The line, often 3 people wide, snaked down the hallway, around a corner, dodged a glass table, and mooned the hotel lobby. Groups here and there made up of the 8,000 attendees of CPAC saw some of their cohorts in this thing and wondered what they were missing. By the time they found out, it was too late. There were already over 700 people in line for an event that expected 200 and was only able to fit the first 500 in the room. According to many at the end of the line or who never even got in line, they turned away more than had originally even been expected.

CPAC had the opportunity to host this as an official event. They turned it down. Too controversial I suppose. It ended up in a far off side room a ways from the main event. Not announced or advertised. Not Rush Limbaugh. Not Glenn Beck or Shaun Hannity. But a Dutch politician with a dangerous weapon – a mirror. Geert Wilders holds the mirror up and people don’t like what they see. But then, he’s the offender holding it up.

More at Atlas Shrugs.

Update: Thus far Fox News has not mentioned one peep about Geert Wilders visit to the US last week. On the other hand, during the month of February they featured 5 articles about his difficulties entering the UK.

As I’ve noted in several posts on this blog, the day of the all electric recreational boat is coming. It’s actually a more technically and economically feasible deal than electric cars. The drawback? As electric boats become readily available we’ll start to see pressure for lakes and sections of rivers to be classified as electric only. No gas engines allowed. No more air and noise pollution. And this won’t wait until all or even most of the current users of the waterway have electric boats, it will happen very early in the electric boat epoch. Those who own gas powered boats will start to find fewer and fewer places to use them and with fewer places to use them comes huge devaluation of gas powered boats making it difficult for these folks to afford to purchase a new electric boat (or get their gas guzzler converted?)

How much you want to bet we’ll see a government program to help people cover the difference in their devalued gas boat and a new electric boat? It can be modeled on the similar government program to help people who had devalued horses purchase new gas powered cars. (Is this the government program that was a model for the government program that gave everyone $40 to help buy a new digital TV tuner?)

They bar Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the country because he’s too controversial and now, just a few days later, they say this is OK. Confused? I am.

Thanks to the folks at WIRED magazine for coming up with this pic of what the new Tesla S Model may look like.

In other Tesla news. I was very disappointed to hear a rumored reason for Darryl Siry’s departure was his having angst over Tesla taking $40k deposits on the S Model before they even have a factory to build them in. Does the guy simply have a conscious?

I don’t know how accurate this site is, but from quick checking it’s fairly solid. Some of the stories of innocent people killed by police and DEA agents in pursuit of people doing drugs is heart-wrenching.

In true government parlance I guess they’re just necessary collateral damage.

Rick Santelli:

In talking with kids and adults today it becomes apparent that we are no longer teaching critical thinking. It’s a foreign concept. Kids in school are indoctrinated with a variety of things and are never given the other side, told to research the other side, or asked to evaluate all of the potential negative consequences of a decision. They’re now growing in to adults who choose who they like and want to listen to and then swallow everything that person or group says. To the blind and often ignorant exclusion of others. No questions asked.

We are ALL, whether Democrat or Republican, Black, White, Red, or Grey, becoming simpletons. We’re nothing but lemmings. We follow without question, even if that’s right over a cliff. We make decisions with little to no thought about the consequences – for us, those around us, and society. Most of us have no idea why we believe what we believe, even on a very rudimentary level.

It would do us some good to task ourselves with writing a paper arguing for the position opposed to our own and evaluating all consequences.

In school our kids should routinely be tasked with doing this so that they learn to evaluate the pros and cons of decisions. Perhaps first argue for their own position along with the negative consequences of the opposing view, then some time later argue for the opposing position with all of the negative consequences our their own view, then some time after that present a solid pros and cons evaluation.

RIA? Rest In Anquish. Critical thinking won’t rest in peace.

This was the headline for at least one major newspaper late last week. Many parents who’ve lost their jobs or have had their hours cut back are apparently keeping their kids at home instead of bringing them in to daycare. Interesting impact of our new economy.

Would this have been a headline anytime in history prior to perhaps 1990?

I was looking for a Blu-Ray player and came across this on a Sony BDP-S550

http://www.techcyberstore.com/sobdbl.html

$239 is a pretty good deal. Too good to be true when most others are selling this player for $275 – $300?

Their address as listed on their website is
TECH CYBER STORE, INC.
10400 Southwest 98th Street
Suite 400
Miami FL 33176

Click Here to see their ‘office’ on Streetview, It’s the one on the right.

If you order from them let me know how it goes.

Some would think that the last thing people in the oil funded Middle East would want is to do anything that would benefit electric cars. Well, some folks in the United Arab Emirates want to put some of that money they’ve earned from all of our gas engines in to a racing series for Tesla electrics. More here.