LA Occupy Protesters (and observers) will be forced to attend a political re-education program in which they will be forced to learn about their First Amendment rights. I am not making this up. Continue reading #Occupy Common Sense
Monthly Archives: December 2011
The Free Thought Blogs Video Channel
Did you know what Freethoughtblogs.com has a YouTube channel thingie? It is here.
Is Gignrich’s Campaign About To Cain-Out?
This is not yet confirmed, but a former Gingrich campaign worker claiming to have Clintoned Gingrich may result in a Garry-Hart for the About to Cain Campaign. Which has already been Gingriched pretty thoroughly. Which brings us to the question of what exactly is is. Continue reading Is Gignrich’s Campaign About To Cain-Out?
Newt Gingrich you’re as charming as an eel.
Teacher Responds to Rick Perry
This is very, very good:
Continue reading Teacher Responds to Rick Perry
Sharks hardly ever eat people. But now and then …
Two times in one week in Australia:
Birding Binoculars
What kind of birding binoculars do you use? How do you chose a good model?
Obviously, the best way to pick out a pair of binoculars is to try them out, but in doing so, I strongly urge you to try at least a couple of pairs that are beyond your budget, and work your way down from there. Not knowing what an excellent pair of binoculars is like makes it difficult to judge among the lesser forms that you will ultimately have to pick from. Putting it another way, if all you know is the $50 special, and you use a pair of them for a season or two, then the first time you bring a nice pair up to your eyeballs you’ll realize that you had no clue what you were missing. By trying the higher quality binoculars you will understand the necessity of getting the best pair you can afford. Fortunately, the difference between the $50 binoculars and the $200 binoculars is probably much greater than subsequent increments of several hundred dollars. Truthfully, though, the binoculars you want and can actually afford if you save up, and if good binoculars are really important to you, are probably in the $300 – $500 range.
Continue reading Birding Binoculars
SCOTUS will review Arizona’s Immigration Law
Moments ago, the Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to review a highly controversial Arizona law. This promises to be one of the more significant things they’ve done in a while.
The deck is stacked for a more conservative ruling because Justice Kagan will recuse as she worked on the law while in the Obama administration.
Continue reading SCOTUS will review Arizona’s Immigration Law
Should the military, and predator drones in particular, be used by US law enforcement?
Apparently, “predator drones” have been used to assist US based law enforcement officials for domestic law enforcement a number of times. We all knew that drones were being used to guard our borders from hoards of Canadians coming from the North, but lately North Dakota local and state police have had drone assistance in entirely domestic law enforcement.
Wildlife of Southern Africa
Wildlife of Southern Africa 
This is a pocket guide, it is small, has good photographs, is inexpensive, and accurate.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine: What is it, and should we fund it?
Skeptics love to hate CAM. And often, with good reason. Alternative medicines or medical treatments, as is often pointed out, become “mainstream” when the available science suggests that they work, so it is almost axiomatic that “alternative” means “unproven” and it is probably almost always true that the kinds of things that end up as “alternatives” come from sources with poor track records. For instance, one of the most common forms of alternative medicine used over the last several decades is Extra X where X is some substance we know the body uses, and that we know a deficiency of is bad. The idea is that if something is good at a certain level, loading it on by a factor of anywhere from two or three to several hundred over the usually consumed amount must be REALLY good. If a substance is used in the body for something we like … an immune system function, tissue repair, muscle energetics, etc. … then consuming vast quantities of it MUST be good. And, in some cases, this turns out to be true. There are times when consuming huge quantities of potassium is medically indicated, for instance. But this does not mean that a daily intake of seven or eight hundred bananas is a good idea. It turns out that loading huge quantities of vitamins and minerals has very little or no positive effect and it can be rather harmful in some cases. (Though there may be some exceptions.)
Continue reading Complementary and Alternative Medicine: What is it, and should we fund it?
Complementary and Alternative Medicine: What is it, and should we fund it?
Skeptics love to hate CAM. And often, with good reason. Alternative medicines or medical treatments, as is often pointed out, become “mainstream” when the available science suggests that they work, so it is almost axiomatic that “alternative” means “unproven” and it is probably almost always true that the kinds of things that end up as “alternatives” come from sources with poor track records. For instance, one of the most common forms of alternative medicine used over the last several decades is Extra X where X is some substance we know the body uses, and that we know a deficiency of is bad. The idea is that if something is good at a certain level, loading it on by a factor of anywhere from two or three to several hundred over the usually consumed amount must be REALLY good. If a substance is used in the body for something we like … an immune system function, tissue repair, muscle energetics, etc. … then consuming vast quantities of it MUST be good. And, in some cases, this turns out to be true. There are times when consuming huge quantities of potassium is medically indicated, for instance. But this does not mean that a daily intake of seven or eight hundred bananas is a good idea. It turns out that loading huge quantities of vitamins and minerals has very little or no positive effect and it can be rather harmful in some cases. (Though there may be some exceptions.)
The birth and history of Unix
…A door had slammed shut for Thompson and Ritchie in March of 1969, when their employer, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., withdrew from a collaborative project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and General Electric to create an interactive time-sharing system called Multics, which stood for “Multiplexed Information and Computing Service.” Time-sharing, a technique that lets multiple people use a single computer simultaneously, had been invented only a decade earlier. Multics was to combine time-sharing with other technological advances of the era, allowing users to phone a computer from remote terminals and then read e-mail, edit documents, run calculations, and so forth. It was to be a great leap forward from the way computers were mostly being used, with people tediously preparing and submitting batch jobs on punch cards to be run one by one….
Most expensive accidents in history video
Newt Gingrich: Palestinians Don’t Exist
There is a theory that the Palestinian identity is a fairly recent invention. Maybe. But if so, the Israeli identity is even more recently invented if the same standards apply. And, the American identity, by the same standards, while rather old today, was very young at the time of the War of 1812. Had Newt Gingrich been around then, would he have said that there was no America, only a British Colony that needed to be straightened out?
I’ve always wondered, ever since Gingrich’s “Contract On America” why he hated his own people so much. Now, I ask, why does he hate the Palestinians, and by extent ion, the Israelis, and for that matter, modern Russians who did not exist just a few decades ago? And himself? He does, after all, reinvent himself every four years or so.
Those who can’t teach run for office, I guess.
My source is here.