Month: June 2007

  • Your President Is Lying To You

    Yep. No doubt about it. Your President is lying to you. At least according to the Japanese during WW2. June 29, 2007: U.S. troops have been mystified at how differently the war they fight in Iraq is portrayed by the U.S. media back home. Most just shrug it off as “politics,” and yet another reason…

  • Greetings from Alaska

    This is the first chance I’ve had to check in at all, and I don’t have time for much of a post, but I thought I’d try to share a picture. In Ketchikan, Alaska yesterday I was lucky enough to see a bald eagle sitting on top of an abandoned ramshackle house. Whipping out my…

  • “Ups and Downs”

    From A London Child Of The 1870s, by M.V. Hughes A settled income has its attractions possibly, but it can never be the fun of an unsettled one. My father was on the Stock Exchange, and wavered between great affluence and extreme poverty. Neither he nor mother had a saving or economical disposition, but lived…

  • Arthur Collins

    From A London Child Of The 1870s, by M.V. Hughes Londoners have no neighbors. During our fifteen years in the one house we never had the slightest acqaintance with our ‘semi-detached’, nor with the people round, although we knew several by sight and gave them nicknames. A very few became known to us through the…

  • A Victorian Childhood Described

    Earlier this month, I posted an excerpt from A London Child Of The 1870s, by M.V. Hughes. Since then, I’ve been re-reading it and enjoying it greatly. It’s a brief, rambling, and episodic little volume, sedately endearing and unpretentious. Having enjoyed it, my plan for the next few days is to share that enjoyment with…

  • Art by Roni Golan

    Roni has more fine art at Underground Studios. He lives in Rockford, Illinois and is a friend of mine. About the artist. Cross Posted at The Astute Bloggers

  • Price Controls

    I have made one of my periodic visits to the Netscape blog where today’s topic is Anger At the Gas Pump. A topic already covered here. So the topic drifts to Nixon’s wage and price freeze. We have an economic genius who says the policy was really nice but didn’t last long enough. farmerman has…

  • Plan B From Outer Space

    My friend Sgt. Mom, from the Daily Brief has an idea and some chapters of a book she wants to get published. She needs your help. I’ll let her explain: So here’s the story, of a blogger (me, of course) who wrote a long multi-part essay a couple of years ago about an incident in…

  • Early Thoughts On The Precautionary Principle: 1976

    From The Next 200 Years, by Herman Kahn It is often suggested that adequate technology assessment (TA) studies should be required for any technical innovation before proceeding with commercial applications–that the burden of proof be placed on the people who want the innovation. It sounds reasonable to say that it is up to the innovator…

  • “Top Men”

    From The Sydney Morning Herald, June 22, 2007 More than 100 studies have found that experts are often poor forecasters. In one survey Professor Philip Tetlock, of the University of California at Berkeley, obtained 82,361 forecasts from 284 academics, other commentators and professional advisers in the areas of politics and economics. The experts had to…

  • The Difficult Long Term Environment: 1976

    From The Next 200 Years, by Herman Kahn Man’s intellectual and physical resources must also be devoted to the task of monitoring and overcoming potentially catastrophic long-term environmental problems… To help in this effort, we would recommend the world-wide creation of a number of public and private institutions with various specific purposes, but all with…

  • Gas Wars In Iran

    In America a “gas war” is a price war. Fuel stations compete for customers by lowering prices. In Iran the “gas war” is caused by a government mandated sudden jump in fuel prices. The Spirit of Man blog has a round up of the gas wars in Iran with pictures. It appears Iran is burning.…

  • Principles Of Forecasting

    Did you know there were principles of forecasting? I don’t mean like the positions of the planets. Which for time spans of tens of thousands of years is fairly mechanical. The kind of forecasting I’m talking about involves events that are less deterministic than the motions of the planets. And yet there are principles. The…

  • When Only The Truth Is Allowed…

    Some of the conspiracists over at Volokh were discussing the Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case that the Supreme Court decided. Basically they said that if you intentionally skip school and show up at a public event with a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” sign a 10 day suspension for the sign is not unreasonable because school…

  • Because It Is Popular

    Ann Althouse is looking at what makes Mike Nifong or as I expect, the soon to be JailFong, different from other prosecutors? Was it the elements of the case: sex, athletes, strippers, and a hooker? Or was it his behavior? Which got me to thinking. The whole Drug War is prosecutorial misconduct. We now know…

  • Enslave The Machines And Free The Humans

    I’m working with a bunch of folks at NASA Space Flight blog trying to turn the concept invented by Dr. Robert Bussard, the Bussard Fusion Reactor, into a practical research reactor to test the concepts involved. What is striking about the people working on the project is that we have every one – from a…

  • Telling The Truth In School

    It seems that in Canada telling the truth in school can get you suspended. Kieran King got in trouble with his school for doing research on marijuania (on line, not personal) and telling the truth about what he found. On May 30, Kieran, who is described as “research-obsessed” by his mother, was chatting with friends…

  • Classics might be forever, but I’m going on vacation!

    Last week I bought a sheet of the new “Forever” stamps: I like things that can be used forever, and I toyed with the idea of buying a lifetime supply. Too much hassle, I thought. Besides, what’s a lifetime? Suppose I die. Can I take them with me? I was reminded of the Forever stamps…

  • Multiculturalist Micromanagement?

    Via Pajamas Media, I read about a scary new trend in Australia — selective race-based legislation which would prohibit alcohol and pornography, but only to Aborigines: Australia’s prime minister announced plans Thursday to ban pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in northern areas and tighten control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex abuse among…

  • More laws, more bureaucracy, more social workers, more crime!

    Summer’s beginning: Six dead in one day Five died in two triple shootings 15 hours apart in which gunmen opened fire on people on city streets. That scary headline makes it look as if Philadelphia is being plagued by random gunfire, which just happens all by itself. And as usual, none of the victims or…