FRED HOYLE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Red Rain, Comets, And Extraterrestrials.
Archive for 2010
September 1, 2010
ANALYST: OIL SHOULD BE $10/BARREL.
ALL IT TAKES IS A DEPRESSION: Number of illegal immigrants in US now declining.
WHAT IT TAKES to shut down a botnet.
ECO-TERRORISM? Gunman who took hostages at Discovery Channel inspired by Al Gore. “Lee appears to have posted environmental and population-control demands online, saying humans are ruining the planet and that Discovery should develop programs to sound the alarm. . . . Lee said he experienced an ‘awakening’ when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth.'”
Won’t Al Gore please stop it with his extremist, eliminationist rhetoric before he inspires still more violence?
UPDATE: Reader Lois Brenner sends this:
A manifesto posted on a Web site registered to a person named James Lee, who gave a post office box in Canada as his address, lists several demands to the Discovery Channel, saying the station “MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet.” It lists 11 demands about airing shows that would promote curbing the plant’s population growth, finding solutions for global warming and dismantling “the dangerous US world economy.” . ..
“All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions,” it reads. “In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.”
The manifesto was published on http://SavethePlanetProtest.com. Law enforcement sources said they believe the site was operated by the same person who is inside the building. Lee has lived in Hawaii, California and the D.C. area.
“Parasitic human infants” — well, that’s the logical conclusion of the “deep ecology” view. Eliminationist rhetoric indeed. Brenner also comments: “If this is more zeitgeist tie-in publicity, Franzen has a genius working for him. By the way, the book stinks.” Oh, well.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Hot Air has a roundup and notes a double standard. Plus this:
Speaking of lefty bloggers, Think Progress blames Lee’s madness partly on rhetoric from … groups opposed to illegal immigration. Even liberal Adam Serwer of the American Prospect is embarrassed by their post.
Nice try, guys . . . .
MORE: Another roundup here, including this: “On his Yuku forum Lee lamented the fact that Al Gore wasn’t involved in his ’08 protest of Discovery.”
And reader Hastings Walton writes: “If humans are so bad, why hasn’t he killed himself already? Hypocrite.” Yeah, they never seem to follow their humans-should-be-extinct logic to its obvious conclusion.
STILL MORE: Suspect James Lee Rails in Manifesto Against ‘Filthy Human Babies.’
FINALLY: Police Shoot Discovery Channel Gunman, Hostages Safe.
BEDBUGS — AN ECO-PROBLEM? Reader Tom Brosz writes: “I’ll tell you where at least some of the bedbug problem comes from. Used to be years ago hotels washed their linen in steaming hot water, and everybody got fresh crisp sheets every day when they stayed there. Nowadays, it’s all ‘green,’ and cold water washing at hotels is the rule of the day, along with places that don’t change your sheets unless you ask. I hope to God they still change them between customers, but sometimes I wonder.” Those old laundry customs were designed to limit the spread of bedbugs (and other gross things) but people have gotten complacent, I guess. . . .
A ONE-DAY SALE on radar detectors. After my bleg a while back, I never did get around to buying one. This one’s a lot cheaper than a ticket, though.
MICHAEL BARONE: Down with Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor. “Big Unit policies are not a good fit for a country that has grown out of the wreckage the Big Units made of things in the 1970s. They freeze poorly performing incumbents in place and they don’t provide the breathing room for small units to start up and grow.”
GALLUP: Voters trust GOP more on, well, everything. “Well, okay, not everything. Democrats still get more trust from voters on the environment by 23 points in this latest Gallup survey, and health care comes in at a virtual tie. Since those are near the bottom of the electorate’s priority list in the midterms, it hardly matters. Republicans have taken the lead on every other issue on the radars of voters, including a stunning eleven point lead on the economy, a traditional Democratic strength.”
Plus this: “It took Republicans twelve years to dissipate their trust and credibility with voters after taking control of Congress, and six years of one-party governance in Washington. It has taken Democrats less than a third of both time frames to utterly destroy their standing with voters on nearly every issue. That’s quite an achievement, and impressive in its own way.”
FRANKENMASCOT: All The Cereal Mascots In One.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Speech: Why Didn’t They Call Rewrite?
AMERICA: Heading Toward Greece?
BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO WHEN THERE ARE YALE MEN OUT THERE? How to date Harvard men.
UPDATE: Reader William Tanner writes: “I went to Yale from 1988 to 1992 — we had t-shirts that said 20 years of women at Yale. What’s next, men at Harvard? I always thought that was funny, and now I realize it was true.”
HOW GM WILL USE FEAR to sell you a Chevy Volt.
THOUGHTS ON REFORMING LEGAL EDUCATION.
UNEXPECTEDLY! Private Jobs Tumble. “The U.S. manufacturing sector grew faster than expected in August but private employers unexpectedly cut jobs, showing the economic recovery still faces major headwinds.”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Novel nanotechnology collaboration leads to breakthrough in cancer research. Faster, please.
IN THE MAIL: From Brendan Brazier, Thrive Fitness: The Vegan-Based Training Program for Maximum Strength, Health, and Fitness.
JACOB SULLUM: ALAN SIMPSON AND THE SACRED COW. “The reaction to the former senator’s comments on Social Security shows he’s right. . . . Just three entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—account for two-fifths of federal spending, representing 10 percent of GDP. Without reform, they are expected to consume half of the budget and about 20 percent of GDP by 2050. . . . Social Security is neither a pension fund nor a means-tested assistance program for the needy. It is a pay-as-you-go system of transfer payments that takes money from relatively poor workers and gives it to relatively affluent retirees.”
ARNE DUNCAN’S INVITATION JUST THE START OF THE PROBLEM:
So U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan invited every Education Department employee to attend Rev. Al Sharpton’s Glenn Beck counter-rally. As David Boaz explained in the Examiner, it was a ”highly inappropriate” thing to do, pushing people who are supposed to serve all Americans to support one side of a “political debate.” But that’s just the most obvious problem with Duncan’s weekend doings.
Perhaps just as troubling as his rally-prodding is that Duncan declared education “the civil rights issue of our generation” at Sharpton’s event. This only about a year after helping to kill an education program widely supported by many of the people he and Sharpton insist they want to empower. I’m talking, of course, about Washington, DC’s, Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program that was proven effective. But the heck with success — Duncan and President Obama let the union-hated program die.
The cause for concern, though, doesn’t end there. According to the Examiner, an Education Department spokeswoman tried to gloss over the boss’s out-of-bounds play by suggesting that Sharpton’s rally was but a mere “back-to-school event.” Sound familiar?
Is there a bigger embarrassment for the Administration than Duncan? Well, probably . . . .