#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
The Baltimore public schools began classes today and lots of that all-important socialization is already underway:
Baltimore County Police are investigating a confirmed shooting at Perry Hall High School. Police say a 17-year-old student has been shot and one suspect, a student, is in custody…. The shooting reportedly happened in the school cafeteria and the victim was shot in the back.
Public school is child abuse.
Karl Denninger points out the observable difference in theory and practice on the part of those who deny that credit money is money:
I happen to find the esoteria between the gold bugs and various other flavors (and, in my view, mis-flavors) of Misean thought to be highly amusing. From my perspective there’s only one point worthy of consideration in this regard, and that is whether or not the particular economic model under debate counts all credit and currency as “moneyness” and therefore innately fungible when evaluating the impact of various policy decisions and strictures.
Sadly, few if any do, and thus I find them all flawed.
I further find it amazingly frustrating that those who claim that such a distinction is unimportant (or, at least, less important) think absolutely nothing of waltzing into the closest restaurant, bar or other establishment and whipping out their VISA card, pretending that it is currency. There’s a certain level of intellectual disconnection required to do that, you see, and it appears in people on both the left and right, conservative and liberal and among all particular monetary theorists. Indeed, most will simply argue that credit is nothing more than a time shift for which one pays a privilege in the form of a thing called “interest.”
Another observed monetary inconsistency is that those who claim to believe in inevitable inflation are not borrowing heavily. The logically correct thing to do, if you are sure that an inflationary or hyperinflationary scenario is in the works, is to borrow as much money as possible at today’s low interest rates, then purchase real assets such as gold that will appreciate in value and permit the repayment of the loans in the significantly less valuable dollars of the future.
If someone is proclaiming “inflation is coming” and “get out of debt” at the same time, the chances are that their monetary model is less than perfectly coherent.
This doesn’t mean that a gold standard isn’t to be vastly preferred to other monetary models, in that it is somewhat harder to abuse by banks and governments. But anyone versed in economic history will know perfectly well that the gold standard isn’t some sort of economic miracle cure either.
Does Romney want to kill Americans?
Former U.S. presidents seldom publicly criticize the current occupants of the White House. It is even more unusual for them to criticize a sitting president who belongs to their own party. But this did not prevent Jimmy Carter from criticizing Barack Obama’s policy asserting the president’s right to murder Americans at will without due process in an article he wrote for the New York Times.
It would appear fairly obvious that Apple’s patent infringement award will not only be appealed, but reversed and thrown out.
Apple v. Samsung juror Manuel Ilagan said the nine-person jury that heard the patent infringement case between the companies knew after the first day that it believed Samsung had wronged Apple…. The decision was very one-sided, but Ilagan said it wasn’t clear the jurors were largely in agreement until after the first day of deliberations.
“It didn’t dawn on us [that we agreed that Samsung had infringed] on the first day,” Ilagan said. “We were debating heavily, especially about the patents on bounce back and pinch-to-zoom. Apple said they owned patents, but we were debating about the prior art [about the same technology that Samsung said existed before the iPhone debuted]. [Velvin Hogan] was jury foreman. He had experience. He owned patents himself. In the beginning the debate was heated, but it was still civil. Hogan holds patents, so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. After we debated that first patent — what was prior art –because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn’t something out there before Apple.
“In fact we skipped that one,” Ilagan continued, “so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down.” …
“Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents,” Ilagan said, “it’s easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products because it was all the same. Like the trade dress, once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flatscreen with the Bezel…then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel. But we took our time. We didn’t rush. We had a debate before we made a decision. Sometimes it was getting heated.”
Regardless of what you think of patents or Apple, the fact that the jury didn’t even look at all the prior art should be sufficient to get a judge to look at this again. And the jury foreman sounds like an Apple plant, or at least fanboi.
Powerline exposes the latest iteration of a stupid old Democratic trick:
It happens all the time in talk radio: a caller will say that he is a lifelong Republican, and will recall fondly how he voted for Ronald Reagan. Then he says that today’s Republicans have gone too far, and for the first time ever he is voting for a Democrat! These callers are nearly always lying. If you look them up, you likely will find that they are Democratic Party precinct chairmen.
The Obama campaign is trying to perpetrate the same deception. It has just released a video called Republican Women For Obama, which features four or five women who claim to be Republicans, or to have been Republicans until recently. But, of course, they are appalled by Mitt Romney–it is hard to say why, apart from a couple of discreet references to abortion, but did they really just now figure out that the Republican Party is pro-life? The ad is surprisingly ineffective, but it is also dishonest. At least one of the women who pose as “Republican women for Obama” is a long-time Democrat.
Her name is Maria Ciano, and BuzzFeed finds that she has been a registered Democrat in Colorado at least since 2006.
Of course, there is an easier way of knowing that the woman isn’t a Republican than combing through her Facebook page and voter registration. First, she is an unmarried Hispanic woman. Second, one has to be a pretty extreme Democrat to be appalled by Mitt Romney’s “right-wing” ways.
UPDATE: Obama is clearly getting desperate. President Barack Obama said Mitt Romney has locked himself into “extreme positions” on economic and social issues and would surely impose them if elected, trying to discredit his Republican rival at the biggest political moment of his life.
Romney is a flip-flopper, not an extremist, and everyone knows it. Obama’s 2012 campaign is looking more hapless than Hillary Clinton’s catastrophic 2008 team.
The initial results of the religion and paternal age survey have been intriguing, so much so that it may justify a more methodical investigation into the hypothesis. However, we need a bit more information in order to tease out the strength of an effect called the demographic confound.
So, if you don’t mind answering the following questions, please do so, but keep the following instructions in mind: Answer only for yourself. Not your siblings, your children, or your parents. Also, Anonymous responses will not be counted.
Name. (Not real name, just make something up so we can keep things straight.)
Birth year.
Age of father at birth
Age of mother at birth
Sex (M/F)
Parents married through age 18 (Y/N)
Strength of belief on the Spectrum of Theistic Probability. (1-7). The milestones are as follows:
1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung: “I do not believe, I know.”
2. De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. “I don’t know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.”
3. Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. “I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.”
4. Completely impartial. Exactly 50 per cent. “God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.” Agnostic.
5. Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. “I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.”
6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. “I don’t know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
7. Strong atheist. “I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one.”
Science thanks you for your assistance.
It’s indeed unfortunate that Neil Armstrong should have died, so suspiciously, just when he was on the verge of coming clean about the faked Moon landings. The media is reporting “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures”, which we all know is merely cover for “Obama sent a drone to silence him.”
Also, if it is later determined that Armstrong was doping during the flight, will NASA strip him of credit for the first Moon landing?
Draft Time: Sat Sep 1 3:00pm CDT
Bailout Banksters – Larry Fitzgerald, Rob Gronkowski, Matt Ryan
RR Redbeards – Tom Brady, Chris Johnson, LaShean McCoy
Greenfield Grizzlies – NEED 3 KEEPERS
Mounds View Meerkats – Aaron Rodgers, Arian Foster, Marques Colston
Sean – (Cranberry Rhyneaux)
Peter Garstig – (Bane Sidhe)
Boetain – (Green Reverends)
Gapeseed – (Grover Beach Quixotes)
上酒 – (Macau Marauders)
Slack Attack – (Swamp Spartans)
So, if you’re one of the three remaining guys – in bold – who have been assigned a team, email me ASAP and I will send you a league invitation as well as your roster from whom you can select up to three keepers.
“When you go in the lion’s den, you don’t tippy toe in. You carry a spear, you go in screaming like a banshee, you kick whatever doors in, and say, ‘Where’s the son of a bitch!’ If you go in any other way you’re gonna lose.”
– Brian Billick
Kickass wonders about a well-known image:
Could I get an explanation on the flaming sword picture? I thought it was a joke but googled it.
I’ve explained this before, but for those who didn’t know, this picture was one of many from a Star Tribune photoshoot for an article one of its writers was doing about my Eternal Warriors novels. He moved onto one of the big New York papers before he’d finished the piece, if I recall correctly, so it never ran, but the photographer liked them so much that he emailed a few of them to me.
I still remember laughing when he called me up after the interview with the writer and asked if “my characters, like, did anything interesting?” I mean, what was I supposed to say, no, they all sit around and discuss their boring lives? He got really excited when I mentioned that there were these angels and they got in big battles with flaming swords, until he realized that he was, after all, dealing with a writer. Which led to his next question: “You’re not, like, fat or anything, are you?” When I reassured him that I was not the pudgy little novelist he was expecting, he asked me to come down to the Star Tribune building in Minneapolis the next week and bring a sword if I happened to have one.
I didn’t, but there was one at the house at which I was staying – we’d already moved to Europe at this point – which led to the funniest part of the whole thing. It was winter, so it was cold, but it was also a bright sunny day, which led to my walking into the Star Tribune reception wearing a long black overcoat, black gloves, black shades, with a shaved head and carrying a katana. The two female receptionists freaked out and called security, at which point I explained the situation and the guards had a good laugh.
We didn’t end up using the katana, however, as the photographer obtained a few swords from a nearby theatre as well as some flame-paste, so he just picked out a rather Conanesque sword, gave it a quick coat of paste, then set it on fire while I held it. It was a little trickier than it looked because the burning paste tended to drip off, so I had to try to hold still for the photo while dodging the dripping flames at the same time. It was more fun than the usual photo shoot and I shared the photographer’s disappointment that the piece never ran. The reaction to the photo, however mockingly it may be intended, only tends to show that his instincts were correct as it made for a much more interesting author’s photo than most.