Archive for August, 2008
Biden good, Palin bad
Saturday, August 30th, 2008Predictably, all of my friends, acquaintances, and co-workers whom I've heard express their thoughts and opinions about Obama/McCain running mate choices enthusiastically approve of Obama's selection of Joe Biden and speak badly or neutrally of Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate. This is because they are all hardcore liberal Democrats. (By ...
The-e-e-e-e-e-e Yankees suck!
Friday, August 29th, 2008The patriotic correctness bellowing blowhard bully brigade is in full force at Yankee Stadium, where no one is allowed to move or talk very much, much less go to the bathroom, during "God Bless America" in the 7th-inning stretch. Bradford Campeau-Laurion violated that ludicrous rule, unknowingly, and suffered the consequences, ...
Cypriot cynical wisdom
Thursday, August 28th, 2008My college friend who is from the Turkish side of Cyprus currently has a Facebook status that reads: "is bewildered by the amount of hot air generated at political party conventions in the US. He bets you could run a steel mill with it for a year!" Amen. I just ...
Michigan government tries to fix problems it caused
Thursday, August 28th, 2008In recent months I have heard about two economic developments in Michigan that have been facilitated by the Michigan state legislature, to benefit the state's struggling economy, which had been in its own mini-recession for years before the rest of the U.S. caught up. The legislature passed movie-filming tax breaks ...
A glimpse of anarchic rights, laws, and socioeconomic organization in online communities
Sunday, August 24th, 2008This is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking news articles I've read in a while: Rights like free speech don't always extend online. It is about the different rules and restrictions established and enforced by online companies (Yahoo!, YouTube, MySpace, GoDaddy, etc.) and the consequences of their actions, their ...
David Theroux on Olympic nationalist-Statism
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008Naturally, a professional writer says many of the same things I said better than I did.
Jury nullification protects people from the State
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Prosecutors and judges have an alarming tendency to empower the State over individuals. Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute reports on a juror who was removed from a jury by the judge, against the protests of the defense, for attempting to protest the very law the defendant was accused of ...
Children, forward to the Glorious Green Future!
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Unsurprisingly, quite a few radical environmentalists are escalating their alarmist/propagandist efforts and trying to turn children into snitches on their parents and blind servants of the Glorious State. I'm pretty sure most people who call themselves "environmentalists" and embrace the term would find this brand of brainwashing and family-destruction very ...
Drug War atrocities
Friday, August 15th, 2008Radley Balko blagged about Charlie Lynch, a Californian who smoked marijuana for medicinal purposes, which is now legal in California, but who was arrested anyway by federal thugs and now faces 100 years in prison for violating federal laws. Please read his post; it's short. I can't add much to ...
The behavioral psychology of lotteries
Friday, August 15th, 2008In the August 15, 2008 issue of Science, in the Editors' Choice section of the journal, highlighting recent scientific articles the editors of Science found interesting, a study on the psychology underlying socioeconomic trends in lottery-playing was summarized: ... The low chances of winning life-style-altering prizes are prominently posted, yet many ...
Staggering ignorance 2
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008Unfortunately, the greater the humanitarian outreach, the greater the violence required to achieve it.—Ron PaulAt lunch today I overheard people talking about the ridiculous sums of wealth that athletes and entertainers accumulate, and they wondered what in the world those hundred-millionaires and billionaires do with all that money, and why ...
Debbie Downer, Olympics version
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008I know I'm being a total Debbie Downer about the Olympics, but I had two thoughts to write about them. Basically, they are variations on the observation that the Olympics tend to glorify and elevate the State to a great extent. This could be due to the preeminent pathos of ...
Government: The Demotivator
Monday, August 4th, 2008Because I love those zany demotivator posters: Courtesy of Despair, Inc.
The Onion on the invasion of Iraq
Friday, August 1st, 2008The geniuses at The Onion put together an atlas of the world, Our Dumb World, and just about every page of it is hilarious. It must have taken a ton of time and manpower and research to make it. Every country of the world is profiled and summarized, with an ...