I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.~Isaac Newton
The federal gas tax, however, was originally created as a “temporary” deficit-reduction measure in 1932 and was used to pay the federal government’s regular bills until the 1950s. With the inception of the national interstate system in 1956, revenues from the gas tax were instead dedicated to the new Highway Trust Fund.
"Money for nothing" by Dire Straits is the only song I have noticed that is Bowdlerized on FM radio.
President Barack Obama will name Shailagh Murray, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reporter, to serve as his new senior adviser. Is the easy flow of people from reporter to politics and back a good thing? Is it different from the flow of legislators and regulators?
N.B.: Shailagh (sha(i)-la-gh) is a variant of the English and Irish name Sheila, derived from Sheila (Irish, Gaelic) meaning "blind". It is said to mean "from the fairy palace".
Upper quintile househilds have 2.1 40 hr/week jobs, the lowest quintile, .48.
In 1398 Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk quarreled so bitterly with mutual accusations of treason that the royal council decided they would have to fight it out in a trial by combat. To the death. At the last moment, when the two combatants appeared in the lists arrayed in magnificent armour ready to fight, King Richard intervened, forbade the combat and banished both of them. When Bolingbroke's father died, he returned to England from his exile in Paris, proclaimed himself king and killed Richard, the son of the Black Prince. Bolingbroke became Henry the Fourth, father of Henry the Fifth.
The ranks of billionaires constantly change. Most of the persons on the original Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 1982 were off the list in 2013. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, was not born until 1984.
In 1634 the first colonists arrived to the land that King Charles I of England had chartered to Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore: Maryland. Named for the king's wife, Henrietta Maria, Maryland was the first proprietary colony in what is now the United States. As the head of a proprietary colony, Lord Baltimore had almost absolute control over the colony in return for paying the king a share of all gold or silver discovered on the land. From its founding, Maryland was seen as a safe haven for Catholics escaping religious persecution in England. In 1649, Governor William Stone, under the direction of Lord Baltimore, passed an act ensuring religious liberty and justice to all who believed in Jesus Christ. So Christians, at least, were safe.
Mulder and Scully and The X-Files are reuniting for six-episodes on FOX.
Robert Reich wrote an editorial about the danger of increasing technologic innovation in manufacturing. (“In Our Horrifying Future, Very Few People Will Have Work or Make Money,” March 17). This is a response to it: Dr. Reich’s most wrongheaded claim is this one: “when more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, the profits go to an ever-smaller circle of executives and owners-investors.” This claim is exactly backwards. By far the greatest part of the gains from entrepreneurial-driven advances in technology are, as they have always been, widely dispersed to the masses in the form of more and better consumption options available at lower and lower prices. Examples include the factory production of textiles that clothed the masses, the mechanization of agriculture that saved the masses from famine, the assembly line that brought the likes of automobiles, kitchen appliances, telephony, and air travel to even the modern-world’s ‘poor,’ and the technology revolution that enables those yearning to read Dr. Reich’s economically uninformed commentary to satisfy their demands 24/7/365 by using their smartphones while sipping lattes and attending protests against the predations of the one percent.
Who is...George Martin?
Sowell on current American foreign policy: Before President Obama entered the White House and appointed Clinton secretary of state, al-Qaida operatives in Iraq had notified their leaders, stationed in Pakistan, that their cause was lost in Iraq and that there was no point sending more men there.
Hosni Mubarak was in charge in Egypt. He posed no threat to American or Western interests in the Middle East or to Christians within Egypt or to Israel. But the Obama administration threw its weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood, which took over and began terrorizing Christians in Egypt and promoting hostility to Israel.
In Libya next door, the Qaddafi regime had already given up its weapons of mass destruction, after it saw what happened to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But Obama's foreign policy, carried out by Secretary of State Clinton, got Qaddafi removed, after which Libya became a terrorist haven where an American ambassador was killed, for the first time in decades.
The Russians have invaded Crimea and, in Asia, both China and North Korea are building up threatening military forces while the administration has been cutting back on American military forces.
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.~Admiral Hyman Rickover. Did he realize he was talking about people when he said that?
Two years after revealing that she underwent a double mastectomy because she carries a gene mutation that increases breast and ovarian cancer risk, Angelina Jolie writes in The New York Times that she had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed last week. "I am now in menopause," she says. Now the question is, who will this woman pick as her endocrinologist. That is going to be a guy with some responsibilities.
Last year 155 thousand people had their social security attached to pay for their grandchildren's defaulted college loans.
For more than 4,000 years before the Communist Revolution in 1949 China was ruled by 308 different emperors spanning 14 dynastic periods. Of those 308, only one was a woman. It happened during the T’ang dynasty, which ruled China from AD 618-907, an era commonly considered the height of Chinese art, literature, philosophy, trade, and technology. She was Wu Zhao, one of nine “fifth-tier” concubines of the Emperor Tai-tsung.
When
Emperor Tai-tsung died, in keeping with tradition, all the concubines
were sent to a Buddhist convent, where they were to spend the rest of
their lives. But Tai-tsung’s son, Kao-tsung, became emperor and soon
began visiting Wu at the convent. He eventually returned her to court
with the highest rank of the second-tier concubines. There were now only
two women above her, Kao-tsung’s wife, Empress Wang, and his first
consort, Xiaoshu.
Through some complex and brutal
machinations worthy of Game of Thrones the Empress and the first consort
were eliminated, Wu became empress and then ruler--with the appropriate
purges. She took a male name, Emperor Shengshen, declared the end of
the T’ang dynasty and a return to the Zhou dynasty and ruled for 15
years.
Golden oldie:
George Martin was the EMI Records producer whose skill and penchant for innovation helped propel the Beatles to superstardom. But in 1962, when the Beatle's manager Brian Epstein was going from producer to producer unsuccessfully trying to get a record deal, Martin was one of many who turned him down.
Monopoly profits are social blessings when they "signal to the ambitious the wealth they can earn by entering previously unknown markets." So "when the wealth gap widens, the lifestyle gap shrinks."
Hence, "income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful" because "it provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas, and it turns luxuries into common goods." Since 2000, the price of a 50-inch plasma TV has fallen from $20,000 to $550.--John Tanny
Stalagmite: noun: A conical column on the floor of a cave, formed by minerals in dripping water. From Greek stalaktos (dripping), from stalassein (to drip). Earliest documented use: 1681. A similar tapering structure hanging from the roof of a cave is called a stalactite. It's easy to remember which is which. Ground: stalaGmite; Ceiling: stalaCtite.
A 2005 essay published in JAMA found that male doctors killed themselves at a rate 70 percent higher than other professionals; among female doctors, that rate ranged from 250 to 400 percent higher.
Because the sell-by date for eggs in a supermarket (with U.S.D.A. inspection) can be up to 45 days after the packing date, [The Eastman Egg Company] has a quick and easy way to check for freshness: the Julian date. Every egg carton has a code printed on its side, and the last 3 digits of this code are called the Julian date. The code uses a number from 001 to 365 to correspond to a day of the year and indicate when they were packaged. For example, 001 is January 1st and 365 is December 31st. To find the freshest eggs, select the highest number you can find (keeping in mind the numbers wrap around in January). (Lifehacker) N.B. Both labels are optional and not always on every carton.
Somewhere between 50% to 75% of drunk drivers who have their licenses suspended for DUI convictions continue to drive without a license. The old East German state would impound your car if you tested positive for alcohol, any alcohol.
It is only thanks to cheap, plentiful, reliable energy that we live in an environment where the water we drink and the food we eat will not make us sick and where we can cope with the often hostile climate of Mother Nature. Energy is what we need to build sturdy homes, to purify water, to produce huge amounts of fresh food, to generate heat and air-conditioning, to irrigate deserts, to dry malaria-infested swamps, to build hospitals, and to manufacture pharmaceuticals, among many other things. And those of us who enjoy exploring the rest of nature should never forget that energy is what enables us to explore to our heart’s content, which preindustrial people didn’t have the time, wealth, energy, or technology to do.--Alex Epstein’s 2014 book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
AAAnnnnddddd.......a picture of George Martin and the Beatles:
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