"In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm; in the real world, all rests on perseverance."- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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For the second time this month, Russia moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict and left the United States scrambling, this time by reaching an understanding, announced on Sunday, with Iraq, Syria and Iran to share intelligence about the Islamic State. Like Russia’s earlier move to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad by deploying warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria, the intelligence-sharing arrangement was sealed without notice to the United States. American officials knew that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad, but they were clearly surprised when the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command announced the intelligence sharing accord on Sunday. (NYT) This would probably not be part of the "Assad-must-go" mantra of the Americans. And one can only imagine what will happen to the vaunted American "no fly zone."
Am I losing my mind? Does that homicidal fascist Putin sound like the most reasonable leader at the U.N.? I do not care what your politics are, that should not be allowed to happen. Now, Russian warplanes began airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday--picking their targets. This is in direct opposition to the U.S. position in Syria and places Russia on the side of hierarchical stability (vs "Arab Spring" revolution the Americans have been fostering in Iraq, Libya and Egypt.) And it doesn't inadvertently arm the extremists. I saw him on Charlie Rose. He seemed like an urbane, thoughtful--but ironic--guy trying to help the retarded. What is happening here?
Hillary Clinton promises to reduce the growth and burden of student debt if she is elected president by taxing high earners. Isn't it a bit early for the shameless part of the campaign? According to the NY Fed, the main reason for the increase in tuition costs in college is federal government support. So Hillary's plan does what?
"Venery" is an interesting word whose meanings comes from two completely different sources. noun: 1. The practice or pursuit of sexual pleasure. 2. Hunting. ety: For 1: From Latin veneria, from venus (desire, love). Venus was the goddess of love and beauty in Roman mythology who gave her name to the planet Venus. Earliest documented use: 1497. For 2: From Old French venerie, from vener (to hunt). Earliest documented use: 1330. In olden times one was supposed to know theterms of venery. Ultimately both senses are from the Indo-European root wen- (to desire or to strive for), which is also the source of wish, win, overweening, venerate, venison, banyan, wonted, venial, and ween. Earliest documented use: 1330.
Just under a year since she was re-elected, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff is now Brazil's most unpopular democratically elected president since a military dictatorship ended in 1985, with an approval rating of just 8%. In a recent poll, 71% said they disapprove of the way Rousseff is doing her job... and two-thirds would like to see her impeached.
Who is.......Captain Jack Hays?
According to Reuter's last year, a New York broker went on trial over a U.S. securities regulator's claims he participated in a scheme designed by a Morgan Stanley employee to profit from the death of terminally ill patients through variable annuity sales. They sold annuities to terminally ill people, listing themselves as the beneficiaries when the patient died. You may want to read that again. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data by Vocativ and The Daily Beast shows that of the 60 or so the mega-donors who have contributed to Jeb Bush’s and Hillary Clinton’s federal campaigns, seventeen of those contributors have gone one step further and contributed to both--both-- the Bush’s and the Clinton 2016 campaigns. Access trumps ideology. Rousseau, who shed conventional clothing along with conventional manners and morals, was the original of all the estranged, visionary, badly dressed intellectuals who came after him.--Turner
Edmund Burke writing on Machiavelli's belief that the State may compromise itself for stability: “All Writers on the Science of Policy are agreed, and they agree with Experience, that all Governments must frequently infringe the Rules of Justice to support themselves; that Truth must give way to Dissimulation; Honesty to Convenience; and Humanity itself to the reigning interest. The Whole of this Mystery of Iniquity is called the Reason of State. It is a Reason, which I own I cannot penetrate. What Sort of a Protection is this of the general Right, that is maintained by infringing the Rights of Particulars? What sort of Justice is this, which is inforced by Breaches of its own Laws? These Paradoxes I leave to be solved by the able heads of Legislators and Politicians. For my part, I say what a plain Man would say on such an Occasion. I can never believe that, any Institution agreeable to Nature, and proper for Mankind, could find it necessary, or even expedient in any Case whatsoever to do, what the best and worthiest Instincts of Mankind warn us to avoid. But no wonder, that what is set up in Opposition to the State of Nature, should preserve itself by trampling upon the Law of Nature.” (N.B. This is from Burke's A Vindication of Natural Society, a satirical approach to anarchy, which, nonetheless, contains truth.)
Ali Soufan was a high level FBI interrogator who was the lead examiner of a number of terrorists. He is a sympathetic guy. He has little regard for the euphemistic "enhanced interrogation" but did say that prior to the attack the CIA withheld information on several of the 911 bombers from the FBI. Perhaps the CIA should have been water-boarded.
A book by American author Eric Schlosser titled Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety includes over 1,000 accidents with nuclear weapons that occurred during the nuclear age, a number by negligence. In particular, the documents describe explosions, fires and accidental drops of nuclear bombs that could have cost millions of lives during the Cold War. An example:
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser of 39th U.S. President Jimmy Carter, was woken up at 2:30 a.m. to be informed about the imminent nuclear war.
Warning systems showed 2,200 Russia missiles heading toward U.S. shores and Brzezinski had only a few minutes to make a decision whether or not to launch a retaliation attack with the use of nuclear weapons. While making a call to Carter, Brzezinski received a call informing him that the missile alert was a false alarm caused by a faulty 46-cent component in the warning systems.
How to calculate a square root by hand, from Quora:
Newton's Method of calculating the square root of X:
Make a guess of the square root of X, say Z g
Calculate the average of Z and X/Z
Using the result as your new guess, go back to step 2. Repeat as long as you want.
In 1900, when Carnegie decided to sell out, he wrote his price, more than $400 million, on a piece of paper, and handed it to his boy-wonder executive, Charles Schwab, who delivered it to Pierpont Morgan. Schwab reported that Morgan merely glanced at the paper and said, 'I'll take it.' The result was the biggest industrial merger in history to date. United States Steel had two-thirds of the industry's ingot capacity, $550 million of common stock, $550 million of preferred stock, and $304 million in bonds.
Bananas are the world's largest fruit crop and the fourth-largest product grown overall after wheat, rice, and corn.
The twenty-five year old leader of the Texas Rangers, Captain Jack Hays, had remarkable success against the homicidal Comanche but it was mostly the result of bravery; his men would attack when attacked because their Pennsylvania rifle, while deadly accurate, was cumbersome and single shot.
In 1830 a sixteen-year-old with big ideas and a knack for intricate mechanics named Samuel Colt had carved his first model of a revolving pistol out of wood. Six years later, he took out a patent on it. In 1838 a company in Paterson, New Jersey, began to manufacture Colt's patented firearms. Among them was a .36-caliber, five-chambered revolving pistol with an octagonal barrel and a concealed trigger that dropped down when the gun was cocked.The test of the Colt revolver came to be known as the Battle of Walker's Creek, a minor Texas Ranger military victory that became one of the defining moments in the history of Texas and of the American West. The Colt just murdered Comaches, who liked to fight close at heavy odds. Indeed, it can be argued that before Jack Hays arrived in San Antonio, in 1844, Americans in the West went about largely on foot and carried Kentucky rifles. By the time he left in 1849, anybody going West was mounted and carrying a holstered six-shooter. Walker's Creek was the beginning of that change. And the Sharps buffalo rifle put an end to it.
Craig James sued Fox Sports on Monday for religious discrimination, alleging that he was fired because of his “religious beliefs about marriage.”
All politicians hate people. Politics is a way to gain power over people without justification for having that power. Nothing in the 11,000-year history of politics—going back to the governing elites of Mesopotamia—indicates that politicians are wiser, smarter, kinder, more moral, or better skilled at any craft (aside from politics) than we are. But political rulers need the acquiescence of the ruled to slake the craving for power. Politicians hate you the way a junkie hates junk.--P.J. O'Rourke
In 1834, Richard Dana boarded the merchant brig, Pilgrim for the Boston-California return voyage that would become Two Years Before the Mast. He left Harvard to do it. The 1840 book was based on his letters, notes and recollections -- the diary he kept was lost as soon as he disembarked in Boston -- and was meant to tell of the ordinary seaman's life at sea, in "a voice from the forecastle." Melville said it was an inspiration for him to write Moby Dick. Dana eventually became a Boston lawyer. On landing on the West Coast he wrote: "The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves."
“Let's give up on academic freedom in favor of justice."--Harvard Crimson. The Harvard Crimson!
An interesting observation that might be attractive to Millennials: The power to tax and regulate makes it possible for the majority to coerce the minority. There is no such parallel coercive power when resources are allocated by markets. Market exchanges do not occur unless all parties agree. Private firms can charge a high price, but they cannot force anyone to buy. (Stroup, Lee, and Ferrarini)
On Aug. 6, in 1786 twenty-seven-year-old Robert Burns served his third and last public penance for having "ante-nuptial fornication" with his eventual wife, Jean Armour. AAAAAAAaaaaaannnnnddddddd.......a graph:
Expressed as a percentage of GDP, government R&D spending peaked with NASA's Apollo space program in the late 1960sand early 1970s. It got a little bump from defense spending in the Reagan years and the Human Genome Project launched toward the end of Bill Clinton's era, but the overall trend is still down.
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