Have you seen this pattern before? The government enacts new laws that subvert natural behavior for the good of society The government waits for this subversion to create a crisis The government rushes in to trade your liberties for security from the crisis We saw this pattern seven years ago. Leading up to 9/11, the [...]
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Palin detractors insult dads when they criticize her pursuit of a career
September 17th, 2008
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There’s a meme being tossed around as a criticism of Sarah Palin, runningmate to John McCain in the upcoming presidential election. The idea is that since Palin is a mother with a family, she shouldn’t be spending time in politics. This is the type of rhetoric we used to laugh at when I was growing [...]
Iran Months Away from Having the Bomb
June 25th, 2008
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A little over two years ago, I wrote a post called It’s Time to Destroy Iran. At that time, UN representative Mohamed ElBaradei claimed that Iran was 5 to 10 years away from having nuclear weapons. The tone of the NY Times article was one of relief that we had so long to work on [...]
Optimize the Most Significant Parts
March 30th, 2008
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There’s a general principle to optimization that many people miss, but seems so simple once you know it. I’m sure I first read about it in The Practice of Programming from Kernighan and Pike. You should optimize the most significant part of a program to get the most reward for your effort. The procedure is [...]
Does Wealth Make Us Bored Enough To Hurt Ourselves?
January 26th, 2008
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Robert Tracinski runs a newsletter I really enjoy called TIA Daily. You can try it for free, but ultimately it’s about $70/year. It’s well worth it–no other source provides the same quality of new coverage. A few days ago, Robert was offering a hypothesis on why the green movement appeared and seems popular. We are [...]
