« October 2004 | Main | October 2005 »
June 23, 2005
Back From Hawaii
Karen and I are back from Hawaii. (Actually, we've been back since Sunday night, but I've been busy playing catch-up at work all week.) We spent the entire time on the island of O'ahu. Being the most citified of all the Hawaiian islands, we weren't sure how we'd like it, but I'm happy to report that we had a great time.
Unfortunately, it will be few days before I have time to blog the trip, but in the meantime, here are a couple of pictures.
Karen looks out across eastern O'ahu from the Pali lookout.
View of Waikiki from the top of Diamond Head.
Posted by Tim at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
News From the Wild Kingdom
More lions like this, please. Less like this.
For the record, I'm highly skeptical of the Ethiopia story. Since when has being small, frail, and helpless ever induced in lions a desire to be protective? It never worked for any of those baby gazelles on the Discovery Channel. The behavior of the Minnesota lion (and tiger) seems much more typical of big cats.
And how bad a day was that Minnesota kid having? Usually, being mauled by a tiger would be enough to win you bragging rights over just about anybody. But this kid looks up while they're pulling the tiger off him and what does he see? A lion coming in to take its turn! Yikes.
Posted by Tim at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2005
The Deal With Comments
In case anyone is wondering why they have to register with TypeKey in order to post a comment, it's mainly to help prevent comment spam. For those who don't feel like wading through the gory details in the preceding link, comment spam is like email spam, except that the messages are posted to the comment sections of weblogs. When first I converted this site to a weblog format, I allowed unrestricted posting of comments. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for someone who was just wandering through to leave me a note. Within a couple of weeks, however, my blog entries had about 20 "comments" each, every one of which was an advertisement for an online casino. It didn't take long before monitoring and deleting comment spam became a real pain. And that was with only two blog entries! I could see that as the number of entries grew, manual culling of the spam would become impossible. So, I opted for the TypeKey solution. Now you know.
Posted by Tim at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
Harvard's Diversity Grovel
Writing in this month's City Journal, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald exposes Harvard's $50 million faculty diversity pledge for the craven appeasement that it is. (Hat tip: Power Line)
Posted by Tim at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2005
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter: Rock Star, Counterterrorism Expert
Are you tired of playing guitar for the likes of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers? Feel like your career as rock star has reached a dead end? Well, why not start a second career in the exciting field of counterterrorism? After all, that's what Jeff "Skunk" Baxter did. (Hat tip: PowerLine)
As much as I love the quirkiness of this story, and as much as I don't want to be a wet blanket, I still have to wonder whether some of Mr. Baxter's boosters aren't motivated more by the PR value of his celebrity status than any insight he has into terrorist tactics. Most of the observations the story credits him with seem stone cold obvious to me. And then there's the complete implausibility of this scenario:
In the late 1990s, Mr. Baxter led a fictional future alliance of Iran and Iraq that was trying to drive the U.S. Navy from the key oil-shipping routes through the Persian Gulf. Facing a massive military imbalance, Mr. Baxter had covert operatives introduce oil-eating bacteria into the Saudi Arabian oil supply that rendered its petroleum shipments worthless. The Navy was forced to pull out after oil-dependent American allies threatened to pull their financial assets out of the U.S.
All I can say is, if I were allowed to pull some Corbomite Maneuver every time I was up against a superior military force, I'd be the most formidable bad guy the Pentagon war gamers have ever seen.
Posted by Tim at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)