For a long time, I’ve been joking with people about Guptastan – the state which is in the box. It only recently occurred to me that people don’t realize that I’m absolutely serious about starting a new nation state within three or four years if conditions are historically right. This is not a joke. It’s [...]
I think I stumbled on something today, in a discussion with Arto. Here’s the idea. The right to free speech has some natural limits – the classic statement of this being “shouting fire in a crowded theater” – a phrase with a very interesting history. Similarly, very few people think that the right to bear [...]
http://www.stanley2002.org/CSII.htm . Very good reading so far. It’s stuff like this that could get me re-invested in the political process. Should that happen… hide.
This phrase, “unequal distribution of abundance” I use to refer to the phenomenon of people starving to death or dying of easily curable diseases in affluent societies. I consider it a profound “bug” – apriori evidence that somebody’s natural rights to life, liberty and property have been violated.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2008/04/26.html#a2139 Talking about the class system etc. I can’t agree with many of the conclusions or the underlying models, but I’m absolutely sure that some of the observations mentioned are pure gold.
http://bendiken.net/2008/04/26/zero-sum-delusion is Arto’s post on capitalism. My issues with capitalism as it is typically formed by Libertarians are three fold. 1> Natural monopolies, like railways, networks, and irrigation and other river activities. 2> Creation of property rights over things like land by the State. 3> Limited liability as a subsidy to investors by the State. [...]
WAS IT ILLEGAL for American officials [who kidnapped Abu Omar in Italy] to send Abu Omar to Egypt? Yes, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which prohibits delivering someone to a country where there are “substantial grounds” to assume that he might be tortured. Were there substantial grounds to believe that transferring Abu [...]
Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soy beans are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program [...]
By the way, do you know what Mycroft is?” I had some vague recollection of an explanation at the time of the Adventure of the Greek Interpreter. “You told me that he had some small office under the British government.” Holmes chuckled. “I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has [...]
I finally picked up a field recorder: the Zoom H2. Unexpected bonuses * extremely aggressive automatic gain control on “voice mode” * 24/96 recording * incredibly light but not chintzy * features like automatic gain control work even when it’s in USB mic mode – ideal for skype etc. quirks * UI is a bit [...]