10:52 AM Jun 21, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

Isaac Asimov is rolling in his grave:

Angst Over Arming Robots

Honest! I don't know where Sarah Conner is!

I'll have the latte, please...

10:15 PM Jun 20, 2006by Rob Ritchie

9:59 PM Jun 20, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

These are the monsters we are fighting:

The bodies of two U.S. soldiers found in Iraq Monday night were mutilated and booby-trapped, military sources said Tuesday.

May God give peace to Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, and consolation to their families.

And to their killers, painful, lingering deaths followed by an eternity of torment.

I control worlds! Universes!

11:59 PM Jun 17, 2006by Rob Ritchie

Welcome!

11:33 PM Jun 17, 2006by Rob Ritchie

The latest member of the G.A.R.:

Jack Warren Ritchie

Congratulations to Amy and Michael!!

7:29 PM Jun 16, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

Hey! Anyone in Tucson ever visit the Pima Air & Space Museum?

This looks like a cool place to go. Click the link and see the planes!

Pious gratitude to: Tim Blair

Straight talk on Friday

7:00 PM Jun 16, 2006by Rob Ritchie

Charles Krauthammer asks Who Is to Blame for Grief on a Beach?

An expert at a local chapter of a human rights group disputes the Israeli claims. Okay. Let's concede for the sake of argument that the question of whether it was an errant Israeli shell remains unresolved. But the obvious question not being asked is this: Who is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers to attack Israel -- and placing them 400 yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian families on the Muslim Sabbath?

Answer: This is another example of the Palestinians' classic and cowardly human-shield tactic -- attacking innocent Israeli civilians while hiding behind innocent Palestinian civilians. For Palestinian terrorists -- and the Palestinian governments (both Fatah and Hamas) that allow them to operate unmolested -- it's a win-win: If their rockets aimed into Israeli towns kill innocent Jews, no one abroad notices and it's another success in the terrorist war against Israel. And if Israel's preventive and deterrent attacks on those rocket bases inadvertently kill Palestinian civilians, the iconic "Israeli massacre" picture makes the front page of the New York Times, and the Palestinians win the propaganda war.

But there is an even larger question not asked. Whether the rocket bases are near civilian beaches or in remote areas, why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place -- about 1,000 in the past year?

To get Israel to remove its settlers, end the occupation and let the Palestinians achieve dignity and independence? But Israel did exactly that in Gaza last year. It completely evacuated Gaza, dismantled all its military installations, removed its soldiers, destroyed all Israeli settlements and expelled all 7,000 Israeli settlers. Israel then declared the line that separates Israel from Gaza to be an international frontier. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory ever.

And what have the Palestinians done with this independence, this judenrein territory under the Palestinians' control? They have used their freedom to launch rockets at civilians in nearby Israeli towns.

Why? Because the Palestinians prefer victimhood to statehood. They have demonstrated that for 60 years, beginning with their rejection of the United Nations decision to establish a Palestinian state in 1947 because it would have also created a small Jewish state next door. They declared war instead.

Read the rest.

Pious gratitude to: lgf

12:11 PM Jun 12, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

Via The Tensor, we read about this:

Record meteorite hit Norway

At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky.

A few minutes later an impact could be heard and geophysics and seismology research foundation NORSAR registered a powerful sound and seismic disturbances at 02:13.25 a.m. at their station in Karasjok

Keep your eye on this story, because that's how this started.

Zarqawi tracked with Pixie Dust?

4:14 PM Jun 11, 2006by Rob Ritchie

As Arthur C. Clarke is quoted as saying, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Good News!

4:50 PM Jun 9, 2006by Rob Ritchie

Zarqawi lived briefly after attack

A mortally wounded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still alive and mumbling after American airstrikes on his hideout and tried to get off a stretcher when he became aware of U.S. troops at the scene, a top military official said Friday.

So, he did suffer a bit.

Let me wipe away this tear from my eye....

Question Hour

6:05 PM Jun 8, 2006by Rob Ritchie

Who is the most famous Islamic cleric of the last 50 years? Of course, it's the old Ayatollah Ass-a-holla himself, right?

So, if anyone can answer that burning question, "Is Islam the religion of peace," it'd be him, right?

Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does that mean that Muslim should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill the [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!

There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.

Thank's for clearing that up, man!

Pious gratitude to: lgf

Awesome!

7:18 PM Jun 7, 2006by Rob Ritchie

11:22 AM Jun 6, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

The Elephant in the Room

Over the weekend, Canadian authorities apparently smashed a frightening plot involving Islamic terrorists who planned a series of bombings against sites in southern Ontario. Instinctively, the mainstream media went into its now-familiar coverage template, Phase One of which avoids like the plague any mention of the fact that accused terrorists are Muslims.

Read it all.

Update:  More pachyderm metaphors found here:

I drove back from yesterday's news conference at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto in the northeastern part of the city, but honestly, I could have just as easily floated home in the sea of horse manure emanating from the building.

So frequent were the bald reassurances that faith and religion had nothing — nothing, you understand — to do with the alleged homegrown terrorist plot recently busted open by Canadian police and security forces, that for a few minutes afterward, I wondered if perhaps it was a vile lie of the mainstream press or a fiction of my own demented brain that the 17 accused young men are all, well, Muslims.

But no. I have checked. They are all Muslims.

Lost: Article of Clothing

12:06 PM Jun 3, 2006by Rob Ritchie

London police search for 'suicide vest'

British police were searching for a "suicide vest" laced with dangerous chemicals after a raid of the alleged bomb factory yielded two suspects but no vest.

Police think the vest has been made and will be set off at a busy bus or train station, or in a crowd watching a World Cup game in a local pub, The Times said.

Law enforcement officers wearing oxygen masks and chemical protection gear raided the London house after receiving a tip that the vest had been assembled.

I'm sure it's nothing to worry about; no doubt the raid was based on faulty intelligence. Such unprovoked agression is what we've come to expect from the Bush/Blair/Howard troika.

Pious gratitude to: Powerline

10:10 AM Jun 3, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

Ace of Spades has an interesting analysis of the basis of Leftist Anger:

The left, to a man, considers itself to be educated and enlightened. It matters not how little actual schooling a particlular leftist may have had, nor how unintelligent the person might be. They all consider themselves intellectuals of sorts. If they dropped out of college after one semester, they just think of themselves as autodidacts whose genius could not be stimulated by the ossified and bourgeois teaching of the academy. If they're just plain stupid or crazy -- like, say, Charlie Sheen -- they indulge in farcial conspiracy-theorizing, reassuring themselves that they are intellectual because they know things others do not. They are one of the chosen few brave enough to see past the web of lies and glimpse the arcane truth behind, say, the implosion of the World Trade Center (a SEAL team planted those charges, you know?).

This conceit, usually wholly undeserved, of practically every leftist in the world is what makes leftism so intoxicating for the intellectually insecure, and what makes leftists so easily led and manipulated. It's an attractive doctrine for those who wish to conceive of themselves as intellectual and brilliant, for it provides an instant short-cut to the equivalent of an MIT education. If you simply believe these things we tell you to believe, you are one of Us, one of the Intellectually Elite, one of the Cultural Vanguard. Just as giving oneself to Christ, and believing in His power, and accepting the need for and gift of His redemption, instantly makes one "saved" and enters one's name in the Book of the Heaven, so too does accepting leftist tropes and core beliefs make one one of the Secular Elect.

Now, the things the left wants you to believe are not easy to believe. It's hard to believe that, for example, taxing work and investment will not reduce work and investment (especially when one simultaneously believes that taxing the use of gasoline or other energy will reduce the use of gasoline or other energy). Nevertheless, while it may be difficult to believe these things, it's certainly easier to simply give in and believe these things than to, say, earn a Ph. D. in literary theory or semiotics or even something stupid like science or engineering.

So, if one wants to conceive of oneself as an intellectual, one can either actually become an intellectual -- which frankly takes a lot of work and reading, much of it terribly boring -- or one can simply believe what Noam Chomsky tells one.

As for myself: I actually would kind of like to be an intellectual, but I haven't the patience or discipline for becoming one the hard way, and I also can't believe what Chomsky tells me, so, alas, I have to honestly assess and accept myself as a non-intellectual.

That notion is abhorrent to your typical leftist, so he chooses Option B.

From a cost-benefit standpoint, it's really a no-brainer. Like I said: an easy way to "earn" the "equivalent" of an advanced degree from CalTech or the University of Chicago. Believe these things, accept this dogma, take these gods as your own and keep them sacred, and you are reborn holy and clean as one of the smart set.

This is, I believe, why lefties get visibly angry or astonished to learn that someone within their social group -- whom they had previously considered a nice, normal, college-educated and upstanding citizen -- may hold conservative views or vote Republican on occasion.

Read it all

5:51 PM Jun 2, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

Inayat Bunglawala and the Western Press: Studies in Demopathy

8:15 PM Jun 1, 2006

by Rob Ritchie

The Broken Laptop I Sold On eBay

As Tim Blair writes: this is "a masterpiece of internet vengeance."

Not entirely Safe For Work

Naturally, you might disagree...

7:00 PM Jun 1, 2006by Rob Ritchie

The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time