The House of Representatives voted down the proposed bailout today. This I approve! There was substantial opposition to the bill among just about everybody I know, and it’s good to see politicians obeying the will of the people every once in a while.
I can’t rule out the possibility that a bailout of some kind is [...]
My little brother recently wrote about an article which argues that western culture has gone too far in accepting and promoting diversity, and the acceptance of other cultures.
On the one hand, I am forced to agree with this guy on some points: not all worldviews have equal merit, and some are simply better than others. [...]
One of the worst things about living in a representative democracy is that when you become fed up with your representatives, it can take ages to actually change them out.
The citizens of the US have wanted for years to get out of Iraq. The citizens of Iraq want to know when we’ll leave. The war [...]
Prayer is not healthcare. If a parent chooses to deny their child medicine in favor of prayer, they should be convicted of negligent homicide. This isn’t a matter of freedom of religion: people should have leave to practice their religion as they see fit, except when such practice harms another person. This is a clear [...]
A doctor’s predictions about whether or not various victims of assassination could be saved with modern trauma medicine.
Casualty rates in american wars.
The importance of medicine in keeping people alive is hard to appreciate. It’s easy to say that the US life expectancy has more than doubled since the nation’s inception, but it becomes much more [...]
I saw an article decrying the flimsiness of modern gadgetry in general and the Motorola Razr in particular. My own two cents are this: regardless of the general case, the Razr is a piece of crap.
I was happy enough with mine when I first bought it, but within six weeks it was powering off erratically, [...]
I hate Perl.
Perl is an agglomeration of functionality combining the worst of incomprehensibly terse unix syntax with the worst of every other incomprehensibly terse syntax Larry Wall could get ahold of.
There are people who love Perl. Who enjoy producing write-only code. Who are proud that an incredibly high percentage of completely random files will be [...]
I wish people were more willing to converse on arbitrary topics. That they had unbounded curiosity, and were willing to discuss things they know little about in the hopes of being educated.
I want to be able to walk up to someone at a party and start talking about why investing in space technology is a [...]
Why do I hear people decrying the invasion of Iraq as a merciless opportunistic grab for oil in one breath, and then complain about the high price of gas in the next? Do they even hear themselves?
We have invaded Iraq with the stated intention of effecting a regime change. Nowhere except the accusations of liberals [...]
Let’s say that the US decides to stop suffering casualties in the Middle East, decides that maybe the Iraquis can stand up for themselves and rule themselves in a sensible manner.
Let’s say that by June 30, there were no more US soldiers there at all. That it was decided that the UN could step in [...]