On this day:
1876
Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
1906
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania millionaire Harry Thaw shoots and kills prominent architect Stanford White.
1910
The United States Congress passes the Mann Act, which prohibits interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes”; the ambiguous language would be used to selectively prosecute people for years to come.
1950
The Korean War begins with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.
1960
Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union.
Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
1906
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania millionaire Harry Thaw shoots and kills prominent architect Stanford White.
1910
The United States Congress passes the Mann Act, which prohibits interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes”; the ambiguous language would be used to selectively prosecute people for years to come.
1950
The Korean War begins with the invasion of South Korea by North Korea.
1960
Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union.
***
"The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition." --G K Chesterton
***
At least 164 people have been killed and 971 injured after Venezuela’s most powerful earthquake in more than a century, according to the country’s acting president. The 7.5 magnitude quake struck just 40 seconds after a 7.2 magnitude foreshock. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable, and the disaster is likely widespread,” the USGS warned — estimating that the death toll could climb to at least 10,000, and potentially 100,000.
***
Astronauts coming home from long stays on the International Space Station have, for years, described a strange perceptual aftertaste: a sense of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame. They sit at dinner with family and feel like a guest. They drive on a familiar street and feel like they’re piloting it. The room is loud, and they are in it, but a part of them is hovering near the ceiling, taking notes.
"The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition." --G K Chesterton
***
At least 164 people have been killed and 971 injured after Venezuela’s most powerful earthquake in more than a century, according to the country’s acting president. The 7.5 magnitude quake struck just 40 seconds after a 7.2 magnitude foreshock. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable, and the disaster is likely widespread,” the USGS warned — estimating that the death toll could climb to at least 10,000, and potentially 100,000.
***
Astronauts coming home from long stays on the International Space Station have, for years, described a strange perceptual aftertaste: a sense of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame. They sit at dinner with family and feel like a guest. They drive on a familiar street and feel like they’re piloting it. The room is loud, and they are in it, but a part of them is hovering near the ceiling, taking notes.
***
Your SpaceX IPO
The SpaceX IPO has given a booster rocket to a very virulent popular myth, the Zero-Sum Game of Personal Finance. It states that Elon Musk's grotesque financial worth is actually yours. This stunning declaration is usually followed by the equally unsupportable, "He didn't earn it, you did." (By 'you,' the professional pot-stirrer and amateur economist does not mean the guy working in the dark underground in a mineshaft or the woman working a 12-hour shift in an E.R. with drunks, criminals, and armed illiterates. No, she means the drunks, criminals, and illiterates. Only circumstances have prevented them from issuing their own IPO.)
Fortunately, the selfless politician is there to balance the scales.
It would be different if such a redistributionist fever arose in a kind, burning heart, but, as history has shown, envy works better, especially when bred with revenge. So, not only is inequality unjust, but it is someone's fault. And he will pay in more than coin.
Just as original sin begs for spiritual shepherds, and chaos demands divine rights and hierarchies, inequality cries out for retribution, often against the most unlikely criminals against humanity. Pensioners and skinflint retirees, the wide-eyed daughters of the tsar, the well-dressed passerby--all have unknowingly created or inherited their malicious part in the world's imbalance.
The SpaceX IPO has given a booster rocket to a very virulent popular myth, the Zero-Sum Game of Personal Finance. It states that Elon Musk's grotesque financial worth is actually yours. This stunning declaration is usually followed by the equally unsupportable, "He didn't earn it, you did." (By 'you,' the professional pot-stirrer and amateur economist does not mean the guy working in the dark underground in a mineshaft or the woman working a 12-hour shift in an E.R. with drunks, criminals, and armed illiterates. No, she means the drunks, criminals, and illiterates. Only circumstances have prevented them from issuing their own IPO.)
Fortunately, the selfless politician is there to balance the scales.
It would be different if such a redistributionist fever arose in a kind, burning heart, but, as history has shown, envy works better, especially when bred with revenge. So, not only is inequality unjust, but it is someone's fault. And he will pay in more than coin.
Just as original sin begs for spiritual shepherds, and chaos demands divine rights and hierarchies, inequality cries out for retribution, often against the most unlikely criminals against humanity. Pensioners and skinflint retirees, the wide-eyed daughters of the tsar, the well-dressed passerby--all have unknowingly created or inherited their malicious part in the world's imbalance.
Like 'slavery reparations', where people who have no connection to slavery are taxed to give their money to people who were never slaves, it is faith-based. And in our world of ubiquitous information, any cult can have its day.
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