Doug McCaughan at KnoxNews makes the great point that for years, schools have been trying to get more computers into classrooms, only to now stigmatize and ban them when students bring their own in the form of cell phones and smartphones. To a certain extent, I suspect good old-fashioned technophobia, but I think there’s also [...]
I was at the shooting range and an unbelievably cute asian couple set up in the booth next to mine. The husband noticed that I had a 10/22, the same gun he had, and he started up a conversation. I looked over at his, and noticed it had a folding stock. And a pistol grip… [...]
Ars Technica is reporting some disappointing data on the web’s so-called “democratizing” effects. They report that political participation using web-centric methods such as emailing representatives or donating using paypal. Here’s the money quote: The depressing take-home from Brady’s talk was that, at least when it comes to participation in politics, the Web isn’t quite the [...]
I found a graphic from the New York times that perfectly displays not only the root of the current economic problem, but also inadvertently shows why Geithner’s new plan to fund private investment of securitized bank assets won’t work to fix it. Here’s the graphic: (click to see a larger version) There’s a particular quote [...]
1. The drug war has failed. We all know about the social problems, but fundamentally, drugs pose an economic problem because selling and transporting them is a relatively easy way to net hundreds or thousands of dollars that requires no special skills or large time commitments. For people who live in poverty and hold down [...]
Any time I read the writings of a member of the Judicial branch, I cannot help but feel terribly outclassed. Everything is meticulously reasoned and supported using the most sophisticated language, and the justices themselves often inject a usually acerbic wit into their arguments; consider the following reasoning from a minority opinion in K-mart v. [...]
Not many people realize how entwined the histories of gun control and racial discrimination are. I recently found an eye-opening article, originally published in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy and reproduced online with permission, that exposes the sordid truth. I feel it really pulled together a great deal of disparate facts on [...]
((so said a reformed Chicago gang member, whose firsthand experiences display the brazenness with which bans are ignored by criminals. In this case, the man was talking about how easy it was for him and his buddies to acquire illegal guns through illegal means, and how little they cared about it.)) I’ve long believed that [...]
The other day, my fiancée said, “You know, the liberal approach to guns is a lot like the conservative approach to birth control: keep it out of peoples’ lives and everything will be fine.” She’s right, of course. Liberals constantly deride conservatives’ efforts to restrict abortion and sex education because liberals know that absent these [...]