It's probably going to be cheaper too.
And have fewer blank spots where some government says "Don't peek".
Military implications.
Officials and national security analysts believe that the Knights Templar and the Zetas may have reached a “tipping point” in sources of income. The cartels may be making more money from non-narcotics related criminal operations. The Knights Templar and Los Zetas both make a lot of money in mining (Templars extracting iron ore, Zetas in coal). Both run extensive business extortion operations.Davidson and Rees-Moog make the case in The Sovereign Individual that the opportunity costs and benefits of violence explain much of society. Government and banditry, in their view, are on a continuum. At the low end, life is cheap and everyone poor. At the high end, few people own the right to use violence and rewards are widely distributed to crony players and to civil servants but the size of the pie is so big that the insider who gets a small slice has more than the old time warlord who got all of his local little pie.
The Robber Barons details the history of a small class of men who arose at the time of the American Civil War and swept into power. They were aggressive, and in important crises, nearly all of them tended to act without those established principles associated with the common people of the community. At the same time, many of them showed qualities of courage. These robber barons, as were their medieval counterparts, were the dominating figures of an aggressive economic age.
In their hands the renovation of American economic life proceeded relentlessly: large-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized production; industrial enterprises became more concentrated, where they had been purely individualistic and wasteful. To organize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, to regiment its farmers and workers into producers, and to do this only in the name of profit—is the great contradiction whence so much disaster, outrage and misery has flowed.
Matthew Josephson illuminates the story of industrial concentration in the United States, which is here pursued through the study of the major financial events and personalities between 1861 and 1901. This book also focuses on establishing the manner in which the country’s natural resources and arteries of trade were preempted, its political institutions conquered, and its social philosophy turned into an economic one, by the new barons. This is, by all odds, a classic study of the culture of American capitalism.
Crater, page 20 of Chesapeake report. |
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline supplies the headline.Paul adds about Bergdahls: Appeases a deadly enemy, makes like more dangerous for an ally we are about to abandon, disregards American law, and does it on behalf of jihad sympathizers. That warm hug with Obama was beyond inappropriate and topped off with Islamic praise in the Pashto language, the language of an enemy to whom Bergdahl fils apparently gave bomb making instruction.
"Any country might do a prisoner swap, even if it meant freeing very bad people. But only an exceptional country would swap five leading terrorists in exchange for a deserter.
Any second-rate county might screw up in providing medical treatment for its veterans. But only an exceptional country would do so while at the same time providing a sex change operation for an ex-soldier who betrayed his country.
What Obama really believes in, of course, is his own exceptionalism. This belief is fully justified.
President Obama believes in American exceptionalism — his own version, in which American does things so perverse that no other country in history would even contemplate them."
It was also discovered, quite by accident, that the troop habit of playing violent video games, in between bouts of real combat, reduced combat stress. Mental health practitioners tested the use of violent video games for their PTSD patients, and found out that it worked.
Scientific examination of the subject has found that as the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down. (From "The Scientist").While I was convinced in the past that viewing sexual parts and activity promoted lascivious behaviour that threatened marriages, it also seems likely that dispersing the sex drive into play in a never-never land, reduces the drive to engage in appropriate and inappropriate sex with live partners.
"The Left doesn’t really believe in climate change. Their true religion is raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and reducing national sovereignty. Climate change is just a temporary excuse to achieve those ends".Gabriel of Ricochet.com makes it sound funny in a well-written piece as the left segues from ice age to DDT to aerosols to global warming to more natural gas to less natural gas.
From the abstract: Scientists re-examined 100 world-wide monitoring studies and were surprised to discover that, over decades, the number of species in many places has not changed much -- or has increased. But the researchers did discover that almost 80% of the communities showed changes in species composition. This shows that a rapid global turnover of species is happening, resulting in novel biological communities.
Taken Friday. If you're interested look up the mostly smooth indeterminate faces of the other leaders voting. |
Click on body language to see how it goes. |
His ex-girlfriend Lucy Pinches said today Mr Magee had an obsession with the concept of parallel universes and a suicide pact of two U.S. students. 'There was a story of a double suicide in the States where two students had killed themselves, she said. 'It was to do with quantum physics and suicide, the two students were linked up to lethal injections which were operated by lottery numbers.'So the only universe they would wake up in would be the one they both won the lottery in. 'That was something Gabe thought about a lot and had the mental capacity to think about it a lot, with the equations and the physics.'
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds |
Aldrich, University of Warwick |
From the article: We're used to the idea that secret intelligence agencies spy on us, but over the last ten years the big intelligence gatherers have become airlines, banks, internet providers and Tesco -- all of which have more information about us than GCHQ and the NSA put together.
"These organisations are becoming cleverer and cleverer. Cleverer than the CIA; cleverer than the KGB."
Little comes easier to a skilled speaker than clarity ..... Politicians require the ability, and generally have the personality type that draws one to public speaking. Ironically, these facts produce a wonderfully useful corollary: If a politician’s statements leave you unsure of his stance on an issue, you can be sure he opposes the popular stance of his electorate.
The Golden State has gained international notoriety for its deficits and government dysfunction.....On every measure of indebtedness, Ontario is markedly worse than California. Ontario’s debt is almost two-thirds larger than California’s bonded debt even though California is a much larger jurisdiction .... Specifically, California’s bonded debt is $143.9 billion as of 2011 while Ontario’s is $236.6 billion, two-thirds larger than California. As a share of the economy, Ontario’s debt (38.6 per cent) is more than five times larger than California’s debt (7.7 per cent). Ontario’s per capita debt ($17,922) is over four-and-a-half times that of California ($3,833). ... Ontario spends a little over three times the amount of revenues on interest costs as California: 8.9 per cent versus 2.8 per cent. More specifically, Ontario spends roughly $10 billion a year on interest costs, about $750 per Ontarian per year just paying the interest on already accumulated debt.
Remember Bob Rae? This is not just a Wynne-lose scenario. |