Author: Jim

liberty

Court appointed lawyers

Texas Child Protective Services wishes to “protect” Teresa Jeffs from being sexually abused – which “protection” has a curious resemblance to charging her with practicing polygamy while white. The courts have appointed Natalie Malonis to supposedly represent her and two other polygamist “children”, which lawyer has been conducting trial by media against her supposed client: …

crypto

One mode, and it is secure

Ian Grigg correctly argues that any internet protocol that has an insecure mode can never be made secure, thus if security is introduced as after thought, will never be secure. Https is exactly such a bolted on afterthought, and to use it one must pay money, and suffer substantial inconvenience. Further, it is a woefully …

liberty

Hatred of softly influential groups

Wherever a group has disproportionate economic or cultural success that does not rest upon political power, does not involve the ability to kill people and break things, does not depend upon hard power, for example Jews, Americans, Indonesian Chinese, Indian Fijians, Indians in Africa, the Ibo in Africa, the same hatred occurs, the same accusations, …

war

Bring back the Northern Alliance

The US is winning in Iraq, in large part by abandoning or indefinitely postponing the goal of a unitary state, and cultivating the militias, such as “the Sons of Iraq” (who are more like the sons of Arab Shia Iraq) Afghanistan, however, is going down the tubes. According to Gideon Rachman Our current strategy isn’t …

liberty

A better ID card

Digital Identity Forum has a better solution for ID. Instead of an ID card that tells any purported authority everything about you, an ID smart card that verifies what authority the authority actually possesses, and reveals the minimum information that that authority is authorized to know, for example that you are over 18, to be …

economics

Roots of the energy crisis

The energy crisis happened because of optimistic projections – that gas to liquid and coal to liquid would not be needed until the technology had been improved and the cost brought down, that the dramatic growth in China and India could be accommodated by rapidly expanding conventional oil production. The political elite, unable to introduce …

economics

Rational Oil Prices

It seems that Arnold Kling has been in Afghan cave during the past six months. He does not seem to think that there has been any bad news on oil supply over the last six months. The recent run-up in oil prices represents a similar puzzle. I think that it’s difficult to tell a story …