Month: February 2014

Shall we bring back the passenger pigeon? …Sure: I hear that they’re tasty.

Via AosHQ, meet a controversy you may not be aware of: the politics of using genetic engineering to recreate extinct species. Although admittedly the NYT thought that it was just writing about passenger pigeons.

More pressing to conservationists is a practical anxiety: Money. De-extinction is a flashy new competitor for patronage. As the conservationist David Ehrenfeld said at a Revive & Restore conference: “If it works, de-extinction will only target a very few species and is extremely expensive. Will it divert conservation dollars from tried-and-true conservation measures that already work, which are already short of funds?”

[snip] Continue reading Shall we bring back the passenger pigeon? …Sure: I hear that they’re tasty.

Connecticut to gun owners: hey, did you *try* to register? …SUCKERS!

Well, isn’t this just a fine how-do-you-do:

After tens of thousands of defiant gun owners in Connecticut chose not to register their semi-automatic rifles to comply with a hastily-passed gun control law, the state is now taking some action. Officials are reportedly notifying gun owners who submitted late applications that they have one last chance to get rid of their “illegal” weapons.

State officials did accept some gun registration applications that were submitted after the Jan. 4 deadline, however, not all late applications were accepted, the Journal Inquirer reports.

“But rather than turn that information over to prosecutors, state officials are giving the gun owners a chance to get rid of the weapons and magazines,” the report adds.

Continue reading Connecticut to gun owners: hey, did you *try* to register? …SUCKERS!

I am distracting myself with “Cthulhu in World Mythology.”

Well, in about five minutes I will be going to bed.  But before that I was reading Cthulhu in World Mythology (which I actually picked up via the Atomic Overmind Press site (they take PayPal)); it is most diverting in its conceit (which is that the Cthulhu cult invented by HP Lovecraft actually has historical evidence of its existence).  If you like tongue-in-cheek academic parodies – and who does not? – and the Mythos you might find this worth picking up. Continue reading I am distracting myself with “Cthulhu in World Mythology.”

Illinois businesses now shedding work-hours, thanks to #Obamacare.

If you want less of something, you tax it. Thanks to the – I almost said “Byzantine,” but your average Byzantine Empire bureaucrat would be insulted at the slight to his competence, and for good reason – thanks to the insanely complicated nature of Obamacare, it pretty much acts as a tax on generating full-time jobs.

Guess what happened?

No, go on. Guess. Continue reading Illinois businesses now shedding work-hours, thanks to #Obamacare.

Hey! Twenty three Democratic Senators can do minimum wage math!

Shocking. Why have they hidden their light under a bushel for all these years?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday delayed action on legislation raising the minimum wage, the centerpiece of the Democrats’ 2014 agenda.

[snip]

Reid has not yet unified his caucus on the issue, which is a constant in the Democrats’ election-year playbook. Of the 55 senators who caucus with the Democrats, only 32 have signed on as official co-sponsors of Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) bill.

Continue reading Hey! Twenty three Democratic Senators can do minimum wage math!

I miss my old immune system.

The colds just keep spiraling through the house: kids get it, I get it, wife gets it, kids get whatever the hell my wife also catches in the process, rinse, repeat. So posting may be taking second fiddle to sleep for a couple of days.

Moe Lane

What’s that?  “Could my recent downloading Assassin’s Creed IV be affecting this at all?”  …Well, you could very well say that; but I couldn’t possibly comment.  Also: freaking snipers.

Rumblings of worry among the Left over 2014.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The entertaining bit about this Bill Press piece is not that he’s hilariously wrong about where the evvvvvvillllll Koch Brothers fall on the donor scale, or perhaps scale of donors; nor is it that he seems to think that there’s more than a physics’s chance* of the Democrats retaking the House.  It’s that his basic point is, in fact, sound: by all means, the Democratic party should concentrate on the 2014 elections first**.  But the likelihood that the institution in question will think clearly on that subject? …Well, that’s another physics’ chance.

Moe Lane Continue reading Rumblings of worry among the Left over 2014.