I like Ross Douthat. In this day of screaming absolutes he always has a nuanced take on things. But even he says that the current campus crisis is something U.S. universities deserve. And if anybody had doubts about what a bunch of whiny brats those “oppressed” university students at Mizzou are, check out their reactions to the slaughter in Paris. Whaaaaaa-waaaaa, nobody’s paying attention to US! Will the little narcissists ever feel shame? Meanwhile at Yale the social justice pecksniffs protest a free-speech panel. Australia is going to try out a hip, cool, and groovy cloud-based virtual passport system. Think…
Category: Computers & Technology
Doxing: yet another reason for privacy. OTOH, it’s so entertaining when one corrupt politician decides to take revenge by outing a bunch of others. Fourteen strange but true facts from tech history. “What we owe the MythBusters.” A renewed interest in and understanding of the scientific method. Two traits of lasting relationships.
Take driverless cars, for instance. If we were in a less tech-perilous, tyranny-seeking time, I think most of us would be excited about them.
You and I may be skeptical about a specific new technology, but we tend not to be technophobes. We’re not ones who reject the new out of hand. We may not want to buy the first flying cars or be on the first ship to colonize Mars or the Moon, but we probably have friends who do want to and maybe even know a few who will. We jumped on computers years ahead of the average and were getting acquainted on BBSes before the Worldwide Web tempted slower adopters in.
So no, we don’t innately distrust tech.
I’m reading — rereading, actually — the excellent book Isaac’s Storm, about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.
One hundred and fifteen years later this remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. By a long margin. The San Francisco earthquake? The Chicago fire? The Great Peshtigo fire?* The Johnstown flood? The eruption of Mt. St. Helens? Hurricane Katrina? Forget them. All small potatoes when compared with what befell the people of Galveston.
Just now. 74 to 21. I posted about Orwell, Rand, and CISA last week. The data in question would come from private industry, which mines everything from credit card statements to prescription drug purchase records to target advertising and tweak product lines. Indeed, much of it is detailed financial and health information the government has never had access to in any form. The bill’s proponents said the data would be “anonymized”. Cisa would create a program at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through which corporations could share user data in bulk with several US government agencies. In exchange for…
So … a gigantic Sunday morning linkathon … The technology is ancient. Mark Twain knew all about it. But making gunpowder with urine is taking the gun blogs by storm. Smoky black powder it’ll be. But one more way that all the self-righteous bans in the world won’t end firearms. We all know not to talk to cops, but in a moment of surprise and stress, the temptation to “cooperate” is enormous. The astute Ken White explains the WHY of things in a way that might help us zip our lips. The Motley Fool test drives an Elio. Another way…
You are committing a crime. Right now. By reading this page. Really. (H/T MJR) This is from earlier this year, but the message is timeless. Always, always trust your dog’s impressions of people. Google’s driverless cars are programmed to obey all traffic rules. But oops, the people they attempt to navigate among … not so much. Yeah, you already know it, but Heather Wilhelm says it well: D.C. is America’s biggest busybody neighbor. Seems the big food companies suddenly like Michelle Obama now that they’ve figured out whole grain and low-fat junk foods are bringing in the profits. Yet another…
This oughta keep you busy for a while. Major hat tip to faithful contributor MJR, who went on a link-hunting tear this week. Um … Yes, Wired, you can do something about Spotify’s weird new anti-privacy policy: don’t use Spotify. And y’know, Spotify’s “clarification” doesn’t help one little bit. It amounts to, “Oh, we’ll never, ever abuse all those bits of your life we’re requiring users to give up to us. Trust us …” Now this is funny. How North Korea is handling shooting range budget cuts. Over at TZP, Nicki and Y.B. write about a pair of killers and…
This cop is a shapeshifter! And he and his cohorts are liars and manipulators. This article is nominally about millions being about to lose their Obamacare subsidies. But the most intriguing part is how many people aren’t filing their tax returns. The war on walking? Personally, I think all these busybodies who are so worried about every little thing being “cultural appropriation” should quit speaking English. After all, our language has been appropriating words from other cultures at a furious pace for thousands of years. Our culture would be considerably improved if the “appropriation” yakkers stuck to speaking pure Anglo-Saxon.…
Prisons and the reading matter they prohibit. $15 minimum wage: The Tony Soprano Enabling Act. Well. That’s yet another reason not to go to movie theaters. (H/T LA) Another puppycide by cop. Another example of sociopathic contempt for life, including human life. This in the City of Brotherly Love. Any maroon who’d sign up with an adultery website, handing over all manner of personal details in the process, is probably dumb enough to deserve this. And it’s yet another opportunity to snicker at that ubiquitous commercial Christian, Josh Duggar. (Less amusing is that some in their faction would prefer to…