Author: splicer

Posted onOpinionated Junk

September 22 GOP debate wrapup

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On Thurs­day, nine con­tenders for the GOP nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent par­tic­i­pat­ed in a tele­vised ques­tion-and-answer ses­sion host­ed by Fox News and Google. As usu­al, I hes­i­tate to refer to these events as «debates» because they real­ly aren’t debates. There’s not enough time allot­ted to per­mit more than a sound­bite on each issue and there are few real chances for rebut­tal. They are all about the per­son­al­i­ties and very lit­tle about the prin­ci­ples and issues.

Here is my take on the … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

The elephant in the room

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Tonight at 6pm Pacific/9pm East­ern time, nine GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls will take the stage in a live ques­tion and answer ses­sion intend­ed to famil­iar­ize Amer­i­cans with the can­di­dates. This will be the sev­enth so-called debate in the 2012 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry sea­son, and the sec­ond to include Gov­er­nor Gary John­son, who appeared in the first of these debates back in May but who has not been per­mit­ted to par­tic­i­pate since. In a sur­prise (but wel­come) deci­sion on … Read the rest

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Libertarian: better adjective than noun

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Recent­ly I lis­tened to a Com­mon­wealth Club dis­cus­sion with Nick Gille­spie and Matt Welch titled WWLD: What Would Lib­er­tar­i­ans Do? Gille­spie and Welch are co-edi­tors of Rea­son mag­a­zine, which I’ve nev­er read, but is reput­ed to have a strong lib­er­tar­i­an bent. The top­ic is of inter­est to me, as I have mixed feel­ings about lib­er­tar­i­ans. In the 1990s I was a reg­is­tered mem­ber of the Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty. I vot­ed for Har­ry Browne in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 1996… Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Got my groove back

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It’s been a tough cou­ple of months. I’ve been pin­ing away for my Moto Guzzi, which has been in the shop. That means more than just an emo­tion­al gap in my life; I’ve been less able to get from place to place and have even resort­ed to dri­ving four-wheeled vehi­cles on occa­sion. That was an exer­cise in frus­tra­tion; not only did it take twice as long to get any­where,  it usu­al­ly took longer to park than it did to drive.

The … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

WINO

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Most politi­cians deserve a lit­tle name-call­ing, but there are two labels — real­ly two vari­a­tions on the same label — that have become pop­u­lar late­ly and real­ly get my goat. They are RINO and DINO: Repub­li­can In Name Only and Demo­c­rat In Name Only. Even Lib­er­tar­i­ans call oth­er Lib­er­tar­i­ans LINOs, Greens have their GINOs, and prob­a­bly even Inde­pen­dents who get called IINOs even though I have no idea how to pro­nounce it.

I make an excep­tion for the use of … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

What Google+ gets right

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Over the last week or so I’ve been explor­ing Google’s new social net­work­ing sys­tem, Google+ or, as it is affec­tion­ate­ly known, g+. At first glance it seems like a direct clone of Face­book with some fan­cy user inter­face improve­ments for orga­niz­ing your «cir­cles» of con­tacts. There are also some nice usabil­i­ty improve­ments, like the abil­i­ty to edit a com­ment after it has been post­ed. Any­one who has ever hit the sub­mit but­ton with a typo still in their mes­sage — … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

On motorcycle safety

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As a motor­cy­clist I’m fre­quent­ly faced with the claim (some­times out of con­cern and oth­er times from judg­ment) that rid­ing a motor­cy­cle is unsafe. It’s true that a two-wheeled vehi­cle is inher­ent­ly less sta­ble than a four-wheeled one, and that rid­ers are more vul­ner­a­ble to impacts that one would be pro­tect­ed from inside a car. Look­ing at the sta­tis­tics one can clear­ly see that the fatal­i­ties-per-mil­lion-miles and injuries-per-mil­lion-miles are much high­er for motor­cy­cles than for automobiles.

Sev­er­al fac­tors make these … Read the rest

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Ignoring the Constitution: it’s not just for Democrats anymore

by 5 Comments on Ignoring the Constitution: it’s not just for Democrats anymore

After tak­ing a shot at Rick San­to­rum about the appar­ent incon­gruity between his strict con­struc­tion­ist stance and his zeal for fed­er­al restric­tions on abor­tions, I was grat­i­fied to see that I was­n’t the only one to notice. The Volokh Con­spir­a­cy, one of the best law-ori­ent­ed blogs out there, today has a post by David Kopel point­ing out that San­to­rum and four oth­er Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates have signed a pledge that states almost in the same breath that they will appoint … Read the rest

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Sympathy for the devil

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I chal­lenge any­one to pro­vide a rep­utable source for this sup­posed quote attrib­uted to GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Rick Santorum:

Abor­tion in any form is wrong, except for my wife. If your wife’s life was at stake and the only thing that could save her was an abor­tion, well, too bad. Your wife will have to die. It was dif­fer­ent with my wife. You see, I love her. I don’t even know your wife’s name. 

I call bull­shit on this whole … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Why Splicer can’t create

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2011 has so far been an almost com­plete­ly unpro­duc­tive year. That’s a ter­ri­fy­ing thing to admit about the last five months of my life. I haven’t been on sab­bat­i­cal or fam­i­ly leave or vaca­tion; instead I’ve been sit­ting at my desk in front of my com­put­er accom­plish­ing noth­ing. I’ve been accom­plish­ing noth­ing and won­der­ing why.

I’ve tried a myr­i­ad of solu­tions to address and cor­rect this sit­u­a­tion: spo­radic attempts at phys­i­cal exer­cise, hyp­no­sis, bin­au­r­al beats, read­ing moti­va­tion­al arti­cles, prayer, medi­a­tion, jour­nal­ing, … Read the rest

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