So, what do we find?

1. Consider the hypothetical …
2. Innocence and loss.
3. Snow.
4. Yikes!
5. Where accuracy is king.
6. Your administration, restricting liberty every which way it can.
7. Of income and nation.
8. Camouflage.
9. It looks like a case of overhype. In which “Potentially leading to a solution” actually means potentially maybe leading to something, but … maybe not.
10. The response by Ferguson police examined.

So.

1. Socialism, the goal of the American left is not what it is cracked up to be. (HT)
2. Also on the left, an odd remark. Let’s see, Picketty recently wrote a book offering that investment trumps salary. The left loved it, but seems to fail to notice that SS is salary, not investment, based. Odd that.
3. Economics for our times.
4. An Advertising suggestion.
5. Apparently the right defends Charlie Hebdo, the left does less so. This is strange for a very left wing satirical mag, the actual publication it is unclear why anyone would buy a copy for any reason with attitudes like this.
6. And the American left, trying to distance themselves from freedom of expression, succeeds.
7. Legal PED? Tylenol?
8. On military service.
9. Here’s a stupid idea fronted by Mr Obama.
10. Here is a less stupid idea that Mr Obama might have said, but didn’t.
11. Hmm. So which study is more worthless this one or this one? Kinda seems a wash to me.

So.

1. Hitting the nail with the noetic hammer.
2. We would be guessing alcohol was involved.
3. Energy weapons, … although the writer misses that one suggestion is that energy weapons are used in space because of the small momentum transfer (low recoil).
4. But those duecedly odd and uncouth chemical weapons can join the “Interwebs of things”. Reprising, I guess, Richard Stallman’s notion that every program grows until it can send email to, every houshold appliance gains intelligence until it can serve a web page.
5. So, Wooly mammoth got the flu?
6. I realize my very smart dietitian once said “cheese isn’t food, it’s a condiment” and that advice is very good for my cholesterol levels, but … cheese!!!! (grommit).
7. Ouch evolved.
8. Now, just apply that indemnity from suit to medicine, nuclear power, and other desirable technologies and we’d have more useful progress in other fields.

Links with remarks?

1. My, uninformed guess, would be that this liberal disaproves. Alas, he’s only half right. “Hate crime” are apparently committed when you do a criminal act and the jury decides you have ideological motives. Seems to me that a crime against police may very well fit into this category. Alas, after all, turnabout is fair play, which in this case means if the ideology is one you approve it still makes it a “hate crime”. And the scare quotes are intentional, for the real way clear out of this mess is to remove all traces of “hate crime” from the books.
2. So. Are you the kind of person to laugh at the misfortune of someone young, inexperienced and clumsy? I certainly am.
3. The west coast liberal anti-vaccine crowd gets a wonderfully apt acronymic sendoff. (HT)
4. Look, when you read some statistical result you have don’t have to google for opposing studies. The first thing to do is the Fermi test, do a back of the envelope estimation of the numbers and figure out if you think it is a reasonable quantity. 1 in 30 homeless. No freaking way.
5. So with Ferguson, the kerfuffle (I don’t recall names) in New York and the movie Selma, much ado has been made about how nothing has changed and things are still horribly racist and wicked in America. Alas, this isn’t actually true. As this post points out, things in the 50s were very very bad, but guess what?  Things are very very very different now. Why does lying about the current state of affairs help? Everybody actually knows they are lying. How does it help to destroy your credibility on the outset.

And … Ant-man? Is it too late to change the name?

Hey. Weekend is done.

1. Meta-linking (linking of links), and I will say, the point on the “trauma” is spot on.
2. So, Christmas and Islam.
3. Teh noodity meets the Constitution.
4. One of those models looks like it’s still tracking the data, although it does it by predicting very little warming.
5. Powder go bang.
6. Obamacare and a twist.
7. Nicknames and history.
8. Danger! Danger! Danger!(Will Robinson?)
9. Snarf.
10. Click through, it’s worth your while.
11. Oddly enough actual leadership involves people following your lead. Doesn’t matter what you say, if you can’t get people to follow your lead … and in fact they resist and go the other way either your a bad leader (and didn’t realize they’d not follow) or you intended the result that was achieved (the not following).

Last full day in Jersey.

1. Of course, what he misses is that those millions would be captive Democrats.
2. PC from the CP. Succinct.
3. In that same vein.
4. A suit that shouldn’t win.
5. A question asked.
6. Origen would not seen a difficulty and that was in the 2nd century.
7. If anyone doubts modern liberals are clueless when it comes to Christian beliefs, doubt no longer.
8. Tech and art working together.
9. A very non-standard interpretation of Shostakovitch’s 7th.
10. Uhm, some Duh Science. Stress impacts the immune system negatively. That isn’t news, everyone knows that.

Ok. Back to it, after all, I haven’t stopped reading and saving links, just reporting them. So, what’s in the backlog.

1. Here’s a x-mas suggestion for the old-calendar practitioners who haven’t gotten anything yet. (For those who don’t know, much of the Easter Orthodox are still on the Julian calendar 13 days later than the Gregorian until the end of the century. This is why the Orthodox Easter/Pascha is so wildly different from the West, as both are based on the full moon after the spring equinox, but … when that equinox is changes by 13 days).
2. Mr Degrasse’s 8 “books everyone should read“. Yikes.
3. I haven’t a clue whether Mr Schraub disapproves or approves but, geesh, anyone who holds Israel and ISIS as morally equivalent is ethically blind and should be regarded functionally as a psychopath.
4. Here is another equivalence, possibly slightly less morally suspect.
5. Yet again, repeat ad infintum, the argument against torture is not gotten via consequentialism.
6. I’m not up to speed on hate speech and the legal status of same, but as a layperson one would be lead to suspect that “hate speech” should involve in some way, you know, actual hate or even mild dislike.
7. Speaking of which, there are plenty of liberals who clearly hate conservatives. I wonder if their hate-speech microscope will be turned on themselves in this regard?
8. Union labor and why it sucks so often.
9. Very cool.
10. Graft and equalite, liberte, fraternite (and buckets of blood).
11. A gun (which is sort of on my wish-I-had-one list)

So, Dr Gruber, not a politician. Ya think? This gets much mileage in the press and the liberal politicians are going distance themselves from him as if he he were scalding acid. Abortion as eugenics, to be applied to minorities, hmm. That’s palatable, albeit Ms Sanger was in the camp too I think. Regarding Mr Gruber, the outrage is confusing. I mean, here is a guy who admits selling Obamacare on falsehoods. But I mean, why is the right acting all put out? Those lies were not believed by the right, but by the left. Why is the left not outraged that they were sold a bill of goods? Politics remains very confusing for me.

Some IQ specialist thinks he has evidence that intelligence is not nuture but nature, which will alas irk the (mostly racist) race theorists no end (see this too). So, if it comes out that intelligence (and therefore success in school) are due to nature not nurture, can we stop with the stupidly high inheritance taxes that the left thinks are necessary to stop the “rich” from having unfair advantages?

I wonder what this sort of graph but instead for the WWII Germany/Soviet Eastern front wars would look like. It would be appalling I think. Appropos of that and in the discussion which mention Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo. But like most of the Western canonical history forget that Russian led armies sacked Paris in 1814. The same poster (rightly) mocks those college students of today who are so so so ignorant of history it seems.

Regarding Ms Feinstein and her “release” of CIA investigations on torture. The left’s thesis (which is badly flawed) is (a suggested thesis of her report) is that torture doesn’t work, ergo we shouldn’t do it. Actually historically it seems very very likely that when done efficiently with an understanding of what you are up to, it works and works very well. See Mr Fernandez excellent book  No Way In (or read about the Gestapo and well, anywhere they operated). Look. Every single time a resistance cell loses a member to the torture using establishment everyone has to find a new safe houses, move and so on. Why? This wouldn’t be so if torture was ineffective. But. It is. The argument against torture is not that it isn’t effective or cost effective but that is immoral. It is wrong. That is the only argument needed or which should be used against it.

At long last, more links.

1. More CO2.
2. Yikes.
3. I have to say, vis a vis corn, that comparing corn grits and cream of wheat and how hungry I am four hours later in the morning, corn beats wheat hands down.
4. The minority leader and doing self parody right. Man, she has teh stupid in buckets, eh?
5. Some politicians around the globe, however, are make Ms Pelosi look less worse.
6. Neat interior design.
7. Tranadol found in trees, or more precisely, not found in trees. Interesting though.
8. ‘cuse me, any “theory of tattoos” has to include “alcohol was involved in the decision making”.
9. Heh.
10. On banning prayer at games. Reminds me of the Soviet era story of the pols proclaiming to the crowd how religion in the USSR was dead and gone … somebody in the crowd shouted “Christ is Risen” and the whole crowd responded back automatically “He is Risen Indeed”.
11. Looking into the near future crystal ball, optimistically.
12. Relics of the Cross.

Whoo.

1. Ms Bathory was close.
2. Human’s are nothing if not adaptable.
3. Remembering 9/11 and something about it you probably didn’t know.
4. Max-Sec in the deep south.
5. Yikes.
6. More yikes.
7. Constitutional authority … but don’t worry, Mr Yoo is for it.
8. Unintended consequence (but … easily predicted consequences should not be unintentional. So is it an intentional consequence then?)
9. The wrong air force.
10. Mr Kerry, “if you don’t study” … comes back to haunt, eh?
11. Let’s see, it is “regrettable” that a guy who thinks it OK to offer that the Israeli Prime minister would wear the teeth of Palestinian children publicly doesn’t get tenure … Hmmm. What’d that site offer on various conservative remarks that lost people jobs or positions?
12. Incoherence from the left, noted.
13. We’re waiting for the really really cool lightning bolt.
14. Liberal much? Geesh. So, do you think that next week they write an essay comparing Mr Obama to Joseph Kony? ‘Tis about as logical and as outrageous.

Yet another hotel.

1. Some theology.
2. Some things the police has for which they have no reasonable need.
3. Some history if you follow the linked link.
4. Well, TR said (I think) “walk softly and carry a big stick.” Our knucklehead in chief has a variant of that phrase, which alas, is stickless.
5. More here.
6. Some jokes all with the same punch line.
7. Crime and punishment.
8. Global warming.
9. Cool. (probably literally as well)
10. Nature’s beauty (and the beast).

Good, err, day.

1. A post sort of against profiling. Profiling is racist when the criteria chosen are inappropriate. if race is a factor predictive of crime then race is not an inappropriate criteria. In setting a defensive line, you put your forces where the bulk of the attacks are expected. This isn’t “profiling”.
2. Rape culture.
3. Scraping the ugly barnacles from the underside of civilization as a job.
4. The prior reality is why “slower to draw” is a death sentence for many.
5. Fun and snow.
6. Somebody fulfilled their photographic bucket list.
7. Government waste examined.
8. ‘gainst mines and IEDs … a tool.
9. The constitutional right to be an ass. Wonder if the left would be defending that U of I Urbana professor if he wore that in public (and not at work).
10. Apparently 83% of American’s are out of their freaking minds. Or the poll is just another damn cricket race. I’d rather the law went the other way.
11. Embrace your coming disrespectability. There’s even a beatitude about that.

G’day, hump day (of my 15 day workweek) is over.

1. More grist for the Ferguson discussion.
2. Here too.
3. Some silliness. Signs like this are pertinent, when people who accidentally do this roam the earth.
4. Film.
5. I’d go with #10, #9 and #1.
6. Some basic points in theology which everyone should agree, here and here … but a whole lot of people get stuck on them.
7. Piketty points.
8. Confused about the outrage. So ‘splain it for us, eh?
9. Well, you always have the two choices, are they stupid or evil?
10. I don’t see what’s wrong with being liked because you are smart. Do you?
11. Very cool.

Travel travel.

1. So. I sorta missed a lot of Ferguson kerfuffle. Aside from the “we’re angry, scared, and affronted … therefore let’s loot lots of innocent bystanders shops” logic fail. Very few facts are out so most noise and nonsense seems to me to be just that. This however, may give some useful information going forward.
2. In the context of Ferguson, liberals still striving to keep the black man down.
3. Of course, she’s waiting for the GOP field to flesh out. (or not)
4. Mr Perry was indicted apparently. So, if the GOP was not behind the indictment … explain why since everyone (pundits and others) “knows” that an impeachment of Mr Obama would (a) not lead to a conviction and (b) aid the Democrats in 2014 midterms, why do the similar (presumably Democrats) think that a weak indictment of Mr Perry which (a) would not lead to conviction and why the don’t think the “b” supposition is also not true.
5. The wisdom of our press.
6. An answer to the eagles in book one LOTR question.
7. I ordered the book … (see item 2 above … alongside the why do liberals hate Asians?)
8. Well, guesses 1-10 are wrong, and likely somewhat bigoted. The right answer is “one who forgets (a) “judge not lest you be judged” and from which follows the question who is the righteous judge, to which we know the answer.
9. The greatest sentence? The Orthodox Christian answer would be the Jesus Prayer. A physicist would say Emmy Noether’s theorem.
10. Drones on the move.

Oooh. I get to work this weekend in the land of hot and dry.

1. Stupid human tricks.
2. Something about history and ignorance from the prior post is recapped here, uhm, Poul Anderson’s High Crusade comes to mind.
3. What to do if your car gets a browser.
4. Until a baby sitter attaches it to the family dog and lets it run.
5. Academics often tout “there are no stupid questions” … this blog site contradicts that premise with the “multiple attempts … (to ask the world’s dumbest question)”.
6. So. Is that a maxim? Is it true that “No coerced virtue is a virtue?” It’s true for charity?
7. $11 billion. Yikes.
8. Is real?