Stop me if you've heard this one, a Bilderberger walks into a bar...

[O]n the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks.

No but seriously folks.  What the hell?  People really truly believe that stuff.  The bank that bought you when you born.

Via Kevin Drum:

The basic idea is simple: the wind gets stronger the higher up you are, so why not build flying turbines that hover a mile or two above the earth and crank out the megawatts?

The only question I have would be how much reduced atmospheric pressure at high altitude would affect the kinetic energy transmitted from the moving air to the generator itself, but I'd imagine they've already thought of that and that it's not a factor.

Scott McNealy has an interesting idea.  His non-profit company, Curriki, aggregates and develops online educational resources from a community of contributors:

Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of 'curriculum' and 'wiki' which is the technology we're using to make education universally accessible.

Like most other people on the more non-conservative side of things, I was pretty disappointed with the administration's actions in the recent Shirley Sherrod dust-up.  But I thought that their actions were somewhat mitigated by the fact that they fairly quickly did the right thing: admitted they were wrong, apologized, and tried to take steps to make things as right as they could be under the circumstances.

I think Steve Benen sums up the way I see the situation pretty well right here:

A very interesting article on the topic by Jonathon Rauch.  The basic point, and I've long thought that this is very true, is that opposition to same-sex marriage is driven in some cases by homophobia, but not in all or even most cases.

Update Below: Will Wilkinson addresses Dylan Matthews's point about Hayek's support for social insurance and safety nets.

In this article on Bill Kristol's recent outreach to tea-party activists, James Poulos makes a declaration about how liberals and progressives view the size of government:

I've received quite a few e-mails from my conservative-leaning family members and friends identifying the culprit behind the oil spill in the Gulf. The issue, it seems, is that the Obama Administration is so in the pocket of organized labor that it's allowed the Jones Act, a law that places a number of restrictions on the nationality of ships that carry goods in U.S. waters:

I have not been writing much lately, as I've been pretty involved with other projects, but am really trying to get back to it!  At least I've posted one coherent thought now!

Fred Kaplan has a great response to Mitt Romney's Washington Post OpEd yesterday.  I read Romney's article and it certainly sounded suspect to me, but I'll admit that's because I assumed that, as a Repandercan, anything Mitt Romney "writes" is going to accord with the by-laws and stipulations of Asinine Conservative Nation as currently constituted on the Tea Party-Ron Paul-Glenn Beck Axis (ACNACCOTPRPGBA for short).

Well, I've mostly completed my completion from one server that's hosted my sites and code and all kinds of jack for over 10 years to a newer one.  I managed to get the Drupal site migrated with a minimum of fuss, but I did need to actually move the whole site over via tarball as opposed to installing a new version of Drupal and just having that work.  Dunno what that was all about.

But regardless, here I am at my new home!  Don't get the carpet dirty too fast.  Thanks.