Step back, take a breath…

This didn’t take long-

Google Glass: The Opposition Grows. ”

The opposition will congregate in dark corners.

They will whisper with their mouths, while their eyes will scan the room for spies wearing strange spectacles.

The spies will likely be men. How many women would really like to waft down the street wearing Google Glass?

Uh, folks, have you looked around in any store you enter?  Heck, any public place? Any of the major streets in any town of any size in the ‘free‘ world? Cameras are everywhere already, 24/7!

With apologies to the new pope, ‘Lighten Up, Francis.’

Nuggets from the blogfather

(picked at random)

Let Them Eat Fat. “Preventing obesity is a laudable goal, but it has become the rationale for indiscriminate fat hunters. It can shade into a kind of bullying.” Most PC crusades are just a way of providing socially acceptable outlets for the urge to bully.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You Are Not a Unique Snowflake: Desk Jobs Suck Everywhere.

Lockheed Martin Throws More Dirt On Malthus’ Grave. “Cheap, clean water may soon be available for the whole planet. According to Reuters, defense contractor Lockheed Martin has developed a filter that will hugely reduce the amount of energy necessary to turn sea water into fresh water.”

WELL, ONCE THEY WENT AFTER PICKUP ARTISTS AS A “HATE GROUP,” THEY KINDA JUMPED THE SHARK: The SPLC’s bogus “Hate List.”

Meanwhile, let’s not forget the Southern Poverty Law Center’s own “kill map,” which has produced actual shootings.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can You Get Addicted To Your Vibrator?

THAT’S NOT WHAT WE WERE PROMISED: Everyone More Miserable as Fathers Pitch in Around House.

VALENTINE’S DAY FOR MEN: Steak & BJ Day.

I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead. all salute the mighty Glenn!

 

An apology

Sorry for the light posting lately, folks. It’s just that the news is been so bad, the world so crazy in my eyes, that I’ve just not felt like writing anything at all. It gets old just dinging on the president and that’s all I’ve been doing. So, a break!

I’m sure I’ll be back with my normal smart-assery soon.

Props to Thomas Sowell

Who? Glad you asked. Merely on of todays great thinkers, and widely reviled because of it.

In an article at Townhall.com Mr. Sowell points out the great fallacy in the thinking of all the big government collectivists- they call themselves “progressives”, I call them “Stalinists”- that somehow governments can better figure out how we should run our lives than we can.

John Stuart Mill’s classic essay “On Liberty” gives reasons why some people should not be taking over other people’s decisions about their own lives. But Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard has given reasons to the contrary. He cites research showing “that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging.”

Professor Sunstein is undoubtedly correct that “people make a lot of mistakes.” Most of us can look back over our own lives and see many mistakes, including some that were very damaging. (Boy, can I! – ed.)

What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other than people, are going to override our mistaken decisions for us. That is the key flaw in the theory and agenda of the left.

Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us.

Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?

And that superior sort of folks will never, ever leave us be. See the Lewis quote at the top of the blog.

He then provides a list of great moments in government- World War One, the Holocaust, the Great Depression… I’m sure if you think a moment you can come up with numerous other examples, both micro and macro.

Too many among today’s intellectual elite see themselves as our shepherds and us as their sheep. Tragically, too many of us are apparently willing to be sheep, in exchange for being taken care of, being relieved of the burdens of adult responsibility and being supplied with “free” stuff paid for by others.

Problem is, the ‘others’ are getting restive and resentful. In response, our government has purchased billions of rounds of ammunition and 2700 MRAP’s for the DHS. Am I the only one who finds that a wee bit frightening? When the hammer comes down, I will not be on my knees. How many of you can honestly say the same?

How many of you are sheep?

Thanks to Samizdata for the pointer.

 

R.I.P. Andrew Breitbart

Iowahawk has a nice elegy:

With all the tributes and venom being churned out today it’s obvious he still looms large in the political conversation, and it’s hard to think of another figure in media or activism who would be a trending topic a year after their death. I think the reason why is that he represented a new kind of cultural/social conservative. Maybe not in the conventional sense (it’s still fun to freak my liberal friends by noting Andrew’s status as a pro-gay marriage, pro-pot decriminalization Jewish activist for women and minorities who loved of 80s New Wave), but on the value of honesty. I’ve heard him referred to as a “reactionary.” I suppose he as a reactionary – in the literal sense – against an increasingly contrived, vapid, narrative-driven news culture, one that attacks and marginalizes any non-conforming message. He studied the bullies’ playbook, called them out, and bloodied their noses. Hard as it may be for these bloody-nosed bullies to believe, it had nothing to do with their ‘liberal’ politics. If there was a parallel universe with a dominant right wing media culture as dishonest and conformist and thuggish as the left wing one here, Andrew would’ve been more than happy to rocket there and punch them in the mouth, too. If that’s what a reactionary is, then sign me up for the t-shirt.

Sleep well, happy warrior.