The Rational Mind

In response to the recent ballyhoo about “red vs blue” states, a Princeton prof created a color-gradated county-level map which makes the real trend clear: large urban cities vs. America. Kerry’s support came primarily from those who didn’t attend high school (50% ) and post-grads (55%). In areas with a high-concentration of both, such as Washington D.C., the vote was 90% Democratic. This trend was much stronger than religion or “moral values.” According to CNN, 58% Bush and 41% of Kerry voters reported “weekly church attendance”, 50% of Bush and 49% of Kerry voters reported “monthly church attendance”,” and 45% Bush, 54% of Kerry voters reported attending church “seldom/few times a year.” Definitely a relationship, but a mild one that is little changed from 2000.

I believe that the explanation for the overall trend is nothing new: the major sponsors and the major beneficiaries of the welfare state – the intellectual elite and welfare recipients voted overwhelmingly for the candidate who promised to direct the wealth back into their pockets, while the rest of America voted to keep it in theirs.

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe gives Arafat the obituary he deserves.

Also read Elan Journo’s piece: Arafat’s Undeserved Honor: The West’s Shame

It’s an open secret that government bureaucracies in the United States hire minority racial groups significantly over their proportion in the general population. According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the EEOC overhired blacks by 623%, the U.S. Dept. of Education overhired by 462% and HUD overhired by 430%. Other federal agencies beat their racial quotas by similarly high ratios, so that only 23 out of every 100 new federal jobs went to non-preferred individuals. My experiences indicates that less drastic but similar patterns are found within state-subsidized as well as large private bureaucracies within private industry, particularly those with low skill/intelligence requirements such as H/R departments, janitorial services and especially university staff.

I think that this overt and institutional racism is due to three factors: (a.) policies which explicitly discriminate against non-preferred groups, (b.) the dominance of leftist politics within minority areas such as inner cities and public universities, and (c.) a self-reinforcing anti-entrepreneurial, pro-entitlement mentality within minority groups.
Continue reading Could racist hiring policies be America’s undoing?

Firefox 1.0 is out! You should download a copy from my website right now!

If you haven’t heard of Firefox before, it’s a new web browser descended from Mozilla and Netscape. Compared to Internet Explorer, it is faster, more secure, more customizable, theme-able and extensible. It’s designed to be compatible with the latest internet standards, so you see websites as their authors intended you to. Firefox also features some must-have features like tabbed browsing, pop-up management, built-in website syndication, and access to your favorite search engine right from the browser. Even the U.S. government recommends it – so, uh, you know it’s good!

The U.S. Air Force recently published a “Teleportation Physics Report,” which among other things, calls for $7.5 million to conduct “psychic teleportation experiments.” An Air Force Research Lab spokesman justified the report by stating “If we don’t turn over stones, we don’t know if we have missed something.”

What kind of philosophic corruption makes such a statement possible? Imagine if psychics and faith healers were taken as seriously as scientists. Any crack-pot could present his delusions and demand that they be taken as seriously and potentially valid as a scientific theory that comes from careful research, a rigorous inductive process, and published, verifiable, and falsifiable evidence.
Continue reading USAF publishes report on "psychic teleportation"

Tradesports odds are 2-1 against Bush, folks. Looks like it’s all over. After starting the day with a slight lead, he fought for control, then fell hard. I’ve been predicting a Bush victory for months, too – good thing I don’t have any money riding on the election. Wait, where are those tax forms…

Update: Looks like my prediction was a bit off. There is a valuable lesson about gambling in there somewhere…

Thanks to the campaign finance laws, political groups are now busy filling FCC complaints at any sign of “partisan” behavior by the media. According to them, speech is only “free” when it’s non-commercial, non-political, and anti-“hate.” Political stances are a “right” reserved for politicians, it seems. All thanks to John McCain, a corrupt has-been politician, who made a comeback peddling censorship and now has both parties in his lap for his “non-partisan” positions.

On top of that, arbitrarily selected categories of speech are banned for being sexually-explicit or violent – or the group in question is threatened until it begins “voluntary self-regulation.” Free speech in America is not dead yet, but there are very few left who understand what it means.

My comments have been fixed. Thanks to everyone who emailed me to let me know. See, I didn’t ignore your emails – it just took me a month or three to get around to acting on them.

Pratt & Whitney has developed a revolutionary design for a thermal nuclear rocket – a practical design rapid deep-space exploration suitable, for example, for a human expedition for Mars. But don’t expect NASA to be flying nuclear powered rockets anytime soon – NASA is a political creature, and environmentalist paranoia is likely to keep this project grounded, as it has in decades past. (Source: /.)

If you can’t take the heat, get out err, back to the kitchen.