Month: March 2014

How Do You Rate?

C. U. Douglas
C. U. Douglas
4522
 

If you’re like me — and I know I am — you probably frequent one or two sites that ask participants to rate something on a scale of 1-5. If you visit Netflix and Amazon.com at all you’ll certainly run across ratings. The one to five star rating seems to be the most accepted online system, rivaled only by binary systems such as thumbs up or down, like or dislike.

Or is it? In many ways, I see the binary system overcoming the supposedly more nuanced five star rating. It’s perhaps best demonstrated in an xkcd comic:

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Fredösphere
Fredösphere
11
 

President Obama memorably dismissed the idea of American Exceptionalism by claiming all nations are exceptional. His gesture was not convincing. America is not the only nation so inclined, but the list of nations claiming an exceptional destiny are few. A country needs to be geopolitically significant or culturally energetic to claim exceptional status. There is […]
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A Personal Note on Larry Kudlow — James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis
James Pethokoukis
1713
 

Tonight is the final episode of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.” Now Larry Kudlow isn’t retiring, thank goodness. He’ll still pop up regularly on the network’s programs as senior contributor.

But early evening Monday through Friday won’t be quite the same without Larry’s lively recap and spot-on analysis of the day’s business and political events, as well as his infectious testimony on the wonder-working power of economic freedom.

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Devereaux
Devereaux
164
 

?Did anyone notice that Sen. Mark Kirk, a republican from Illinois, has come out saying that he will not support Oberweiss who is running against Turbin Durbin in the November election. Because he doesn’t want to “jeopardize” his friendship with Durbin. So a liberal republican won’t support another republican running against a democrat. ?Is is […]
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Travelers Beware — Jack Dunphy

Jack Dunphy
Jack Dunphy
3221
 

Are you planning on traveling by air soon?  Here’s a story to keep in mind when you pack your bags.  Police in Los Angeles have arrested six LAX baggage handlers and are seeking others involved in the theft of valuables from checked luggage.  “Basically everything of value — be it electronics, jewelry and items — that could be stolen in seconds would be removed from bags,” LAX Police Chief Pat Gannon told the Los Angeles Times. “They’d just open up the suitcases and rifle through them and pocket valuables.”

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Obama’s Proposed NSA Reform: Less Efficiency, But No Greater Privacy — John Yoo

John Yoo
John Yoo
35
 

President Obama announced this week that he will change the NSA metadata collection program, but in a way that I believe will make everyone worse off. The heart of the change is to keep the metadata — the phone numbers dialed in the U.S., but not the content of the calls — in the hands of the phone companies, where it can still be searched after a request by the NSA. This does not restrict the collection of the data — the phone numbers are still collected — and so does little to solve the privacy right issue. It only makes the analysis of the information slower; it does not stop the government from analyzing the metadata, but only makes it less efficient.

In the latest issue of National Review, Ricochet’s own Arthur Herman and I defend the NSA program from its detractors:

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How Much Repenting Do I Need to Do? — Tabula Rasa

tabula rasa
tabula rasa
8347
 

I need theological advice.

Today started calmly enough. I work at home and was quietly surfing Ricochet when Mrs. T informs me that the garbage disposal isn’t working. So I hit the reset button. No dice. I then tried to unfreeze it with the Allen wrench. Won’t move. I remove the old disposal and some pretty despicable water gets on me, to which I respond with some mild cursing.

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Hartmann von Aue
Hartmann von Aue
75
 

UPDATED POST Y’all  are cordially and heartily invited to a central Texas Ricochet Meet Up for May 3rd, at the Round Rock Express game (against New Orleans) at the Dell Diamond here in Round Rock, which is right off of US-79. If you are interested, just let me know here.  A table will be booked […]
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Miffed White Male
Miffed White Male
45
 

The full statement is at the end of the link, after the commentary by Eugene Volokh.  Apparently this is for real, but in my opinion it reads like a (really bad) parody of what right-wingers THINK left-wingers sound like.  I mean, c’mon ” The price we pay to speak our own minds is allowing others to […]
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Neil Hansen (Klaatu)
Neil Hansen (Klaatu)
13314
 

This is a request for further information. Tonight’s episode of Special Report on FNC had a story on Rand Paul and it contained a portion of a speech the senator gave (possibly the UC speech) in which he said, “What you read or what you send in your email or text messages is none of […]
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Ole Summers
Ole Summers
76
 

The “Hobby Lobby Case” now before the Supreme Court can give raise to a variety of discussion points. The most central is, of course, freedom of religion and the constant push by the left to change the real nature of this most basic right, a right first understood enough nationally by Americans that it was […]
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Tuck
Tuck
116
 

Exactly: “President Mitt Romney wanted to talk about his meeting with the Pope today, but instead he was besieged by a swarm of reporters shouting questions about the remarkable string of high-profile Republicans arrested by the FBI, or resigning under federal investigation, over the last few days. Preview Open
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It’s Weather, Not the Apocalypse

Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
1311
 

Another day, another weather panic. A storm bears down on the media centers of the east coast. Reporters don oversized parkas, waddle into the howling wind and offer jeremiads about global warming climate change. “Repent! The End is Nigh!”

Because who would expect the northeast to get snow in February — it’s unheard of! Messrs. Delingpole and Steyn made great sport of this on their recent podcast.

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Tuck
Tuck
124
 

Of course this presupposes a Republican President, and firing most of the Justice Department, but that’s in the realm of possibility: “…These people have been enemies of the state since Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton (Burr, who was basically the first Democrat vice president, also was one of the founders of Tammany Hall, […]
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Fighting Oppression vs. Fighting for Home

Aaron Miller
Aaron Miller
119
 

In his book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg touches on the widespread sympathy for fascism and communism in the United States in the years leading to World War II. Many others have written on the subject.

It only now occurred to me that many of “the Greatest Generation” who were sent to fight the Nazis, Mussolini’s fascists and the Soviets might have been supporters of those regimes before the war. Is there any history of this?

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Simberg: Safe Is Not an Option

Ricochet Editors' Desk
Ricochet Editors' Desk
3611
 

The successful expansion into space requires tradeoffs in cost and safety. But the government’s obsessively risk-averse regulations are preventing us from being able to make those tradeoffs. That’s the message of the new book by Ricochet member, CEI adjunct scholar and “recovering aerospace engineer” Rand Simberg. Safe Is Not an Option: Overcoming the Futile Obsession With Getting Everyone Back Alive That Is Killing Our Expansion Into Space is getting rave reviews from prominent experts, knowledgable politicians, and successful entrepreneurs.

Simberg notes that, throughout the history of exploration, science and technology has always entailed risk to the health and lives of the explorers. Yet, when it comes to exploring and developing the high frontier of space, the harshest frontier ever, the highest value is apparently not the accomplishment of those goals, but of minimizing, if not eliminating, the possibility of injury or death for the humans carrying them out.

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