Good morning.

1. “Pragmatism” … in a politician it seems to me pragmatism is another way of saying one’s word is not one’s bond.
2. Going down the toilet (near you coming soon?).
3. Misplacing blame.
4. Four Tea party myths held by the left analyzed from the left (HT: MP).
5. Speaking of the Tea Party … a candidate and his bike.
6. There’s a reason why a really badly edited book was on my “book of the year” list a few years back. It has a lot of important and striking ideas in it.
7. Church architecture and Romania. Romanian churches feature hand painted iconography covering the exterior of the church in the style you can see in the image shown. 
8. Really bad use of statistics.
9. Of party and politics (HT: neo-neo).
10. Of Physics envy. So … is economics a 4 (or a 5)? Do economists think they are in a 2 regime?
11. In which Mr Krugman is shown to misuse statistics as badly as the people in #8.
12. A hunger strike of which I was completely unaware. How about you?
13. The Church in India.
14. Not stopping to pee.

Good morning.

1. Virtue and Obamacare.
2. Epic aftermath.
3. Bring out the guns, pitchforks, and torches.
4. What happened to repentance?
5. Coffee grounds put to interesting uses. 
6. Judith Curry and climate.
7. The new CIA.
8. If the purpose of a organization is defined by what it does … consider the UN.
9. Now that was funny.

Good morning.

1. Advice to prepare for Confession.
2. Some thoughts against Obamacare.
3. What passes for “disturbing” on the left.
4. “8 Things …”  fisked.
5. Uhm, duh.
6. Not exactly helpful diet advice.
7. Meta-linking economics.
8. A job posting in the Admin.
9. Tenthers. I suspect the intersection of tenthers and liberals is low.
10. Bandwidth.

In the past I’ve tried on a number of occasions to explore hypothesis that are radically different from our (and mine) own assumptions. One of the very popular books in the collegiate circles in which I ran in my early college years (I matriculated in 1980) was Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. One of the highlights of this book are short dialogs mostly between Achilles and the Tortoise borrowed from the famous race/paradox exploring in somewhat eclectic and fascinating conversations connections about Bach, Godel, and Escher. In one of these dialogs sports replays came up as a discussion topic. There we were introduced a better type of replay … made available subjunctive TV, that is “how would that play have gone .. if instead of X, Y was the case.” If memory serves, Achilles was tried the TV with standard suggestions, like “if they had run the ball instead, or tried different personnel and so on. The Tortoise tossed some more imaginative suggestions like “How would that play have looked if it was played by intelligent life forms on/from Jupiter or if the number 13 was not prime.” Exploring radical hypothesis and following their logical consequences is, for me, a vital part of the intellectual life. Subjunctive exploration is a valuable thing, e.g., the gedankenexperiment. Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. The cling of sin.
2. Obama and those running in the mid-terms.
3. Econ meta-linking. Hmm, that didn’t come out right … I think I should have written “Meta-linking economics”.
4. I first misread that as Morgan Freeman, which really would be, uhm, not quite the best.
5. Philosophy and belief in God.
6. Advert preference.
7. When reading this, it occurred to me those progressives who fear the Tea Party is racist … do they also think of it is primarily a women’s movement? And if, for a moment, they did would that change their evaluation regarding racism?
8. Inflation predicted.
9. So, facing charges. Justified or not?
10. Two Bibles.

This weekend the WSJ had an odd headline which read something like (yah, I’m too lazy to look it up verbatim), “CIA to expand secret war in Pakistan.” What do they think “secret” means in this context?

The problem with the progressive/left using “right racism and bigotry” to fix perceived racism and bigotry in society is that it enforces bad behavior (HT: here). Bigotry as a method, once accepted becomes a pattern. Is that explanation correct? Or is there another?

Good morning.

1. The anti-catholics around like to point to Pope Benedict’s Hitler youth membership, this will go unremarked, although I’d have to say it’s likely that both allegations are quite strained.
2. One problem with this post is that Mr Williams was trying to make the opposite point, i.e., that anti-Muslim (esp. American) bias is to be resisted.
3. More on that topic here.
4. Orthodoxy noted.
5. Woo hoo.
6. Liberals and their delusions.
7. Ouch.
8. A skill to learn?

Good morning.

1. A word from the Holy mountain.
2. So, if you didn’t watch the VC youtube lecture on individual mandate, something of a summary.
3. On the Mr Williams firing, with lots of links.
4. More thoughts on that here.
5. 90 TB? At home no less.
6. On religion and higher ed.
7. Better than “going for dirt”, going for irony and comedy.
8. Here’s the thing, lots of people complain about Ms O’Donnell. But those fragments I see quoted are quite reasonable in context.
9. The first new coming out that approaches the efficiency of my 2000 model. Perhaps in five or six years they’ll manage to improve on that benchmark. 
10. Talking about classified information. I think the administration’s strategy is to lie so often that credibility is completely lost. That way real secrets are safe.
11. A book noted.
12. Blasphemy just changed its name.
13. I’ll huff and puff and … well, take a look.

Good morning.

1. Stimulus irony.
2. Gitmo in the news.
3. BP’s payment and consequence.
4. Transplants and an interesting development.
5. The future of skin art?
6. A different way to look at H/S cultures. A few months ago I was considering the thesis (I still am) that H/S cultures are happier, just not wealthier, than the Western individualistic one. Perhaps the “more natural” fit with human nature is the reason why.
7. A VC threesome, on the individual mandate and Constitutional considerations, the historical origins of the separation of Church and State in US jurisprudence, and why lawyers seem to prefer technicalities to ethics.
8. Scary tales.
9. Two links to Serbia and cinema.
10. Speaking of cinema, a film everybody should see noted.
11. Heh.
12. One of the consequences of progressives insistence on ‘good racism’, is that they need to constantly maintain their artificial hierarchal victimology.
13. Brain drain, democracy and the third world.

Good morning.

1. Repulsive? How about unsurprising.
2. One year back … 
3. A cool drawing.
4. Finding common ground … with Mr Gerson.
5. Selling tech.
6. Advice.
7. Hmm. But are on the verge of stealing on of our companies unofficial mottos, “Sucks Less.” 
8. A question for those who question the competence of Ms O’Donnell.
9. While its a little late for graduation addresses, this feels like one.
10. Mr Stevenson and some of his verse regarding the progressives of his day.
11. So dear, what did you do today?
12. Cinema and conservative/libertarian separation.
13. Mooooooo.

My daughter related that in health class today they saw a small film on two girls, on anorexic and the other (her friend) was bulimic. Her remark on coming home, “Now I feel fat.” 

FAIL!!!

Good morning.

1. What? Was Monday “weird literary comparison day” and nobody informed me? Mr Greenwald starts the game off with a really weird allusion in his first sentence. Now is that the Mr Baum witch (Dorothy) or the Mr McGuire (Wicked) one? Does he really believe that there exist there that the set of decent serious people has 100% overlap with those who think Ms McDonnell is “the Wicked Witch.” Seriously? That’s just dumb.
2. The Vatican apparently is not to be outdone on WLC day. I say apparently because you can’t always take Protestants as accurate when the report on what Roman Catholics say.
3. The word canon and what it meant (and should mean?).
4. “Do-over” and mortgages. I think you’d be hard pressed to come up with a worse idea than that one, economically speaking. 
5. Uncertainty and regulation.
6. Follow up on the Constitutional discussion regarding compulsory insurance.
7. Russia, a call to “man up.” 
8. So, if your labor ain’t worth $14 an hour -> no job.
9. Recommended reading for the thoughtful.

Recently, a conversation led me to read this book Stalin’s Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West which was an interesting and quick read. This led me to a question … before which I pose, I will offer some background.

The Kolyma basis is a river valley system in the arctic and sub-arctic regions of western Siberia. This region is rich in mineral resources, and in 1932 Stalin decided that retrieving the gold from the river valley was important, and that free-market was not the solution. Instead, perhaps typically, he decided to use slave labor. For the first few years, Kolyma was one of the “better” prison/slave camps in the gulag system, but that changed in the later 30s to being the very worst. About a million persons were shipped to Kolyma between 1932 and 1953. The first parts of the journey by rail and part by sea and it is on the sea portion of this voyage the book noted above concentrates. The vessels used in this part of the passage were mostly obtained from the US. Mr Bollinger points out that he can find no evidence that anyone in th West was aware of the purpose of those ships when they were sold to the Soviets. During the war, the management of the Kolyma fleet, as did virtually everything in the Soviet world, moved to the military. The Kolyma fleet split time during this period between transporting slaves and stuffs to the Kolyma camps and transporting war material as part of the US/Soviet Lend-Lease program. 

Military books that I have read on WWII point out that the victory over the Axis powers was a near thing. Many authors point to a small number of crucial decisions and events which if had been made or fallen out differently would have likely meant that Hitler may have won. The US Lend-Lease program has been pointed as a one of the important factors in giving the Soviets the breathing room to stave of defeat. The point to take away from this is Lend-Lease was critical to the Allied war effort. There were two routes for ships supplying the Soviets, an Atlantic route up past Norway to Murmansk and a Western/Pacific route. The Kolyma fleet was part of this latter group. Prior to the US directly entering the war and Japan/US hostilities being in the open, Soviet (non-US) ships were preferred for transport of material via the Pacific route.

The Kolyma vessels were in a rough trade. They were older steam powered ships that plied ice choked Arctic seas and were badly in need of repairs. Many times these ships put in they were repaired by US shipyards. 

Which leads us to the question at hand. 

Consider yourself in the role of the American President. Kolyma vessels have docked in your ports for Lend Lease operations. By 1944 to 1945 two things have become clear:

1. Germany’s fate is sealed and the Allied victory is assured.
2. Kolyma is a part of the gulag/slave camp system and these ships needing repair are part of that system.

Recall also, Stalin and the Soviets at this point are allies and Lend-Lease has been a vital part of the war effort. 

So. Do you authorize repair of the vessels? These vessels split time between slave transport and carrying Lend-Lease material. What do you do? What records might you leave regarding your decision?

Historically, the repairs were made. Was that the right decision?

This is a question, probably mainly for the right, but the those readers on the left might offer their two cents. 

The $800b stimulus package has now been acknowledged by the President and pretty much everyone with their heads not in the sand to have been a waste. This criticism is especially strongly held on the right. However, what if the stimulus package instead of being useless road projects and expansions of bridges to nowheres (for example expanding the Byrd airport) had only one single project/point to which it was aimed. That is to say, all $800 billion was allocated to one thing. That the stimulus only allocation was to build and install 40-50 new Gen-IV nuclear reactors (or best current technological practice) throughout the country accompanied by ’emergency’ executive orders designed to steamroll any and all environmental and green-activist objections. Furthermore these plants might have been be small and quickly installable and all fast-tracked to be on-line by, say, late October 2010. 

Here’s the question(s).

1. Would that have changed your opinion of the stimulus package? 
2. Would that have changed today’s economy for the better? 
3. Would the election in three weeks from now be trending differently? 

I offer that the my answer might be yes (and with an “alas” on the last) to all three questions. What d’y’all think?

Good morning.

1. Obama’s town hall meetings from the right.
2. Cell phones, women, and the third world.
3. Words from the Elder Seraphim.
4. A book noted.
5. Photo-tech: dancing water.
6. A different diet strategy.
7. Strength training advice for endurance athletes.
8. As Constitutional protections and amendments are discussed, I think penning this one into an Amendment might be a good idea (HT: Borepatch). For those naive enough to figure the Tea Party is “about racism” might pause to consider that probably such a notion would get almost unanimous support from the T-P supporters and would be one that protects minorities at that place where the rubber meets road (or truncheon meets flesh). 
9. Real or photoshop? Does it matter?
10. King David and guys in a deep hole.
11. Good advice for the right.
12. Support for my thesis concerning the left and the 10th Commandment. Specifically, “Most middle class Americans of my acquaintance would be much happier if they lived on a much less steeply-sloped income curve,” … and much of the middle class of my acquaintance would not … but I think that is because his acquaintance is almost certainly more left leaning than mine.