Well, post swim lactic acid and endorphin levels have ruined my chance to offer a intelligent essay. So … on to links.

1. A middle ground?  You mean like where people who want guns can get them and those that don’t don’t. Sounds like a middle ground to me.
2. So the left has been full frontal attack mode on Mr Walker. They’re making him a more and more attractive candidate from where I sit. I mean, for example, when you demonize a guy for “gosh he’s making it illegal on Wisconsin campuses to report rapes and assaults” … uhm, dig just a little bit and you find he’s doing that at the effing request of the University (not a hotbed conservative place, btw). And the whole, “he’s clearly unqualified” after giving reasonable responses to stupid/unreasonable questions. Uhm, no. That’s not unreasonable, but hey, the questions were.
3. On speaking truthfully, unless you are a politician. (for a prime example see our President), in which case (to borrow from Shania Twain) as we know politicians only lie when they’re breathing.
4. On the IRS and Obamacare.
5. On the IRS and their breathing thing, or lying thing .. whatever.
6. Tech for the plant floor.
7. Cool image.
8. Evil and consequences.
9. Zoom.
10. A school (down under) getting it all wrong.
11. Left wing boorish bullying, an example.
12. So, Obama vetoed Keystone, because he things rail is much cleaner safer way to transport oil. Teh stupid, it burns.
13. So, will the Rubicon be crossed in the next decade or two? Wonder if anyone is laying odds.

Links?

1. It is indeed winter. See? Nature can impress, eh?
2. The are spreading … and it is a religious movement. And not extremists, alas. The President’s strategy of denying their religious origins/basis is, to put it kindly, “a well intentioned but dishonest campaign”. Hmm. Well intentioned and dishonest, sounds like our President’s modus operandi for many many things.
3. Security and technology, or asking a high school kid to hack a car.
4. Hmm. Who’s job was it to stop the Balrog? Somebody had to, apparently, put their foot down and say, “You shall not pass!”
5. How post-modern scholarship gets it (being it = history) wrong.
6. I wonder how unintentionally ironic that headline is, after all “insane and unbalanced” is a pretty good self-portrait of that particular site. Well, insane might be too strong, unbalanced however is constant as the stars.
7. Nanotech in nature.
8. Some verse.
9. A book now in my inbox. Looks good.
10. Heh.
11. I hadn’t realized most outdoors hiking/camping/mountain climbing deaths are by the very experienced not the reverse. Makes sense though. Doesn’t really sound like anything anyone needs to do anything about though.
12. Regulation. So, is that a generalization principle? That regulation needs to establish both (a) the need for said regulation and to (b) establish that proposed regulation is feasible at a sufficiently low cost. Low. Cost. !!!! Grrr.

So, what have other people been talking about, eh?

1. Well, that’s true, … but actually just about everyone toward the top of the world-class game is effing hard core. The exception is the few who are not.
2. Hmm. (if true) Don’t worry that’s matched by the liberal intellectual and political elites who underestimate it.
3. There is a serious problem when people who give voice to the cry of “teh racism” don’t bother to deny the actual fact that there was cheating involved. Is your race supposed to give you license to cheat? Or what?
4. Now that’s very cool. On the not-very-cool and not completely unrelated news, my Christmas present for my daughter (glow in the dark plant seeds which were (supposed to be) genetically modified with jellyfish DNA to glow) … haven’t arrived.
5. Speaking of very cool. Bet you could shoot planes with that. Somewhere recently I read that many many inexpensive drones with explosives would make tanks and capital ships like the one carrying ordnance linked obsolete, forget both sides have drones. You’re going to have a bloody war (as it always) with defensive and offensive drones fighting. That is just another front. You’re still going to need ships to carry troops, ships to protect those ships, tanks to protect infantry, and as always … infantry. I don’t think that’s changed yet.
6. Speaking of unrestrained power in motion. This is interesting to watch.
7. What passes as liberal labor theology is just out of my site racism. Until the minimum productivity/wave fanatics stop talking about US wage laws and start pushing for global wage standards … it’s just racism of a different sort.
8. A very strange architectural wonder. My sweet wife has a fascination for very small houses (I think there is a movement, but don’t recall the phrase). I think the about 100 sq foot houses require a warm climate where you can do much of your living outdoors. Which is nice. It just isn’t where the thermometer reads single digits for much of the year (if at all).
9. So, Mr Obama opened a can of stupid and declared that the Crusades were a Christian war of aggression in which atrocities were committed. Here’s as close as an even handed look at that point of view as you’ll find. I mean, if “because it was war and all wars contain atrocities” and Christianity was involved (just as Islam is involved in ISIS, which he denies (keeping that can open)) therefore … uhm. Isn’t this supposed to be a “smart” President. Why such a simplistic shallow view of the Crusades? Hmm?
10. University budget cuts and how it is pointed out how an argument of this hardship is not made correctly.
11. If true … the President should be excoriated for many lifetimes.
12. Who is paying for ISIS/ISIL? (who is playing their video?) Answer should be nobody. Why isn’t it nobody?
13. An economic indicator of hard times ahead. So, optimists, ‘xplain why that’s not a problem.

So. Back to work tomorrow.

1. Carnegie-Mellon puts PV=nRT to the test.
2. No prejudice in the alteration of data.
3. Methane for vehicular fuel, exhibit a and exhibit b.
4. School hi-jinks.
5. Corruption in (a) government noted.
6. Someone on the right praises Ms Obama.
7. With the common practice of security free medical devices, do you think security will be a primary concern for its use. (Update: I hadn’t checked past the headline when I linked this. Apparently it’s a security update that makes this a possibility. I’d still be concerned however, I think if you were installing a hackable device on my heart).
8. Very cool. Wonder what it would be like to play with that on at the same time.
9. 200 million? That seems not very much, it’s likely they lost more than twice that from employees borrowing pencils and office supplies.
10. Unemployment and welfare.
11. Military aid for families takes an ironic turn.

Linky link.

1. Still seems like mental illness to me. The dysphoria <->BIID comparison seems to make that clear. It might be that the best available treatment is to live with it, but that doesn’t make it not a mental illness.
2. Not unrelated, Mark Daniels on addiction.
3. Toyz.
4. Nutt’n better to do I guess than pretend to know about that which you don’t.
5. “Digitally faked”. Now that’s just wrong (and embarrassing to own up to I’d think).
6. An animal with a backpack.
7. A use for old hard drives.
8. “Everywoman” … isn’t.
9. Extra-terrestrial taking a leak.

26 days to (Western) Lent. 31 Days for the Eastern Church (for which there are 10 days to the Triodion … this Sunday is Zacchaeus Sunday).

And nonsense.

1. Heh. A history lesson of sorts.
2. The sooner people figure out that human value is uncorrelated with salary, the better.
3. Conservative vs Liberal Supreme Courts (by a paint by numbers metric) measure with respect to freedom of religion.
4. Seems I grew up in a transition period. I think A grades are exceptional, but that as well, Failing means you were also exceptionally unexceptional.
5. Church and men.
6. Snipers and public perception.
7. Heh.
8. Security and Progressive. In a word, yikes.
9. If Picketty is right (capital trumps salary) then gosh, you’d think the President would be proposing policies that encourage investment in markets. Not the reverse, ah, our moron-in-chief.
10. Great muscular strength helps sometimes.

Links?

1. Ms Warren (is probably not running).
2. Macular degeneration and a possible cause.
3. Bake your own energy bars, with some help.
4. State solvency and some suggestions for the basket case states. (earlier post here)
5. Snail poisons.
6. Almost sounds like the “cafeteria Christianity” heresy is enshrined in American common law.
7. Damned lies and statistics.
8. So. We all try to empathize and understand those on the other side of the aisle (or we should). But I completely strike out here. I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would utter the phrase “That is irrelevant”. Because, no. It! Is! Not! I fail to understand any circumstance in which that would not be the only relevant factor.
9. Somebody else here mistakenly assumes the result of the Habermas/Ratzinger debate. Uhm, the argument isn’t as cut and dried as you pretend.
10. Bang for beginners. (if you have bucks)
11. Backwoods epicurean delight?
12. And .. I bought the book. Haven’t read it yet though.

So, what do we find?

1. Consider the hypothetical …
2. Innocence and loss.
3. Snow.
4. Yikes!
5. Where accuracy is king.
6. Your administration, restricting liberty every which way it can.
7. Of income and nation.
8. Camouflage.
9. It looks like a case of overhype. In which “Potentially leading to a solution” actually means potentially maybe leading to something, but … maybe not.
10. The response by Ferguson police examined.

Hmm, lactic acid abounds from tonight’s workouts.

1. The President pushes wants to persuade/pressure journalists to moderate their criticism of Islam.
2. His supporters in the press apparently fear for their safety.
3. But it would seem one should perhaps instead do something material to discourage this sort of thing and this.
4. Encourage this and this.
5. Technology and impressionism.
6. Biologists and their passions.
7. That is what I’d expect, although those in the wake of Ferguson expect the reverse.
8. Two notes on the European response, here and here.

So.

1. Socialism, the goal of the American left is not what it is cracked up to be. (HT)
2. Also on the left, an odd remark. Let’s see, Picketty recently wrote a book offering that investment trumps salary. The left loved it, but seems to fail to notice that SS is salary, not investment, based. Odd that.
3. Economics for our times.
4. An Advertising suggestion.
5. Apparently the right defends Charlie Hebdo, the left does less so. This is strange for a very left wing satirical mag, the actual publication it is unclear why anyone would buy a copy for any reason with attitudes like this.
6. And the American left, trying to distance themselves from freedom of expression, succeeds.
7. Legal PED? Tylenol?
8. On military service.
9. Here’s a stupid idea fronted by Mr Obama.
10. Here is a less stupid idea that Mr Obama might have said, but didn’t.
11. Hmm. So which study is more worthless this one or this one? Kinda seems a wash to me.

So.

1. Hitting the nail with the noetic hammer.
2. We would be guessing alcohol was involved.
3. Energy weapons, … although the writer misses that one suggestion is that energy weapons are used in space because of the small momentum transfer (low recoil).
4. But those duecedly odd and uncouth chemical weapons can join the “Interwebs of things”. Reprising, I guess, Richard Stallman’s notion that every program grows until it can send email to, every houshold appliance gains intelligence until it can serve a web page.
5. So, Wooly mammoth got the flu?
6. I realize my very smart dietitian once said “cheese isn’t food, it’s a condiment” and that advice is very good for my cholesterol levels, but … cheese!!!! (grommit).
7. Ouch evolved.
8. Now, just apply that indemnity from suit to medicine, nuclear power, and other desirable technologies and we’d have more useful progress in other fields.

Links with remarks?

1. My, uninformed guess, would be that this liberal disaproves. Alas, he’s only half right. “Hate crime” are apparently committed when you do a criminal act and the jury decides you have ideological motives. Seems to me that a crime against police may very well fit into this category. Alas, after all, turnabout is fair play, which in this case means if the ideology is one you approve it still makes it a “hate crime”. And the scare quotes are intentional, for the real way clear out of this mess is to remove all traces of “hate crime” from the books.
2. So. Are you the kind of person to laugh at the misfortune of someone young, inexperienced and clumsy? I certainly am.
3. The west coast liberal anti-vaccine crowd gets a wonderfully apt acronymic sendoff. (HT)
4. Look, when you read some statistical result you have don’t have to google for opposing studies. The first thing to do is the Fermi test, do a back of the envelope estimation of the numbers and figure out if you think it is a reasonable quantity. 1 in 30 homeless. No freaking way.
5. So with Ferguson, the kerfuffle (I don’t recall names) in New York and the movie Selma, much ado has been made about how nothing has changed and things are still horribly racist and wicked in America. Alas, this isn’t actually true. As this post points out, things in the 50s were very very bad, but guess what?  Things are very very very different now. Why does lying about the current state of affairs help? Everybody actually knows they are lying. How does it help to destroy your credibility on the outset.

And … Ant-man? Is it too late to change the name?

Hey. Weekend is done.

1. Meta-linking (linking of links), and I will say, the point on the “trauma” is spot on.
2. So, Christmas and Islam.
3. Teh noodity meets the Constitution.
4. One of those models looks like it’s still tracking the data, although it does it by predicting very little warming.
5. Powder go bang.
6. Obamacare and a twist.
7. Nicknames and history.
8. Danger! Danger! Danger!(Will Robinson?)
9. Snarf.
10. Click through, it’s worth your while.
11. Oddly enough actual leadership involves people following your lead. Doesn’t matter what you say, if you can’t get people to follow your lead … and in fact they resist and go the other way either your a bad leader (and didn’t realize they’d not follow) or you intended the result that was achieved (the not following).

Last full day in Jersey.

1. Of course, what he misses is that those millions would be captive Democrats.
2. PC from the CP. Succinct.
3. In that same vein.
4. A suit that shouldn’t win.
5. A question asked.
6. Origen would not seen a difficulty and that was in the 2nd century.
7. If anyone doubts modern liberals are clueless when it comes to Christian beliefs, doubt no longer.
8. Tech and art working together.
9. A very non-standard interpretation of Shostakovitch’s 7th.
10. Uhm, some Duh Science. Stress impacts the immune system negatively. That isn’t news.

Ok. Back to it, after all, I haven’t stopped reading and saving links, just reporting them. So, what’s in the backlog.

1. Here’s a x-mas suggestion for the old-calendar practitioners who haven’t gotten anything yet. (For those who don’t know, much of the Easter Orthodox are still on the Julian calendar 13 days later than the Gregorian until the end of the century. This is why the Orthodox Easter/Pascha is so wildly different from the West, as both are based on the full moon after the spring equinox, but … when that equinox is changes by 13 days).
2. Mr Degrasse’s 8 “books everyone should read“. Yikes.
3. I haven’t a clue whether Mr Schraub disapproves or approves but, geesh, anyone who holds Israel and ISIS as morally equivalent is ethically blind and should be regarded functionally as a psychopath.
4. Here is another equivalence, possibly slightly less morally suspect.
5. Yet again, repeat ad infintum, the argument against torture is not gotten via consequentialism.
6. I’m not up to speed on hate speech and the legal status of same, but as a layperson one would be lead to suspect that “hate speech” should involve in some way, you know, actual hate or even mild dislike.
7. Speaking of which, there are plenty of liberals who clearly hate conservatives. I wonder if their hate-speech microscope will be turned on themselves in this regard?
8. Union labor and why it sucks so often.
9. Very cool.
10. Graft and equalite, liberte, fraternite (and buckets of blood).
11. A gun (which is sort of on my wish-I-had-one list)