Truth, Justice, and the American Way

Im leaving for a two week ski trip in Colorado, so no blogging for a while, Im afraid.
Want to get to know me better? Check out the new section of my bio page.

In other news, Castro as Hitler on Cuban front page sparks hunt for mystery satirist.

After asking voters not to focus on guns, God and gays, Howard Dean is using Jesus in his campaign rhetoric but only in the South. Dean is a Congregationalist (wtf is that?) and has a Jewish wife and children. Methinks that (a) Dean is too pragmatic to hold any kind of explicit [...]

The next environmentalist mass hysteria is at hand: the earth is slowing down. Collision with sun/moon is imminent.

Correction: what I meant to say is that after billions of years, the earth has stopped slowing down—since 1999 that is. The difference is less than a second a year, but the missing leap-second is significant [...]

CATO: “The sad truth is that the best purpose for the homeland security advisory system is for the federal bureaucracy to be seen as “doing something,” to prove to the public that politicians and government officials are not asleep at the wheel-if something actually does happen, they can claim they gave fair warning.”

I’ve been working on converting my website to a content management system that I can easily deploy on other sites. If you’re familiar with PHP, you can download my first hack at it here. The interesting stuff is in cms.php and .htaccess. (File compressed with WinRar.) I used the CMS to [...]

Texas A&M has cloned a deer, which brings up the total number of species cloned at Aggieland to six. Nice to know that my own little neck of the woods is at the forefront of cloning research.

SelectSmart has a “presidential candidate selector poll.” Given that my answer was not listed for 2/3 of the questions, I think that the results are fairly accurate:
1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Libertarian Candidate (71%)
3. Bush, President George W. – Republican (69%)
4. Gephardt, [...]

Kwanzaa is different. It has connections to still-living violent criminals. It is an insult to the African American community, very few of whom celebrate Kwanzaa and even fewer of whom would celebrate it if they knew the full story of its recent history, to suggest that it is an “African American holiday.”
More on the founder [...]

This TCS op-ed has to be the most insightful article on the peace movement Ive ever read.
And here we begin to see why there is this strange and unholy alliance between idealistic liberalism, the vestiges of the old socialist left, traditional third world authoritarians, and the unrelenting forces of Islamic totalitarianism, theocracy, and terror. However [...]

Interesting story about the hunt for Saddam @ Newsweek: “Saddam struggled and spat, until a commando slugged him.”

A recent poll shows strong that 55 percent of Americans support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Whatever one thinks of gay marriage itself, a Constitutional amendment banning it is ludicrous. A constitution is a framework for a nations government, not a means by which trendy political disputes are resolved. There [...]

Whether the People be led by the Lord,

If it be quicker to die by the sword

These are the things we have dealt with once,

The new design of the WTC has been unveiled (photos) after Daniel Libeskind was forced to compromise on his original monstrosity. I dont particularly like the new design either the top third is just a useless lattice with a wind turbine added in for environmental reasons. Still, it will be [...]

Ive updated my art gallery with several new artists, including a new pin-up section and a number of artists from Quent Cordair fine art, who kindly allowed me to feature them. I made the gallery from my collection of 1600 paintings and drawings, the bulk of which come from the Art Renewal Center. [...]

Cox and Forkum has a great cartoon about the Wright brothers, celebrating their tremendous achievement, and lamenting the lack of innovation in the aviation industry today.

As Heike Berthold explains, there has not been a radically new civilian aircraft design in 50 years. While technology has surged ahead in every field, todays jetliners and private [...]

A great story from Radley Balko @ Fox News: “Greed Makes the World Go ‘Round.”

Chinas Communist authorities recently shut down shut down a sex museum and sentenced several people to life for organizing an orgy. The Communist Party quips: “Sex Still a Dirty Word in China.” (More here and here.) While underground porn and prostitution is widespread and tolerated in Chinas large urban areas, any attempt [...]

From Cox and Forkum

Jerusalem Post:Fathi Salman, 50, a taxi driver, described the arrest of Saddam as a “black day” for the Palestinians. “This is a black day for all the Palestinians and all the Arabs and Muslims,” he said. “I still can’t believe that President Saddam has been captured by the Americans. Saddam was the only Arab leader [...]

“It’s true,” said a U.S. intelligence official in Baghdad about the arrest of the former dictator. The official wouldn’t give any more details except to confirm that the former dictator had been detained the night before…
Celebratory gunfire erupted across Baghdad as the news of the fallen Iraqi president’s arrest spread across the town. Iraqis [...]