war

The lesson of Gaddafi

The brutal death of Gaddafi teachers all rulers a lesson:  Emulate Syria, Iran, and Turkey.  Obstinately continue to do bad things to Americans, do not give in.  Do not imitate Gaddafi, who stopped doing terrorism, backed off and went on his best behavior after Ronald Reagan killed various members of Gaddafi’s family.  Still less should you emulate Egypt, and be an American ally.

politics

More astroturf riots in Greece.

At one minute fifty seconds in this you tube video, a man carrying a burning molotov cocktail rushes up to police. They don’t react. He hurls it onto the ground, not at them, but right in front of himself. There is a huge spectacular whoosh as burning petrol sprays everywhere. They react only slightly. He runs away. They don’t chase him. They act as if they knew in advance that …

politics

Left political singularity

The French Red Terror, the Soviet Great Terror, the Cambodian autogenocide, and many others were all examples of what I call left political singularities. Left wing repression tends to make things lefter, which tends to worsen left wing repression, which makes things even lefter, which …   The process only stops when the latest despot starts to realize he is not left enough, he is being outflanked on the left, is …

politics

Fun hate fact about the bell curve

Today’s hate fact is hyperexponential decay. The normal survival function (the number of cases in a normal distribution that are more than x, one minus the cumulative distribution) approaches zero as x increases hyperexponentially, which is to say, very fast. This often makes it possible, under many common circumstances, to draw conclusions about individual cases, to infer a particular person’s character and or ability from his race or sex, and …

party politics

Government hires protestors to demand more government

Powerline found an interesting job advertisement in Craigslist: Under the job category “new york craigslist > brooklyn > jobs > government jobs”, people looking for a government job are invited to: “ FIGHT TO HOLD WALL STREET ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERENCE! GET PAID!” I knew they were getting paid to protest, but until now there was some deniability – students were being turned out to protest by their professors, employees …