June 2007
57 posts
“I want to do this forever.”
– Laurellyn on the iPhone.
I was showing Pixar shorts to my three-year-old daughter.
Must Stop
It’s 2am. I can’t stop playing with my new iPhone. Most stop. Tasting metal.
First Post From iPhone
I’m already poking along pretty good on the keyboard. It certainly encourages brevity though.
And I’m doing this over the dreaded EDGE network, no less!
In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby Faces →
Conn Iggulden, co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, explains why he wants to bring boyhood back: “We wanted to write a book that celebrated boys — with all their differences and geeky love of knowledge, skills and stories.” Funny how I’ve often thought of myself as an atypical guy because I’m not into cars, weight lifting and watching sports on TV, yet everything...
Geek To Live: Separate your email from your... →
“Two lists of tasks - an email ACTION folder and a regular to-do list - is the sure road to dropping the ball on something.”
How To Turn Two Deaths Into Ten Million
Garrison Keillor, on the Writer’s Almanac, notes a grim anniversary:
Today [June 28] is both the anniversary of the event that started World War I and the day that the treaty was signed that officially brought the war to a close.
The event that started the war was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Bosnian revolutionary on this day in 1914 in the...
Rands In Repose: Ninety Days →
Good advice for the first ninety days at a new job. “#2) Accept every lunch invitation you get.”
“The ruling class was always inclined to declare that the country was in danger,...”
– Joseph Schumpeter. Quoted in “Imperialism and the Logic of War Making” by Joe Salerno.
Joe’s article and some other work by him is very relevant to my ongoing research on mass murder.
Previous post on Political Economy.
Stealing and Killing: The Independent Review →
Just noticed that my first major publication is now fully available online, albeit as a PDF, the ghetto of web formats. (Just a summary was available at first). The sub-title is “A Property-Rights Theory of Mass Murder”.
Previous post on Political Economy.
The Peasall Sisters, Interview →
These were the girls whose singing was featured in O Brother, Where Art Thou? I just bought the rest of their album “Home to You”, (last day today to do “Complete My Album” on iTunes for older purchases). These girls are true talents and remind me of family friends the White sisters. I love the Andrew Sisters too. I think I just like harmonizing sisters as a general...
“This war against learning infects virtually all areas of childhood activity....”
– Butler Shaffer, “The War Against Learning”.
Thanks to Butler for articulating something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been very disturbed to see how regimented many children’s lives are these days… Often with little league sports. You have to make an...
Hot computer nerd ninjas →
USA Today’s review of Die Hard 4. The movie is evidently targeted at the users of Digg. It even features Justin Long, “Mac” from Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials.
“If we gathered every bit of output from traditional publishers, we could line...”
– Clay Shirky, “The Siren Song of Luddism”.
Would You Believe That Some Women Can See More... →
The normal human retina’s color receptors are tuned to green, blue, and red. Working together, the three give us our colorful view of the world. When one or more of those color receptors is missing the result is color-blindness. While most of us have color vision based on three channels; a tetrachromat has four.
[Now I know what to say next time my wife teases me for struggling to tell my...
Mises Economics Blog: The GI Bill →
“It was on this day in 1944 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the GI Bill of Rights.”
…Besides the unconscious self-congratulation that one expects from the intelligentsia (“more of us is clearly what the world needs”), there is the matter of how many college degrees is optimal. Should every man, woman and child have a PhD?
Previous post on...
“No one ever said on their deathbed, “Gee, I wish I had spent more time...”
– Dani Berry. Quoted in a useful meditation by Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror: In Programming, One Is The Loneliest Number
“To ignore the wider benefits of the digital revolution is obtuse. Here’s the...”
– Nick Denton of ValleyWag on the short-sighted attacks on Apple, eBay and Google by environmentalists. [Thanks Tim Lee@Cato]
Previous post on Political Economy.
Firstborn children are the Cleverest →
Firstborn children score significantly higher in IQ tests than their younger siblings, according to a large study of 250,000 military draftees. The researchers say the difference is due to social, not biological, factors, as younger siblings have higher IQs if they are raised as an eldest child following the death of an older brother or sister.
Public Enemy #2: Farmers →
Robert Higgs writes: “Ours, however, is not to question why, ours is but to enrich these scoundrels until we die.” (Public Enemy #1 is, of course, the state, the sine qua non of this sort of institionalized looting).
Previous post on Political Economy.
Libertarians on Israel
An exchange with a friend reminded me of some of the key articles on Israel from a libertarian perspective and turned up some other valuable ones. These destroyed my prejudices in favor of the Israeli state by substituting facts for the vague triumphalist history I had learned. Let it be so recorded:
Alienation of a Home-land: How Palestine Became Israel (pdf) by Stephen P. Halbrook (if you do...
8 things about me
I’ve been tagged by BK Marcus. The Rules are:
Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.
The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.
At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and
posts their names,
then goes to their blogs
and leaves them a comment,
letting them know that they have been tagged
and asking them to...
Real Men Love The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai... →
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is the quintessential cult classic B-movie: from its mishmashing of dozens of different film genres, to its detailed creation of a fictional world and hero, to its final, inexplicably cool ending credits, Buckaroo Banzai is, to put it bluntly, pure awesome.
Reason #101 Gov't School is Crazy
Six-year olds starting up their “work week” with six-hour days (plus driving) five times a week. If they get antsy? Drug ‘em.
Previous post on Political Economy.
Reviews: 'At home with The Simpsons' by Paul... →
Includes his explanation of how the Simpsons defends the family.
Black culture beyond hip-hop →
“Try to imagine the Chinese-American son of oncologists… who feels subconsciously compelled to model his life, even if only superficially, on that of a Chinese mafioso dealing heroin on the Lower East Side. “
Mises Economics Blog: If Men Were Angels →
In If Men Were Angels Robert Higgs analyzes James Madison’s famous passage from The Federalist No. 51 containing the quotable line “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Previous post on Political Economy.
Rudy Giuliani Threatens to Whack Ron Paul →
The campaign manager for Ron Paul advised reporters that the matter was reported to the White House and that Alberto Gonzales promised an immediate investigation right after the 2008 election.
“I wish I could hold myself!”
– Laurellyn, upon seeing pictures of herself as a newborn.
VIDEO: Ron Paul on Colbert Report 6/13/07 →
Ron Paul explains liberty to the people.
The Perfect (Sine) Wave by William S. Lind →
“In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006…”. Lind argues that these bombs are entirely counter-productive and the result of the Air Force “protecting its bureaucratic turf”. The banality of evil!
Previous post on Political Economy.
LewRockwell.com Blog: Re: St. Louis Ron Paul... →
As we went around introducing ourselves, LewRockwell.com was mentioned multiple times as the way people knew about Ron Paul and libertarian ideas.
Bumps and bruises are 'good for children’ →
Children should be allowed to play dangerous games and risk minor injuries as part of a wider lesson in life, the organisation responsible for avoiding accidents has said. By scraping knees, grazing elbows and getting bruises, children learn “valuable lifelong lessons” that will help them to avoid more serious injuries in later life.
Wireless Power is Finally Here! →
MIT Team Powers Light Bulb Without Wires. The scientists lit a 60-watt bulb that was 7 feet away from the power-generating appliance.The MIT team stresses that the “magnetic coupling” process involved in WiTricity is safe on humans and other living things. And in the initial experiments on the light bulb, nothing bad happened to the cell phones…
“‘Everything’s changed now’ is a popular way of saying,...”
– Rose Wilder Lane, Pittsburgh Courier, September 7, 1944. [Thanks David Beito]
Previous post on Political Economy.
Wikipedia’s Nerd Bias →
Hilarious. Try, for example, Real Life vs. Second Life.
LewRockwell.com Blog: St. Louis Ron Paul Meetup →
Meet us there!
Two Views on Social Order: Conflict or... →
There are two clear and present dangers to liberty in America, writes Lew Rockwell. One is known as the Left, and the other is known as the Right. They are dangerous because they seek to use government to mold society into a form they seek, rather than the form that liberty achieves if society is left on its own.
Previous post on Political Economy.
What Would Happen If the Post Office Had... →
Would we get more services? Cheaper rates? Shorter lines? Better handling of mail? More convenient location of mailboxes? Just to name a few. Are there risks? Only if you expect poor service at a higher rate.
Previous post on Political Economy.
blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Personal... →
“Each night before you go to bed, prepare a 3x5 index card with a short list of 3 to 5 things that you will do the next day.”
“Pilate asked them, “Why? What has he done wrong?” But they shouted more...”
– Mark 15:14-15. Pilate thinks Jesus is innocent, yet he ignores justice to please the crowd. Majoritarian democracy in a nutshell.
Previous post on Political Economy.
NetNewsWire v3.0 →
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