Steven Den Beste writes a great post at Hotair.com about "government by wishful thinking". It's great reading. * * * I agree: fifteen years and $10 billion is not enough time or money to build a space elevator, particularly when the cable is still made of unobtanium. You'll spend years and billions of dollars just finding ways to make a strong enough cable; and after that you will still have...

Our official unemployment rate is higher than Germany's and is about as high as France's. The official unemployment rate of about 10%, I mean. Check it out. Via.

Declaring it an "emergency" that Massachusetts has only one senator, the Democrat governor of Mass. appointed a new senator. In 2004 the Democrat-run legislature of Massachusetts changed the state law controlling how a replacement senator was to be chosen should a seat become vacant between elections. Before 2004, a senator was simply appointed by the governor of the state. In 2004, however, John...

"...now you've got something like 12 per cent of the world's container ships doing nothing." ( Via. ) 12% of the world's capacity for moving goods via sea is sitting idle. Do you have any idea how much stuff twelve percent of shipping represents? There are close to 500 ships sitting in the water, doing nothing but rusting--and it's going to get worse before it gets better because new ships...

Top Commenters on q99 's LiveJournal (Self comments excluded from rankings) 1 rjmoya 193 2 krischan 75 3 thoughtspiral 67 4 vajrabot 55 5 eslington 32 6 mrteufel 28 7 thalaric 28 8 big_nutter 28 9 ...

So yesterday was errand day. Mom wanted to lay in a supply of bird seed, and I needed to go to Harbor Freight to pick up a few things. I had been up all night playing WoW, and to top it off had a panic attack while bloggerating, so I took chill pill (generic Xanax, 0.5 mg) and a four-hour nap. After I woke up, off we went. Note to self: make sure you are awake before driving. I wasn't fully awake...

Flipping through the Chicago Sun-Times today I saw an opinion piece--I think it was opinion, anyway; who can tell these days?--with the headline "Dems Need Strategy For Dealing with Birthers". The strategy of "Obama releases his long-form birth certificate" seems too simple for Democrats to grasp. That single masterstroke would completely vaporize any and all complaints made by the "birthers". ...

I have to admit being a bit cranky regarding the health care debate. It seems to me that many of the folks on the opposite side of the aisle have a lack of information or are simply disinterested in looking at the facts. Not so bdunbar . Unfortunately, I was a bit snippy with him yesterday, so my form of apology (his idea) is a donation to The Boys and Girls Clubs of America . I'm giving $20...

So, bdunbar provided a link to this fellow, who asks why is health care special ? In other words, why don't we treat health care like, say ordering a meal in a restaurant. Well, part of the answer is called rescission . This is where you pay your premiums, get sick, and then get dropped for an undiagnosed or unknown pre-existing condition. It's the equivalent of walking into a restaurant...

bdunbar has introduced me to The Terror of Tiny Town (if you're curious, you can find it on YouTube), a film released in 1937, and which claims to be (and I have no reason to doubt the claim) the only singing western with a cast made up entirely of midgets. The credits for the film list them as Jed Buell's midgets, and I can only find that Mr. Buell managed a troup of midgets, and that...