競馬予想サイトうまフレになろうよ！を運営する競馬情報会社うまフレ事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイトプロ競馬ロジックを運営する競馬情報会社株式会社プロ競馬ロジック運営会社の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイトマイルスを運営する競馬情報会社マイルス運営事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイト競馬裏街道を運営する競馬情報会社競馬裏街道運営事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイト暁-あかつき-を運営する競馬情報会社暁運営事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイトアイリアル( AIREAL )を運営するアイリアル事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイト馬券茶屋を運営する馬券茶屋運営事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイトセンチュリオン( H.R.I CENTURION )を運営する競馬情報会社 H.R.I CENTURION運営事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイトディバイン( Divine )を運営する競馬情報会社ディバイン事務局の評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

競馬予想サイト的中サークルを運営する競馬情報会社的中サークルの評判がわかる口コミ評価を掲載。更に管理人がサイトに自らサイトに登録して検証した内容も公開中！

Viel Wirbel um ein wenig Darmwind. Christopher S. stand am Dienstag vor Gericht. Der offizielle Vorwurf: „Beleidigung und Ehrverletzung einer Beamtin durch Flatulenz“. Was war passiert?

bz-berlin.de

My dad died on June 12, 2002, and he was 61. Twenty years ago already. He was only nine years older than I am now and that’s weird to think about. In my professional life, I’ve probably spoken in front of crowds one hundred times or so. By far the most difficult time I ever […]

The post My Dad Passed Away 20 Years Ago Today appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

I am heading back to Las Vegas. It’s the first time since late January 2020 that I have visited and my first time without being a part of Affiliate Summit. From 2005 through 2020, I was in Las Vegas every year, sometimes multiple times. But this time it is different. I am going to have […]

The post Back to Las Vegas For The First Time Since 2020 appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

I dreaded graduating college. After a rough start where I got a 1.0 GPA and landed on academic probation, I straightened things out. It took five years and one summer session (a Spanish class in a room with no A/C in the hot Maryland summer), but I finished what I started on May 20, 1993. […]

The post I Graduated from College 30 Years Ago Today appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

My life changed in a big way twenty years ago today. It was the first Affiliate Summit that I organized with Missy Ward and it took place at Baruch College in New York City on November 3, 2003. Pulling the whole thing together happened pretty fast. We chatted on the phone about trying to start […]

The post The First Affiliate Summit Was 20 Years Ago Today appeared first on Shawn Collins' Blog.

In February Microsoft published an article to parents on how to interpret "leetspeak" so that parents could understand what their kids were saying. The article is off the wall funny. Microsoft seems so serious in its presentation of the facts. Below are some excerpts from the article. The full article can be found here.

1. While it has many nicknames, information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short. Leet (a vernacular form of "elite") is a specific type of computer slang where a user replaces regular letters with other keyboard characters to form words phonetically—creating the digital equivalent of Pig Latin with a twist of hieroglyphics.

2. Rules of grammar are rarely obeyed. Some leetspeekers will capitalize every letter except for vowels (LiKe THiS) and otherwise reject conventional English style and grammar, or drop vowels from words (such as converting very to "vry").

3. Non-alphanumeric characters may be combined to form letters. For example, using slashes to create "//" can substitute for the letter M, and two pipes combined with a hyphen to form "|-|" is often used in place of the letter H. Thus, the word ham could be written as "|-|4//."

4. The suffix "0rz" is often appended to words for emphasis or to make them plural. For example, "h4xx0rz," "sk1llz0rz," and "pwnz0rz," are plural or emphasized versions (or both) of hacks, skills, and owns.

•	"kewl": A common derivation of "cool."
•	"m4d sk1llz" or "mad skills": Refers to one's own talent. "m4d" itself is often used for emphasis.
•	"n00b," "noob," "newbie," or "newb": Combinations synonymous with new user. Some leetspeekers view "n00b" as an insult and "newbie" as an affectionate term for new users.
•	"w00t" or the smiley character o/: An acronym that usually means "We Own the Other Team," used to celebrate victory in a video game.
•	"roxx0rs" Used in place of "rocks," typically to describe something impressive.
•	"d00d": Replaces the greeting or addressing someone as a "dude."
•	"joo" and "u": Used instead of "you." This is also commonly written as "j00" or "_|00."
•	"ph": often replaces "f," as in "phear" for "fear" (as in "ph34r my l33t skillz") and vice versa, such as spelling "phonetic" as "f0||371(." Well, thank you Microsoft on that fine lesson in leetspeak. *cough* +MacMan

FTS (From the Shadows) recently released their newest episode, Box 4.0. Man, these guys keep getting better and better. Yoshi and Robert are on this one.

Topics Covered in Box 4.0
ATSAC - LA Traffic Control
Make virtual drives to run your PC games directly from a hard drive (Robert)
Remove scratches from iPods and PSP screens ;-) (Yoshi)
Use a traffic pre-emption device to force traffic lights to change from red to green

Box 4.0 is one of the best episodes of FTS. Can't wait for 5.0.
+MacMan

See the list of nominees for the 67th Grammy Awards, which will take place in February 2025.

The 2024's series of I'm a Celebrity include McFly's Danny Jones and social media influencer GK Barry.

A remix will blend the voices from all the different versions released over the years into one whole.

Grafische Dienstleistungen für Unternehmen. Full-Service aus einer Hand: ➡️ Konzeption, Gestaltung ➡️ Layout, Satz, Korrekturläufe ➡️ Format-Adaptionen ➡️ Short Copy, Text, Slogans, Claims ➡️ Bildrecherche, Bildbearbeitung ➡️ Infografik, Datenvisualisierung ➡️ Logo-Design, Corporate Design ➡️ Formulare ➡️ Reinzeichnung, Druckdatenerstellung ➡️ Druckproduktion, Versand Nutzen sie meine Erfahrung im Bereich Printmedien für Ihr Unternehmen. Projektarbeit oder regelmäßige Kooperation? Die Möglichkeiten sind… | Taunus Flyer – RheinMain und bundesweit

Windmill launched Monitor in August 1998 and mailed it to just 42 people. Very soon after they started offering their data acquisition software suite free to everyone signing up. At that time it cost non-subscribers Euro 500,00 to purchase the software - so not surprisingly a great many people took advantage and tried the software for free. In fact, around 70% of subscribers still download the software and they've given away over 17000 copies of Windmill! Dedicated to PC-based data acquisition and control, Monitor is sent by e-mail every month.

Over 25000 people are now receiving Monitor, the free newsletter for PC-based data acquisition and control.

More than 25,000 individuals are now receiving Monitor, the free e-mail newsletter for PC-based data acquisition and control published by Manchester-based Windmill Software Ltd. Engineers and anyone else interested in reading Monitor can subscribe for free at http://www.windmill.co.uk/newsletter.html

More than 25000 people are now receiving Monitor (ISSN 1472-0221), the free newsletter for PC-based measurement and control.

The 400-year-old Assyrian bazaar in Mardin, located in Türkiye's southeastern region known for its rich cultural heritage, has reopened following a comprehensive restoration as part of the "Street Health Project.

File photo of Catholicos Mar Awa III meeting Pope Francis in the Vatican in 2022 . ( Vatican Media)It was 11 November 1994, when Pope St. John Paul II and the then-Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, His Holiness Mar Dinkha IV, signed the Common Christological Declaration, which marked, as the text states, "a basic step on the w

Cross-posted from Gus Van Horn

No Bulwark against Tyranny, Part I

No sooner do I complain about Al Gore seeing fertile ground for global warming hysteria among evangelical Christians than I learn (via Glenn Reynolds) that the World Council of Churches is in favor of having the United Nations regulate new technology! Blogger Christine cites a report on nanotechnology by the WCC:

Firstly, society must engage in a wide debate about nanotechnology and its multiple economic, health and environmental implications. Secondly, some civil society organizations have called for a moratorium on nanotech research and new commercial products until such time as laboratory protocols and regulatory regimes are in place to protect workers and consumers, and until these materials are shown to be safe. Given the regulatory vacuum and inertia by leading nano nations to act, the call for a moratorium is justified and deserves public debate... [bold added]

Christine correctly notes that this call for "democratic control" at the world level by Christians is very naive, but she is herself very unclear over whether any government control of new technology would be proper and, if so, why it would be or what it would properly entail.

When the defenders of freedom offer only murky objections to the most outrageous proposals, they fail to address the underlying incorrect argument and end up coming down for what amounts to the very same thing, only incrementally. To wit, this blogger ends with the following:

This is not to say that we might not need some kind of international organization someday to deal with, say, nanoweapons. I expect we will. But the ETC proposal is not the way to go. The WCC might want to start looking at this whole topic in a broader way, rather than relying on one external organization so heavily.

No. It isn't that the WCC is looking at only one organization. It is that they seek to trample the freedom of scientists to innovate rather than simply address legal questions -- within the framework of protecting individual rights -- brought up by the new technology. You don't want or need a world authority to do that at all. And as for a world body dealing with nanoweapons, if one of those is desirable at all, a better model than the UN is obviously needed.

No Bulwark against Tyranny, Part II

And if defenders of science from government control are rendered ineffective without proper principles, so are those who would keep the government from robbing the public in the name of promoting science.

Although Martin Fridson makes a number of good points in his TCS Daily article against our government funding a "Manhattan Project" in the name of breaking our "addiction to oil", he never really questions the propriety of the government interfering with the allocation of resources (and time) towards research that our private sector would be better off doing itself. Here is his conclusion:

If something beyond the ordinary profit motive is required to bring forth the means for greater energy independence, the government should follow two principles:

• Encourage scientific exploration on multiple fronts, rather than put a thumb on the scale for any single technology.
• Spend the taxpayers' money on outputs, rather than inputs.

On what basis is one to determine that "something beyond the ordinary profit motive" (i.e., government force) is needed for "greater energy independence"? And more importantly, why should this "something" be used at all to take money away from American citizens to do what Fridson suddenly seems not-so-confident that private enterprise can do -- rather than being used to part hostile regimes from oil wealth and secure our supplies of cheap energy?

UN "Oversight" of Art

Cox and Forkum once again hit the nail on the head with this cartoon on some attempted UN oversight of art done at the behest of religious authorities.


And be sure to read Allen Forkum's partial fisking of the Kofi Annan's remarks at the UN's asinine "Unlearning Intolerance" seminar.

Oh yeah. Their upcoming book is nearly out the door!

A Threat against Reliant Stadium?

This article in the Houston Chronicle is the first I've heard of the home stadium of the abysmal Houston Texans specifically appearing in the crosshairs of terrorists. With the Texans Foundering at 1-4, perhaps their management could claim to be doing its best to keep fans safely at home! They need to put a positive spin on something this season.

Wrong Actress, (and now,) Wrong Writer

On October 18, Michelle Malkin said, "I really can't believe this soft-headed starlet is going to play Dagny Taggart. Blecch."

And on that very day, Mike informed us that the people behind the (latest overhyped) effort to make Atlas Shrugged into a movie have switched writers. "[T]hey've changed the writer after ... pimping [James V.] Hart for the last year."

The new writer has Pearl Harbor among his "credits".

My eyepatch joke looks more and more like a prediction every day.

300 Million!

"Or 957 trillion, if you work for Lancet ...", as Tim Blair put it in this very nice photo-blog in commemoration of America's latest milestone.

Since so few US media outlets were inclined to celebrate this non-grim milestone, the job was outsourced to a little Australian blog. Following is a small sample of Americans, from which you may reasonably extrapolate a figure of 300 million.

Thank you, Mr. Blair! (HT: Isaac Schrodinger)

William "Effin'" Buckley Rides (in Plumber Pants) Again!

Diana Hsieh catches a longstanding enemy of Ayn Rand being openly dishonest again. Here's the quote:

It is widely noted that for all that [North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Il] thinks of himself as a leader with a divine afflatus to bring to his people and the world the fruits of Juche (the North Korean variant of Leninism, with a little Ayn Rand mixed in), he is himself a man of total self-indulgence, devoted to porn, Scotch, and Daffy Duck cartoons.

Often, at times like this, I get a kick out of an old fisking I wrote, of a hack job by one of Buckley's -- erm -- underlings, Andrew Stuttaford, to "commemorate" the 100th anniversay of Ayn Rand's birth. His whole brilliant conclusion was basically that Ayn Rand was "strange".

"Of course he does," is all Stuttaford can think to say about the fact that Rand got a lift from Cecil B. DeMille. This isn't a damned cliche! It really happened, and I think it's pretty neat that it did. Stuttaford is then confronted by the fact, obviously unpleasant to him, that a small group of people regularly met with Ayn Rand after she became famous, to discuss philosophy.

Frat boy makes the following scintillating observations: (1) Rand was (twitter) "the sage of selfishness." (2) Those people sure were creepy. Call me crazy, but here's what I find creepy: people who meet regularly "at the feet" of some cleric to take whatever he says on faith, and then practice ritual cannibalism. Oh! But I'm wrong because more people do the latter. [with minor editing]

Enjoy!

A Bleg

Daniel Rigby is curious about Typepad. Drop by and give him the straight dope if you are so inclined.

NOFORN

CONFIDENTIAL-ly, Bubblehead may think he has cornered the market on increased gummint blog traffic through his prostitution of such terms as "top secret" and "for official use only", but he forgot a few key words. I leave further such similar abuse to my more, um, enterprising compadres, but in the meantime, that smacking sound is me at the public trough!

-- CAV

Cross-posted from Gus Van Horn

Today, I find myself getting back into the blogging groove after an insanely busy last couple of days. Lots of good stuff here, and I just barely skimmed through the feeds. Here are today's finds in the order I encounter them on my browser tabs....

Neil Davenport of Spiked describes what sounds like a real travesty of a televised bull session. "[BBC Channel 4 newsreader Jon] Snow summed up the mealy-mouthed character of the programme by declaring that, 'Perhaps free speech is a high price to pay for a multicultural society'."

Such affairs not only fail to address the relevant issues rigorously, they provide false "evidence" that public debate is a waste of time and therefore not really worth defending anyway.


Yesterday, I posted on "Physicians as 'Little Dictators'". Andrew Dalton of Witch Doctor Repellent provided another example (physicians being conscripted as informants) of how government management of medicine opens up whole new frontiers to the abuse of government power. And he caused me to remember another example of further potential abuse down the road.


Little Green Footballs relays the following example of the moral poverty that goes hand-in-hand with Islam's total abdication of reason in favor of a mountain of holy decrees. This comes from a sermon about some gang rapes that occurred in Sydney, Australia.

In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?"

"The uncovered meat is the problem."

The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men. [bold added]

So women are "meat" and men are "cats". I guess if I had such a low opinion of myself, I might be susceptible to Islam, too.

Remember this the next time you hear a Moslem whine about being "offended" by intellectual criticism of his religion. And the next time you hear some useful idiot insinuate that Islamic headdress for women is somehow "liberating" to them.

The carte blanche granted to Islamic "men" to rape women, however, is more than balanced by some rather curious restrictions.


According to the Czechs, Egyptian airline passengers have been probing in-flight security measures. Quoth a Norwegian paper, "The crew on board discovered the three Egyptians trying to open the door into the cockpit. When the stewards intervened they immediately gave up their attempts and gave the excuse that they were looking for a staff member because they wanted to buy chewing gum."

Going to the cockpit to buy gum? Horse Mohammed!


The Gaijin Biker relays news that sanctions against North Korea are being felt already. (Or that North Korea is making sure reports to that effect are getting out to the West, anyway.)

Given our record with the "Palestinians", perhaps I stand to make a quick buck by laying bets on when sanctions against North Korea will end -- without causing any substantive change in its capacity to build nuclear warheads, of course.

Kim Jong "Mentally" Il is not exactly the brightest bulb (and his country shows it), but he knows that too many of his colleagues are even dimmer.


Cookie posts a very funny sea story over at Ultraquiet No More.

Now...it don't take genius to figure out just who had to clean up all the shit. The coffee urn...a total loss...oh it was fixed and cleaned...but ain't nobody would ever drink outta it after that...includin me....the boat had t'get a new one.

Hey! I can't help it if so many of the best ones are about blowing sanitary tanks!


Is it really worth your while to check on a blog in a language you don't understand? It certainly is if you're an American named Gus Van Horn (whose "second language" is classical Latin) and the blogger in question is Carl Svanberg.

Svanberg links to quite a gem from USA Today. Heather MacDonald:

What are we supposed to learn when a candidate talks about his faith: That he is a good person? The rich history of religious bounders and charlatans should give the lie to that hope. Nor has a sincere belief in God prevented behavior we now view as morally repugnant. There were few more religious Americans than antebellum slaveholders and their political representatives; their claim to a divine mandate for slavery was based in unimpeachable Scriptural authority.

Or perhaps a politician's discussion of his prayer habits should reassure the public he'll make the right decisions in office. But what if opposing candidates declare themselves supplicants of the divine will -- how will a voter decide who is most likely to receive divine guidance?

Anyone who has ever sneered in derision when listening to some piece of human refuse babbling about "finding Jesus" during an interview from behind bars would do well to remember that emotion -- and why he felt it -- the next time he hears the same sentiment uttered by a politician.

Both want to use the moral blank check that people grant to religion as a means of purchasing positions of power for themselves.


And then there were [some number less than three].

Via Randex, it now seems that the producer of the Atlas Shrugged movie(s) are no longer going to make a trilogy.

I know that movies and books are different genres, and I never expected the movie(s) to have everything that is in the book. Nevertheless, I have serious doubts that anything less than a trilogy can be adequately faithful to the book.


Andrew Dalton remarks on the government's curious difficulty in grasping the purpose of public bathroom segregation by sex.


Andy has jury duty.

That reminds me. If I suddenly disappear for months after some time next week, it won't be because a competent defense attorney rejected me on sight during the selection process.

And look in the papers for either a harsh verdict or a hung jury in a high profile case.

That also reminds me that I need to make up my mind on whether jury nullification is a valid concept.


Daniel Rigby says "Screw Ageism". I would add that for demonstrably dangerous activities, such as driving vehicles when one is incapable of operating them safely, it is not an unwarranted government intrusion to intervene.


The man with the apt nom de plume of Toiler points to a story I intend to read. "Notice that artist Chris Miles is not just engaged in a sensuous dance with his on-again, off-again muse. It's also a lot of damn hard work and learned skill."

Labor of love. Not labor of lust. Not labor of amorousness. Not labor of commitmentphobia. Not labor of convenience.

Love. And love, like all worthwhile things, is often difficult.


As usual, Cox and Forkum nail it. Title: "Give War a Chance". Caption: "meanwhile, in Fallujah..."

Soldier One: We've given Iraqis food, money, clean water, schools, hospitals, freedom ... even our very lives.... What did we miss?

Soldier Two: Defeating them.

And as has been usual lately, Blogger problems are preventing me from uploading the image.


Hannes Hacker recently emailed me a lnk to this very funny Onion article the other day: "Mars Rover Beginning to Hate Mars".

That was right up there with "Coke-Sponsored Rover Finds Evidence of Dasani on Mars"!

-- CAV

Cross-posted from Gus Van Horn

Yes. Even I have my limits!

Add numerous extra obligations to a massive dose of election fatigue and you get a somewhat abbreviated weekly roundup! I very nearly decided not to post it at all this morning, but realized that what I have found might, put together, bring some welcome relief from the upcoming election.

There is nothing here about the election or John "effin'" Kerry past this point.

The Undercurrent has posted a preview (in the form of a few articles) of its upcoming November issue.


Through the Harry Binswanger List, I was reminded of an article I'd run across a few days ago about the popular myth -- now being used to sell the idea of government favors for American ethanol producers -- that Brazil's independence from foreign oil is due to its cultivation of a domestic fuel ethanol industry.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva didn't celebrate the oil independence milestone out in an Amazon sugar field.

No, he smashed a champagne bottle on the spaceship-like deck of Brazil's vast P-50 oil rig in the Albacora Leste field in the deep blue Atlantic. Why? Brazil's oil independence had virtually nothing to do with its ethanol development. It came from drilling oil.

I recall that after the fall of communism, ecological disasters -- real ones -- were turning up all over the old Soviet Bloc for awhile. And then Kyoto, I believe, exempted developing countries from its emissions obligations. And now we see that Brazil, that worker's paradise always held up to the United States as some kind of great "progressive" example, has been (shudder) drilling for oil! No one bats an eye or even says anything about it until seven months later!

That activity ( drilling ... Shhh!) has been all but banned in the United States! If you need a reason to doubt the sincerity of the left when it claims that its efforts to throttle American economic might are motivated by a desire for such things as "clean air", add this to the pile. And then try looking at the pile!


Dave Harriman's well-regarded "Physics by Induction" course is being made available to the public.

[Harriman's] unique approach is to teach physics historically, thereby teaching it inductively. From the early Greeks to Copernicus to Newton, this course presents the essential principles of physics in logical sequence, placing each in the context of the earlier discoveries that made it possible and explaining how each was discovered by reasoning from observations.

Cox and Forkum have just announced the availabilty of their latest book, Black and White World III!


I seem to have found a new whipping boy in Arnold Kling, a "former" member of the far left who has "converted" to Libertarianism and frequently posts articles to TCS Daily.

In his latest affront to the cause of individual rights, he discusses which form of government intervention would be best to combat the unsubstantiated threat of anthropogenic global warming. Quick! What's missing from the two excerpted paragraphs?

For this essay, I want to take as given the report's assessment of the cost of global warming. Also, I will take as given that the strategy of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, which I call the de-industrialization strategy, would cost one percent of global GDP each year. I want to suggest exploring an alternative strategy for fighting global warming, which I call the climate engineering strategy.

...

I also will concede that I am not entirely comfortable putting the world's climate in the hands of scientists who attempt to engage in climate engineering. However, that discomfort is nothing compared with my fear of putting our future in the hands of international bureaucrats who are eager to embrace de-industrialization and to engineer a reduction of world GDP of $400 billion a year.

Our Libertarian fails to mention that he also "takes as given" that we should simply forfeit our freedom and property to busybodies -- who would tax us at best and forbid us to enjoy industrial society at worst -- all because of an overhyped, undersubstantiated climate phenomenon! Even if industrialization did cause global warming, such solutions are wrong because they threaten individual rights.

Mr. Kling, your "discomfort" is nothing compared to mine when I consider that you, who so quickly forget the importance of freedom, are regarded as one of its defenders!

Why not talk instead about freeing ourselves entirely from governments that will take any excuse they can get to push us around?


Back in World War II, we had a foe in Japan whose soldiers and citizens were so fanatical that they held military glory as a higher value than their own lives. Our leaders wisely decided to bring the war to them, ultimately showing them through the power of atomic weaponry what this really meant. They learned and we won.

Today, we have a foe in Islamic totalitarianism whose soldiers are so fanatical that they didn't even wait for things to get desperate before they became suicide bombers. Our leaders have done little to bring the war home to them. In fact, our enemy is far closer to bringing home to us the lesson of complaisence than we are to showing them what war really means.

Iran, the cradle of this movement, is being permitted to lie undisturbed as it feverishly develops the cpability to build nuclear weapons. There is, nevertheless, a significant portion of its citizenry who do not necessarily oppose America. So why haven't they overthrown the mullahs? Because the mullahs are insulating them from the full consequences of accepting their rule:

I live in a country where alcohol is officially banned, but where the art of homemade spirits has reached new heights. Sharing my astonishment about the cocktail book with some friends with better connections to the Islamist regime, they explained the government has a silent pact with the educated and affluent in Iran's big cities, who render politics unto Caesar, provided that Caesar keeps his nose out of their liquor cabinets.

In other words, the well-to-do Iranian drinks and reads and watches what he wishes. He does as he pleases behind the walls of his private mansions and villas. In return for his private comforts, the affluent Iranian is happy to sacrifice freedom of speech, most of his civil rights, and his freedom of association. The upper-middle class has been bought off by this pact, which makes a virtue of hypocrisy.

The subtitle of the article sums it up best: "How can you have a revolution when everyone is watching TV?"

Until we give them a reason to get up out of their couches and work for regime change, they probably won't.



"Funny that out of all of my brother's wristbands, this one is first to break." -- Kyle Rosenburg

(via This is Broken)

-- CAV

Have you decided to vote for a Republican candidate? Think again... Could we find a "freeranger" candidate in the near future? [Editor's note: Check out Comedy Central InDecider.]

Boo


Related: My post, GOP PREMORTEM and Burgess Laughlin's column, VOTER'S DILEMMA?

Recommended reading: Ominous Parallels by Dr. Leonard Peikoff.

Cross-posted from Gus Van Horn

It is two days after an election which saw the Republicans lose their "permanent majority" rather decisively. Why did this happen? I have argued that the party earned its defeat by attempting to implement a religious agenda domestically while the public was "preoccupied" with the threat of Islamofascist terrorism.

At the same time, I never became comfortable enough with the idea, advocated by most prominent Objectivists, of voting for the Democrats to actually do so. Either they were wrong on this point or I have more thinking to do on the subject. Be that as it may, two days is short enough that it is still worth looking at some of the pre-election debate and long enough that some of the fallout from Election Day is becoming apparent.

I missed this Allen Forkum blog on the election until this morning.

Will Bush adopt even a few of these measure? Perhaps, but the prospects are worse than dim. Certainly the leftist-influenced Democrats will not. I'm hoping that it's still possible to influence Republicans and other Americans to begin fighting to win. However, voting for Democrats in order to hasten a change for better political alternatives could be the better strategy. I'm not yet convinced we've reached that point.

This is pretty close to where I was in my explicit thinking Tuesday. My gut feel was indifference to the results. My first stab at making sense of this conflict is that we were fast approaching the point at which the Republicans needed to be dislodged if we weren't there already. This is something I will be sorting out perhaps for some time.


A huge misgiving I have about the left is the increasing willingness it has shown in the past decade to forcibly restrict freedom of speech. For example, Michelle Malkin reports that David Horowitz was attacked just yesterday at Ball State, on his way to a speaking engagement.


Another misgiving I had about voting for Democrats was that their victory would cause the Republicans to "get the wrong message" and end up becoming more like the Democrats rather than understanding that it was their failure to live up to their own promises that got them into trouble. You doubtless already have heard that Bush has already gotten rid of Donald Rumsfeld in favor of Robert Gates, who believes we can negotiate with Iran. On top of that, Bush seems to have already conceded that there should be a minimum wage hike.

At first glance, it might seem that my fears are being realized. In fact, though, we are just seeing a man who has no fundamental objections to these things moving faster to his actual positions -- or at least being pushed to where he would go anyway. After all, we were already negotiating with Iran before the elections. Bush's accelerated buckling at the knees will hasten substantive debate or consequences. In that respect, this is a good thing. (I abstained in Bush vs Gore because I saw environmentalism as the major issue in that election. I couldn't vote for Gore, but I didn't see Bush stopping the environmentalists, either.)

And that's (mostly) all I'm going to discuss fallout-wise. I know. The Dhimmocrats are gleefully drawing up lists of Bush Administration officials to impeach or try for war crimes, and coming up with all sorts of idiotic legislation. but we knew they'd do that all along. (Well, okay, I didn't think they'd be screaming Gore/Kucinich in '08 so soon, but then I don't spend "enough" time at DailyKos!)

What will be interesting to see is how far gone the Republican Party really is. How many more of them need spine transplants, are essentially Dhimmocrats already, or are hell-bent on theocracy? The only substantive political debate going on in America is on the right. Do the better parts of the right really have a home? If so, will they evict their deadbeat roommates? This is what we'll learn.


Myrhaf delivers the quote of the day after he observes Arlen Specter winning reelection only to all but switch parties: "With politicians like Specter, the question is not, 'Is America on a highway to hell?' The question is, 'How have we survived this long?'"


Myrhaf also comments on Rush "Water Boy" Limbaugh's new-found sense of "liberation":

Rush Limbaugh tells us:

I feel liberated, and I'm going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried.

You know what, Rush? It would have been better for America (and for your self-esteem) if you had not carried the Republicans' water when they did not deserve it. But instead of doing what was best for America, you did what was best for Republican Party power. There is a difference.

My initial reaction to hearing about this was about the same.

As a scientist, I have a saying that bubbles up to mind when I hear someone defending a view I think is rubbish: "Real scientists don't have pet theories." In the realm of politics, it would go something like this: "Real patriots don't 'carry water'."


Trey Givens reacts to the predictably mealy-mouthed assessments of our election results we're getting from abroad.

First of all, when anyone tells me what a virtue humility is, I have a nearly irrestistable urge to punch them in the face. My immediate thought is, "How dare you talk to me about humility?" Not because I'm so humble, I'm not, but because I don't see any reason to be more humble than I am.

Second of all, Americans have no business voting for the benefit of everyone else in the world. Whatever decisions are made in elections need to be on the grounds that it is what is best for America, so the world's opinion of our leaders be damned.

Finally, I think the fact that they're following our elections closely proves the point that America is awesome and we didn't get to where we are by being concerned about other people's feelings. [bold added]

If Allen Forkum is where I was before the election, Trey Givens is, at least in this respect, where I am now.


Apropos of nothing....

I just got a phone call -- despite being on the national "do not call" list -- with a recorded message informing me that "This call is impor--".

Click!

Important to whom?

God, I hate telephones sometimes.


Paul Hsieh writes a very good piece on why it is so crucial to root out attempts to transform America into a theocracy.

Although this may seem improbable now, those ideas may seem much more plausible to a country that has been softened up by a barrage of conservative Christian academics and intellectuals who have been teaching that America is a Christian country, that American virtue depends on its religiosity, that the very survival of America depends on the inclusion of religious values in the government, that the "wall of separation" between church and state imposed by the secular Left has been a major source of our problems, and that the attacks we have suffered are the price we are paying for ignoring these "truths". This misintegrated worldview could gain significant traction amongst a large segment of Americans who aren't otherwise armed with a opposing strong rational explicit philosophy.

Read it all. There are some especially alarming examples of bleeding edge -- This phrase seems particularly appropriate here! -- conservative thought on the matter of separating church and state at the beginning of the piece.


A Bush vs Jesus gag campaign ad has been making the rounds lately. Andrew Dalton says correctly, "Right attack, right target, wrong message."

Amen.


File this away for future investigation: Martin Lindeskog has found a "guest blogging network" that purports to give feedback on which posts attract the most readers.

I am unsure of the utility of this for my particular niche, but it is still an interesting idea.


Grant Jones lays down the law on comments. I'm with him there, although I have another category of comments I will not post: The confusing. It doesn't happen that often, but once in a while, I will get a comment that just doesn't make any sense to me. I moderate comments, so those just don't get posted.

Hey! At least he didn't say, "I could just get drunk one night and start deleting comments at random."


Bo has found more submariner types who blog and wonders the same thing I do: Whatever happened to Periscope Jack?

That guy was, I am prety sure, the only one I found before Bo or Bubblehead! And it was a very well-done blog, too.


Myron asks, "How many of 'you' are there?" There are 49 of "him" in America. I have a rare first name and a common last name. There are 623 of "me" computed in that way. If I use my middle name (as I do on a daily basis, being named for my father), there are 1,564 of me.

But there is only one Gus Van Horn!

-- CAV

Spartan Net is excited to announce receiving national recognition for the first 10 Gigabit deployment in student housing! This new technology was deployed at Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors Landmark on Grand River in partnership with Nokia and LightSpeed Technologies, Inc.

Once again Network Control is recognized as a key telecom expense management provider by Analyst firm Gartner in their 2020 Market Guide for Telecom Expense Management Services.

Company achieves 20% growth with its most diverse new customer additions to date. The positive results are due to complex work and business climate, the need for proactive management of communication costs.

Telecom Expense Management company Network Control has been selected for the latest Gartner Market Guide for Telecom Expense Management Services.

Munich, Quincy/MA, July 23, 2024 – Consumers who use high-end mobile phones trust that their smartphones have been manufactured fairly from an environmental, social, and economic point of view. However, for the majority of smartphones this is not the case. Whistleblowers have revealed that Largan, by far the largest manufacturer of camera lenses for smartphones, manufactures its products using illegal practices.

Over the past 70 years Menno Place in Abbotsford, BC has provided trusted care for more than 27,000 seniors. Now they look forward to redeveloping the campus to meet the needs of the next 70 years.

The Virchow Prize 2024 will be bestowed upon Lucy Gilson and Johan Rockström for their holistic and systems-based approach to safeguarding human and planetary health.

Acousia Therapeutics GmbH, a Tübingen-based clinical stage biotech company focused on the enhancement and preservation of natural hearing, will be presenting the ACOU085 Phase 2 PROHEAR clinical study at the HansonWade 4th Inner Ear Disorders Therapeutics Summit in Boston (MA) from August 20–22, and at the 36th World Congress of Audiology from September 19–22, 2024.

The world's leading global health conference begins on October 13.

Revelwood Named 2022 Americas Solution Provider of the Year and 2022 Americas Best New Partner by BlackLine.

Revelwood, experts in providing technology solutions for the Office of Finance, has earned the Workday Adaptive Planning Partner of the Year Award – Americas 2024. This is the latest of several awards Revelwood has earned from Workday in just a few short years. The other awards are the FY23 Solution Provider of the Year – North America, the FY22 Solution Provider of the Year Award for Most Growth – Americas, and the 2019 Adaptive Insights Partner Rising Star of the Year award.

Double Fun Watersports in Destin, FL, offering double-decker pontoon boat rentals, was the Silver Winner in the "2017 Finest on the Emerald Coast" Reader's Choice Award in the Recreational Rentals category. The contest was sponsored by Northwest Florida Daily News.

Pacific Holidays is offering a pre and post 2018 Winter Olympic Games package, for individuals to enjoy eight days in Pyeongchang from $3,799 per person.

Rayana Spa at Hyatt Capital Gate Abu Dhabi has received an award at the 2017 World Luxury Spa Awards ceremony which took place in Hanoi on July 22, 2017.

Thousands of people celebrated on Monday Nov. 11th the opening of the nationwide campaign "Germany-does-not-fly" and gave a clear statement not to use any domestic flights between Feb. 10th until Feb. 16th 2020.

2020 is the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's birth. Beethoven was raised in Bonn and a master at writing unique compositions. In the spirit of that, Deutsche Telekom plans to create a huge mosaic of Beethoven comprising many small photographs.

Bob Dylan's 80th birthday is next Monday. On Friday, "Music Connection" magazine will feature Harvey Kubernik's interviews with musicians, producers, filmmakers, photographers and fans.

An update on author and music journalist Harvey Kubernik's recent activities. And there's even more on Kubernik's Korner!