Travel places, look at things, think about them, write your thoughts down.
One thing leads to another and you’re bound to sound absurd and stupid. At least that’s how slippery slope arguments go. Take former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, (R-Arizona) for example. He thinks folks might want to marry horses in Massachusetts.
By the way, sorry for the delay. Lot’s of stuff, including the last half of the China trip coming soon.
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Loading ...I just played the lottery. I received a ticket in a holiday card from one of my employer’s vendors. I didn’t know what to do, but I logged onto the Colorado Lottery website and looked up the past draw dates for the numbers under 23 December 2009 on the ticket.
I didn’t get a single number.
It was oddly exciting.
I still subscribe to the idea that playing the lottery is a tax on people who can’t do math and I don’t plan on playing again in the future.
(no ratings yet, click a square to vote) Loading ...I’m trying out Meebo which puts that disturbing bar down at the bottom of your browser for this site. I’ve noticed all the cool kids are on those “social networking” sites like faces book, and flicker, and that the hipsters like to tell their friends they dig something or stumbled on it. Oh, you kids today. With Meebo you can easily share links and point your friends to the humorous, insightful and interesting things I have to say. It’ll make you seem all connected and in the loop and stuff to point out this blog to people. I’m sure it will. You can even chat with online friends on the book of your faces there and discuss the clever things I’ve written. Oh, and maybe you’ll appear worldly or something. With your help, my readership might double from seven to maybe fourteen….or twelve,or whatever.
If you haven’t seen Meebo before, maybe try it out and let me know what you think.
(no ratings yet, click a square to vote) Loading ...According John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, capitalism has done a bad job marketing itself. Looking at how pretty much everyone sees Wall Street and business everywhere, it’s easy to think he’s right.
If you ask the ordinary person what the purpose of a business is, they’ll say, “Well, it’s to make money.” Which is kind of a strange answer, because you don’t get that answer if you ask what the purpose of a doctor is or what the purpose of a teacher is or an architect or an engineer or any of the other professions, yet they all have to make money. To be a doctor, you can’t operate at a loss, at least not for very long.
Most entrepreneurs I’ve known—and I’ve known lots of them—none of them started their businesses primarily to make money. Instead, they were pursuing some type of dream, some type of passion. They wanted to make the world a different place…It’s not why I started Whole Foods Market, to make as much money as possible. It was to sell healthy food and help people earn a living, do something I felt good about. I was on fire about eating healthy food; I had passion about that.
He explains more in his interview at Reason. It’s definitely worth the read.
(no ratings yet, click a square to vote) Loading ...It’s the anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Nothing else particularly exciting seems to have happened today, so CNN assembled some slightly dated videos and a few recent interviews with lightning rods of the evolution vs. religion debate.
“Pro-Darwin consensus doesn’t rule out intelligent design”
“Darwin and the case for ‘militant atheism‘”
and finally,
“Religion, evolution can live side by side”
Comparing and contrasting these three views, and perhaps, more so, what each doesn’t say, is pretty thought provoking. I hope after reading them you’ll come back here to let us know what your takeaway is.
(no ratings yet, click a square to vote) Loading ...I’ll just quote from the Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times:
“I am a genuine admirer of Obama. And I am very pleased that George W. Bush is no longer president. But I doubt that I am alone in wondering whether this award is slightly premature. It is hard to point to a single place where Obama’s efforts have actually brought about peace – Gaza, Iran, Sri Lanka?”
I remember the complaints about Al Gore winning. I defended that choice a little here on this blog, but this is gone even further. Does this make sense to anyone who isn’t still starry eyed about our president? Aren’t we lead to believe the peace prize is about accomplishments and not just hope?
Update: The left don’t think he deserved it (he’s escalating in Afghanistan). The right think it’s pure politics (call it the not George W. Bush award.) The only way to make this a positive is for him to have the character to decline.
Update: Well, clever guy that he is, he didn’t decline, but instead accepted the prize “as an affirmation of American leadership,” and a “call to action.” It’s a thoughtful response, but I don’t think it will do at all. He will still live under the shroud of “he didn’t deserve it.” Good news, Obama won’t suffer as much as the Nobel Peace Prize which now will have about as much credibility as the Oscars.
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(no ratings yet, click a square to vote) Loading ...According to a recent Pew Form on Religion and Public Life report Nearly 1 in 4 people worldwide is Muslim. The report admits that the question being answered is how do people identify themselves. Freaked out American fundamentalists can relax that the 1.57 billion people who identify as Muslim is still fewer than the 2.25 billion Christians. Except that the report didn’t yet answer the more important question: religiosity, that is, what do people actually believe.
“Spiritual but not religious,” is so common it’s how folks describe themselves on internet dating services. ”I believe in a supreme being but no particular god or religion” is something I hear during barstool conversations. Surely many of these folks are sincere in their beliefs, and their unwillingness to sign up to some dogmatic, organized, religion, but, like many so-called “agnostics,” many of them are really just lazy atheists. Upon reflection they may not really believe in anything. If you doubt religion, then, honestly, until you come around to finding that faith, you don’t believe it in yet, even if some part of you is scared you might be struck by a godsent bolt from the sky if you say it out loud.
Their non-specified ‘god’ is much the same as Einstein’s god, it’s really just any part of nature that, even geniuses like Albert don’t yet understand and, well, it really is quite amazing.
As a rule these folks don’t pray. They don’t vote based on their lack of religion (except, perhaps, to avoid the religious extremists.) They receive little guidance and know, deep inside, that it’s not OK to steal or rape little children without having to read it in a book. Religion plays little or no part in their lives. It is not a place they go to for solace or thanks. Many of them would self identify as (nominally) Christian. I’ve even met a few say the believe in God when asked casually, because it just isn’t socially acceptable not to.
Many Europeans and Americans fall into the description I’ve laid out here, but far fewer Muslims do. In the west it is less socially acceptable to be Muslim in the first place (at least in the last decade it has become more challenging thanks to 9-11 and similar attacks in Spain and the U.K.) Muslims must stand against the criticism against them thanks to the acts of a few so it takes a certain courage and commitment to identify as such when anyone, including a survey, asks. Who knows how religious the citizens of the Iranian and Saudi theocracies are, but we can assume that they, at least outwardly, pay more than lip service to their self-identified religion.
I’m afraid, then, that the Christians might have something to worry about after all. At least if they continue to assume that there are 1.6 billion terrorists out there.
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(no ratings yet, click a square to vote) Loading ...There are two sides to every argument of course, but at the end of the day, someone has to make a call about which side to choose. The company I work for delivers technology to help understand jet engines and the New York Times article Mishap Raises Questions About Pratt and Whitney F-35 Engine caught my eye.
The Obama administration wants to cut funding for developing a second jet engine, claiming that it’s an example of government waste. Meanwhile, there are dozens of examples from history where having a back-up plan for a critical component has resulted in very significant savings over the long run.
From an engineering perspective, it is easy to be concerned that we might cancel support for other vendors during this trillion dollar development. Second vendors and designs make a lot of risk mitigation sense. From an economics perspective, that money isn’t going to waste. As GE performs similar work to Pratt and Whitney, the money the government spends flows into taxpayer’s pockets, and libertarian though I am, even I have to admit that government funding of incredibly expensive projects like this has made sense in the past. Isn’t creating jobs part of what the administration’s stimulus package is all about?
The Obama administrations critics correctly tell us that not funding a parallel development path for this critical military investment might well cost the United States loads of money in the long run. But let’s face it, as much as politicians would like to imagine it, there is no unlimited pot of taxpayer gold. We’ve already spent deep into the next generation and something has got to give. Where are the critics going to get the money? Build fewer roads? Stop funding education? Skipping the back-up plan for a jet engine may not make long term sense, but seems like it’s the only short term solution.
(no ratings yet, click a square to vote) Loading ...It’s actually a charming story of a small town being revitalized by a Korean automobile manufacturer. They’ll be making SUVs there, but it’s still good for the town…. But really, check out the picture attached to the story. Would he really have the time? Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to bring a local auto manufacturer, or perhaps not let the textile plants close in the first place?
(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5) Loading ...A patron was chatting with the server in a Fife (suburb of Seattle/Tacoma) diner. “Rainy today…” he said. “Well, it’s about time,” she replied, “we’ve had sun all week and I was getting pretty tired of it.”
That’s not a joke. It was almost as dry as Colorado over the July 4th holiday.
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