ThePirateBay.org Raided

Slyck News:

"In a move that many thought would never come, Slyck.com learned this morning that ThePirateBay.org was raided by Swedish police.

“…The police right now is taking all of our servers, to check if there is a crime there or not (they are actually not sure),” ThePirateBay.org spokesperson “brokep” told Slyck.com.

The seizure of ThePirateBay.org’s entire server farm will guarantee this BitTorrent tracker will remain offline until the police complete their investigation. The uncertainty on the part of the police may stem from the fact ThePirateBay.org's servers only host .torrent files, not actual copyrighted material."

F**K the POLICE!

Kudlow:

Kudlow's Money Politic$: Great American Boom Continued: "Economic pundits keep telling us about the impending slowdown. Well, they’ve been waiting for a slowdown for years. Actually, I’ve heard about this slowdown for 25 years, ever since Reagan restructured and revived American capitalism through low tax rates, deregulation, and disinflation.

The reality is about 3.5 percent growth since the early 1980’s with very few interruptions. Total employment and wealth creation have soared during this entire span of time.

There’s a lesson here: Tax incentives matter. Price stability matters. Markets are smarter than central planners.

Think of it."

Congress needs to be Fired

National Review Online:

"By nothing more than dumb luck, the Republican-controlled Congress—lambasted for the junkets, earmarks, and “culture of corruption” that have aligned to produce the lowest approval ratings in memory—was handed a shot at some desperately needed redemption. All its leaders had to do was make the right choice between condemning the rankest corruption and displaying an outsized arrogance. Guess which one they chose?"

This whole scandal, whereing Congress claims to be immune from FBI probes even when the FBI has a warrant, sickens me. Why would I want Congressmen, of all people!, to be above the law ...to be above criminal investigation. Heck, I'd like to make it easier to probe congressmen -- I say: take Congressman Jefferson to the nearest prison and give him a rectal exam and find out where exactly he's hidden all of his bribe money.

How Police Interrogation Works

Howstuffworks.com:

"One method of creating a baseline involves asking questions that cause the suspect to access different parts of his brain. The detective asks non-threatening questions that require memory (simple recall) and questions that require thinking (creativity). When the suspect is remembering something, his eyes will often move to the right. This is just an outward manifestation of his brain activating the memory center. When he's thinking about something, his eyes might move upward or to the left, reflecting activation of the cognitive center. The detective makes a mental note of the suspect's eye activity."

This is a fascinating article on how police get confessions -- classic psychological warfare. It amazes me that more suspects don't simply demand a lawyer; every cop show I've seen has the lawyer's first advice being "don't say anything to the police".

iDon't

Engadget:

"In a viral marketing move that's sure to draw the fire of Apple fanboys enthusiasts (probably right here in the comments, if history is any indication), SanDisk has posted a website called 'iDon't' that encourages people to flee the closed iPod universe (the 'iTatorship,' they call it) -- and to pick up a SanDisk Sansa e200 while they're at it. While we certainly won't go into the pros and cons of each company's products here (mainly for fear of getting flamed), we must say that the iDon't site features little compelling content other than a few cheesy wallpaper downloads and some links to anti-iPod sites, and mostly comes across as sour grapes from the runner-up in an industry being dominated by a single player. Still, other manufacturers need to do something in order to gain market share, and R&D is, like, really expensive, so if you can convince a couple of kids to sport t-shirts and buddy icons featuring your propaganda, who knows, maybe a few consumers will bite."

As a proud ownder of iPod's nano, I can honestly say that Apple pwns the digital music market because their players are simply better and the customer experience is superior to their competitors. (Not that I've *ever* bought a song off iTunes, remember fight the power!)

Xbox 360 hack downloadable

Xboxic:

"They took their sweet time after the first announcement on March 18th, but finally someone has bothered releasing a redistributable version of the firmware hack allowing you to boot backups on your Xbox 360"

Yes, all you 360 gamers out there can now just borrow the games from your friends and burn them to a DVD+R/DL (if you have access to such a burner). The hack involves opening up your xbox case and plugging the data cable from the dvd drive into an SATA socket on your mobo. Then boot from a DOS floppy disk and run some software to reflash the drive's firmware chip. All-in-all its a straightforward modification, but its going to be too much for 99% of xbox owners out there.

Yahoo 2.0

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact:

"For a year or more, a common buzzword uttered by Yahoo engineers and executives has been 'social media' -- the idea that one-to-many communication on the Web has given way to many-to-many communication, and that traffic and conversation naturally cluster around content, such as videos, photos, blog posts, and bookmarks. Examples of social media in action at Yahoo include My Web 2.0, where users can save, share, and tag Web pages they've visited; Yahoo 360, a free blogging and social networking service; and Flickr, which first popularized the concept of 'tagging,' or adding informal labels to content such as photos to facilitate searches later."

Allright, as a self-appointed prophet of the technoutopia I feel it a duty to try and push my friends into this improved technology. Specifically -- web 2.0 sites like flikr and blogger and social networking. So check out yahoo's new junk -- its pretty cool, and what it enables is sharing more of your life with friends and family (via photos on flickr, text on blogs, videos on youtube ...)

Modern Parenthood

Instapundit.com -:

"We keep hearing about declining birthrates, but raising a kid is far more expensive -- financially, emotionally, and in terms of time -- today than it was a few decades ago. As she occasionally notes, things that were considered adequate, or even examplary, parenting then are now considered abuse or neglect. In fact, when you look at how the burden of childrearing has increased, it seems amazing that we see as many people having children as we do.

Society would be a lot better off (emotionally and demographically) if it would cut parents more slack on this stuff, though as she notes, much of the pressure is the result of competitiveness among parents, particularly mothers."

I agree with this sentiment -- I've often wondered why now-a-days kids just have to have pre-school, soccer league, ballet lesson, music lessons, gymnastics, karate, as well as church involvement as a *bare minimum*. My father, for example, didn't benefit from any of these "enriching activities" and he turned out fine. In fact he probably spent his childhood playing in the forest, smoking cigarettes with his buds and reading comic books. All in all, we make parenting into more of chore than it should be, IMHO.

Fire Florida's Senators

Porkbusters:

"Listed below are Senators, grouped by how many times they voted to support one the three Coburn anti-pork amendments that have come to a vote: the CSX Railroad relocation in Mississippi (Coburn lost 47-50); the 'seafood promotion strategies package' (Coburn won 51-44), and the Northrup Grumman bailout (Coburn lost 48-51)."

OK, here's the deal (and I'm talking to Emily, Kevin Oneal,Lewis P, and Brian Perry especially) both of our state's senators are porkers -- if you check out the link they voted for the two pork projects that narrowly passed (the Mississippi highway boondoggle and the Northrup G bailout, costing us 1.2 Billion dollars together). So here is the link to email Martinez (I can't believe I voted for this SOB. I naively assumed that since he campaigned as a small-government republican that he would be, you know, for a smaller federal government). If watching the federal government piss away your tax dollars on pork projects upsets you, please write and let you voice be heard.

Seize Arab Oil by Force?

Instapundit.com:

"But just to troll a bit more, I do think that seizing Saudi and Iranian oil would be entirely morally justifiable on terms usually approved of by the left: They didn't earn it, they inherited it (it's like the Estate Tax writ large!). They're extracting huge profits for fatcats at the expense of the poor. They're racist, sexist, homophobic theocrats! (Literally!) Surely if it's ever permissible to redistibute wealth by force, this is the case. Right?"

Except american "liberals" try to target only white christians with wealth redistribution schemes, so that's why they'd be contra.

Catallarchy » The Road To Hell Was Paved With Bad Intentions

Catallarchy » The Road To Hell Was Paved With Bad Intentions:

"Like the Nazis, the Communists murdered tens of millions. But even today, few people hold both movements in equal contempt. Citizens of the West remain largely ignorant of the crimes of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. But even those who know what happened shy away from the thesis that the two movements were morally equivalent. Why is this?"

Good question.

Ethanol: A Tragedy in 3 Acts

businessweek:

"If there were ever a time when the truth in advertising standards should be put back into place, it's now -- during the current (third) attempt to convince the public that the massive use of corn-derived ethanol in our gasoline supply will alleviate our need for foreign oil. Ultimately, the answer to just one question determines ethanol's actual usefulness as a gasoline extender: 'If the government hadn't mandated this product, would it survive in a free market?'"

This article is a must-read if you're interested in our fuel situation. I've always believed that ethanol was a con foisted on us by mid-western farmers through our political process.