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A good post on immigration
From Kerry Howley in Reason
The greatest distortion for Chadian farmers is not American cotton subsidies, writes Pritchett, but that “farmers from Chad have to farm in Chad—and not farm in France, Poland, or Canada.”
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Wellput from Julian Sanchez
In this post about full brains
Efficient brains need to know what they can afford to forget—probably quite a bit, now that it’s so easy to outsource our recollections to rapidly-searched digital media. The interesting question for me is: When almost anything you might need to recall can be offloaded in this way, what’s worth keeping in wetware memory? My first instinct is that you need to remember exactly enough to (1) make interesting connections, and (2) actually find the full information from the signpost you’ve remembered.
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Funny thing I heard on the History Channel
I’m slowly working my way through the History Channel documentary on the Spanish American war. The black cavalry soldiers, known commonly as “Buffalo Soldiers” were known by the Spanish as “Smoked Yankees”.
It’s interesting to be reminded that America had a low-level conflict with the Indians for years up to that point.
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Monday link roundup
- An in-depth examination on how to build an energy efficient house
- Robot snipers in Israel
- Strobist begins Lighting 102
- No one thinks seriously about alternative energy. Check out this post from TreeHugger “New Battery Pushed Prius to 125 MPG“. It’s a great idea and invention, but it’s a plug-in hybrid. The motion is coming from the power grid. Granted electricity is usually more efficient than gasoline, but that’s like saying that a diesel engine gets infinite mileage because it doesn’t burn any gasoline at all.
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Thoughts on Ron Paul on the Daily Show
He came across better than usual for his usual presentation. They talked a little about domestic policy, nothing about drug legalization or gun control, mostly spending. Not bad though.
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A nifty photoshop video tutorial
It has some great stuff on color correction and sharpening. Check it out at Digital Photography School.
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Ron Paul on the Daily Show tonight
Republican presidential candidate, former Libertarian Party nominee, current Texas representative, temporary darling of the trendy left and overall interesting guy will be on the Daily Show tonight. We’ll see if they go into his foreign policy stance (popular to the Daily Show audience, so long as it’s kept vague) and away from his views on abortion and national health care.
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Two for Monday
- Sandy Berger gives up his law license, which makes me thing that there is some serious hiding going on.
- More on the rogue Atlanta narcotics squad. Unmentioned is any mention of the judges and magistrates who rubber stamp all this crap. Ideally they would be help liable for any fraudulent warrants they sign, but that will never happen.
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Performance anxiety
So, at long last, I have my first gig as a solo performer in one month, opening for the A-Sides. And I need a full hour of material.
It’s good to have goals. And deadlines and stress I suppose.
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Three on Iraq
First, there is this depressing report on civilian casualties in Iraq. The numbers are all going the wrong way.
Second is this post from Ross Douthat about the long term impact of Iraq, and how similar wars have affected the US and the British.
Last is this post from the Belmont Club. I haven’t read that site in quite some time (it’s a weird combination of gloom and optimism), but Wretchard does do sweeping phrases well. To wit:
Al-Qaeda, like all the evil vapors of the world through history, inevitably comes to resemble its predecessors. Soldiers of the dark eventually find themselves wearing the same livery. Flowers bloom in myriad ways, but evil, like pornography, is repetitive. It marches to same dull beat that all the Lost of the ages have heard call. Poor men, these al-Qaeda, they who would remake the world in their ostensibly new vision only to find it had been templated long ago by some sad and ancient corruption.