Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
A friend of mine just offered two scenarios that might result from repealing DADT:
1)  The military reacts with dignity and professionalism and treats gay and lesbian soldiers with respect.
2)  The military is paralyzed and unable to invade and occupy countries that did nothing to hurt us.
I’m kind of hoping for scenario 2, but 1 [...]

By Thoreau
Though I am of course a heartless single-issue civil liberties extremist who eats puppies for breakfast in a manor built by Bangladeshi toddlers, at Christmas time it is traditional for this evil libertarian to perform an act of benevolence.  Last year I promoted the website of a friend selling electronics and other gifts.  This [...]

By Thoreau
This is what we were fighting against when we campaigned and voted and donated for Prop. 19.  Twelve thousand people killed as an utterly predictable consequence of a grossly failed social experiment.  Twelve thousand people who could be alive today if the drug war ended, if the gangsters didn’t have as much money and [...]

By Thoreau
Rep. Peter King, the guy who wants WikiLeaks designated a terrorist organization, was a long-time supporter of the Irish Republican Army.  I know it’s been mentioned before, but the article I’m linking has a nice round-up of the case, so I figured it was worth blogging.

By Thoreau
I occasionally see articles or presentations by people who stress the importance of time-management, personal planning, writing every day, etc.  I agree that carefully prioritizing what you do, meeting deadlines, and attending to one’s professional writing on a regular basis are all very, very important things.  I am good at deadlines, mediocre about priorities, [...]

By Thoreau
Back when a guy named Jim Henley used to blog here, he noted that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t seem to have produced many children of US and Afghan/Iraqi parents.  Part of me suspects that there are indeed some such children, and they simply aren’t getting much notice.  You can’t send hundreds [...]

By Thoreau
Iraqi emo teen forced to wear black headscarf.

By Thoreau
While there are substantial differences between what Wikileaks does and what a newspaper does (e.g. Wikileaks does not provide much summary or commentary on the information that it uncovers), at its core Wikileaks is receiving information from sources and disseminating it to the public so that the public might be informed about the actions [...]

By Thoreau
A colleague of mine noted that he was so impressed to learn that the Presidents, Chancellors, and Deans of certain prestigious research institutions actually teach classes and do publishable research, and he lamented that ours don’t.  While I have little use for people who have not seen the inside of a classroom or lab [...]

By Thoreau
By various accounts, the number of people who had access to the latest Wikileaks documents was in the 6 to 7 digit range.  Now, I am aware that these people had all undergone background investigations.  However, I invite you to consider the sorts of people who get security clearances:
*Torturers
*Spokesmen who lie to the public [...]