Hi! Tom doesn't post here anymore. Please go here to see new posts.
 | New Lease On Life For Hubble |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Tuesday, Oct 31, 2006, 12:03 PM · 147 words · 
I'm heartened to see NASA announce plans to repair the Hubble telescope. Granted, it only extends the lifetime from 2009 to 2013, but since we have shuttle flights going up there anyway and we have the capability to fix it, I don't see why we shouldn't keep it running as long as possible. (Personally, I'd place a higher priority on the telescope than the space station, but that's just me.)
| Rush And Ann On Fox |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Monday, Oct 30, 2006, 12:56 PM · 190 words ·
I saw somewhere that Rush and Ann were up in arms for being demonized over speaking up against Michael J. Fox's commercial, because (according to them) part of the liberal strategy is to use people with disabilities to advance the liberal agenda so everyone will feel sorry for them and cave in.
| On Webb's Novels |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Friday, Oct 27, 2006, 1:30 PM · 72 words ·
My opinion about Allen's people using Webb's novels against him is the same as it was when it was just some silly blogs doing it. It's borderline-fascist anti-art propaganda, but a predictable desperation smear tactic. (I'm sure if Allen wrote fiction, Webb's people would be doing it too.)
| On New Jersey |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Friday, Oct 27, 2006, 1:29 PM · 270 words · 1 comment ·
On the recent New Jersey decision: My marriage doesn't feel the slightest bit different. It's very difficult for me to wrap my mind around how people can honestly believe the Republican line that marriage is "under attack," especially from something as infrequent as gay marriage (as opposed to, say, rampant divorce). It seems like people with such beliefs would have trouble with basic motor coordination, let alone any kind of higher cognitive thoughts. I wish people would just be honest about it and say, "hey, I'm voting against gay marriage because I think gay sex is icky and I don't want to bother dealing with my prejudices."
| On Michael J. Fox |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Friday, Oct 27, 2006, 1:27 PM · 150 words · 1 comment ·
I've been silent lately partly because of a newfound fascination with World of Warcraft, and partly because of a complete lack of interest in writing about campaign politics, which seems to be the dominant topic in the world lately. But here's a few quick blurbs.
said,
Despite the fact that I live in Missouri, I still haven't seen the ad. Most likely because I generally avoid TV. But I know what I think about embryonic (sp?) stem cell research.
Vince
| Unusual Abortion Followup |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Friday, Oct 20, 2006, 12:46 PM · 183 words ·
Here's a followup to an incident I commented on several months ago about a woman who shot herself in the stomach to induce an abortion. Apparently the felony case against her, which could have resulted in up to 10 years in prison, was dropped because of some legal technicalities.
| Fretting Over North Korea |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Wednesday, Oct 18, 2006, 3:48 PM · 214 words ·
The solution to North Korea remains elusive, and the situation appears on-pace to escalate into a really, really bad scrum someday. Most liberal blogs advocate abandoning the six-party talks and negotiating with them one-on-one, but I fail to see how that's a position of strength, or how that would solve anything. (Besides, that's apparently what Clinton did, and it didn't work either.) It sounds more like giving in to a toddler throwing a tantrum to me.
| Book Burning Coming Soon |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Tuesday, Oct 17, 2006, 4:03 PM · 174 words ·
There's an attempt underway by some of the more desperate elements of the Virginia conservative blogosphere (aka. Allen's A-Team and co.)--who not too long ago wrote, "let’s get back to the issues"--to focus on the campaign issue of racy content in Jim Webb's novels. The gist of the argument is that Webb's personal credibility as a Senator should be scrutinized because of the questionable conduct of fictional characters in his books. I know, it sounds rather ridiculous when you explain it in those terms, but that's the kind of stuff you get from Republican activists looking to force their authoritarian doctrine on the population by disseminating any scandal they can pin on the opposition. Perhaps they'd enjoy a world where books didn't even exist; where imagination was stifled and creativity squashed at every opportunity. But unfortunately in that world, they wouldn't be able to dream up scandals like this.
| Kinda Small For A Nuke |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Monday, Oct 16, 2006, 1:43 PM · 182 words ·
According to FOX News, the U.S. is now confirming that North Korea did in fact detonate a nuclear device the other day. (There was some question about it before.) They say it was around 1 kiloton, though, which is really small for a nuke. (For comparison, Hiroshima was 13-16 kilotons and Nagasaki was 20-22 kilotons, and the B83, currently the most powerful U.S. nuke, is 1.2 megatons, or 1,000 times more powerful.) That may sound like it's no big deal, and from a military standpoint, it isn't. But from a maximum-terrorist-bang-for-the-buck standpoint, it sounds pretty grim for people living in major cities around the world. One wonders if the North Korean nuke is as small as our Davy Crockett nukes deployed in Germany during the Cold War. It looks like it would be pretty easy to hide one of those, or get one across a border or something.
| New Study Hard To Believe |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Wednesday, Oct 11, 2006, 11:04 AM · 138 words · 2 comments ·
There's this new study out that claims 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, where it was previously estimated to be somewhere around 50,000. I find it rather hard to believe, especially considering their method of research: Walking around to private homes and asking the people that live there. Human nature dictates that people always exaggerate, and I'm quite sure that the average person doesn't keep accurate records of the number of people dying around them anyway. If I were looking for reasonably accurate estimations of deaths, I'd be going to hospitals and morgues, not homeowners. So I'd have to rate the chances of this study being a political stunt to be pretty high.
said,
Given that this thing (i.e. Iraq) has been going on for about 3 years, that would be about 500-600 per day. Pretty unbelievable in my eyes too.
Vince
said,
QandO also pointed out a good refutation of the Lancet study made by none other than Iraq Body Count.
| North Korea Back In The News |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Tuesday, Oct 10, 2006, 12:39 PM · 225 words ·
Last we heard from North Korea (or, as the bloggers have suddenly started calling it, NoKo), they were test-firing medium- and long-range missiles over the Japan Sea. (The long-range missile failed.) Now, apparently they're exploding nuclear weapons underground. There is some question from seismologists about whether it was really a nuclear explosion and not just a conventional explosion, though. If it was nuclear, it was really small. (Some people think suitcase-bomb small.)
| My First Activism |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Thursday, Oct 5, 2006, 8:32 PM · 274 words · 1 comment ·
I've never been much of a political activist, but this Marshall/Newman Amendment proposal here in Virginia annoys me. You know, the one that supposedly amends the Virginia constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.
said,
Excellent post! And I added your comments to my Voting No page.
| Welcome To Web 2.0, Part 2 |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Thursday, Oct 5, 2006, 7:57 PM · 86 words ·
A short addendum to my post on Malkin's video getting pulled from YouTube: 1) Now that I'm home, I can verify that there is a "Flag as Inappropriate" link right below each video, though admittedly you have to login to use that feature. (Not a problem for bots.) 2) I don't dispute that dhimmitude was the motivation for wanting to yank Malkin's videos, I just don't think YouTube submitted to dhimmitude so much as they submitted to a flaw in the peer-review system.
| Welcome To Web 2.0 |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Thursday, Oct 5, 2006, 10:32 AM · 384 words ·
I saw on Crowhill that one of Michelle Malkin's videos (something about Islamic violence) got pulled from YouTube. This struck me as funny. :) And not just because Malkin, a la the best war profiteers, is personally profiting from the culture wars. (By the way, Malkin misleads with her title... she wasn't banned, she just had one of her videos pulled. There's a big difference between the two.) I thought it was funny because I'm not a big fan of the collection of technology ideals known as "Web 2.0," and I enjoy seeing them fail.
| Foley Thoughts In Context |
· Krehbiel Commentary · Wednesday, Oct 4, 2006, 3:58 PM · 544 words ·
Somehow, a Congressman's instant messages are getting just as much attention as a madman shooting five Amish schoolgirls in the head, execution-style.
· 
Anonymous said,
From a purely technical perspective, if the New Jersey constitution says everyone should be treated equally, then there shouldn't be any laws that exclude people from equal treatment, and any laws like that should be changed.
Guess it depends on how you treat the phrase 'treated equally'. Some people might say that homosexuals are just as free to marry someone of the opposite sex as a straight person, but no one is free to marry someone of the same sex.
Vince