Michael B. Duff

Levin proposes to Erica at PAX. What a beautiful moment. Don't you just love these people?

A list of journalists telling people to "grow up" about the TSA mess.

This is the kind of obvious spam that never makes it into Gmail. And even if it does show up in email accounts with lesser filters, like Hotmail, users expect spam there. The context is different in Facebook, where it's sitting alongside a much smaller batch of messages that are obviously from real people and organizations that I've connected with, like The Economist and the band Wilco.

I don’t really have a problem with a video game that encourages me to kill Cuban dictators, but “Homefront” presents us with a more interesting question. Is the video game industry ready to grow up? Are we ready for games that deal honestly with human suffering and the cost of war?

A U.S. Marine reservist collecting Toys for Tots donations at Augusta's Best Buy was stabbed in the back this afternoon while helping subdue a shoplifting suspect. [Aw, the first stabbing of the season. Merry Christmas, everybody!]

Every issue of Playboy ever published on a 250GB hard drive, $300. Mankind has now reached the pinnacle of technological achievement. All striving will now cease.

In September, however, the Obama administration used the state secrets privilege to block a lawsuit by five former captives who say they were tortured as a result of extraordinary rendition. Although candidate Obama surely would have been outraged, President Obama is for some reason less concerned about abuses of executive power.

Hmm, that kind of confirms what critics have been saying for years, that the IPCC has nothing to do with science. Because, you see, to my knowledge the scientists of the next IPCC have not even started their work, but the UN leadership has already determined what the report will say. Which is consistent with their process in the last go around, where the UN political guys crafted the management summary first, and then circulated it to the scientific teams with instructions to adjust their sections of the report to fit the pre-existing conclusion.

The western democratic states have attempted to live in the denial of economic laws for decades. Governments where aided in this denial by growing legions of "economists" and economic policy "experts". This has produced a world which attempted to "paper over" (literally with currency manipulation) the fault lines in economies that have resulted from bad economic policies. But what is wrong with Portugal is also what is wrong with California, let alone the other "PIGS" countries.

"Here in the United States, one thing that strikes me about my most liberal friends is how conservative their thinking is at a personal level. For their own children, and in talking about specific other people, they passionately stress individual responsibility. It is only when discussing public policy that they favor collectivism. The tension between their personal views and their political opinions is fascinating to observe. I would not be surprised to find that my friends' attachment to liberal politics is tenuous, and that some major event could cause a rapid, widespread shift toward a more conservative position."

Imagine an America without jazz. Imagine an America in which alcohol is still illegal. Imagine an America without Broadway, Las Vegas, or Hollywood. Imagine an America with no racial integration or freedom to be gay in public. In my new book, A Renegade History of the United States, I show that all you have to do is imagine American history without organized crime … Here are 7 ways that gangsters made America a better place

As I've said for the past six months, when it finally comes time to cut spending, it won't matter who the President is.

I left for eight years when tax was put up to 82 per cent. The newspapers said: "Michael Caine's leaving: let him go, the stupid, overpaid, loudmouth idiot, who cares where he goes?" Well, you didn't get 82 per cent tax from me for eight years and a quarter of a billion dollars worth of movies were outside this country instead of inside it. Now, that is just one stupid, loudmouth moronic actor. Imagine what happens with companies that disappear.

As Stephen Foster has argued, the media world is kicking up a fuss about Rupert Murdoch not because of concerns about media plurality, but because they are afraid of the competition. The vilification of Rupert Murdoch as a ‘media tyrant’ gives cover to his rivals to run to the regulators to protect them, rather than trying to compete by offering better services.

But when a community-based group near the erupting Mount Merapi volcano, which has killed over 300 people, sent a message, or tweet, on Twitter that food was piling up in the next town and there were no vehicles to pick it up, over a dozen cars lined up to deliver it within 10 minutes.

Quick summary of editorials dismissing the TSA protests.

No idea how much energy these can produce, but it seems like a great match for electric cars.

Some people install monitors in their walls for kitchen-computing, but usually stop at Windows or OS X for the OS. Not Dutchman Pascal, though—who created a Windows XP skin inspired by Star Trek's LCARS interface.

Blue State QOTD: "When did the sheep that make up the populous decide that they wanted to live in a constant state of irrational fear, so much so that they would give up their right to go where they want, with what they want, when they want, undeterred by illegal search and seizure?" Rock on.

Twice a year I try to rise above my natural pessimism and focus on good things in the world. Thanksgiving is one of those times.