Hear, hear!

Hear, hear!  Brit Hume on what the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party is trying to accomplish.  Well said, and briefly too.

I'm skeptical that the Tea Party wing will ever be able to subsume the rest of the Republicans, though I'd certainly love to be proven wrong on that.  The last time an independent third party ever emerged was before the Civil War, over 150 years ago, when anti-slavery forced formed the Republican Party.  Those folks wouldn't recognize their creation today.  For a new third Tea Party to emerge, there would have to be similar passion and widespread support for the kind of liberty and small government the Tea Party stands for.  Could that passion be the equal of anti-slavery passion?  Certainly not today, and certainly not with the low information electorate we have...

From the Department of Doublespeak...

From the Department of Doublespeak...  Sylvia Burwell is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and an Obama administration and White House insider.  Here's she's being interviewed (by Al Hunt, a liberal) and is asked what you would think would be an easy question, with a yes-or-no answer.  Hunt asks twice, but never actually gets an answer.

Burwell's response is exactly the kind of content-free political response that makes me distrust every one of these toadies.  Listen carefully to what she says (and doesn't say), then consider what that tells you about whether she's part of a government of, by, and for the people...

4.6033388489...

4.6033388489.  That's the answer to this puzzle, involving monsters, perfectly circular lakes, and rowboats.  Oh, and just a little calculus.  Nick Berry from Data Genetics does his usual nice job...

Scary story...

Scary story.  Identity thieves purchased consumer information from Experian.  Yikes!

Creative advertising...

Creative advertising.  Lots more on this web site.  Some of these are really, really clever...

This smacks of desperation...

This smacks of desperation...  Obama announces a “tech surge” to fix the broken ObamaCare web sites.  That's not what you do to fix a few little “glitches”.  That might be what you do if your technical team is telling you that the web site is badly broken and it's going to take months and months to fix it.  An ignorant and desperate manager, in that situation, might convince himself that the answer is to throw as many smart people as he can.

Large systems that were poorly designed generally cannot be fixed in a big hurry.  Patching symptoms, while a common response, isn't likely to actually fix the problems.  Careful study by experts who are thoroughly immersed in the details of the technology are what it's going to take – and that's not what a new team of “experts” will bring to the party.  At least not quickly, which is the stated goal...

I suspect it will be many months before those web sites are functioning well.  Maybe more – if they're as poorly designed as some suspect, the shortest path to a functioning system may well be to start over...

Fly over Mars...

Fly over Mars...  The short video at right was made from stereographs taken from Martian orbit.  Some snippets are in natural (or near-natural) color; others are in false colors highlighting mineral types, etc.  You'll definitely want to zoom this one to full screen.  Awesome!