America

  • Alt Energy,  America,  Environmentalism,  Hybrids

    Yet more reasons to hate environmentalists

    I just saw the creator of “Who Killed the Electric Car” on the Daily show. He did not address the problems raised by David Friedman (mainly cost), or any of the range argument. Instead it was the usual anti-corporate spiel.

    That’s to be expected. What I found reprehensible was his not mentioning the new vehicle by Tesla Motors, or plug in hybrids from CalCars. Too many people in the alt-energy environmental front prefer a great excuse to a modest accomplishment and the director was no exception.

    I suppose that’s why Solar Towers (CNN article here, WikiPedia here) don’t actually exist yet.

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  • America,  Funny,  Weirdness

    It almost writes itself

    Somehow I came across the book page for this book “Why Mommy is a Democrat“. There is a link to a review from some outfit called “The National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature“. To quote some of the review

    Mommy is a tufted-ear squirrel who embodies and makes visual all the good things Democrats like to think they do, like playing by the rules, treating everyone fairly, and sharing their toys.

    Little lovable animals inhabit the very finely done colored-pencil illustrations, exemplifying abstract beliefs like tolerance and accessible health care.

    the representative multicultural-looking down-and-out young man who is barred from an expensive school, sleeps under a tree in the park, or looks in trash cans for dinner

    The jokes for write themselves. What I found strangest was the phrase “representative multicultural-looking”.

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  • America,  Cycling

    15 million illegal immigrants can’t be wrong

    Happy Birthday America!

    You’re 230 today! That’s 1,610 in dog years. And over 140 years without a civil war, which isn’t that bad, considering.

    I’m off to celebrate the day by riding to Alabama and back. If this site isn’t updated by this time tommorow, would someone please look for me?

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  • America

    RIP Steve Mizerak

    The CNNSI article

    I got his “Pool the Master’s Way” videotapes in the early 90s, and to date, they were the best instructional investment I’ve ever made, and I have dozens of instructional tapes and DVD’s over the years. They improved my pool game several hundred percent.

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  • America,  Bush,  Politics

    Funny line

    I was reading part of the transcript of Rumsfeld vs the heckler (who’s a moderately well known anti-Bush activist, I’ve heard him on Democracy Now before) here in Atlanta last week. I came across this gem:

    CHILD: Mom, do you have an Altoid?
    MOM: Yes, I think so. Look in my purse.
    CHILD: I don’’t see any.
    MOM: Oh, I thought I had some.
    CHILD: LYING BLOODTHIRSTY MONSTER!

    I’ve always wondered how is it possible that people can believe the government, particularly this one, is more capable of a grand conspiracy than a grand failure.

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  • America,  Funny

    Alex Tabarrok has the line of the day

    In this post

    Brad just doesn’t know right-wing agitprop. My friends walked out, but I exited the theater, pumped my fist in the air and shouted, Wolverines! (That’s when I first knew I was a rather odd Canadian – perhaps this was destiny.)

    He would later (legally) immigrate to America and taste the sweet air of freedom.

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  • America,  Politics

    Thought and line of the moment

    An interesting thought from Jesse Walker at Reason’s Hit and Run

    But is there anyone in the country who wouldn’t be delighted to learn that the forces behind 9/11 are based in Washington, D.C.? That the enemy is not some exotic conspiracy of mysteriously motivated foreigners who speak impenetrable languages and fade easily into an alien landscape, but a familiar group of Republicans with Middle American accents who would be ousted the moment their cabal came to light? The Bush-did-it theory lends itself to a tidy movie ending, a conclusion far preferable to the endless bloody soap opera we’ve landed in instead.

    There are many reasons I don’t believe the president plotted 9/11. The biggest is that I’m just not optimistic enough to think the problem could be eliminated that easily.

    But the real winner is in the comments (they’re quite snarky over there these days) with

    … and I think we’ve ‘turned the corner’ again, too. Considering how many times we’ve turned the corner in Iraq, I suspect that the country is shaped like a gigantic four-dimensional dodecahedron.

    I think 50 years from now all of this will be seen as a negative function of technology and communications more than anything else.

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