Month: October 2008
-
Liquidity
There is a disagreement as to just what caused the Great Depression, but the general problem once it started was one of liquidity: there was not enough money available. This led to price deflation, which led to people saving their money rather than spending it, which led to people not buying things, which led to…
-
System Beep
I like the system beep on my laptop. I’m used to hearing it for file completion and in emacs. I seem to be the only person who does like the system beep, though, considering how difficult it was to turn it on on a brand new Fedora 9 installation. Previous Fedora installations have not had…
-
Ballot Initiatives
California is very fond of the ballot initiative. Coming from a different state with a different political culture, this baffles me. This biggest, most obvious problem with democracy is that the majority will vote themselves benefits at the expense of the minority. The authors of the U.S. constitution were aware of this, and they created…
-
South Ossetia
George Friedman has a good short analysis of what happened in South Ossetia from the Russian perspective. He doesn’t have an explanation from the U.S. perspective, and I don’t either. It seems possible that Saakashvili ordered the invasion of South Ossetia without any support from the U.S., and that the U.S. felt obliged to support…
-
Revelation
My aunt, who lives just outside of Portland, Oregon, told me that one of her neighbors told her that Barack Obama was the anti-Christ. She thinks the comment was meant fairly seriously, and in any case felt too intimidated to reply. I told her that she should have pointed out that the anti-Christ would be…