Wildfire vs. Siri

Back in my law school days, I was really intrigued by the Wildfire sexy-disembodied-voice-robot-assistant-that’s-always-in-the-background-of-your-calls-and-ready-to-assist-you service product. It was marketed to lawyers, natch, but I couldn’t afford it at the time. It was really impressive, though.

Having just upgraded to an iPhone 5, I’m monkeying around with Siri, and so far I’m not impressed. This fascinating review article confirms Wildfire’s ten-year-old technology was and is better at a lot of stuff. That being said, I have no doubt Siri (and whatever Android equivalent) will be at the Wildfire level pretty damned soon.

It’s cool when a technology marketed for the elite becomes commonplace within a decade. That seems to be happening a lot nowadays.

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Did Tom Coburn Just Win the Behind-The-Scenes Gun Legislation Battle?

Nice.

UPDATE: To the victor go the spoils. Read between the lines on the timing here. Every single day that passes, Newtown recedes and we get stronger. Coburn managed to play Schumer for what, a month? Two? Gottlieb’s working this like a chessboard, I tell you.

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Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel, Heroes, Comrades and Brothers | 3 Comments

Call Me A Hole

Nine Inch Nails vs. Carly Rae Jepsen. Actually pretty catchy; earworm warning!

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New Item for Your Bookshelf

Perry Metzger, at the UK Samizdata blog, has found a book that I’m snatching up and I think you should as well.

The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey by Michael Huemer, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Perry writes, “Huemer systematically addresses the justifications that have been articulated for political authority over the centuries, from hypothetical social contract theory to consequentialism and everything in between. I will give away the punchline by noting that his arguments would appear to fatally damage all of them.

“Political philosophers generally start by attempting to construct a complete moral framework within which they justify their positions. Huemer takes an entirely different approach. He does not assume that we all agree on a single universal moral framework. He only assumes that most of us generally share similar moral intuitions about certain sorts of situations in the average case. (The strongest sort of assumption he demands is that his reader agree that beating people up without provocation is usually bad.)

“Because he demands that the reader agree with him on so few things and so weakly, Huemer’s argument gains enormous strength, since there is no need to accept an all-encompassing ethical theory to believe the rest of his arguments.

Read the rest of Perry’s post and then hit the Amazon link to read some of the reviews. Then you’ll want to click the “Buy” button.

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Test

Testing, testing, 1,2,3…
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Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

What a Bargain for Me!

I shall name this rifle “Eddie,” as in “Murphy,” because it was indeed a bargain at $175. When I got it home I flipped it over to see an unnoticed price tag:

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You have got to be kidding me

Somebody is in love with the 16th Amendment

That somebody is Kevin Horrigan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Last Monday marked the 100th anniversary of the day that U.S. Secretary of State Philander C. Knox took pen in hand and affirmed that the 16th Amendment, having been passed by Congress and ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, was part of the U.S. Constitution.

The income tax is 100 years old. Got any big plans to celebrate? Probably not.

The First Amendment has a lot of fans. The Second Amendment is huge. The 13th Amendment was a star on Oscar night. Chicks dig the 19th. We’ll drink to the 22nd, which overturned the 18th. But few people love No. 16, which is strange, considering how much we all benefit from it.

It is amazing that a guy who thinks a progressive rate tax is “fair” can actually write coherent paragraphs.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 3 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 03/04/13

They want to protect you from yourself.

But, oddly enough, they don’t actually want you to be able to protect yourself from outside threats.

Former Obama Administraion regulator, Cass Sunstein, is at it again. This time, Professor Thomas Sowell takes him down.

John Stuart Mill’s classic essay “On Liberty” gives reasons why some people should not be taking over other people’s decisions about their own lives. But Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard has given reasons to the contrary. He cites research showing “that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging.”

Professor Sunstein is undoubtedly correct that “people make a lot of mistakes.” Most of us can look back over our own lives and see many mistakes, including some that were very damaging.

What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other than people, are going to override our mistaken decisions for us. That is the key flaw in the theory and agenda of the left.

Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us.

Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?

Thomas Sowell – Shepherds and Sheep

RTWT

You may remember this theme from last week.

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Must Be Nice

To be loved by the media

Another Voice for Gun Safety – The Seattle Times Editorial Board

THE public campaign for gun safety and accountable gun ownership received a serious infusion of talent, energy and resources.

Formation of the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility will help promote legislation to require background checks for all firearms sales in the state.

Good intentions are a start, but they are rarely enough to complete a challenging task. Entering the political fray in Olympia and engaging a wider audience to ensure public safety takes skills and effort.

The group is being financed by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. Members include Seattle City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw, Seattle-King County health director David Fleming, former Seattle City Councilmember Tina Podlodowski and Eric Liu, an author and public television host.

Local leftwing bloggers will rant about how “reich-wing” the Seattle Times is at the drop of a hat. This editorial proves that idea  to be a falsehood. Sure, the editorial board like them some corporations on the odd day. But giving the newest group to attempt to sway government to deny citizens their 2nd Amendment civil rights a front and center spot on their editorial page is a bit of a tell which way their politics lean.

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RNS Quote of the Day, 03/01/13

…the Government avers it would be “foolhardy” for the officers to “go about their business while allowing a stranger in their midst to possess a firearm.” We are not persuaded.

U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, United States v. Black

While Mr. Black, a convicted felon, was certainly not a model plaintiff, a clear, well-written Federal court ruling that detaining and searching Mr. Black and seizing his concealed handgun were all illegal searches and seizures, and that the mere presence of a lawfully-open-carried handgun carried by someone else was not sufficient justification for either detention of Mr. Black or a search or seizure of him or his property, is very welcome.

More importantly, where a state permits individuals to openly carry firearms, the exercise of this right, without more, cannot justify an investigatory detention. Permitting such a justification would eviscerate Fourth Amendment protections for lawfully armed individuals in those states.

Sadly, there’s also this from the opinion:

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