| the Britons |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|09:01 am] |
![[book cover]](http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/38480000/38485261.JPG)
Reading Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter (9781592404940). The author claims that spoken Old English existed just long enough for the Anglo-Saxon-Jutes to conquer the the Britons, then the conquered Britons immediately mangled the language, producing something very akin to Middle English within a generation. But the A-S-J scribes continued to write a dead language for five hundred years. This is why English is so unlike other Germanic Tongues.
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|08:46 am] |
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Where can I get information on all the various environmental costs of the production of various meats? Water input, fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and pollution per gram of protein? |
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| algorithms |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|07:20 pm] |
Redistricting: smallest sum of the boundary lengths, lowest average distance to the center of the district, shortest-splitline algorithm, or gerrymandering? |
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| cocoa and flavonoids |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|11:54 am] |
If cocoa has health benefits, how do I maximize those benefits? Obviously hot chocolate mixes full of added sugar are bad. Is there a brand I should buy that maximizes flavonoid content? |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 7th, 2009|07:13 am] |
Need a catchy slogan. This won't do: What do we want? A stimulus big enough to close the output gap! When do we want it? Six months ago! |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|10:40 pm] |
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The 1980s was, stylistically, an attempt to recreate the awesomeness that was the various set designs of Cloud City |
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| UNSC / Realpolitik |
[Sep. 23rd, 2009|02:50 pm] |
Mr. Qaddafi thinks the UN security council is unfair. Personally, I don't think it's fair for a totalitarian state to have an equal vote in the UN, which is nominally dedicated to human rights.
That said, the security council is set up the way it is to give voting power to those nations with the most military power. Why? If the world was ever to go back to a state of world war, these are the nations whose military power will end up deciding the outcome. If one of these nations is left out of council, they will be more likely to use that military power to defy the council and the rest of the world. I say that if, for example, India or Brazil wants to have a veto seat on the security council, they need to first beef up their military to the point that we agree that they are as able to project military power as effectively as China, France, or Russia today. |
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| Economic Badness |
[Sep. 16th, 2009|11:44 am] |
We may be out of the recession (in that gross domestic product is no longer shrinking), but with a growing population, people delaying retirement because investments failed, and increases in productivity (GDP-per-worker) unemployment rates will continue inching upward. The stimulus package was not big enough to return us to full employment. So once the stimulus spends itself out next year, we may be in worse shape.
What do we need to do?
1) Fix the fundamental issues with our economy.
1.a) Encourage energy efficiency with a Pigovian tax on carbon emissions. This will reduce energy imports, help our trade deficit, and bring jobs home. Instituting a border carbon tax adjustment will help.
1.b) Keep health-care from rising more. Subsidize health-care for the lower-middle class. Regulate health insurance to get rid of the preexisting condition unfairness. Nationalize the insurance companies if they refuse to play nice.
1.c) Insure the insurers. Just like the FDIC insures banks and charges a premium to pay for potential bailout costs, do the same for insurance companies. Call it the Federal Insurance Insurance Corporation (FIIC). So even in the worst disasters, where insurance companies can go bankrupt, there would be an institution that can step in and make things right. The FIIC would refuse to re-insure a company like AIG , keeping it from becoming too-big-to-fail.
1.d) Get serious about other reforms of the financial markets. Does the financial system really deserve to make such huge profits? Do they add that much value to the economy as a whole? You will know that a financial system is properly regulated when investment bankers make the same salary as an accountant.
2) Continue with the monetary stimulus until we see real indications of inflation. So far, there are no indications, so we are not printing cash fast enough.
3) A new fiscal stimulus bill big enough to close the unemployment gap within 12 months. If we paid people to dig ditches and fill them back in, that would have the desired effect, but we can do better. Let us invest in more energy-efficiency projects, like the cash-for-guzzlers program. Let us start with a high-speed rail from Miami to Montréal. I know it is not shovel-ready, but it could be if we threw enough dollars and workers at it.
4) I have said it before: Short-term cyclic deficits are good, long-term systemic deficits are bad. We need to get rid of the our systemic deficit. I do not think we can reign in spending. Left-wing Democrats have got to realize that we have to be the world's policeman and that is not going to be cheap. And Republics should (but will not) admit that wars and defense spending must be paid for with taxes on the rich. Running a federal deficit during the bubble years was inexcusable. In fact, higher taxes would have kept the bubble in check, to some extent. So we should immediately pass higher taxes on the highest bracket, along with a provision that they will be automatically reduced to current levels for as long as national unemployment is over 6%. |
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| reorg |
[Sep. 15th, 2009|05:09 pm] |
/me has now completely reorganized all his mp3s. CDs re-ripped, id3tags fixed, mp3gain adjusted, filenames and directories standardized. I feel so clean. 22 GB of awesomeness/ |
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| night |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|08:41 am] |
I watched STS-128 lift from 154 miles away last night. Since it was dark, I couldn't see the cloud trail, just an orange glow on the horizon that then turned into the familiar glowing exhaust before fading to a very bright star. |
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| macro |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|07:18 am] |
Dear Americans, EITHER read a book on macroeconomics, OR don't have an opinion. Thank you. |
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| The Garden |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|07:24 am] |
Shauna and I have been landscaping the garden one bit at a time this year. The patio went in a month ago and the landscaping around it is progressing. On the left there, I’m trying to produce wildflowers. |
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| my face is cold |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|05:54 pm] |
Two weeks ago:
![[]](http://halcanary.org/photos/2009-04-08_064728_dscn0417.jpg)
This morning:
![[]](http://halcanary.org/photos/2009-04-21_073058_dscn0418.jpg)
Just now:
![[]](http://halcanary.org/photos/2009-04-21_165730_dscn0423.jpg) |
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| really? |
[Apr. 2nd, 2009|07:47 pm] |
I'm going crazy. Today I craved broccoli, bought some, cooked it, and enjoyed it. |
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| How many computers DO you have? |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|07:52 am] |
A few years ago, Chapman asked me "How many computers DO you have in your house?" Good question. There is (1) Sloop, the new one that I built last fall (Athlon 64 3500+) inside the old chassis from Lensman, which is now a inoperable mobo+cpu waiting to be recycled. Then there is (2) Olpc, the new netbook, which I sadly don't use often enough because I rarely leave the house. (3) Dalek is the computer I built in 2001 that still serves as my backup desktop. (4) Mazer is a P3-800 laptop I keep around because Olpc doesn't have a VGA-out socket for presentations. I've loaned Mazer to the housmate until he de-viruses his own computer (windoze user, go figure---and Steve's a computer professional!). (5) Nimrod is an ancient Pentium laptop that I forgot I had until this year's housecleaning. It still works, and I intend to get rid of it at some point. Then there's my old laptop, Hiro2, which has been broken since before I fully paid for it; but we aren't counting nonfunctional computers.
So yes, I own 5 functional computers. This weekend I found out that Dalek, even though it has a motherboard and processor from 2001 and has a Radeon 9200 GPU from 2004 and is running Linux will run World of Warcraft. Not well, mind you, but usable. Now Shauna and I can play together in my house. We're such dorks.
I've got Dalek set up on my dining room table with a giant 9-year-old CRT monitor and an ethernet cable running across the floor into my room. It's okay because it's been so long since I've had more than two people eat at my dining room table anyway. The other possibility is to squeeze both computers onto my desk. But that would be crowded. We'd bump elbows. |
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| local mean solar time |
[Mar. 9th, 2009|05:21 pm] |
According to maps.google.com, my longitude is -81.803888 degrees. This puts my house 5.45359253 hours behind Greenwich, England. Call it 5 hours, 27 minutes, and almost 13 seconds. This morning I woke up at 6 AM, Eastern Daylight time, UTC-4; so I got up at 10 AM UTC. This means I got up this morning at 4:32:47 AM local mean solar time. |
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