A blog about negative liberty, because it's nobody's business if nobody gets hurt.
The other day, I came across a photo of an Egyptian pyramid. The camera had been pointed in the general direction of the sun, and what appeared to be a beam of purple light streamed across the top of the monument toward the viewer. Almost everyone recognizes this phenomenon as lens flare (an artifact of …
Continue reading “Divine delusions (or, why I prefer observable reality)”
I’ve been watching the indignation build over the alleged treatment of workers at Apple’s biggest supplier, the unfathomably huge Chinese Foxconn plant, where iPhones and iPads are assembled. The New York Times published two big stories about Foxconn this week (1, 2), setting off the discussion. Today, on an Internet forum for professional photographers that …
Continue reading “The iPhone owner’s guide to liberal hypocrisy”
Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX) is the author of the awful SOPA copyright bill that is about to go down in defeat. Rep. Smith clearly cares a lot about creators’ copyrights, but not as much as he cares about his desire to save a few bucks by…ripping off a photographer. Turns out that Rep. Smith …
Continue reading “SOPA author is caught stealing someone else’s photo”
Here’s one cool thing about being a politician: You can make up shit about little people, like accusing them of being cokeheads even if the white powder they were caught with was in fact aspirin. So if you hold elected office, go ahead and commit slander. No problem. If the victim of your lie sues, …
Another pot raid [via Balko]. No deaths this time, not even a gun battle, just seventeen shattered windows, a battered-down front door, plus half-burned curtains and char marks on the walls from the flash grenades the officers threw. The haul? Some water pipes and, allegedly, 20 grams of marijuana. Isn’t it interesting that when cops …
Noted without comment: The Indiana State Police told a student working at the Statehouse on Tuesday that she could not bring a full can of Dr Pepper, packed in a lunch bag, into the building — despite the fact that Dr Pepper is sold in cans in a number of Statehouse vending machines. The Dr Pepper, …
Got a plugged-up drain? If you live in Illinois and are thinking of buying Drano or Liquid-Plumr, better bring an ID. You’ll be asked to show it and sign for your purchase. That’s mostly because some evil asswipe threw acid in a woman’s face in Chicago three years ago. Hence the new measure. The legislators, …
Here‘s how the loophole works (kudos to the normally catatonic Bangor Daily News): If [fictional] legislator Mary Smith is an accountant and performs accounting services for the state for which she is paid more than $1,000, she would have to disclose this under the requirement. But if she were the president of Accounting Associates, Inc. …
Continue reading “Maine: Come for the lobster. Stay for the corruption.”
‘Limited government’ is just an empty buzzword for these people. They believe that government is too powerful, too big, and too fallible — right up to the moment they reach the Oval Office and get to play with the launch buttons. From today’s New York Times: Even as they advocate for limited government, many of …
Continue reading “GOP candidates’ big swinging dicks trump their small-government “ideals””
State legislatures have had a busy year. In 2011, all 50 states and territories met in regular session and enacted close to 40,000 new laws on issues across the board. Forty. Thousand. Laws. In one year. One that caught my eye: Washington state approved special license plates expressing appreciation for music teachers. Not gym teachers, …
Deborah Newell Tornello says of the TSA, one would not expect an organization whose job it is to “keep us safe” to be hiring child porn enthusiasts, child molesters, and child rapists. No, one would not. But in fact, the TSA does it all the time. Tornello cites just the 2011 cases (correction — just …
Continue reading “That’s some fine personnel screening there, TSA”
I said something critical of the crop of current GOP contenders yesterday (OK, I called them crooks, panderers, and liars), and someone immediately commented that I sounded like an “Obama fan.” Such has long been the knee-jerk reflex of most Americans: Someone who says unkind things about a Republican must be a hardcore liberal, and …
Continue reading “Bastion of Liberal Media Elites embraces Ron Paul”