....there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. --George Orwell
Some years ago, one of those “hidden camera prank the public” programs in the US decided to find out how many people knew what this word "suffrage" meant, so they set up a stall asking people to sign a petition to “end women’s suffrage”. They got a disturbing number of signatures, from voters of both sexes.
When Marxian predictions fail even though they are allegedly derived from scientific laws of history, Marxists go to great lengths to change the terms of the original prediction. A notorious example is Marx's law of the impoverishment of the working class under capitalism. When it became all too clear that the standard of living of the workers under industrial capitalism was rising instead of falling, Marxists fell back on the view that what Marx "really" meant by impoverishment was not immiseration but relative deprivation. One of the problems with this fallback defense is that impoverishment is supposed to be the motor of the proletarian revolution, and it is difficult to envision the workers resorting to bloody revolution because they only enjoy one yacht apiece while capitalists enjoy five or six.
For as long as people have recorded their views on economic life, there have been two constants of political economy. The first constant has been to distinguish two opposed methods of economic coordination: market exchange and administrative command. The second constant has been to scorn markets and to esteem administration.---Thomas Leonard
Although the FBI is responsible for investigating possible violations of federal law, according to the FBI’s own procedures posted on its website, the “FBI does not give an opinion or decide if an individual will be prosecuted. The federal prosecutors employed by the Department of Justice or the U.S. Attorneys offices are responsible for making this decision and for conducting the prosecution of the case.”
Neither Comey nor Lynch explained by what authority Comey violated the FBI’s own procedures by making a recommendation.
Some conservatives on Trump:
George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter:
"He is summoning primal forces of anger/fear, and displaying leadership without moral guardrails, religious principles or civic responsibility"
Mitt Romney's chief strategist:
Give him credit for this: Donald Trump is a dark, disturbed man, and he sees in the country what he sees in the mirror"
A conservative blogger:
"Trump's speech sounded better in the original German"
Bill Kristol:
"Trump's 'I'm the only one who can fix it' marks descent of the Republican Party from Republican constitutionalism to demagogic Casarism"
Conservative writer Stephen Miller:
"RNC who made fun of "Yes We Can" for seven years are now chanting "Yes You Will" on the convention floor"
Testosterone administration for 36 months in older men with low or low-to-normal testosterone concentrations did not improve cognitive function. Future long-term trials are needed to investigate the efficacy of testosterone replacement in patients with impaired cognition, such as people with Alzheimer's disease.
Thomas Leonard documents in Illiberal Reformers, American “Progressives” a century ago explicitly rejected the idea that an ordinary person spending his or her own money does so in ways that promote that ordinary-person’s best interest. “Progressives” believed that knowledge of that ordinary-person’s best interest, and the fortitude to pursue it, was possessed reliably only by “experts” (that is, “Progressive” professors, pundits, politicians, preachers, and mandarins).
The U.S. Border Control is proposing adding a new line to the form travelers fill out when visiting in the U.S. for under 90 days without a visa. According the Guardian, the line would be added to both the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) and I-94W forms and would read, “Please enter information associated with your online presence—Provider/Platform—Social media identifier.” The Office of the Federal Register states that “collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case.”
Who is...Kenneth Arrow?
Who is...Kenneth Arrow?
Edison said he never had a failed experiment regarding the light bulb; he learned 1000 ways not to make one. The Venezuelans are learning how not to run a country. Current government price controls are such that it costs more to grow the ingredients for maize flour, cooking oil, rice and beans--the basics of the local diet--than it is legal to sell them for. Thus people don’t. And those fixed prices are also lower than the global prices of those things. Thus people cannot and will not import them. In response to the government induced shortages, President Nicolas Maduro has just put the Army in charge of the food distribution system. Is that because the army knows how to grow and transport food?
Control seems to be its own reward.
"Without the reestablishment of freedom of migration throughout the world, there can be no lasting peace."--This is a very provocative line from the writing of the libertarian Ludwig von Mises‘s 1935 essay “The Freedom to Move as an International Problem.” I wonder how many Americans who identify themselves as libertarian would agree. And I wonder how, with the growing homicidal Politics of Derangement, the libertarian reacts now.
The actress that played Robb Stark's wife, Oona Chaplin, in GoT is the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin. And Harry Lloyd, who played Viserys, is the great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens.
The actress that played Robb Stark's wife, Oona Chaplin, in GoT is the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin. And Harry Lloyd, who played Viserys, is the great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens.
Kenneth Arrow is a Nobel Prize winning economist. Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem states that it is impossible to devise any collective decision-making mechanism or procedure that generates results free of the influence of arbitrary factors (that is, factors that reasonable people believe should not play a role in determining the outcome of decision-making procedures). For example, in almost all elections, there isn’t only one correct outcome. There isn’t one outcome that reflects the individual-voters’ collective “preference” better or more accurately than some other possible outcomes. Stated differently, in almost all collective-decision-making settings, there is no “will of the people.” It’s a mistake to anthropomorphize a group of people. Each individual has preferences; a collection of individuals has only a collection of individual preferences and not a separate and determinate group preference. And, in other decision making arenas--like the aims and actions of government--the notion that the government consistently acts to promote some identifiable ‘public welfare’ becomes downright laughable.
Rubber is a 110 billion dollar global market, 4th largest agricultural product and the second most imported commodity to the U.S. behind oil. 42% is natural, 58% synthetic. It is used in more than 40K products and the U.S. has no natural supply. It is limited to certain areas because of climate and rainfall, must be harvested by hand and has a long --read slow--life cycle. With disease and competition for land, natural sources are declining.
Richard Holmes's highly praised Coleridge biography describes the writer Coleridge living in semi-seclusion in his Highgate rooms thinking and talking--but not writing. Coleridge's fame and his reputation for brilliant conversation caused many to visit; when a young Thomas Carlyle came calling in 1825, he found Coleridge "a kind good soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal magnetism," but "a great and useless genius" who in conversation "wanders like a man sailing on many currents." The critic William Hazlitt wrote that, "If Mr Coleridge had not been the most impressive talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest writer," though he did concede that for all Coleridge had failed at gathering the promised "immortal fruits and amaranthine flowers," he had not gone Establishment-rotten, like Wordsworth and Southey.
The failure of talent or will is put down, in part, to Coleridge's return to opium.
In 2012, archaeologists announced they had uncovered traces of ash, burnt twigs, and animal bone — evidence of a controlled fire — while excavating a cave in South Africa. Those tiny fragments were more than a million years old and likely the handiwork of Homo erectus, a species that predates Homo sapiens.
The failure of talent or will is put down, in part, to Coleridge's return to opium.
In 2012, archaeologists announced they had uncovered traces of ash, burnt twigs, and animal bone — evidence of a controlled fire — while excavating a cave in South Africa. Those tiny fragments were more than a million years old and likely the handiwork of Homo erectus, a species that predates Homo sapiens.
These gross extortions and tyrannies, of course, are all practiced on the theory that they are not only unavoidable, but also laudable ....that government is something that is superior to and quite distinct from all other human institutions – that it is, in its essence, not a mere organization of ordinary men, like the Ku Klux Klan, the United States Steel Corporation or Columbia University, but a transcendental organism composed of aloof and impersonal powers, devoid wholly of self-interest and not to be measured by merely human standards. One hears it spoken of, not uncommonly, as one hears the law of gravitation and the grace of God spoken of – as if its acts had no human motive in them and stood clearly above human fallibility. This concept, I need not argue, is full of error.-- H.L. Mencken
AAAAannnnnddddddd......a famous picture of a wall after the Hiroshima blast:
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