Month: April 2010

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

For when a simple ‘Dude’ just won’t do.

USC scientists figure out how to turn t-shirts into body armor

Researchers at the University of South Carolina have figured out how to combine the carbon component of cotton with boron to create a cotton t-shirt with the toughness of body armor.

One long step closer to the battlesuit that I’m going to need if I ever plan to go out there and FIGHT CRIME!

…pretend that you didn’t read that, OK? One way, or the other.

Moe Lane
Continue reading Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

‘Liberaltarianism.’

Yeah, some people are still trying to revive that one.

Professor Bainbridge (via Instapundit) is having fun with demolishing this one by bringing up public sector unions, and why the Democrats won’t abandon them for libertarian votes. It’s a perfectly good practical observation, but I’d like to kick liberaltarianism right in its fundamental principles, so here goes:

What, precisely, is the liberaltarian response to health care? Putting only one-twelfth of the US economy under government control?

Thanks, I’m here all week! Tip your waiter! …until the beginning of the next fiscal quarter, when the new federal guidelines on compulsory nondiscriminatory automatic gratuity surcharges on all waitperson-customer interactions go into effect.

Moe Lane

PS: The fact that you were worried there for a second that there might actually be new federal guidelines goes a long way towards proving my point.

Crossposted to RedState.

#RSRH Quote of the Day, Ed shouldn’t have bothered edition.

Hope springs eternal, I guess:

One of our passengers in the van opened the door to engage them and asked them if sex was a human right, to which they shouted “Yes!”  Maybe they’d like to explain how that works when one can’t find a partner f0r that kind of activity, but that would presume that they understand the concept of human rights at all.  Since they’re arguing that health care and housing are “rights,” I doubt they would grasp the dilemma.

This is from the SRLC, whose counter-protests were apparently… lacking.  Mind you, given the way that the Left’s faux-populism has been shown up lately by actual grassroots activists, possibly I am merely judging progressives by a standard that they are simply inherently incapable of meeting.

#rsrh Kept down by the Man.

(H/T: Hot Air) Taylor Marsh wants to know:

Where is the woman on the left who can make headlines and draw crowds like Sarah Palin, Liz Cheney, perhaps even a re-entry of Dr. Condoleezza Rice?

…as if she didn’t know the answer already – which is, “stuck permanently below the twin filters of Democratic establishment orthodoxy and left-feminist orthodoxy.”  To put it simply, anybody who can manage to bow at both altars without irony or self-consciousness is going to be as dull as dishwater.  This is not a bug, and this is not even a feature: it is in fact the goal.  The entire organization of the Other Side is designed to take radicals, populists, mavericks, and/or anybody else with a desire to change the system and put them off to the side, where they can be fed a steady diet of hate-the-enemy, periodically shaken down for money, and pointed at Republican and conservative targets.  This preserves Democratic party apparatchiks and keeps the entire edifice humming nicely along, and nobody important is discommoded by it.

Again, Taylor Marsh must know of this system: heck, Taylor Marsh is an enabler of the system (writer for HuffPo, after all: which exists to tamp down left-activism and keep it working for Establishment Democrats).  So why is she pretending that she doesn’t?

Moe Lane

Kaczynski plane crashes en route to Katyn.

No reported survivors.

Horrible news from Poland:

Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed early Saturday along with his wife, several top military officials, and the head of the national bank when their plane crashed at a western Russian airport, officials said.

“There are no survivors,” said Sergey Antufyev, the [acting] governor of Smolensk, where the plane was trying to land when it crashed.

A spokesman for Poland’s Foreign Ministry, Piotr Paszkowski, said earlier that it was probable that everyone on board was killed.

President Kaczynski and his party were on their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre; the site at Katyn has become the visible symbol of the atrocity where twenty thousand Polish officers captured during the Soviet Union’s sneak attack on Poland were secretly executed by the NKVD* (ancestor to the KGB), and has strong resonances to modern, post-Warsaw Pact Poland. While the continuity of government in Poland has not been completely compromised (as is common in Europe, the head of government is the Prime Minister, who was not on the flight), the Polish military has been devastated by this – as has been Poland generally.

The President of the United States and other world leaders have released statements of sympathy and condolences to Poland – as do we; Kaczynski and Poland were and are true friends to the United States. Our prayers and sympathies go out to that country.

Moe Lane

*No Russian government has yet to admit this to be a war crime.

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Talking in your sleep.’

I’ve never heard of Space Cowboy before.


Talking In Your Sleep, Space Cowboy

But it’s like somebody opened a wormhole to the early 1980s and brought back a synthpop* band. And their favorite video director.

Moe Lane

PS: And is this a parody?

*Let the arguments now start whether I really meant synthpop or New Wave or pop rock.

1Q 2010: Crist raises 1.1 million to Rubio’s 3.6.

It’s not your time, Governor.

Via Hot Air: Allahpundit independently makes the same suggestion…

If I were Crist, here’s what I’d do. First, I’d dial up Jeb Bush and ask him whether there’s any chance whatsoever that he’ll endorse me. If he says no (which seems likely), either because he’s backing Rubio or staying out of the race, then I’d dial up Rubio and offer him a deal. In return for me dropping out right now, endorsing him, and helping him fundraise, I’d ask for a commitment that he’ll help me beat Bill Nelson in 2012. That’s really the only way at this point that Crist can regain his standing among the base, whom he’ll need to have onboard for any shot at the Senate.

…that I did last month, only I didn’t bother with suggesting that Crist give Jeb an opportunity to bail him out.  It’s not too late, Governor: you still have something to trade.  We don’t have to let this situation deteriorate further.

But the clock’s ticking.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.