Average Freethinking American: The Blog

Tea Party, Earl Grey, Hot

2010-05-12T18:40:00.001-07:00

I think I like David Cameron, the new British Prime Minister. Read this and tell me an American conservative / Tea Partier couldn't have said it (albeit probably without the capitalization of "government"):

Her
Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new Government and I have
accepted. Before I talk about that new Government, let me say something
about the one that has just passed.
Compared with a decade ago, this country is
more open at home and more compassionate abroad and that is something we
should all be grateful for and on behalf of the whole country I'd like
to pay tribute to the outgoing prime minister for his long record of
dedicated public service.
In terms of the future, our country has a hung parliament where
no party has an overall majority and we have some deep and pressing
problems - a huge deficit, deep social problems, a political system in
need of reform.
For
those reasons I aim to form a proper and full coalition between the
Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
I believe that is the right way to provide
this country with the strong, the stable, the good and decent Government
that I think we need so badly.
Nick Clegg and I are both political leaders that want to put
aside party differences and work hard for the common good and for the
national interest.
I
believe that is the best way to get the strong Government that we need,
decisive Government that we need today.
I came into politics because I love this
country. I think its best days still lie ahead and I believe deeply in
public service.
And I
think the service our country needs right now is to face up to our
really big challenges, to confront our problems, to take difficult
decisions, to lead people through those difficult decisions, so that
together we can reach better times ahead.
One of the tasks that we clearly have is to
rebuild trust in our political system.
Yes that's about cleaning up expenses, yes
that is about reforming parliament, and yes it is about making sure
people are in control - and that the politicians are always their
servant and never their masters.
But I believe it is also something else. It is
about being honest about what Government can achieve.
Real change is not what government can do on
its own - real change is when everyone pulls together, comes together,
works together, where we all exercise our responsibilities to ourselves,
to our families, to our communities and to others.
And I want to help try and build a more
responsible society here in Britain. One where we don't just ask what
are my entitlements, but what are my responsibilities.
One where we don't ask what am I just owed,
but more what can I give.
And a guide for that society - that those that can should, and
those who cant we will always help.
I want to make sure that my Government always
looks after the elderly, the frail the poorest in our country. We must
take everyone through with us on some of the difficult decisions we have
ahead.
Above all it
will be a Government that is built on some clear values. Values of
freedom, values of fairness, and values of responsibility.
I want us to build an economy that rewards
work. I want us to build a society with stronger families and stronger
communities. And I want a political system that people can trust and
look up to once again.
This
is going to be hard and difficult work. A coalition will throw up all
sorts of challenges.
But
I believe together we can provide that strong and stable government
that our country needs based on those values - rebuilding family,
rebuilding community, above all, rebuilding responsibility in our
country.
Those are the
things I care about. Those are the things that this government will now
start work on doing. Thank you very much.

Obama Saves Euro?

2010-05-12T18:22:00.001-07:00

From here.

Okay, so if Obama went to a great deal of trouble to save the Euro . . . why? What's in the Euro for us, long-term?

I love certain European countries, but to my mind a united Europe is like China . . . either a great friend or a great adversary or both. A true European hegemony represents an unpredictable shift in the balance of power. One can easily imagine a situation in the future where the ChiComs, self-interested Putin-esque authoritarian post-Soviets, and EuroSoc are in general agreement on some matter, and the United States stands alone (provided we don't follow the European socialist example).

Should that day come, we'll rue the day we saved the monetary tool that was meant to allow for a united Europe.

LGF Fail

2010-03-31T08:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't been paying any more attention to Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, given his return to the irrationality of his leftist roots, but I saw this and just had to share:

http://www.weaselzippers.net/blog/2010/03/charles-johnson-fairly-sure-the-tennesee-state-flag-is-neonazi-logo.html

Leftist Kamikaze

2010-02-18T15:13:00.001-08:00

I thought anti-IRS types were supposed to be the "right-wing anti-government kooks" the media is always talking about.

Or, more reasonably, people who think the government is too big and should stay out of our wallets are usually conservative.

The guy from Austin, though, is a leftist. His manifesto makes that plain. And yet in between anti-business and anti-capitalism diatribes he'll take a moment to reflect on the fact that the government sucks at life and should stay out of everyone else's. It's almost like he had recognized just enough to where some people would start to reanalyze life and perhaps end up conservative, but this guy was so stuck in the leftist mindset that when THE GOVERNMENT of all things seemed to betray him, he couldn't take it.

Don't get me wrong, the guy's a nut no matter who he ever voted for, but I think what broke him was the confusion of ideas in his head, rather than some particular structural defect in the brain. Instead of solving the progressive riddle, he got mad and wanted to quit the game.

American Revolution: A Political Thought

2010-01-23T16:29:00.001-08:00

The American Left is lucky that their foe is the American Right, because as a rule American conservatives are too polite or too interested in their own affairs to really kick ass, even though they could. By the same token, American conservatives are lucky to have the American Left as foes, because as a rule the American Left is too stupid and too cowardly to actually pick a real fight.

If one were gunning for revolution (no pun intended), then the best way would be to get one or the other side so pissed off that they really start fighting. The Left might be easiest, given that they're stupid, but the Right has more to be pissed off about if they'd ever pay attention. Getting them to really pay attention is seemingly unlikely, but the advent of Limbaugh, Fox, and Beck may change this.

But, in the American system of politics, whoever is the most pissed off can generally win elections, which usually serves to satisfy many of the most pissed people for awhile.

So as a rule, the American system in the current political climate is designed in such a way as to keep a certain percentage of people pissed off all the time, but never quite to revolutionary levels. It's like a boiler that never boils over. This has served the Left well, of course, since some of them have long vision (e.g. Stalin's comment on slow takeover, the statements of Obama and others that nationalized health care is the goal with stuff like the "government option" being a long slow segue to that, and so on).

The trick for pro-revolutionaries, then, is that time be compressed to get one side or the other totally pissed off in less than the election cycle. In other words, either an Obama has to get busy trying to nationalize the economy, or else another Bush-the-Younger has to get busy re-establishing the Constitution.

Given how busy Obama's been on his task, it appears that the Right may take a bit longer to actually get revolutionary, unless Obama accelerates and the Right gets even more pissed. The Left, of course, was getting revolutionary even when Bush the Younger was in office, which is when the Republicans were, for the most part, lazy bastards (which is the proper thing for government to be, rather than busybodies involving themselves in absolutely everything).

So, if there is to be revolution in the near future, I predict it will come when the government becomes busy-conservative. The Leftist revolutionaries will no doubt point fingers and try to make the Tea Parties and such out as the genesis of their own revolutionist tendencies and the environment that 'required' it (since, of course, they're pussies who can't accept blame on their own), but I think its true genesis will have been simply the derailment of the past century of Leftist victories.

2010 vs. 2010

2010-01-11T06:49:00.001-08:00

Been wanting to watch 2010 lately, but this guy beat me to it. Nice notes with pictures.

Al Gore

2009-12-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

My aunt was a huge fan of Al Gore. She spoke of him to me before he became vice-president, talking up his education, noting that he took a university class on any subject laid before him. I remember her in the living room of her not-quite-Tennessee home speaking of him in glowing tones.

Shame about that. What a lying frakbag he turned out to be.

Just sayin' . . .

LGF Missives From the Deep

2009-11-25T11:37:00.001-08:00

I'd mentioned LGF a few times of late, but I'll be damned if I didn't just go there and discover that he's dismissing ClimateGate as a non-issue.

What happened to that guy?   Brain damage, maybe?   Fat paycheck from somewhere? Simply getting annoyed with Beck and ending up considering him his "Other", so that all the sudden conservatism just couldn't be right on any topic?    Personal guilt over some unethical behavior producing self-destructive thoughts?

How does a seeming conservative seemingly lose his mind?    Where did Johnson go wrong?   It's so weird to consider LGF a liberal blog . . . but there it is.

Update: Like many, I'm thinking Johnson was a "post-9/11 temporary conservative", but simply one with more staying power than other post 9/11 temporary conservatives.   It's noted on Wikipedia that he considered himself center-left before 9/11, and to the left he is finally returning.

ClimateGate and What Science Is Not

2009-11-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

"ClimateGate" refers to the hacking of the Climate Research Unit in the UK, a primary center espousing man-made global warming claims, producing e-mails and documents from scientists showing several alarming things:

1. Their climate models are based on profoundly sloppy and undocumented computer code, poorly-kept guesswork-analyzed datasets, and only a rudimentary understanding of the chemistry and general workings of the Earth, the variability of the sun, and so on. For example, those dealing with the models often have no idea what assorted rows of numbers mean for historical data, and their globe modeling is exceedingly primitive and flawed on its best day. (Hurricane-oriented weather modeling is decades beyond their global warming climatology models, and yet even the newest hurricane models can have errors of hundreds of miles even over a timespan of days.) Worse, much of the data used as input is synthesized unnecessarily from other input data (e.g. not using real weather info from the 20th Century but only predicted weather for that time period based on prior years), and model output usually features enormous variances compared to the claimed tenth-of-a-degree accuracy of their predictions. Almost pure guesswork is used when pondering effect and concentration of pollutants and particulates, often oversimplifying or ignoring the matter (as had already been noted elsewhere, such as recently in the journal Science). And, of course, the sun is usually discounted, despite its known cycles and their effects (see "Maunder Minimum", "Little Ice Age") and its current variance (see "Modern Maximum").
2. The scientific method is based on the idea that you develop a hypothesis and test it.   The results of the test are supposed to be reproducible by other scientists. In the case of models, reality is the test. Man-made global warming predictions have almost invariably failed both in the short term and over the decades since the beginning of the claims (once they got past the global cooling claims of the 70s). Nevertheless, one way to at least allow other scientists -- including those skeptical of your claims -- to understand the claims would be to share the details of how you arrived at your conclusions.
Man-made global warming proponents, however, jealously guard their raw data, their model code (see #1), and their
methods (see #3), so as to avoid critique by those skeptical of their view (see #4).   Even when the government-funded data is requested via Freedom of Information Act requests (the UK has one as well), information was removed from the data to render it unusable and an unabashed conspiracy to delete correspondence about the research was engaged in.
3. When the model outputs do not correspond to preconceptions, the models are run again and tweaked by applying specialized numerical transformations or simply factoring in previously-unfactored bits of other datasets (see #1). The methodology is quite ad hoc.   "Trick"s are used to "hide the decline" where needed, and evidence-based events like the Medieval Warm Period for which man-made global warming folks have no man-based explanation are intentionally "contain"ed . . . minimized in their models. This is done in the hopes their existence and claims regarding it by skeptics (who correctly note the lack of SUVs and coal power plants in Medieval times) can be thwarted early by making it seem small compared to what is claimed for the 20th Century.
4. A concerted effort is in play by prominent global warming scientists to keep skeptical scientists out of the peer-reviewed literature. This effort involves attempts at character assassination of opponents, campaigns for the firing of research journal editors who are 'soft' on skeptics, and other forms of pressure.   The absence of significant skeptic presence in peer-reviewed literature is then used as 'proof' that skeptics are dealing in poor science.
5. Global warming scientists have good relations with members of the press.

None of the above is meant to suggest that global warming is an evil conspiracy. It is, however, proof that there are a bunch of like-minded idiots (plus a few plain old badguys) pushing the claims.   That the claims could be politicized so long ago by the likes of new carbon-credit billionaire Al Gore ("the science is settled; the debate is over") and made to play into international anti-capitalist agendas and mixed with the modern secular religion of ignorant environmentalism is just proof of the capacity for self-deception of a gaggle of like-minded idiots operating en masse.

Nevertheless, Al Gore will continue to sleep at night in sweatshop-created, inefficiently-shipped pajamas in his extreme-carbon-footprint mansion. Global Warming alarmists will try to pretend that, yes, the sky is still falling, so we still have to sign treaties that condemn the economy of the United States and EU and require taxation to give to developing countries, because somehow that will correct the environmental injustice of our pollution (though China doesn't have to, because . . . er . . . well, because).

The fact is, humans can have an impact on the environment. But all the energy of man pales in comparison to the energy of the Earth, and all the industrial smokestacks, cattle farts, and SUV tailpipes in the world can't hope to compete with the incredible balance of this massively huge volume of atmosphere across the planet. LED lightbulbs and hydrogen cars and nuclear fusion and nanomaterials are worthwhile goals for a lot of reasons . . . there is no need to make false and bogus claims of imminent fiery death (or ocean-level-rise drowning) in order to get them.

******************************

So how best for science to respond?   Well, first, get the bums out, and then have everything these lying dirtbags have touched redone to confirm or deny their claims.

What global warming people shouldn't do is try to ignore or get even more arrogant over the matter.

Note these comments from a claimed scientist in response to the controversy for an example of the worst possible response:

"Science is not a democratic process. Nor is it something akin to the
french revolution. What exactly are you going to do with that data?
Nothing but hurl criticism based on ignorance. Having to defend
ourselves from that shit increases our already monumental stress
levels.

You lack the training or intellectual capacity to see
anything but a string of numbers you cannot understand and your eyes
glaze over. {...} We do what we do because we are (for the most part) one of the few
groups of people on this planet which has the ability and willingness
to{.}"

"Scientists do not serve you directly, and the data we obtain is beyond your capacity to analyze."

The point that science is not a democratic process is actually quite true, and ironic from this person given that he's supporting the same folks who claim a consensus of scientists dictates reality. It does not. Reality exists, and would do so even if all the people of Earth failed to recognize it and instead believed the contrary.

But beyond that, all we have is elitism and undeserved arrogance.

The global warming guys were liars and scoundrels perpetrating a falsehood upon the whole world, and they suffered from the same sort of undeserved arrogance. So afraid were they to be criticized, they finally got to the point . . . no doubt bit by bit . . . where they would cross almost any line. They weren't breaking kneecaps yet, but given that one of these wannabe scientists claimed he was going to be very tempted to punch a particular opponent when next they met, it seems it was only a matter of time.

In politics, science, and so much more, we must always be diligent against those who would unleash the worst traits of humanity.

Software Reviews

2009-09-15T10:33:00.001-07:00

A. Handbrake is a highly-recommended DVD ripping tool that does not work at all. Originally made for Macs, it evidently needs to stay with them and not pretend to be Windows-compatible.

1. It's default is to save to the desktop. However, even if you tell it to save to the desktop, it simply goes through the motions without creating an output file. The third time I tried, it actually did finally create an output file . . . in its own folder in Program Files. The hell?

2. The file wouldn't even play. All I wanted was an .avi with Xvid encoding and it can't even get that right.

Handbrake thus officially sucks.

B. All Text/Hex Editors suck, because they cannot handle significant but very simple search strings. In my
case, this simply means that I was trying to divine a way to
search-and-replace section numbers out of a large number of text files.

So, let's say this was a fragment of my text:

text text text text

23

text text text text

24

text text text text

All I wanted to do was to remove the 23, 24, et cetera so it looked like this:

text text text text
text text text text
text text text text

However, remarkably, this is apparently something that the world's programmers have never considered. Oh, I can remove the digits in one maneuver and then remove the spaces in another, but only at the risk of removing other useful digits in the text (e.g. a line starting with "56 times" or something might have the "56" deleted).

You would think that there would be a simple way to tell a program to find "linebreak-linebreak-digit-digit-linebreak-linebreak" and remove it, but amazingly there is no such thing.   Oh, there's an "extended" expression type that makes finding linebreaks a little easier, but you can't find numbers at the same time.   The regular expression type won't let you find linebreaks worth a damn.

C. RegexMagic is supposed to help with regular expressions . . . you're supposed to be able to input a bit of text and tell it how you want it parsed, and then it will come back with the regular expression coding for you.   I figured it might help me find a way to bypass the absurdity mentioned in B.

However, it did not do crap.   I'm a pretty smart guy, usually able to operate even less-than-intuitive software with relative ease, but this was ridiculous. So I spent an hour going over all of the instructions carefully, marking my text precisely, and yet all I found was that the software continued to fail to do anything of value.   Its big idea of the sort of regular expression I needed to use was to delete all of the text in the file. Seriously!

Don't waste your money.   I'm glad I just used the trial version.

Leftist Trash vs. Glenn Beck

2009-09-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

Sick and evil people are trying to start a rumor/whisper campaign on the internet against Glenn Beck. Originating from a comedy routine of associating someone with insinuations, the original perpetrator and those who are spreading it are trying to hurt Beck by insinuating a violent crime in his past, though they are relatively careful about not actually making the claim. However, by trying to spread the idea and thus bring it to the forefront of Google and the like, they are creating a myth which, if it took root, would be virtually impossible to dispel.

Leftists will think this a stroke of brilliance without ever pondering what it means or what it would be like to be the target of such a thing.

Worse is their attempt to justify it, claiming that it was meant to flip the Obama birth certificate / citizenship questions back on the right wing, "using Beck's tactics against him".   Bull!

First, I don't even think Beck questions Obama's citizenship, but even if he did, what the hell is the similarity between the "where's the beef?" citizenship people (who have yet to be given the beef) and this insidious rumor campaign?   Proof positive is what the so-called Birthers are asking for, and the lack of it from Obama and Hawaii is the wind in their sails. Obama has a very simple solution . . . have the damn birth certificate shown so these people will shut up.

However, in the case of this evil maneuvering against Beck, there is no solution, because the wicked rumor-mongerers demand that a negative be proven. It's fallaciousness is similar, emotionally speaking, to the question-begging of "so when did you finally stop beating your wife", which presumes that you did. You are thus in the position of having to disprove the claim buried in the question.

But how do you prove a negative?   Oh, sure, he could show he was somewhere else, or otherwise prove that every single bit of their claim was wrong. But that's not the same, and is wrong for Beck to have to do that besides. (e.g. Where was I in 1990? Up yours! I am a free man and owe you no
answer. If you require one then "I was banging your mom" is your
answer, you trash.)

All that Beck's point-by-point response would do is to disprove the claims of the rumor-mongerers, who aren't even really trying to prove their claims as factually-based anyway. And by even responding, Beck would be giving fuel to their fire. And even if he was somehow able to do the impossible and prove this negative (that he did not commit the crime they claim), there is nothing to stop them from doing it all over again with another crime the next day.

It's just more sick behavior from leftist trash, and it's enough to make one wish for the existence of Hell just so there's a proper place for such animals.

Another LGF Classic Moment

2009-09-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

Obama as Witch Doctor re: ObamaCare (e.g. making fun of his health care)

LGF calls this disgusting, racist, the creator a creep, and uses it to attack the Tea Party movement.

Now let's flash backward a bit . . .

Bush as Witch Doctor for no apparent reason

What's the difference? Just because Obama is of African descent doesn't make topical fun-poking about his health care ideas racist, you twits, any more than poking fun of Bush as a European king-figure (from the same site as the Bush witch doctor pic) is racist.

So, LGF is getting to the point where they are cordially invited to eat me. Too bad they won't allow new commenters as they continue to drive off the deep end. Echo chamber, anyone?

MicroProse, MegaTestes

2009-08-02T23:08:00.001-07:00

From the Wikipedia article on MicroProse, known for games such as "Gunship" and "Civilization", here's something that made me laugh for the brazen nature of it.

First, a little backstory, again just from Wikipedia. First was a board game called Civilization, made by the Hartland Trefoil company. Another company, Avalon Hill, got a license to sell the game in the US. These events were both circa 1980.

Fast forward to 1991, when a PC game called Civilization comes out. Made by Microprose, which went so far as to license the title from Avalon Hill despite the different media, the game was a smashing success.

But Avalon Hill developed its own designs on the PC market, and circa 1997 wanted to make a PC version of its Civilization game (which by this point was called "Advanced Civilization"). So it was that in 1997 Avalon Hill rescinded the MicroProse name license, handed that over to computer game maker Activision, and together with Activision sued MicroProse.

(Now, this to my mind is the problem with licensing anyway. If it is rescinded for any reason or no reason at all, you are screwed.)

Now obviously, the Avalon Hill folks . . . had they not been bastards . . . would have noted that they had already licensed the name, so they could've released their game by another name. However, they wanted to capitalize on the work MicroProse had done to make the name a legend in the PC world, and of course Activision wanted the same thing. So they wanted to call their game the same name in the hopes that people would buy it not realizing it was some board-game-on-the-PC crap.

This is why the law sucks sometimes . . . but then it does give us entertaining stories like this:

In November 1997 MicroProse was sued by both Avalon Hill (who had the US publishing rights to the name Civilization) and Activision for copyright infringement. MicroProse responded by buying Hartland Trefoil, which had used the Civilization name in early game products and then sued Avalon Hill and Activision for trademark infringement and unfair business practices as a result of Activision's decision to develop and publish Civilization computer games. [...] Under the terms of the settlement MicroProse became the sole owner of the rights of the name Civilization [...]

In other words, Avalon Hill acted like they owned the name in the PC world, so MicroProse responded by buying the real originator in Avalon's board game world, and then sued Avalon and Activision.

It is the legal version of "bring it on, mofo!" I love it. MicroProse completely made Avalon Hill and Activision their prison bitch, and rightly so.

Little Green Footballs Deflating

2009-08-01T13:09:00.001-07:00

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs gained notoriety during the so-called "Rathergate" fiasco, when Dan Rather and CBS ran with false documents impugning Bush the Younger's Guard service. I've visited the site sporadically since then and found it generally interesting, if for no other reason than the fact that it was both conservative and very anti-creationism.

But save for lip service to conservative values, Charles Johnson and LGF are no longer worth paying attention to.

1. Regarding the never-ever-seen Hawaii birth certificate of Barack Obama, Johnson declares those who would like to see it retarded "nirth certifikit" idiots, known as "nirthers".

It is never a great idea to skip to the childish and obnoxious name-calling behavior when the precise item that people wish to see remains unseen. Folks wanted to see Obama's birth certificate to confirm his American citizenship, yet it was sealed and everyone is content to leave it so. Sure, there are announcements in the paper from the right time, and a "certificate of live birth" (which has little to no legal standing given that those can be issued even for the birth of non-citizens), but that isn't the birth certificate.

America's a show-me kinda place . . . Missouri even took that jab and made it a motto. So to start name-calling on that basis is the epitome of absurdity.

And as long as we've brought up the topic of the certificate of live birth, LGF showed an original one from 1962 the other day:

Here's Obama's, which they showed after claiming it is equally valid and that all counter-claims are "debunked":

Now obviously, these two look nothing alike, which leads me to the following irony bomb:

RatherGate was based on a document forged to look like it had come from a typewriter but which instead came from Microsoft Word.

Now the same guy who gained notoriety for debunking RatherGate claims that a Microsoft Word Certification of Live Birth is equal in all ways to either a 1962 typewritten Certificate of Live Birth or even a real Birth Certificate.

Funny, that.

2. Johnson has been going after Glenn Beck in all sorts of absurd ways, usually if not exclusively featuring ridiculous straw men.

I am unsure what it is about Glenn Beck that Johnson finds so repugnant. Beck is a Mormon and does discuss his belief in God and his (unfortunate) belief that the rights of America's people are God-given rather than claimed by the blood and sweat of American patriots, but I can listen to Beck and just sort of edit the God stuff out and he still has everything else right. Thus, I find Johnson's hatred quite confusing.

The latest absurdity is here.

Glenn Beck . . . and this happens even in the posted video . . . clearly states that car dealers involved in the Cash for Clunkers program who use a government website for processing are at risk because the site's terms of service clearly state that their computer and all its contents, upon logging in to the website and using the services thereon, become the property of the Federal government, to be used or disposed of as they see fit.

You don't find that a little freaky for the government to stick in a long legalese terms-of-service thing? I sure do. So does Beck.

Yet Johnson goes apeshit and declares Beck "a raving freakazoid nut sandwich". He also claims you can't reach that page from Cars.gov, which is also silly ... apparently Johnson's never been to a site where the login happens on a different server than the default site's standard URL.

I don't know for sure, 'cause I'm not going to the site to research it on this computer. I guess that makes me a freakazoid nut sandwich, but if so then I am in august company.

What a Ho

2009-05-19T04:40:00.000-07:00

Be glad you didn't get caught, boy . . . now run far away, 'cause her kind is no good.

JournoList

2009-03-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

Seems the liberal media does indeed have its own little support group and information hub where they can get their stories straight. It's called the JournoList . . . and it's not the first such meetingplace for lefties to get their spin aligned, but it is the current one.

(The rest of the time they seem to just quote Democrat talking points memos.)

“There is nothing comparable on the right. E-mail conversations among bloggers, journalists and experts on our side tend to be ad hoc,” Goldfarb said. “The JournoList thing always struck me as a little creepy.”

Kaus, too, has seemed put off by the whole idea, once talking on BloggingHeads about how the list “seems contrary to the spirit of the Web.”

“You don’t want to create a whole separate, like, private blog that only the elite bloggers can go into, and then what you present to the public is sort of the propaganda you’ve decided to go public with,” Kaus argued.

An Important Perspective on Obama and Ayers

2008-08-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.

Read the whole thing.

Alex Jones is a Psychopath

2008-08-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

I've seen signs posted for someplace called Infowars.com, the first being in a bathroom stall with pictures meant to suggest conspiracies and such. I never thought much of it . . . just loony stuff.

Unbeknownst to me, it is the website for radio show host Alex Jones, who is a conspiracy theory nut. The self-written Google blurb suggests that the site contains "strong opposition to socialism, communism, and the New World Order", yet the guy is apparently a supporter of leftists. Go figure.

Now, Alex Jones has gone utterly bonkers, behaving like quite the monster upon sighting conservative blogger Michelle Malkin.

After seeing the video of Alex Jones going bonkers, I can only hope that a monster like him gets hounded and harassed by someone twice his size in similar fashion someday.

Whereas Michelle Malkin handled the event with dignity and grace, a cowardly psychopath like Alex Jones would certainly wet his pants from their tiny, tiny contents.

Meh

2008-08-11T02:43:00.000-07:00

I wish I had more time to elucidate my thoughts here. But I don't, for now. I'll be back to this someday.

A Legal Defense is a Federal Crime?

2008-07-16T22:20:00.001-07:00

A rather interesting article, alarming at times. Perhaps the most alarming thing is this:

The U.S. Attorney’s office also added new charges of felony obstruction of justice, citing the disruptive nature of the flesh-and-blood defense. The prosecutors weren’t just rejecting the defense as an argument for innocence. They were saying that it was, itself, a crime.

Um, excuse me, but if I'm a defendant in a death-penalty case, the attempt to call my legal defense a crime . . . even if it is based on tenuous and objectively illogical legal theories . . . is horsecrap of the first order. I mean, if I shoot the judge or kill a witness or something, then yeah, I'm obstructing the hell out of some justice. But arguing a point of law is, however sadly it can sometimes be, what courts are for.

Also scary in the article is the use of federal law to retry cases where a conviction has already occurred in order to get a harsher penalty. The occurrence of local or state dismissals being retried federally has increased, which seems an obvious case of double jeopardy despite whatever legal loophole arguments are employed. For a case to be retried directly in the way described is even worse on the double jeopardy front.

It seems that there is a lot of convergence these days that would allow a new liberal fascism to develop. Perilous times, indeed.

Bacterial Awesomeness

2008-06-19T17:39:00.001-07:00

This is fascinating, though you wouldn't think so if you were doing it. Taking a population of bacteria, dividing it by twelve, and watching the populations develop for twenty years sounds like great fun, no?

Twenty years into it, Richard Lenski of Michigan State noticed that one group of bacteria were eating the other component of the feed they were given. The bacteria weren't supposed to be able to do that . . . their little bacteria species was identifiable, in part, from the fact that they couldn't eat that. It was just in there because it was part of the standard growth medium.

This is basically akin to cats . . . who cannot taste sweets according to various sources . . . developing a sweet tooth all of the sudden, snarfing down Reese's Pieces and ice cream (after batting the Pieces across the floor for awhile, of course).

Now as for me, I'm curious to know whether their sudden citrate-tooth . . . which other bacteria have . . . is something that might've involved some vestigial code from a common ancestor that was simply reactivated, or if this was a major change that occurred quite independently.

Either way, though, massive kudos for Lenski, and more pointing and laughing at young-Earth creationist loons.

Fascinating: Obama's Record

2008-06-18T04:04:00.001-07:00

Haven't heard much on this before. It's a must-read and must-confirm and must-discuss.

Obama seems capable of sugarcoating his near-communist views most excellently (so you don't even recognize them while he's saying them . . . only later in reviewing what he said), but seeing what he actually does is rather interesting.

The article's not some harsh hit piece, so near as I can tell . . . while there's mention of his long association with Wright in a quote of someone else, the author doesn't fixate on Obama's association with black racists like Wright, terrorists like William Ayers, or his America-loathing wife.

All in all, a good and informative article, but as with all things one must check it out.

Google Making Us Stupid? Perhaps, But . . .

2008-06-10T21:28:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure that it is the internet making us stupid. I think it's more that it allows us to exercise our existing stupidity. That, and the fact that it means our village idiots and resident hippies get to roam free, spewing their babble en masse, instead of being contained and isolated and eventually trainable as once they were.

The Coming Industrial Revolution

2008-06-07T09:34:00.001-07:00

The RepRap is a self-replicating rapid-prototyping machine. I've seen a large rapid prototyping device before at a university, and they are magnificent devices. Building a plastic object layer by layer, you end up with a near-perfect model (or, if it was a plastic object you wanted in the first place, a near-perfect object ready for use).

Calling it "self-replicating" is a bit of a stretch at the moment. In addition to a wealth of additional parts (including steel rods and assorted electronics), it must be hand-assembled and requires a computer to operate. However, future RepRaps are intended to have the ability to do circuitry. This sort of thing is manually possible even now . . . there are special conductive-ink pens that allow one to draw working low-voltage circuits. Microprocessors are certainly a long way off for any such tabletop technology, but the germ of the idea is there.

Even with what it can do now, it would be theoretically possible for RepRap to put certain companies out of business, if the units existed in sufficient numbers. For the most low-key example, you can imagine a simple "make solid" plug-in to convert 3-D graphics models (LightWave or POV-Ray or what-have-you) into solid shapes that the RepRap software could build. This would have the effect of savagely reducing the business of certain fringe model kit and toy makers. Even for more advanced model-builders who wanted to light their models, designing little conduits (or large open spaces) for running wire or fiber optics is hardly outside the realm of possibility.

The best part of RepRap is the open-source nature of it. You can make your own right now.

The active mind can certainly see all sorts of potential for a device like that. But, I want you to imagine the future. Picture a replicator similar to RepRap capable of working with many materials. I'm not even talking about nanotechnology dreams, here, but a real assembler capable of using small quantities of metals and plastics. Even with the most basic processors, what common items couldn't be made with such a thing?

This is the coming revolution. While industry will remain a step ahead for a long while owing to quantities of scale and special needs and whatnot, home manufacturing will slowly whittle away at it as time passes.

Of course, the more things can be made simply, the greater the danger, too. If you can make a simple analog telephone at home, you can make a sealed detonator circuit just as easily. The same is true even today, to be sure, but with so severely lessened cost and thought and effort requirements I have a feeling the problem would worsen significantly.

Will we make it past a home manufacturing revolution? Will nano-tech based home replication systems come and will society survive? It remains to be seen. But we're not too terribly far away now from finding out. The world of 2100 will either be extraordinary to see, or positively horrifying.

Dear US Media: Shut Up!

2008-06-06T16:30:00.001-07:00

What is it with the press? I mean, we know they're leftist-leaning and all, and we know they also need ratings and that scaremongering seems to generate them, but good grief.

For months now they've been trying to generate a recession out of thin air. When the real numbers have failed them by showing that all is well and the economy is growing, they report as news their own polls of a few hundred people wherein they find that a majority think we're in a recession. Or, they find some economist guy to say it's probably a recession. And from there the media goons go on talking about the recession that experts and hoi polloi believe us to be in.

"Of course they believe!" I want to scream . . . "you've been shoving the idea down their throats day in and day out!"

Such so-called "news reporting" is just so jarringly opinionated that it boggles the mind that more people don't realize what's going on.

This does demonstrate the weakness of our economy, though . . . after all, it can be significantly slowed by nothing more than rumor.

The really sick part, though, is how gleeful these bastards are when any negative number does come in. Case in point is the news today about unemployment rates, which have climbed up from historically-low figures toward more-normal-but-still-great values. I don't have more information on the released numbers themselves . . . e.g. the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts as unemployed those who are "discouraged workers" (who have supposedly given up looking, esp. due to economic conditions) and marginal workers (able-bodied folks who haven't looked recently).

(That's crap in my opinion -- if you're not looking for work, then you're not unemployed . . . you're just not a part of the labor force, slacker -- but I'd be interested to see how much of this climb is based on that sort of silliness.)

Yet you can hear the glee in the reporting, and of course you can see the attempt to convince people that it's a recession:

"the nation's unemployment rate zoomed to 5.5 percent in the biggest one-month jump in decades."

Yeah, and my neighborhood anorexic has ballooned out to 105 pounds after her three-cracker eating binge.

"Barbara Bowens, 52, of Washington, D.C., has been laid off from a janitorial job since March. The prospects of finding a new job "don't look so good," she said. "I can't pay bills off nothing." Collecting unemployment benefits helps, but "I've got to pinch pennies."
Cheryl Williams, who lives in the Tulsa, Okla., suburb of Broken Arrow, has been looking for work for two years after losing her job as a certified nurse's aide. The 37-year-old relies on $225 a month in welfare and odds-and-ends jobs to support her two kids.
"I have job searched and job searched and job searched," Williams said. "I would like to have a real job."
Just in the past several days General Motors Corp., United Airlines and others have joined the flurry of job-cut announcements.
The unemployment rate shot up from 5 percent in April, reflecting more workers losing their jobs as well as an influx of young people looking for work. It was the biggest over-the-month swing in the rate since February 1986."

For 1986, the yearly average was 7.0 percent. Indeed, through the roaring 80's the unemployment rate only dipped into the 5's in the last two years. Now it's 5.5 and you're acting like the world's ending?

"Ohhhh, but listen to Barbara and Cheryl!" Screw them. There's always a Barbara and a Cheryl who press, politicians, or other folks will use for their gain. What about the sad tales of non-leftist Americans tired of having their economy affected by the lies of the press? There are so many of them compared to Barbara and Cheryl. Oh, but that wouldn't fit the narrative of a sour economy . . . silly me.

"The increase left the jobless rate at its highest since October 2004."

2004's yearly average was 5.5 percent. A good year, overall. Better than the two post-9/11 years preceding it.

"The White House snapped into crisis-management mode. "

Yes, because it's all the president's fault, of course. Remember planetary expert Kanye West? . . . Bush hates black people.

"Employers -- and the public -- have been shaken by lots of talk about whether the economy is on the brink of or has fallen into its first recession since 2001. That determination, made by a panel of academics, is usually made well after the fact."

This is cute. Here the author reports on "lots of talk" . . . talk that came from the press, of course . . . and then suggests that a bunch of Ivory Tower folks will determine whether it happened after it passes. In other words, he's basically saying "trust us . . . we know now that we're in one." Eat my poo.

""For the average American there is not debate that the economy is in a recession," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com."

Of course not! Didn't you know that once the press starts reporting something as fact, it is fact and none may oppose it without being clearly and undeniably insane? Al Gore knows. The debate is over.

(My ass. Mark Zandi's a reject. The data says we are not receding, ergo we are not in a recession. QED, punk.)

A Well-Spun "Confession"

2008-05-24T14:41:00.001-07:00

Here we have Rep. Kanjorski (D) of Pennsylvania. Some people are all in a twitter because he basically says here that the Democrat party leadership was blowing sunshine up their base's behinds with their claim that they would bring an end to the war (a claim which was actually made, despite Kanjorski's attempt to argue it was merely an impression left in the minds of fools). He basically says that they won by running on an anti-war platform.

That's crap.

Kanjorski is attempting to explain away the fact that the leftist anti-war Democrats have failed to keep their promise to end the war. But it's sort of clever how its done, because he maintains the false claim that Americans voted them in to stop the war.

But that had virtually nothing to do with why the Democrats got back in during the 2006 mid-terms. In dozens of cases they ran "Blue Dog" conservative DINOs ("Democrats In Name Only"). These were not the anti-war friends-of-Code-Pink-and-William-Ayers types who are actually running the party. The Dems basically got back into Congressional authority by running Democrats who out-Republicaned Republicans, which isn't all that difficult these days.

A similar case occurred during the most recent Mississippi gubernatorial race. Incumbent Republican Haley Barbour had a bit of a challenge because the Democrats were running a guy who was pretended to be such a quintessential Mississippi conservative that I found him frightening, and any liberal policy he espoused was so wrapped up in woodsy folkisms and Bible-thumping that most people hardly noticed what he was proposing. His commercials espoused few troubling parts (e.g. his HillaryCare-for-Mississippi sort of silliness was never mentioned), instead mostly discussing his religious convictions and making use of New-Testament-based class warfare rhetoric. (If I never hear the term "money-changers" again, I'll be happy.) All this with him standing on a stage missing its pulpit, as his hair was backlit with artificial halo for the camera's diffusion filter.

It was basically a TV and radio ministry . . . and that is most assuredly NOT what today's Democratic Party is or stands for. The party is led by San Francisco friend-of-Code-Pink Pelosi, Nevada's wacko dirty-dealing "the war is lost" "Mormon, what Mormon?" Reid, "YYYYEEEEAAAHHHHGGGRRGHGHG" Howard Dean, friend-of-American-terrorist-Ayers and "my minister preaches America-hate but that's okay" Barack Obama, and of course the lying and deceptive Clintons.

If you want the truth of today's Democratic Party, you need look no further than Socialist Maxine Waters.

I just have one question ...

2008-05-22T05:39:00.001-07:00

... regarding this complete wanker. Is it wrong of me to be so happy that he has an English accent instead of an American one?

Burma

2008-05-06T04:22:00.000-07:00

I find it entirely rude of the universe to smash a Katrina-esque hurricane into Burma (or "Myanmar" if you wish to listen to its evil overlords). The people already have to deal with a fascistic socialist military regime.

The Anti-Science Alliance

2008-04-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

(a.k.a. "Strange Bedfellows - Dear Al Gore: Stop Hurting America")

One hundred and fifty years ago (give or take), Darwin gave us a book that would come to be known as The Origin of Species. While borrowing from similar ideas of earlier years (e.g. the Vestiges idea of transmutation of species), Darwin's work was specific, direct, and profound. Although the concept had gained wide popularity with naturalists within about 15 years, it took over fifty years before the concept was sufficiently accepted that it came to be commonly taught in schools. Today, the concept is part of the bedrock of natural history. An insurgency has remained, of course . . . even the most absurd ideas have their adherents. But now, things are worse. A few years ago (give or take), Al Gore and others really started shoving global warming down people's throats. While borrowing from similar ideas of earlier years (e.g. the hole in the ozone layer from hairspray cans, et al.), Gore's attempt to popularize the concept even beyond earlier discussion a la Kyoto was specific, direct, and profound. While opinions differ insofar as what percentage of climatologists concur with all the alarmist predictions (at least the current ones . . . the old ones failed to occur), it took just a few years before the concept started getting taught to our children, despite the fact that climatology itself is in its infancy.

This is the backdrop for my response to an e-mail I received (regarding another website), with both reprinted below:

Greetings tireless bastion of truth and free thinking!

I'm sure you're aware of this, but your stance of encouraging a "how to think" mentality as opposed to "what to think" has inspired me beyond the boundaries of the TvW debate. I couldn't help but notice that Mr. Wong and many of his cohorts subscribe to a militant stance on Darwinian evolution. That being the case, I can only imagine his reaction toward Expelled: The Movie, a documentary released this past weekend in the States.

This movie examines accomplished members of the academic and scientific community who've been black listed for suggesting Intelligent Design might be a possible explanation for the origin of the universe.

Regardless of the origin of the universe, Stein suggests that a rational person should be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead him or her, and should not be stonewalled by any establishment that clings to a single, unyielding doctrine. In this, I cannot help but see parallels between you and Mr. Stein (or Wong and his hero, Richard Dawkins, who appears prominently in the film with quite the dogmatic, elitist point of view).

If you have the time, sir, I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Thank you for your work.

If you are intrigued by Ben Stein's work, then I have failed you.

The fault is not entirely mine. Activists like Al Gore have quite literally turned their global warming concept into a secular religion, heavily politicized to boot. Instead of raising the issue and opening the proverbial floor to debate, such people have leapt headlong into the notion that the debate is over, and have long since begun poisoning the well against Holoc . . . er, I mean, Global Warming deniers. The appeals to Pascal's-Wager-esque "logic" are the icing on the cake.

All that is over and above the poor measurements, slipshod treatment of data, plain ole faulty science, absurd leaps of reasoning, grandiose empty claims, and many other such details that are outside the scope of this missive.

The principle here, though, is that the perilously young science of global climatology is being pressed into service for extraordinary claims, predictions that don't come true, and so on. Yet this young theory from the young science is suddenly being shoved down everyone's throats, taught in schools, and so on.

The comparison to the era of Darwin is striking . . . not for similarities, but differences. In the time of Darwin, the evidence was all around that the Earth was far older than religion suggested. The evidence was staring everyone in the face that information was passed on via some mechanism of heredity. Darwin is lauded (or profaned) as the father of evolution, but his work was hardly revolutionary . . . it was the inexorable conclusion to be drawn from all the information from all of the natural sciences that was available at the time.

Now, midway through the second century since Origin of Species, we have seen the concept grow and thrive. Cellular-level discoveries that Darwin could scarcely have dreamed of have reached back through time to confirm and expand upon the ideas he presented.

In short, we know evolution happened. We can look to the wild itself to determine the basic mechanism, as Darwin did, and we can expand upon the simple concept of natural selection to show the hows and whys of where assorted details fit in. We can, like the geologists of Darwin's era who were thinking Earth must be "millions" of years old, clearly establish that Earth has billions of years of antiquity under her belt. We can look to the cell . . . DNA, RNA, and mitochondrial genetic material giving us the whys and wherefores and sometimes even the traces of the millions upon millions of generations before. And we can look to the vast expanse of the heavens, and in its processes determine that Earth, compared to the universe itself, is a relative newcomer.

Evolution fits neatly in this constellation of knowledge.

Yet despite the beautiful simplicity and explanatory power of the concept of natural selection, the adoption was not instantaneous . . . rather obviously. Although the concept had gained wide popularity with naturalists within about 15 years, it took over fifty years before the concept was sufficiently accepted that it came to be commonly taught in schools. And, of course, this was not without challenge, as the Scopes trial made plain.

It is my contention that Al Gore and the like, by pushing and politicizing and 'religionizing' a theory -- at best on wobbly legs and at worst stillborn -- are hurting science.

The Ben Stein thing is, to my mind, a prime example.

There is a difference between being shunned for one's own abject stupidity and being shunned due to the abject stupidity of others. It can appear to be a fine line, and many skip across it without realizing which side they were really on to begin with.

Without evolution, life sciences just don't work. As soon as you start inserting miracles and deleting logic, understanding what life is up to suddenly becomes a confusing mish-mash. I once knew a biology major who rejected evolution . . . he could pass the tests, but he had no idea what was going on. In his mind, God was always behind the corner monkeying with things.

If you're a plumber looking for a loss of pressure, you can't operate on the assumption that God is hiding in the pipe making some water disappear. If you're an electrician or electronics tech trying to troubleshoot unexpectedly high resistance in a line, you can't assume that God has his finger in the copper causing electrons to flow around it. If you're a PC tech trying to figure out why a hard drive is going bad, you can't assume God is riding the platter whacking the read head a little off track each time he passes at 7200 RPM. (Though, in fairness, if I was God I'd totally do that once, just for kicks.)

The basic point here is that, from the perspective of science, assuming the involvement of God serves no purpose whatsoever. If I can give you a naturalistic, testable explanation of an event, and you reject it because you think some omnipotent being snapped his fingers and caused something to flash into existence . . . well, who is the scientist and who isn't?

This is why one can see the rationale for biologists opposed to evolution to be discarded. In the modern era, one could present the case that such people shouldn't progress much beyond lab techs. Sure, like a stopped clock they can turn out lucky twice a day . . . but, contrary to popular opinion, that never meant that on those two occasions they were *right*. Better to use your resources in support of someone who "gets it".

And yes, that's dangerous territory to tread, because it can be far too easy to jump straight there over any disagreement. Wong and the gang jumped there long ago, for instance, and of course as mentioned the weird envirofascists online are long since there.

What we're seeing with this Ben Stein idiocy is the proof of dangerous territory, because the same foolish facts-be-damned closed-minded elitism of the global warming crowd . . . and its natural resistance . . . is something that can all too easily be turned against other areas of science. It's not human stupidity, as they might claim . . . it's human nature.

Put simply, someone claiming to be a nutritionist ramming horse manure down a patient's throat won't make it taste better, and they're still going to puke. If a real nutritionist is offering them a real meal in the same packaging, should we be surprised when they say no thanks? Even if what they eat is little better than the manure, they'll still think they've improved their lot.

Of course, we've had people trying to spread lies about the real nutrionist and the real meal for some time.

You can google absurdities like the "water canopy" for examples . . . basically Bible-thumpers in scientist lab jackets they got from a Halloween store tried to suggest that Earth had a watery shield over it whose primary purpose was for God to drop during Noah's flood.

Behe's "intelligent design" nonsense is simply a sneakier version of the same creationist tomfoolery. ID'ers pretend to accept the timeline and events of history and our knowledge of biology's past, but anytime there's a question mark yet to be filled in (or, more likely, the *claim* of a question mark), they scream "goddidit!" and cackle with glee.

It's absurd, deceitful, and dishonest. And Ben Stein, self-proclaimed member of the intelligentsia, fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

For someone claiming to be so smart, he suuuure is dumb.

Oh, and for the record, Dawkins rocks.

Score One for the Good Guys: Fred Phelps in Trouble"

2008-04-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

This is great news.   At last, those Westboro Baptist Church bastards of "God Hates Fags" fame are finding their strangely slick legal maneuvers a bit empty this time out.

More like this, please.

It's worth pausing, though, to report something I found altogether fascinating.   Fred Phelps is a Democrat.

That probably didn't register at first, so let me repeat:

Fred Phelps of the aforementioned "God Hates Fags" fame is a Democrat.

What the hell is he doing in the party of San Francisco?   You can't tell me that he is unaware of the Democratic Party's platform reputation regarding gay rights, gay marriage, et al. Per Wikipedia (yes, I know, but it was fast), he started out as a civil rights lawyer, too.

I realize that one's political views need not invariably follow the current separations as selected by the parties . . . I am, after all, a conservative agnostic, and thus I also slip through certain cracks in the whole New-Deal-vs.-Conservative-coalitions thing.

But applying all the stereotypes, it seems to me that a raving lunatic homophobe who bases his hatred of homosexuals on quasi-Calvinist Biblical teachings would, alas, be a more natural fit for the Republican, conservative party. The fact that he's a Dem is almost enough to put me in a conspiracist mood. (And c'mon, lefties . . . you can't tell me that finding out Osama bin Laden was a Republican wouldn't make you jump right to the conspiracist conclusion.)

How do they afford all that protesting everywhere, anyway?