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Monday links
- Fertility rate in US on upswing
- This post on Ron Paul from Col. Lang, featuring the lovely line “citadels of exalted brooding”. I saw the interview he mentions as well and got the same impression; namely that Russert was trying to rapid fire the questions enough to get him to trip up and say something that could be easily misinterpreted. It’s not like Paul is hiding what he believes, or that it’s not controversial in his version. Lame. A bit reminiscent of Ace in the Hole.
- This Matt Yglesias post on the same interview
- This is a nice web app
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This is an insightful post
From an Econolog post about raising children
Laugh if you like, but I want to give me kids a better life than I had. I don’t want them to be bullied or mocked by teachers or other kids. Since adult life is far more civilized than childhood, sheltering your kids is not “delaying the inevitable”; it’s skipping pointless suffering.
That strikes a chord with me. People have been much nicer in adulthood than in school. Civilization begins with voluntary association I suppose. If I were feeling hyperbolic, I would say that the only thing forced association in the form of mandatory schooling prepares you for is prison, but that’s not accurate. It’s certainly not the only thing anyway.
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Quote of the morning
From Despair.com
When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it’s really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you’re pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it’s death by meteor.
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Solar power makes a step
The much touted Nano Solar corporation, seems to be ready to actually ship it’s first product. Supposedly it makes it cost competitive with coal. A welcome development.
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A good Ron Paul interview
Ron does well in extended interviews. Here is one with Glenn Beck (who doesn’t know the difference between a debt and a deficit, fyi).
Incidentally, Andrew Sullivan has endorsed Ron Paul also.
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I play a different venue
In this case, Blind Willies in the Highlands on Sunday night. Judging the reaction of the small but appreciative crowd, it sounded good.
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Throwing stuff to the wall
Via Marginal Revolution, here comes today’s quote of the day
Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it. (Compare the cost of paying and feeding someone to do a few weeks of [Perl or PHP] hacking to the full cost of the meetings that went into a big company decision.) Don’t overplan something. Just do it half-assed to start with, then throw more people at it to fix it if it works.
The market is a discovery process after all.
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Freedom house and the basement of adventure!
As those of you who know me in the flesh have been told endless times, I’m still doing lots of work around the new house. My current mania is leveling out the floors (I’m almost done) via the use of a system of jacks.
On Saturday I was installing a new jack and was tilling the dirt floor of the basement to create a level spot for the jack. I came across what could have been a bone, and then the shovel struck a hard surface. I decided to dig out whatever it was while saying to myself “Please don’t be a body, please don’t be a body”. Did I mention that my basement bears a strong resemblance to the basement in Silence of the Lambs?
Happily it was only a lump of old concrete with nothing underneath. Later it occurred to me that if it were a body the police would have to dig out the entire basement to look for more, which would save me the trouble of doing it later.
Last night I was adjusting one of the jacks (the initial setup by a previous owner was done poorly) when the ladder turned on a piece of soft ground and I fell off the thing. The support jack I was adjusting then had no support and fell on my neck as I lay on the ground. Happily it didn’t land that hard and I’m just a little sore.
And that’s what I’ve been doing lately.
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It’s been a light blogging week
But a heavy work week. For your reading pleasure, check out
- An NYPD detective commits perjury for no obvious reason, the matter seemed inconsequential. It’s a bad omen for the current state of law enforcement.
- Check out this Ron Paul post, featuring the interesting line, “Rubble doesn’t make trouble“
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X-Sql, welcome to the Blogroll
I have recently discovered that my friend Naim has recently started blogging about software matters and such at http://xsqlsoftware.blogspot.com/
Welcome to the blogsphere!