• History,  Politics,  Predictions,  Quotes

    Quick roundup

    January 18, 2006 /
    • It’s depressing that two senators don’t realize how off they are. If you want to characterize the Republican majority in the House of Representatives negatively, then the proper term is fascism (taken literally, strength in numbers, and a dictatorship thereof) rather than a plantation, the relevant characteristic being oppression of the many by the few. All to work in a racial angle I suppose.
    • Tom MacGuire has more interesting thoughts on the NSA wiretapping thing. Still, why not change the law though?
    • An interesting post from the Belmont Club “A stone killer is never idle in a lawless Third World country”
    • America’s possible action on Iran:. Evidently some lessons were learned from the lack of immediate American response to Afghanistan after 9-11.
    • The Great War of 2007 – very scary possible history.
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  • Links,  Politics

    Sunday rapid fire

    January 15, 2006 /
    • A nice summary of the demographic predicament of the Democratic Party. The Roe Effect is curiously unmentioned.
    • 39 Mega pixel digicam! Via Digg.
    • A very good article on NRO about the current state of 527 organizations.

      …led by the so-called 527 groups, was a broad-based, grassroots effort, it was, in fact dependent in substantial part on just five donors: financier George Soros, Progressive Insurance chairman Peter Lewis, Hollywood mogul Stephen Bing, and the California investors Herbert and Marion Sandler. Together, they spent about $78 million in the effort to defeat the president — more than the $75 million in federal funds that each presidential candidate received to conduct his entire general election campaign. (It was also more than twice what the late-starting top five Republican 527 donors spent on their side.)

      The low number of people funding really does explain a lot about the Kerry campaign.

    • The Iranians seem to refine technique.
    • A good look at what could the scenario with the FISA/NSA case. One thing I would still like clarified: Is it wiretapping when it is recorded, or when someone listens to it? It still seems like a massive amount of datamining to me.
    • Blues guitarist Rory Block has an unappealing FrontPage website, but a very interesting life story.
    • I intent do explore AJAX more thoroughly when I have more time, but here is a tutorial, and a good open source download site. Here is an AJAX library it seems.
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  • Home Stuff

    The new faucet

    January 14, 2006 /

    Last week I decided to finally get a new faucet. Much to my surprise, the previous owner had installed the last one horribly. All of the nuts where misthreaded and stripped and it worked out to be a 6 hour pain. I wound up having to take the entire counter apart to get good leverage on loosening and remove everything.

    An astonishing amount of gook can accumulate on the underside of the faucet over the years.

    The counter with the back panel removed.

    Dirt!

    The underside of the old faucet.

    Here is the finished product

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  • Funny,  Politics,  Weirdness

    Everything you can say about America is true

    January 13, 2006 /

    Vampire Candidate ‘Won’t Hide Evil Side’
    Thursday, January 12, 2006

    MINNEAPOLIS One gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota is giving a whole new meaning to the “dark side” of politics. A man who calls himself a satanic priest plans to run for governor on a 13-point platform that includes the public impaling of terrorists at the state Capitol building.
    ..
    Including the impaling of terrorists, rapists, drug dealers and other criminals, Sharkey’s platform includes emphasis on education, tax breaks for farmers and better benefits for veterans.

    I think govenors have been hiding their evil sides for far too long, and I welcome his candor. Throw in his impalement policy and I think we have a winner. Sure, it didn’t work for Dole in 96, but America has changed since then.

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  • Demographics

    The Steyn Article

    January 12, 2006 /

    I’ve been meaning to comment on the Mark Steyn Op-Ed “It’s the demography, stupid” is for a long time (the page has been open in Firefox for a week now.) but it looks like i won’t get around to it, so I guess I’ll just post the link. James Lileks comments on it are here.

    While I think Steyn overstates his case by a lot, mostly in not counting the positive value of immigration (buying, rather than building Westerners) and longer lives for a lot of people (who will be disproportionately our best and brightest).

    Now that I think about it, he also overestimates (IMHO) the importance of population. There is really no reason to think that the asymmetries currently in existence will disappear. Still a society that can’t sustain itself (not true of America but true in Europe and Japan) is not healthy. Curiously unmentioned are payroll taxes.

    Another random thought: the similarities to our current problems and late 19th century Bolshevism are eerie.

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