Book It

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Other Columns

≈ Comments Off on Book It

Tags

Mental Floss composed a list of the “best book stores” in every state. I detected a slight leaning or agenda at work. But, hey, it’s books. Read ’em if you can.

20. THE BEST BOOKSTORE IN MARYLAND: SECOND STORY BOOKS // ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND

Second Story Books’s cavernous warehouse in this Washington, D.C. suburb is crammed with used books, rare volumes, antiquarian collections, art and antiques, and much more, all arranged in delightfully specific categories (Byzantine studies or polar exploration, anyone?). Be ready to hunt for buried treasure at 50 percent off the cover price. There’s another, smaller location in D.C.’s Dupont Circle neighborhood too.

Other Maryland Bookstores We Love: The Book Escape (Baltimore), Ukazoo Books (Towson), Normal’s Books and Records (Baltimore)

I noticed some conspicuous absences: Main Street Book Store, Starkville, MS, that second-hand place, McCormick, SC, Andover Books, Andover, MA, the very decent shop at Newburyport, MA, etc. And, of course, there are the ones we lost, like Oxford of Atlanta.

Go read something.

Keep Driving and Driving and Driving…

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on Keep Driving and Driving and Driving…

Tags

, , ,

How many times must I call for a ban on fully-automatic assault trucks before someone (else) gets killed? When will our “leaders” step up for the children? Have we learned nary a thing from Christchurch?

Nothing to see here I guess.

Rondell Henry, 28, of Germantown, Maryland, has been charged with interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, but in court documents authorities allege a much more sinister intention.

According to authorities, Henry claimed to law enforcement that he was inspired by the Islamic State when he stole a U-Haul van looking to use it as a weapon.

“I was just going to keep driving and driving and driving. I wasn’t going to stop,” he told law enforcement officers after his arrest, according to court documents filed in his case.

On his phone, authorities found “images of gun-wielding ISIS fighters, the ISIS flag, and the Pulse nightclub shooter” who killed 49 people at the Orlando bar three years ago.

Authorities said Henry told them he wanted to create what he allegedly called “panic and chaos” like the attack on pedestrians in Nice, France, in 2016, when a terrorist killed 86 people and wounded 450 others when he drove a 19-ton truck into a crowd celebrating a local holiday.

Trump, at the very least, could give us a ban on automatic transmissions in trucks, which “bump” the rate of shifting dramatically. The MSM can do their part by calling out all the supremacist hate by the … nevermind … just saw Mr. Henry’s picture. Memory hole.

Masters Tuesday 2019

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Other Columns

≈ Comments Off on Masters Tuesday 2019

Tags

,

It wouldn’t be the practice rounds without the weather.

Gates opened as scheduled this morning at Augusta National Golf Club for Tuesday’s practice round.

Steady rain has been falling all morning, and the forecast calls for continued rain with some shorter breaks before more rain moves in later this morning.

The forecast calls for the chance of strong storms this afternoon with heavy downpours, small hail and gusty winds.

Wednesday’s Par-3 Contest forecast looks good with sunny and warm temperatures expected.

The weather for the first round of the 83rd Masters on Thursday is expected to be partly cloudy and warm.

– The Chronicle

The National

God Save The Queen!

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Comments Off on God Save The Queen!

Tags

, , ,

Thank Heaven that Britain has a strong monarch in Her Majesty, Elizabeth (Alexandra Mary) the Second, of the House of Windsor, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, and Defender of the Faith. I for one was very worried that Meghan and Harry’s baby was going to go vegan on us.

With Her Majesty, 92, well-known for her love of hunting – it’s been the palace’s prized sport for hundreds of years – bringing up a child in the Windsor household who eats only plant-based foods really goes against the royal grain.

“The Queen won’t have it,” a source tells Woman’s Day.

“It’s created tense discussions between Meghan and Harry, who doesn’t want to upset his grandmother.

“He’s hoping Meghan will settle once the baby comes and he’s putting this latest polarising idea down to heightened emotions while being pregnant.”

So glad that’s settled. This matter was much more pressing than, say, trivial issues like Brexit, the ongoing invasion and conquest, and the literal conversion of Great Britain into Airstrip One. Good job, Jerry Jane.

Moral Duty and The Great Charter

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

≈ Comments Off on Moral Duty and The Great Charter

Tags

, , , ,

In this sense, they don’t go together.

‘MORAL DUTY’

Last week, Mr Zuckerberg told politicians in Ireland that the company would work with governments to establish new policies in a bid to regulate social media.

The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid added that tech firms had a “moral duty” to protect the young people they “profit from”.

“Despite our repeated calls to action, harmful and illegal content – including child abuse and terrorism – is still too readily available online,” he said.

“That is why we are forcing these firms to clean up their act once and for all. I made it my mission to protect our young people – and we are now delivering on that promise.”

A 12-week consultation of the proposals will now take place before the Government will publish its final proposals for legislation.

The Government said the proposed regulator would have a legal duty to pay due regard to innovation, as well as to protect users’ rights online.

Social networks have failed to prioritise children’s safety and left them exposed to grooming, abuse, and harmful content

Peter Wanless, NSPCC

Peter Wanless, chief executive of children’s charity the NSPCC – which publicly backed the idea regulation in February, said the proposals would make the UK a “world pioneer” in protecting children online.

“For too long social networks have failed to prioritise children’s safety and left them exposed to grooming, abuse, and harmful content,” he said.

“So it’s high time they were forced to act through this legally binding duty to protect children, backed up with hefty punishments if they fail to do so.

“We are pleased that the Government has listened to the NSPCC’s detailed proposals and we are grateful to all those who supported our campaign.”

However, former culture secretary John Whittingdale warned minister risked dragging people into a “draconian censorship regime” in their attempts to regulate internet firms.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he said he feared the plans could “give succour to Britain’s enemies”, giving them an excuse to further censor their own people.

“Countries such as China, Russia and North Korea, which allow no political dissent and deny their people freedom of speech, are also keen to impose censorship online, just as they already do on traditional media,” he said.

“This mooted new UK regulator must not give the despots an excuse to claim that they are simply following an example set by Britain, where civil liberties were first entrenched in Magna Carta 800 years ago,” he said.

FB outrage of the day (again, told ya so) and woe unto GB.

Debt and the New Dark Age

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Comments Off on Debt and the New Dark Age

Tags

, , , ,

Vox Day and Michael Hudson have it right about the doom of debts in society.

Jesus wasn’t just talking about sin when he told us to pray for the forgiveness of our debts. That’s one of the reasons the Pharisees hated him so much. Michael Hudson is interviewed concerning a very important trilogy of economic history he is writing:

MH: The key public concern throughout history has been to prevent debt from crippling society. That aim is what Babylonian and other third-millennium and second-millennium Near Eastern rulers recognized clearly enough, with their mathematical models. To make an ideal society you need the government to control the basic utilities — land, finance, mineral wealth, natural resources and infrastructure monopolies (including the Internet today), pharmaceuticals and health care so their basic services can be supplied at the lowest price.

All this was spelled out in the 19th century by business school analysts in the United States. Simon Patten [1852-1922] who said that public investment is the “fourth factor of production.” But its aim isn’t to make a profit for itself. Rather, it’s to lower the cost of living and of doing business, by providing basic needs either on a subsidized basis or for free. The aim was to create a low-cost society without a rentier class siphoning off unearned income and making this economic rent a hereditary burden on the economy at large. You want to prevent unearned income.

To do that, you need a concept to define economic rent as unearned and hence unnecessary income. A well-managed economy would do what Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Marx and Veblen recommended: It would prevent a hereditary rentier class living off unearned income and increasing society’s economic overhead. It’s okay to make a profit, but not to make extractive monopoly rent, land rent or financial usury rent.

JS: Will human beings ever create such a society?

MH: If they don’t, we’re going to have a new Dark Age.

If an executive order and some attendant regulations can ban bump stocks, then some similar measures could easily make debt (all of it) illegal. Usurers would turn in their notes to the police to be destroyed. Future usury would become a felony. There’s also bankruptcy; if Congress could be bothered to govern, they could involuntarily draft everyone (including the US government, the states, and the cities) into court for mandatory clean-slating.

Or we could just have the dark age.

Americans Are Addicted to Social Idiocy

07 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Comments Off on Americans Are Addicted to Social Idiocy

Tags

, , , ,

A new poll indicates that Farcebook, Twitbook, and other social media operations are every bit as hypnotic and mind-altering and dangerous as television. People know there’s a problem but they can’t break the habit.

The American public holds negative views of social-media giants like Facebook and Twitter, with sizable majorities saying these sites do more to divide the country than unite it and spread falsehoods rather than news, according to results from the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

What’s more, six in 10 Americans say they don’t trust Facebook at all to protect their personal information, the poll finds.

There’s more.

According to the poll, 57 percent of Americans say they agree with the statement that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter do more to divide the country, while 35 percent think they do more to bring the nation together.

Fifty-five percent believe social media does more to spread lies and falsehoods, versus 31 percent who say it does more to spread news and information.

Sixty-one percent think social media does more to spread unfair attacks and rumors against public figures and corporations, compared with 32 percent who say it does more to hold those public figures and corporations accountable.

And a whopping 82 percent say social media sites do more to waste people’s time, versus 15 percent who say they do more to use Americans’ time well.

Wait for it.

But those numbers also come as nearly seven in 10 Americans — 69 percent — say they use social media at least once a day.

They don’t trust it. They know it’s not good for them. But they use it anyway. I can quit anytime I want! There’s more still.

The NBC/WSJ poll also finds Americans are down on Facebook, with 60 percent saying they don’t trust the company at all to protect personal information.

…

By contrast, the percentage of Americans not trusting companies or institutions with their personal information is lower for Amazon (28 percent), Google (37 percent) and the federal government (35 percent).

And by a 74 percent-to-23 percent margin, respondents say that social media companies collecting users’ personal data to allow advertisers to target them is not an acceptable tradeoff for free or lower-cost services.

Overall, 36 percent of adults view Facebook positively, while 33 percent see it negatively. And Twitter’s rating is 24 percent positive, 27 percent negative.

The people are twice as trusting of government as they are of Faceberg, while still taking copious advantage of the “benefits” of both. A slight majority say there’s no need to trust-bust the social tech monopolies. One frequent argument against that drastic action is that the socials are private companies ergo, leave them alone (to be evil).

Dear Libertarians, Whig Partiers, Tide Pod-eaters, and others: Farcebook is a corporation. Corporations are government-sanctified entities or fake persons. Government, on the other hand, is Faceberg with a gun.

And. What’s the great benefit to all the gibberish and stupidity of the socials? Does everyone search daily for long-form articles to read? No. Do they make use of the astounding research capabilities of the digital age? No. Self-improvement? No. It’s all cat videos, memes, pictures (of your kids…), echo chambering, cat videos, porn, gambling, and triviality. A giant, all-seeing, privacy-risking, literally mind-numbing (I mean literally a digital narcotic) waste of time.

Delete the accounts.

A suggestion for the neurological sciences-minded or professionals: conduct a brain scan study to map the effects, live or long-term, of social media usage. Maybe try t track who is and who isn’t more susceptible to harm. Write a paper. Win a prize. Give me credit. We’ll Tweet about it.