As we approach the second anniversary, does anyone else have the sense that many Democrats (particularly the ones swooning over Dr. Dean) are more angry at George Bush than they are at the people who destroyed the World Trade Center?

The Onion has a great interview with P. J. O’Rourke.

…I feel like now, I guess, everybody pays lip service to libertarian?and, indeed, many conservative?ideas, and yet they keep moving forward with an increasingly bureaucratic state. It shows itself in all sorts of little ways. I’m not screaming about injustice here, or gulags. I buy a tractor two years ago, and four-fifths of the tractor manual is about not tipping over, not raising the bucket high enough to hit high-tension wire… not killing yourself, basically. The tractor itself is covered with stickers: Don’t put your hand in here. Don’t put your dick in there. And in that manual, I found out?and it cost me a thousand dollars?that when the tractor is new, 10 hours into use of the tractor, you have to re-torque the lug nuts. If you don’t, you will oval the holes. This is buried between the moron warnings. I never found it. I take the tractor in for its regular servicing, and they say my wheels are gone. A thousand dollars worth of wheels have to be replaced because I didn’t re-torque after 10 hours. How am I supposed to know that? “It’s in the manual.” You f***ing read that manual! You go through 40 pages of how not to tip over! Anyway, that’s the world that we seem to be moving into. And just because a society has absorbed these ideas and pays them lip service, anyone who’s talking about libertarian ideas and certain basic conservative principles will get people who nod politely and say, “Oh, yeah, we knew that already.” It’s a pain in the ass.

Go read the…well, you know the drill.

SpaceShipOne had a successful test of its feathered descent last week.

This is truly silly, and gives a bad name to those people who are seriously pursuing property rights in space. It should be simply laughed out of court.

There’s no legal precedent (at least in common law), or sense to grant property rights to remote unclaimed locations simply on the basis of a stated claim. If Orbdev had actually sent a spacecraft there first, they’d have a legitimate case, and I’d applaud them, but this is as likely (and perhaps more likely) to set back the cause of private property in space than to advance it.

In light of this editorial, which is an official government organ, can someone explain to me why we’re giving billions of dollar of aid annually to this country?

In light of this editorial, which is an official government organ, can someone explain to me why we’re giving billions of dollar of aid annually to this country?

In light of this editorial, which is an official government organ, can someone explain to me why we’re giving billions of dollar of aid annually to this country?

The one-eyed man is king.

An Australian biologist has come up with a theory that the Cambrian explosion was a rapidly-escalating arms race catalyzed by the development of the first creature with vision.

Without giving it a lot of thought, it seems plausible, and intriguing. As he says, imagine all of these creatures evolving in a darkened room, when all of a sudden, someone flicks the light switch. It would be a radical and sudden change in the environment and evolutionary pressures.

“Allah” responds to charges that the web site is anti-Muslim. I think (s)he’s got the better part of the argument, by far.

“…everything is out of control…” in Iraq.

That’s all the hyperbole you need to read to not bother to take this piece seriously.