Zombies

It’s funny. So sue me.

Wikidgame

I’m a little late to the party here on the blog. Virgil Griffith, a Caltech graduate wrote a web site which identifies anonymous edits made at Wikipedia. Behold the power of Wikipedia Scanner.

LGF has lots of coverage on this. Wired just set up a great page where readers contribute dirt they’ve uncovered. Pretty much everybody has been snared. Government agencies, big businesses and churches are all caught red-handed.The New York Times, though, really shines for its sheer immaturity.

Everybody knows that Wikipedia has to be taken with a grain of salt. I’m stunned that they even allow anonymous editing, though. That’s just asking for trouble. Griffith has done the world a great service.

Why Soldiers Cry

I’m going way out on a limb here and saying that The New Republic won’t be posting this.

Mira!

(A little bilingual pun, there.)

Check out a star that’s leaving a tail 13 light years long.

Envision No Gas Taxes

John Hood has been posting over on The Corner about how gas taxes are rapidly becoming a poor measure of road usage, thanks to high-mileage vehicles. He says GPS tracking may take its place.

Some readers say GPS is uneccesary because we could use odometer readings. Hood fears that presents a too-tempting beauracracy.

The second major objection is that using GPS technology to price road usage is a huge invitation to Big Brother to monitor everyone’s driving habits. I am nervous about the privacy implications, too, though I will point out that as I understand it, carrying a cellphone around gets you pretty far along to that troubling prospect, if Big Brother is so inclined. Still, if the high-tech solution is problematic on privacy grounds, I’d be open to some other solution to the problem of transportation finance, which is very real and inherent in any system based on taxing gas consumption.

Here’s what I just emailed to Hood:

Big Brother can get a rough idea of where your mobile phone is. But he doesn’t know how fast you’re going.

GPS tracking of cars would be such an egregious intrusion I can’t believe you’re taking it seriously. I take it seriously, but as a threat.

I fail to see the advantage to taxing differently based on time of day. That would imply the government knows better than I when I should be driving and that, somehow, pavement wears out faster at certain times of day. Taxes should be collected to fund the minimum and necessary functions of government. Any use of taxes to modify behavior is immoral. Which is why the left will love this idea.

High-tech isn’t the problem. An odometer that responds to a remote signal with the VIN and current miles would be easy to make, and cheaper than GPS. Then sensors get installed on all gas pumps (or 220V outlets for electric cars). Every time you gas up, Big Brother knows only how far you’ve driven, and where and when you gassed up. Then you can get a bill at whatever interval the government decides. An advantage to this system is that people will be aware, as you say, of how much they’re spending in transportation taxes.

Anybody see any downside to my idea that’s any worse than current fuel taxes?

When Filthy Religions Collide

I’m beginning to think Christopher Hitchens was being kind when he described Islam as a “filthy religion”. In northern Iraq the small Kurdish sect, the Yazidis, once stoned a girl for having a Muslim boyfriend. And now some filthy Islamists have committed mass murder among the Yazidis.

The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday’s bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are “anti-Islamic.”

Anti-Islamic. That’s all the reason these barbarians need to slaughter people while blowing themselves up. Filthy hardly begins to cover it. The only thing that seems to make the Yazidis any less filthy is that, so far, Yazidis haven’t declared war on civilization.

Michael Yon has a heartbreaking story to tell about what the Yazidis are likely feeling right now.

One Problem With Being A Surrender Monkey

is that you don’t know the first thing about guns.

Update:

Like so many Islamic Grievance Theatre Players, she’s done this before.