Face plant!

Face plant!  MSNBC is the most strident television voice I know of in its support for Obama and ObamaCare.  Its hosts and on-air personalities are well-known for their “thrills up their legs” and unmitigated partisanship.

So it's a special thrill up my leg to see one of their anchors demonstrate ObamaCare online – and fail, miserably.

I think I'll wait for version 2.0 before I even go visit the web site...

The One: a better example...

The One: a better example...  This quote from H.L. Mencken, written almost 100 years ago, was quite popular in the 2004 presidential campaign, when it was used with G. W. Bush as the target:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In a small area, before a small electorate, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality.  But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre; the man who can most easily, adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Re-reading it this morning, I found myself thinking that The One is a far better example of Mencken's excoriation...

The Broken Fork.

The Broken Fork.  A beautiful story, via my lovely bride...

He just wants you to know.

He just wants you to know.  Reader Simi L. sent me this:

"Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."
- Henry David Thoreau

As I approach my twilight years, I am struck by the inevitability that the party must end. And one clear, cold morning after I'm gone, my spouse will awaken in the warmth of our bedroom and be struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't "anymore." No more hugs, no more special moments to celebrate together, no more phone calls just to chat, no more "just 5 minutes more." Sometimes, what we care about the most gets all used up and goes away, never to return before we can say good-bye, or say "I love you."

So while we have it, its best we love it, care for it, fix it when it's broken and heal it when it's sick. This is true for marriage.....and old cars, and children with bad report cards, and dogs with bad hips, and aging parents and grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it. Some things we keep -- like a best friend who moved away or a son-in-law after divorce.
There are just some things that make us happy, no matter what.

Life is important, like people we know who are special. And so, we keep them close! Suppose one morning you never wake up, do all your friends know how you really feel?  The important thing is to let every one of your friends know your true feelings, even if you think they don't love you back.

So, just in case I'm gone tomorrow, please rest assured I voted against that asshole, Obama, both times!

Got it, Simi :)

AC vs. DC...

AC vs. DC: the battle started long before I thought it did.  Tesla and Edison weren't the first to disagree which was better: electric fish apparently started this fight a long, long time ago...

What is that thing?

What is that thing?  A $300 toothbrush.

A full-blown hootenanny!

A full-blown hootenanny!  According to news reports:

WASHINGTON—With legislators unable to reach an agreement on health care and other issues before the start of the new budget year, Washington insiders confirmed Monday that the United States is rapidly approaching a full-scale government hoedown.

Already donning the bib overalls, Stetson hats, and festive gingham skirts that they will wear throughout what is expected to be a long and strenuous hoedown, legislators on both sides of the aisle told reporters that there is little chance of Democrats and Republicans negotiating a last-minute deal that would forestall a countrified barn burner the likes of which the federal government has never before seen.

Source: The Onion  :)

Mainstreaming anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skepticism...

Mainstreaming anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skepticism: The Wall Street Journal's editors are not impressed with the latest IPCC report.  Early in today's editorial you'll find this:

Translation: Temperatures have been flat for 15 years, nobody can properly explain it (though there are some theories), and the IPCC doesn't want to spend much time doing so because it is politically inconvenient and shows that the computer models on which all climate-change predictions depend remain unreliable.

Ouch.

Then there's this:

The other lesson is that amid such uncertainty the best insurance against adverse climate risks is robust economic growth. The wealthier the world is in 50 or 100 years, the more resources and technology it will have to cope if the worst predictions come true. But that requires free-market, pro-growth policies that are the opposite of the statist fixes pushed by the climate alarmists. 

It's very nice to see the skeptical AGW position going mainstream.  It hints at that rarest of commodities these days, the one stamped out by The One: hope...

This gets my engineer's brain going...

This gets my engineer's brain going – an art form that can actually be designed: shadow art.

Schneier hints...

Schneier hints, and now I'm waiting for the next NSA revelations.  MIT Technology Review has an interview with Mr. Schneier.


What law of nature is it that guarantees that people who can think like Schneier never, ever go into government?

Epic fail: ObamaCare exchanges.

Epic fail: ObamaCare exchanges.  Many more fails documented at this link.


I was expecting glitches and bugs, but for once the federal government has exceeded my expectations...

If you're going to quit...

If you're going to quit, this ain't a bad way to get the job done...

First they came for the unicorns...

First they came for the unicorns...  Dolphins may not be as smart as we've been led to believe.  Or, as Spiegel put it, “Flipper fail”...

The world, she's-a-changing...

The world, she's-a-changing...  Nick Berry, writing over at Data Genetics, has an interesting post up on the issue of privacy on the Internet.  He starts with “Privacy is dead.  Long live trust!&rdquo and ends with “Trustworthy is what trustworthy does.”  In between he makes a lot of ponder-worthy observations about life in the age of the Internet...

Government shutdown.

Government shutdown.  Call me perverse, but I think those words have a beautiful ring to them.  But I'm disappointed that the government has decided that two thirds of all federal employees are “essential”, and therefore remain on the job even during a “shutdown.”   So it's really more like a “government slowdown” – but still an improvement, from where I sit, from “government that steals all my money and spends it on utterly stupid things.”

Update: the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up by over 50 points as I write this.  Apparently Wall Street is happy with a government shutdown, too :)