-
Ajax.net nugget of wisdom
Here’s something I’ve just spend 90 minutes discovering – if you use inline code containing a Request.Querystring that screws up the Microsoft Ajax.net code causing it to do a full postback.
-
A rise in crime
Personally I think Katrina and meth have something to do with it but Tom Barnett might have it, specifically
the three-strikes and other harsh-penalty laws of the previous decade had surged the prison population, but soon the number of ex-cons being released (about 600k, if I remember) would surpass the number of new cons going in (about 500k). A simple prediction: urban crime was going to go up all across America.
Food for thought.
-
Christmas 2006
This is a bit late, but here are the photos I took on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 2006. Some of them turned out very well. The heat lamps allowed the shadows and the colors to do very nice things. Most of the photos were taken with the lovely new prime lens Mike and Erin got me for Christmas.I overdid the flash, which made many of them fit for conversion to black and white.
-
Thursday rapid fire
- Hitchens reviews Stein – personally I don’t think the demographic argument carries much weight – look at the performance of Japan vs China and Germany vs Russia in WWII. A productive culture beats a backward one in a life or death struggle. It’s an interesting read though. To clarify – the reason that Japan and Germany lost was American material and military support. While they could die bravely, that doesn’t lead to many wins.
- Toddler’s Temper Ousts Family From Plane –
She was removed because “she was climbing under the seat and hitting the parents and wouldn’t get in her seat” during boarding, Graham-Weaver said.
- Police in Tijuana Issued Sling Shots –
The police department has issued about 60 slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana, where soldiers confiscated police weapons two weeks ago on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers.
Yet the war on drugs continues. This time for sure!
- Battery Breakthrough – Well worth reading. If true, this changes American society for the better in ten years or less. Sadly, most scientific breakthroughs tend to be either false or meaningless
- Diane Feinstein and conflicts of interest
- Winning the battle for freedom – RTWT – from the founder of Whole Foods no less.
-
Cool post on Coming Anarchy
Specifically about the Milton County secession movement. Eric and I have been commenting on the post.
-
Beat this for raw weirdness
’12-year-old’ is 29-year-old sex offender
Stiffler and Robert James Snow, 43, “were very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man and not a pre-teen boy,” Quayle said.
I think the next step is raining frogs. We live in a very strange world. I’m going to put on my tin foil hat now.
-
3 very cool links
- The Gap Minder – From Google, it tracks life expectancy, income, population in a very cool graphical use of flash
- “Things My Boyfriend Says” – pretty funny
- Apple Dei – the cult of the mac
-
Put very succinctly
From the Ethical Spectacle
However, I suspect that the real reason we haven’t gone after Bin Laden is because we know he is living in the lawless part of Pakistan near the Afghan border, where the resurgent Taliban are also based. This has rapidly become a new rogue state, not really under any kind of Pakistani military or political control. In addition, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are allegedly sheltered and supported by renegade elements of Pakistani intelligence who originally worked with them on the anti-Soviet effort and haven’t given them up in the post-9/11 world.
If this part of Pakistan had been a completely independent state, it would have made a lot of sense to invade it instead of Iraq (I believe we don’t have a large enough military to do both). I suspect that the reason we can’t do this is that the minute US troops land on Pakistani territory (even such independent and lawless territory) there would be a huge popular uprising in Pakistan, overthrowing our nominal ally the weak dictator-president Musharraf. The result of the incursion would be to drive a huge country with nuclear weapons over to the other side, giving Al Qaeda a large powerful playground instead of a small weak one.
-
Government temerity
From this CNN article
The bill would bar companies from future lease sales unless they agree to renegotiate flawed leases issued in 1998-99 for deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Because of a government error, the current leases do not contain a trigger for royalties if prices soared, as they have in recent years. As a result, the companies have avoided paying $1 billion in royalties so far and stand to avoid an additional $9 billion over the life of the leases, the Interior Department says.
Isn’t that why one signs a lease, to lock in a price? All government contracting is shady, but to pretend that anyone is owed anything is ridiculous. All the more reason to auction off the drilling rights and be done with it.
-
Happy, Happy
I won the open Mic at Limerick Junction last night, it was a decent performance on my part. I did the standard material.