RESOLUTIONS
Month: December 2018
QUOTES OF THE DAY
“Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.”
Charles Peguy
“People will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.”
Frank Zappa
“The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”
Ludwig von Mises
“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.”
John Taylor Gatto
MEANWHILE….IN TORONTO
In Defense of Error
Guest Post by The Zman
The other day, I followed a back and forth on Twitter between two smart people and one of them pointed out that the other had been wrong about the issue in the past. The details are not important as nothing serious ever gets discussed on Twitter, but what struck me is how even smart people can resort to this sort of score keeping. In the context of an internet exchange, it is about as sensible as claiming the other guy has cooties. It’s just a childish way of dismissing an argument or criticism without examining it.
“Bone-Crushing Hard Job”: John Kelly Gives Candid Interview On Being Trump’s Chief Of Staff
Update: Shortly after the LA Times published its article, the New York Times published a similar piece – recapping the LA Times story while adding:
Mr. Kelly is leaving after a 17-month tenure that he described to the paper as a “bone-crushing hard job.” Mr. Kelly was known to tell aides that he had the “worst job in the world,” and frequently told people that Mr. Trump was not up to role of president, according to two former administration officials. –NYT
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly will be leaving the Trump administration on Wednesday after 18 months on the job wrangling President Trump and keeping the West Wing in order.
In an exclusive two-hour interview with the LA Times, Kelly offers a peek behind the curtain as he presided over some of the Trump administration’s most controversial immigration and geopolitical policies.
THE WALL
Guest Post by David Erickson
President Trump frequently appears to have good instincts on a particular problem, but sometimes doesn’t understand how to solve the problem. The wall, which has been one of his signature topics since he was a candidate, is a good example of this. He understands that we need better immigration control, but he is fixated on the wall, which is a bad solution to the border control problem, and border control is only one aspect of overall immigration control.
For starters, walls don’t do any good if you leave the gates open. If Trump is successful in getting his wall built, five minutes after his Democrat successor takes office (and his successor will be a Democrat), the entry points at the border (the gates) will be wide open, and his wall will be nothing but an expensive, ugly, environmentally destructive white elephant.
No, We Don’t Need Death Squads
From Comments:
“to EFFECTIVELY protect the border you MUST use deadly force. Something we are NOT doing currently as evidenced by the THOUSANDS who succeed in entering America every month. The UGLY TRUTH no body wants to admit is that as long as the benefits outweigh the risks they will KEEP COMING. And when the only real risk is merely being sent back to TRY AGAIN there is no incentive to not keep trying. People denigrate the Berlin Wall but he truth is IT WORKED….and it worked because it was enforced by DEADLY FORCE. So YES!!!!! Want to end ilegals invading America? Kill a bunch trying. Don’t have the balls to do that? Then say goodbye to your culture and country. THAT is reality.”
Um, no.
Not even close.
The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything
There are four simple steps to the Feynman Technique, which I’ll explain below:
- Choose a Concept
- Teach it to a Toddler
- Identify Gaps and Go Back to The Source Material
- Review and Simplify (optional)
***
If you’re not learning you’re standing still. So what’s the best way to learn new subjects and identify gaps in our existing knowledge?
Continue reading “The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything”
How to Become a Living Meme…
HERE’S YOUR SOCIALISM
Tragic: starving #Venezuelans fight over meager food rations. This is the #socialist dream; there is no income inequality because everyone has an equal share of nothing. pic.twitter.com/oJGRLULC5r
— Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) December 28, 2018
New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics
Guest Post by Aaron Mate
Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election.
The release of two Senate-commissioned reports has sparked a new round of panic about Russia manipulating a vulnerable American public on social media. Headlines warn that Russian trolls have tried to suppress the African-American vote, promote Green Party candidate Jill Stein, recruit “assets,” and “sow discord” or “hack the 2016 election” via sex-toy ads and Pokémon Go. “The studies,” writes David Ignatius of The Washington Post, “describe a sophisticated, multilevel Russian effort to use every available tool of our open society to create resentment, mistrust and social disorder,” demonstrating that the Russians, “thanks to the Internet…seem to be perfecting these dark arts.” According to Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times, “it looks increasingly as though” Russian disinformation “changed the direction of American history” in the narrowly decided 2016 election, when “Russian trolling easily could have made the difference.”
Radar Invisibility, Kinda-Sorta . . .
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Some of you may remember the ‘80s movie adaptation of the epic (and excellent) sci-fi novel Dune by Frank Herbert. The characters in this far-distant future wear defensive shield belts that, when activated, partially protect them from attack.
But they are not invulnerable to attack.
Radar detectors amount to the same thing. They offer partial shielding. They do not guarantee immunity from tickets. But they can greatly reduce you odds of getting one – if you understand what they can (and can’t) do and adjust your driving accordingly.
Radar detectors can’t detect radar that’s not on – but police radar might still be there.
35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote
Guest Post by Isaac Asimov
Originally published Dec. 31, 1983
lf we look into the world as it may be at the end of another generation, let’s say 2019 — that’s 35 years from now, the same number of years since 1949 when George Orwell’s 1984 was first published — three considerations must dominate our thoughts:
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/world/2018/12/27/35-years-ago-isaac-asimov-was-asked-by-the-star-to-predict-the-world-of-2019-here-is-what-he-wrote/isaac_asimov.jpg)
n 1983, American writer Isaac Asimov wrote that by 2019, “It is quite likely that society, then, will have entered a phase that may be more or less permanently improved over the situation as it now exists.” (Mondadori Portfolio)
1. Nuclear war. 2. Computerization. 3. Space utilization.
If the United States and the Soviet Union flail away at each other at any time between now and 2019, there is absolutely no use to discussing what life will be like in that year. Too few of us, or of our children and grand· children, will be alive then for there to be any point in describing the precise condition of global misery at that time.
Let us, therefore, assume there will be no nuclear war — not necessarily a safe assumption — and carry on from there.
The Depression Of 2019-2021?
Submitted by Brendan Brown, the Head of Economic Research at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International via Mises.org
The profound question which transcends all this day-to-day market drama over the holidays is the nature of the economic slowdown now occurring globally. This slowdown can be seen both inside and outside the US. In reviewing the laboratory of history — especially those experiments featuring severe asset inflation, unaccompanied by high official estimates of consumer price inflation — three possible “echoes” deserve attention in coming weeks and months. (History echoes rather than repeats!)
Will We Learn from History — And What Will Soon Be History?
