Tag: natural law = soviet law
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Happy 68th, Sputnik!
I’ve saluted Sputnik many times, focusing on a different topic each time. Today is the 68th birthday. I’ll repeat the 2021 version, which seems most appropriate now. = = = = = Browsing through more of the ACM magazine. From Nov 1957, a remarkably sane and objective IMMEDIATE response to Sputnik. Author Edmund Berkeley gets…
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Rererereprint on real value
Reprinting this for the thousandth time after mentioning the Soviet reliance on REAL VALUE in previous item. This one piece encompasses everything I know and believe. = = = = = START EVERYTHING: Robert Shiller is arguing that economics pays too much attention to theories and numbers. Perfectly correct. He’s also arguing that real economies…
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Hard currency?
The ex-Soviet auto history podcaster often mentions that trade between the US side of the world and the Soviet side was difficult because the ruble wasn’t a ‘hard currency’. I used to hear that phrase in the news and didn’t question it at the time. The news told us Soviet money wasn’t hard, so it…
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It was all about SKILL.
Lately I’ve been watching this Youtube channel. The author grew up in the Soviet Union and knows how it REALLY worked, not our perpetual propaganda. He brings out the SKILL-oriented nature of Soviet economic policy in the automotive area. I’ve seen this focus on SKILL before in electronics and education. In this clip on the…
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Not the only choices
Paul Vigna proposes frequent debt jubilees. He says there are only two motivations in an economy: greed and morality. He complains correctly that we’ve organized our economy on greed and debt. To favor morality more, he wants occasional debt jubilees, saying that ancient governments realized it was the best way of restoring stability and giving…
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How to kill science
Oxford University Press will censor genetic studies from China because some of the samples come from Uyghurs, who are allegedly persecuted. First: Most of the good research is in China now. Rejecting Chinese studies is deliberately blinding ourselves to most science. Second: I can understand rejecting a study because the subjects were unnecessarily harmed. But…
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Personal schadenfreude
Via Gizmodo. Chegg, the company that offered a variety of online courses and homework cheats, rose to a fine Tech Tyrant peak of Holy Share Value during the Bush-Trump concentration camp. Investors are cheaters, so they love a cheating technology. Since then, the Tech Tyrants moved on to the superior cheating and stealing of AI,…
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Upon whom shall Newton’s apple drop?
For many years schools taught prescriptive grammar, while real linguists and dictionaries had long since switched to descriptive grammar. The dispute finally went away in the 70s. Only conservatives and neocons are still pushing the prescriptive crap. None of the prescriptive crap made the slightest sense. The prescribers weren’t real authors, just various scholars who…
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Facta
One discussion of Prevost’s background mentioned a school whose motto is Facta non verba. Google doesn’t find the reference now, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t AI-hallucinate it. The Endarkenment inverted the meaning of factum. In Latin a factum was simply a completed task, a got-r-done**. Now we think facts are authorized descriptions of the…
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One more inevitability
Previous item is a perfect example of why the RIGHT kind of price controls are needed. Enid hasn’t been affected by the real estate bubble. When I compare rental and sale prices there with what I remember from the 70s, the current numbers are in line with overall inflation. A $100 apartment then is $700…
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This is why
Protos notes that the bettors in Polymarket are increasing the odds of Jesus returning this year. The odds are still extremely small. It turns out that they’re not really betting on Jesus, they’re working a supercomplex superweird linkage of strategic steps to gain a slight arbitrage advantage. The bet itself isn’t on Jesus: The “odds”…
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The answer, three ways
The Canadians and the new pope have figured out how to deal with a psychopath. The idiot US Dems and “journalists” aren’t even close to thinking about the right solution. They’re stuck on screeching and suing and insulting the customers, which will only make things worse. Henry Ford and FDR had the right answer to…
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Stretching the point
Stretching the point a bit, the Post Office belongs in the same category as Bell. It’s a government regulated monopoly, selling services for a profit but firmly required to serve public purposes. So it does. The public purpose works at the supplier end as well as the customer end. The PO buys its trucks from…
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Tally sticks
= = = = = MEDIEVAL METROLOGY PART 2 = = = = = In the first part of Medieval Metrology I showed a medieval ruler for measuring length, as used by the ale tasters. It was notched in fractional parts but not numbered. The ruler bears a close resemblance to the medieval way of…
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Metrology Day 2025
Today is Metrology Day, so I’ll maintain my long tradition. = = = = = MEDIEVAL METROLOGY PART 1 = = = = = This year I’m focusing on the medieval way of thinking as illuminated by Sherri Olson. Medieval villages embodied Natural Law. = = = = = REVIEWING: The Almighty has created this…
Polistra's Mill 