Most of the time, the farther Left I look on the continuum of political opinions, the more I see people who do not reason well or are ignorant about history. Maybe I am overgeneralizing from my own experience. Most of the conservatives and libertarians I meet seem to have coherent worldviews even if I don’t always agree with them. A much larger fraction of the leftists I meet seem to have incoherent worldviews in which issues that I see as related exist as unconnected islands, or in which events that I see as consistent with spontaneous order and feedback mechanisms are seen as manifestations of conspiracy.

Perhaps the “Screwed Generation” would have benefited from better education. Perhaps they will learn from experience.

James Q. Wilson reviews Tim Groseclose’s recent book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. (Via Power Line.)

Peter Robinson recently interviewed Tim Groseclose here.

It’s easy to believe what we want to believe, and often we want to believe things that aren’t true. That’s human nature and it’s why empiricism is important. Many people believe that our big media impart a leftist slant to the news; many people believe there is no slant or that the slant doesn’t affect media consumers’ voting behavior. Groseclose and other researchers mentioned by Wilson have been trying to quantify media bias and its effects. So far they appear to have confirmed conservatives’ beliefs about leftist bias. Of course it’s possible that the researchers are wrong, and it will be interesting to see how other researchers respond to Groseclose’s work over time.

Predictions about the year 2000 made by Robert Heinlein in 1952.

via Newmark’s Door

Does this story mean that the US govt is not only not collaborating with Israel but is trying to undermine Israeli covert efforts? If so that is very bad news. We need more information. If the story is valid and our govt has decided to leak it to the press now, that suggests that we are 1) shockingly inept or 2) may be trying to cut a deal with the mullahs by sacrificing our ally or 3) both. Either way it sounds bad. I hope there’s more to the story.

The shooting of James King – political murder disguised as a justifiable response to a personal insult – inflamed the city of San Francisco immediately. King, shot in the chest but still clinging to life was taken to his house. Meanwhile, an enormous mob gathered at the police station, and the police realized almost at once that the accused James Casey could not be kept secure. He was removed under guard to the county jail. The indignant mob was not appeased, not even when the mayor of San Francisco attempted to address the crowd, pleading for them to disperse and assuring them that the law would run its proper course and justice would be done. The crowd jeered, “What about Richardson? Where is the law in Cora’s case?” The mayor hastily retreated, as the square – already guarded by armed marshals, soon filled with armed soldiers. The angry mob dispersed, still frustrated and furious. No doubt everyone in authority in the city breathed a sigh of relief, confident that this matter would blow over. After all, they controlled the political apparatus of the city, at least one newspaper, as well as the adjudicators and enforcers of the law … little comprehending that this shooting represented the last, the very last straw.
Read the rest of this entry »

The first stored-program electronic computer capable of doing useful work was the EDSAC, built at Cambridge University and commissioned in 1949. It supported research in several scientific disciplines as well as the development of software techniques until being scrapped as obsolete in 1958. There is now a project to rebuild this pioneering computer: the reconstructed version will be made as close as possible to the original, with one exception…and the reasons for the exception, I think, are perhaps more related to social history than to the history of technology.

EDSAC used vacuum tubes (valves, in Britspeak) for its arithmetical and logical functions; for memory, it used something called a mercury delay line, an idea borrowed from WWII radar technology. (EDSAC=Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator.) information to be stored was introduced at one end of a tube of mercury, down which it traveled in the form of pulses of sound. About 1 millisecond later, at the other end of the tank, the pulses were picked up, amplified, and emitted again at the starting point, with the whole train of information bits in the line thereby being kept in continuous circulation as long as the power was on.

Can you guess how the reconstructed EDSAC is going to differ from the original version?

Read the rest of this entry »

-from SHOTS, NPR’s Health Care Blog:

Health care reform is no laughing matter, but MIT economist Jonathan Gruber’s new comic book on the subject aims to communicate some pretty complicated policy details in a way that, if not exactly side-splitting, is at least engaging.
 
In Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works, Gruber steps into the pages of a comic book to guide readers through many of the major elements of the law, including the individual mandate to buy insurance, the health insurance exchanges where people will be able to buy coverage starting in 2014 and how the law tackles controlling health care costs.

I draw your attention to another graphic novel: The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation.

While I was buying a copy of Persepolis from a real-life book store a few years ago, a young woman at the sales counter mentioned that there was a “great” graphic novel about North Korea that I might like. I’m not a graphic novel reader and I think Persepolis is it for me unless I decide to review the health care book, but it interested me that she seemed so enthusiastic about the topic of North Korea and graphic novels. I guess it makes sense given our “information overload” society. I don’t know. Why not look for clarity?

PS: Linking is not endorsement and all that.

PPS: What’s the “all that” about? Eh, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for the past week or so and my blogging has been pretty terrible because of it. I linked the health care graphic novel because it amused me, not because I am simpatico with the message. I think you all knew that already….

This Chicago area event – Faith Under Fire — looks like it will be excellent.

This Conference is designed to address the plight of persecuted religious minorities in Muslim countries. Join us to learn the real nature of their hardships and what each of us can do to advance religious liberty for suffering indigenous communities.
 
Leaders of the indigenous communities describe their plight.
 
Eyewitnesses offer riveting testimony about this harsh reality.
 
Key members of U.S. Congress discuss action to prevent genocide.
 
Global experts offer critical analysis of the international threats.
 
Panelists discuss policy issues and opportunities for action.
 

We hear about a mythical Arab Spring.

But for many non-Muslims in the region, it is a Winter of persecution and the destruction of ancient communities.

These atrocities should be getting more attention.

Buy tickets here.

I was going to vote republican, but since some bimbo with cleavage likes Obama, I have no choice but to discard my reasoned analysis and run with the herd. It’s the only intelligent thing to do.

-Commenter “Pizzullo” in Reply #10 to Politico’s article about “Obama Girl”

Just released and looks like the hottest digital camera yet. 36 megapixels puts it in the performance category of specialist high-res cameras used for landscapes and commercial photography that cost many times more and are less versatile. For a few extra bucks the D800E has even higher resolution because it lacks the D800′s anti-aliasing filter. The D800/E won’t ship for a month or two, but you can order it and cancel or return it if you change your mind — IOW, a free option.

Nikon D800/D800E at Amazon

Nikon D800 at B&H

Nikon D800E at B&H

To be American is to forget…

Or, having exhausting every other opportunity to forget, to remember poorly.

In the course of a series of posts on how the United States of America has implemented selected clauses from its constitution…

a well-regulated militia

• “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”
• “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress”
• “The President shall be Commander in Chief…of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”
• “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress…keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
• “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

…Dmitri Rotov has unearthed some forgotten yet particularly shiny pebbles:

Read the rest of this entry »

When gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in 1848, it seemed as if most of the world rushed in to California – which, until then had been a sparsely-settled outpost of Mexico, dreaming the decades away. The climate was enchantingly mild, Mediterranean – warm enough for groves of olive trees and citrus to thrive, and the old missions crumbled away as if nothing had or would ever change. The old, proud Californio families with names like Verdugo, Vasquez, Pico and Vallejo kept vast cattle herds and lived in extensive but rather Spartan-plain estates. There were a few handfuls of American settlers who had come overland, or by sea; they tended to what little trade there was, and an energetic and slightly shady Swiss entrepreneur named Johann Sutter had a vast agricultural and establishment centered around a fortified holding in present-day Sacramento. It was on his property, and in the course of building a saw-mill that gold was discovered. And change came upon the enchanted land – and the place called Yerba Buena turned almost overnight from a hamlet of eight hundred souls on the shore of San Francisco Bay into a ramshackle metropolis of 25,000 and more in the space of two years.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today marks 60 years since she acceded to the throne. Chicagoboyz wish her all the best.
 

The IRS has a proposed new regulation which would prohibit charter-school teachers from participating in state retirement plans. (At present, all of the states which authorize charter schools permit, and in some cases require, the charter-school teachers to participate in these plans.) Furthermore, the new regulation would apparently apply retroactively and would cause the teachers to lose the state contributions to their accounts which have been accrued, and on which they were no doubt relying, unless they give up their employment. More here.

Today, February 6, is the last day for public comments on this issue under IRS procedures.

Our friend J. Scott Shipman, who has been blogging at zenpundit.com, has a new website, blog and forthcoming book.

Check them out.

Following a couple of posts (here and here) about time-lapse videos I did some experimenting. It turns out to be simple to create a passable time-lapse sequence using an inexpensive digicam and some freeware.

You need an interval timer. I don’t know how many cameras have this feature. However, if you have a Canon PowerShot camera you can download a quite sophisticated bit of freeware called CHDK that, among other capabilities, functions as a user configurable interval timer. CHDK is well documented but the online wiki is a bit intimidating. Don’t worry. Go to this page and work your way down. It gives the essentials.

I used my Canon S95 with CHDK, configured to take photos continuously at five-second intervals. Put the camera on a tripod or other support, use JPEG rather than RAW if this is an option and deactivate your camera’s stabilizer if it has one. Focus manually if you can. Then point the camera at something interesting and start the interval timer. The video below represents about an hour and a quarter in real time, 924 exposures. (Your camera battery will run down pretty quickly doing this, so you may want to turn off the camera’s LCD if possible. The CHDK documentation mentions a way to trick the camera into turning off its LCD by plugging something into the “video out” socket, but I haven’t tried this yet.)

There are probably many ways to stitch the photos into a video sequence. I used Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker, which is part of Windows Live Essentials, which may have come with your computer if you use Windows 7. (It’s also available as a free download here.) Simple to use: Start a new project, import your photos (batch edit them first if you want), select all of the imported photos, click the Edit tab, set Duration to .03 seconds (the minimum), hit the enter key to apply this duration to all of your photos, then save your movie using the quality setting of your choice.
 

A thoughtful interview, here.

Misawa AB, late fall, 1977. If it were later in the year, the field would have been under about four feet of snow. I think I took this picture because some of the FEN-Misawa staff were playing. They would have been for one of the larger unit teams – FEN wasn’t large enough to field a team of our own.

Previous in the series:
I, II, III, IV

First there was TEDx, the low cost/no cost to the original TED initiative to spread the TED message around the world in local affiliated events. Now there is MITx, an initiative to create free/low cost classes with an MIT affiliation but no degree. So why isn’t there AFL-CIOx? There is no great leap necessary to figure this out. Fire up a web site and provide tools for all workers to improve their position. AFL-CIOx could provide templates on how to lobby their local governments to diversify local economies and cater to entrepreneurs so the increase in businesses operating locally would improve the chance that different employers would compete for local workers. Employers bidding up salaries in order to compete is how non-union workers get salary increases and it’s a successful strategy. It used to be that union workers earned more than non-union. That is no longer true.

And they could provide “plus” services that would carry a fee that you could take or leave. Hat sales alone would probably cover most of the electricity bill. And yes, I’d buy one. I’d also use the site as I assume a lot of people who would viscerally reject joining a union, ever. Google will index it and people will use compelling content, giving unions a 2nd chance at a large part of the population that have long written them off as irrelevant and outdated.

So where is that site? Where is the effort to improve the position of all American workers by providing a 21st century education on how to be a smart, savvy worker?