Applied Indifference

The nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court of the United States of America has me excited.

All the right people are outraged. That’s a good start. And the predictable bleating from the left is there.

In fact, pretty much everything I’ve read on the left criticizing this man centers on one thing, and one thing only: abortion.

The left is convinced beyond reason that not only will this man single-handedly overturn Roe, but since he found no fault with a Pennsylvania spousal-notification law, they are actually arguing that a husband has no legitimate stake in deciding if his child is even born!

So far, what I’ve seen of Alito is that he would rather leave things like abortion up to the states. The leftists, of course, can’t take the risk that some state might not actually play ball with their far-left agenda, so they need the Supreme Court to enforce their belief system. After all, we can’t possibly trust the ignorant American population to select the socialist agenda.

Tags: Politics, Society by Brian Corbino
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Maureen Dowd wonders (yet again) What’s a modern girl to do?

MoDo has bloviated in the past about how so many of her successful friends are in their forties and still single. Of course, she notes that men would rather marry their personal assistants — and of course determines it is because men fear powerful, successful, intelligent women.

She’s wrong, of course. One of the traits of the business world is competition. Men are inherently competitive, but we know when to turn it off. Women in the business world, in a misinterpretation of how to be sucessful, try to emulate men. It doesn’t get them far professionally, and furthermore they forget to turn it off when they leave the office.

Contrary to popular belief, men aren’t afraid of intelligent women. Personal assistants are often quite intelligent, given that they are essentially the support crew for a business executive. It can’t be fear of power either, since a personal assistant wields considerable power over the person she assists. And if she wasn’t successful at what she did, she’d be unemployed.

No, what we don’t want is women who are bitter shrews who view every interaction with a man as a power transaction. We don’t want competition, we want companionship. When you turn dating into combat, we walk away.

Maureen Dowd, who is by no means unattractive, is her own worst enemy. She is the epitome of the high-maintenance woman. She’s not independent, she’s needy. Why the hell would a sane man want a woman who isn’t capable of standing on her own two feet?

(N.B. the title is the kind of commentary that men often get when we criticize the sisterhood as being insufficiently womanly. We are assumed to be embittered cads suffering from an extended bout of blue balls. Turnabout’s fair play, eh?)

Tags: Society by Brian Corbino
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(hat tip: Drudge)
From NBC-2 in Florida: Mysterious ‘2′ on Radar.

Watch the video loop. You can see in the doppler of Hurricane Wilma a well-defined ‘2′ show up in the eye.

That’s friggen cool.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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It is raining again. There are flood watches again. And Wilma is carrying a big pot of moist air north. No, sir, I don’t like it.

If Wilma decides to hang a left and come visit, we are going to be VERY wet in a VERY big hurry. We’re talking 1955 wet. This is, as they say, a Bad Thing.

I hope Wilma decides to be aloof. This is the first time I have ever hoped for a woman to ignore me.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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Jack Thompson’s at it again. Threatening to sue (or attack, depending upon the story and the time of day) anyone that dares question his intentions or sanity.

Jack holds himself out as some important moral arbiter of society, single-handedly fighting off the hordes of evil that are the Video Game Industry.

He honestly believes that video games like “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” are murder simulators, because one psychopath who shot up a police station told him so. He thinks that second-rate Leonardo DiCaprio movies make kids slaughter gymnasiums full of students.

This man is clearly not living on the same plane of reality as you and I.

First, he has no concept of mathematics. If he did, he’d realize that one person going nuts and blaming a game that sold many millions of copies is not exactly gonna pass the laugh test for causality.

He also doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a properly controlled study and a bogus PR stunt. He claims that there are all sorts of studies that show a definitive link between video game exposure and violent behavior in young persons. Never mind that the studies he cites weren’t controlled for mental disorders, nor were they controlled for much of anything else. And the ones that I’ve read seem to ask the kids how they “felt” after playing a game, and didn’t actually see if they were more criminally inclined.

He also has a poor grasp on statistics. I’ve not seen one analysis of youth crime that shows an increase in violent crime among children since the advent of video games. And given how much more media attention crime gets, and how much more trivial a thing it takes to be accused of a violent crime, that’s no mean feat.

Simply put, the man is so full of shit that he cannot help spewing it out of his mouth in continuous streams.

Jack, shut your mouth and crawl back under your rock. We are bigger than you, smarter than you, and we have better lawyers than you. If you continue to fuck with us, you WILL be destroyed. And I’m not talking about merely being embarrassed on the national stage by losing in court. You’ll lose the one thing that makes your miserable existence possible - your law license.

Tags: Video Games by Brian Corbino
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Jeff at Protein Wisdom says what I mean.

The Conservative resistance to the Miers nomination is not grounded in elitism as some have argued. It’s certainly not grounded in sexism as Laura Bush has outright accused. It is based upon the simple fact that there is nothing in Miers background, career, or writings that implies that she is anything other than a “go along to get along” type.

Personally, I could give a shit about Roe v. Wade. Anyone who thinks that the Supreme Court is going to overturn it is nuts. Anyone who thinks that overturning it will have the effect of instantly wiping out abortion is certifiable. This is considering the facts that I am against abortion in nearly all cases, and think that Roe was wrongly decided.

What’s at stake here is far greater than any one pet cause. We’re talking about the future of American jurisprudence. Roberts is already showing his cards. He’s all about the stare decisis. Sure, considering precedent is valuable when evaluating law. But it should not be held to with an iron grip. What makes Miers appear worse (and keep in mind I’m going off of random snippets of the few things that ARE known about her) is that she, like O’Connor, is willing to let not only legal precedent guide her decisions, but also social opinion.

We should not be putting justices on the bench of the highest court in the land who believe in the myth of “settled law”. To do so is tantamount to establishing Judicial Infallibility.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Hugh Hewitt, noted Presidential apologist, seems to think that opposition to the Harriet Miers nomination runs along a Boston/Washington Axis of Elitism. Further, he posits that the “base” actually supports the Miers nomination for the same reason he does, which is essentially “trust the president”.

Hugh, I quite simply cannot do that. Bush has done nothing to advance the conservative agenda since his election. Tax cuts are meaningless when spending increases. A war on terror that refuses to speak the name of the enemy is no war. His domestic response to 9/11 was as ridiculous as Clinton’s response to Oklahoma City - that being expand government power and restrict civil liberties.

Hugh manages to put this whopper in:

Rather, it is an argument about who leads the conservative movement and the GOP. The president does, and as a result the Miers nomination will succeed despite obvious and sincere dissatisfaction along the BWAE.

This is, of course absurd. The President clearly does NOT lead the conservative movement, precisely because he is not now nor has he ever been a conservative. I have been arguing this point since before he was even anointed as the Republican nominee in 2000.

Given the whispering campaign being conducted in favor of Miers, and the assortment of far-left senators who actually support her nomination, I’m inclined to say her nomination should be withdrawn, or she should at least remove herself from consideration. Spare the nation the farce of a softball confirmation process. There is no doubt in my mind that Harriet Miers will be the same kind of justice as Sandra Day O’Connor, whom she is to replace. The court does not need another “swing” vote that will sway with the breezes of public opinon.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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After seeing this mentioned at Lileks, I figured I’d give it a shot on my Sony MZ-RH10 Hi-MD Minidisc recorder. It had been badly scratched by merely being in my hand. And I’m not talking about the minor scratching that Todd had on his iPod, I’m talking about scratches so bad you need to tilt the unit to see the screen.

Brasso did a wonderful job taking out those scratches, and my MZ-RH10 is, while not perfect (hey, I spent a minute on it, and I got what I wanted. Leave me alone) it certainly is much better than it was.

And, in the more bang for the buck category: A quick application took out the surface scratches on the touchscreen of my Nintendo DS. I’ll try a more vigorous application later to see if it can take out the deeper cuts.

And if I’m feeling particularly brave, I’ll try to buff out the scratches in the clearcoat on my motorcycle.

Tags: Technology by Brian Corbino
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Battery life. You get this phone, it’s supposed to have 4 days of standby. I’m lucky if I get two with moderate usage. OK, fine. But to have the thing croak in less than 24 hours is unacceptable.

Lesson learned: always bring a charger on a road trip, even if it’s one day.

Insert random expletives here.

Tags: Technology by Brian Corbino
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After yesterday’s depressing incident with The Buttery, we desperately needed a new place for lunch in Vermont. The Vermont Country Store in Weston, VT has a restaurant next door called Bryant House. You go over there, put your name down on the list, and then you can browse the store until your table is called. How cool is that?

Lunch - I could eat lunch there every day for two weeks and not try everything that looked good to me, but I had one afternoon. Then I saw it: “GRILLED VERMONT CHEDDAR SANDWICH PLATE”. Let me tell you - this was the finest grilled cheese sandwich to ever pass through my face. And the fries are unlike any you’ve ever had. Very crispy, very light.

So, the Yearly Vermont Road Trip is no longer in peril. I don’t know that we’ve a compelling reason to hit Manchester any longer, but a ride to Weston is still in the offing for October.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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