Saturday, March 29, 2014

I only know a few people I'd call “racist” ...

I only know a few people I'd call “racist” ... and every last one of them is a self-identified liberal.  Most of them are the kind of liberal who wears their progressivism on their sleeve.

This video shows Juan Williams (a prominent liberal) expressing his support for his son Raffi (a prominent conservative) in the aftermath of an ugly racist incident.  Juan does a great job here, speaking out about the racist underbelly of the liberal movement...

In the part of the country where I live (or anywhere I'd want to live), the social stigma of being overtly racist is quite high.  I've noted, though, that when some liberals believe they are in a place where only other liberals can hear them, they're rather more willing to express their racist beliefs.  The hypocrisy is strong there...

Philae is awake!

Philae is awake!  The Philae comet lander was awakened from its long hibernation and was thoroughly checked out this week.  It's all good news.  The lander is currently attached to the Rosetta comet explorer, but will detach and land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko later this summer.

It's another robotic space explorer doing real science on a budget.  Unlike, say, the manned ISS, which does little useful science while spending huge amounts of tax dollars and risking lives.  So, of course, the government says “Let’s do less robotic exploration and more manned space missions!”

Our tax dollars, hard at work.  They're just not working for us.

Things I didn't know...

Things I didn't know...  I do know about the secret “no-fly” list, which keeps over 20,000 people from flying in the U.S.  It seems obvious that (a) there aren't really 20,000 people in the world who are trying to hijack or blow up an airliner, and (b) that many of the people on that list are there in error.

What I didn't know is this: in the entire history of this secret list, only one person has ever succeeded in getting his name removed.

That is the kind of statistic you might expect to come out of the old Soviet Union, or North Korea, or Bangladesh.  Not out of the United States.

Reading this story made me think, for the umpteenth time, that the 9/11 terrorists really have won.  If there's an afterlife, Bin Laden and his buddies are laughing – at us.  The America they hated – that land of freedom and opportunity – is being eaten away by a burgeoning security apparatus and by a progressive-pushed journey toward socialism.

Is 10 AM too early for a drink?  Ah, well, it's the right time for a drink somewhere...

The progressive narrative, part 34,813...

The progressive narrative, part 34,813...  Do you know about Oculus being acquired by Facebook?  Click on that link for a detailed story.  Here are the basics:

Oculus was a startup company whose goal was to develop a new and better virtual reality (VR) headset, named Rift.  VR headsets present a 3D image to your eyes, tricking your brain into believing that you are in a different world – one that is completely generated in the computer, and can be anything at all.  The main use today for VR headsets is with 3D games, but there are all sorts of other possible uses as well.

Oculus chose to fund its startup through a Kickstarter campaign.  They were massively over-funded, meaning that they succeeded in raising far more money than they were asking for.  People contributing small amounts of money got nothing but a sincere “thank you” for their money.  If you contributed more, you might get a T-shirt, an early version of the Rift, or (for lots of money contributed) various other perks.  What you didn't get was any stock in the company – so you weren't investing in the usual sense.  The only rewards you got were the pleasure of funding something successful, and possibly (depending on how much you contributed) a copy of the product – if the development was successful.

As it happened, the Rift development every was successful – very much so.  Facebook, last week, acquired Oculus in a $2B deal, making the founders fabulously wealthy.  The people who funded Oculus – those Kickstarter contributors – make nothing at all on the deal.

The progressives were quick to respond to this.  This article, on Bloomberg View, is entirely typical.  It takes the view that those Kickstarter contributors are blooming idiots, and they were screwed by Obama's unwise decision to deregulate crowdsourcing – thus allowing the “sheep” (stupid Kickstarter contributors) to be “shorn” (cheated of the investment returns they should have received).  The culprit is that perpetual Progressive punching bag: deregulation.

But, as usual, the Progressives have got it all wrong – exactly backwards, actually.  This wasn't deregulation at all.  Kickstarter (and the similar crowdfunding sites) would like nothing better than to sell stock shares to funding contributors – but existing investment regulations forbid it.  Those regulations are the direct result of Progressives meddling with capitalism.  The “screwing” that the Progressives are screaming about happened not because of deregulation, but because there wasn't any deregulation.  The Progressive regulations that prohibit ordinary Americans (those with a net worth less than a million dollars) from making speculative investments is what “screwed” the Kickstarter funders.

Progressives: destroying freedom and opportunity everywhere they go...

California leads the way!

California leads the way!  Few other states would keep paying state politicians accused of gun-running...

I guess I should be grateful that they even suspended him...

Justice is for the little people!

The EU provoked the Ukraine crisis?

The EU provoked the Ukraine crisis?  Interesting alternative narrative by two people I admire: Delingpole quoting Nigel Farage.  Hmmm...

We never felt a thing!

We never felt a thing!  But then again, we were sound asleep... 

Last night at 9:09:42 PM, there was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake whose epicenter was near La Hambra, California (21 miles ESE of Los Angeles).  About 28 seconds later, at 9:10:10 PM, the shock waves reached our seismometer, which recorded the results shown at right (click to embiggen).  Here's the shakemap...