Michael Williams – Master of None

Money phrase: "is it only a person when it's wanted?"

(HT: Allman's Electric Stove.)

Johan Huibers built a life-sized Noah's Ark. Here's the Ark's website (with pictures). Amazing.

Man Builds Noah's Ark (exact scale given in Bible)

Working Replica of Noah's Ark Opened In SCHAGEN, Netherlands . The massive central door in the side of Noah's Ark was opened the first crowd of curious townsfolk to behold the wonder. Of course, it's only a replica of the biblical Ark , built by Dutch Creationist Johan Huibers as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible. The ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high and 20 cubits wide. That's two-thirds the length of a football field and as high as a three-story house. Life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals greet visitors as they arrive in the main hold. A contractor by trade, Huibers built the ark of cedar and pine. Biblical Scholars debate exactly what the wood used by No ah would have been.

Huibers did the work mostly with his own hands, using modern tools and with occasional help from his son Roy. Construction began in May 2005. On the uncovered top deck - not quite ready in time for the opening - will come a petting zoo, with baby lambs and chickens, and goats, and one camel.

Visitors on the first day were stunned. 'It's past comprehension', said Mary Louise Starosciak, who happened to be bicycling by with her husband while on vacation when they saw the ark looming over the local landscape.

'I knew the story of Noah, but I had no idea the boat would have been so big.' There is enough space near the keel for a 50-seat film theater where kids can watch a video that tells the story of Noah and his ark. Huibers, a Christian man, said he hopes the project will renew interest in Christianity in the Netherlands, where church going has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years.

(HT: SS.)

It used to be that liberals wanted to free us from paternalistic authority, but President Obama's new regulatory chief, Cass Sunstein, is explicitly in favor of more paternalism.

The basic premise of libertarian paternalism is that the government should use its power to “nudge” people into acting in their best interest, while leaving them the choice to “opt out.” If the government decides that saving money is good, it would automatically divert a percentage of your paycheck into a savings account in your name unless you explicitly declined. Supporters claim that this preserves freedom because government is only changing the default, while leaving individuals the final choice. It is merely a gentle “nudge,” not a hard push.

However, nudging represents an assault on freedom, because it undermines man’s basic tool of survival — his mind. By creating a default, libertarian paternalism in essence says, “Don’t worry — we’ll do your thinking for you.” Sunstein’s book explicitly compares Americans to a bunch of Homer Simpsons in need of such guidance. If Americans surrender their minds to the government, they become easy prey for demagogues and dictators.

Once we concede the legitimacy of “nudging,” nudges will inevitably escalate. Over time, libertarian paternalism will become less “libertarian” and more “paternalistic.” The government that initially nudges you to save 5% of your income may next nudge you to save 25%. Or buy more vegetables. Or drive fewer miles. And once a default is set, government could make opting out increasingly difficult, then impossible.

Plus all the time you've got to waste keeping track of and undoing these "nudges". Can't they just leave us alone?

A regular home internet user may not realize it, but current technology allows data to be transmitted much faster than it can be processed. Your home network connection sends data far slower than your desktop can handle it, but at the top end of the technology spectrum the bottleneck is processing, not data transmission. Fortunately, techniques for faster signal sampling are improving!

Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have achieved world-record speeds for real-time signal processing in an effort to meet ambitious goals set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the first Terabit-scale technology for optical processing. The technology could have widespread ramifications for networking, computing, defense and other industries.

UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering professor Stojan Radic and his team have demonstrated the first real-time sampling of a 320 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) channel, setting multiple records in the process. ...

“For the first time we have been able to process signals as fast as 320 Gb/s by making more than eight copies of the signal and simultaneously sampling all the copies – thereby allowing us to do real-time processing,” said Radic, a professor in UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. The aggregate speed was a record, as were the number of copies simultaneously sampled. The demonstration also registered a five-fold improvement in a published optical delay demonstration." ...

The goal of the four-year project is to reach one Terabit per second processing with a single technology platform,” said Radic. “A little over one year into the project, we have achieved one-third of that speed, which is about an order-of-magnitude faster than the advanced commercial optical transport at 40 Gb/s.”

Very cool. It will be years before this technology gets into your home, but just imagine downloading your entire harddrive in one second.... DVD and BluRay won't be able to compete in a world where that much data can be streamed to users so fast.

I've mentioned Voice of the Martyrs before and the great work they do bringing attention to Christians being persecuted around the world. Well now there's a way for you to support a worker of the underground church by making a $35/month contribution. Check it out and pray about giving.

Wikileaks is an awesome new site where you can download public domain Congressional reports that your Congressman doesn't want you to see. Over $1 billion worth of reports online now. It's hard to stop reading them....

Buy your own Tim Geithner "TAX CHEAT!" stamps. Thanks to Gateway Pundit for the mention.

I'm printing out this bingo card for our next trip to Wal-Mart.

(HT: RD.)

Just watched President Obama's spa speech and he must have forgotten his contact lenses or something. There were a few obvious mis-reads from his teleprompter, the most egregious of which was (paraphrase): "we must pass this stimulus so our school won't keep falling." I'm pretty sure that should've been "failing".

My wife just sent me this story and it makes me absolutely furious. As if abortion isn't bad enough, now babies that manage to survive abortions are being murdered.

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.

Only Renelique didn't arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.

First off, how often do you think this sort of thing happens? I bet it happens a lot without anonymous tipsters raising an alarm.

Secondly, this is exactly the kind of murder that Barack Obama refused to criminalize when was an Illinois state legislator.

The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) both in the Illinois and Federal legislatures was meant to make illegal death by neglect of born but unwanted infants. These bills were opposed by the bulk of the Democrat Party because of the fact that the original bills could have been construed to say that a pre-birth fetus was a "person" that was protected by law. So, the bill in Congress was altered to address that concern by adding a "neutrality clause" that made it clear that the bill would not protect a fetus in utero.

As Obama continues to tell the tale, as a State Senator he said he voted against the Illinois bill because the Federal "neutrality clause" was not included and that therefore he could not support the Illinois bill. Turns out he is not telling the truth about this fact. Even worse, he knows better because he was part of the legislative committee that added that very "neutrality clause" to the very bill he voted against in 2003.

Revolting. Renelique and Belkis Gonzalez, the clinic's owner, should both be executed.

I'm stealing daveg's idea and am selling "TAX CHEAT!" stamps for use on bills bearing the name of our new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Shoot me an email (plasticATgmailDOTcom) if you'd like one. $12 each, including shipping.