Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
With regarding the current financial crises has the following connection been made anywhere?
- Many American’s operate close to the edge of their liquidity, spending money on “things” at about the same rate it comes in.
- Gas prices doubled in a short period of time, coming to a maximum shortly before the crises.
- Our economy is called rightly petroleum based.
- Our behavior didn’t markedly change quickly when prices doubled.
- Then the credit markets collapsed.
It is hard to adjust habits, spending and activities rapidly to match rapidly fluctuating commodity prices. When that commodity is oil, which is so fundemental to every one of our activities. That could spell trouble.
Is it too simplistic to account for the current market problems to the inability of that same market to adjust quickly to fluctuations in cost of its fundamental commodity? If not, why isn’t this being noted? Or more to the point, what’s wrong with my logic above? And if it isn’t wrong, who else is suggesting it.
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
The world has long awaited and long needed, a final realistic solution to the Palestinian/Israeli Middle East problem. And at long last, I’ll offer it to y’all for free. Just because … I’m that kind of guy.
The problem itself goes back some years, generations in fact. To the creation of Israel. The UN in either its folly or its evil intent, depending on your point of view on that matter, created this whole disaster by its intentional act. In the movement of Israel to a free Jewish state they moved the Palestinians out. Where? Into “permanent refugee camps”. Now in the rest of the world, and in saner moments of reflection, it will occur to any rational observer that the words “permanent” and “refugee camp” should not be connected in any way shape or form. Refugee camps, well suck just a little less than the terror of war, famine, or other disaster from which the refugee is fleeing. The slogan might be, “refugee camps, where life sucks just a little less than being dead.” The purpose of such camps is to either wait the short time until the disaster has passed to return home, or in case of civil war and the possibilities of return are not realistic … a place to survive until one can make oneself a way to find a home elsewhere.
Well, guess what. The time for waiting for Israel to be returned to the Palestinian people has passed its time. It’s well overripe. The refugees need to find a home … outside of that refugee camp. The time for the Palestinian diaspora is now. These people need to be integrated into society. Those people need to be bussed out of those camps, split up, separated and integrated into legal stable societies all over the world. They need jobs, they need a quiet surrounding filled with law abiding people to raise their children in, they a fresh start.
Decades ago if not sooner.
(one final remark, note the title, “A Modest Proposal” … you all know what that means right?)
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I hear there are courses offered at B-school on this topic. This is odd, or a unfortunate sign of the times at best.
Business ethics are trivial. Two rules only.
- Don’t lie.
- Don’t steal.
Uhm, what isn’t covered in those two simple rules in the world of commerce? Why are there courses to teach how to do that?
Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Mr Schraub gets it very wrong, and I think on this point, he is not alone in this on the left. He (and others) love to jump on the property/marriage allusion. One wonders if that is a prime example of, to coin a word, a Vizzinism? (From, of course, the Princess Bride where Vizzini keeps coining the Dread Pirates advance as “inconceivable” and Inigo Montoya’s rejoinder is “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”) But enough lexical silliness. To the point, Mr Schraub offers:
Property, in its simplest form, is that to which you have the right to exclusive use (and can correspondingly exclude others from). In a very real sense, that’s precisely what a closed relationship is: a mutual grant of exclusivity, reducing at least one element of another’s personhood to the level of property.
and connects that to notions about:
A lot of bloggers have taken apart the risible Dennis Prager’s sex advice column, in which he advises married women that they should have sex with their husbands even when they don’t want to.
So, what have we here simply put is that Mr Schraub connects the idea that the notion that a spouse might be advised to consent to sex when “they don’t want to” equates that same said spouse with property.
Property? No. No. And No. Let’s examine how this is in error. I should note, that I’m not arguing an anthropological point that no societies have treated their spouse as property. However, Mr Schraub is alluding in part to Jewish and Christian notions as suggested by his allusion to Mr Prager, which indeed I will argue these traditions support such notions as that which Mr Prager suggesting regarding sexual relations disregarding your personal desire at that time without any requirement or delving into notions of spouse as property, which is an assumption it seems that those on the left are amazingly quick to leap. Read the rest of this entry
Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 12:11 am
A question that struck me regarding the Rick Warren flap.
I’ve been paying attention to Presidential races and elections since 1972 … and voted in every election since 1980, which makes for some 6 to 8 Presidential elections … and that’s what a good half dozen swearing in ceremonies. And I’ve never ever watched one or had the slightest interest in paying them any mind or thought that watching, much less attending, was a “thing to do.”
So no matter what you think about Mr Obama’s choice of Rev. Warren, why do you think this matters? And for that matter, have you yourself ever watched a swearing in or felt it a thing “to do?” If so, why?
Sunday, December 28th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
It’s typical of periodical media of many types, news, sports, special interests at this time of year to do year end reviews and so on. Last year I suggested some books which I thought most affected or influenced my thinking and ideas in the prior year. As a reminder the two books, which I still very highly recommend from last year were Stephen Collier’s The Bottom Billion (note: now in paperback) and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.
- For the first book, an interesting approach to the theodicy problem in The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? This book frames the problem and stresses that there aren’t “trivial” answers locates the best solution (and framing of the problem) in the literature as being found in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov which … I also finished reading this year at long last. And which, now having found the suggestion that this book, among other things, is “about” theodicy I will start to re-read. This book too, I glanced at but will return to when I return to the latter book here Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction.
- For my second book, I’m going to have to go with The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, which I highly recommend to anyone who likes math and has a few collegiate mathematics classes under their belt.
How about you? Any books you found interesting that you read in 2008?
Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
John Rowe (for example this post at Positive Liberty) is just one example of many who frequently cite the notion that Christian theology is not one of freedom. Putting it quite strongly, a commenter Andy Craig apropos of the post above notes:
A pretty good argument as to why biblical Christianity is on the whole a fundamentally authoritarian worldview and has little place in a world of individual liberty, actually. It’s one of the main reasons I rejected Christianity and religion in general (most religions take a similar view of government authority).
In the post itself, it is noted that Romans 13 written by St. Paul in the rule of Nero (who it might be noted did have a predilection for augmenting lighting public fixtures with Christian corpses) specifically enjoins the Christian,
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
which is pretty straightforward … it seems. However, this in a large measure misses the point. Read the rest of this entry
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I’ve just completed a 24 hour or so train trip to the East Coast. In the absence of computers and the net, books were read.
I’ve really enjoyed reading through the first parts of the Princeton Companion for Mathematics. I’ve been away from academics and “real” mathematics for almost 20 years. This book is aimed at a mid-collegiate level math background and so far is pitch perfect for me, although I’m just getting into topics in section 3 with which I’m not very familiar. Anyhow I recommend it highly.
St. Siluan the Athonite is a great spiritual read, but best taken in smallish bites … at least for me.
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy was very good and a very short study on why a little self-examination and reflection is a good idea. Actually (as my parents don’t regularly read this blog), I’ll admit that I’m going to give it to my father for Christmas once-read.
I’m about half-way through Ian Banks The Algebraist which paints an interesting galactic society without breaking (much) known laws of physics (I think wormholes, if possible are harder to “work” with than suggested). I’m getting hints half-way through that this is a book about oppression and liberty.
I’ve read a few chapters of Fagles and Fox recent translation of The Aeneid and had brought a parallel book The Black Ships but didn’t get a positive impression of the second from the first 10 or so pages and will defer returning to that for a while.
Finally, I still have “grand” plans on reading a Banks “Culture” novel (The Player of Games) and a translation of Henryk Sienkiewicz With Fire and Sword before getting back to the midwest, but that will depend on time remaining and how much the Companion grabs me in the meantime.
