Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Homespun Symposium XIX

In the spirit of better late than never, this weeks question comes from Mr. Minority.

Should taxpayers money be spent on Universities that disallow conservatives equal voice, equal access, dissenting opinions and restrict Christian clubs?

Email marvin at marvinhutchens dot com with a permalink to your response and it'll be added below for all to see.

Enjoy.

Homespun Responses

Dagney's Rant
A Republic, Madam, If You Can Keep It
Mad Poets Anonymous
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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

3 4 5 New Bloggers

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Monday, April 25, 2005

Best Of Homespun Bloggers April 24th, 2005

MuD&PHuD

Misunderstanding?

A few days back I posted some thoughts on the Terri Schiavo case. One of my contentions elicited a comment and I would like to set the record (as I see it) straight. I would, however, be grateful if anyone with a better understanding of legal-speak that myself would step in and correct me if I am in error.

Considerettes

Bill Frist's "Religious War"?

It seems that the NY Times thinks that Bill Frist has started a religious war over the judicial nominees. My "blogger-in-law" Jim Jewell and I co-fisk the Times' editorial, highlighting their sloppy writing, lack of fact checking, amazing hyperbole, and redefinition of words.

Carpe Bonum

Mossberg tosses a fat one, Microsoft goes down swinging

Anyway, in today's column, Mossberg reviews Microsoft's free blogging platform, Spaces. Mossberg's columns have covered blogs before, usually with guest columnists, but this week is the first time Mossberg has reviewed a blogging tool himself.

Product managers see these Mossberg reviews as an opportunity for publicity, but also as a huge risk. If the product fails for Mossberg, the world will know.

Don't Let Me Stop You

Fun with Machine Translation

Artificial Intelligence is often the same as Natural Stupidity, and machine translations prove this epigram. We have now added links to each post that will provide Google's machine translations for the corresponding post pages. Conceivably, this may be of some use to some readers, but the primary motivation is fun. The translations are amazing, both in their successes and their failures. For example the link translation of a previous post about Nebraska football...

Bunker Mulligan

Ever notice how politicians scurry around like cockroaches when the light shines on them? First we had BCRA which was supposed to take Big Money™ out of politics. The policians had already figured out how to bypass that before it was ever really considered, so it was a non-starter as far as reform is concerned. And when small-money ways of expressing support of or opposition to candidates made inroads, politicians and bureaucrats looked to quash that vehicle, too.

Weapon of Mass Distraction

Bird Flu Less Deadly, More Dangerous

It seems illogical, but by morphing into a less virulent strain, H5N1 is more likely to cause the global pandemic experts say is overdue. While the case fatality rate has dropped from 100% to around 35%, it's becoming easier to spread. To compare, the Spanish flu of 1918 killed between 40 and 100 million people, and fewer than 5% of the infected died.
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Monday, April 18, 2005

2 3 4 New Bloggers

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Best Of Homespun Bloggers April 17, 2005

The Southern Conservative

Axis of Evil: The Secret Hypocrisy of the Left

...It's not art. Let's get that straight right off the bat. The goal of the "artist" is NOT to create art or express something. The goal of the artist is simply to enrage people he disagrees with. Those who defend the "artist" are really only defending him or her because they have the same political enemies as the artist.
Nobody actually enjoys this kind of "art."

MuD&PHuD

Terri Schiavo

I received an email last night kindly prodding me to not fall into the short attention span trap that I, from time to time, accuse others of. So I'll ask, what every happened to the Terri Schiavo story?


Carpe Bonum

Hitler not democratically elected

I have repeated the myth that Hitler was democratically elected. This is not the case.

Don't Let Me Stop You

Touring The Great American Desert

Some two score years ago the state of Nebraska started an advertising campaign to increase tourism. Our slogan, "NebraskaLand: Where the West Begins," was quickly transformed into "NebraskaLand: Where the East Peters Out." It was a tough sell. After all, Nebraska history is mostly the history of people passing through on their way to somewhere else.

The Redhunter

War with China: 2008-2010?

In an earlier post called "The Looming Threat", I wrote that China would likely attack Taiwan sometime "before 2015". In light of better information, I am revising my estimate to say that if there is a war it will occur sometime between 2008 and 2010.

In this post I will review why the Chinese might attack, when they might attack and why, why we should defend Taiwan, and how the 2008 Olympics in Beijing will affect China's decision on when to attack.
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

2 New Bloggers

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Monday, April 11, 2005

Homespun Symposium XVIII

Despite the momentary absence, the Homespun Symposium continues. This week the question comes from Patterico.

How has blogging affected your life?

Email marvin at marvinhutchens dot com with a permalink to your response and it'll be added below for all to see.

Enjoy.

Homespun Responses

Mud and Phud
Little Red Blog
Bunker Mulligan
Grizzly Mama
Dagney's Rant
Redhunter
Major Dad 1984
Ogre's Politics and Views
Carpe Bonum
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New Blogger

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Best Of Homespun Bloggers April 10th, 2005

Blog d'Elisson

The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve

Everyone should have at least one great passion in his or her life, an interest that fires the imagination and impels one to action. Some people find that passion in their work and toil happily away, some successful, some less so. Others find their Great Driving Force on the playing fields, where they pursue greatness through feats of endurance and skill. And others find it in the arts, creating great works of
painting, sculpture, or music.

And then there are those with /hobbies/...

Cursed By a Classical Education

Back to the Minuteman Project

Okay, I've held my tongue long enough. Try as I might to let this story slide, I just can't. At the risk of this becoming an anti-immigration blog (which it's not), I'll have to address the issue of the Minutemen in Arizona.

Here's my reference story from Netscape to give you just a little background...--

Musing

Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla

As a public service, for those who have trouble understanding government bafflegab. Here’s a translation of McLellan’s response: the right and ever so very honourable Anne McLellan has no idea why the affidavits were prepared. She just thought that it would make for a neat statistic.

She also knew that that statistic would be taken by her sycophants in the media and her indirect employees in the Coalition for Gun Control and trumpeted around the country as “proof” that the firearms registry was a real value-added product, for the bargain price of $2 billion and counting.

Just keep repeating the number of affidavits that were produced Anne …keep repeating them … and repeating them, despite the facts that Breitkreuz just showed the world that you have no (zero zilch none nada) idea why they were produced and that you have no idea whether they were just more AdScam-style busywork for bureaucrats with mortgages that need to be paid.

MuD&PHuD

Drudge vs. Everybody

I was just reading this NY Observer thing and an old thought was resurrected. I've watched a number of conservative commentators rise to national prominence and, literally at the same time, a number of liberal counterparts try to match them, fail, and fade rather quickly into oblivion...or at least back to whence they started. The Conservatives I'm thinking of are Rush and Hannity on the radio, Hannity and O'Reilly on TV and Matt Drudge on the internet. I honestly don't know the Liberal side as well, but there have been a number of would-be Rush competitors (including Rudolph Giuliani) who have not fared well. The common denominator of the successful Conservative commentators is that they rose to prominence by virtue of being selected for their skills as commentators. Those on the Left, in contrast, seem to be selected for such commentator slots based on previous (and almost always unrelated) stardom.

Bunker Mulligan

I finished reading the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and much of the text focuses on definitions. It is worth your while to read. Perhaps the comments I’ve sent to the FEC will give you some idea of where they are going with all this. Here is the text of my comments. I also sent copies to my Congressman, Senators, and the White House expressing my view that BCRA must be repealed.

Book Review - "Commies" by Ronald Radosh

Born a "red diaper baby" in 1937, Radosh grew up surrounded by communists. He went to "commie camp", where he saw guests such as Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger perform. Among campers were the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. It was a matter of faith that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of American fascist repression.

Pattishub

Go Ahead and Kill Them...But No Pictures!

It is interesting that Mulligan claims to have sponsored this bill out of concern for the health of the unborn, because earlier she voted against a ban on partial birth abortion. Apparently she feels it is ok to kill a partially born fetus, just not to take pictures of it.
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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

New Blogger

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Sunday, April 03, 2005

Best Of Homespun Bloggers April 3rd, 2005

I Was Thinking

Take heed, a letter to Putin with love.

Mr Vladimir Putin,

Recently you have come under fire for the rollback of freedoms in your proud nation. Your people have a lot to be proud of. Your army is feared the world around. Your men and women are intelligent, they excel at every academic pursuit they tackle. Your winters are the stuff of which nightmares are made. Your people have spent centuries taming one of the worlds most stunning topographies, it may not be done yet, but they will accomplish it. Your people have many strengths, many virtues, as well as the integrity, and guile to be great. In short, when the bear roars, the world gives pause and wonders who has drawn it ire.

Musing

The sky is now - most assuredly - falling

I am guessing that the scientists who backed the recently released report that argues "almost two thirds of the natural machinery that supports like on Earth is being degraded" are not familiar with Julian Simonÿs work. Those who might be tempted to fall prey to this latest bit of Malthusian fear mongering would do well to acquaint yourselves with Simon's writing.

Folks, Malthus was wrong. Learn to live with it.

If youÿre unwilling to consider Simonÿs writings, you could try to read the writings of an openly gay, self-admittedly ´Left-wing, worried, former Greenpeace member. If heÿs gay, left-wing and has purchased Greenpeace memberships, he canÿt be wrong now can he?

Pope John Paul II - An Appreciation

He is perhaps the last of the giants of the twentieth century. His was an era of greatness, or at least of men and women who achieved great things. With his passing, which appears imminent, we will have lost someone who helped make the world a better place.

MuD&PHuD

Berger

Well, it looks like Sandy Berger did it after all:

[W]ASHINGTON, March 31 - Samuel R. Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and give up his security clearance for three years for removing classified material from a government archive, the Justice Department and associates of Mr. Berger's said Thursday.
Carpe Bonum

Legal changes -- Terri's Law?

Because of the circumstances, Carpe Bonum's coverage of the Terri Schiavo case has been one-sided. But now I thought I'd lay out what I think of the right-to-die question, and what changes I think need to be made to avoid tragedies similar to Terri's in the future.

Weapon of Mass Distraction

Death Penalty Tossed Over Bible Verses

The Colorado Supreme Court threw out the death sentence of a convicted rapist and murderer because some of the jurors consulted the Bible for guidance. Why not? It's not like God had anything to do with our laws against killing each other. And from now on, instead of being sworn in on a Bible, all witnesses in Colorado courts will “pinky-swear” to tell the truth.
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