Isaac Schrödinger

A Famous Bomber

OPFOR has a brief post about a great American.

Loved "Kind" Obama

Andrew Klavan on Why Are Conservatives So Mean?

Not me. I've always thought of myself as above mean.

Ignition and Beyond

Fusion tests set at new Livermore facility. If successful, it will:

-- Enable the keepers of America's nuclear warheads to make sure that, after decades in storage, those elderly weapons are still "safe, secure and reliable," as their keepers hope.

-- Enable astrophysicists and other scientists to study for the first time what kind of matter lies inside exploding stars, as well as in the deep high-pressure interior of Earth and its sister planets.

-- Finally, if the coming years of experiments, which start next year, are successful, a truly limitless supply of clean electrical energy with no carbon waste would be created using the limitless hydrogen fuel in the world's oceans.

And also the world will finally be able to deal with the oil-rich Islamists in a most proper manner.

Link via Charles.

A Great Author

Even though I am more into Western history, military and fiction, I can still appreciate certain mysteries.

Resistant

They can drink the water because their bodies are used to it.

When I visited my relatives in Pakistan, we always boiled water and let it cool before drinking it. Mind you, this was regular tap water. Drinking from a river would have been suicide.

Nightmare Work

Yeah, I wouldn't like his job either.

Can You See the Face?

A black and white shot with great stopping power.

Chasing Away the Goose

The Wall Street Journal via Glenn Reynolds:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%.

Some cities had even higher rates.

Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

Grin and bear it? Nope. They "sighed and left."

In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

Thank God for freedom of movement.

Keep the Change

Professor Reynolds writes deservedly scathing words for Obama.

I remember when Bush was harshly criticized for his unbelievable deficit spending in 2001. Proportionally, those deficits weren't huge. But now we've got a chance of hitting the two trillion mark for one year and the media is largely giving Obama a pass. The markets, however, will not react well to his economic stupidities.

All Women are Idiots

The Apostate: All men are rapists.

At the end:

All whiny comments defending the male species will be immediately deleted. In a post which is talking about the mass rape of the female half of a population - not an isolated occurrence in one weird country, but a common enough thing - a man need only speak up here if he's willing to join in the indignation that such a statistic should provoke in any decent human being worthy of the name. Everyone who is more concerned with fairness to MEN, who is concerned that the poor men are being unjustly maligned, can go try to teach fifty-year-old depraved monsters not to rape 7 year old girls.

That makes as much sense as the title of this post.

Shallow DOF

Such a creepy creature.

Twin, Half Brothers

Craziness via Code Monkey Ramblings:

A disbelieving Mia, 20, told The Sun: “Out of all the people in America and all the people in the world, this had to happen to me.”

Cute narcissism.

I bet her sons will someday think, "Out of all the people in America and all the people in the world, we had to have a whoring, birth control avoiding mom."

Various Animals

• Nice composition on the last photo.
• It's amazing how truly ferocious they look when they grow up.
• Pink Panther?
• Creepy eyes.

No Salvation

Wired via Hardocp:

One of the American military’s leading humanoid robots is Petman. Its job will be to testing chemical protection clothing for the U.S. Army. Petman is being built by Boston Dynamics, famous for its alarmingly lifelike BigDog robotic pack mule. Unlike earlier suit-testing robots, which needed external support, Petman will stand — and walk — on his own two feet.

“Petman will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents,” the company promises. “Petman will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions.”

[Emphasis mine.]

We're doomed.

High in Dubai

82nd floor to be precise.

The Patriarchy Made Me Do It

Fetiche Nouvelle giggles:

You could say a lot about that study without descending to calling it "lies." You could note that religious and cultural factors are non-uniform and quite powerful, as Apostate unconsciously does in citing Islamic honor killings. You could also say that men tend to change their attitudes toward women's sexuality as they age (the "not with my daughter, you don't" effect), so that societies top-heavy with older members are more disposed toward sexual constraint. But Apostate, a firebreathing militant feminist-Communist who can't differ with anyone without condemning him, has to call it "lies" immediately -- and imply that the authors are unqualified to reach such conclusions, to boot. On the other hand, her "feminist bloggers...who have real academic credentials" will straighten us all out. Indubitably!

The Apostate is quite a character. She sees sexism where others are too obtuse to notice and she thinks that communism is cool. She provides target-rich, logic-deficient posts very week. Her responses to blistering critique is "sexist!", "misogynist!", "stalker!" and "liar!" The beauty of the Internet is that folks can easily see and decide who has the arguments and who has the bile.

I'm thinking of writing a book filled with icy fiskings -- The Spanking of The Apostate by Isaac Schrodinger.

That sounds sinful on so many levels.

Is She Crying Yet?

The Apostate writes about me:

Updated to add link to my stalker’s site, and to say: the funny thing is, this guy who is obsessed with me makes a lot of posts mocking feminism, feminists (especially yours truly) and generally serving the patriarchy through lies and smirks, but being a former Muslim, he DOES acknowledge that Muslim women are oppressed, including sexually oppressed (the very thing he’s so happy is being demonstrated to be false in the article he links).

A few points:

1. Yes, that's right: Linking to and criticizing asinine statements is now considered "stalking". But then, she also thinks that Communism Is Cool, so it does make sense. No one is stopping the Apostate, or anyone else, from linking to my posts. To do so isn't called stalking. Heck, by that definition, I've been "stalking" Prof. Reynolds and Charles Johnson for five years. I guess it's easy to play the victim game than to reply to my posts. (I don't leave comments or trackbacks at her blog which makes the "stalking" charge even more inane. She chooses to visit my blog and then gets upset because she can't come up with cogent comebacks to my posts.)
2. So far, the Apostate and I strongly disagreed on many issues. However, she has decided to call me a liar. Here's a challenge, Apostate: Point out these lies.
3. I do mock feminists who think men and women are the same with the exception of their plumbing. They think that the gender differences -- the masculine and feminine qualities -- are created by society. This, I think, is silly. Men and women are attracted to different types of activities. This is largely why with almost total freedom, we see that certain fields still don't have a 50/50 gender divide; not because of some phantom discrimination but because, overall, men and women choose differently. To deny this is to inflict perpetual misery upon oneself.
4. Serving the patriarchy is lucrative. Every Friday I get a sizable cheque. Hey, it pays better than stripping. You know you would do it to!
5. Of course, Muslim women are oppressed. The religion of Muhammad is truly patriarchal. It's only when this system is said to be no different than the mechanisms of the West that we run into loony territory.

Here's a delicious strawman:

On the other hand, feminists apparently dreamt up the patriarchy, and no oppression exists or existed in the west.

Just because I disagree with her cute feminist views means that women were never oppressed in the West. I am blinded (ouch!) by the sheer brilliance of her argument.

Never mind that the same mechanisms are at work everywhere – the only difference is degree – and until the very recent past, the west was perpetrating the same oppression against western women that the east is perpetrating today, many of which oppressions haven’t completely been dismantled even in the west.

Many of these oppressions are still present in the West? What might they be? Please, do elaborate. By the way, men not noticing you without makeup doesn't count as oppression.

And the reason the west was able to progress beyond these oppressions to some extent is the work of feminists, because of which work my stalker can feel superior to those backward Islamic civilizations, while at the same time calling feminists crazy.

How…cognitively dissonant of him.

There is no cognitive dissonance since I do not credit feminists for the rise of women in the West in the past century. Unless, feminists are responsible for:

1. The revolution in agriculture over the last 120 years which ensured that an overwhelming majority of society didn't have to be in farming for civilization to survive. Only in the 21st century, did we for the first time have a situation in which most of the employed people on Earth are not into farm related work. This allowed jobs to come forth where women could comfortably work. (You know, because of their inferior physical strength.)
2. The pill.

Overall, I think the influence of recent feminists has been a net negative for most men and women. To feminists: Thinking of half the society as The Enemy is not healthy.

[Postdated from Monday to Friday; then back to Thursday.]

Behold the Man!

Rick Lee:

Is Pontius giving lessons in something?

Ha!

Hans!

The funniest video I've seen this year.

Repelling the Rich

Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore:

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Canadians talk of a 'brain drain' from Canada to the US because of lower taxes and high incomes for certain professions. It's amusing to see this process play out within the US as well.

Link via Instapundit -- I'm "stalking" him!

Better Than Google?

Tom's Hardware on Wolfram Alpha:

I wish I had this to do my homework for me. Well, back when I had homework.

Me too!

I searched for "population of india" and I got this informative page.

Then I searched for "isaac schrodinger" and I got: "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

It still needs work. :)

The Sorry Sisterhood

An abstract of an academic article via Dusk in Autumn:

Four theories about cultural suppression of female sexuality are evaluated. Data are reviewed on cross-cultural differences in power and sex ratios, reactions to the sexual revolution, direct restraining influences on adolescent and adult female sexuality, double standard patterns of sexual morality, female genital surgery, legal and religious restrictions on sex, prostitution and pornography, and sexual deception. The view that men suppress female sexuality received hardly any support and is flatly contradicted by some findings. Instead, the evidence favors the view that women have worked to stifle each other's sexuality because sex is a limited resource that women use to negotiate with men, and scarcity gives women an advantage.

[Emphasis mine.]

The Patriarchy^TM works in mysterious ways!

Rising Drops

A shot that can't be taken with basic, auto settings.

Grrrl Power

The Apostate:

I’ve been considering stripping for quite a while now. It was the first job I considered when I got to the US and I’ve fantasized about the “easy money” I imagine it yields many a time since then. I’ve never considered it as a “career choice,” only as a stop-gap bill-paying measure that will allow me flexibility and will have a higher return on the hours put in. I’ve never been desperate enough for cash to actually apply for any stripping jobs (or even waitressing jobs), but as I’m now entering my longest period of (voluntary) unemployment and staring looming law school debt in the face, the prospect of stripping sounds appealing.

Her parents must be proud! Their cute, little Muslim girl sure has grown up. After her, er, experience, she can probably turn her story into a novel: One Day in the Life of an ex-Muslim, Misandrist, "Communism Is Cool", Stripper.

It probably won't sell much because of The Patriarchy^TM.

So Pretty

Such rich colors.

A Moderate Blight?

Cafe Alpha asks:

Isaac are you willing to admit that moderate market socialists like Canada's NDP are not the blight on humanity that the Chinese or Soviet Communists were? How about admitting that the Canadian socialized medical system (initiated by the NDP in Sask) is overall an improvement over an American style system?

Yes to the first question. The NDP is more annoying than a blight. Every time I see Jack Layton it's like seeing a rottweiler in a chihuahua body.

I'm not sure about the answer to the second question since I'm ignorant about the particular points of the socialized system in Ontario/Canada and the quagmire that is the American system.

Here's my thinking: I don't agree with a universal health care system from which people don't have a choice to opt out of. As long as I could not pay taxes towards the health care system and use that money as I see fit, then I don't care what Canadians decide to do with their portion of the taxes.

Why don't I like universal health care? Because of three main reasons:

1. It limits freedoms. The government is now in the business of telling people what's healthy and not healthy. What we should eat and not eat. To tax heavily those things that are not healthy...etc.
2. It destroys the price mechanism. Health care becomes "free". People use it more often and therefore the costs of it are higher than they normally would be.
3. It's not truly insurance. Insurance is, usually, a payment provided in the case of an emergency or disaster but people use their health care to pay for regular visits to the doctor or simple medicine. People ought to pay for that themselves! It would be like using car insurance to pay for gas. There won't be much money left over in case of a true emergency.

A Historical Presidency

No black ink from Obama:

The federal government ran a deficit in April for the first time in 26 years, pushing the red ink so far this budget year to a record $802.3 billion.

More awesome history:

For the budget year that began Oct. 1, the deficit totals $802.3 billion, putting the country well on track to register the first $1 trillion annual deficit in U.S.

Link via Instapundit.

So Pretty

Windows 7 install on a beast of a desktop system -- the price of their hard drive alone can buy one an entire setup.

The task manager bit at 08:20 in the vid is sweet.

Madness on All Fronts

Victor Davis Hanson:

We are entering a new phase in which, for the first time since Jimmy Carter, an American administration really believes that land concessions back to 1967 will ipso facto ensure new mentalities that are not like those in 1967, when the Arab world on three occasions had gone to war to destroy the Jewish state within its 1947 borders.

It's the worst of both worlds: socialist economic policies plus selling out free allies. Some never learn.

Once U.S. foreign policy is based on moral equivalence — that a Western democratic state is about the same as an undemocratic, radical authoritarian entity that embraces terrorism as a tool of state policy — then anything is possible, from calling for Israeli nuclear disarmament as part of an Iranian deal, to pretending that a Hamas ten-year truce is something other than a decade of chest-thumping before the final assault.

Nothing good will come out of courting genocidal monsters. Obama, it seems, wants to kick this specific problem down the road for another president. He's too focused on bankrupting the American economy to pay much notice to foreign lands. If the Iranians were smart, they'd be pouring resources into and rushing their nuclear program. It the Israelis were smart, they'd be planning to annihilate the main Iranian facilities without American help.

OMG

It's Churchill!

Obamanomics

George Will via Greg Mankiw:

At the Academy of Obama, professors and others devise plans for extracting a new and improved automobile industry from a semi-sort-of-bankruptcy arrangement that -- if it survives judicial scrutiny; that is not certain -- will give the United Auto Workers 39 percent of General Motors, with the government owning 50 percent. During future contract negotiations, will the union's adversary be an administration that the union helped to put in power?

The UAW will own 55 percent of Chrysler, so perhaps the union will sit on both sides of the table in negotiations.

Rewarding failure never works.

Free Air

Instapundit:

AIRGUNS: Banned in Germany, but marked down at Amazon.

Awesome.

I want this one. Unfortunately, Amazon Canada doesn't sell it. :(

The Deficit President

Recently, the American government had to offer higher than expected interest rates to sell bonds. How will this impact the future deficits?

These projections had to consider interest payments on all of the debt Obama planned to buy while running these deficits, and any hike in interest rates means that those interest payments will have to go up. That also means that we will have to spend more money than Obama projected, creating even higher deficits and the need for even more bond sales — and more interest payments on those.

It’s basically a Ponzi scheme, and it’s accelerating.

Yup.

Born Famous

Fox News via Gateway Pundit:

"When I see that picture, the first thing I think of is how special and lucky I am to have God use me that way," Samuel told FOXNews.com. "I feel very thankful that I was in that picture."

More:

"It's just a miracle picture, a miracle moment," Clancy told FOXNews.com. "It shows the earliest human interaction ever recorded."

Sponsors of Tomorrow!

This made me chuckle.

Cutting the Deficit in Half ...

... By setting record-high deficits!

Good Idea!

The Apostate on the Supreme Court:

They better fucking nominate a woman. I’ll be fucking pissed if it’s a white guy - or a guy of any color, frankly.

Can't argue with that logic.

The comments section there gets entertaining when 'Infidel' joins in. The Apostate showcases the following rhetorical wreck:

“Extreme feminism and communism” are not “cool” because these ideas are alien where I come from - they are alien here as well, and that’s not what makes them cool. What makes them cool is that they are good ideas.

A few figures from page four of this book:

• Latin America: 150,000 deaths.
• Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths.
• Vietnam: 1 million deaths.
• Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths.
• Cambodia: 2 million deaths.
• North Korea: 2 million deaths.
• USSR: 20 million deaths.
• China: 65 million deaths.

Just how high does a mountain of skulls have to be before the responsible ideology is considered a bad idea?

Perhaps, the question could be put to the thousands who swam through shark-infested waters to escape "cool" Cuba?

The Apostate left Islam but follows these two odious commandments:

1. Men are the enemy.
2. Communism is cool.

What a sorry combo.

How Swine Flu Started

It's obvious when you think about it.

Dirty!

That's right.

Caturday

• Sauron.
• Two Saurons!
• Too much coffee.
• The cat vs. the bat.

Jon Stewart Gets Nuked

Bill Whittle does the honors. Link via Instapundit.

Bill Maher offered similar drivel a few years ago. My response is here.

Infinite Math Recognition

The Math Input Panel in Windows 7 and much more:

Have you ever written a math paper in Word or performed calculations in Mathematica, and spent hours creating equations using a multitude of buttons or a complex linear format, thinking: “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for an easy-to-use input method?” Well, your wishes have just come true, in addition to improving handwriting in Windows 7, we have also invested in recognizing ink drawn math equations.

Some years ago, I had to provide solutions to a few calculus problems in a Microsoft Word document. It was a hideously slow process. I wish this superb technology existed then.