(While the USA may not be helping ukraine ENOUGH, any impression that the USA is not helping Ukraine at all, is falsified by the absurd number of young, fit, extremely muscular men in fatigue pants ordering beef at local restaurants talking about their travel plans to and from US military bases. Made a little more obvious by the few nerdy older guys running around with DOD secret stickers on laptops. And made even more obvious by their ignorance.)
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-24 05:40:00 UTC
http://thechive.com/2015/04/23/man-single-handedly-plants-a-forest-co-exists-in-it-with-animals-19-photos-video/MY HERO
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-24 02:03:00 UTC
(worth repeating)
Ukraine does not need a big mechanized military, but universal training on the swiss model; near universal small arms; to fill the armories with RPGs, and to focus on training soldiers with mobile artillery, including air defense, and to keep the army limited to very good special forces that rotate training of the civilians. If ukraine has this and six nuclear weapons they will be a free people. Russia is a one-city country. The centrality is its weakness. Nuclear arms guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty. special forces and a militia (which ukrainians are culturally disposed to anyway) will make occupation of the country literally impossible.
The central point being that large mechanized infantry is not necessary for the defense of ukraine. Large vehicles and concentrated forces are just targets.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-23 10:00:00 UTC
SWITZERLAND IS THE ONLY REMAINING EUROPEAN COUNTRY
(worth repeating)
Switzerland is the only country that evaded the post-Napoleonic statist phase, because they never had the need or opportunity to construct a bureaucracy capable of total war. As such Switzerland is the only surviving ‘European’ country.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-23 08:54:00 UTC
LOW BRITISH PRODUCTIVITY
—“Low productivity is the number one problem Britain faces,” says Van Reenen. Even before the crisis, it lagged behind other rich countries. The latest data suggest UK output per hour worked is 30 per cent below US levels, and 17 per cent below the G7 average (at purchasing power parity).—
John van Reenen, Professor at the London School of Economics
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-21 23:28:00 UTC
THIEL GETS IT RIGHT
“I would bet on globalization slowly being in abeyance,” tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel said in a video interview with George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen. “I think with the benefit of hindsight, we will realize that 2007 was not just the peak year of the finance boom, but also the peak year of globalization, like maybe 1913.”
His reference to 1913 was surely meant to be — and should be — chilling. That was the last full year before the outbreak of World War I, a conflict in which about 16 million people died. In its wake, Communists took over Russia and Hitler took over Germany. The war made the world safe not for democracy, as Woodrow Wilson had hoped, but for totalitarianism.
The globalization resulting largely from British policies — free trade, the gold standard — was not re-established after World War I. Instead, trade protectionism and unstable currencies led to the Great Depression.
World trade fell about 90 percent between 1929-33, as shown in the famous spiral graph in MIT economist Charles P. Kindleberger’s classic The World in Depression 1929-1939. The result was not, as current critics of globalization might suggest, good for the workingman. It was economic disaster, political instability and World War II, in which about 60 million people died.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-21 22:08:00 UTC
WRITE FOR AVOCATION, NOT VOCATION
—“The research, commissioned by The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, found the top 5 per cent of writers earned close to half of all the income received by professional authors in 2013. The median income for professional writers is just £10,432, less than the minimum wage. Technical and academic writers are among the worst paid.”—
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-21 17:12:00 UTC
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6232/333.summary?rss=1Small variations, small number of axis, complex resulting behavior.
Life is cool
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-17 12:13:00 UTC
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaninglesslol. Don Finnegan?
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-17 08:26:00 UTC
http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/04/14/how-progressives-purge-corporate-cultures/
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-16 16:28:00 UTC