The more I look into Referendum C, the more it blows my mind. I can't understand how someone would want to support this, and if they do... there's nothing keeping them from donating more of their own money to taxes.http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/316.htmlhttp://www.freedomworks.org/informed/issue...p?issue_id=2264
I've been reading things here and there about the EU mandating, on penalty of an incredible fine, that Microsoft ship its own product Windows without Microsoft's own media player and to reveal parts of its programming code to rivals. Microsoft has already settled with the U.S. Justice Department, revealing code and allowing PC makers and conumsers to hide the bundled software. All this in the name of 'fair competition'.
This isn't just about Microsoft, it's about property rights. Personally
Some interesting quotes from Mussolini that I've come across in my reading, judge for yourself how they apply to modern reality as you percieve it:
"Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
"Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are
I recently finished reading this book, and I have to say that at first I was almost disappointed with the ending and that something really bothered me about it. In fact, I kept thinking about it for a couple of days and realized that when the method of narration and the nature of the main character is taken into consideration, the story becomes something that is opposite of what the words in the book describe. This is the first time I've noticed that the physical method of delivery of a book can
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
I find this interesting because I love the writing of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden. Ultimate irony on several levels.
Volumes 1 and 2 of Murray Rothbard's History of Economic Thought:
1 Economic Thought Before Adam Smith
2 Classical Economics
This should keep me occupied for a long time.
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/struwwel/struwwel.html
I read this 19th century picture book (with these exact illustrations, but a different translation) when I was young, like my mother did and her parents did. What a trip...
Most universities have recently restriced access to their actual course lecture podcasts. Instead, they now typically offer boring crap or political keynote lectures. However, Berkeley still offers public access to complete semester course lectures going back several years. Hopefully, they keep it up.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php
I just picked up this album tonight and I'm really enjoying it, though I'm not sure that anyone reading this would...
As someone who's spent countless hours listening to the 20+ years worth of their music, I consider this to be some of the finest.
After finishing my last round of books, (one of which was 'Ilium' by Dan Simmons, the most enjoyable science fiction book I've read in a while) I picked up a few more to read. I like to read several books at once, not only because my obsessive attention to things swings wildly about, but also because even the most disparate books can sometimes profoundly enhance each other in strange ways.
Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
A History of Western Philosophy b
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
Geez, I seem to be turning into a subversive propaganda syndication. Weee! No really, I found this fascinating. Ever wonder what politicans talk about when they think the camera isn't rolling?
http://www.brasscheck.com/videos/spin.html
I usually do not watch much television. The exeptions are a few shows on the Discovery/History/Science channels and the sitcom, 'The Office.' Recently, I was looking at the dazzling array of crap that I pay a monthly fee for, trying to somehow justify the cost other than just accepting that my wife watches more tv than I do. As I was skipping through, I stumbled upon a show that at first seemed documentary-ish but was actually some footage of three guys exploring miles of tunnels underneath Pari
http://www.banksy.co.uk/
I just looked through the whole site at one sitting, and thought that some people here might enjoy some of it. Actually, the thing that I found most interesting wasn't any of the imagery, but one of the email responses:
Spoken like a 'true believer.' I might even be able to cut the irony with a knife.
China Defends Internet Controls
How transparent is this guy? I'm amazed that the people who witnessed this briefing did not laugh in his face at the contradictory stupidity that he spewed forth. While I agree that the U.S. government is over-stepping its power wrongly in some cases for the sake of its citizen's protection, you cannot correlate the freedom of private enterprises to censor their own productive work to the act of forcing them against their will to censor certain topics.
"H
The upgrade wasn't as smooth as I thought. Apparently, in the old forum version, the post formatting was saved with each post in the database and it does not get updated along with the upgrade. So... I spent a few hours writing and testing a script to go through each post and replace certain pieces of code and HOPEFULLY everything is solved.
Anyone interested in getting the script for their own upgrade can just PM me.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/a...us/tax_tussle_2I find it frightening that the most obvious solution for lack of efficacy from my state government is to just use more money. Maybe if I don't budget my income and use it wisely, my boss will just give me all his additional revenue for a few months. I'm pretty sure that would teach me how to use money wisely.
Where to start? I haven't been terribly active here lately, though I do check in roughly once a day. Interest in specifically Roman things has waned a bit an I find that I have less to contribute than normal, if that is possible I'm inescapably trapped in fervent book reading for the moment, to the point that any moment when I cannot read (any time that I'm driving) I'm engrossed in podcasts of academic lectures.
I've put a link to some of these in the block to the right. I'm currently lis
Vangelis is the first electronic music that I ever remember hearing. Needless to say, its made a huge impact on my musical tastes. Strap on your full size headphones and enjoy!
Like many people, I found the first few books in the Camulod Chronicles to be exceptional but I lost a little bit of interest in the latter books of the series. Not that any of the books were less than great, they were worth every penny in my opinion. It's just that the first books were so remotely distant from anything 'Arthurian' and so intimate with the lives of the Romans that the story was centered on.
Although the stories in subsequent volumes are intriguing and well written, it seems
Here's another little excerpt gleaned from the Underground History of American Education, recounting the influence, in China, of the same prominent ideologues that influenced much of our educational system.
From 'Education and the Philosophy of Experimentalism', John Childs - 1931
I recently read an article by Nathaniel Branden that nicely articulated a mass of something that has been in my mind, of which I could only grab bits and pieces when I attempted to understand it as a whole.
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/ar...untability.html
