Dogs, Socks...Nothing More...

Norman Borlaugh: the Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity...

Relatively few Americans know anything at all about Norman Borlaug, quite possibly never having heard of him at all.  I first heard about him myself when reviewing American winners of the Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago.  Borlaug stands out amongst them for actually having accomplished something real and lasting – revolutionizing agriculture around the world, enabling a hungry world to eat.  I've since read several books about him.  There's no doubt that Borlaug's teachings saved lives – perhaps as many as a billion.  The Atlantic put a good 1997 article about him online; it was written while he was still alive...

Obama “Recess Appointments” Ruled Invalid...

Obama's been slapped down (for once!) for one of his many overreaching attempts to create an Imperial Presidency.  Much more here from Ricochet and Megan McArdle.  Three cheers for the appellate court having the guts to stand up to him...

Fools of Chelm...

Playwright David Mamet is an eloquent convert to conservatism from progressivism.  His writings are often interesting and provocative, as is this article on gun control.  An excerpt:

Healthy government, as that based upon our Constitution, is strife. It awakens anxiety, passion, fervor, and, indeed, hatred and chicanery, both in pursuit of private gain and of public good. Those who promise to relieve us of the burden through their personal or ideological excellence, those who claim to hold the Magic Beans, are simply confidence men. Their emergence is inevitable, and our individual opposition to and rejection of them, as they emerge, must be blunt and sure; if they are arrogant, willful, duplicitous, or simply wrong, they must be replaced, else they will consolidate power, and use the treasury to buy votes, and deprive us of our liberties. It was to guard us against this inevitable decay of government that the Constitution was written. Its purpose was and is not to enthrone a Government superior to an imperfect and confused electorate, but to protect us from such a government.

Go read the whole thing...

IQ and Vocabulary...

High IQ (as measured by conventional tests) and large vocabularies are strongly correlated.  Which causes which (or are they completely independent, and the correlation is simply chance)?  An interesting discussion...

Opportunity: Nine Years on Mars...

Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of Opportunity's landing on Mars.  The plucky little rover was designed to last just 90 days, but it did a little better than that – and it's not done yet.  The panorama below was stitched together from many individual images, and shows over 210° of view from Opportunity's current perch on the rim of Endeavour Crater.  Full resolution version here.  From APOD, of course.

Class Act...

This past Monday, Quirky accused OXO of ripping off a design for a “broom groomer”.  This caught my eye, as I'm a fan of both OXO products (especially for the kitchen) and Quirky.  The issue is a classic intellectual property dispute, an area I have some familiarity with.

OXO's response is quite unconventional.  The conventional response would have been to counter-sue Quirky and start a war of attrition, doing neither side any good.  Instead, OXO published an open response that details the many ways in which Quirky's complaint is unjustified.  It also details the many opportunities OXO has for a countersuit, and on the face of it they look much more substantial than Quirky's complaint.  Then OXO simply calls for a truce – and a return by both parties to designing great products.

Nice, OXO.  A tip o'the hat to you for a classy response.  I hope it works out well, and serves as an example of an alternative to mutually destructive litigation...

A Marine and His Dog...

Marine returns home after a year-long deployment, and his dog greets him: