Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • CREATES JOBS? My friend Sam Hughes +Gmailed me about this unpublished TED talk.

    http://www.upworthy.com/breaking-you-know-that-nick-hanauer-ted-talk-you-werent-supposed-to-see-here-itWHO CREATES JOBS?

    My friend Sam Hughes +Gmailed me about this unpublished TED talk. And it’s actually true. But misleading. Yes, the super-rich do not create jobs, the middle class creates jobs. However

    a) The middle class ‘hires’ the super rich to protect them from the government. And it works.

    b) The ‘Rich” are almost universally (above 90%) members of the middle class who made their money in small and medium business.

    I don’t support the super rich. I support active constraint, and even dissolution, of the government.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-16 15:57:00 UTC

  • Awesome sight lines. Although I do prefer a fully enclosed shower

    Awesome sight lines. Although I do prefer a fully enclosed shower.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-16 14:12:00 UTC

  • Seven emergency room visits. Five days in the hospital. Seven days recovering in

    Seven emergency room visits. Five days in the hospital. Seven days recovering in bed so far – mostly because of this damned upper respiratory infection, not the surgery. Likely three more days in bed to go. Four weeks more to recover fully. And then probably two to four years of being generous to the liver. At 53 I’m already down two organs. 🙂

    Lessons learned?

    1) Um. Don’t man up to pain. Get problems fixed early. The whole alpha male instinct is wrong on pain. I have an incredibly high pain tolerance. And that’s a bad thing. … Well, outside of business anyway. 🙂

    2) Oh, and the one I keep learning all over again: You cannot count on the medical community to get it right. Ever. Especially if you’re on the right of the curve. I had a concierge doctor with cellphone access 24/7, but was absolutely useless, and the only way I got a diagnosis was to tell the ER docs I had no PCP, and needed their help. The only person interested in working hard at curing you early is you. You are your own primary care physician.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-16 13:44:00 UTC

  • CONTRA THE ATHEISTS American christianity is a revolt against the state, not an

    CONTRA THE ATHEISTS

    American christianity is a revolt against the state, not an advocacy of mysticism. The purpose of all religion; to place limits upon the state. To determine the limits of rule. To place control of society into the hands of small local groups, each with a variety of different interpretations and preferences. To make the individual in control of his or her life, and his or her destiny.

    Seeing christianity as a movement consisting of irrational statements toward an irrational end, is very different from seeing it as practical means of achieving a rational end, regardless of the irrationality of its arguments.

    Marxism is based on a false assumption. Democracy is based upon many false assumptions. Inter-temporal redistribution is based upon many false assumptions. Why is it that Religious Conservatism must be based upon true assumptions?

    All movements are political. I find the argument about the FORM of religious doctrine always somewhat childish – judging a book by its cover. The CONTENT of religious doctrine can be analyzed. The RESULTS of applying religious doctrine can be criticized.

    There is no evidence that most of what we debate in society is rational. And as Caplan has tried to show us, it may not be possible for public discourse to be rational. FORM does not matter. CONTENT matters,and content can be judged by the RESULTS it produces.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-15 13:48:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813155521.htm

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-14 03:07:00 UTC

  • @sebastianG @LeeBailey How about this: “Every population must have a reasonably

    http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/02/mitt_romney_is_living_every_social_scientists_nightmare @sebastianG @LeeBailey How about this: “Every population must have a reasonably uniform set of rights and correlative obligations, necessary to perpetuate the individual, familial, tribal, informal and formal institutional orders, which in turn makes planning, cooperation, a division of knowledge and labor, and conflict resolution possible. This portfolio of rights and obligations is largely unstated, and exists as manners, ethics. morals, rituals and traditions – all transmitted through imitation and training. This portfolio is generally called culture: the soft institutions that are habituated by a population. And as a rich and complex web of rights and obligations, many of which make assumptions about the natural world, and our relationship to it, changing these webs has infinite consequences, some of which are beneficial, and some of which are not. But the similarities that unite these rights and obligations generally impeded whatever changes we seek to impose upon that system of unstated rights and obligations.The written law generally codifies these unstated rights and obligations. Regulatory law then seeks to clarify them. Political or legislative law then seeks to alter them in order to grant privileges, rents and transfers. Some portfolios of rights and obligations accelerate cooperation, competition, a division of knowledge and labor, and provide a barrier against rent seeking and corruption. Some portfolios of rights and obligations inhibit cooperation, competition, a division of knowledge and labor, and provide a breeding ground for rent seeking and corruption. Every time an individual forgoes the opportunity for personal, familial, and tribal consumption by respecting someone else’s rights, whether individual or communal, it is a cost to him or her. To respect individual property rights, to avoid corruption and rent seeking, is an extremely challenging and culturally difficult thing to accomplish.These unstated, unwritten portfolios of rights and obligations are the most expensive infrastructure we can build. And they are resistant to change, and particularly to change that is not obviously useful to individual participants. The very idea that we must break family inbreeding and grant women property rights in order to reduce corruption at all levels of society, is not only foreign, but antithetical to some of our largest civilizations – which have retained familial or tribal priority. When by contrast, we understand, that human beings do like to consume. But the majority of people feel alienated by consumption and the dissolution of the family, tribe and nation. It is this conflict between what is necessary to create the productive and prosperous society, and the human desire to be part of a pack or tribe, that is impossible to solve with our current institutions. And it appears we cannot have it both ways.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-13 21:25:00 UTC

  • @jbbigf @tuppington @PhilBest That’s about right. But I can’t tell how much of t

    http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/02/mitt_romney_is_living_every_social_scientists_nightmare @jbbigf @tuppington @PhilBest That’s about right. But I can’t tell how much of that is pandering.Diamond’s full argument is that all other things being equal, humans develop at a fairly constant rate given the natural resources available to them. HOWEVER, cultures often choose or evolve institutions that allow them to be out gunned, germ’ed and steel’ed, so to speak. And cultures can create institutions that allow them to advance or inhibit advancement. So Diamond generally argues that he answered the objection. He’s just emphasizing his primary contribution. Not diminishing it’s counter-effects.For example, we can visibly demonstrate the points at which both Chinese and Islamic civilizations became destructive. And we can see why they became destructive: they could not solve the problem of institutions. The west didn’t so much solve the problem of institutions as solve more of the problem than others did – preventing stagnation and regression. Even if that solution was an accidental byproduct of the church’s greed, caused by forbidding cousin marriage, and granting women property rights, in order to collect land in the Church’s name more easily.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-13 18:44:00 UTC

  • IS NOT POSSIBLE IN AN EMPIRE

    http://blog.ted.com/2012/08/13/how-pervasive-has-government-distrust-gotten/TRUST IS NOT POSSIBLE IN AN EMPIRE

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-13 16:09:00 UTC

  • OUT OF HOSPITAL – AT HOTEL – THANKS FOR LOVE AND SUPPORT Thanks for all the kind

    OUT OF HOSPITAL – AT HOTEL – THANKS FOR LOVE AND SUPPORT

    Thanks for all the kind words. They matter. ( I do have a heart despite what people seem to think. 🙂 Feeling dramatically better. It’s like walking around in a completely different body. It’s awesome. Still pretty high levels on my liver tests. Gotta have a few more. I’m betting it’s just a reflection of how bad it was in there.

    I’ll venture that 20 years from now, some doctor in some lab will show why all these gall bladders started failing. (I say this with no knowledge of the current statistics.) And like Ulcers and Cervical Cancer I’ll bet this one is also driven by an infection we just don’t know of yet. Just seems to fit the profile.

    The awful chemistry we eat doesn’t help any either, I’m sure. I still cannot find that great work that revisits the Chinese nutritional data, and shows that it doesn’t matter what combination of foods we eat. It just matters that they aren’t processed foods. But I’m glad this is becoming something we’re more aware of. A century of faulty nutritional information is the real culprit.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-10 16:08:00 UTC

  • ONE OF THE FIVE WORST GALL BLADDERS HE’S SEEN Given that its dinner time here, I

    ONE OF THE FIVE WORST GALL BLADDERS HE’S SEEN

    Given that its dinner time here, I won’t go into too much detail. But the surgeon said it was in his “top five”. The top five worst gall bladders he’s removed. Fully infected. Everything he touched bled.

    The second surgeon came in and did another procedure that used a basket of some sort to clear the duct between the liver and intestine. So I had a six hour surgery and recovery instead of a one hour surgery and recovery.

    I tell people that I have a high pain tolerance. And that’s not a good thing. I should have gotten this out last January.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-08 21:07:00 UTC