Wisconsin

Those on the right, who oh so often are quick to denounce anyone who dares to suggest that Tea Party protesters, seem to have no problem condemning the protestors in Wisconsin as "violent thugs". They see no irony in this.

Are there some people among the protestors who've said stupid violent things? Sure? That's true of any large group. Will conservatives admit the same about tea-baggers? Apparently not.

Here's a good video about it.

DOMA Dead? Dun Dun DUNNN!!

So Obama has decided not to defend constitutional challenges to the Defence of Marriage Act. What practical difference will this make? One reason DOMA was passed was to prevent same-sex married couples from being able to demand that their marriages from being recognized in states that don't want to recognize them. Will people be able to do this now? Will people be able to cite the full faith and credit clause to force states to recognize same sex marriages performed in other states? Will the SCOTUS uphold its constitutionality without the Attorney General defending it?

Qaddafi on Drugs?

I've just been walking Fareed Zakaria on Parker/Spitzer and they asked him what his impressions of Qaddafi were when he interviewed him before the revolt in Libya. His response: "I seriously thought he was on drugs."

If only Qaddafi were not so brutal, he would be the coolest world leader out there today, with the exception of maybe Berlusconi. He dresses like he's a 17th century European monarch all dolled up for a portrait, and his 40 or 50 bodyguards are all women trained to use high powered weapons. He's like a teenaged boy who's been put in charge of a country.

Market Solution to Global Warming

Most of the really pro-free market guys say they don't believe in global warming, despite the science. Why is this? They seem to like science when it produces profitable technology, but not in this case. Why? I suspect it's because if they admit that global warming is real, that it is caused by human activity, and that it will cause massive problems very soon, their ideology provides no solutions.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that global warming is real, human caused and soon to do great damage. What is the free market solution to this? If clean energy doesn't become more profitable than fossil fuels in time to prevent catastrophe, how is the market going to address this problem? How do you fix this without state intervention?

You Think People'd Be Used to Snow by Now

This basically sums up my opinion of people whining about snow. Every time this happens people act like it's the first winter EVER and they have no idea what to do about this bizarre phenomenon that is snow.

They're After Your Women!!

Rabbis' wives in Israel are telling Jewish girls not to get into relationships with Arab men.

The statement was made in a letter organized by Lehava, an organization aimed at what it calls "saving the daughters of Israel" from assimilation. The group runs a shelter for Jewish women who have left their Arab partners and is calling for a boycott of a supermarket in Gush Etzion that employs Arab men and Jewish women.

And to avoid such a danger, they are telling them "Don't date non-Jews, don't work in places where there are non-Jews, and don't perform national service together with non-Jews". Why, you ask? Because "As soon as you're in their hands, in their village, under their control, everything changes." These sneaky Arabs may even try to disguise themselves as Jews! "In some of the places where Jewish girls might work, like supermarkets or hospitals, 'there are no few Arab workers who use a Hebrew name,' it [the letter] states. 'Yusuf turns into Yossi, Samir turns into Sami and Abed turns into Ami.'"

This is a totalitarian level of paranoia. Fortunately, the ladies who wrote this are on the fringes of Israeli society. A country in which this kind of talk is taken seriously could never be a free one. And it's not like they are talking about some serious epidemic of Jewish girls being whisked away by Arab men. According to the article in Ha'aretz, a paper not exactly known for its liberalism,

A protest in Bat Yam this month previously coupled the real estate issue with warnings that Jewish women should stay away from Arab men, though no convincing evidence was provided to indicate that such a phenomenon exists on a broad scale or that an increasing number of Jews are dating Arabs.

The letter also warns, "Your grandmothers never dreamed or prayed that one of their descendants would commit an act that would remove future generations of her family from the Jewish people". So remember girls, keep your race pure!

Apparently the Guy with $12.7 Billion Is Getting Ripped Off

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, is suing AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube for infringing on his patents for "related links", "alerts" and "recommendations".

This is the second time he's tried to file this lawsuit, because the first time the courts wouldn't here it due to the fact he was basically claiming that he invented the majority of the services that every major site on the internet provides. The language of the patents is so vague that one wonders how they even qualified as patents. The patent for "alerts" describes them as "displaying information to a user in an unobtrusive manner that occupies the peripheral attention of the user." In other words, Paul Allen is claiming to have invented putting shit to one side of the screen.

Also, I LOLd when I saw that the site that featured this story had two links below the first two paragraphs labelled "See more of our latest Patents coverage" and "add an alert for future coverage of Patents."