Cohen on Thomson on gun control

Hard to follow the columnist's logic. (via Instapundit ) He seems to advocate gun ownership for liberal newspaper columnists, but not for college students. Or is his point that guns might be okay for some people to have in their homes, but not on their person. He fears young, drunk college students might recklessly discharge a weapon in a fit of hormones. And he's willing to sacrifice 30 innocent Hokies to prevent this theoretical possibility. That's 30 (plus) actual dead people versus some unknown number of potentially dead or injured others.

This is darn

funny.

Lileks on Scary McRaincoat

Now. You could say that there's nothing wrong with a fifty-something guy with a grey beard and a raincoat and no fixed address wandering around a playground looking at the kids in their bathing suits, and that it's unfair to deny a fellow the simple human pleasure of watching kids enjoy themselves just because he happens to be homeless.

I don't care.

First of all, there aren't any shelters in this area. Second, I don't care. Third, it's possible he's homeless because he spent a lot of time in prison for kiddie-diddling. Fourth, you don't get to look like the fellow who shows up to collect the Hellraiser cube and hang around the kiddie pool. Good bye.

Here's the rest. Pretty much nails my feelings on the matter.

I realize the odds of something horrible happening to my kids is vanishingly small. The stakes, however, are so high that I feel like any risk is too much.

That said, I tend to regard with suspicion anyone who shows more than passing interest in my kids. The other side of that is I try to avoid paying too much attention to other people's kids.

I don't necessarily like this environment, but it is what it is.

When's the last time you thought about baton twirling?

I thought about it yesterday for the first time in - I'm sure - many years. I was listening to the radio and a singer was talking about being from a small town and how she had just been back to act as Grand Marshall for a parade she remembers marching in with her dance class as a small child.
This reminded me of parades I remember as a small child in Big Stone Gap, Va. I remember ranks of little girls twirling batons, dropping them, picking them up. It's a nice memory. And it led me to wonder what ever happened to baton twirling. I have four kids. Two of them are girls. I don't think they've ever owned a baton and I'm not sure they'd know what one is.
Today - literally and truly the next day - I see this on the front page of a section of the local paper:

Baton twirling: Glitz, no glory

That kind of think makes me a little nervous.

sorry

this is just crazy

New idea for UN

I kind of like the way China deals with corruption ...

What Heinlein believes

Well worth reading.

What he

said.

Cable Co Horror Story

Teh InstaMaster is running a poll looking for an alternative to his horrible Comcast service. This reminded me of my favorite all time cable company experience.
I don't remember where we lived at the time - Kingsport, Knoxville (Hi, Glenn), or Green Bay. I think it might have been Green Bay, but it doesn't really matter.
We had cancelled our service, or dropped part of our service, or something like that and there was a secret decoder ring or some such device that we had to - as Glenn mentions - drive all the way across town to give back to them.
We did that, but we lost the receipt.
They started sending us bills to the effect that we had not returned the item.
We insisted that we had and they continued to deny it.
I physically took my posterior back down to the dingy little office (yeah, pretty sure it was Green Bay. I'm picturing a location over on the West side. We, of course, lived on the East side.) and continued our discussion. The not so gracious lady checked a ledger and said our item was not listed, so we hadn't returned it.
I explained that we had, in fact, done so.
She said if we had returned it then there would be a slip of paper attached to this here clipboard and it would be in that there ledger.
Since she had already checked the ledger, I offered to check the clipboard.
She thought that would be an invasion of someone's privacy, but she consented to do it herself. She did it in front of me and initially she tried to hide the papers from me, but after flipping through a few she had the clipboard down where I could see it - albeit upside down.
Long story slightly shorter - as I watched, she flipped right past the long string of numbers and letters that represented the wayward device and I said - "Wait, that was it."
She flipped back to it and after several moments of silence she agreed that it was.
I'm pretty sure I didn't speak to her again (which was for the best) I just glared at her as she gave me another receipt.

Star Tribune going soft on Bush

This story was on the front page of the Star Tribune today. I read it expecting the usual jibes at President Bush, but he came off sounding nothing but sympathetic and genuinely kind to the family of a local soldier who died in Iraq. This quote appears in the first paragraph:

[The family decided they] should try to get in to see President Bush to tell him of their continuing support of him and the war.

I was shocked, shocked, I say. They move Lileks to the web (DUH!!) and then run a front page story that fails to disparage the president.

I'm not sure how to interpret this information.

Oh my.

This isn't good.

Gun-free Zone = Criminals Welcome

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.
-- Fred Thompson

Something funny from the New Yorker of all places.

I like the last one the best.

Just wrong, wrong, wrong

This strikes me as kind of pathetic. If there's nothing similar for Republicans I can only assume it's because they don't need to propogandize. (tongue applied firmly to cheek)

But seriously ... really?

clipped from brain-terminal.com A children’s book called Why Mommy is a Democrat, filled with cute illustrations of cuddly animals, will help prevent the harrowing possibility that your children will someday come to their own conclusions about political issues.

You can't handle the truth!

Colonel Jessup was a little over the top. But I think there was some truth in his monologue - truth that's relevant today in the midst of our current war.

clipped from www.whysanity.net

You
don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties,
you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.

We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a
life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline.

Hotspot finder

Hopefully this takes off and is kept up to date.

clipped from lifehacker.com

Find hotspots with Hotspotr

Find a Wi-Fi hotspot in your area with Hotspotr, a new Google Maps mashup that relies entirely on user input.

As with other Wi-Fi finders, you can search for hotspots by entering a city, ZIP code or place, then get maps, driving directions, phone numbers, etc. Hotspotr also lets you rate and review existing hotspots based on criteria like wireless quality, food/drink quality, availability of AC outlets and so on. It's fairly easy to add hotspots of your own, though you have to supply the location's address; there's no built-in address lookup.

continue reading »

11 comments,
latest by kim

Read more:

• Google Maps,


• Mashups,


• On the go,


• Search engines,


• Travel,


• WiFi

Response to Susan Estrich's FoxNews article of 2/18

In your editorial of 18 February on FoxNews.com you complain that the president isn't listening to those in Congress and the media who want our troops to leave Iraq. You further encourage the congressional leadership to do more to "stop this war".

As to the President not listening - I don't believe it's his responsibility to listen to polls and whatever talking heads agree with the media outlets that give them air time.

He was elected to execute this war and I certainly hope he has better intelligence resources to base his decisions on than the evening news, or latest Gallup.

I voted for him - twice. The first time it was a close decision, but after 9/11 I was very glad I made the decision I did.
The second time it was a no-brainer. Kerry was a terrible candidate and I had no faith that he would continue the war that I believe is a necessary front in the war on terror.

I'm not enamored of President Bush. I'm not happy with his domestic performance, but I believe that we must win the war in Iraq to encourage change in the Middle East. If we fail in Iraq, it will only embolden the terrorists and the tyrants who support them. Failure is not an option. And I believe we are winning the war. Although if I only listened to the major media outlets it would be hard to hold that opinion. The troops also believe in their mission and believe they are winning. They don't want to come home until the job is done.

Any resolution by Congress that suggests to the terrorists that they are winning the war for the American heart is obviously not supportive of the troops. Terrorists don't expect to win their engagements in the traditional sense. Their battle is with the will to win of those they attack. Your article, the House resolution, and recent comments by Democratic leadership can not do other than to tell our enemies that they are succeeding in their objectives.

How that can be considered support for our troops is beyond my ability to perceive.

Tom Clements
Prior Lake, MN

---

Be a PS3 game guru.
Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games.

happy valentine's day

The perfect Valentine's day anecdote:

The most romantic thing I've ever heard of was the broadway producer who, when he was poor and starting out, gave his future wife a bowl of peanuts, which was all he could afford.  "I wish they were emeralds," he told her.  Thirty years later, when they were rich, he gave her a bowl of emeralds.

"I wish they were peanuts," he said. 

Bird eating bats??

This is .. interesting, I guess. So bats eat songbirds. Well, bats obviously have sensitive ears what with the sonar and all. Maybe they just eat the songbirds that can't carry a tune. It's evolution at work.

Myths about Suburbia

Cars aren't as evil as we're told. Mass transit is not the magic bullet it's touted as. Global warming is coming, but it probably won't be as bad as the worst-case scenarios we hear about - and the best thing we can do for developing areas is to build infrastructure, not make them comply with global environmental standards like Kyoto that are too much of a compromise to actually have a meaningful effect anyway.
Huh. Who knew? (another hat tip to Instapundit)