And you may quote me

I like to quote quotes worth quoting. This one is mine; I coined it today. You are free to use it with (of course) appropriate attribution:

Sometimes laughter is not a choice, it's the only viable option before firearms come into play.

Hit and Run

From a comment on Reason's Hit and Run:

If we're going to have a serious war on drugs, we need to start with the opiate of the people.

It pays to have the right friends

What causes a jump in daily page views from 2 to 176? A link from Anthony Gregory.

The usual suspects. As usual.

Per Jim Henley:

From what I can tell in the last couple days’ reading, Katrina has chiefly served to confirm people in their previously held views. Liberals proclaim it proof of the need for a robust federal government (shades of Bill Moyers in September 2001), conservatives find themselves confirmed in their belief in the overriding importance of social order vigorously enforced, and libertarians regard the disaster and its aftermath as an exemplary failure of government. (Anarchists see government failing at even its core functions. State-accepting libertarians see government as having ignored its core functions for inappropriate pursuits.) Environmentalists amaze themselves with the realization that Katrina proves we need cars with better gas mileage and religious nuts of all persuasions discern the hand of God smiting their - and, need it be said, his own - enemies.

Hooray! Everyone wins! Again!

Hat tip goes to Jesse Walker at Reason's Hit and Run.

I need this! I need this right now!

If you really need an unbelievably powerful magnet, here it is (ALTG note: scroll down for it). Uses include magnetic steering of nuclear particles in homemade accelerators, magnetic beam amplifiers, etc. Beware - you must think ahead when moving this magnet. If carrying it into another room, carefully plan the route you will be taking. Computers & monitors will be affected in an entire room. Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly considerable distances - and at great speed - to attach themselves to this magnet. If you get caught in between the two, you can get injured. We can only ship this magnet by ground UPS - it cannot be shipped via air as it will interfere with the aircraft's navigational equipment.

I don't know why I need this, but I do.

All hail Dave Barry's blog.

Holy crap, I've been studied!

Like an E. coli colony on a petri dish, I have apparently been an unwitting subject in an academic study, as described here:

Have read my first academic article about blogs! And it was interesting the entire time. This is such a great topic. It's called 'Political Blogs and the Bloggers Who Blog Them: Is the Political Blogosphere an Echo Chamber?' The author, Kevin Wallsten, studies a random-ish sample (random-ish because there is no master list of blogs, and no official definition of a 'political' blog) of the relatively unpopular blogs written by ordinary citizens for a small audience.

...

One of the fun things about this study is that you can actually visit the blogs he studied, most of which are still in operation, such as AgnostoLibertarianTechnoGeek...

Now wait one second. "Relatively unpopular blogs"? How demeaning. Let's be more accurate, and call ALTG a completely unknown blog.

There, that's more like it.

Federal incompetence

Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish on Meet the Press:

We had Wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. Trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back, said we didn't need them... yesterday, FEMA comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in. He reconnects the line. He posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines... [I]f American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

Video here. Hat tip Lew Rockwell.

It doesn't take a weatherman to see which way the wind blows

Bush Says Relief Results 'Not Acceptable' - Yahoo! News:

President Bush, facing blistering criticism for his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday 'the results are not acceptable' and pledged to bolster relief efforts with a personal trip to the Gulf Coast.

...

'There's a lot of aid surging toward those who've been affected. Millions of gallons of water. Millions of tons of food. We're making progress about pulling people out of the Superdome,' the president said.

For the first time, however, he stopped defending his administration's response and criticized it. 'A lot of people are working hard to help those who've been affected. The results are not acceptable,' he said. 'I'm heading down there right now.'

Bush hoped that his tour of the hurricane-ravaged states would boost the spirits of increasingly desperate storm victims and their tired rescuers...

Sure, that's what they need, having their spirits bolstered.

...and they're being shipped "millions of tons of food"? Is that possible?

Yes, he cares about the people

In his TV interview this morning, our Dear Leader had this to say:

Asked if U.S. oil companies should forfeit profits during the crisis, Bush said instead American corporations should contribute cash to hurricane relief funds.

Let's see, the number of people directly affected by the hurricane is, what, a couple million maybe? The number of people indirectly affected by the hurricane's effect on gas and oil prices is, what, the entire fucking population of the country?

Now I'm not proposing any sort of governmental mandate on prices (that would so not work (besides being immoral) -- anyone remember the gas shortages of the 1970's? -- yes I'm that old), but if we're calling for some sort of charitable giving, how about something that will actually benefit *everyone* affected by this disaster's effect on the economy? Oh, but sorry, I forgot that it's better for the oil companies' bottom line if they give to disaster relief funds rather than cut back their profit margins temporarily.

Silly me.