KNIVES: A review, from H. Clay Aalders, of the Tormek T-3 Sharpening System.
Archive for 2013
March 22, 2013
SUMMER IS COMING: At Amazon, it’s the Sandal Shop. Don’t tell The Manolo, but I like crocs.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. Ice blades threaten Europa landing. “Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is a prime target for future space missions as it harbours a buried ocean that could have the right conditions for life. But attempts to land may face a major hazard: jagged “blades” of ice up to 10m long.”
Arthur C. Clarke reference courtesy of Matt Hurley.
15 REASONS ZOOM WAS TOTALLY UNDERRATED. I watched that, and made Super 8 movies and animations.
AN INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE VIDEO: Epic Public Interest Boot Camp, a Weekend for Law Students.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: In the Developing World, MOOCs Start to Get Real.
IN THE MAIL: From Ken Wheaton, Bacon and Egg Man. Life in a Bloombergian dystopia.
TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Hey, what if we fired federal employees seriously delinquent on taxes? Democrats: Nah. “The bill offers exceptions for those employees and applicants demonstrating financial hardship and making good faith efforts to settle up. You’d think our friends in the fair share party would be all over this, but it turns out they only like to demonize people who are already paying their taxes. Asking the bare minimum of federal employees isn’t their bag.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: ObamaCare Turns Three: 10 Disturbing Facts Americans Have Learned.
THERE’S A LOT OF THAT GOING AROUND THESE DAYS: Venezuela Takes Desperate Measures to Put Off Day of Reckoning.
The Venezuelan government is making a frenzied effort to combat shortages of food and medicine. The FT reports that on Monday the country will begin auctioning off dollars to certain business in hopes of spurring them to import the basic goods it desperately needs. . . .
Venezuela’s economic woes are telling. Apologists for Chavez mentor Fidel Castro blame Cuba’s sixty years of economic problems on the US embargo. If it weren’t for Uncle Sam, they say, Castro would have built a socialist paradise by now.
Venezuela is the test for this talking point. Not only is there no US embargo in Venezuela, but the country also has huge oil reserves. And what does it have? Food and medicine and foreign currency shortages. A socialist paradise, indeed.
Who could have seen this coming? The Gods Of The Copybook Headings say, “Indeed.”
DEALS SO GOOD THEY’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! At Amazon, it’s the April Fool’s Day Shop.
Also, today only: House: The Complete Series, $83.99 (58% off).
AS ONE OF MY LAW PROFESSORS ONCE SAID, “I used to think that all property was theft, but that was before I had anything worth stealing.” Heh.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Drone base in Niger gives U.S. a strategic foothold in West Africa. “Since taking office in 2009, President Obama has relied heavily on drones for operations, both declared and covert, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. U.S. drones also fly from allied bases in Turkey, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. Now, they are becoming a fixture in Africa.”
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Rick Perry: The Presidential Candidate Ahead Of His Time. “The Texas governor ran an awful campaign in 2012. But his platform is now belatedly being embraced by party leaders.”
SO MAKE SURE THEY HEAR FROM YOU WHILE THEY’RE HOME: Senate To Take Up Gun Control After Break.
K.C. JOHNSON: The Times: Still Biased on College Sex Hearings. “Richard Pérez-Peña, an unusually shaky New York Times reporter who covers campus sexual misconduct cases and gets many of them wrong, has been corrected by his bosses, though the Times didn’t announce it as a correction and managed to introduce a new error while altering the inaccurate wording of the March 19 story. . . . The Times, of course, has a troubled history of slanted coverage when it comes to allegations of sexual assault on campus. The paper’s handling of the Duke lacrosse case was so bad that it yielded an eventual apology from the sports page editor. Yet the Times’ botching of the lacrosse case appears to have had no impact on how it treats the more general issue.”
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: Senate Democrats unite to defeat balanced budget motion.
MASSACHUSETTS: Ethics Commission Boots Press From Meeting On Transparency.
UNDERFUNDED / OVERGENEROUS PUBLIC PENSION UPDATE: California Teacher pension problems catch lawmakers’ attention. “The teachers pension fund had an unfunded liability of $73 billion as of June 2012, an increase from $64.5 billion the year before.”
BLUE ON BLUE: Conflicting Interests Split Top Democratic Firm.
A top Democratic consulting firm, Mack|Crounse Group, split this month after one of the partners used a shell firm to produce mail pieces that attacked candidates backed by the other partner’s banner progressive clients.
The break-up between longtime partners Kevin Mack and Jim Crounse illustrates how the complications of modern politics — outside spending, jungle primaries and interest groups — can put a firm in conflict with itself.
For five cycles, Mack|Crounse Group was a giant among Democratic mail firms, counting top liberal groups, labor unions, elected officials and even President Barack Obama as clients. But all it took to fell the famed partnership were two obscure state California Assembly races last fall.
“Colossal mistakes were made on the other side of a firewall,” Mack said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I was blindsided by this a month or so ago. Those mistakes left me no choice but to split the firm.”
Oops.
FROZEN IN TIME: Is Hillary Clinton Too Conservative To Become President? “While she was at the State Department, and out of politics for four years, Clinton’s party was moving to the left, and fast.”
KEEP HIM AWAY FROM SHOTGUNS: Vice President Biden pushes assault weapons ban despite Democrats’ opposition. “Vice President Biden on Thursday pushed ahead with the White House’s pursuit of an assault weapons ban, putting the administration at odds with centrist Democrats who would rather see the legislation die on Capitol Hill.”