better late than never

John Mark Reynolds has many reasons that this is both a Happy Holiday and a Merry Christmas season. (and if you're offended by them, maybe you should ask yourself why you are offended by them.)

great quote

Peggy Noonan via Power Line:

"In a time of endless opinion, fact is king. Fact is rarer, harder to come by, more valuable. If only the MSM understood what money and power there are to be had from being famously nonideological, from being a famously reliable pursuer and presenter of fact. Wouldn't it be great if that were the next new thing?"

i almost missed it during my holiday travels.

(update: fixed appearance)

offensive offensive on offensiveness

To honor the secular spirit of the season, I propose to ban the term "Have a Happy New Year" for the following reasons:

1) The word "have" fosters a sense of greed, and is offensive to communists and hippies.
2) The word "a" is singular and exclusionary, and is offensive to multiculturalists and pantheists.
3) The word "happy" is offensive to those people who choose to be unhappy, or are otherwise happiness-impaired.
4) The word "new" is discriminatory against anything old, and is therefore offensive to baby-boomers.
5) The word "year" is discriminatory against other periods of time such as eons, centuries, weeks, and nanoseconds.

:)

update: iowahawk has related stories.

cool pic

fake but accurate photo op.

Not exactly the "Darwin Awards"

Evolution is a Trojan Horse for atheism more than Intelligent Design is a Trojan Horse for religion.

via MoltenThought

maybe february

...will be the interesting month.

from DefenseNews:

”Iran has bought 18 disassembled BM-25 missiles from North Korea with a range of 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles),” Bild newspaper said, citing a report from the German secret services.

It added that Iran’s ultra conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to have the range of the missiles “extended to 3,500 kilometers”.

It further cited the secret service report as warning that “with a longer range, and the probability that (Tehran) would try to equip the missiles with nuclear warheads, there is the risk that Iran could strike at Israel and parts of central Europe.”

It added that according to the German intelligence services, Iranian experts were already working on fitting the missiles with nuclear warheads.

or maybe sooner - march might be too late.

giftgiving for guys & gals

MishMash has aaalllllll the answers :)

Big Brother Sony

Forget the NSA/Patriot Act, Sony's spies are real and pervasive:

It seems that the State of Texas is all upset that Sony was sticking rootkits onto people’s computers without their expressed consent. The stated goal was to make sure the copy protection was working, but it made the user’s computers ridiculously insecure.

That, and the new suit says that Sony was using the MediaMax software to track what people where doing with their data files. That wouldn’t be so bad, but it is installed whether you agree to the EULA or not.

First step: Boycott Sony.

update: Spies!! Spies everywhere!!!

define "dictator"...

MacStansbury has a working definition of the word.

what the dickens?

Lileks shows us the real meaning of romanticizing the Victorian yuletide.

Oh for the old days, when a man could walk down the snow-choked alleys on Christmas Eve, taking care not to make eye contact with his betters, pushing aside the ragged beggars with their oozing carbuncles and the haggard gin-blasted pox-ridden doxies... Oh for the honest Christmases, when you’d buy a goose and take it home and spend your week’s salary getting the stove hot enough to cook the thing. Remember the year little Tim pitched in his crutch so we could have enough heat to crisp the duck? Merry times, merry times. Now let us sing a carol and thank our stars we do not have to drive self-propelled machines - complete with auto-heat and magical devices that pluck music and voices from the very either - to great broad sheds filled with goods unimaginable. It seems like a wonderland, children, but every Eden has its snake; there are other people there, and they oft do not comport themselves as we would wish. And the songs from unseen minstrels, while short and endlessly variable, are often contrary to our aesthetic preferences. No, be happy we are here together in our perfect Victorian times. Now throw another volume of Dickens on the fire; it grows cold, and Father cannot lose but two more toes.

Digital TV Transition

According to the Washington Post, Feb. 17, 2009 will be the last day analog television signals will be broadcast.:

That means that millions of people will either have to buy new digital TV sets or get their hands on a set-top converter box that allows the digital channels to be viewed over an old analog television.

They fail to mention the option of just not watching it any more, which I plan to do.

what's the frequency?

I am shocked - shocked - to find that media bias is going on in here!

meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Despite his claims to the contrary, I suspect Bolivia's new president's leftist programs won't actually do much for the poor.

Five centuries of white rule in Bolivia have ended with the election of the country’s first indigenous head of state.

Evo Morales, of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), won more than 50 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s election, far outstripping all predictions. In his unprecedented first-round victory he left his nearest rival for the presidency, the pro-US Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, more than 20 percentage points behind...

Señor Morales built his campaign on a promise to break the power of the European elite that has run Bolivia since independence from Spain in 1825 and which is seen by many as having ransacked the country’s vast mineral wealth and left its people impoverished.

Señor Morales has pledged to nationalise the country’s huge gas reserves and call a constituent assembly to write a new constitution that will reflect the indigenous majority. Ethnic Aymara and Quechua people make up a majority of the 9.3 million population.

He has also promised to ally Bolivia with other regional left-wing leaders such as Presidents Chávez of Venezuela and Castro of Cuba...

Señor Morales, who used to lead a coca-growers’ union, has promised to legalise the cultivation of coca, the primary ingredient in cocaine...

In La Paz’s middle-class neighbourhood of Sopocachi, many white voters said that they were voting for Señor Morales for the first time after losing faith in the traditional political class. “For 180 years since independence we have been governed by ‘the gentlemen’ and what did we get? Nothing!” said Gabriella Sánchez.

...and nothing is what they'll get from the communists as well.

endangered species

hooray! environmental changes do cause extinction!

when they are saying "peace and safety"...

Fraters Libertas on Iraqi freedom:

To back up the notion that the Iraqis were better off living in a Baathist tyranny, statistics are usually cited on the number of Iraqis killed in the war, the economic conditions in Iraq, how many hours a day the power is on in Baghdad, the number of children in school, the literacy rate, etc. They're often same sort of "standard of living" stats that these folks love to reference when talking about how Sweden is superior to the United States or how Cuba is a really swell place to live despite the bad rap that Fidel's regime has gotten.

The problem with using such measuring sticks is that without freedom they're meaningless. What good does is it to be literate if you don't have the freedom to choose what to read? What's the value of health and longevity if you don't have the freedom to decide what you want to do with your life? What's the value of having a job if that job is a life-long occupation chosen for you by the government?

Freedom is messy, complicated, unruly, loud, and sometimes chaotic, violent, and dangerous. Tyranny is often organized, simple, orderly, quiet, and safe (at least for those who keep their head in the yoke). There isn't a lot of complaining, protesting, or political bickering. The leaders don't have to concern themselves with approval ratings. The prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves are kept out of sight. The courts run smoothly and efficiently (The People's Revolutionary Court finds you guilty. Next!). The government statistics on unemployment, child care, women's rights, infant mortality, literacy, poverty, housing, and universal health care make the Noam Chomsky crowd drool with envy.

But without freedom, none of it means a d***. I would choose dangerous freedom over safe tyranny any day. And most of the Iraqi people appear to feel the same way.

today's adventure

i was going to upgrade my computer, but i forgot the memory.

then while driving west, i became disoriented and nearly had an occident.

so i stopped in a restaurant and ordered the chaos.

then i went home again to watch baseball reruns.

:)

can any good thing come from boston?

today is the 232nd anniversary of the boston tea party.

update: Miss O'Hara has a bigger celebration planned.

blogdreams

i'm not the only one.

to those against freedom,

take that!

and that!

odd ad

found on an online classified ad section:

hi we are looking for a home to rent in the area and jobs. and i would also like to find a ferret with cage.

at least their priorities are straight...