REASON TV: Veterans’ Day 2009: Every Day Is A Bonus.
Archive for 2009
November 11, 2009
FOR THANKSGIVING JOY, try Turbaconducken! Mmm mmm mmm.
KEEPING PACEMAKERS safe from hackers. “Manufacturers have started adding wireless capabilities to many implantable medical devices, including pacemakers and cardioverter defibrillators. This allows doctors to access vital information and send commands to these devices quickly, but security researchers have raised concerns that it could also make them vulnerable to attack.”
AUSTIN BAY: Hasan’s Treason. “Traitor is a tough word. It doesn’t smudge and squish.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: “Remember how we had to bail out Chrysler and give the company to Fiat because they were going to save American jobs and the environment with their awesome new electric cars? The electric cars that were going to start hitting the streets in 2010? Apparently, now that they’ve gotten the money, it’s festina lente; Fiat has apparently disbanded the team that was trying to rush these cars to market.”
VIDEO: SCENES FROM THE TUCSON TEA PARTY. “Once again, what’s remarkable about this protest is how absolutely ordinary it is. No one is foaming at the mouth; they’re mostly laughing at Giffords’ hypocritical attempts to cast herself as some sort of moderate while mindlessly following Pelosi and her radical agenda. They’re not an angry mob, as the media has cast the Tea Party movement — they’re a motivated group of voters who are sending a message that will only get louder in the coming year.”
A CURIOUS SUBPOENA.
TEN FAILED DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS.
UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe writes that the Joseph Smith prediction story is incorrect.
IN THE MAIL: From Carlos Eire, A Very Brief History Of Eternity.
SONJA SCHMIDT: Shticks & Groans: My Gig at the NY Underground Comedy Fest. [Link was bad before; fixed now. Sorry!]
BYRON YORK: Big news: New poll shows GOP leading Dems in congressional preference ballot. “It’s an extraordinary turnaround for the GOP. Last July, Democrats held a six-point lead. Last December, Democrats held a 15-point lead. At one point in 2007, Democrats held a 23-point lead, and for all of that year, 2007, Democrats held a double-digit lead. The new Republican lead is the result of a dramatic move of independents toward the Republican party.”
HAPPY VETERANS’ DAY, and take some time to remember a Vet who’s special to you. Another way to observe the day would be to donate to Project Valour-IT. I’ve donated.
And to some readers’ surprise, Google is recognizing Veterans’ day. Good for them.
RON BAILEY: How Green Are Your Nukes?
Once an opponent of nuclear power, Stewart Brand is now a big backer. With regard to the safety, cost, waste handling, and weapons potential of nuclear power, Brand writes, “I’ve learned to disbelieve much of what I’ve been told by my fellow environmentalists.” On safety, Brand notes, “year after year, the industry has had no significant accidents” in the operation of the world’s 443 civilian nuclear plants. “Radiation from nuclear energy has not killed a single American,” asserts Brand. He does look at the after-effects of the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant which released a lot of radiation over swathes of northern Europe. He finds that the dire predictions that hundreds of thousands would die of radiation induced cancers turned out to be false. Weighing the safety tradeoffs between nuclear power and man-made global warming, Brand cites this observation from environmentalist Bill McKibben: “Nuclear power is a potential safety threat, if something goes wrong. Coal-fired power is guaranteed destruction, filling the atmosphere with planet-heating carbon when it operates the way it’s supposed to.”
Al Gore disagrees.
THE FEDEX VS. UPS lobbying knife-fight.
DOT LOOKING AT AIRLINE RE-REGULATION?
When asked if this meeting was called by the AFL-CIO, Olivia Alair, DOT spokeswoman, said, “Secretary LaHood made the decision to bring together aviation representatives to talk about the future of the industry because he wants it to succeed. Given the economic pressures and challenges U.S. aviation is facing, a number of stakeholders suggested a meeting like this would be helpful so people could share ideas and perspectives.”
Read the whole thing.
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 IS OUT, and here’s a review from Wired. “It’s all very realistic, and it’s doubly powerful because the game’s storyline could be pulled from today’s headlines.”
RAND SIMBERG: Whether or Not Obama Focuses On The Economy, It Gets Worse. “The problem is not that Obama doesn’t spend enough time on the economy — his philosophy isn’t capable of (or interested in?) stimulating growth anyway. . . . Obama persuaded many small business people to pull in their horns and make plans to keep a low profile (including laying people off) in order to avoid the wealth confiscation of the populist, socialist, economic storm they saw coming with his election.”
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: “The Obama Administration’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration, Erroll Southers, was censured by the FBI for asking law enforcement personnel to conduct a background check on his ex-wife’s boyfriend.”
WHAT THE FBI WAS DOING INSTEAD OF STOPPING NIDAL HASSAN:
A couple of months ago I put up a post about federal prosecutors’ pursuit of Dr. Roger Weiner, an outspoken Mississippi cardiologist who was charged with Mann Act violations for using a Memphis-based website while in Mississippi to meet and date adult women. FBI agents posting as prostitutes repeatedly tried to get Weiner to agree to for money for sex. Each time, he explcitly turned them down, at one point writing to one in a chat room, “I’m not interested in a hooker.” They arrested him and charged him anyway.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. dismissed all charges against Weiner, ruling that the federal courts didn’t have jurisdiction in the case. Biggers’ opinion strongly suggested the case against Weiner was politically motivated, and came down hard on federal prosecutors.
In a better world, they’d be more worried about blowback from stuff like this than from going ofter an obvious jihadi . . . .
MORE ON beaten and imprisoned Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez. Maybe someone should ask some of those Castro-sucking-up Hollywood types for a reaction?
POLITICO: GOP Tries To Recapture Town Hall Anger. Thing is, the GOP never captured it, so how can they recapture it? It was, and is, an external phenomenon.
BREVITY, BY CAPITOL HILL STANDARDS: Chris Dodd’s financial “reform” bill is 1136 pages long, and “impenetrable.” No word on whether it bans sweetheart mortgage deals for members of Congress . . . but I know the way to bet.