Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Let us say that you are a harsh critic of the status quo, firmly believing that the system must be fundamentally overhauled.  It may very well be that things will get far worse before your desired things happen.  However, it occurs to me that the status quo (in any society, in any place or [...]

By Thoreau
Hypothesis 1:  Anonymous was arrested earlier this week because the FBI was afraid that they’d slip into disguises at Comic-con and elude surveillance.  I mean, imagine you’re the surveillance guy and your orders are to “keep all cameras on the obese guy in a Jedi costume.”  Yeah, could you narrow it down a bit?
Hypothesis [...]

By Thoreau
So, I know next to nothing about property law, but this guy apparently figured out how to move into abandoned property via the common law doctrine of adverse possession, moved into an abandoned home in Texas, and paid a $16 court filing fee to make it all proper.  As far as I’m concerned, if [...]

By Thoreau
Herman Cain thinks that the first amendment shouldn’t apply to Muslims. While there’s nothing new about a Republican primary featuring a rich, bigoted candidate from the South, we’ve reached the fascinating point where that candidate happens to be the black guy.
In an ideal world, progress and equality would mean that all God’s children, of [...]

By Thoreau
The Justice Department is arguing that the federal government shouldn’t be held liable for the anthrax attacks because the containment lab that Ivins worked in was not stocked with the necessary equipment to produce weaponized powders of microscopic anthrax particles. Now, this in and of itself is not an admission that Ivins didn’t do [...]

By Thoreau
Nick Gillespie is a kindred spirit on the topic of redoing 2001.  Just check out the alt-text in the graphic in this post.  For that alone, he and the leather jacket will be valued elements of the do-over.
I’ve decided that I won’t spend as much time making colloidal silica in the do-over.  At some [...]

By Thoreau
I occasionally run across stories that are…surprising.  People write about things that they experience, things that are very surprising and shocking, and state that these things are constant and everyday.  And, not being in their situation, I can’t say that I know what their experience is really like.  I know that the decent thing [...]

By Thoreau
In the midst of some good advice, the Dean Dad says:
It’s college; it’s supposed to be hard.
That may have been true once upon a time, but we’re much more progressive nowadays.  You’re an administrator; didn’t you get the memo?
In all seriousness, I would add that much of the advice he’s offering translates directly to [...]

By Thoreau
My first thought is that this graph makes it pretty clear that the A and B and have been inflated.  However, any study can have all sorts of flaws, so I need to delve more deeply into the study before I draw a firm conclusion.  Interestingly, the D has become only slightly less common, [...]

By Thoreau
Hey, remember January of 2009?  Remember this?
Mr. Obama signed executive orders closing the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year; ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prisons; and requiring all interrogations to follow the noncoercive methods of the Army Field Manual.
Yeah, about that part in bold, well, turns out he was lying.
As [...]