My reaction to the recent Ft. Hood shootings: freedom isn’t free. Or, as was noted in “The American President”, civil liberties sometimes come with a price tag attached. The liberties I’m thinking of here are religious freedom, and the right to keep & bear arms.
Regarding religious liberty: The Founders were actually quite familiar with the [...]
Archive for the ‘MI’ Category
Freedom Costs a Buck-Oh-Five
Posted in Law, MI, Politics, War on November 15, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Using Immigration to (Re)Inflate Housing
Posted in Commerce, MI, Politics on October 19, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Recently read an interesting proposal by John Mauldin: use immigrants to prop up the housing market. After all, if housing is deflating because supply exceeds demand at current prices, we can avoid attempting to balance supply & demand via lower housing prices by increasing demand.
I’d read earlier proposals (*) along such lines, but Mauldin’s addressed [...]
The Backstroke of the West
Posted in Humor, MI on October 4, 2009 | 3 Comments »
A long time ago (ca. mid-’00s), in a country far, far, away (i.e., Iraq), I came across “The Backstroke of the West“, and found it utterly hilarious.
Well, this past (Chinese) New Year, an update was posted. Still hilarious.
Signs of Intelligent Life, Redux
Posted in MI, Politics, War on October 3, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Perhaps I’m just taking this too seriously, but upon further consideration, it seems I have another bone to pick with John Perry’s silly coup idea. In particular, there’s the apparent presumption, running through the article, that such a coup would be a relatively minor, surgical, “civilized” affair:
America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup [...]
Constitutional Coups, Foreign & Domestic
Posted in Law, MI, Politics, World on October 1, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Jonathan Alder of Volokh Conspiracy notes a recent report by the Law Library of Congress, which discusses whether Honduran ex-President Zelaya was legally removed from office. Said report concludes:
Available sources indicate that the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by [...]
Danish Mortgages & Negative Equity
Posted in Commerce, MI on September 28, 2009 | 4 Comments »
In his new book, Richard Posner (HT Tyler Cowen via Steve) notes an interesting aspect of the Danish mortgage system I’ve previously advocated:
The Danish model has another critical and innovative feature. Holders can retire their own mortgages by purchasing the same face amount of mortgage bonds at the prevailing market price. To prepay a mortgage [...]
Random Thoughts on US v. Sullivan
Posted in Law, MI, Politics on September 23, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Reading about this incident, wherein Andrew Sullivan apparently caught a break from selective prosecution, brought to mind several things.
1. Favoritism: Yes, prosecutorial resources are limited. Yes, you fight the fights you can win. Neither appears to be in evidence here. Perhaps the federal prosecutors in this district have standing orders to seek dismissal of charges [...]
Grant, Lee, Parole, & Treason
Posted in Law, MI on September 16, 2009 | 2 Comments »
When I first read James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, I came across this interesting nugget regarding the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia:
The terms [of surrender] were generous: officers and men could go home “not to be disturbed by U.S. authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force [...]
Reflections on (America’s) Remembrance Day (*)
Posted in MI, Self, War on September 11, 2009 | 4 Comments »
What was I doing when the planes hit the World Trade Center & the Pentagon? Honestly…I was asleep. I’d been up way too late the night before, hanging out with friends while watching “Con Air” for the first time; and, being a grad student with a cushy assistantship, my work hours were a bit more [...]
In Re Birthers
Posted in Law, MI, Politics on September 9, 2009 | 5 Comments »
While I did encounter the “birthers’” strange notions before the election, a brief visit to Snopes was sufficient to disprove them. (Whereupon I returned to more interesting perusals, e.g., following the unfolding financial crisis with rapt attention.)
It’s worth noting, however, that questions were also raised regarding McCain’s eligibility under the natural-born citizenship clause…and that such [...]
Extrajudicial Detention, Real & Imagined
Posted in Law, MI, Politics on September 2, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Were I a “man of the Right”, I’d hang my head in shame upon reading this recent gem from WorldNetDaily (HT Jon Henke):
Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency centers [...]
Random CO2 Statistics
Posted in MI, Nature on August 25, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The following observation by Rajat (HT sudipa via Lynn Gazis-Sax):
Some experts have suggested that instead of using per capita emissions as a parameter, emissions per GDP (or GDP per emission) could be considered. This could be the right strategy which should be accepted by the developing as well as developed countries. Whatever nations or people [...]
Dept. of Unintended SF References, BSW Edition
Posted in Arts, Language, MI, War on August 9, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Thanks, apparently, to Gen. Abizaid, it seems “Long War” is now the officially-approved replacement for “(Global) War on Terror”. Although, given my druthers, we’d have adopted Pournelle’s phrase, “Black September War” (despite the historical ambiguity associated therewith), I suppose “Long War” is an improvement over its predecessor. I never much cared for the latter; just [...]
Zip Drive Bleg
Posted in MI, Technology on August 2, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Once upon a time, my girlfriend had a Zip disk containing some irreplaceable data. The disk was in a zip drive, which was hooked up to a surge protector. One day her house receives a power surge strong enough to knock out the HVAC system’s compressor…and, apparently, powerful enough to reach her Zip drive through [...]
Chronoliths & Hemispheric Sterilization
Posted in Arts, Commerce, MI on August 1, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Reading this post by Tyler Cowen (as well as the David Brooks column it spawned) brought to mind one of my favorite SF novels: The Chronoliths, by Robert Charles Wilson (*). Although Cowen’s notion of the “mass sterilization of half of humanity” differs considerably from Wilson’s scenario, the two share a common focus on how [...]
Sunday Morning Humor
Posted in Humor, MI on July 12, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Homo Sapiens <> Endangered Species: A draft opinion from the Fish & Wildlife Service, responding to a petition by the Samish Indians to be listed as an “endangered species”. (HT: David Hardy, who apparently wrote the opinion.)
Wells Fargo Sues Itself: This sounds more like a technicality than anything substantive; still, it’s kinda funny.
Historical National Debt Redux
Posted in Commerce, MI, Politics on July 11, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Following up on this post, I ran down some more comprehensive stats on the public debt; it turns out OMB’s data stretches back to 1940.
Figure 1: Federal Debt as % of GDP, 1940-2008
Notes: “Intra-Gov” = sum of “Held by Federal Government Accounts” + “Federal Reserve System” columns in Table 7.1 of Obama’s 2010 budget. “Privately [...]
Housing Prices & Construction Costs
Posted in Commerce, MI on July 7, 2009 | 10 Comments »
A query from Steve got me curious about how the ratio between housing prices & residential construction costs might have varied over the years. Fig. 1 plots the ratio of Case-Shiller indexes & the Census Bureau’s Fisher Index of New One-Family Houses Under Construction, for each month from January 1987 through April 2009. For comparison [...]
Blogfather’s Day Surprise: “From me? Oh, I shouldn’t have.”
Posted in Arts, DADvocate, Ethics, Family, Franklin Evans, Jesharris, Lifestyle, Lynn Gazis-Sax, MI, Man, Media, Moro, Nature, Private, Public, Scott Lahti, Self, Sex, Sigaliris, Sport, Steve S., Technology, Wired Sisters, Woman, Wordadvocate, tagged plausible denial, paternity birthday suits on June 21, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I swear I was only there to supply the towel-and-bottled-water concession…
Jubilee & Turbo-Deleveraging
Posted in Commerce, MI on June 18, 2009 | 4 Comments »
A while back, when charts like this & this were making the rounds, I occasionally ran across a notion (*) I termed the “Jubilee Solution”. It basically proposed to restore economic growth via mass debt defaults, using this sort of economic logic:
1. Consumption spending contributes a lot to US GDP; and
2. An overleveraged private-sector is [...]
Amnesty International, Abortion Bans, & Torture
Posted in Law, MI, Politics on June 13, 2009 | 10 Comments »
“I’m in awe, Lennier. The way you can take a straightforward, logical proposition and turn it inside out so that, in the end, it says what you want it to say, instead of what it actually means. Did this come naturally, or did you, um, attend some special martial arts class for the philosophically inclined?”
– [...]
Fair-Weather Originalism
Posted in Law, MI, Politics on June 8, 2009 | 10 Comments »
Contrast this:
Erin Manning: I suppose it’s hopelessly old-fashioned of me to ask where in the Constitution the Congress is given the power to create a high government office to be filled by someone authorized to take over decision-making powers for a private industry, right?
MI @ 9:30 PM: AFAIK, the original meaning of “commerce” in Article [...]
Why I Dislike “Judicial Activism”
Posted in Law, MI, Politics on June 6, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Recent deployments of the phrase “judicial activism” on J’s Blog – regarding the Sotomayor nomination – reminded me of how much I dislike that phrase. Although I was once prone to employing said phrase myself, reading this post on Lawrence Solum’s Legal Theory Blog, set me straight. As Solum notes (by way of dissecting both [...]
Entitlements, Slow Growth, & Deficits
Posted in Commerce, MI, Politics on June 5, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Reading this post by David Merkel got me wondering about how the economic crisis might affect the long-term solvency of Social Security & Medicare. In particular, Merkel observed:
As for the economic assumptions that Social Security uses, I think they are still optimistic. One thing I have learned about cash flow modeling is that though the [...]
In Re Tiller
Posted in Ethics, MI, Politics on June 1, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Some thoughts regarding the Tiller killing.
On the one hand, as Pournelle once paraphrased Niven’s Laws #16: Every movement has its share of fuggheads. An obvious corollary is that one should not judge a movement by the random idiots within it. I have many friends & acquaintances who are prolife, and I cannot picture any of [...]
