Archive for 2012
June 6, 2012
MARYLAND SEEMS A BIT QUICK TO ISSUE ARREST WARRANTS: Student misses graduation after police mistakenly arrest her. “Seventeen-year-old Tiarra Brown was focused on her future, but the excitement about graduation turned to fear when police came to her school and arrested her. Prosecutors said they dropped the case after realizing she was not involved in a crime. It appears to be a horrific case of mistaken identity, 11 News I-Team reporter Barry Simms said.”
WHY I AM NOT A MARK STEYN-STYLE GLOOMER: Jonah Goldberg sums it up well:
Conservatives have a tendency to be fatalistic. They often think things only get worse. It’s slippery slopes for as far as the eye can see. Well, this is an example — a major example — of conservatives pushing History up the slippery slope, rather than being dragged down it. It’s a demonstration that the country still has the capacity for self-correction (the theme of my column today, written well before the polls closed), and that active engagement with the democratic process can actually restore the democratic nature of our system, even in such hotbeds of Crolyism as Wisconsin.
And if that doesn’t cheer you up, the video will. As Rand Simberg emailed earlier today, “To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you’d have to have a heart of stone to watch that and not laugh out loud.”
TAR. FEATHERS. Mom Arrested for Cheering at Graduation.
PEAK OIL? WHAT PEAK OIL? Bazhenov-Neocomian oil formation covers 80 times the land area of the Bakken in the US and Canada.
MEDICINE: Progress With Smart Bomb Drugs, Immune Enhancement Against Cancer. Faster, please.
WHY IT’S BETTER TO SLEEP WITH SOMEONE than to sleep alone.
SARAH HOYT REMEMBERS RAY BRADBURY, and, like me, has a special place in her heart for Dandelion Wine.
THE ATLANTIC: In Wisconsin, the Left Picked a Fight—and Lost. Ya think? Actually, they picked several fights in a row, and lost them all.
TORIE BOSCH: Bring Back Home Economics! I had a mandatory unisex home-ec class my senior year in high school. It taught budgeting, meal-planning, shopping, etc. (For one exam, we had to cut up a whole chicken into parts, because that’s much cheaper than buying precut chicken — or at least, was back then).
DRONES OF THE FUTURE: “Siri, Kill That Guy.”
THE DEMS’ WISCONSIN TALKING POINT IS THAT IT WAS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY, but Obama Spent $25 Million in May Without Moving The Needle. “$25 million in ads and what does President Barack Obama campaign have to show for it? Stagnant or sagging poll numbers, an opponent who’s finally showing fight, and dissension in the ranks.”
Speaking of showing fight: Romney: Obama slowed recovery to push Obamacare.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Christian Science Monitor: Did tea party put Scott Walker over the top in Wisconsin recall? “The tea party movement flexed its muscle in Wisconsin, as Gov. Scott Walker handily won a recall vote on Tuesday. Thirty-six percent of voters said they support the movement – and almost all went for Walker. . . . Walker’s ground game played a big role in pulling off a win, as he became the first governor in US history to survive a recall election. And like the recent GOP primary victory of Richard Mourdock over veteran US Sen. Dick Lugar in nearby Indiana, that ground game is being pitched by cadres of grass-roots activists who identify to a large extent with the leaderless tea party movement. . . . ‘While Occupiers and union protesters got the ink, the tea party dropped the placards and picked up clipboards, phones and got out the vote.'”
Well, I told you so.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Senator Saxby Chambliss has sent a letter to AG Eric Holder demanding action on behalf of conservative commentators currently experiencing threats and harassment by an as yet unidentified source. And Jake Tapper of ABC News has noticed.
Sen. Chambliss’s press release is here.
UPDATE: More here.
CHANGE: 3-Million-Fold Improvement In Immunoassay Sensitivity. “The scaling of biotechnology to work at very small scales is yielding rapid advances just as scaling down of semiconductor devices enabled computers to become both cheaper and more powerful at the same time. It is this trend toward smaller scale devices that gives me the most optimism about how soon we will get advances in biotechnology that will enable the development of rejuvenation therapies.” Faster, please.
SOME D-DAY THOUGHTS from Dave Kopel.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Tools & Home Improvement Outlet Sale.
TYLER COWEN: Thoughts On How To Avoid Another Great Depression.
Related: What Color Is Your Panic Button? “I will Boldly Predict that the use of US taxpayer dollars to bail-out Spanish banks would be even less popular than the bail-out of US banks.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: “The American left as we have come to know it suffered a devastating blow in Wisconsin last night. . . . The public sector unions are critical to what remains of the American left. The power of the public service unions in Democratic politics pulls the entire party to the left and gives ideas that are important to the left an access to power that they would otherwise lack. But more important than that, they provide a kind of center to a movement that otherwise threatens to fragment into antagonistic cliques. . . . To the extent that these unions shape the Democratic agenda, Democrats aren’t just the party of government; they are the party of inefficient, expensive, unresponsive, bureaucratic government. . . . The left’s problem in Wisconsin wasn’t that the right had too much money. The left’s problem is that the left’s agenda didn’t have enough support from the public. Poll after poll after poll showed that the public didn’t share the left’s estimation of the Walker reforms. Many thought they were a pretty good idea; many others didn’t much like the reforms but didn’t think they were bad enough or important enough to justify a year of turmoil and a recall election.”
Related: Michael Barone: Walker changes attitudes on public employee unions.
KATIE GRANJU is staying on the case.
FASTER, PLEASE: Dengue vaccine in sight, after 70 years.
A CHICKEN’S WORST NIGHTMARE: ROBO-BUTCHER: “The prototype Intelligent Cutting and Deboning System has a built-in 3D vision system in order to help it cut and debone a chicken. The robot uses collected data and custom algorithms to help reduce bone fragments and increase yield on birds, whilst ensuring that no fowl with ever get a full night’s sleep again. The school has begun testing the system, as evidenced by the unfortunate bird picture above.”
TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE: What Is the Future of Standing/Walking Workstations? I’ve considered a treadmill desk, but it seems like a lot of trouble.
Related: How I hacked my computer desk to help me lose 67lbs. I mean, I don’t want to lose 67 pounds — I’m not sure I even want to lose 7 pounds — but I’m sure there would still be benefits.