"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." - H. L. Mencken
In 1806 Napoleon
made Jews full citizens of France, but two years later he issued the
'Infamous Decrees' ordering them to take French names, privatize their
faith, and ensure that at least one in every three marriages per
family was with a gentile.
That is more than integration, it is gradual extinction. So is that homogenization worthwhile?
That is more than integration, it is gradual extinction. So is that homogenization worthwhile?
What allows for freedom from those ever-grasping for power over us? Voting? A free press? The classical-liberal conception of rights is likely to be discomforting to any ruling class, no matter how constituted, because it reliably subtracts power from those who rule, or hope to, and distributes it among the people. Decentralized private property has had precisely that effect. Private property and the right of assembly. The right to form groups.
Archaeologists have
determined that by 1900 BC, the ancient Assyrians had established one of
the first postal services. Merchants used it to exchange messages
written in cuneiform on tablets sealed in clay envelopes, and they
trusted it enough to send each other currency. 'I provided your agents
with three minas of silver for the purchase of lead,' one businessman
wrote to another. 'Now, if you are still my brother, let me have my
money by courier.' Typically, however, ancient rulers didn't allow
commoners to use their postal services. They reserved the post for their
own use as a tool for controlling their subjects and consolidating
their power. Two centuries later, the Egyptian pharaohs created a
network of postal routes traveled by horsemen who carried messages
written in hieroglyphs on papyrus to their princes and military leaders.
Only the most highly born Egyptians could send mail through the
official post. Merchants had to use slaves to deliver their messages.
Japan's
Emperor Akihito, like his father before him, is a scientist with a
passion for studying marine life. Although he was never able to pursue a
doctorate in the field, Akihito has continued his studies and research
throughout his life.
He's published extensively in ichthyology and genetics. Akihito's most recent article is titled "Speciation of two gobioid species, Pterogobius elapoides and Pterogobius zonoleucus revealed by multi-locus nuclear and mitochondrial DNA analyses."
He's published extensively in ichthyology and genetics. Akihito's most recent article is titled "Speciation of two gobioid species, Pterogobius elapoides and Pterogobius zonoleucus revealed by multi-locus nuclear and mitochondrial DNA analyses."
In
1593 Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council issued a warrant for the arrest of
Christopher Marlowe on charges of spreading "blasphemous and damnable
opinions." Five days earlier Marlowe's roommate and fellow playwright,
Thomas Kyd, had also been arrested on similar charges; under torture
(apparently a set piece on the rack called "scraping the conscience"),
Kyd had claimed that the offending documents in his possession were in
fact Marlowe's. While prosecutors prepared for trial Marlowe was allowed
out on bail; the day before his scheduled court appearance, and at just
twenty-nine years of age, Marlowe was killed in a drunken brawl in
Deptford, a dagger through his eye. But times change. It seems now that
Marlowe was actually a spy for the Crown, that Marlowe died not in a
tavern but in a government safe house, in the company of other spies and
spy-runners, some of whom had the personality and perhaps the motive to
kill him. And it gets more exciting. Marlowe was felt by many to be as
talented as Shakespeare. A more recent theory that Marlowe's
secret burial in an unmarked grave was a ruse, and that Marlowe was in a
group of spies conducted across the Channel the day after his faked
murder, and that he went on to not only write as well as Shakespeare but
to become "Shakespeare."
Who is.... Lord Acton?
From Aagam Shah:
In
1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper
worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and
they got bankrupt.What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of
industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming.
Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures
on paper film again?Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first
ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore’s law. So as with all
exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time,
before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a few short
years. It will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health,
autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and
jobs. Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the
Exponential Age. Software will disrupt most traditional industries in
the next 5-10 years.
Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.
Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.
If
you seriously want to monetize the debt, you'd have to buy back the
debt held by the public, with newly issued base money. There are two
data points that suggest this will lead to hyperinflation:
1. Currency in circulation is about 8% of GDP
2. Treasury debt held by the public is about 80% of GDP
1. Currency in circulation is about 8% of GDP
2. Treasury debt held by the public is about 80% of GDP
A
point de Jasay raises concerns a moral diminishing returns argument.
When does the state stop in pursuing worthy goals? If cancer research
deserves state support, what about psoriasis? Depression? Low self
esteem? Homelessness? It is easy to visualize the rise of successive
pressure groups for research, culture, sport, while an avowedly
anti-culture or anti-sport pressure group seems simply unthinkable. So,
given the worthiness of the project, what is not in the state's purview?
An interesting observation: The eminent historian Robert R. Palmer has offered a critically important comparison of the degree of radicalism in the American and French revolutions: the number of emigres who felt compelled to flee the country during the revolution. The French Revolution created 129,000 exiles out of a total population of about 25 million: an emigre ratio of 5 per 1000. The American Tory emigres amounted to what Palmer very conservatively sets at 60,000 in a population of about 2.5 million: 24 emigres per 1,000. But at least half a million of the American population were slaves, who could hardly be considered in the same category as other inhabitants of the colonies. A more likely estimate for Tory emigration in the Revolution is 100,000. At this corrected rate, 50 Americans out of every 1,000 were emigres during the Revolution, a rate fully tenfold of the exile rate in the supposedly more radical French Revolution.
So was this flight because of philosophical incompatibility, easy access and transportation to Canada or real fear?
An interesting observation: The eminent historian Robert R. Palmer has offered a critically important comparison of the degree of radicalism in the American and French revolutions: the number of emigres who felt compelled to flee the country during the revolution. The French Revolution created 129,000 exiles out of a total population of about 25 million: an emigre ratio of 5 per 1000. The American Tory emigres amounted to what Palmer very conservatively sets at 60,000 in a population of about 2.5 million: 24 emigres per 1,000. But at least half a million of the American population were slaves, who could hardly be considered in the same category as other inhabitants of the colonies. A more likely estimate for Tory emigration in the Revolution is 100,000. At this corrected rate, 50 Americans out of every 1,000 were emigres during the Revolution, a rate fully tenfold of the exile rate in the supposedly more radical French Revolution.
So was this flight because of philosophical incompatibility, easy access and transportation to Canada or real fear?
Golden oldie:
Eating
Local has become more than an interesting diversion; it has become a
thesis for restoring person-to-person commerce and intimacy. This would
oppose the growing impersonal corporate world, a la Wendell Berry. As
Robert Wuetherick asks, “What will be next? 100-mile-sourced medicines?
100-mile-sourced ideas? 100-mile-sourced economic history?”
"Le tour d'abandon ('the desertion tower') was merely a box attached to the hospital, constructed
with two sliding doors and a small, loud bell. An infant was
unceremoniously placed in the box, the door firmly closed behind it, and
the bell was rung. Upon hearing the bell, the nurses on duty would go
to le tour to remove the infant, replace the box to its
original position, and wait. Every night, a dozen or so infants were
received in precisely this way.
Factious: adjective:
Divisive; seditious; relating to or arising from faction. ETYMOLOGY:
From French factieux (seditious) and Latin factiosus (partisan), from
facere (to do). Ultimately from the Indo-European root dhe- (to set or
put), which is also the source of do, deed, factory, fashion, face,
rectify, defeat, sacrifice, satisfy, Sanskrit sandhi (joining), Urdu
purdah (veil, curtain), and Russian duma (council). Earliest documented
use: 1527.
USAGE: “The agreement last month of Syria’s
traditionally factious and fractious three million Kurds to put aside
their differences and form the Kurdish National Council has alarmed
neighbouring Turkey.” Jonathan Manthorpe; Arab Spring Awakens Kurdish
Dreams of Autonomy; The Vancouver Sun (Canada); Aug 3, 2012.
It
is a mistaken notion in government, that the interest of the majority
is only to be consulted, since in society every man has a right to every
man’s assistance in the enjoyment and defense of his private property;
otherwise the greater number may sell the lesser, and divide their
estates amongst themselves; and so, instead of a society, where all
peaceable men are protected, become a conspiracy of the many against the
minority. With as much equity may one man wantonly dispose of all, and
violence may be sanctified by mere power.--Cato
The
English historian Lord Acton (1834-1902) deplored the notion of
nationality, fearing that the 'fictitious' general will of the people
that it promoted would crush 'all natural rights and all established
liberties for the purpose of vindicating itself.' He could see that the
desire to preserve the nation could become an absolute used to justify
the most inhumane policies. "By
making the State and the nation commensurate with each other in theory,
[nationality] reduces practically to a subject condition all other
nationalities that may be within the boundary .... According, therefore,
to the degree of humanity and civilization in that dominant body which
claims all the rights of the community, the inferior races are
exterminated or reduced to servitude, or put in a condition of
dependence." There was a real conflict here. The new nation-state would
labor under a fundamental contradiction: the state (the governmental apparatus) was supposed to be secular, but the nation (
'the people') aroused quasi-religious emotions. In 1807-08, while
Napoleon was conquering Prussia, the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb
Fichte had delivered a series of lectures in Berlin, looking forward
to the time when the forty-one separate German principalities would
become a unified nation-state. The Fatherland, he claimed, was a
manifestation of the divine, the repository of the spiritual essence of
the Volk and therefore eternal. (from Armstrong)
The
nation's weather satellite program over the course of a year suffered
10 data security incidents, including unauthorized access and probes by
adversaries, according to a congressional auditor. The ground system is
highly susceptible to compromise because, among other things, the agency
has not executed nearly half of the recommended standard security
controls and has not patched key vulnerabilities, the audit states.
Compromising weather satellites. Now who would want to do that?
Aaaaaannnnndddddd.....a picture of something:
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