tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41166892009-12-29T10:39:58.092-05:00<strong>Isegoria</strong> - From the ancient Greek, equality in freedom of speechIsegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.netBlogger5000125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-41425380707045970232009-12-29T10:38:00.000-05:002009-12-29T10:38:00.135-05:00

Builders are zero-ing in on net-zero housing — whether or not it makes economic sense: In Greenfield, Mass., where Rural Development is putting up duplexes, the premium for a net-zero home is as much as 15%. For example, it has one three-bedroom home on the market for $240,000, compared with about $203,000 for a comparable home without net-zero features, says Anne Perkins, a Rural Development

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-79410114453869776702009-12-29T09:16:00.000-05:002009-12-29T09:16:00.533-05:00

James Rummel cites a most astonishing op-ed from the Miami Herald that reveals something shocking — other countries may have goals that conflict with ours! What knocks me for a loop is how Ms. Ghitis patiently goes through this indescribably obvious concept, explaining it in small words as if her readers have the same mental development as five year olds. It appears as if she was taken by

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-22148655642532154412009-12-29T08:19:00.001-05:002009-12-29T08:20:12.516-05:00

Researchers have found an antibody that hunts down prostate cancer cells in mice: When injected in mice, F77 bonded with tissue where prostate cancer was the primary cancer in almost all cases (97 percent) and in tissue cores where the cancer had metastasized around 85 percent of the time.It recognized even androgen-independent cancer cells, present when prostate cancer is incurable, the study by

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-36689115503634449922009-12-29T08:10:00.001-05:002009-12-29T08:11:10.856-05:00

A Detroit-area lawyer claims to have seen a well-dressed older Indian man helping the Nigerian bomber past the boarding gate, complicating the Detroit bomber narrative — but that's not what puzzles Brian Doherty: I still find the most suspicious fact of this whole incident that 257 people were flying from Amsterdam to Detroit, a city that is by most accounts deader than Mu and Atlantis combined,

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-1889436231548920802009-12-28T20:50:00.001-05:002009-12-28T20:50:29.690-05:00

Double-crossing the CIA sounds like risky business, but a programmer did just that. Dennis Montgomery conned both the CIA and the Pentagon into buying bogus anti-terror code: In December 2003, DHS secretary Tom Ridge announced a terror alert based on intelligence from “credible sources” about imminent attacks that “could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11.” Dozens of

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-75418047319005763442009-12-28T12:31:00.001-05:002009-12-28T12:32:04.051-05:00

Joel Johnson describes the secret lives of Amazon's elves — "workcampers" who park their RVs near Amazon's fulfillment center in Coffeyville, Kansas: "From what the agency people had told us, Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa," says Chris. "There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious about the job."Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-75390823888967056732009-12-28T09:53:00.001-05:002009-12-28T09:54:26.812-05:00

The sky’s the limit for China’s DIY aviators, Michele Travierso says: These garage builders and innovators are, like their products, often called shanzhai. Literally translated, it means “mountain strongholds,” but it has come to mean nonprofessional or clandestine manufacturers turning out products from the basic to the highly sophisticated. These shanzhai often take familiar products, concepts

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-60447654527721381902009-12-28T09:43:00.001-05:002009-12-28T09:44:15.461-05:00

Bryan Caplan calls Deborah Spar (The Baby Business) a democratic fundamentalist, because she (supposedly) supports whatever regulation emerges from the political process: My objection is simple: Almost all of the regulatory evils I've listed are ultimately caused by "political debate." The public irrationally opposes technological innovation and mutually advantageous exchange in the baby market.

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-40023255924944029322009-12-28T09:12:00.001-05:002009-12-28T09:12:42.825-05:00

The clock is ticking for the death of Gary, Indiana, says T.M. Lutas: State law imposes property tax caps on all local governments far below the level Gary has grown accustomed to. Gary finances 80% of its $80M+ general fund operations through the use of property taxes. A vote on including the tax caps in Indiana’s Constitution is widely expected in 2010.[...]Complicating matters are at least

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-90465725690550160752009-12-27T16:44:00.002-05:002009-12-28T18:22:44.911-05:00

Curzon has compiled links to the articles that became Robert Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy — they're now available through The Atlantic's archives: The Coming AnarchyWas Democracy Just a Moment? (blog post here)Idealism Won’t Stop Mass MurderSpecial IntelligenceAnd Now for the News: The Disturbing Relevance of Gibbon’s Decline and FallProportionalism: A Realistic Approach to Foreign PolicyKissinger

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-14050197183898623112009-12-25T11:08:00.001-05:002009-12-25T11:08:25.624-05:00

The Swedish Chef, Beaker, and Animal perform the Ringing of the Bells:

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-54287269847261266392009-12-24T09:34:00.000-05:002009-12-24T09:34:00.460-05:00

Wretchard tells a tale of genocidal American imperialists — and data gathered by one's own lying eyes: Once upon a time I was sitting with some guys who were excoriating the “genocidal American imperialist”. So I asked them a question: how many people do you actually know who’ve been killed by a genocidal American soldier? Nobody could mention a single instance. “Ok,” I said, “how many people do

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-72525797282208743832009-12-23T09:21:00.000-05:002009-12-23T09:21:00.595-05:00

Respect means different things in different cultures, Wretchard reminds us: I think I’ve told the story of running into a Sulu Muslim named “Pershing”. Upon inquiry the man (who was a high ranking sort of guy) explained his grandfather had named him after the toughest hombre he could think of.My guess is that the Afghans would understand the idea that Americans were retaliating for an attack

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-90073825622380852862009-12-22T12:23:00.000-05:002009-12-22T12:23:00.163-05:00

Why are Europeans white? Because they live in a not-so-sunny region, far from the equator, of course — but there's more to it, Frank Sweet claims: Northern Europeans are lighter than everyone to the south (Mediterraneans), to the east (Mongols and east-Asians), to the west (Native Americans across the Atlantic), and to the North (Inuit, Sammi, Chukchi, Aleut).Clearly, there once was a factor at

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-41090796129984679852009-12-22T09:17:00.000-05:002009-12-22T09:17:00.135-05:00

The fact that the US Air Force was broadcasting unencrypted video feeds from its drones raises some questions about the USAF's management philosophy: The Navy evolved from a situation where when the ship was over the horizon, it was gone. No calling it back except with another ship and no real hope in that case of catching the first. Further, the first ship had to have the authority to do what

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-77886206453981857752009-12-22T08:58:00.000-05:002009-12-22T08:58:00.065-05:00

When will white people stop making movies like Avatar?, Annalee Newitz asks: This is a classic scenario you've seen in non-scifi epics from Dances With Wolves to The Last Samurai, where a white guy manages to get himself accepted into a closed society of people of color and eventually becomes its most awesome member. But it's also, as I indicated earlier, very similar in some ways to District 9.

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-39234717655617505792009-12-22T08:43:00.000-05:002009-12-22T08:43:02.070-05:00

Clive Thompson explains how success killed Duke Nukem: To videogame fans, that logo is instantly recognizable. It’s the insignia of Duke Nukem 3D, a computer game that revolutionized shoot-’em-up virtual violence in 1996. Featuring a swaggering, steroidal, wisecracking hero, Duke Nukem 3D became one of the top-selling videogames ever, making its creators very wealthy and leaving fans absolutely

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-77697327534427172922009-12-21T21:18:00.001-05:002009-12-21T21:18:51.409-05:00

What does a Nor’easter look like from space? White. Lots of white. The Mid-Atlantic states were completely white on Sunday, December 20, 2009, in the wake of a record-breaking snow storm. The storm deposited between 12 and 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. on December 19, according to the National Weather Service. For many locations, the snowfall totals broke records

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-58232828873321128422009-12-21T14:42:00.002-05:002009-12-21T14:45:38.632-05:00

Asking a question like, Do balrogs have wings?, is one way to recapture the feel of medieval theological disputation: However much fan art depicts it, for the true Lord of the Rings fanboy, there’s only one definitive source: the book itself. What does Fellowship have to say for itself?Exhibit D: ‘His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings.’The

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-26966080668933683452009-12-21T14:19:00.002-05:002009-12-21T15:55:52.045-05:00

Steve Blank's latest headline did its job and pulled me in — The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free: Last week as a favor to a friend, I sat in on a board meeting of a fairly successful 3½ year-old startup. Given all that could go wrong in this economy, they were doing well. Their business had just crossed cash flow breakeven, had grown past 50 employees, just raised a

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-42426682463626948192009-12-21T14:01:00.000-05:002009-12-21T14:01:00.340-05:00

In the twentieth century, the big-brained female — femina sapiens — found herself living in an utterly reshaped habitat, Kay S. Hymowitz reminds us: “Consider a typical woman born around 1900,” [Stefania Albanesi and Claudia Olivetti] write. “She married at 21 and gave birth to more than three live children between age 23 and 33. The high fetal mortality rate implied an even greater number of

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-67003867868128895672009-12-21T13:33:00.000-05:002009-12-21T13:33:00.351-05:00

Erik Prince — tycoon, contractor, soldier, spy — founded Blackwater with a much more limited concept that it outgrew after 9/11: Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina — not exactly a hotbed of the defense-contracting world.In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical James

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-52185593368703943402009-12-21T12:02:00.000-05:002009-12-21T12:02:00.615-05:00

Claiborne Pell — of Pell Grant fame — died at age 90 earlier this year: What the encomiums to Pell failed to mention is that his grants have been, in all the ways that matter most, a failure. As any parent can tell you, colleges are increasingly unaffordable. Students are borrowing at record levels and loan default rates are rising. More and more low-income students are getting priced out of

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-45149261209738836632009-12-21T10:56:00.000-05:002009-12-21T10:56:00.759-05:00

Michael Marshall shares five laws of human nature — including Parkinson's law and Student syndrome — with various sub-laws: Parkinson's lawCivil servant, historian and theorist Cyril Northcote Parkinson suggested in a 1955 article that work expands to fill the time available for its completion – backed up with statistical evidence drawn from his historical research. More recent mathematical

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224isegoria@isegoria.nettag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-78816270918384335602009-12-20T14:34:00.001-05:002009-12-20T14:35:26.006-05:00

James Gurney (Dinotopia) notes that if you want to draw portraits of great apes, you have to approach them in the proper way: You can’t just march up to a great ape enclosure and start staring at them, or they’ll get all shy and disgusted and turn their back on you, because staring is a threat to them.Yesterday we went to the North Carolina Zoo, the third largest zoo in the U.S.A. We got there

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