I’m sitting on my back patio with my laptop untethered from its normal AC converter. I have one of those battery-sucking laptops that go from 100% capacity to 10% capacity in the time it takes to load up a website — well, I’m not sure it is as bad as all that, but it certainly seems that way.
So a rare moment on the patio while the whiskey barrel water garden gurgles, the crickets breep behind me and the cicadas buzz in the trees. Somewhere in the distance I can hear the whine of the traffic on I-35 (which is not far from the house), but overall it is a peaceful night.
Sometimes I get so caught up in the perversity of human stupidity and how the best-intentioned people can make some of the dumbest decisions on the face of God’s green Earth. But I must remind myself that we foolish humans have been on this planet for a long, long time and, God willing, will be here for an even longer time.
Perhaps all of us who get caught up in discovering the foibles of those evil/stupid (strike whichever is not needed — see ‘Conflict of Visions’ for a guide) people on the other side need to sit down and listen.
We have this great gift — a groundbreaking Broadway musical, packed with unforgettable tunes, choreography, and characters, and it’s named after our state (although it nearly wasn’t). Let’s make the most of it.
Discoverland’s Oklahoma! is one of those things that has been on my “todo” list for some time, but I never seem to get around to it. Usually because we are Tulsa to visit my brother-in-law. But Michael has convinced me to take the family up for a special trip.
On a related note, when I was a kid, I mis-heard the lyrics to Oklahoma! as: “Every night my honey lemon eye”. I could never figure out what exactly that was.
For those of you who are not uber-cyber-aware, the US government has put together a group that is supposed to protect government IT infrastructure (and possibly civilian infrastructure as well). Given recent news about IT infrastructure attacks, this is a good thing. And the attacks that have made the news are only the tip of the iceberg.
The shield for this new cyber command can be seen below (click for a larger image):
For those with sufficiently sharp eyes, you can spot a set of characters on the inner gold band. The meaning of this code was not initially explained and people were encouraged to investigate.
As I have noted on my Facebook page and in the pages of this website, I consider myself, by and large, to be a Classical Liberal (PDF). Others of this class of political thought are the Founding Fathers, Thomas Sowell and Frederic Bastiat (adding grave accents are left as an exercise to the reader).
The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority.
I see also from the Wikipedia entry for Bastiat that the Mises Organization has two PDFs of his collected works, Volume 1 and Volume 2. I have added these to my reading list.
There are, I’m sure, some that would call these “community organizers” something not-so-nice — like Greedy Bastards. But these sort of people cannot recognize that their progressive, enlightened betters are arranging the lives of the unwashed masses for their own good. They are, simply put…
Just saw Toy Story 3 in 3D at the Warren Theatre in Moore. I loved the part about Mr. Potato Head “disassembling” himself and using his components to fashion a new body.
Which got me to thinking… what part of Mr. Potato Head is “Mr. Potato Head”? I would have always though that it was the body, but from the movie, apparently not. His arm has an independent existence, his eyes, etc.
I’m not sure where these thoughts go, but just wanted to share that with you.
Makes you wonder what other philosophical questions were raised by this movie…
The phrase “oil addiction” has come into common use…in his speech the other night, Obama generalized this to “addiction to fossil fuels.”
A little historical perspective…
Before we were addicted to oil, we were addicted to coal.
…
Before we were addicted to coal, we were addicted to wood.
…
Much of the talk about oil and alternative energy ignores a key point: in the United States, very little oil is used for electricity generation. Hence, all those solar cells and wind turbines, even should they achieve enough scale to represent a material part of U.S. electrical generation, don’t directly cut oil consumption.
