uses.

10 summer projects.

Skinheads in Russia.

Still ignoring the coming entitlement tsunami.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Wednesday Links



Cancel the continuing kangaroo courts in Canada.

Trade saved America from recession.

Is the Secret Service illegally grabbing hackers in Deutschland? [Sorry, German version only.]

A genetically modified cure for AIDS?

From heroes to victims.

Stubble is the way to a woman's heart.

The NT kernel, intelligently discussed.

Flying cars are coming.

Darwin vs. Lincoln.

Play games. Learn immunology.

The best of the China blogs.

The robotic musical sensation.

Obama's wealthy supporters.

The last generation of Europeans?

Indian culture revealed.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Tuesday Links



By any other name....

Powell is the ideal vice presidential candidate, no matter how you slice it.

The most extreme life forms.

Dreams from his Grandmother.

The value of working out.

Crumbling infrastructure?

Submarines for the drug cartels.

Leaving the Goog for the Soft.

Free chess endgame tables.

A universal sentence structure?