We don’t need no steenking Americans.

In the world of technical workers there is on the part of some anxiety about outsourcing, H-1B visa holders and other things that make it seem that American employers don’t want Americans as employees. When these complaints and worries are voiced the chorus of assurances starts.
We are told that outsourcing is being exaggerated. There aren’t [...]

Foreign Policy Minus Realism

Newsweek writes that the Mullahs of Iran aren’t even close to having a population willing to overthrow them. And of course the Bush Administration doesn’t realize this. In fact they have insisted on taking actions that hurt the cause of Iranians that would like to see their country be a republic in more than name. [...]

Not Quite, Andrew

Andrew Sullivan responds to a reader who recommends Michael Moore’s Sicko. The key part that I want to address is this one:
But I grew up with socialized medicine, and I know what a disaster it is.
No, Andrew, you did not grow up with socialized medicine. You grew up with one version of universal health care [...]

The Problem with Piracy Paranoia

Most software companies worry about piracy and intellectual property theft. This is only reasonable. But then the question becomes what do you do about it? How does that decision affect your customers and what are your obligations to them?
This was driven home to a lot of people recently. A company named AppForge made a very [...]

Some people disappoint me.

Sixty Minutes repeated a story from last December this evening with one of their usual follow ups. It told the story of Joe Darby, the courageous young man who brought the events at Abu Ghraib to the attention of military investigators. He requested anonymity. Somehow the New Yorker found out but the article which revealed [...]

Here we go again.

Once again someone who has clearly made up his mind on the issue of climate change writes an article that has the deniersphere tapping their keyboards gleefully.  Unfortunately for them the paper is not even written by a climatologist. Mr. Patterson is a geologist. Also notice that this article is not appearing in a peer-reviewed [...]

Sure. Yeah. Uh-huh. I believe that one.

The New York Times reports on how the always reasonable and reliable leaders of Hamas are reaching out to Fatah to re-create a power-sharing government. While Fatah is very, very far from being an organization of saints or even potential members of MENSA apparently the old saw about “fool me once” has sunken in to [...]

No one really hates to say I told you so.

Including me. So when I saw this in the local news today it was just proof of my opinion concerning the old “The illegal immigrants just take jobs Americans don’t want.” saw. Didn’t roofing and similar construction trades used to be jobs that paid middle class wages? I seem to remember my father working in [...]

I just wonder…

…how some of the Constitutional “originalists” among us who don’t believe that Griswold or Roe were proper decisions feel about Loving. Andrew Sullivan posts something by Mildred Loving 40 years after the Supreme Court decision that said she and her husband had the right to marry.

We can hope, can’t we?

Wired Magazine has an interesting article about some of the innovative ideas to replace the standard internal combustion engines that power virtually all of our personal vehicles now. While they do quote one contrarian engine designer I would think that his caution only applies to the ideas that are variations on combustion engines, not some [...]