Around the blogs

Here goes with another blast from the blogosphere.

# # #

The Silicon Graybeard examines the prospects for an Article V Convention to amend the US constitution.  I'm not sure that would be a good idea, for fear it could be 'packed' by supporters of one party or the other and propose amendments that might not be widely accepted;  but if that danger could be overcome, and a Convention called that was genuinely non-partisan and balanced, it might not be a bad idea.

# # #

Knuckledragger brings us this image of an epic product failure.

# # #

American Mercenary describes 'government spending in a nutshell, and social security in particular'.  Not very comforting, to put it mildly.

# # #

Matt Walsh finds out he's been guilty of racism.  Not.

# # #

Passive Guy, an intellectual property lawyer and publishing industry blogger, has an excellent post on how to back up and save your computer work so that you never, ever lose it to accident or malfunction.  Extremely useful advice, IMHO.  I'm going to modify my backup practices to implement some of his suggestions.

# # #

The interestingly named Titflasher describes 'How to live with nine cats and not lose your mind'.  She had me laughing my ass off . . . As Miss D. observed after reading it, we have enough trouble living with one!

# # #

The Hit & Run blog at Reason.com describes an outrageous attempt at intimidation by cops in Kansas City, MO.  Even more shocking is that technically, it may not have been illegal.  I'll be watching developments in this case very closely.

# # #

Mad Ogre, a long-standing colleague of mine on Internet forums and a fellow blogger since way back when, describes his wife's trials, tribulations and frustrations in trying to renew her drivers license.  Bureaucrats!  Grrr!

# # #

Borepatch has two articles of interest this week.

The first is what he calls a 'Security Smorgasbord', recommending various solutions and products to aid and enhance computer security.  I tried one of them, Bleachbit, and was astonished at how many redundant files it removed from my system.  I've run CCleaner religiously on a weekly basis since way back when, and it's routinely deleted a few dozen megabytes each time.  Bleachbit deleted 3.7 gigabytes!  My system's been noticeably faster and smoother since all that crud was removed.

Next, he brings us a very interesting video discourse by Milton Friedman on socialized medicine.  In the light of the catastrophe that is Obamacare, it's well worth watching.

# # #

Earthbound Misfit warns tinfoil hat users that 'They don't really work. Worse, at some frequencies (reserved for government use), they amplify the signal.'

# # #

Vodkapundit warns that 'The Facebook Messenger app requires users agree to be monitored by microphone at any time without their permission'.  Tell me again why anybody in their right mind would trust Facebook at all, let alone use it?

# # #

Finally, Roberta has a very interesting video showing how astronauts aboard the International Space Station return to Earth aboard a Soyuz capsule.  Lots of interesting bits of information for space geeks.

# # #

That's all from the blogosphere for this week.  More soon!

Peter