Blog Archives
I, Smartphone
Via Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek – An update to Leonard Read’s legendary 1958 essay I, Pencil –
I wish more people understood the marvel of emergent order that makes the world around us not just orderly, but when the feedback loops are healthy ones, a source of delight and comfort. This video (HT: Caleb Cangelosi) says it very well. Much of what makes life pleasant is undesigned. This does not mean that all undesigned phenomena are good. It does not mean that the islands of design within the undesigned sea are unimportant; they are very important. But appreciate how we human beings are able to cooperate without explicit top-down coordination. – Russ Roberts
The IHOP Is Full
Friedman looks back at the first decade of the 21st century and wonders, “in a world of limited resources, how did I eat that much?”
Thomas Friedman writes for the International House of Pancakes Menu –
In the hyperconnected world we live in, nothing is off limits, which is to say that when the phone rang at the Beijing Hilton I picked up and knew it was one of my Arab friends immediately. “If you have something good,” he said to me, mysteriously, “You can always have something better.” I tapped the message into my notepad app. It was only later, playing golf in the fuzzy green indoor 18 hole arena reserved for visiting businessmen from Europe and America, that I realized what the proverb meant. If you have French toast, stuff it with strawberries and vanilla frosting. If you stuff your French toast, put whipped cream and fruit sauce on top. It’s as simple as that and investments work the same way. I call it the Bettering.
A leading cause of population growth. Taiwanese “big ‘n’ tall” factories are ramping up production
Nobody’s gonna get this but me, probably, but so what?
H/T to Kids Prefer Cheese
Soulmates
All my life I’ve been hearing about “soulmates.” Everyone wants to find theirs. Sonnets have been composed, songs performed, how-to books written.
The problem is that most people are searching for their Sole Mate, the one single person somehow magically made and placed on Earth just to meet, fall in love, and marry, who will make life complete. Prefabricated, ready-made and just waiting to be found. They don’t exist.
Soulmates aren’t born. They’re made.
Two people meet, get to know each other, marry. They live life together, tried and tested, becoming closer until they’re practically one person. It happens over time. Some people will get there faster than others – sometimes two people are just more predisposed to get along extremely well. That doesn’t mean this is the One And Only such person like that in the world, or that if it doesn’t happen after a set amount of time it never will. If two people commit to making it happen, it will.
The bad news is if soulmates can be made, they can be broken. The bond must be maintained vigilantly. Complacence, neglect, or a hundred other things can stress or even sever it.
The good news is that more often than not, broken things can be fixed.
No Recess!
From PJ Media… 4 Secrets from the Hidden World Of Homeschoolers describes “four geek-culture experiences unique to homeschoolers.”
I suppose I could point to things like the “homeschool balls,” which are “carefully choreographed social events at which teens are expected to participate in coordinated group dances (think of the dance scenes in Pride and Prejudice). The girls usually dress in formal gowns — sometimes in period costumes — while the boys are attired in suits or dress shirts with ties,” since this sort of thing signals a return to traditional (and classy) roles and manners and would make traditionalists like Sunshine Mary and Donal Graeme very happy. But screw them, the important part here is blowing $#!7 up.
I don’t know that I have ever attended an outdoor event with homeschooled boys in attendance that did not at some point include fire and/or blowing stuff up.
First of all, every homeschooler knows that #13 in The Homeschool Rulebook states that if something catches on fire, you can count that as chemistry class. And if there is an explosion with projectiles — even better — you can add a Carnegie Unit for physics. There are dozens — maybe thousands — of books on the market aimed at homeschoolers that explain how to teach chemistry with everyday household items.
Many of those books, along with the vast resources of the intrawebs, show ordinary families how to create incredible pyrotechnic displays using everything from toilet bowl cleaner to the family’s Thanksgiving turkey. Homeschooling breeds curiosity in children. Combine that with a male child’s natural predilection toward examining the physical properties of combustion and fiery conflagrations, and it’s inevitable that homeschooling moms with boys will find themselves saying many, many times, “I had no idea you could burn that.” I’m convinced that the next generation of scientists and inventors will come out of the homeschooling community. They’re not used to being told, “You’re not allowed to do that — it might be dangerous!” Look out, scientific frontiers!
Sure, teaching social graces, proper manners, and how to engage with the opposite sex are all nice, but dude, exploding and burning stuff just rocks.
A related article is Will Your Kids Grow Up To Be Weird If You Homeschool Them? To which I reply, I bloody well hope so.
I’m pretty well sold on the idea of homeschooling. The fact that I might be able to send them away to college by the time they’re 12 while I’m still young enough to take up a full-time golf career or join a bar band has nothing to do with it at all.
Good Heavens Miss Sakamoto!
The Pew Research center and Smithsonian magazine have a 13-question Science & Technology quiz.
Going by their own statistical brackets, I am a white male between 30 and 49 with a high school education. I answered all 13 correctly, doing better than 93% of the public and the same as 7%.
How’d you do?
Famous moon rock star Buzz Aldrin records in Doubly.
Turn On, Tune Up, Drop D
[Or: “The Good Kind Of Pain”]
My wrist and fingers are hurting from taking up guitar again. Not just my fingertips, from sliding them up and down the strings – my fingers, from the knuckles down. My back acted up for the first couple days, but it’s getting used to this again.
I’m starting to get back the feel for chords and chord changes. Still sloppy – “C” is a pain in the ass chord – but improving. I can almost work my way through “Pennyroyal Tea” again. However, my amp isn’t handling too well when I switch the pedal from clean to distortion. I’m thinking I can find one on craigslist relatively cheap – anyone had any experience buying used amps? All I need is a 15-watt crate amp.
Bonus points to anyone who gets the triple whammy pun in the title.
Far Off Broadway
After some trial and error (less than I thought there would be, honestly), I restrung my guitar. I haven’t played it in 2 or 3 years, and it’s painfully clear that I have a lot of relearning to do. Still, I remembered a number of the basic major/minor chord structures and was close on the ones I missed. So it’s not exactly time to catch the Greyhound bus for home, as it were.
Pure Progressivism
From Cafe Hayek comes “Rents And Race: Legacies of Progressive Policies” (PDF). The abstract reads –
Could it be that the institutional racism of Jim Crow occurred not despite the Progressive era but because of it? Not only did the Progressive reforms create new economic rents that could be exploited by whites and by the politicians who enacted those reforms, but many leading Progressives espoused views on racial purity and segregation that put them in the vanguard of the American apartheid system.
The authors continue –
Robert Higgs ([1977] 2008) writes that despite racist views by whites and despite the residual interracial violence and discrimination that existed after the Civil War, black Americans made significant economic and social gains. Many of those gains, however, occurred before the onslaught of Progressive economic regulation and the imposition of Jim Crow.Thus, one cannot claim that the institutionalized racism that came with progressivism simply was based on residual racism that existed after the war, as though the racial attitudes of that time inevitably would end in Jim Crow. [1977] 2008. Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.]
The Davis-Bacon Act is a pro-union law that discriminates against non-unionized black construction contractors and black workers. In fact, that was the original intent of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. During its 1931 legislative debate, quite a few congressmen expressed their racist intentions, such as Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., who said, “Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. This is a fact. That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.”
Night Skies
Last night I went with Allamagoosa and her brother to watch the Perseid meteor shower. We took a few mats out to a field and kicked back while watching shooting stars. The only manmade lights I could see were a faint light by a barn or something and some radio towers way off in the distance. I can’t recall the last time I was able to see so many stars.
After about a half hour, clouds started moving in and obscured our view. We waited a little to see if they would clear, but no luck, so we called it a night and left. Fun times.
Girl Is A Danger!
[Or: Allamagoosa Unleashed]
“I stun and amaze in my ability to harm myself” – Allie
Allamagoosa and I have long joked about her needing a leash so she doesn’t wander into traffic. A couple days ago, she was getting into my car and must not have ducked low enough because she banged her shoulder on the roof edge. Her right shoulder. Getting in the passenger side. Not quite sure just how she managed that one.
The leash is sounding less like a joke and more like a necessity. Even non-moving traffic is a risk.
nightskyradio 