Of course they’d say that…
NBC News reported that the US State Department has “No secret plan to invade Canada”. But they’d say that even if they did have such a plan (and let’s be honest, they must have thought about it,...
View ArticleFixing Windows Update
For the last several weeks, I’ve been having issues with Windows Update on my laptop. I’d been keeping the machine pretty much up-to-date with the latest patches up until late August, when one (or...
View ArticlePotentially deadly legacies of war
A long, fascinating, disturbing blog post at SciencePunk on unexploded munitions from both World War 1 and World War 2, still showing up unexpectedly: The WMD was discovered, quite by chance, lying by...
View ArticleJourneyQuest S2E9: Retromancer
Related posts: JourneyQuest, Episode 1 JourneyQuest S2E1: An Epic? JourneyQuest S2E6: Better Than Sex
View ArticleCalifornia’s “wall of debt” actually a very high cliff of debt
Mary Williams Walsh on the so-much-worse than estimated debt of California: Gov. Jerry Brown of California announced when he came into office last year that he had found an alarming $28 billion “wall...
View ArticleGary Johnson polling at 6% in latest Reason-Rupe poll
The headline most media outlets would run includes just President Obama and Mitt Romney. If you allow more than two choices, however, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson changes the numbers a fair...
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This week in Guild Wars 2
My regular community round-up at GuildMag has been posted. In addition to the usual assortment of articles, videos and podcasts, there is the Mac OS X announcement, a flurry of whining over YouTube...
View ArticleRick Mercer’s first rant
No, not his own … the first one he remembers: One of my earliest life-defining memories as a kid was being dragged against my will to the bank because Mom had a meeting. I can remember sitting in a...
View ArticleThe “joy” of data-capped, throttled internet access
Welcome to Canada: Blogger Stephanie Morrow has complained about data caps in Canada for a while now. The details of her situation show just how hard it can be to get faster internet even if you are...
View Article“I can no longer shock [conservatives] when I tell them I’m gay – but I can...
Of all the political changes you might have expected to see in Canada, having Stephen Harper’s Conservatives become pro-LGBT must be one of the least likely: A mere seven years ago, the Tories were...
View ArticleCharles Stross on the diminishing marginal utility of just about everything
A post at his blog looks at an economic concept that is becoming familiar to more of us than ever before (even in the middle of a long-term economic crisis): There’s a concept in economics called the...
View ArticleMismeasuring inequality
If you haven’t encountered a journalist or an activist going on about the Gini Coefficient, you certainly will soon, as it’s become a common tool to promote certain kinds of political or economic...
View ArticleThe spectre of Ayn Rand is haunting America
Terence Corcoran on “the most dangerous woman in America”: Weird, I thought. Why would a world-famous economist, followed by millions, advisor to UN officials and presidents, launch into a personal...
View ArticleAre we really smarter than our great-grandparents?
An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal looks at the documented phenomenon of rapidly rising IQ in modern humans: Advanced nations like the U.S. have experienced massive IQ gains over time (a...
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Canada is open for (shady) business
The Economist looks at the relative level of difficulty in setting up a shell corporation in various jurisdictions and how easy it is to create an untraceable shell: Shell companies — which exist on...
View ArticlePlagiarism in the Globe and Mail
Writing at Maclean’s, Colby Cosh outlines the case against Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente and the Globe‘s public editor Sylvia Stead: Journalistic plagiarism is ordinarily regarded as what a...
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Vikings upset San Francisco 49ers in Minnesota
Lots of bookies are unhappy with the result of Sunday’s game in Minnesota, as the underdog Vikings played a complete game and came out with a big win over the heavily favoured San Francisco 49ers....
View ArticleUS Navy works with Chinese Navy ship for anti-piracy exercise
This is an unusual arrangement, but it makes sense in the larger picture: The U.S. Navy and the Chinese Navy conducted their first joint anti-piracy drill. A Chinese frigate (the 4,000 ton Type 54A...
View ArticleFlying cars are still (mostly) future-tech, but amphibious cars are almost here
Except for the WW2-era Schwimmwagen, no other amphibious car has gone into mass production. That might change soon, if Gibbs Technologies can square the circle between US highway regulations and US...
View ArticleWarren Ellis: the fun in politics is gone, gone, gone
In his weekly column at Vice, Warren Ellis finds it in his flinty heart to mourn the passing of fun in politics: There has long been a notion abroad that positions of authority should be given to the...
View ArticleOne thing the Occupy movement was absolutely right about: crony capitalism
In the Calgary Herald, Mike Milke says that the Occupy protest movement was spot-on in their criticism of crony capitalism: With the recent first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, consider one beef...
View ArticleIt’s not just your imagination: libertarians really are weird
Jonathan Haidt at the Righteous Mind summarizes a recent study published in PLoS ONE which looked at the psychology of libertarians (using conservatives and liberals as controls): The findings largely...
View ArticleMine operations in the Straits of Hormuz
Strategy Page runs down the history of naval mines and explains why Iran is most likely to try using mines to close down the critical Straits of Hormuz to tanker traffic if a new Gulf War begins: The...
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Chinese Navy commissions first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning
China’s first aircraft carrier has been commissioned under the name Liaoning (not Shi Lang as most earlier reports had stated). Chinese news agency Xinhua posted this report earlier today: China’s...
View ArticleA bit more progress in autism research
An article at the Wall Street Journal discusses some recent advances in uncovering the causes of autism: Scientists say that roughly 20% of autism cases can be linked to known genetic abnormalities,...
View ArticleQotD: Replacement NFL referees
The replacement officials are a mockery wrapped in a travesty, dunked in a vat of incompetence, glazed with WTF and set to the Benny Hill theme song. Scott Feschuk, “In defence of the replacement...
View ArticleSpaceX Grasshopper completes first (tiny) hop
At The Register, Lewis Page discusses the first successful launch-and-hover by SpaceX’s Grasshopper: SpaceX, the upstart space startup founded and bankrolled by famous internet nerdwealth kingpin Elon...
View ArticleReason.tv: Imagine (There’s No YouTube)
As protests against “The Innocence of Muslims” video span the globe — and U.S. officials pressure YouTube’s owner Google to restrict free expression — Remy imagines a world where politicians cave to...
View ArticleCoptic Christians and “The Innocence of Muslims”
Strategy Page has an article about the history of the Copts in Egypt after the Muslim take over: An ugly and ancient aspect of Islamic culture recently triggered violent demonstrations throughout the...
View ArticleShakespeare’s Henry V: public choice theory in the 15th century
In The Freeman, Sarah Skwire points out that the opening act of Shakespeare’s Henry V — while boring to those hoping for battle and carnage — explains the public choice economic theory of rent-seeking:...
View ArticleUnthinking support of “the troops”
If you’ve read the blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m far from anti-military. I was in the Canadian militia (the army reserve) during my teenage years, and still have friends who are serving in the...
View ArticleVirginia Postrel on the faulty notion of “secure jobs”
Along with proving that no American politician ever deliberately angers the “middle class” (because literally 89% of Americans consider themselves to be middle class), Virginia Postrel points out the...
View ArticleGary Johnson profile in Businessweek
He’s still struggling to get on the last three state ballots (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Oklahoma), but Gary Johnson does offer a very different vision than BaraMitt Obamney: Gary Johnson was governor...
View ArticleYahtzee Croshaw reviews Guild Wars 2
The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : Guild Wars 2 Related posts: Yahtzee reviews Duke Nukem Forever PC Gamer reviews Guild Wars 2 Guild Wars 2 to be available on Mac OS X
View ArticleThe Guild Season 6 trailer
Related posts: The Guild Season 4 trailer New trailer for Guild Wars 2 The Guild, Season 4 Episode 7
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Colin Russon, RIP
Obituary notice in the Calgary Herald, 27 September, 2012 Colin and I weren’t close — I hadn’t seen him in many years — but it’s still a shock when a family member (however distant) dies unexpectedly....
View ArticleDuelling reading lists for military science
Foreign Policy listed the “Top 10” books as recommended by the US Military Academy at West Point: On War, Carl von Clausewitz, 1832. I’ve read this, but perhaps it’s better in the original than in...
View ArticleReason.tv: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring at 50 Years
“It’s not polite to talk about brown and black people dying because rich white people in America feel better about themselves when the brown and black people don’t get to use DDT,” says the University...
View ArticleThe future of electronics might be biodegradable
Brid-Aine Parnell at The Register, talking about specialized electronic development: When it comes to electronics, boffins are usually going one way — how to make them smaller, faster and longer...
View ArticleDefending the welfare state … badly
At sp!ked, David Clements reviews a new book by Asbjorn Wahl which inadvertently exposes some of the very real problems of the modern welfare state in the process of praising and defending it: Asbjorn...
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This week in Guild Wars 2
My weekly community round-up at GuildMag has been posted. The game is now a month old, and the community is still posting game-related blog posts, videos, podcasts, and fan fiction at a blistering...
View ArticleEven when they quote you accurately, they can still miss the point you’re...
Tim Worstall, after thanking all the folks who got him to the point he can be quoted (and quoted accurately) in the Los Angeles Times, realizes that they’re using his words to present a point he isn’t...
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CN experiments with natural gas for its locomotives
Canadian National Railways is running a limited experiment with a pair of retro-fitted diesel locomotives converted to running on natural gas: Canadian National Railway is exploring whether its...
View ArticleHe comes not to praise Mists of Pandaria but to bury it
A harsh review of the latest World of Warcraft expansion in the PC World gaming column: As I’ve played the new WoW expansion this week and journeyed through the lands of Pandaria I’ve been struck by...
View ArticleDisabusing Canadians about mercantilism, one tweet at a time
Stephen F. Gordon is waging a lonely campaign to persuade Canadians that free trade is better than the managed, mercantilist “free trade” most of our governments have wanted since the NAFTA...
View ArticleRegulating the size of soft drinks won’t solve the obesity problem, but will...
At Reason, Baylen Linnekin explains that even if all the claims about the nutritional evils of sweetened soft drinks are completely true, regulations will not actually make much difference: As an...
View ArticleIf you’re not getting enough convictions on drug charges, tamper with the...
The war on drugs is already insane enough, with civil liberties being curtailed in pursuit of drug dealers and even drug users. The number of US citizens in prison for drug charges helps make the US...
View ArticleTracking (smaller) space junk in orbit
Strategy Page on the latest developments in tracking even smaller pieces of space junk in orbit around the Earth: The U.S. Air Force is spending nearly $4 billion to build a S-Band radar on Kwajalein...
View ArticleThe Two Scotts’ NFL picks for the week
I don’t take my NFL picks very seriously, but Scott Feschuk and Scott Reid are as unserious as possible: San Francisco (minus 4) at New York Jets Feschuk: […] Now the lockout is over, which is great...
View ArticleInnovative idea? Better get congressional approval before you go to market
Radley Balko linked to this story on Twitter, nominating it for the most “incredibly dumb IP story of the day“. Hard not to agree, possibly even upping that nomination to “of the month” or possibly...
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