A Little Perspective

Mark Steyn hit it this morning when he remarked upon the list of 500,000 on the watch list, and that it is not easy to check that list instantly.
Steyn remarked that if you buy a book on Amazon.com, and access that site 8 years later, the site will instantly remind you of that previous book [...]

Pure, Blind, Dumb luck

I saw our Homeland Director on two TV news/opinion shows this a.m. She appeared either clueless, or restrained — either way it was not reassuring.
The Obama administration appears to treat this ‘attack” as a criminal matter at home, while it engages in war abroad — not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but in Yemen. Yemen appears [...]

Alchemy!

While I find it interesting that Amazon.com sold MORE Kindle books this Christmas  season than they did printed books, the Senate healthcare Reform Bill was far more interesting.
In what can only be called alchemy, the Senate says they can take half a TRILLION dollars out of Medicare but keep it whole without reducing its value [...]

The Copenhagen Snowstorm

I would hope that even liberals would oppose what is apparently going on in Copenhagen.
(I say “apparently” because it is like the Senate Healthcare Bill – no one knows what is being discussed!)
I assume that the United States will “promise” about $30 billion a year to match the European nations, and of course the “developing [...]

Chapter Four of CRU E-Mail Kerfuffle

In this chapter, I investigate the culture in which scientists fudge data, threaten others who hold competing theories with bodily harm or blackballing from publishing.
It should be noted that scientists are human, with the same human foibles as most of the rest of us, but they deal in a subject so distant from most that [...]

The Servants Become the Masters

My post on the obscene pay of the Vallejo firemen is proof that it is not JUST the obscene benefits that unions cause — it is the pay as well.
Of course that pay then transfers to obscene retirement.
But it is more than JUST pay and benefits as determined by retirement pay AND medical for life [...]

Mass Transit Strikes (our pocketbook) Again

Bullet train streaks through money
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
12/15/09 1:29 PM PST
“California’s high-speed rail system is still years in the making and it has already being slowed down by its own projections.
A new report released this week says that the costs for passengers will be much higher than expected, causing millions of them to [...]

The Future Is In Good Hands

Similar to the DARPA competitions I have remarked upon before, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) sponsors an annual competition – this year to have a vehicle similar to the Mars Rover robot which could start, surmount obstacles, find a rock, pick it up and return to a starting point within four minutes.
This year’s [...]

Chapter Three of CRU E-mails

Chapter three:
It was not just other CRU scientists who were concerned about the quality of the data, as revealed by the e-mails published from CRU, East Anglia.
(As an aside it might be noted that there are charges that the e-mails were “private” and “stolen” – and that may or may not be partly true – [...]

Columbia — Iraq — Afghanistan?

The continuing question about the Afghanistan policy is interesting. (See the Steve Chapman Op-Ed on the Editorial page.)
It is certainly chancy but it is based on the successful Clinton administration policy in Columbia, which then worked in Iraq. Columbia, the size of Spain, France and Portugal together, was half under the control of a Communist [...]