Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • 47% OR IS IT 74%? I love that this issue is getting popularized. This article tr

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-47-percent/2012/09/21/57dc7bbe-0341-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_story.htmlTHE 47% OR IS IT 74%?

    I love that this issue is getting popularized. This article tries to debunk a few myths but misses out on a few important and related statistics:

    a) something close to 74% of people join the tax paying majority at some point in their lives. The young, immigrants and the old of course, are not. The people of productive age of course are. So, it’s true that at any given point less than half of americans pay taxes. But that’s not the same thing as saying that more than half of them will become, or have been, taxpayers.

    b) The 1% consists largely of people who are in that 1% for only one or two years – people who make windfalls.

    c) About 12% of americans actually qualify as ‘poor’. The rest are either recent immigrants, young or old, and the remainder are those who have made poor reproductive decisions, or have other problems that leave them to the left of the curve.

    d) Any statistic that makes use of ‘household’ rather than individual numbers means the author is lying. The composition of the family has eroded so significantly since the sixties that any statistical comparison of households is irrelevant. We humans choose spatial independence at all costs. This means more smaller poorer households.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-23 16:34:00 UTC

  • ON WAR AS ORGANIZED MURDER (A post from elsewhere) It may be true that war is or

    ON WAR AS ORGANIZED MURDER

    (A post from elsewhere)

    It may be true that war is organized murder, But that moral statement must be balanced by the practical recognition that those who are unwilling to engage in war, unprepared for it, and unskilled in it, will rapidly become the subjects of those who are willing, prepared, and skilled at conducting it.

    Certainly the neocon mission has been a failure in muslim lands, for the sole reason that exacting punishment for not controlling one’s citizens is different from the absurd attempt at social conversion of paternalistic tribalism to something like democracy and consumer capitalism.

    Certainly the intervention in Serbia was a mistake. Wars can be waged by urgent violence, tactical trade policy, ideological conversion, and sustained immigration. To limit the appropriation of a people’s life and property to that of violence is a bit of arbitrary and dishonest rhetorical trickery. Conquest by immigration is just as viable as conquest by force. The only difference is the time frame.

    Certainly the US intervention into WW! was a mistake, as was our intervention in the european theater in ww2. The cultural core of Europe was Germany and we broke her will. And along with that will, the long term viability of the high-trust society that is unique to protestant germanic lands and the secret of Germanic resistance to corruption. The rest of Europe is just a cultural province by comparison. And teh german criticism of petty consumerism of anglo society has proven as true as they predicted. It will be two or three generations before she regains her will to act as the core cultural state of western civilization. (Others think it will not recover but I’m less skeptical)

    But I don’t think our interventions that stopped the spread of communism were mistakes. I don’t think McArthur’s desire to topple communist china was a mistake. It would have saved millions of lives, and prevented the upcoming confrontation we will all be faced with.

    And most of all, I don’t respect european pacifism paid for with american blood and treasure. Nor social programs that are subsidized by Americans who pay for European defense, and most importantly, subsidy of stable energy prices. Nor do I respect American pacifism that is mere financial and personal convenience masquerading as conviction.

    There is a vast difference between war, nation building, police action, and empire building. Only war is necessary. Nation building, police action and empire building are just thefts by way of murder.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-23 14:08:00 UTC

  • MOSCOW Watching a movie right now. Captures the lights of downtown. I want to go

    MOSCOW

    Watching a movie right now. Captures the lights of downtown. I want to go back.

    Russians still remember what it nobility is. Art and elegance , sophistication and grace are terms that still retain their meaning, at least to some.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-23 01:24:00 UTC

  • FROM A POST ON QUORA – THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MAJORITY RULE OVER HETEROGENEOUS VAL

    FROM A POST ON QUORA – THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MAJORITY RULE OVER HETEROGENEOUS VALUE SYSTEMS

    Small homogenous cultures tend to be redistributive. One of the sillly myths, is that 350M americans of various value systems can be governed as are 10M northern european protestant germanics. Majority rule assists us in selecting fiscal priorities when our interests and values are the same. But as the values of a country become heterogeneous through immigration, or the breakdown of the nuclear family that allows women to return to their communal state of bearing children but asking others to pay for them, we render majority rule impossible. Because now we are not selecting priorities for the use of scarce resources, and generating laws to prevent privatization of those investment ‘commons’, but we are instead, generating laws to advance one system of moral codes at the expense of another, and using money from one group to achieve what is amoral to them. This is why democratic government is limited to homogenous cultural entities. And why the market serves us across heterogeneous entities. Our institutions of majority rule are not competent to solve this problem of heterogeneous values.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-22 13:11:00 UTC

  • Caplan tipped us off on this, So I had to share. 🙂

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2012/09/20/the-state-of-social-media-at-work-in-one-quick-infographic/Mike Caplan tipped us off on this, So I had to share. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-21 23:04:00 UTC

  • (MSG or something in the soup from Whole Foods. Sleeping for the past four hours

    (MSG or something in the soup from Whole Foods. Sleeping for the past four hours.)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-21 20:45:00 UTC

  • I did NOT need to know more about this car. I was perfectly happy knowing that E

    I did NOT need to know more about this car. I was perfectly happy knowing that E Types and Cobras were antiquated technology. So I didn’t have to long for one. And, well, Morgans are one thing. But this is purely modern car. And it’s gorgeous. 🙂

    A used one is 75K euros. 100K US.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-21 13:18:00 UTC

  • HOW A NERD THINKS ABOUT A WARDROBE I’ve lost something like 40 lbs, although I f

    HOW A NERD THINKS ABOUT A WARDROBE

    I’ve lost something like 40 lbs, although I feel like I’ve gained a bit back staying here in Bellevue, typing all day. So I’ve had to slowly rebuild my wardrobe over the summer so that I’m not swimming in sacks like Alice after she imbibes the Drink Me potion.

    I didn’t change the style at all. Still stayed with the jeans/jacket theme that I’ve always had, and the pretty stock Ralph Lauren for casual.

    — WARDROBE UPGRADES —

    2 Suits (Charcoal, Navy Pinstripe)

    3 Sports Jackets (2 blk, 1 blk/grn)

    12 Dress Shirts (8 white, 4 black)

    4 Smart Casual Dress Shirts (3 Blues, 1 rust)

    2 Ties (Robert Talbot) Yellow, Charcoal (Short 4)

    3 Pocket squares (short one)

    1 RL Long sleeve cotton shirt (pink)

    3 RL Polos (Black, Grey, Blue)

    1 RL Long Sleeve Polo Heavy (Green and Blue with leather)

    1 RL Long Sleeve ‘Sweatshirt’ (red)

    1 RL Long Sleeve ‘hoodie’ (Brown)

    6 Jeans (Seven for All Mankind – 4 blue, 2 grey, 1 brown)

    1 Black Dress Shoes (cole haan)

    3 Driving Shoes blk ( 2 cole haan, 1 Diesel)

    1 Running Shoes (nike free)

    1 Sweats (grey, eddie bauer)

    1 RL cargo shorts

    — HOLD OVERS —

    3 sports jackets – retailored (Abboud, RL, Custom Made)

    5 Belts 2 blk/br, 3 blk decorated, 1 RL braided Br.

    1 blk loafers (cole haan)

    1 brown loafers (santoni)

    2 smart casual city shoes (Geoxx)

    1 driving shoes (cole haan)

    1 RL heavy winter hoodie

    1 Jones NY Black Car Coat

    1 North Face ‘Fleece’

    1 (?) Rain Jacket

    2 Grey Seven jeans (really need to go)

    1 RL Swim (white)

    2 RL Shorts (cargo, white)

    2 Watches (Baum Mercier, Hamilton) (can’t find the Raymond Weil)

    3 sets cufflinks

    — STILL NEEDED —

    1 Narrow Lapel Tux

    2 pleated tux shirts

    2 watch bands (br/blk)

    1 proper raincoat

    — LOSSES —

    4 RL polos (xl/custom fit)

    20 various shirts

    15 various jeans, mostly Seven brand.

    2 Abboud tuxes (wide lapel, narrow lapel)

    6 sports jackets

    4 suits

    6 shoes

    TIPS:

    – Wash your expensive jeans inside out. That’s where most of the wear comes from.

    – Wash your clothes in cold water using Woolite or some other mild detergent unless you work with dirt and sweat for a living. Hang dry your shirts on plastic hangers. They’ll last longer. (The water at the cabin ruined my clothes. Its one of the reasons I didn’t want to live there any longer.)

    – The cleaners damage your clothes. Especially the seams. You are better off doing them at home. I see all these guys with freshly pressed clothes that are falling apart.

    – Learn how to iron. Iron in front of the TV in the morning with your coffee. I do it before the shower, and lay my clothes out for the day on the bed. I love ironing. Because it’s become part of my ritual. And because my grandmother taught me how. And it reminds me of her.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-21 07:18:00 UTC

  • WORD OF THE DAY: NONCE 1. Nonce, time being: the present occasion; “for the nonc

    WORD OF THE DAY: NONCE

    1. Nonce, time being: the present occasion; “for the nonce”

    2. Cryptographic nonce, a number or bit string used only once, in security engineering

    Until today, I always thought ‘nonce’ was some sort of abbreviation for “nonsense”. Because I’ve always seen it used to refer to a one-time key in software.

    You learn something new every day. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-21 01:02:00 UTC

  • ANYONE ELSE TIRED OF EURO-BLOWHARDS restating the patently obvious? The northern

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/09/europes-crisisIS ANYONE ELSE TIRED OF EURO-BLOWHARDS

    restating the patently obvious? The northern and southern cultures are incompatible. Or better stated, the Protestant german speaking cultures are incompatible with the catholic countries. Is that difficult to understand?

    The euro was doomed from the start. Either the germanic peoples leave and save the south, or the south leaves and dies by suicide. Although some of our south american friends have proven even that is survivable if you have a parent currency to leverage.

    The Economist for some reason feels the need to print toilet tissue on the subject. But this is not a question of economic efficiency. It’s a question of cultures.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-21 00:01:00 UTC