RUMMAGING
I’m off to rummage through my storage place and see if I can find the documents for my cars. I kind of doubt it. But I’m going to give it a jolly try. It’s a nice day for rummaging. Well, it’s pretty much a nice day for anything. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-09 12:51:00 UTC
SUNBURN
Drove all over today with the top down. Sunburned. Totally dazed. Fried. Tired. Forgot what it was like. Haven’t seen sun in so long. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-08 00:00:00 UTC
VIRUS
So, it looks like my macbook pro caught a virus. Either at home or the airport. Not sure where. There are logs and a few other artifacts on it. A couple of file sharing trees. First time that’s happened to me. Been trying to clean it up all afternoon. Took one computer down, killing the hard drive. Now the other seems to be infected too. Brought it to apple , restored from time machine. Reinfected the new disk… sigh. This time, new antivirus first, then restore only the apps and documents without the settings. Hopefully that works.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 23:45:00 UTC
I LOVE THE APPLE STORE AND APPLE SERVICE
Was having some odd problems with my 17″ Macbook Pro – intermittent performance problems. Took it in. Hard drive was starting to fail. (I really need a SSD in that machine, I”m too hard on it.) I backed it up. They replaced it under warranty. Five hours later they send me an email telling me to pick it up. Just love my Apple products.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 18:42:00 UTC
INTERESTING: A DEROGATORY COMMENT ABOUT LIBERTARIANS
Yesterday, I went to a conservative political event and listened to two candidates. One of the comments they made was that the group was for ‘conservatives not libertarians’. (Really.) Which was followed by another giggle over a quote by a libertarian candidate — the implication being that libertarians will never get elected.
Now I’m aware that libertarians and conservatives argue from different frameworks, and I”m aware that those frameworks are intellectual and economic on the libertarian end, and emotional and moral-historical-allegorical on the conservative end. But I”m also aware that conservatives have failed to produce an intellectual program, or a policy program to counter the progressive left. Most progress at resisting the left has come not from conservatives, but from the libertarians.
It’s also ironic that the Village Voice can call me a member of the ‘Hard Right’ yet I’m not ‘right’ enough to get into a conservative political meeting.
I’m working on providing conservatives an intellectual framework, so that libertarians and conservatives can cooperate, and so that we libertarians can leverage some of the conservative movement.
But I am also struck by the vision of how difficult it will be to speak about political ideas in intellectual terms to conservatives.
I mean, libertarians tend to be ‘smart folks’. And Like democrats, conservatives all too often are not.
The thought leadership battle is between libertarians and liberals. The democrats and conservatives are just a measure of how well each side’s intellectuals do at convincing the middle of the curve.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 11:08:00 UTC
LUCIANOS BELLEVUE
“I know it’s not on the menu, but can you make me a carbonara?”
“Sure.”
Spaghetti, Olive Oil, Cream, Parmesan, Bacon, Eggs. Simple comfort food.
To die for.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-05 18:20:00 UTC
LOOKING AT DENIAL
As long as you believe in human equality, it’s pretty hard to complain about people who believe in the omniscience and omnipotence of divinities. Denials are rampant on either side of the political spectrum. If you can get a population where everyone’s IQ is over about 106, and you’ll have neither problems of material inequality or pervasive mysticism. But we don’t have a population over 106, we have one distributed either side of 100 — and its declining. Its declining largely because of the denial of inequality, leading to policies that allow the expansion of the lower classes. … Subsiding the breeding of the lower classes at the expense of the middle classes is not a good idea for anyone. And denying these facts is the source of our conflict. Denial is not a monopoly of the left or right. Denial is an ideologically pervasive problem.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-05 12:25:00 UTC
THE POOR
“The absolutely poor constitute about 12% of the US population — the majority of which is caused either by being a recent immigrant, or by the choice or necessity of domestic independence: living alone, or being a single parent with child while unable to support that domestic independence. And statistically speaking about 4% of that population will always be poor due to problematic genetics. And the inefficiency of the US system of redistribution via services rather than direct monetary contribution is more problematic than the number of poor. So, the financial cost of helping the poor in this country is not a problem. The envious middle class are the problem. And our focus on inefficiently serving the poor through costly government intervention rather than building an educated populace and an economy that satisfies the envies of the middle class is the causal problem. The question is whether we will fix it or cease to be a viable political system because we fail to.”
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-05 10:30:00 UTC
(Its it me, or did nothing interesting actually happen today?)
Source date (UTC): 2012-04-27 21:37:00 UTC
http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/04/26/the-institutional-answer-to-bleeding-heart-libertarianism/YOU CANNOT ACHIVE ANY NOTION OF “JUSTICE” BY VOLUNTARY MEANS WITHOUT FORMAL INSTITUTIONS.
(Sorry Rothbard, Sorry BHL’s. It is entirely possible to create institutions that assist in inter-temoral coordination between the classes. We do with with banking all day long. But we can’d do it without formal institutions that forbid privatization of public goods.)
Source date (UTC): 2012-04-26 18:12:00 UTC