Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference. Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
A paper is out showing a resurgence of flora and fauna after Chernobyl. "What we do, our everyday habitation of an area - agriculture, forestry - they've damaged wildlife more than the world's worst nuclear accident," said Prof Jim Smith, professor of environmental science, University of Portsmouth, and one of the paper's authors. So the astonishing recovery of the area is not seen as an example of relentless, hopeful life. Rather we humans are such a danger to the Earth--even nuclear accidents are more benign than we are. You have just got to think a certain way....
People rush to replace real-world markets upon the first sign of those free markets failing to operate with textbook perfection, but somehow are willing to forgive and to tolerate horrible failures of government to perform in even marginally effective ways.
While nighttime awakenings are distressing for most sufferers, there is some evidence from our recent past that suggests this period of wakefulness occurring between two separate sleep periods was the norm. Throughout history, there have been numerous accounts of "segmented sleep", from medical texts, to court records and diaries, and even in African and South American tribes, with a common reference to 'first' and 'second' sleep.
Who is....Will Rogers?
Who is....Will Rogers?
It is exceedingly difficult to create property rights that are legitimate, and respected by all, by expropriating the property of some purely on the grounds that they are the wealthiest owners.--Tom Bethell’s 1998 book, The Noblest Triumph. An interesting observation. It does more than create precedence; it undermines a precept of individual liberty.
Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm's empirical study, "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," reports as late as 1954, "there were no controls on shotguns" in England, but only 12 cases of armed robbery in London. Of these only 4 had real guns. But in the remainder of the 20th century, gun control laws became ever more severe -- and armed robberies in London soared to 1,400 by 1974."As the numbers of legal firearms have dwindled, the numbers of armed crimes have risen" is her summary of that history in England. Conversely, in the United States the number of handguns in American homes more than doubled between 1973 and 1992, while the murder rate went down.
“Ban-the-Box” (BTB) policies restrict employers from asking about applicants’ criminal histories on job applications and are often presented as a means of reducing unemployment among black men, who disproportionately have criminal records. However, withholding information about criminal records could risk encouraging statistical discrimination: employers may make assumptions about criminality based on the applicant’s race. A recent study by Agan and Starr using fictitious internet job applications show that criminal records are a major barrier to employment, but they also support the concern that BTB policies encourage statistical discrimination on the basis of race. The race gap in callbacks grows dramatically at the BTB-affected companies after the policy goes into effect
Literacy tests in some Southern states used to ask black voters, "How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?" and "How many seeds are in a watermelon?"
The power to tax and regulate makes it possible for the majority to coerce the minority. There is no such 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 their product. Indeed, private firms must provide benefits that exceed the price charged in order to attract customers.--from Common Sense Economics
But he made the trains run on time. 'Between the war with Spain and the first world war, a radical transformation took place in both American foreign and domestic policy. Expansion abroad, like reform at home, became a means of rationalizing the economy.... Progressivism and imperialism flourished together, not as opposites, but as “expressions of the same philosophy of government, a tendency to judge any action not by the means employed but by the results achieved, a worship of definitive action for action’s sake . . . .” '(historian Arthur Ekirch)
Echoes of Obama's "whatever works for you" philosophy he articulated in Cuba. Ends with politicians always justify means. Strangely, bad endpoints never seem to result in the reassessment of the means.
But he made the trains run on time. 'Between the war with Spain and the first world war, a radical transformation took place in both American foreign and domestic policy. Expansion abroad, like reform at home, became a means of rationalizing the economy.... Progressivism and imperialism flourished together, not as opposites, but as “expressions of the same philosophy of government, a tendency to judge any action not by the means employed but by the results achieved, a worship of definitive action for action’s sake . . . .” '(historian Arthur Ekirch)
Echoes of Obama's "whatever works for you" philosophy he articulated in Cuba. Ends with politicians always justify means. Strangely, bad endpoints never seem to result in the reassessment of the means.
Harvard University has announced new rules that will punish students who join single-sex clubs, including fraternities and sororities. Part of that punishment will make them ineligible for college endorsement for top fellowships, such as the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. It will not ban students who participate in single sex sports. Gee, that doesn't sound fair.
Some recent court rulings pushed the Justice Department to drop its unjust charge that FedEx conspired with illegal online pharmacies to transport drugs to buyers without valid prescriptions. The WSJ notes, “[t]he only way it [FedEx] could know whether packages include illegal drugs is by tearing them open and investigating the prescriptions” – a practice not only inconsistent with good business practice but also destructive of customers’ privacy. One wonders what the DOJ could be thinking. Of course, illegal online pharmacies have no real victim as they exist to supply cheaper meds--real or not--to people who are willing to pay for them. So there is no complaint as there is no actual victim. So.....what inspires this kind of overreaching for prosecution?
The utilitarian principle recently paraised by Obama--“the greatest happiness for the greatest number"--should make every citizen's hair stand on end.
Bentham did not originate it; there are similar expressions in a number of eighteenth-century philosophers, such as Hutcheson, Helvetius and Beccaria. But, very importantly, behind Bentham’s utilitarianism was its unequivocal rejection--rejection--of natural rights.
Natural rights, according to Bentham, are “simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, — nonsense upon stilts” So-called moral and natural rights are mischievous fictions and anarchical fallacies that encourage civil unrest, disobedience and resistance to laws, and revolution against established governments. Only political rights, those positive rights established and enforced by government, have “any determinate and intelligible meaning.” Rights are “the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law—no rights contrary to the law—no rights anterior to the law.”
Natural rights, according to Bentham, are “simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, — nonsense upon stilts” So-called moral and natural rights are mischievous fictions and anarchical fallacies that encourage civil unrest, disobedience and resistance to laws, and revolution against established governments. Only political rights, those positive rights established and enforced by government, have “any determinate and intelligible meaning.” Rights are “the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law—no rights contrary to the law—no rights anterior to the law.”
This is one of the major thinkers behind Obama's "whatever works" pronouncement. Oh, well.
Once tax receipts reach the Treasury, they are owned by no one. They are like a huge pile of candy. Then the fun begins.
Will Rogers was a renowned American humorist in the early 20th century. During World War I, German U-boats threatened the Allied war effort by sinking US ships headed to Europe. The Allied navies could not stop the slaughter.
Rogers was asked what he would do about it. He said that the only solution was to boil away the Atlantic Ocean, and then capture the U-boats sitting on the bottom. When asked how to do that, Rogers answered that he was responding as a policymaker, and that that question must be handled by others.
Boiling away the Atlantic was a solution to the U-boat problem. Any issues created by the solution would have been ignored. Whether or not it could be done was treated as someone else’s problem.
Policymaking is easy, even if it ignores reality.
(This appeared in a discussion about solving the terrorism problem by banning either guns or Muslims.)
Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/04/distaff-factor.html
"Given the public awareness that science can be low-quality or corrupted, that whole fields can be misdirected for decades (see nutrition, on cholesterol and sugar), and that some basic fields must progress in the absence of any prospect of empirical testing (string theory), the naïve realism of previous generations becomes quite Medieval in its irrelevance to present realities." This is from an essay on science by Jerome Ravetz who works at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford.
This is a pretty scary generalization about science.
Gen. Michael Flynn headed up the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) when, in 2012, an intel report predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Syria – and showed how US policy deliberately ignored and even succored it. Several disparate islamic rebel groups were seen as reasonable to overthrow Bashar al-Assad with the help of “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.” Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then CIA director David Petraeus argued for a full-scale effort to overthrow beleaguered Ba’athist strongman Bashar al-Assad with massive aid to a loosely-defined “opposition.” He was interviewed by Al-Jazeera:
Will Rogers was a renowned American humorist in the early 20th century. During World War I, German U-boats threatened the Allied war effort by sinking US ships headed to Europe. The Allied navies could not stop the slaughter.
Rogers was asked what he would do about it. He said that the only solution was to boil away the Atlantic Ocean, and then capture the U-boats sitting on the bottom. When asked how to do that, Rogers answered that he was responding as a policymaker, and that that question must be handled by others.
Boiling away the Atlantic was a solution to the U-boat problem. Any issues created by the solution would have been ignored. Whether or not it could be done was treated as someone else’s problem.
Policymaking is easy, even if it ignores reality.
(This appeared in a discussion about solving the terrorism problem by banning either guns or Muslims.)
Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/04/distaff-factor.html
"Given the public awareness that science can be low-quality or corrupted, that whole fields can be misdirected for decades (see nutrition, on cholesterol and sugar), and that some basic fields must progress in the absence of any prospect of empirical testing (string theory), the naïve realism of previous generations becomes quite Medieval in its irrelevance to present realities." This is from an essay on science by Jerome Ravetz who works at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford.
This is a pretty scary generalization about science.
Gen. Michael Flynn headed up the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) when, in 2012, an intel report predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Syria – and showed how US policy deliberately ignored and even succored it. Several disparate islamic rebel groups were seen as reasonable to overthrow Bashar al-Assad with the help of “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.” Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then CIA director David Petraeus argued for a full-scale effort to overthrow beleaguered Ba’athist strongman Bashar al-Assad with massive aid to a loosely-defined “opposition.” He was interviewed by Al-Jazeera:
Al-Jazeera: “You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?
Flynn: I think the administration.
Al-Jazeera: So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?
Flynn: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.
Al-Jazeera: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?
Flynn: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.”
AAAAaaaaaannnnnddddd......a picture of a simultaneous sunset and eclipse:
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