Monday, April 12. 2010
Good, fun, basic, math. Here.
We have seen what happens when climate science is politicized. Here'a a taste of what happens when medicine gets politicized.
"In the year 2000, American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, CA, was one of the worst-performing middle schools in the state."
So what happened?
Sana'a, or Sana. Population 1.7 million, but certainly off the beaten path.
Yemen, known by the Romans as Arabia Felix, was once famous for their Frankincense trade.
More photos of the mud-brick city here.
 Spittlegate. A MSM scandal
What really drives climate changes? The Milankovitch Cycle
For Mad Men fans, a post on their props, via a piece at Driscoll
The people who do not want medical insurance
Dalrymple: Very Few Innocents in Housing Market Collapse
Parks on Leftist racism. A quote:
...I also knew that I believe in the uncelebrated work fellow black conservatives do to this day (and endure) as racism is only allowed in our society when it’s aimed at us, and instead of turning tail and running, we keep on. I think we’ve shown more guts than any ratings-driven media pundits anyday.
Comments on the Ferguson essay about behavioral economics, which we posted yesterday, at Volokh
What entitlement crisis?
The Islamist Ghost Haunting Europe
Hennessey: Should taxpayers subsidize underwater homeowners?
Amil Imani: Jews as scapegoats
The KKK in Rhode Island. It's a crisis.
Crash course: Your illustrated guide to the Tea Party saboteurs
Sunday, April 11. 2010
 Ferguson's excellent essay at Weekly Standard, titled Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink: Behavioral economics—the governing theory of Obama’s nanny state, quotes the Prez:
“Far more is now known about regulation—not only about when it is justified, but also about what works and what does not. .??.??. In this time of fundamental transformation, that process—and the principles governing regulation in general?—should be revisited.”
Gee whiz, it sounds very "scientific." My response to the notion that my supposed betters need to regulate and nudge me and my life is not printable on a family website such as Maggie's. I do not care whether it "works" or not. Mussolini made the trains run on time, too.
I believe that our Maggie's team and our readers know far more about life than Barack Obama or Cass Sunstein will ever know.
Robin Hanson begins his piece of the above title, about "forager norms," thus:
Food isn’t about Nutrition
Clothes aren’t about Comfort
Bedrooms aren’t about Sleep
Marriage isn’t about Romance
Talk isn’t about Info
Laughter isn’t about Jokes
Charity isn’t about Helping
Church isn’t about God
Art isn’t about Insight
Medicine isn’t about Health
Consulting isn’t about Advice
School isn’t about Learning
Research isn’t about Progress
Politics isn’t about Policy
His conclusion: "We signal covertly and unconsciously because our ancestors were strongly punished for overt and conscious signals."
Signaling theory is interesting, but I do not accept the reductionistic notion that signaling is all that people do when they are together (I should say, neither does Robin H.).
A re-post from June, 2008. Was it that long ago? Seems like yesterday...It was a fine trip.
We took a day, last week, to hop the train over to Lake Como (and to stop by the Como Duomo), and took the fast ferry up to Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo - and then across the lake to Bellagio to see the equally renowned gardens of Villa Melzi.
The 17th-18th century Villa Carlotta and its gardens were a traditional and necessary stop on the "Grand Tour" of "the Continent." We anglophiles like to follow in those old paths.
It is impossible to capture on camera the feel of such vast and varied gardens, which are, in effect, both botanical gardens with worldwide collections of plants, and ornamental gardens designed to impress as much as to delight - some formal Italian and some English-style.
For example, these gardens have bamboo groves, Sequoia groves, acre-sized plantings of azalea, palm collections, collections of cacti, citrus arbors, etc. Even a turtle pool with happy and smiling American southern Red-eared Sliders and Cooters.
This photo is the entrance:
More of my mediocre photos on continuation page below -
Continue reading "Villa Carlotta"
Jars of Clay are wonderful, but I'd like to hear Dylan do this one with Paul Simon:
Saturday, April 10. 2010
Among our link dump Friday morning was a piece on a Cyberspace Bill of Rights.
We need no "rights." We are a free people. Our own Bill of Rights was an unfortunate (if politically necessary) error of the time. Why an error? An error because it made it appear that only the listed "rights" were the rights of citizens.
In the USA, it is the government which has (or had) strictly circumscribed powers. The rest are ours alone - our individual powers - not our "rights." Americans do not have circumscribed "rights." We are not supposed to need them.
Video of Market St., San Francisco, 4 days before the quake. The camera is mounted on the front of a streetcar. I cannot embed it...but maybe Dr. Merc, our Embedder In Chief, can figger out how to.
The population of SF was 400,000. Some traffic, eh? No lights, no crosswalks, no rules. Everybody dodging cars, horses, and streetcars. Total chaos, and wonderful. I love the two guys running to jump-start the car in front of the streetcar.
Also, dig the serene dude on horseback weaving through the people and the traffic. Reminded me of the absurd end of the already-insane Blazing Saddles.
Ed Morrissey and Professor William Jacobson inform us about the tragic death in an airline crash of the brave Polish president and a large number of Poland’s leadership, on their way to a joint commemoration with Russia of the 1940 slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Union.
For those of you who don’t recall Katyn, I wrote about it last August.
Katyn: In 1962, one of my later mentors published the first definitive book proving that the Soviets committed the massacre of Poland’s military elite at Katyn. This is a very important key to understanding the Captive Nations outcome of WWII and the Cold War. I just rented the film, Katyn, directed by Poland’s most famous director. Anne Applebaum, steeped in Soviet history, has an interesting review of the film, “A Movie That Matters.” An excerpt:
"Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army's subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda's father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland's best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union's plans to absorb and "Sovietize" Poland's eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.
"But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.
"Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word "Katyn" thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn't a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland's loss of sovereignty."
Obama snubbing Poland for 70th anniversary of WWII? Poland was the most screwed over country going into, during, and after WWII. Those of its soldiers who escaped the Nazis and Soviets were among the bravest fighters with the Allies. Poland and Poles deserve more respect.
Wonder what hollow words President Obama will utter now?
Today’s loss is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world. President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity. With him were many of Poland’s most distinguished civilian and military leaders who have helped to shape Poland’s inspiring democratic transformation. We join all the people of Poland in mourning their passing.
As usual from Obama, contradicted by his undercutting of Poland volunteering to host anti-missile defense and his disdain for Polish President Lech Kaczynski when alive. Israel surely gets the point.
The New York Times asks: "For Poland, the losses raise the question of how a country of 38 million can replace a whole political class." It had to before and will again, because Poles and their leaders have clearsighted historical memory and courage.
 Shrinkwrapped: How the poor are different
Video: Jimmy Doolittle talks about the raid on Tokyo
Rates of casual sex swelling. We are just monkeys, aren't we? Or are we not?
The Great Books are the answer. The Bible is one of them.
Malanga: The bloat in NJ's schools (h/t, Tiger)
Great news for Billings, MT - and for your grandkids who will pay for this crap.
40,000 Cuban advisors now in Venez
All the proles need to know about government medical care:
“It’s like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest. All you need to know is, you open the door. The light goes on.”
That Pelosi sure is a deep one.
Good fun with supply and demand curves re health care
The death panels medical rationing that is to come
Britain "bringing climate change to the heart of the national curriculum." Nothing else to learn, is there?
Front Page: The power of the drones
How did people ever survive for 20,000 years in Europe without massive EU regulation?
HuffPo: The battle for the soul of the Dem Party
A hungry Leviathan. The VAT, at Q&O:
Revenue, folks, revenue – the beast is hungry and insatiable. And it has a very serious problem looming the future. It wants no part of lean and mean. Instead, it wants to be fat, happy and expanding – and VAT would do that. And you, dear wage earner, are the means to its dreams.
Keynes vs. Hayek. Of course, we know the only reason that Keynesian stimuli remain popular is pure politics - a justification to reward those one wishes to reward with $.
If the US Europeanizes, Europe is in trouble
Lenin the politician:
An ideological hardliner, he was ready to fudge even the issue of nationalization when his Bolshevik colleagues objected. Call it the people’s ownership, he suggested.
 My Wife
Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire,
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty Master
Gave to her.
Teacher, tender comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free,
The august Father gave to me.
I had something else in the pipeline for today, but I could not resist this offering from Stevenson from our reader MM.
Friday, April 9. 2010
“I’m tired of hearing about the Holocaust.” Be close enough to most people for them to be honest, even Jews, and you’ll often hear that said. What they most usually mean is they are tired of hearing hypocrisy.
Sunday is Holocaust Day, Yom Ha-Shoah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe, sadly commemorated in many nations so we don’t forget. The actual full title is Yom Ha-Shoah Ve-Hagevurah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe and the Heroism.
Yes, there was heroism. Among the parents and strangers who kept spirits alive ‘til death. Among the relative handfuls who risked all to shelter or aid escape. Among those who escaped to fight. Among those who tried to alert the Allies and get their help, failing but persevering.
Continue reading "“I’m Tired Of Hearing About The Holocaust”"
 Apart from blenders, toaster ovens and computers, another realm the microchip has improved immensely are the new state-of-the-art metal detectors.
Metal detectors have been around for a long time, about seventy years or so, but until relatively recently they've been severely limited as to the type of ground they could penetrate. All of the iron in the ground in California, Nevada and Colorado has been like a solid wall to metal detectors, until now. This new wave of metal detectors can now penetrate these ferrous-rich areas, and great discoveries await those who try.
The technology has also enabled metal detectors to work correctly in salt water. The old style worked somewhat, but not nearly as well as the new ones do.
Below the fold, I'll list out some popular ways in which this new metal detector technology can be used for fun and profit. You don't have to buy the fanciest one on the shelf, but you'll certainly get more options, the more you pay. A more-expensive model can not only tell how deep a coin is buried, but even what type of coin it is. It can also tell basic metal types, such as "iron", "silver", "gold", and can even isolate and identify pull-top tabs, the all-time bane of the treasure hunter. So, a few extra dollars spent now could save you endless hours later in the field.
Continue reading "Treasure hunting with a metal detector"
From Spruill on student loans and government obesity:
(A) point I made during the student-loan debate is that it has demonstrated the process by which a basically conservative citizenry can be made to accept a much larger federal government. Step one, subsidize an activity through the private sector, gradually getting the public to think of the subsidy as an entitlement. Step two, get the government more involved through the direct provision of the activity. Step three, denounce the old subsidy as corporate welfare en route to arguing that the government should be the sole provider.
If anyone counters that the government should stop subsidizing the activity, call him a radical (and possibly racist) throwback. If anyone tries to defend the status quo, call him a corporate shill.
Related, see How 100 million lose insurance under Obamacare. Many will no doubt be eager for a government plan...if that's all there is.
I guess that even I, who does tend to be a skeptic about everything, have been a bit influenced by the RC-hating MSM, because I have to admit that this somewhat surprises me.
Got plenty of thoughts about it, but no time now.
Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means.
Robert Louis Stevenson
 Do not eat your vegetables:
HIGH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE CONSUMPTION doesn’t do much to prevent cancer. “People who hate vegetables will be happy about this report.”
Henninger: Youth joblessness in the US, and the Eurozone's jobs dystopia
Why should we need a Bill of Rights for Cyberspace? We already have free speech
In Bid To Reform Fannie and Freddie, Obama Can’t Shake Crony Clintonistas Who Caused the Mess
Steyn: Strange that the more Canada congratulates itself on its ‘tolerance’ the less it’s prepared to tolerate. He quotes some uncloseted totalitarian:
“We don’t have a First Amendment, we don’t have a religion of free speech,” she explained patiently. “Students sign off on all kinds of agreements as to how they’ll behave on campus, in order to respect diversity, equity, all of the values that Canadians really care about. Those are the things that drive our political culture. Not freedoms, not rugged individualism, not free speech. It’s different, and for us, it works.”
That is, we don't need no steenkin freedom.
Roseanne Barr: Parents Who Take Children to Catholic Church Should Lose Custody
Dick Morris: DEM STRATEGISTS HAVE IT WRONG
Big Journalism: The Mainstream Media: Fourth Estate Or Fifth Column?
RedState: Democrats plot two-pronged attack on Internet freedom
Our friend Skook with a Moose story - and nuclear weapons
Give me niceness or give me death
GM: More Troubles Coming Down the Road
Driscoll: Twilight Of The Gods: CNN’s Current, Pitiful State
Time for a fresh look at the Commerce Clause? Will the Individual Mandate Hold up in Court?
Unemployed slackers:
Is it the president's fault that Americans are better off than they were 30 years ago, and are thus not desperate to take whatever job that comes along?
I have heard this plenty of times: "With the extension, I have nine more months of unemployment, so I'll start looking seriously in a few months"?
CT Post: That's Greece in the mirror
Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd wants to impose some changes on the way that financing for new ventures works in America
VAT attack. Beware: 'Value-added tax' is an economy-killer
Powerline: 10 reasons not to walk away from your mortgage
I mentioned Elco yachts in my post yesterday. Here's a 1937 53' Elco, now for sale here.
As I always ask about boats made of wood (and about fancy women), "Even if you can afford to get her, can you afford to keep her?"
|
