Broken Windows

I’m doing a Windows Update on my W2K machine, and there are seven critical security updates that repeatedly fail to install. Anyone have any ideas as to what I should do?

[Update on Sunday morning]

Sigh. Was it really necessary to specify a priori that advice to get different operating systems (I have two other machines running various flavors of Linux) or computers would be unwanted, and unhelpful?

Good Luck With That

Bill Roggio has some good advice for Democrats who want to be taken more seriously on national security. Unfortunately for them (and for the prospect of a serious opposition to the Republicans), they’re probably constitutionally incapable of taking it right now. They’ll have to lose a few more elections first.

A New Problem

I hadn’t previously given this much thought, but it makes sense. More people buying increasingly affordable big-screen televisions is going to skyrocket the nation’s electrical consumption. People don’t realize how much electrical demand is driven by computers and server farms, but this is a new application for the home that will start to exceed the electricity used by multiple computers and home networking.

Of course, I only have the television on when I’m watching, whereas I rarely turn the computers off.

Duh

Here’s a research result that will be sure to shake up the academic community–people with bigger brains tend to be smarter than people with smaller brains.

While I guess there’s some utility to quantifying the effect, what person with a reasonably sized brain would have thought otherwise? The effect may not be linear with brain volume, but it’s almost mathematically provable that there would have to be a positive correlation. Does anyone imagine that a brain the size of a walnut could be as smart as one the average size of a human brain? To argue otherwise seems as spurious as the stubborn insistence by some (such as the late Stephen J. Gould) that there’s no relationship whatsoever between “race” and IQ–it has to be driven more by political correctness than by logic.

Par For The Course

Apparently this isn’t the first time that Senator Durbin got a little hyperbolic. He’s apparently a serial offender–it’s just that no one noticed before. Iowahawk took some time off from his recent problems to dig up prior examples hitherto unknown:

Mr. Hector Gutierrez
Gutierrez Bros. Landscaping
Arlington, VA

Dear Mr. Gutierrez:

Nothing could have prepared me for the shock that awaited as I exited the front door of my home early Wednesday morning, where I discovered that your lawn crew had cut a swath of environmental destruction across my yard so horrifying that it only can be compared to the Rape of Nanking. I can scarcely bring myself to describe the killing fields that are my North azalea beds and the brutal degradation and torture suffered by the bluegrass around the locust tree by the rear patio.

Oh, That’s All He Meant

Apparently Senator Durbin’s ever-changing story was that he wasn’t comparing the Bush administration overall to the Khmer Rouge, or Nazi Germany. No, he was only commenting on their interrogation techniques.

Well, here is an example of “interrogation” at S-21 in Cambodia:

The regime of S21 was harsh beyond belief. Amongst the cruellest of guards were the 12-16 year old warders. Without a strongly ingrained morality and given positions of total power over their captives, their actions became bestial. Prisoners were regularly questioned and tortured with a variety of techniques, from fingernails being pulled out to electrification and suffocation. Important political prisoners were kept in their own 2 1/2 foot by 6 foot cell, feet shackled to an 2 foot iron bar. As horrible as this sounds it was infinitely preferable to the treatment of the bulk of S21

Oh, That’s All He Meant

Apparently Senator Durbin’s ever-changing story was that he wasn’t comparing the Bush administration overall to the Khmer Rouge, or Nazi Germany. No, he was only commenting on their interrogation techniques.

Well, here is an example of “interrogation” at S-21 in Cambodia:

The regime of S21 was harsh beyond belief. Amongst the cruellest of guards were the 12-16 year old warders. Without a strongly ingrained morality and given positions of total power over their captives, their actions became bestial. Prisoners were regularly questioned and tortured with a variety of techniques, from fingernails being pulled out to electrification and suffocation. Important political prisoners were kept in their own 2 1/2 foot by 6 foot cell, feet shackled to an 2 foot iron bar. As horrible as this sounds it was infinitely preferable to the treatment of the bulk of S21

Oh, That’s All He Meant

Apparently Senator Durbin’s ever-changing story was that he wasn’t comparing the Bush administration overall to the Khmer Rouge, or Nazi Germany. No, he was only commenting on their interrogation techniques.

Well, here is an example of “interrogation” at S-21 in Cambodia:

The regime of S21 was harsh beyond belief. Amongst the cruellest of guards were the 12-16 year old warders. Without a strongly ingrained morality and given positions of total power over their captives, their actions became bestial. Prisoners were regularly questioned and tortured with a variety of techniques, from fingernails being pulled out to electrification and suffocation. Important political prisoners were kept in their own 2 1/2 foot by 6 foot cell, feet shackled to an 2 foot iron bar. As horrible as this sounds it was infinitely preferable to the treatment of the bulk of S21

Under Fire, Durbin Issues Belated Apology

June 17th, 2005

WASHINGTON (APUPI) Amidst growing outrage at his comparisons of US troops to Pol Pot’s regime, Nazis and Stalin’s gulag, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin backed off from his earlier comments today, reading from a prepared statement outside his office that he hadn’t meant to directly compare the situations:

“I now realize that my comments unjustly slandered many people in southeast Asia and other places who were, like the Democratic Party, simply trying to create a better and more equitable society, and did not intend to compare what they did to the horrific atrocities that were occurring, and continue to occur, in Guantanamo. I wish to deeply apologize to those, like International A.N.S.W.E.R, who properly took umbrage at such an odious equivalence. I hope that this apology will finally lay this issue to rest.”

He refused to take any further questions.

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