Well, that’s one take. Certainly more reasonable than some views, which I would summarize as, “AIEEEE!”
A linkorama to a linkorama, specifically Radley’s Balko’s list of other mosques being protested. And more info on the Ground Zero Imam.
As predicted, the stupid homebuyer tax credit has resulted in a market crash after being removed. Stay tuned for another wave of foreclosures from being people who shouldn’t have bought houses and wouldn’t have if the feds didn’t pay them to.
Remember, it’s politicizing science only when the Republicans do it. In that vein, the Obama Administration shoved a study on gender pay disparities down the memory hole because it disagreed with their agenda. The study may have been wrong, but we’re not supposed to erase studies we don’t like.
I love color pictures from the 19th and early 20th centuries. I’m so used to thinking of those eras as black and white. Color pictures are just startling and make it so much more real.
Hitchens, no fan of Islam, makes the case for the so-called ground zero mosque. Good God, I hope he recovers from his cancer; we can’t lose his voice. On the flip side, the AFA calls for a nationwide ban on mosques. Yeah, it’s all about Ground Zero, guys.
I have to agree with Gene Healey. I really like the coalition government that’s been put together in the UK. It’s the sort of thing I wish we’d have in this country — practical, prudent, green, conservative, with a sharp focus on restoring civil liberties. Such a thing won’t happen in this country until at least Sarah Palin goes down in disgrace (assuming it’s possible her to be disgrace out of public life). But I can hope, can’t I?
Just to bookmark it for when it hits the Right Wing Echosphere: This story that global warming is a myth because the NOAA is claiming it’s 600 degrees in Wisconsin? Bullshit. Expect no correction, none, from the “skeptics” (O’Sullivan’s website is still trumpeting their discovery of this “fraud”). And expect this debunked point to turn up every time someone tries to prove that global warming is a myth.
John McWhorter on the persistence of black poverty. It’s provoking some interesting discussion on Sully’s blog. But no matter what the source of the social problems afflicting African Americans, I am not convinced that government can do anything other than make them worse.
What if the Earth stopped spinning? Remember, according to the Bible, it did.
Posnanski writes a great post on the idea that we were wrong about steroids. Notice that most of the people disputing him use the, “Oh come on, it was SOOO obvious!” line of argument.
You’re Full of Shit Watch: Paul Krugman is full of it on Paul Ryan, Newt is full of it on the Cordoba Mosque and Bill Kristol is just full of it in general.
San Francisco is rapidly becoming a joke on Nanny State issues. This is absurd.
The idea of removing the lifetime tenure of Supreme Court nominees tends to surface every now and then, mostly when the White House has switched parties. I agree the debate has gotten nastier, although we have Democrats to thank for that (see Bork, Robert). But this is a dumb idea. The best thing about the Court is that the justice are free to rule as they see fit. We’ve seen a number of them go in unexpected directions. And that’s a good thing.
Sully’s readers wax rhapsodic about Doctor Who. It’s a joy to read for this Whovian. The wife unit and I used to watch it every Friday. We’re recently turned some friends onto it. And meeting someone who’s a fan creates an instant conversation. I agree with what he says about the show. As science fiction, it has it’s problems. But as drama, it’s wonderful. And yes, the Doctor is anti-matter to Jack Bauer (but hopefully not Amanda!).
Cool slow mo video. I particularly like the mouse traps.
I think (hope) I’m somewhere on the main sequence. I had to play with the metrics a bit (there are, apparently, lots of Mike Siegels out there and I have a lot of GCNs under my belt at ADS). But my calculation are mid main sequence.
Political Links:
Not sure if this is political or not. It’s about the pink sari gang that are bringing vigilante justice to India. I often think that true progress in things women’s right comes not from a benevolent kind government but from millions of people suddenly say, “Hey, why do we put up with his shit?” If this thing ever reaches the Islamic world, the Earth will shake.
And just when you thought the smear on Shirley Sherrod couldn’t get worse, it does. Ta-Nehisi and Balko take it on. Again, we see why Ta-Nehisi is one of my favorite liberal writers: “The more I think about this, the more I am faced with the kind of question I feel naive and stupid for asking–What kind of human being writes a 4,000 word article to prove that someone’s long-dead relative wasn’t lynched because he was beaten to death? Callousness is scary. Stupidity is scary. When you combine the two….I mean seriously, What the fuck? It’s the worst of everything.”
More “failure” from Obama on illegal immigration. Again, expect radio silence from the “amnesty!” shrieking Right Wing.
Peter Suderman runs down the sad sad legacy of Democratic budget trickeration.
FOIA was used to discover that the SEC was, among other things, warned that Bernie Madoff was a shyster. So the Dodd-Frank bill fixes this by … exempting the SEC from FOIA. It’s amazing how often, under the current Congress, progress has been defined by preventing anyone in power from ever having to take responsibility for anything.
I don’t think much of this site. I posted three different excerpts from my novel and found out I write either like Athur C. Clark, Jane Austen or J. D. Salinger.
Awesome. The navy shoots down on a drone with a laser.
OK, semi-political. I wish I’d had this woman as my philosophy professor when we were looking at feminist philosophy.
Political links:
Crime in Arizona, like the rest of the country, is way down … except in the district patrolled by America’s toughest sheriff. Funny that.
I’m forced to agree with a lot of what’s in this video. I wish our leaders would stop trying to pretend that solving global warming is an economic miracle waiting to happen. Not when things like public transportation are such boondoggles. When I hear pie in the sky talk about AGW, it indicates someone who isn’t taking the issue seriously, just using it as an excuse to prop up special interests. And, like the video, I wish global warming weren’t happening. But I can’t convince myself it’s a myth.
Ron Bailey links up the worst environmental disasters. You could add Chernobyl and Bhopal to the list if you wanted to get historical.
It is absolutely unsurprising that the NHTSA investigation essentially cleared Toyota of most wrongdoing. This is simply a repeat of the sudden acceleration incidents that happened twenty years ago. Ted Frank wades into the comments on the Toyota lawsuits. Worth reading as he is an excellent debater.
In the end, the Nanny Staters will press for this, taking kids out of homes that make them fat. Never mind that weight is a difficult issue to pin down (I linked last week to a school bashing the parents of a gymnast because her Bullshit Mass Index was high). Is the biggest problem we need to solve in parenting people feeding their kids too much?
Hey, it’s no surprise to me that one of the most religious nations on Earth is also the biggest consumer of porn. What do you expect when every woman in a ten mile radius is covered with the living room drapes?
Yep. Celebrities are stupid. Unless they’re conservative, of course.
Political Links:
One thing I like about Andrew Napolitano: he’s consistent. A few weeks ago, he blasted Arizona’s immigration law as unconstitutional. Today he said Bush and Cheney should be indicted for committing torture and eavesdropping. I agree. Our treaty obligations say that we must investigate allegations of torture and prosecute those who authorized it. And under our Constitution, a signed treaty has the power of federal law.
Radley Balko writes a brave column defending Johannes Mehserle.
Yet more reasons I’m glad I left Texas. That’s two cracked links in one linkorama.
I already posted on it at the other blog, but this Black Panther business is just ridiculous.
So now Google joins Microsoft and Paypal as companies that are getting trust-busted because they wouldn’t play politics.
A Holocaust survivor and his grandkids dance at the ruins of concentration camps. To me, survival is the best answer to that horror. One of my favorite movies is Schindler’s List. The reason I like it is because of the very ending with the real life survivors. I watch most of the movie with horror and sadness. But it’s only the triumphant ending, with the sons and daughters of Schindler, that gets me choked up.
Political Links:
Obama scores big, getting four agents from Russia in exchange for the bumbling Russian agents. Naturally … well just read the post and comments about how this all a big conspiracy.
What I was saying the other day about originalism? Jacob Sullum applies it to the DOMA ruling which, in my view, complied with the Constitution.
More on the vileness that is BP, one of the most politically powerful companies in the world.
Dear Conservatives/Libertarians: stop trying to politicize Lebron James’ move to Miami and say he did it because of the taxes. You just sound stupid. No one knows what’s going on in his head.
This is so offensive on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin.
Another inspiring note about people filling in for their corrupt useless government, this time in Detroit.
This is absurd. Law schools are deliberately inflating grades to make their students more competitive. Where does it stop? What happens when every student is Maxima Cum Laude with a 5.0 GPA?
I’m not surprised that the author of “Party of Parasites” collects farm subsidies.
I never thought I’d call Thomas Sowell a hack, but … well. It’s so depressing to watch so many conservative icons go off the deep end. And for all the Republicans going into hysterics about Obama being a dictator, here is Foreign Policy, to remind us of what a dictator is really like.
The tiny DC Vouchers program was a success. So naturally, one of the first things Obama did was kill it. The prose here does not quite capture how much this angers me.
Oh, or Christ’s sake. The Food Grabbers are after happy meals now, bouyed by their imposition of calorie counts on menus — an innovation that … um … increased caloric intake actually. I’m sure that toys draw kids to buy McDonald’s. However, I think it’s very likely that it’s drawing them away from other fast food joints, not platters of asparagus. Where to go for fries is the kids’ choice; whether to go for fries it the parents’ choice.
Let me get this straight. We pay $3 billion a year to subsidize cotton growers. Brazil takes us to the WTO. Instead of ending the subsidies (remember the budget crisis?), we will now paythem $150 million per year to make up or it, a bounty that will presumably extend until we are paying billions in subsidies to cotton growers around the world. OK.
Government is different. If you blow the whistle on a corporation, you get rewarded. If you blow the whistle on the government, you go to jail. It’s not just supposedly classified info either. Obama has ramped up prosecution of government whistleblowers throughout the system.
More form the Right Wing Fantasyworld. That’s twice I’ve linked to thinkprogress in one blog post. Damn you, Sarah Palin! It used to be the Left that just made shit up (3 million homeless, murder being the leading cause of death in women, no history of gun ownership, etc.)
I have to agree with Morrissey and Bainbridge. The Zogby poll being touted by people as proof of liberal ignorance about economics seems more designed to get a certain result than to show anything. While I agree with some of the points stated as “enlightened”, those point are not beyond dispute. Besides. I shudder to think what a poll of conservatives on scientific issues would show.
Once again, we don’t need more regulation. We need to enforce the ones we have.
Now we’re applying zero tolerance to teachers. At what point did we stop allowing people to occasionally mess up?
Reason #61A to love the internet: it empowers consumers, even against lawsuit-happy companies.
Reason #44A I sometimes hate being a dad: stories like this, about a smoking baby, make me physically ill. However, I should note I suspect this story is bogus since it comes from the British press. They are not exactly known for their accuracy.
As much as I fear fire, I’m not sure about the mandate that homes should have sprinkler systems. I can just see myself burning dinner and destroying my expensive television. I do know it’s telling that the biggest advocate for the mandate was … the sprinkler industry.
It’s only been two months and healthcare reform is already increasing in cost. We tried to warn people.
For some reason, the financial overhaul bill includes regulation of the internet.
An absolutely appalling story of prosecutorial misconduct in Puerto Rico.
I take it back. When Glenn Beck is the voice of reason, we are really in trouble.
Speaking of which, why did people admire Joe Lieberman and John McCain so much?
Short-selling, betting on a stock or a bond to fall, is neither illegal nor unethical. It is the way we keep bubbles under control. It may be unpleasant, but if everyone long-sells … well, we saw what happened when the real estate bubble burst. Right now, Congress is criticizing Goldman Sachs for short-selling. Do the idiots in Washington not know that the internet exists and that their hypocrisy will be discovered? Apparently not.
I love stories like this from Cracked about unsung heroes who saved the world.
It’s interesting, of course, to see the usual anti-Green-Revolution trolls slamming Norman Borlaug. Apparently, we’d be better off with a billion or two dead people and a lot more wars. It’s amazing how much green bullshit has infiltrated certain minds. The Green Revolution produces more food with less resources that traditional farming. And as a side effect, a more certain food supply has produced declining birth rates.
I’m also glad to see more attention going to Henrietta lacks. Her story is both inspiring and disgraceful. Inspiring in that this woman accidently saved so many lives. Disgraceful in that no credit was ever given to her until recently.
Update: It’s worth linking up two recent articles on farming. Foreign policy points out that Africa is realizing a fraction of their food potential thanks to their reticence to use modern farming and Reason points out a recent study claiming that biotech crops improve the environment.