Forward Biased (Less-than-current Events)

I'm ba-aaaaaack...!

So sorry to have suddenly stopped posting, folks, but I've spent the last 48 hours without an internet connection--and very nearly without a computer at all. Replacing my broadband modem returned my connection, but I'm using one of my sons' computers at the moment, as I think my motherboard may be history.

Being a Pentium III motherboard, it was pretty much ancient history anyway.

"Leave it on the shelf"

Another subject I haven't broached yet is the book The Truth about Hillary Clinton by Edward Klein.  I expect you've read enough about it already--how it's basically unsupported, unverifiable, and the sort of smear job that should be avoided no matter who the subject is.

There are some people who agree with me politically, in large part, but who I wish would just shut up.  They're not helping.  All this  book is going to accomplish is to contaminate the volumes of legitimate Clinton criticism, making them "tarnished with the tainted brush of this book's accusations."

Yes, the First Amendment is more important

I haven't said anything about the anti-flagburning amendment that was recently passed by the House and is coming up in the Senate soon.  It's not so much that I didn't consider the issue important, just that I didn't think I could add very much to the debate.

But Eugene Volokh's op-ed in the LATimes argued the issue so well that I feel obliged to link to it, adding nothing but my own hearty agreement.

America is different from most other countries, and even from most other democracies. In America, all ideologies are protected, even those that the majority thinks are evil.

Why is this right? Because the First Amendment was drafted and interpreted by people who intimately understood cultural, religious, and political conflict, and who knew how calls for censorship could launch the most bitter of culture wars.

The [First] Amendment is a truce: "I won't try to suppress your ideas, if you don't try to suppress mine." And the flagburning amendment risks shattering this truce.

Information "wants" to be free

The Volokh Conspiracy points to an editorial by Laura Donohue in The Washington Post called "Censoring science won't make us any safer."

Terrorists will obtain knowledge. Our best option is to blunt their efforts to exploit it.

I tend to agree.  The internet has had an unprecidented effect on the availability of both information and mis-information, and while one can easily argue the merits of keeping certain information secret, I don't think the advantages of such an approach outweigh the disadvantages.  Besides,

For better or worse, the cat is out of the bag -- something brought home to me last weekend when I visited the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. One hands-on exhibit allowed children to transfer genetic material from one species to another. I watched a 4-year-old girl...

But does it purr down the tracks?

The new 360-mph Japanese bullet train looks like a character straight out of an anime or manga, especially with its cat-ear-shaped, retractable air brakes.

Whoever gets licensing rights to manufacture toys of this thing will sell a lot of them.

(Via Boing Boing)

About your humble host- 3 of 3

Wrapping it up:

Congratulations on making it this far. Here's where we get really personal.

By the way, the whole reason for my going into this kind of detail about myself is so that you can know where I'm coming from when I write what I do. It's certainly not out of any inflated sense of self-importance, although, like all writers, I would like to think that someone, somewhere is interested at least a little bit in what I write. Of course, all it takes is a glance at my blog's hit counter to return me to reality.

Sen. Durbin apologizes again

So it seems that yesterday Sen. Durbin apologized--again--this time, specifically to a VFW convention in Peoria.

"I think when you've done something hurtful to people you have to stand up and say I'm sorry," he said--the only new quote from the Senator in this particular story.

Well, at least he acknowledged that what he did was "hurtful."  But that also sounds like a way to avoid, yet again, saying that he was wrong in any way.  If I can find out more of what he actually said I can make up my mind better about this.

At least most of the veterans in attendance seemed to accept his apology, as "most of the crowd" gave him a standing O.

Never, ever forget

Thanks to INDIVID for pointing out some archived, high-quality footage of the airplanes slamming into the WTC towers.

Here and here.

It seems to me that many of us are beginning to forget just what and who we're fighting.

About your humble host- 2 of 3

My politics and other perspectives

My politics is a blend of conservatism and “small-l” libertarianism, becoming more libertarian as time goes by, which means that while I voted for George W. Bush twice, I'm also deeply disappointed in much of what he's done, or particularly has failed to do (and I'm furious at the SCOTUS for completely disregarding the Constitution on numerous occasions). Yes, I'm quite Federalist and constructionist when it comes to that sort of thing.

My dear wife is considerably more straight-line conservative than I am, which means that we don't discuss politics very often (actually, no, our politics isn't really all that different). But there is a much deeper philosophical chasm between us than politics.

The Greatest Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Bill Quick hosts a celebration of all things Heinlein.  His apparent favorite:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love

Go ye forth and read.  All of them.  I'll wait.