When the Roman empire in the west fell, it was decades, nearly a century, before Romans realized it had fallen. Falling is a process, which is hard to recognize at the time. A recent post in Gates of Vienna leads me to believe that in decades to come, future historians will date the fall of most of old Europe to Islam to 2008, or not long after. The first step …
Predicted … observed
In 1988 the warmists issued their first prophecy of doom. Repent of your sins against Gaia, abandon the industrial civilization that allows us to feed far too many people, or the wrath of Gaia will manifest in massive global warming, with the wrath setting in around the year 2000. The Blackboard checks on how that prediction went In 2001 they issued a new prophecy of doom, this time with the …
Solution to the energy crisis
Newt tells it how it is: This crisis was caused by politicians. He tells how to reduce fuel costs in the short run, and the long run. “you want energy now†he tells us. And then he tells us how to get it. How do we solve the energy crisis? Answer. Let businessmen extract oil. Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.
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 “childrenâ€, which lawyer has been conducting trial by media against her supposed client: “I believe that [Teresa Jeffs] was avoiding service because of coercion and improper influence from …
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 inefficient protocol, so people always try to minimize their use of it to only what …
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, the same fantasies, the same excessive and disproportionate attention, the same concoction of utterly trivial …
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 working There are no real alternative strategies We cannot afford to lose. There is of …
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 read by cell phone with nfc cardreader.
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 a carbon tax because it would directly and visibly hurt people, proceeded to block coal …
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 for the rise in crude prices for the last six months that is based on …