The folly of mistaking a paradox for a
discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of
capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us. -Paul
Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945)
Finland’s Wife-Carrying Championships has its roots in the late 1800s when a gangster named Rosvo-Ronkainen living in Sonkajärvi, Finland accepted only men who could go through and accomplish a challenge – stealing women from neighboring villages. Stealing women isn’t a practice anymore in the Finnish villages but the sport that emerged from it has become a tradition that’s been annually done since 1992. One of the rules is: All participants must enjoy themselves.
Platte River Systems, of Denver, Colorado, maintained the 'homebrew' server at the center of the mounting scandal hitting the Clinton campaign. Can anyone imagine why? Platte River Systems? Daily Mail Online writes the firm in the past was sued over claims it illegally accessed the US master database of phone numbers, and that it seized control of hundreds of phone lines - including some used by the Department of Defense and White House military support desks. The disclosure raises questions over the ability of the firm to maintain the controversial Clinton server, which was housed in her upstate New York home and had no State Department security back-up. Clinton is facing increasing scrutiny after material which was 'above top secret' and came from the CIA was found in emails she had kept in it. But, like the Animus spill, no big deal.
The
legacy of the Space Shuttle Program: 135 missions over 30 years, 300
astronauts carried into space, 14 lost in 2 disasters, Space Shuttle
Challenger in 1986 and the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003. Missions
included carrying Spacelab for 20 trips, a joint venture between the
NASA and the ESA, the launch and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope,
docking with the Mir Russian space station, and the building and supply
of the International Space Station.
Who was ....Catilina?
Mayor de Blasio congratulated the women's soccer team for their winning the World Cup at a New York parade yesterday. He said the success of the team was a blow for equality everywhere. Fortunately there was no idiot around whose appreciation of the team was limited to that of a really good soccer team playing wonderful soccer and deserving the championship. The same day Omar Sharif died. He was a fine actor who appeared in Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago and many others. He will always be in that iconic moment riding out of the desert. He had an obituary on NPR that emphasized that he was successful despite that he was a Catholic, an Egyptian, criticized by other Egyptians for playing opposite the Jewish Barbra Streisand and that he was square faced, dark haired not blond like the western O'Toole and had an accent. Regrettably he died before he could reap the advantages sowed by the women's soccer team.
As of the beginning of June, in China, the balance of margin financing outstanding was an estimated 12% of the free float market cap of marginable stocks and 3.5% of GDP—easily the highest in the history of global equity markets.
Manitou Lake on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron is the world’s largest lake within a lake (41.1 square miles).
Golden oldie:
In late September of 1950, over a few days, a Navy vessel used giant hoses to spray a fog of two kinds of bacteria, Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii — both believed at the time to be harmless — out into the fog, where they disappeared and spread over the city.
The unsuspecting residents of San Francisco certainly could not consent to the military’s germ warfare test, and there’s good evidence that it could have caused the death of at least one resident of the city, Edward Nevin, and hospitalized 10 others. Over the next 20 years, the military would conduct 239 “germ warfare” tests over populated areas, according to news reports from the 1970s. These tests included the large-scale releases of bacteria in the New York City subway system, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and in National Airport just outside Washington, D.C.– From MSN
Puerto Rico bonds are triple tax sheltered.
“The government funded researchers control the field by funding only those researchers that use the same flawed methods; they stifle progress by rejecting contradictory evidence, and immediately impugn the integrity and competence of researcher who disagree.” That is a line from an article in Reason Magazine on........diet research. Gotcha!
The
power of any particular union to push up the wages of its members, that
is, to make them higher than they would be without the activity of the
union, rests entirely on its ability to prevent the entry into the trade
of workers willing to work for a lower wage. This will have the effect
that the latter either must work elsewhere at still lower wages or that
they will remain unemployed.--Hayek
Privilege: An
recent article argued against the use of the word "privilege" as a
synonym for "successful." "The etymology of the word “privilege” is:
“privi” – private; “lege” – legislation. Private legislation.
(“Special privileges” is, therefore, a pleonasm.--from the Greek,
meaning "more, too much.") A person who is truly privileged, therefore,
is a person who benefits from a special use of government force wielded
in his or her favor. This use of force is not generalizable beyond the
individual (or small, closed group) for whom the privilege is created.
A genuine privilege is a benefit that government bestows on only an
individual or on a small select group with the intention of benefiting
that individual or members of that small group even if such benefits come at the greater expense of the general public." (Bordeaux)
Only 3 percent of soldiers in the active-duty Army have earned Ranger badge, it is an unofficial prerequisite for obtaining many infantry commands, and an explicit requirement for leading combat troops in the Ranger Regiment. It is also a significant career enhancer even for officers who do not serve in combat units. There are at present two women in the advanced stages of Ranger School and, if they finish, they will be the first women to do so. 17 other women who started Ranger School this year did not make it. None of the 29 female officers who started the similar Marine program passed. If either of these women pass the Ranger course, they will place a real question upon the sincerity of the military in their often stated gender equality.
Only 3 percent of soldiers in the active-duty Army have earned Ranger badge, it is an unofficial prerequisite for obtaining many infantry commands, and an explicit requirement for leading combat troops in the Ranger Regiment. It is also a significant career enhancer even for officers who do not serve in combat units. There are at present two women in the advanced stages of Ranger School and, if they finish, they will be the first women to do so. 17 other women who started Ranger School this year did not make it. None of the 29 female officers who started the similar Marine program passed. If either of these women pass the Ranger course, they will place a real question upon the sincerity of the military in their often stated gender equality.
The
Vestal Virgins of Rome were women priests who tended the sacred fire of
Vesta, goddess of the hearth fire. If they lost their virginity,
even as a result of rape, they were buried alive in an unmarked
grave. In the 1,000-year history of the temple, only 18 Vestals
received this punishment. One of the most famous accusations involved
Catalina of the famous Catilina Conspiracy.
Politico
reported recently about an upcoming meeting. “Clinton’s aide said she
will discuss some of the structural forces conspiring against
sustainable wage growth, such as globalization, automation, and even
consumer-friendly ‘sharing economy.’” This deserves some thought.
Opposing expanded opportunities to buy and sell (that is, by
globalization), machinery that releases labor to perform tasks that
would otherwise be too costly to perform (that is, by automation), and
innovations that increase the supply of goods and services by
encouraging owners of private property to use their properties more
intensively to satisfy consumer demands (that is, by the sharing
economy) in any rational world would seem to be a crazy policy.
Globalization and automation have been the driving forces of economic
development and success in the last 150 years. Opposing them sounds
Luddite.
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule (AFFH) has been rolled out quietly but it is a big deal every citizen should be aware of. "[p]erhaps it's important to keep [the AFFH rule] sounding obscure in order to get it through." --Brookings Fellow Richard Reeves. Under Obama’s proposed AFFH rule, the federal government will collect data on the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of thousands of local communities, looking for signs of “disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability in access to community assets.” This is not about blocking housing discrimination, which has been illegal since 1968, but rather frustrating inevitable socioeconomic differences that gradually emerge in a free culture.
Interestingly,
this has been done before, by Clinton; from 1994 to 2008, HUD moved
thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects
to higher-quality homes in safer and less racially segregated
neighborhoods. The 15-year experiment was dubbed "Moving to Opportunity
Initiative." Studies were done on the results. They were not pretty.
"Moving to lower-poverty neighborhoods does not appear to improve
education outcomes, employment or earnings," the study concluded. Even
then-senior HUD official Raphael Bostic, a black Obama appointee,
admitted in a foreword to the 2011 study that families enrolled in the
program had "no better educational, employment and income outcomes."
Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods. HUD
Secretary Julian Castro, the man assigned to implement this new policy,
is on everyone’s shortlist to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate. Federal
intervention in neighborhood makeup should be seen as at least
peculiar. With the previous failure, it is obstinate.
Lucius
Sergius Catilina was a contemporary of Caesar and Cicero, a man of
great wealth and charm, a handsome and ambitious man with a
reputation of Jeckel-and-Hyde swings of action and sentiment. He was
accused of profiting from Sulla’s dictatorship, killing his own
brother-in-law, murdering the praetor Gratidanus, defiling a Vestal
Virgin, and of killing his son to please his new wife, who allegedly did
not want to marry into a family that already had an heir. He was
accused by Cicero of plotting, with Crassus, to take over much of
Italy's farms. His history wound down with the Catilinarian Conspiracy
where he tried to rally the poor and old soldiers from Sulla's old army
to kill the Roman Senate and take over Rome. First on his assassination
list was Cicero, who avoided assassination and revealed the conspiracy
to the Senate--with Catilina present. He fled to an army he had raised
and was killed at the front of it. "Catiline was found, far in advance
of his men, among the dead bodies of the enemy; a most glorious death,
had he thus fallen for his country."—From Florus' Epitome de Tito Livio (II.xii)
There is a thesis that Catilina was framed--by Cicero--and it is presented nicely in the easy reading Catilina's Riddle, by Saylor.
Solar
activity was thought to be caused by a turbine-system of moving fluid
within the sun. In search of a more accurate system of prediction,
Professor Zharkova and her team discovered fluctuating magnetic waves in
two layers of the sun. By studying the data of the dual waves, she
says, predictions are far more precise.
“Combining both waves together and comparing to real data for the current solar cycle, we found that our predictions showed an accuracy of 97 percent,” said Zharkova, whose findings were published by the Royal Astronomic Society.
Using this method, she and her team discovered that there will be far less solar activity in sun cycles 25 and 26, leading to a prolonged period of solar dormancy
“In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other -- peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun. Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other. We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘Maunder minimum’,” said Zharkova.
The Maunder Minimum is the title given to periods of time when sunspots are rare. It last occurred between 1645 and 1715, when roughly 50 sunspots were recorded, as opposed to the standard 40,000. That time was marked by brutal, river-freezing temperatures in Europe and North America.
“Combining both waves together and comparing to real data for the current solar cycle, we found that our predictions showed an accuracy of 97 percent,” said Zharkova, whose findings were published by the Royal Astronomic Society.
Using this method, she and her team discovered that there will be far less solar activity in sun cycles 25 and 26, leading to a prolonged period of solar dormancy
“In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other -- peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun. Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other. We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘Maunder minimum’,” said Zharkova.
The Maunder Minimum is the title given to periods of time when sunspots are rare. It last occurred between 1645 and 1715, when roughly 50 sunspots were recorded, as opposed to the standard 40,000. That time was marked by brutal, river-freezing temperatures in Europe and North America.
Go Set a Watchman has been released. It is by Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, her only other novel. It is said to be a follow-up novel, or perhaps a first draft of Mockingbird. It is going to be a tough novel for us all, especially the academics, because it turns much of Mockingbird on its head and makes Atticus an aging racist. This will be interesting--and maybe painful--to watch.
French
symbolism: In July 1793, Marie Antoinette’s former favorite shade of
defiance, green, was added to the list of unpatriotic markers because a
young woman named Charlotte Corday, who had stabbed to death the
revolutionary journalist Marat in his bathtub, had been apprehended with
a green ribbon in her hair. Following Corday’s summary execution, Simon
Schama has pointed out, her memorable headgear made green “the color of
counter-revolution—prohibited, to the ruin of drapers and haberdashers,
from any public dress.”--Caroline Weber’s Queen of Fashion
AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaannnnnndddddd......a graph:
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