Archive for January 2008

I haven’t told you, lately, how much I love my iPhone; have I? Let me just say that after a Blackberry, two types of Windows-based smartphones — one by HP and the other by Siemens — the Palm Treo 650 (very nice), and then the Samsung Blackjack (nice too, and 3G), all of them together don’t add up to half of what the iPhone represents to me, and I liked the last two phones a lot. I got mine after the first software maintenance release, and as such, I don’t think the OS has ever frozen once. Anyway, via Seth Godin, here’s a wonderful and exciting story in Wired about the story behind the story. Well worth a read in my book.

It’s an interesting thought, with some interesting aspects that add up to a certain logic about it. Asia could well be the vanguard for a new gold standard because of internal dynamics. China is exemplary in this regard in that Chinese citizens regularly save as much as 40% of their personal income. This is in large part due to the lack of a safety net in China. There is no Social Security, no guaranteed medical care, no pension benefits and so on. Many of China’s less-connected citizens seem as likely to bury their wealth in a shoebox as put it in a bank. This mindset strongly favors a physical, storable asset, like gold. Bring it on. You can already buy gold, either physically or various financial instruments and funds. It would be a pretty simple matter to create a currency, units of which could be stored in an account. You could even then have a debit-card tied to the account, cleared through Visa or whomever, and then use it for purchases, the exchange to whichever currency you made your purchase in being effected at clearing. The result is that your monetary assets remain in gold up until a microsecond before…

From: Billy Beck To: HonestyLog.com; Complaint Dept. Subj: Remarkable I was just now amazed to find that there is no way to search your blog. B. Well, we aim to please, around here. See how you like the “Ligit” search widget to the right. In addition to the blog, it keeps track of everything I do everywhere, like YouTube, Digg, and so on. I played with it a bit and it’s pretty cool.

Well, communications wise, it was by the book. (Disclosure: I used to stand as Officer of the Deck, underway, in both the U.S. and French Navies.) For my side, I’m gratified to know that my classmates who now command U.S. Navy warships are still gentlemen, while remaining naval officers. The former is more important. Those boats didn’t need to be “blown out of the water,” as so many jingoists would have liked (thank god they’re not calling the shots). Being a gentleman implies the risk of being taken for a fool. Still, I think, it’s generally worth the risk. “Naval Clash?” Please. Everything went down like it should have. Here’s what I thought of when I learned the news:

I came across a post on the Propser blog, which blogs the new peer-to-peer lending industry that I have some involvement in; but can’t talk about, yet. Anyway, the poster linked to this post at “freemoneyfinance” and here’s my comment among the many others: This is a pretty classic example of selection bias. You pay attention and talk to the successful people who happen to tithe. Those who live in trailer parks and blow everything on the local evangelist or television kind, or old laddies who blow theirs and their late husband’s life savings are generally outside your sphere of attention. 100,000 people go to a self improvement seminar. There, they are shown slides and told stories of people who took big risks and came out on top. The message: to be successful, you’re going to have to take risks. 10,000 take the message to heart, they mortgage the house, invest in a business, and 9,995 loose it all. At the next self improvement seminar, the five who made it big have their pictures up, and their stories are told. Selection bias. It’s also a reversal of cause & effect. People tithe because the vast majority of those who do…

An interesting review by Justin Raimondo of Murray Rothbard’s book, The Betrayal of the American Right (also online). Both are worth a look. Update: Here’s Raimondo’s Part II.

I’d say it has been replaced by global hysteria, global stupidity, global time-lagged ignorance, and an overblown global arrogance as to man’s ability to change the weather. My brother emails a decent op-ed on the subject. In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, “a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption.” In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country’s 24 provinces. In August, Chile’s agriculture minister lamented “the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years,” which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock. There’s more. And… Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn’t turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007’s global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 – and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001….

I’d heard something about this guy somewhere recently and made a mental note that he’s someone I might have to take a second note of. Then I saw Jeff Michael (a very knowledgeable and responsible debt/credit guy) tout Winget’s most recent book: You’re Broke Because You Want to Be. So I’m taking a second note. And, naturally, he has a blog. Go take a look at his last 10 posts and see if you don’t think he’s an honest straight shooter that deals in reality and facts; while ridiculing the standard-fare platitudes of conventional self-help. I do. There are literally thousands of motivational speakers spouting ridiculous platitudes that do nothing more than make you feel good for the moment and have very little lasting effect. They sound good, but they don’t work. Let me prove it to you. I bet you’ve heard these lines: “As long as you have a good, positive attitude everything will be all right.” Sorry, but that is a lie. I’ve had a positive attitude my entire life and had plenty of crap happen to me. So get a little negative. Get sick of the way things are so you will take action to change things….

From Seth Godin. There’s a lot of wisdom, here.

Two true gentlemen. An interview. An honest discussion of ideas.

Be sure and give Radley Balko’s accounts of the best prosecutor and best cop a serious look. God knows I couldn’t get within a city block of either of those institutions without turning in utter contempt for the whole deal, but it’s good to know that there are a few who still understand and hold some semblance of decency, i.e., something rooted in moral principle.

Billy lays it out exactly like it is. It is racism at the very core of the most enthusiastic support for Obama, and that includes Oprah. Yes, I understand very well that she is not a racist in the sense that she regards white people as inferior. She’s a racist because she wants to elect a president on the primary reason of his skin color. That is racism, no matter how you slice it. Afterthought: It’s racism in precisely the same way that black people say it is when you as a white person make a big deal or take particular pride in having “lots of black friends.”

Well, comparing Huckabee’s 1st place finish in 2007 to Pat Robertson’s 2nd place finish in 1988, one would have to conclude that on the whole, Iowans, shall we say, “haven’t progressed a whole lot in 19 years.” Big surprise. The bright side is that in the circles in which I travel, nowadays, I’m just as likely to happen upon and converse with a former “evangelical” as I am just about anyone else. It’s always fun to compare notes on what morons we used to be. I guess Iowa is a breeding grounds, or something. Speaking psychologically, and only for myself, the separatist nature of evangelicalism — at least as a young person — seems to breed a degree of — well deserved and accurate — inferiority sold and wrapped up as superiority (until you realize you’ve been scammed). If that applies in some measure to others as well, it’s easy to understand how that can translate into wanting some authority to shove their religious values down the throats of everyone else — at gunpoint. That’s what the majority of republicans are voting for in Iowa, tonight: to rule your lives by whatever means necessary, including Old Testament means, I assure…

Author George H. Smith, who’s never voted (and doesn’t plan to), gives an offbeat, qualified endorsement for Ron Paul. You’ll have to stay for the punchline to grasp the meaning in the title.

I wonder what is the visceral reaction to news like this, which links this, for most people. For example, the American Federation of Police — with well over 100,000 members — recently praised Ron Paul for introducing a bill that would help cops obtain topnotch body armor that would withstand rounds fired from most firearms. Rep. Paul’s bill — HR 3304 — would amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide for a tax credit to law enforcement officers who purchase their own body armor. — Jim Kouri On the one hand, everybody should get a “tax credit” for simply being dead or alive, so on that issue alone, fine. Bring on the tax credits, I guess. But it seems to me that if you understand the full intent of the 2nd Amendment, it’s that ordinary citizens have some reasonable degree of firepower parity with the state, i.e., to motivate the state to think twice. It is explicitly to introduce an element of bodily risk at an individual level to agents of state force. You can compromise that principle in two ways: either you restrict guns, or you render them ineffective against the technology of the state. So, the attack on…