Recent Comments

1. about 8 hours ago on Speed Bump

   (ex-Winnipegger here, now in Vancouver)

2. about 10 hours ago on Speed Bump

   My MSI Windows laptop has a blinking light next to the camera, and MSI claims that the camera cannot be activated without turning on that light. On my desktop, it’s easy enough just to unplug the webcam.

3. about 10 hours ago on Dick Tracy

   “. . . but I don’t think [bigger guy is] guilty of anything except consorting with other criminals.”

   Er, didn’t he participate in Croptop’s bank robbery?

4. about 11 hours ago on Mike Luckovich

   I think that most people recognize that Carter, apparently pressured by the Chase Bank, made a grave error in allowing the Shah to come to the US for medical treatment. Not only could the Shah with the bloodstained hands have found treatment elsewhere, but he should have been shunned as a pariah by any civilized countries.

   That mistake led to Iran’s seizing of 66 US citizens as hostages for more than a year. Where did you get the figure of “400+”?? I hesitate to speculate where you pulled that from.

   The hostages were close to being released when the Reagan campaign sabotaged this. (Following the precedent of the Nixon campaign’s sabotage of the Vietnam Peace Talks.) I had actually been referring to that Reagan campaign move as “suspected but so far unproven,” but I found an article that confirms it. Check the Wikipedia article on “1980 October Surprise theory”. Footnote 59 refers to an article about the Shah’s admission to the US; footnotes 60-63 show documentation that it was the Reagan campaign that was instrumental in blocking the release of the hostages.

5. about 11 hours ago on Mike Luckovich

   “Where would I ‘look it up’ . . .”

   Well, you might start with Googling “historians rank presidents” and see a number of news articles. In particular, there’s a Wikipedia article entitled“Historical rankings of presidents of the United States” that discusses various surveys and their methodologies.

   Personally, I have methodological problems with the creation of indices that aggregate data, especially when many of these are subjective. Many years ago I wrote a paper on “social indicators,” concluded that they’re imperfect, and suggested that expert opinions may be more useful. But in this case we do have those expert opinions, albeit with methodological problems in aggregating them.

   However, I don’t think that there is any way to rank US presidents without having Trump come out as the worst, perhaps with Nixon and the Bushlet trailing behind.

6. 1 day ago on Jeff Danziger

   Yeah, I suppose that it’s buying money and votes in a way, but how about “Vote for me and give me money and I’ll make sure that abortion becomes legal again / the environment is protected / and so on . . .”

7. 1 day ago on Luann

   " . . . a hard time finding ’Liberal Art Classroom, Building 12, class room 24 . . ."

   I recently became aware (through the British thriller mini-series The Undeclared War) of a system called what3words DOT com, which has divided the earth into squares of 3 metres, and assigned a unique set of three English words to each one). One of the claimed advantages of this system is the idea of the easy direction of emergency services. (I dunno—it doesn’t give a clue about access, like front doors.) Apparently Ireland has something similar, seven-character alphanumeric postcode for every postal address.

8. 1 day ago on Dick Tracy

   “They were not the bank robbers.”

   Actually, they were the bank robbers when they raised the money to get to the book that held the clues to the location of the treasure.

   Since the FDIC compensated the bank for the original stolen funds, the treasure presumably “belongs” to the FDIC. I understand that, in many circumstances, the true “owner” of stolen property (e.g., an insurance company, or in this case FDIC, which is an insurance agency) can be willing to pay, voluntarily, a “finders fee” to those who find and restore the stolen goods. For those who find the stolen goods with no intention of restoring them, probably not.

9. 1 day ago on Dick Tracy

   FWIW, I get the summary email just after midnight Pacific time (Standard or Daylight, as appropriate)

10. 1 day ago on MythTickle

    I don’t think that jungle predators have anything against eating vegetarians.

    (There’s a wonderful National Lampoon Radio Hour skit, I think called “Vegetable Scream,” that discusses the inhumanity of eating vegetables—except cabbages.)