There’s an interesting piece here by a passenger on Flight 253 on what he saw versus what the government has been saying. It’s pretty clear that there’s more to the story than the government wishes to admit, and for once we have somebody who knows what went on that is willing to challenge the official version of the story. Definitely food for thought.
Archive for December, 2009
Cover-Up?
Thursday, December 31st, 2009Dave Barry’s Year In Review
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009Well, Dave Barry has neatly summed up the past year once again. Funny as always – and it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who views the past year as an enormous debacle on the part of Washington and much of the world in general.
California Warning Labels
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009Somebody needs to make California stop.
For some reason, they have this urge to put warning labels on everything, whether they’re needed or not. It wouldn’t be so bad, but companies that want to sell their products nationally have to comply with these stupid regulations if they want to sell their products in the major market of California, and no doubt it’s driving prices up for the rest of us as well. The most recent story about this is the mayor of San Francisco (and you know if he’s mayor of San Francisco, he’s definitely not representative of most of the rest of the country) supporting a requirement that cell phones come with radiation warning labels. Nevermind that there are federal requirements for the amount of EM radiation cell phones are permitted to put out. Nevermind that scientists haven’t even been able to confirm that there ARE significant health effects from cell phone use (apart from the obvious ones of stupid people driving while talking). California feels the need to regulate it anyway.
I bought a plumb bob the other day (for those of you who don’t know what that is, check wikipedia), and right on the back of the package was a sticker with the label “WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects, or other reproductive harm.” No, it’s not lead — it’s brass with a steel point, with a bit of nylon string. How are the normal uses of a plumb bob going to cause any of those problems? I can see health issues if you tried to EAT the plumb bob, but none of the ones listed are ones that I would worry about. If you’re going around eating 8 ounce brass spikes, you have more things to worry about than cancer, birth defects, and reproductive harm. In fact, it might be better if you DIDN’T reproduce. So why does California feel the need to protect its citizens from things like this, while inflicting higher prices and stupid warning labels on the rest of us?
Unfortunate Phrasing
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009After finishing their class work today, one of my students (who I shall call M) was showing her male classmate (who we’ll clepe K) a game on her phone (or mp3 player, or whatever — all those devices seem to blur into one another nowadays).
M: “There’s this sticky ball, and you roll it around and pick up all kinds of stuff. First you get things like candy and floor tiles, but later you can end up picking up people and other big stuff.”
Me: “There you go, K, a sure-fire way to pick up women!”
M: “What? He can’t pick up women now. His thingie is waaaay too small.”
This was almost immediately followed by a minor cry of anguish as she realized what she said, and everyone laughed. K seemed to be too engrossed in the game to pay any attention, which was probably just as well.
Parting Of The Ways
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Some of you may have noticed (ok, so probably nobody noticed, but you’ve noticed now that I have said something about it) that I have deleted Little Green Footballs from my blogroll. I’ve been considering doing it for some time, and finally decided that it had to be done. I posted my reasoning in the comments on his post on “Why I Parted Ways With The Right.” The post has capably been disassembled by Rusty and his furry minions, but I felt that I wanted to make my own objections clear. I will repost it here, as I believe that it is something that should be said, and Charles seems to have been deleting the posts of those who similarly indicated their displeasure with (and their intention to disassociate themselves from) him, referring to the idea that it “is a form of mental illness” for people to think he will leave their posts up. Admittedly, he refers to them as “hate-filled,” but as they have been deleted, I am unable to judge whether they were indeed hate-filled, or simply opposition-fille (or jelly-filled, perhaps?). I suppose time will tell if my post is hate-filled enough to get it deleted, but here it is in its entirety:
Well, it has been an interesting few years during which I regularly read LGF. One of the things that I liked initially about this site, Charles, was that you were a moderate who was willing to focus on issues rather than parroting a party line. Unfortunately, we have come to a parting of the ways.
I have become more and more concerned recently, Charles, with your willingness to paint everyone on ‘the right’ with a disturbingly broad brush. Does the Republican party deserve criticism? Yes. Is it productive to accuse virtually anyone that you disagree with of secretly being racist / homophobic / religious fanatics / bigots / insert-derogatory-term-here? No, it is not.
Perhaps the most important thing that I learned while doing my undergraduate degree in political science was that in really good debate, you have to be able to focus on the ideas rather than on your thoughts about the people who you perceive as holding those ideas. It’s possible to have a productive political debate with people you find morally reprehensible, just as it’s possible to strenuously disagree with people you really like.
Political discourse is cheapened — often to the point of worthlessness — when it simply becomes an ad hominem slug-fest. By all means, disagree with others, make moral evaluations of their actions and words, and share your opinions. However, when you start attacking the characters of those you disagree with instead of engaging on the topic at hand, expect productive political debate to expire quickly.
If you want to declare this post to be a “goodbye, cruel world” post and delete it so that others will not be able to see it, go right ahead. You may delete my user account as well — I would save you the trouble, but after a cursory examination of the account settings page, I could not find a way to delete my own account.
I wish you the best, Charles, and I hope that one day I will be able to return to regularly reading and enjoying your commentary. For now, however, I will be deleting my bookmarks.
UPDATE 12/3/09 15:29: My suspicions were correct. My post apparently was ‘hate filled’, as it has also been deleted. Charles’ comment — apparently on deleting the post — was “And another one. Amazing.”
Another what? Another “hate-filled” comment? Apparently. It would be interesting to know exactly which of the comment guidelines I broke — “Obscene, abusive, silly, or annoying remarks”? Containing personal information or claiming “First!”? Advocation of violence? It certainly brings some light to bear on his statement that “Disagreement and debate are welcome”. If a post like mine is considered “insult[ing] or abus[ive]” and thus not acceptable disagreement, one wonders just what kind of disagreement is allowed.
By the looks of it, only cheerleading posts are allowed. Surprise, surprise.