Current » Adamcat

Let’s Play: If I Were a Right Wing Blogger

Jul 302008

From The Nation:

If I were a right-wing blogger, and I found out that Barack Obama was wearing Ferragamo loafers that cost $520, I would spend about 50% of my waking hours making sure everyone knew this. I would mock him for being an out-of-touch elitist and make jokes like, “If you think that’s a lot, you should see how much his purse costs ” I would send the link to Drudge and wait for Instapundit to pick it up, and then watch gleefully as Fox News ran segments about how Barack Obama’s $500 loafers vitiate his entire economic platform. But of course, I’m not a right-wing blogger. And the $520 shoes belong to John McCain. And frankly, I don’t think how much his shoes cost matters one whit for how he’d govern the country. [From Let's Play: If I Were a Right Wing Blogger]

Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back

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Apr 182008

I love this letter, written by the president of Blue Jeans Cable to the law firm representing Monster Cable. It’s the kind of letter I would dream of having the opportunity to write:

Dear Monster Lawyers,

Let me begin by stating, without equivocation, that I have no interest whatsoever in infringing upon any intellectual property belonging to Monster Cable. Indeed, the less my customers think my products resemble Monster’s, in form or in function, the better.

…

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs’ practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am “uncompromising” in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

[From Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable — Audioholics Home Theater Reviews and News]

Resign, Then Be Prosecuted.

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Apr 162008

Sign The Petition

Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Integrity Displayed: Scientific American

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Apr 152008

I’m looking forward to seeing this:

Expelled wears its ambitions to be a creationist Fahrenheit 911 openly, in that it apes many of Michael Moore’s comic tricks: emphasizing the narrator’s hapless everyman qualities by showing him meandering his way to interviews; riposting interviewees’ words with ironic old footage and so on. Director Nathan Frankowski is reasonably adept at the techniques, although he is not half the filmmaker Michael Moore is (and yes, I do mean in both senses of the phrase).

…

I should note that Stein and Expelled rarely refer to “scientists” as I did—they call them Darwinists. Similarly, this review may have already used the word “evolution” about as often as the whole of Expelled does; in the movie, it is always Darwinism. The term is a curious throwback, because in modern biology almost no one relies solely on Darwin’s original ideas—most researchers would call themselves neo-Darwinian if they bothered to make the historical connection at all because evolutionary science now encompasses concepts as diverse as symbiosis, kin selection and developmental genetics. Yet the choice of terminology isn’t random: Ben Stein wants you to stop thinking of evolution as an actual science supported by verifiable facts and logical arguments and to start thinking of it as a dogmatic, atheistic ideology akin to Marxism.
[From Ben Stein's Expelled: No Integrity Displayed: Scientific American]

American Taxes

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Apr 152008

Interesting breakdown. I tried to download the original file but it came up as garbled text.

The think-tank Third Way released an analysis today of where your tax dollars are going this year. An American household earning a typical income of $63,960 would pay $13,112 in federal income and payroll taxes.

Here’s how that $13,112 breaks-down:

Social Security $2,662.94
Interest on National Debt $1,085.29
War in Iraq $ 593.48
War in Afghanistan $ 159.82
All other Defense $2,008.01
Medicare $1,697.96
Veterans Benefits $ 355.03
Medicaid $ 872.92

So, what about spending on needed programs on infrastructure, research to get us off fossil fuels, or assistance to needy American families?

Road and Bridges $ 77.15
FBI, DEA, ATF $ 41.46
Environmental Protection (EPA) $ 34.50
AIDS prevention $ 14.87
Heating Assistance $ 9.90
Renewable Energy Research $ 6.67
Consumer Product Safety Comm. $ .29
By the way, for all the emphasis on money spent on “pork barrel projects,” those accounted for just $60.45.
[From Mark Nickolas' Blog]

Speech today

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Mar 182008

If someone on the national stage can’t make a speech like this and get elected, then it’s a real shame.

Inhaling Pig Brains May Be Cause of New Illness

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Feb 042008

One of the steps in that part of the operation involves removing the pigs’ brains with compressed air forced into the skull through the hole where the spinal cord enters. The brains are then packed and sent to markets in Korea and China as food. Investigators say there is no reason to suspect that either the brains or the pork cuts were contaminated. Their working hypothesis is that the harvesting technique — known as “blowing brains” on the floor — produces aerosols of brain matter. Once inhaled, the material prompts the immune system to produce antibodies that attack the pig brain compounds, but apparently also attack the body’s own nerve tissue because it is so similar. [From Inhaling Pig Brains May Be Cause of New Illness - washingtonpost.com]

It’s alarmingly like dealing with my 5 year old….

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Dec 052007

But a close examination of his word choice over the past year suggests that he learned something around August that got him to stop making claims that were apparently no longer supported by American intelligence.

Instead of directly condemning Iranian leaders for pursuing nuclear weapons, he started more vaguely accusing them of seeking the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon.

Even as he did that, however, he and the vice president accelerated their rhetorical efforts to persuade the public that the nuclear threat posed by Iran was grave and urgent. Bush went so far in late August and October as to warn of the potential for a nuclear holocaust.

Indeed, a careful parsing of Bush’s words indicates that, while not saying anything that could later prove to be demonstrably false, Bush left his listeners with what he likely knew was a fundamentally false impression. And he did so in the pursuit of a more muscular and possibly even military approach to a Middle Eastern country.

[From Dan Froomkin - A Pattern of Deception - washingtonpost.com]

Sunday Forum: Two problems with torture

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Oct 242007

I really hope that one day, George Bush and Dick Cheney are held accountable for legitimizing/encouraging torture by the United States.

Sunday Forum: Two problems with torture:

It’s wrong and it doesn’t work, according to interrogation expert STUART HERRINGTON
I served 30 years in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer, which included extensive experience as an interrogator in Vietnam, in Panama and during the 1991 Gulf War. In the course of these sensitive missions, my teams and I collected mountains of excellent, verified information, despite the fact that we never laid a hostile hand on a prisoner. Had one of my interrogators done so, he would have been disciplined and most likely relieved of his duties.