How Could They Be So Stupid???

Megan McArdle explains why countries seem to repeatedly make utterly foolish economic and financial policy decisions.  The doom approaches, apparently inevitably.  Politics are (of course!) the problem...

Flying Pig Moment...

Generally speaking, you can count on pablum from the “tame conservative” David Brooks in his commentary published by the progressive podium afforded by the New York Times.  But check out this lead:

There is a statue outside the Federal Trade Commission of a powerful, rambunctious horse being reined in by an extremely muscular man. This used to be a metaphor for liberalism. The horse was capitalism. The man was government, which was needed sometimes to restrain capitalism’s excesses.

Today, liberalism seems to have changed. Today, many progressives seem to believe that government is the horse, the source of growth, job creation and prosperity. Capitalism is just a feeding trough that government can use to fuel its expansion.

...and then go read the whole thing.  Definitely a flying pig moment!  I expect poor Mr. Brooks may be fired at any moment...

Quote of the Day...

From Mark Steyn:

...in Britain, in Canada, in Australia (which is to say in some of the oldest free societies on earth and among the very few developed nations that did not succumb to the mid-20th century totalitarian fevers), it is now received wisdom that state power is required to “balance” free speech with competing societal interests as determined by regulatory bureaucrats.

Scary stuff, especially when it's easy to see that this trend has already started here (most especially in our universities)...

Magnificent Chickens...

When I first visited this site, my internal comment was ... “Really?”

And the answer is ... “Yes, people really do compete in chicken magnificence”

Oh, my...

No Leadership, No Responsibility, No White House Tours...

From San Diego's own Darrell Issa:

Headphone History...

Who would have guessed that the history of headphones involved polygamy and Nazi direction-finding?

The Anatomy of a (Successful) Click Fraud Scheme...

A fascinating dissection of a successfully executed click fraud scheme that generated millions of dollars for the perpetrator...

Chart.js is Back!

This very useful tool for building client-side charts using JavaScript and the HTML5 canvas element was taken down last week over a copyright issue.  Now it's back up – I'm not sure why, but I'm glad to see it!

Diamonds Are Bullshit!

Most of this story I knew, particularly the '30s-era marketing campaign and artificial supply restriction by De Beers.  Some of the details were new to me, though, and it's nice to have the whole story laid out in one short article...

Backbone.js – 1.0 Released...

Backbone.js is a very popular JavaScript framework, used in many of today's busiest websites.  Today it has it's first official “one point oh” release.  Congratulations!

Emotions on Demand...

This is a little creepy...

Dangerous Sociopaths Take Over Capitol HIll...

Details here...

Submarine Cables...

Today's Internet is very dependent on undersea (submarine) cables that link various parts of the world together.  We can seamlessly link between web sites in various countries only because these cables exist.  Less obvious, but economically perhaps even more importantly, these cables enable many other kinds of communications traffic: email, voice phone, fax, instant messaging, and much, much more.  They are, these days, vital conduits of economic activity – it's hard to imagine any kind of business that isn't dependent on them.

These cables (see diagram at right) are the most concentrated information conduits in the world.  When one of them breaks, the impact is large and immediate.  In some cases around the world, a single submarine cable is the only high-bandwidth link between some region and the rest of the world.  When one of those links breaks, large numbers of people are sawed off from the rest of the world – no web, no email, no phones, just ... crickets.

Here's a nice explanation of all this...