A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.--deTocqueville
The Washington Times reported: A former CIA director said the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has been reluctant to attack oil wells controlled by the extremist group partly because of environmental concerns. "We did not want to go after oils wells--actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls because we didn't want to do environmental damage and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure, " said former spy chief Michael Morell. I wonder if such thinking has ever existed before. More important, I wonder if the community of citizens ever existed before where such a public statement would be accepted as at all reasonable.
I saw "Riders of the Purple Sage" this weekend, a movie with Ed Harris. I read the book as a child and remember the astonishment I experienced realizing the hero was a calculating killer who despised Mormons and hunted them. The movie removed some of the extra plot and the Mormons went unnamed. Even in the modern age it is still arresting. (The heroine is roundly criticized for not marrying as it is unnatural.) It is said the story formed the template for many modern westerns. It must have been gripping as I still remember much of it, even the names.
This year, the elementary attendance rate in the Baltimore city public schools is 93 percent. But, look more closely and you find that nearly 20 percent of students in grades one through five have missed more than 20 days of school. That's a whole month and that's more than 6,000 children.
The Washington Times reported: A former CIA director said the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State has been reluctant to attack oil wells controlled by the extremist group partly because of environmental concerns. "We did not want to go after oils wells--actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls because we didn't want to do environmental damage and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure, " said former spy chief Michael Morell. I wonder if such thinking has ever existed before. More important, I wonder if the community of citizens ever existed before where such a public statement would be accepted as at all reasonable.
I saw "Riders of the Purple Sage" this weekend, a movie with Ed Harris. I read the book as a child and remember the astonishment I experienced realizing the hero was a calculating killer who despised Mormons and hunted them. The movie removed some of the extra plot and the Mormons went unnamed. Even in the modern age it is still arresting. (The heroine is roundly criticized for not marrying as it is unnatural.) It is said the story formed the template for many modern westerns. It must have been gripping as I still remember much of it, even the names.
This year, the elementary attendance rate in the Baltimore city public schools is 93 percent. But, look more closely and you find that nearly 20 percent of students in grades one through five have missed more than 20 days of school. That's a whole month and that's more than 6,000 children.
The Spanish reintroduced the horse to the Americas in the early sixteenth century (equines had roamed the Americas before the last Ice Age). The horse was introduced slowly into American Indian life. A current thesis is that this was culturally disruptive, requiring more mobility, more grazing land and this resulted in more conflict. It can be argued that change is not inherently good but the horse became a fact in American life. Anyone who has read about the Comanche will know that some adapted very well--to the dismay of their neighbors.
Antediluvian: Adj: 1. Of or relating to the period before the Biblical flood. 2. very old, old-fashioned, or out of date; antiquated; primitive: antediluvian ideas. Antediluvian is related to the Latin term dīluvium meaning "a flood." The prefix ante- means "before" and is used in the formation of compound words.
Brazil is in the midst of a dramatic economic downturn that's left the country to suffer through the worst inflation-growth outcome (i.e. stagflation) in more than a decade. Unemployment and inflation are soaring (annual headline IPCA inflation at 10.28%, unemployment at 7.9% in August, up from just 4.7% a year earlier) while output is plunging (IBC-Br monthly real GDP indicator down 6.1% Y/Y in September) and the market is losing confidence in the government's ability to end a political stalemate on the way to shoring up the fiscal books and hitting primary surplus targets. WSJ: "Brazil's service sector, including beauty salons, banks and realtors, employs more than any other sector in the country by a wide margin, and represents about 60% of GDP."
Who is....Samuel Huntington?
On Dec. 14, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln announces a grant of amnesty for Emilie Todd Helm, his wife Mary Lincoln's half sister and the widow of a Confederate general. The pardon was one of the first under Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which he had announced less than a week before. The plan was the president's blueprint for the reintegration of the South into the Union. Part of the plan allowed for former Confederates to be granted amnesty if they took an oath to the United States. The option was open to all but the highest officials of the Confederacy.
A mere 4% of students embarking on language courses in schools achieve a basic level of fluency after three years. 96% fail to achieve fluency and/or abandon courses completely.
(Steve King)
A danger of collectivism of any sort is that it clouds thinking. Collectivism not only masks differences that distinguish individuals who comprise whatever group is constructed, in whatever fashion, into some collective, it also causes people too easily to attribute thought and action to the group rather than to the individuals who make-up the group. So when a middle-aged white male violently attacks an institution, such as Planned Parenthood, people often lump all limited- and anti-government people together into some fictional group that is feared to be especially prone to commit violence of the sort that occurred in Colorado. Collecting individuals into general group behavior is the definition of bigotry. Since special interests are assumed to come in groups, this separation is made all the more difficult.
Using a groundbreaking gene editing technique, University of California scientists have created a strain of mosquitoes capable of rapidly introducing malaria-blocking genes into a mosquito population through its progeny, ultimately eliminating the insects' ability to transmit the disease to humans. This is a huge step, the creation of an inherited change in DNA. And the implications of man-induced inheritable change are overwhelming.
The telegraph linked New York to the markets of Europe just as the war was ending. Samuel Morse's invention had spread across the eastern half of the United States during the 1840s and to California in the early 1860s. The telegraph further consolidated American financial markets in New York. So, for the first time, serious communication efforts were separated from transportation.
If competition serves a social purpose, it must produce something that we could not have in its absence. To the degree that competition does what we could have done equally cheaply in its absence, it is wasteful. Competition in fact leads to the discovery of opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. It thus generates a spontaneous discovery process, the exact course of which is unpredictable. This process includes, inter alia, both the discovery of hitherto unsatisfied wants and the products to satisfy those wants, and the invention of lower-cost methods of satisfying preferences. It also encompasses the creation of new economic forms, customs, and structures.--Gerald P. O'Driscoll's and Mario J. Rizzo's 1985 book, The Economics of Time & Ignorance.
Competition is a painful creator. Our lives would be ordered by politicians, bureaucrats and do-gooders who either find the process too painful or would substitute their own brilliance for the competitive creative process.
The Clash of Civilizations (COC) is a theory that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. It was proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
The phrase itself was earlier used by Albert Camus in 1946, and by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Roots of Muslim Rage". Even earlier, the phrase appears in a 1926 book regarding the Middle East by Basil Mathews: Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations (p. 196). This expression derives from clash of cultures, already used during the colonial period. (Wiki)
"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future." Huntington, 1993 Foreign Affairs
The Clash of Civilizations (COC) is a theory that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. It was proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
The phrase itself was earlier used by Albert Camus in 1946, and by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Roots of Muslim Rage". Even earlier, the phrase appears in a 1926 book regarding the Middle East by Basil Mathews: Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations (p. 196). This expression derives from clash of cultures, already used during the colonial period. (Wiki)
"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future." Huntington, 1993 Foreign Affairs
However, politicians' success does not depend on their learning the lessons of history or of economics. It depends far more on their going along with what is widely believed by the public and the media, which may include conspiracy theories or belief that higher prices are due to "greed" or "gouging."--Sowell
Robert Pershing Wadlow (1918-1940) was the tallest person in recorded history for whom there is irrefutable evidence. Wadlow reached 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m) in height and weighed 439 lb (199 kg) at his death at age 22. His great size and his continued growth in adulthood were due to hyperplasia of his pituitary gland, which results in an abnormally high level of human growth hormone. Robert Wadlow showed no indication of an end to his growth even at the time of his death.
Susan Strasburg, daughter of famed acting instructor Lee Strasburg, originating the Broadway role of Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank. Nominated for a Tony Award at the age of 18, she became the youngest actress to star on Broadway with her name above the marquee title. Here she recounts seeking feedback from award-winning actor Sir Laurence Olivier from her book, Marilyn and Me :
"As much as I loved doing Anne Frank, it now overwhelmed me. After a year and a half the high emotional pitch of the performance had taken a toll on my energy and psyche. I was getting every germ that floated into Manhattan. I was losing weight, unable to eat. The year before, [Lee Strasburg student] Marilyn [Monroe] had brought Laurence Olivier to see the play. Afterward he'd been very complimentary. As we were taking publicity photos, all smiling our best airline stewardess smiles, I'd pleaded, "Please, Sir Laurence ..."
" 'Larry,' he'd insisted.
" 'Please ... Sir ... Larry, tell me what you really thought.' He cleared his throat. 'Well, dear child,' he'd said precisely, 'half the effort would have had twice the effect.'
"I was devastated. My smile evaporated, as did his. The flash popped, and the moment was stamped indelibly on film, and on my ego. Marilyn came to my defense. 'She does that because she cares. She wants the people who came to see her to get their money's worth.' I was grateful to her.
"It was true I'd asked, but he didn't have to tell me. He was supposed to be an English gentleman. I knew how the actress felt who had screamed at my father backstage after her opening night, 'How dare you come back here and tell me the truth?' "
AAAAaaaaaannnnnddddd......a graph on duration of U.S. unemployment:
"As much as I loved doing Anne Frank, it now overwhelmed me. After a year and a half the high emotional pitch of the performance had taken a toll on my energy and psyche. I was getting every germ that floated into Manhattan. I was losing weight, unable to eat. The year before, [Lee Strasburg student] Marilyn [Monroe] had brought Laurence Olivier to see the play. Afterward he'd been very complimentary. As we were taking publicity photos, all smiling our best airline stewardess smiles, I'd pleaded, "Please, Sir Laurence ..."
" 'Larry,' he'd insisted.
" 'Please ... Sir ... Larry, tell me what you really thought.' He cleared his throat. 'Well, dear child,' he'd said precisely, 'half the effort would have had twice the effect.'
"I was devastated. My smile evaporated, as did his. The flash popped, and the moment was stamped indelibly on film, and on my ego. Marilyn came to my defense. 'She does that because she cares. She wants the people who came to see her to get their money's worth.' I was grateful to her.
"It was true I'd asked, but he didn't have to tell me. He was supposed to be an English gentleman. I knew how the actress felt who had screamed at my father backstage after her opening night, 'How dare you come back here and tell me the truth?' "
AAAAaaaaaannnnnddddd......a graph on duration of U.S. unemployment:
United States mean duration of unemployment 1948-2010.
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