K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: “Police in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania arrested a local high school Spanish teacher on Thursday for allegedly creating and disseminating Photoshopped images of naked bodies — to which he attached students’ faces,” according to the Daily Caller, noting that the Pennsylvania teacher had nearly “four terabytes of data storage capability at his home,” and “Pornographic images, including child pornography, reportedly took up much of that space.”
Archive for 2013
March 25, 2013
WHO KNEW? ANOTHER REASON TO BUY THEM: Apparently sex toys have other beneficial uses. They help singers hit those high notes. Wonder if they can deduct them as a business expense?
OBAMA DAUGHTERS SPEND SPRING BREAK AT LUXURIOUS RESORT IN BAHAMAS: . . . While regular kids’ long-awaited tours of the White House are cancelled due to budgetary cuts. Guess it’s nice to be the king’s President’s daughter.
THE WORLD’S LONGEST BLOG POST: “Why Liberals Still Detest Fox News” is the subject of a post by Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary:
For decades, mainstream news icons like Walter Cronkite maintained the pretense of objectivity while tilting his enormously influential broadcasts to the left. But while belief in his impartiality and that of almost all of his colleagues on CBS and the other big two of that time was based on myth rather than truth, it was more believable than the willingness of his successors as well as many of those seen on MSNBC and CNN—including those that report as well as those who merely opine—to continue to pretend that they aren’t ideologues.
Fox’s success is rooted in its honesty about its point of view as well as the fact that the uniform liberalism of the other networks has left the field wide open for a conservative alternative. What Ailes and his backer Rupert Murdoch did was to find an underserved niche of the news market. Only in this case that niche is made up of approximately half of the American people. No wonder liberals resent it so bitterly.
Click here to listen, if you missed my interview last week with Zev Chafets, author of Roger Ailes: Off Camera.
My book, Where the West Ends
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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Iraq – Agony, Ordeal, and Recovery. Read the whole thing. And then check out Ross Douthat in the New York Times, on “The Obama Era, Brought to You by the Iraq War.”
STUDYING THE IMPORTANT HISTORICAL EVENTS: To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Matt Novak of the Paleofuture Blog (now part of the Smithsonian Website) breaks down every episode of the first season of the Jetsons, with an emphasis on how the series reflected the technology of the early 1960s, and in some cases, influenced the technology of today.
MORE FREE STUFF! Democrats in the Gang of Eight — the Senate’s bipartisan working group on immigration reform — have taken the first step towards extending Obamacare to illegal aliens who will be granted legal status under the reform. All Republicans in the Gang opposed the move. It’s a potential poison pill, with massive budgetary implications.
FIRST CASUALTY OF THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION: Lebanon’s pro-Hezbollah government collapses.
ARE DEMOCRATS TEARING THEMSELVES APART?
Consider the fundamentals. Our economy runs on fossil fuels, yet an ever-growing number of Democrats at the heart of Obama’s base are literally convinced that the world is coming to an end because of it. This rapidly proliferating movement of Democratic voters has a near-religious determination to choke off the fuel that drives America’s economic engine. Each side of the Democratic split apparently sees the other as Dr. Evil, and at least one side is willing to reach across state lines to make the point. To understand this is to recognize that the Democrats’ political problem will not disappear after Keystone. It will only get worse.
Faster, please.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What It Takes To Be A Great Girlfriend.
MYSTERY IN MISSISSIPPI: Female politician, 53, is found shot to death at home of former lawmaker. “The death of Republican Rep Jessica Upshaw, of the 95th District in Diamondhead, was confirmed by Simpson County Coroner Terry Tutor,” the London Daily Mail reports.
PLEASE, DEMOCRATS: GO AHEAD AND EMBRACE OBAMACARE:
The problem with Obamacare is not that it is being badly presented; the problem is that there is a limit to how well you can present a law that is this bad. It’s like trying to put a positive spin on having your leg bitten off by a shark: sure, yes, in the long run you’re going to see a 50% saving on socks, but that’s not exactly comforting news while you’re watching the water around you go pink…
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™
YET ONE MORE REASON TO READ A GOOD NOVEL: Get that tune out of your head – scientists find how to get rid of earworms.
THE SOO LOCKS opened today. Don’t say you’re not impressed unless you’ve watched the time-lapse video.
FIREFOX TO CEASE PRODUCTION OF THEIR BROWSER: Or at least they should, if they actually believe that the environment is so bad, and/or the world’s energy prospects are so grim that they must encourage their users to celebrate “Earth Hour.”
Fortunately, Viacom provided a modicum of comic relief at the end of the grim, anti-progress hour with this promotional stunt, promoting their next Star Trek movie:
We’ve seen LED quadrotor displays before, and there’s no denying that lighting up the night sky with small flying machines has enormous potential.
Ars Electronica Futurelab, the same outfit that illuminated the skies over Linz, Austria, last year, launched 30 quadrotors near London’s Tower Bridge and flew in a formation that any Trekkie would salute.
The 30 LED-equipped AscTec Hummingbird quadcopters from Munich’s Ascending Technologies hovered about 118 feet to 426 feet above Potters Fields Park and formed a Star Trek insignia to coincide with Earth Hour.
The batteries that powered the micro UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were charged on the Austrian renewable energy grid, according to event sponsor Paramount Pictures.
To mark Earth Hour, the LEDs went dim along with the lights on Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, and the London Eye, then winked on 60 minutes later [forming the shape of the famous Enterprise arrowhead-shaped shirt logo].
Or as someone Tweeted on Saturday, “Earth Hour, when we switch off all the electric things to save the earth (except laptops, routers, & data centres so we can tweet during it).”
Similarly, Wells Fargo bank promotes Earth Hour — but curiously, they keep the electricity still flowing to the alarm systems in their branches during the hour.
In contrast, Tim Blair’s readers prefer a more diversified response.
OBAMACARE: THE “TRAIN WRECK” COMETH: On the 3d anniversary of Obamacare (yipee!), Charles Krauthammer explains the law’s impact on the deficit, employment and taxes upon its full implementation just 9 months from now:
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SEQUESTER JESTERS: An amusing juxtaposition on where the Obama White House will and won’t spend their our money.
(Incidentally, a big thanks to the Blogfather for allowing me to sit in once again while he’s on vacation.)
GAY MARRIAGE & THE CONSTITUTION: The Supreme Court on Tuesday and Wednesday will hear the most significant constitutional cases of this term, both dealing the the constitutionality of laws defining marriage as “one man, one woman.” At stake is the scope and meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, the principle of federalism, and the meaning of the doctrine of “standing” to sue. This excellent editorial by the Wall Street Journal dissects what is at stake in these cases, and the analytical options facing the Court for each.
I NEED A VACATION, AND I’M TAKING ONE. I’ll be away and mostly offline, but I’ve left some scheduled posts, and even better, my highly talented gang of guestbloggers will be back, making this blog more interesting, in my opinion, than it is when I’m here.
CHANGE: ObamaCare Premium Spike Goes National. “As in California, the costs will fall primarily on individuals and small businesses, and as in California, they will fall disproportionately on the young.”
APPLE’S MAGSAFE2 CONNECTOR SUCKS EVEN MORE THAN THE MAGSAFE 1. The bigger head just provides more leverage for it to be knocked loose against the inadequate pull of its magnet. That is all.
AT AMAZON, deals and markdowns in the Easter Shop.
Also, 50% off AC/Delco Powersport batteries. Buy one, add a charger and an inverter, and you’ve got backup power.
Also, the Gold Box Deal of the Day at Amazon is this Nest Learning Thermostat that can be controlled by Wi-Fi from your smartphone, laptop, or tablet.
ON SSRN, I’m #1 among 3000 law professors in recent downloads. Well, good. It’s nice that people are reading my stuff.
For those wondering what this SSRN business is all about, here’s an explanation.