Who Were the Sea Peoples?

are you a little bothered by Obama ordering hits on US citizens, and that, as Greenwald notes, "not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality"?

Staring out the frames of the windows at my campus library yesterday, I wondered, "Did we get the idea of a picture from staring out of a cave and seeing a 'snapshot' of the world framed in the cave entrance? Is it a coincidence that the first painting appear amongst people who dwelt in caves?"

the Battle of Plassey , in which a private company fought the ruler of Bengal and used its victory to gain rule over the subcontinent of India! But... but... I thought private companies only engaged in voluntary transactions, and only governments conquered territories!

Might and Meaning The mood took me over the hill, Giving me some suchness to consider, But I didn't. Fuck suchness, and fuck The almighty God-worn meaning. I honor those who study meaning; That is a lost cause, for meaning Cannot be rectified, no matter what Your lexicographers are telling you, O mighty one. Speaking of meaning, I didn't mean this to be an appeal To you for support, O mighty one, But now that it is, please give generously. Can we not describe this differently, O mighty one? I shall of course Lie however blatantly you desire, O mighty one. But, if I may presume, Think of your subject public: it may not matter What they think, but their collective fear Is like smog, and, as for smog, Can be wiped away with good rule.

Jim Henley explains that it's the scum at CNN .

I'm really starting to like Emerald Publishing -- it seems like they're intending to publish several papers of mine per week. Today, we have The role of ideal types in Austrian business cycle theory .

Mio blogging in italiano ha diminuito severamente quando sono andato nel Regno Unito e mi non ho avuto mio dizionario italiano. Dovrei ottenere occupato.

Now in print , on Tony Lawson's philosophy of economics.

that spend hours a day waiting for other's of their kind to get out of their way?

So, now that I think I understand what these folks were thinking about, thanks to Thomas Sowell's On Classical Economics , let me describe the sort of scenario I believe that they had in mind. Imagine Bob Murphy, Silas Barta and I are living on a desert island. First Bob and I set Silas adrift at sea on a small raft while he's sleeping. (Just kidding, Silas! We love you, man.) Then we set about catching fish from the island's lagoon with our rough-hewn spears. In three hours a day, we each catch about five or six fish, enough to feed us well. Then we spend the rest of the day discussing teleology. One day, Silas says, "Guys, we don't work that much. We could really increase our productivity if we worked six hours a day." Bob and I reluctantly go along. That day, we each catch a dozen fish, but are too tired to discuss teleology. We each eat six of the fish and feel decently full. We eat three more each, and now we're stuffed. We take our last three ...

I was watching The Visitor (a movie that starts with an economist leaving Connecticut to present a paper at NYU -- at first I thought it might be a movie about Bill Butos), which turned out to be a very nice movie, despite being about feelings . But there was one scene where the younger Syrian drummer who is a major character is giving the economist drum lessons, and he says to him: "Walter, you're a very smart guy, but I have to tell you, don't think. Thinking only gets in the way of drumming." Man, the errors one can fall into through a lack of study of British Idealist philosophers! You hear the same thing regarding athletics, and its equally wrong in both areas. Having had some minor success as a musician and a swimmer, I can say you perform best when you are thinking intensively, exclusively, about your playing or swimming. But you have to be thinking musically or swimmingly , and not thinking abstract, verbal thoughts about playing or swimming. That's ...

I am reading Thomas Sowell's On Classical Economics , which I have thoroughly enjoyed so far. He was describing the debate between J.B. Say, on one side, and Thomas Malthus and Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi , on the other, over Say's Law . Sowell notes that these critics of Say's Law never suggested the possibility of a "permanent glut," but merely that there is an equilibrium level of aggregate income, and production might overshoot that at times. But John Stuart Mill never bothered to read Malthus or Sismondi on this point (he thought his father and Say had decisively refuted them, so there was no need), and he falsely attributed to them the idea of the permanent glut. "Hmm," I said to myself, "a vulgar, popular distortion of the ideas of economists who might appear to be market critics? I bet I know who gleefully repeated that!" So I pulled Rothbard's Classical Economics off of the shelf, and... man, I think I'm four-for-four i...

As explained here .

Is an attempt to replace human beings with "political machinery."

There has, of late, been a spate of Internet writing maintaining that " the policeman is not your friend ." Well, a listen a what me a see. I was book shopping at Waterstone's in Cardiff, checking out the "Staff Picks" near the front of the store. I noticed a couple of security guards furtively peering out upon the public square beyond the storefront and talking on their Secret-Service headsets. This got my attention. I paid for my book and went out and took a seat in the square. I sat down and pretended to read while I watched the action. There were three 12-year-olds being plenty furtive themselves, hiding behind trees, peeking at some bicycles. (I had heard security say, "They're going to take the orange one," and there was, indeed, an orange bike, so I knew I had my "men.") I stared at the obvious ringleader and shook my head a bit. Rather than getting my message, that he'd been spotted and should back off, he stared back and sa...

Stupid Willow Tree Stupid willow tree, your branches hang Down upon the muddy swampland, And I thrust myself into the situation, Wondering what it means To look like a shower of rain. In this dark water, like ghosts, Willow trees and their kin Add to the beautiful confusion Where no one can know What actually happened. Who cares? The sight is seen, the shallow Green water conceals nothing. And then? Onward into the next bayou. And then?

One Kiloyear One millisecond = one kiloyear divided by twenty-nine trillion four hundred and ninety-one billion two hundred million. One centisecond = one kiloyear divided by two trillion nine hundred and forty-nine billion one hundred and twenty million. One decisecond = one kiloyear divided by two hundred and ninety-four billion nine hundred and twelve million. One second = one kiloyear divided by twenty-nine billion four hundred and ninety-one million two hundred thousand. One dekasecond = one kiloyear divided by two billion nine hundred and forty-nine million one hundred and twenty thousand. One hectosecond = one kiloyear divided by two hundred and ninety-four million nine hundred and twelve thousend. One kilosecond = one kiloyear divided by twenty-nine million four hundred and ninety-one thousand two hundred. One myriasecond = one kiloyear divided by two million nine hundred and forty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty.

God Visits Hell God, in the Person of Jesus, Harrowed Hell. Does He ever go back? If He doesn't, what's the difference Between a billion and a trillion? Stupid priests: After awhile, how can Longer and more be worse? That's hardly eternal suffering; That's just eternity--not the same. Here's suffering: God calls down, "Can you meet Me for dinner?" Once every millisecond, Or every thousand years, for ever And ever. That's suffering. Stupid priests, May your drabs be dragged in God's mud.

Our financial masters have finally succeeding in stopping the loss of low-wage jobs to India, China, etc. By making the population of the US rust belt as poor as third-worlders, they can now practice near-sourcing !

It's amazing how many people have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that you can criticize an argument independently of whether you think the conclusion is sound. If someone says, "I believe the earth is round, because I like round things, and I like the earth!" they've presented a terrible argument. If you point that out to them, it's nonsense for them to come back with, "Ah, so you believe the earth is flat!"

Is perhaps an alternate name for the TV game show Family Feud , since every single time I've seen it, it features a black family against a white family. I even caught the French version the other night, and the French, not reluctant to follow us in this regard, also had a white versus black match.

Just finished Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life , his description of the Cambrian explosion and what he sees as the philosophical implications arising from those distant events. The science writing is very good, although I understand his conclusions are still disputed. But when Gould goes to draw the "implications" of the events he describes, what we get is typical scientistic nonsense. For instance, Gould contends that the very long time life has existed on Earth compared to the very short time, relatively speaking, that humans have existed demonstrates that the telos of life cannot been to have create humans. Yes, and I suppose if we can show that a composer spent twenty years composing, and then comes out with a one hour symphony, this demonstrates that the purpose of all that composing could not possibly have been the symphony, since the composing lasted so much longer than the symphony!

" A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies in the United Kingdom and Europe with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated ."

"There is but one source for science: It must come from the Medieval insistence on the rationality of God." -- Alfred North Whitehead

"True eloquence has no time for eloquence, true morality has no time for morality. In other words, the morality of judgement has no time for the random morality of mind. "For judgement is what goes with instinct, just as knowledge goes with mind. Intuition falls to the lot of judgmement, mathematics to that of mind." -- Pascal, Pensées UPDATE: I think Pascal is basically correct, but I would put this a little differently: I would say that instinct is a form of thought, and what he calls "mind" I would term "abstract thought."

In my hotel room there are two sinks and a shower. Both sinks are next to dispensers of hair and body wash. The only hand wash I can find is... in the shower! Also of note: The handles by which one opens the shower doors are not knobs but... holes. Now, I´m not one of those freedom fries people, but this is clearly an instance where, say, a Brooklyn construction manager would have come in handy: "Listen, Jean Pierre Avantgarde, do you realize the purpose of them friggin doors is to keep the water in the shower, and if youse cuts holes in em, youse defeatin the point?"

from trying to speak French in Paris: Lots and lots of free language lessons!

Who could have predicted, in, say 1300, that English would be the most widely spoken language in the world in a few hundred years? At that point the language was not only spoken on just one medium-sized island. It was also just one of the four major languages of that island (which included Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish), and it was not even the language of the rulers of the English people themselves. (They spoke Norman French.)

* The UK seems to have a show on that consists entirely in showing people sleeping. It was on two channels throughout much of the night. * An announcer on the BBC show Breakfast said, "And in disturbing news, it seems that four out of every ten victims of domestic violence are men." I was very unclear about what he found "disturbing" -- is it more women or more men he thinks should be victims?

And the seven drunken dwarves arrive at Nos Da:

Better in the US: Bar napkins are placed where the patrons can reach them. Better in the UK: Public toilets have windows, usually opened.

'Congratulations, Dr. Callahan.'

I am forced to use Internet Explorer 8 right now, because that is what Manchester Metropolitcan University has installed, and man, is it still awful. Crash Landing's new fonts look miserable. Both Crash Landing and blogger.com repeatedly crash the browser. Me.com runs like molasses. I have used Firefox, Safari, and Chrome at all these sites, and none of them crash, and they all run snappily. I am stunned that the eigth version of a Microsoft product can be so bad. But I shouldn't be: Word after 20 years still can't get styles right, and, as far as I know, Microsoft still hasn't figured out that the command line window should have scroll bars!

One guy writes that Glenn Beck teaches "his viewers the much-debunked idea that America's creation was rooted in Christianity." In response, another guy writes that it was so founded on Christianity. But no serious scholar of the period agrees with either of these disputants. The American Founding was along-simmered stew containing a variety of ingredients, amongst which 1) classical republicanism, 2) non-conformist Protestant ideology, and 3) Deist-tending Enlightenment philosophy were the most potent. Of course , any partisan can dig up a bunch of quotes from 2) and "demonstrate" that we are a Christian nation, or, from 3), to "debunk" that claim. And neither side, I'd guess, has any interest in hearing the truth. "Well, it's complicated," is not a position that can easily be turned into propaganda to hurl at your political foes.

I, too, thought of sacking Gordon Brown in 2004, and began drinking to put up with him.

From the front page of today's Metro : "This picture of a cuasually dressed [British Foreign Secretary] Mr. Hague with adviser Christopher Myers fuelled rumours of an affair." He was dressed casually while he was with the guy?! Well, that's that, then.