Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

ISIS Beheading Christians

16 Comments

…in Libya.

Probably caused by an Internet video. Hillary and Susan Rice were unavailable for comment.

[Update a while later]

Denmark’s turn, and looking back at the Rushdie fatwa:

It’s not at all difficult to see the roots of now in what happened then. It’s not that Westerners weren’t already alarmed back then, though; they were. They just didn’t see the depth and breadth of what this phenomenon represented, and they didn’t quite know what to do. Nor do they now. And although political correctness was much weaker back then it already very much existed, and probably helped to hamper recognition of the dangers of this strain of Islam to the West itself. Those dangers are still not fully recognized by the governments of the West, in part for the very same reason.

Yes, Glenn is right. We should have nipped this in the bud in 1979, but we had the wrong president.

But it’s not in fact too late. We shouldn’t be droning Al Qaeda/ISIS leaders, we should be capturing and interrogating them. The people we should be droning are mullahs who issue fatwas (like the ones who stirred up all the rage over the cartoons). It would probably discourage them, at least somewhat. And dead mullahs don’t issue fatwas.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Tulsa Totalitarians

1 Comment

This is outrageous:

Without affording him the hearing he was entitled to under TU’s University Student Conduct Policies & Procedures, and despite his husband’s affidavit, Tanaka found Barnett responsible for “harassment.” Tanaka also found Barnett guilty of retaliation and violating confidentiality requirements for speaking about the disciplinary charges with his husband—who was also his exculpatory witness.

Less than two months before Barnett was set to graduate, Tanaka not only suspended him until at least 2016 but also permanently banned him from receiving a degree in his major even upon his re-enrollment. Barnett was forced to wait two months for TU to respond to his appeal, which the university summarily denied on January 9 without explanation—leaving Barnett unable to earn his theater degree as planned.

I don’t think a theater degree is worth all that much, but he probably paid a lot for it, and he should at a minimum be reimbursed (though one can’t give him back the lost years of his life). But actually, as Glenn notes, this insanity won’t end until universities suffer legal and financial severe pain for it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Sunk-Cost Fallacy

4 Comments

…in love, and automobile manufacturing.

This is a big problem for space enthusiasts. “Oh, we can’t cancel SLS/Orion! We’ve already spent so much on them, all that money would just go to waste!”

Well, since the purpose was really never anything except to maintain the work force, it wouldn’t really have gone to waste, and continuing them would waste even more, if our actual goal is to do useful things in space. We need to cut our losses as soon as politically possible.

Administrative, Technology and Society

New Computer Question

12 Comments

She kind of likes the Linux set up, but she really doesn’t want to give up things like (and this is an immediate issue), Turbotax. From what I find in searches, it doesn’t seem to play well with Wine, but it might be OK if I ran it in a virtual Windows machine. But don’t I still need to buy Windows in order to set one of those up? And is there an advantage to running it in a VM, other than not having to reboot into the OS?

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Why The Media Hates Scott Walker

4 Comments

They think he has a time machine.

It would be nice if he did. That would be the best way to fix ObamaCare. Of course, the best use of it, at least in the recent past, would be to shove some sticks in the spokes of the 2008 Obama campaign, knowing now what we didn’t know then.

[Update a while later]

“Our most intelligent presidents have often been our worst presidents.” I think it’s a mistake to conflate “intelligence” with amount of “education.” Barack Obama (or Bill Clinton) has never struck me as particularly intelligent, unless by that you mean “cunning.” They’re certainly not wise. But yeah, Wilson was pretty bad, just as Obama is.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Scott Walker Didn’t Finish College

52 Comments

And…?

I, for one, am glad Howard Dean went to medical school before becoming a doctor. But most liberal arts degrees are overrated as a precondition for success and they are indisputably overpriced — hence the current student loan crisis. In the Internet era, there are many, many new ways to become educated. This sudden suspicion of Scott Walker seems a product of the fact that higher education is a world that liberals control utterly, and the entire economic model supporting it is on the verge of collapse.

Also, it seems to be the only “dirt” they can find on him.

Administrative, Mathematics, Technology and Society

Computer Problems

35 Comments

Welp, Windows (7) isn’t happy with the computer upgrade. It keeps running start-up repair, but it never boots.

[Update a while later]

It occurred to me that Windows might not have liked the BIOS settings. So I went into it, and found something under “Advanced” that enabled it for Windows 8 (which I was planning to upgrade to, anyway). When I did that, it told me that the graphics card was incompatible with that setting. So I pulled the card, and am running directly off the mother board. But now when I try to boot, it dumps me into an EFI shell…

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, this doesn’t seem to be an unusual problem…

I tried moving the SATA port of the hard drive, but no joy.

[Evening update]

Well, isn’t this wonderful. I now have a computer that wantonly destroys USB drives.

[Update a minute after I typed that]

OK, it didn’t destroy the drive. It just made it take a couple minutes to recognize it. I guess that’s not quite as bad, but it still isn’t bootable.

[Late-evening update]

OK, now seriously, it is wrecking flash drives. That’s the second one today. I copy a bootable ISO to a drive, it doesn’t boot, then no other computer can even see the drive. That’s two. Today.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!