People can command, dictate, and legislate; however, people cannot consciously create law any more than people can consciously create human language. Genuine law, like language, evolves; each is the result of human action but not of human design.--Bruno Leoni
Some figures I cannot explain: It is estimated that nearly 800,000 children will be reported missing each year in the U.S; 40,000 children go missing each year in Brazil; 50,500 in Canada; 39,000 in France; 100,000 in Germany; and 45,000 in Mexico. An estimated 230,000 children go missing in the U.K. each year, or one child every 5 minutes.
The Enlightenment began not only with books and pamphlets, but with an earthquake. In 1755, an earthquake flattened Lisbon, set it aflame, and then caused a massive tsunami that swept the Tagus River into the city, killing more than 40,000 people. Theologians claimed the disaster was divine retribution for earthly pride and sin.The French philosopher Voltaire argued, though, that it was simply nature’s systems that had caused the movement of the earth’s crusts. He criticized the Catholic Church for claiming God was behind the disaster rather than the clock-maker master of the system of nature. Voltaire’s opinion led to a famous international debate that helped him move public opinion away from mystical explanations of natural phenomena and toward scientific authority.
Who is....Christopher Harper-Mercer ?
The economist and demographer Julian Simon consistently challenged the population-growth doomsayers, making uncannily correct predictions about future plenty using arguments that are much more widely accepted today than they were at the time. In his The Ultimate Resource, Simon argued that the real source of prosperity is neither land, nor natural resources that might one day be exhausted, but people and the creativity they bring to solve current problems. Managed societies always see people as a burden or threat whereas free societies see people as a potential solution to problems. His book was written in 1981.
Who is....Christopher Harper-Mercer ?
The economist and demographer Julian Simon consistently challenged the population-growth doomsayers, making uncannily correct predictions about future plenty using arguments that are much more widely accepted today than they were at the time. In his The Ultimate Resource, Simon argued that the real source of prosperity is neither land, nor natural resources that might one day be exhausted, but people and the creativity they bring to solve current problems. Managed societies always see people as a burden or threat whereas free societies see people as a potential solution to problems. His book was written in 1981.
Historically, people have had two periods of sleep each night. Every night, people fell asleep not long after the sun went down and stayed that way until sometime after midnight. This was the first sleep that kept popping up in the old tales. Once a person woke up, he or she would stay that way for an hour or so before going back to sleep until morning -- the so-called second sleep. The time between the two bouts of sleep was a natural and expected part of the night
Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to Edger Allan Poe as “the jingle-man”, and told a friend he could “see nothing in ‘The Raven’”. T.S. Eliot insisted that, despite what looks like “slipshod writing, puerile thinking” and the use of “haphazard experiments”, “Poe had, to an exceptional degree, the feeling for the incantatory element in poetry, of that which may, in the most nearly literal sense, be called ‘the magic of verse’. . . . It has the effect of an incantation which, because of its very crudity, stirs the feelings at a deep and almost primitive level”. For Eliot, however, these rhythms are not quite enough. Eliot was critical of casual words and phrases. What, for example, are we meant to make of the adjective “saintly” in the line, “In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore”? And in the lines from “Ulalume” (“It was night, in the lonesome October / Of my most immemorial year”), how can a given moment in the poet’s past be “immemorial” (beyond memory), when in fact he remembers that moment very well? The phrase is intentionally uncanny and imprecise, underscoring the “dramatic arti-factuality of the poem”, Jerome McGann argues in his new book on Poe, The Poet Edgar Allan Poe, Alien Angel. He argues the strangeness of the lyric style, the misuse of words and awkward phraseology that have been criticized even by Poe’s fervent admirers, are taken as virtues, heightening as they do, a given poem’s conscious and calculated formalism.
Lassitude: n: 1. weariness of body or mind from strain, oppressive climate, etc.; lack of energy; listlessness; languor.
2. a condition of indolent indifference: the pleasant lassitude of the warm summer afternoon.
2. a condition of indolent indifference: the pleasant lassitude of the warm summer afternoon.
Ety: Lassitude stems from the Latin term lassus meaning "weary." The suffix -tude appears in abstract nouns of Latin origin.
Restriction of property rights will be more easily attained if they are brought about gradually with the assurance that, in principle, property will remain protected than if they are made suddenly under threats of totally abolishing such property. Since welfare legislation appears to be more harmless than a communist revolution, it is, as far as the protection of property in the long run is concerned, perhaps more dangerous.--Gottfried Dietze
There are about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. Sunnis make up 87% to 90% of the worldwide Muslim population. Shiite Muslims make up approximately 10%. Indonesia has the largest following of the Islamic religion, 13%, though Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh have large populations as well. According to U.S.-based Muslim organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Islamic Circle of North America, there are about 7 million adherents to the Islamic religion in the United States. Pew Research Center estimates Muslims make up 0.9% of the U.S. population.
Of the world's 94 major crop plants, 18 percent are pollinated by the wind, 80 percent by insects (92 percent of these by bees), and about 2 percent by birds.
President Barack Obama's stance of calling on Syrian President Bashar Assad to transition out of power while maintaining basic government functions after he's ousted is a "fantasy" in the context of how the country works, according to Tony Badran, a researcher at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "The biggest myth out there is the existence of 'state institutions' separate from Assad," Badran said in an interview. Rhymes with "Iraq."
President Barack Obama's stance of calling on Syrian President Bashar Assad to transition out of power while maintaining basic government functions after he's ousted is a "fantasy" in the context of how the country works, according to Tony Badran, a researcher at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "The biggest myth out there is the existence of 'state institutions' separate from Assad," Badran said in an interview. Rhymes with "Iraq."
The Federal Constitution of 1787 was designed in part to solve the problems created by the presence in the state legislatures of [common people]. In addition to correcting the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution was intended to restrain the excesses of democracy and protect minority rights from overbearing majorities in the state legislatures. ...throughout the middle 1780s he [Madison], along with other national leaders, had wrestled with various schemes for overhauling the Articles of Confederation. But it was his experience serving in the Virginia assembly in 1784-1787 that convinced him that the real problem of American politics lay in the state legislatures. During the 1780s he saw many of his and Jefferson's plans for reform mangled by factional fighting and majoritarian confusion in the Virginia assembly. More than any other Founder, Madison questioned the conventional wisdom of the age concerning majority rule, the proper size for a republic, and the role of factions in society. His thinking about the problems of creating republican governments and his writing of the Virginia Plan in 1787, which became the working model for the Constitution, constituted one of the most creative moments in the history of American politics.--Gordon Woods, from his Empire of Liberty
The average family income of a minimum wage worker is more than $44,000 a year – far more than can be earned by someone working at minimum wages. But 42 percent of minimum-wage workers live with parents or some other relative. In other words, they are not supporting a family but often a family is supporting them. Only 15 percent of minimum-wage workers are supporting themselves and a dependent, the kind of person envisioned by those who advocate a “living wage.”
The average family income of a minimum wage worker is more than $44,000 a year – far more than can be earned by someone working at minimum wages. But 42 percent of minimum-wage workers live with parents or some other relative. In other words, they are not supporting a family but often a family is supporting them. Only 15 percent of minimum-wage workers are supporting themselves and a dependent, the kind of person envisioned by those who advocate a “living wage.”
Belgium has always been a battlefield among all the leaders trying to advance themselves in Europe. One reason is Antwerp was a dominant port in the 16th century and the largest city in Europe after Paris.
“Our age is the age of criticism to which all must be subjected.” The ultimate goal of this critical movement was to create reason for the betterment of society, and this reason would have to stand the “test of free and public examination,” Kant said as an explanation of the Enlightenment. And what does criticism bring? The idea of secular human progress, Hegel warned, was misguided in attempting to bring “heaven” to the “earth below.” Hegel felt that this hubris, as well as the loss of all Christian morality and the belief that humans could build a secular paradise, had brought about the Terror of the French Revolution. If Nietzsche embraced Voltaire as the great debunker of religion, he nonetheless believed that secularism did not lead to the betterment of humankind, but instead opened the door to nihilism. The Second War was a blow to the Enlightenment as well. Here knowledge and science bred Nazis and atomic bombs.
Golden oldie:
“Seems the more people you kill, the more you are in the limelight.” That blog post on the email address of Oregon mass-murderer Christopher Harper-Mercer was made after Vester Lee Flanagan shot and killed that Roanoke TV reporter and her cameraman. “I have noticed,” according to the blog post, “that people like (Flanagan) are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who you are.”
Between 1871 and 1895 British tonnage passing through the Suez Canal was never less than 70 per cent of total tonnage and remained above 50 per cent until after the Second World War.
Apparently Iran was willing to help the U.S. in its concerns over Middle East terrorism but U.S. indifference and Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech ruined everything and now, after a decade of Hezbollah violence, Iran is supporting Russia in Syria. Here is an excerpt of the hacked CIA chief Brennan's mail: "The tragedy of the al-Qa’ida launched terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland in September 2001 prompted the U.S. Administration to engage in a far-reaching campaign to eradicate the sources of terrorism, and Iran, understandably—but regrettably—was swept up in the emotionally charged rhetoric that emanated from Washington under the seemingly all-encompassing rubric of “The Global War on Terrorism.”
The gratuitous labeling of Iran as part of a worldwide “axis of evil” by President Bush combined with strong U.S. criticisms of Iran’s nascent nuclear program and its meddling in Iraq led Tehran to the view that Washington had embarked on a course of confrontation in the region that would soon set a kinetic focus on Iran. Even Iran’s positive engagement in helping repair the post Taliban political environment in Afghanistan was met with indifference by Washington."
Apparently Iran was willing to help the U.S. in its concerns over Middle East terrorism but U.S. indifference and Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech ruined everything and now, after a decade of Hezbollah violence, Iran is supporting Russia in Syria. Here is an excerpt of the hacked CIA chief Brennan's mail: "The tragedy of the al-Qa’ida launched terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland in September 2001 prompted the U.S. Administration to engage in a far-reaching campaign to eradicate the sources of terrorism, and Iran, understandably—but regrettably—was swept up in the emotionally charged rhetoric that emanated from Washington under the seemingly all-encompassing rubric of “The Global War on Terrorism.”
The gratuitous labeling of Iran as part of a worldwide “axis of evil” by President Bush combined with strong U.S. criticisms of Iran’s nascent nuclear program and its meddling in Iraq led Tehran to the view that Washington had embarked on a course of confrontation in the region that would soon set a kinetic focus on Iran. Even Iran’s positive engagement in helping repair the post Taliban political environment in Afghanistan was met with indifference by Washington."
World leaders will gather in New York at the United Nations to endorse international development goals for the next 15 years. It is the culmination of a four-year process for setting priorities to help the world’s most disadvantaged people—a process beset from the start by horse-trading, haggling and endless consultation. In a bid not to offend anyone, the new development agenda is expected to include an incredible 169 targets for investment. Giving priority to 169 things is the same as giving priority to nothing at all.--Lomborg
People have different amounts of self control but research implies that self control is a limited resource and can be fatigued.
AAAaaaaannnnnndddddddd........a map of Belgium:
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