Some random things while I get my act together

My little bookworm is, thankfully, feeling somewhat better, so I thought I’d throw out a few things that have piqued my interest over the past few days.

You may recall my rant about solar panels a little while ago.  Things are better now, because we’ve just entered the half of the year where most hours are off-peak.  Now I live normally, but spring and summer lurk to make my life irritatingly difficult again.  I mention this here and now because of Barry Rubin’s riff on low flow toilets.  In the same vein, read Robert Samuelson going ballistic about high speed rails, an incredibly expensive boondoggle coming very soon to California (which is essentially broke).

Did you need a reminder that, merely because one is wrapped in the garments of a faith, that doesn’t mean one “gets it?”  If you did need such a reminder, Brutally Honest has one for you.  The pairing for that, of course, is the Catholic Bishop who went on an anti-Israel rant.  It’s not an official Vatican position, but I’m very disappointed that the Vatican’s silence.  The irony is that this ugly voice within the Catholic church represents the Church’s attempt to have a rapprochement with the Eastern branch of the faith, and to keep the faith alive in Muslim lands.  The further irony is that the Catholics in Muslim lands are not faring well, and must be wondering why the semi-official Church position is to pander to their killers.

Given the sea of misinformation in which we live, is it any surprise that America’s debt is far in excess of that to which the administration will admit?

On an unrelated topic, I work with a brilliant lawyer, truly brilliant, whose main fault is that he’s incredibly reactive.  He always allows the other side to frame the case, and then simply responds defensively.  His defense is always knowledgeable and creative, and often incredibly aggressive, but it’s still only a defense.  It’s only when trial comes, and DQ and I really get down to studying the core documents, that we’re sometimes able to break free and come up with our own filter, one that often frames the case in such a way that we win.  I thought of that when I read Charlie Szrom’s post asking, since it’s clear our enemies have a strategy, whether we have one too.