Clever Name To Come Later

Contract law and public pensions

2010-03-30T12:18:00.004-04:00

Contract law and public pensions So, I am not a lawyerbut I am a taxpayer. A taxpayer in New Jersey, yet, which means I really know from paying taxes. The conservative and libertarian blogospheres have been sounding the alarm about public-employee pensions for some time, to no noticeable effect. But everyone assumes that the obligations to the pensioners are inviolate. But it is, I think,

Another good reason to home school

2009-09-30T08:27:00.004-04:00

Another good reason to home school While I am not a lawyer, I read with some interest an law article pointed to by Instapundit: Decriminalizing Students with Disabilities, by Dean Hill Rivkin. I am incompetent to judge the legal arguments Rivkin makes, but they all seem reasonable to me. Given the laws we've got, the consequences he outlines seem straightforward enough. However, I am competent

Language Help for Hillary

2009-03-07T16:07:00.005-05:00

Language Help for Hillary As everyone knows by now, Hillary embarrassed herself the other day with a little mistranslation. But what is one to do, if one is a monoglot? Consider this a free advertisement for Google Translate. I spent 2 minutes with Google Translate to figure out how to say 'reset' по-русский. I asked for a translation of "Push the reset button". You can see the result here. You

It's the End of the World

2009-01-29T12:05:00.004-05:00

Slashdot has a discussion of a paper by T. Ord et al. which attempts to demonstrate that the probability of a world-ending disaster at the Large Hadron Collider is much greater than previously thought. They reach this conclusion by observing that 1 in 1,000 physics papers have to be withdrawn because of miscalculations. To be 'fair' to the LHC, they use a lower number: 1 in 10,000.Let's

2007-02-13T20:56:00.000-05:00

Learning from Islam Tariq Ramadan, whom Ian Buruma says is regarded as an 'Islamic superstar', has decided to tell us what the West can learn from Islam. At least, that's the title of his essay in the February 16, 2007 issue of The Chronicle Review. But what can we learn from Islam? Ramadan never does quite tell us. Oh, he does mention two Muslims from more than half a millennium ago who had an

2005-09-08T20:54:00.000-04:00

Doers vs. RegulatorsNearly everyone is unhappy with the response to Katrina. While Republicans can point to fields of flooded buses in New Orleans and Democrats can point to a slow response by the Bush administration, it seems to me that that's not the most important duality. The horror stories coming out of New Orleans are not evidence of conflict between Republicans and Democrats or between

2004-11-10T22:20:00.000-05:00

Well, Somebody Had to Do ItI couldn't find a good Fisking of Brian Reade's fulminations in the Daily Mirror.I had ignored it, but then I got this missive from my brother in California:This was forwarded to me from someone who titled it "my sentiments exactly." Wow.I was wondering if you could write a counterpoint version (if you had the time and desire).Since I couldn't point him to someone else,

2003-11-21T10:04:00.000-05:00

Krugman Actually Has a Point! (sort of) But we'll begin with Sir Thomas Browne, instead: 'Tis not a melancholy Utinam of mine owne, but the desires of better heads, that there were a generall Synod; not to unite the incompatible difference of Religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it as it lay at first in a few and solid Authours; and to condemne to the fire those swarms and

2003-10-01T10:15:00.000-04:00

Microsoft's treasonous innovations Hey, so what if Microsoft can't produce interesting technology? They've got the market cornered on new ways to betray one's country! I've blogged on this before: see this post from February 2003. The issue -- which everyone seems to be ignoring -- is back in the news. A Slashdot post directed me to this article on C|Net. China has set up a lab to browse

2003-09-14T17:17:00.000-04:00

Fabulous Pianist Patch! The Instapundit is in pain! But I can help ... I suffered hand and wrist pains from computer use some years ago; I'm all better now, but my cure is an unusual one: Hanon. Hanon is a set of finger exercises excruciatingly well-known among pianists. Since my mother was a piano teacher, I, too, knew of them. Once I had started, I eventually found a teacher -- and the

2003-09-12T16:03:00.000-04:00

No Lind for Peas! Oh, boy! My first Fisking ... It is possible, I suppose, to be genuinely concerned about the poor of the third world and to be an American environmentalist -- but Michael Lind doesn't manage it in his New York Times piece, The Canc?n Delusion. In fact, if a right-winger had come up with a third-world agricultural policy anything like Lind's, the Left would accuse him of

2003-07-22T23:41:00.000-04:00

The Fear of Being Right Instapundit linked to the Angry Clam's outing of Berkeley's psychoanalysis of the right-wing mindset. If I could still be offended by leftist idiocies, I would be. But we've had debates at my church over the past few months (the clergy is quite a bit to my left), and I have realized what the Left's problem is: They're afraid of being right. Sure, not everyone on the

2003-02-28T13:41:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Betrays America! Oh, sure, everyone knows that Microsoft is evil. Those of us who have to write programs for the Windows operating [sic] system are, perhaps, easier to convince than most. But there's a story today that forces one to conclude that Microsoft are either traitors or liars. (Or both, I suppose.) See this from the New York Times News from AP feature: "Microsoft to Let

2003-02-06T12:13:00.000-05:00

A Reason for Space Arguments about space exploration usually wind up with the old canard that we should do something about first. So the challenge is to demonstrate that space exploration will have some effect on earthbound ills. Weather satellites are too old-hat to do the trick; and spinoffs, it will be argued, mostly benefit the already privileged. Solar Power

2002-10-26T15:02:00.000-04:00

New Jerseyans: Giving Floridians a Run for Their Money We've been making fun of Floridian stupidity for years now. But a recent New York Times/CBS News poll shows that we've been aiming at the wrong target. (The poll can be found via a pop-up link here or directly here. Let's look at question 26: 26. Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Protecting the environment is so

2002-06-07T17:31:00.000-04:00

A Note for (Other) Pedants Yes, I know what "intergalactic" means. But "intragalactic" or, worse, "intrasystemic" wouldn't convey anything to anyone, now would it?

2002-06-07T17:10:00.000-04:00

The Intergalactic Right-Wing Conspiracy So, it turns out that Hillary was thinking too small (still stuck in the village, I guess). "Vast" is grossly inadequate to describe what Dave Kopel, Glenn Reynolds, and Jonah Goldberg are cooking up. Like all right-wingers, I'm utterly devoid of prejudice. Heck, some of my best friends are Martians. But I think

2002-05-24T12:20:00.000-04:00

Tyrannophilia Jay Nordlinger has (yet another) Impromptus column up. He complains (yes, again) about the Castro-worship of the American left. He's just another right-wing extremist who can't get over the end of the Cold War. But, then, so am I. The Left will upbraid those of us on the Right with hit-squads in El Salvador, apartheid in South Africa, or the crimes of the secret police of

2002-05-22T23:15:00.000-04:00

Al Qaeda's next strike Much has been made of the failure of imagination in our intelligence services, so I would like to lend them mine. The 9-11 attacks were designed to destroy prominent American symbols and to take many American lives. What other targets are out there that meet both criteria? Hollywood. The World Series. The Super Bowl. Disney World. The Mouse is ubiquitous and

2002-03-20T14:44:00.000-05:00

Campaign Finance Reform Loophole I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Web ... Much has been made of the prohibition of issue ads sixty days before elections, while the media is permitted -- as it clearly must be -- to editorialize as much as it wants. And that opens up a loophole big enough for anything. Let's say I'm the CEO of Evil, Inc. and I'm rabidly, irrationally opposed to Joe B.

2002-03-18T13:56:00.000-05:00

Just one more for now. My children are privileged to attend public schools in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, where education is our absolute, top-most, number-one priority -- so long as it doesn't cost too much. It's my blog, and I get to ride whatever hobby horse I want. One of my daughters is in 4th grade and therefore about to take the ESPA test. ESPA is "Elementary School Proficiency

2002-03-18T13:40:00.000-05:00

I guess if I'm going to get linked by the formidable Instapundit, I'd better start putting more good content on this blog. Well, more content, anyway. Yesterday, I had my debut as a hymnodist. My church's choir sang a hymn for which I wrote the words and our music director, Cliff Bohnson, the music. (I'll figure out how to post an audio file later, if Cliff doesn't mind.) I hope to do better

2002-03-18T12:35:00.000-05:00

Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds is concerned about anti-gay bias as evidenced in the Roman Catholic Church's sex scandals. He asks, "...if sex with 16-year-olds is child abuse only if it's gay sex, then how, exactly, is the outrage-differential distinguishable from simple prejudice against gays? Am I missing something here?" Well, yes. Let me begin by referencing the late gay Christian