Fri - August 10, 2007Is the End Game on the Economy Approaching?The Federal Reserve, trying to calm turbulent
asset markets, announced Friday that it will pump as much liquidity into the
U.S. financial system as is needed to prevent the ills of ever tightening credit
crunch. In keeping with this goal, the Fed dropped $38 billion of "temporary
reserves" into the system.
Posted at 08:54 PM Read More Sun - June 24, 2007Dogs Are Now Painting — Or Painting Has Gone to the DogsAnd why shouldn't Rover try his hand at painting?
Surely he can't do any worse than Jackson Pollock and the rest of the Advanced
Finger Painting and Paint Flingining Fraternity. But that's exactly what we
have, according to talk show host Dennis Prager.
Posted at 09:17 PM Read More Sun - June 17, 2007Review of Chris Nunn's "De La Mettrie's Ghost"De La Mettrie's
Ghost seeks to provide a scientific
explanation for free will. The books author, Chris Nunn, argues that "stories,"
recorded in memory, provide the nexus for choice. Unfortunately, this argument,
almost from the beginning, veers toward a sort of cultural determinism. The only
freedom that his account of human decision making allows for is an individual's
haphazard choice of which stories—i.e., which culturally determined
objects—are to dominate his life.
Posted at 06:31 PM Read More Mon - June 12, 2006Economy at the height of boomWe had all better enjoy the summer months,
because the economy almost certainly will begin getting worse by the fall.
Already, signs of rising inflation are becoming so persistent, that even Fed
chairman Bernard Bernanke has been forced to worry about it in
public.
Posted at 10:28 PM Read More Tue - April 11, 2006The insane pendantry of "queer studies"This is about as bad as it gets. Please keep a
barf bag by your side as you read the following.
Posted at 03:09 PM Read More Sun - April 9, 2006Oil demand cannot be met at current paceFinally, someone has hit the nail on the head.
Christophe de Margerie, head of exploration for Total and heir presumptive to
the French energy multinational, has stated quite clearly what should be obvious
right from the start: that the world lacks the means to produce oil to meet
rising demand over the next decade.
Posted at 02:30 PM Read More Wed - March 22, 2006A composers take on atonalityThe British composer Frederick Stocken has
recently published a short web-essay denouncing atonality in music. He compares
the avant-garde's fixation with atonality to Marxism, and roughs up the
avant-garde's golden boy of the late 20th century, Pierre Boulez. See the
article here:
Posted at 04:34 PM Read More Fri - February 17, 2006First "wild" malware hits OS XFinally, it has happened: OS X systems have
finally been visited by a piece of malware--a frequent visitor on Windows
systems. Curious, though, how it was spread: not through web browsers, or
through email clients, as per usual on Windows systems, but, initially at least,
through Mac rumors sites.
Posted at 01:33 PM Read More Tue - February 14, 2006Benchmarking Pentiums, G4s, G5s, and Virtual MachinesHaving recently run some tests on a Compaq PC
with a pentium 1.7 GHz x86 chip, running a virtual machine with Windows XP Home
installed, I thought it might be interesting to compare tests with similar tests
run on PPC chips.
G4 iMac: 700 mhz, 384 MB of RAM G5 iMac 1600 mhz, 1.25 GB of RAM Note: All tests of the G5 iMac are made with the processor settings set at "automatic" unless otherwise noted. Note (Feb 6, 2005): Added a few specs from a G4 Powermac. Posted at 02:58 PM Read More Thu - January 26, 2006"The Economist" not bullish on GreenspanIn an article entitled "Monetary Myopia" in
The
Economist, the editors of
the British news and economics magazine take aim at Alan Greenspan, whom they
say is over-rated. "On Mr Greenspan's watch, America has also experienced the
biggest stockmarket and housing bubbles in history,"
The
Economist points out. "Presiding over one
bubble could be seen as bad luck; presiding over two smacks of carelessness. The
Greenspan era will not end on January 31st. Instead, his legacy will linger in
the shape of the biggest economic imbalances in American history: a negative
household saving rate and a record current-account deficit. Until these
imbalances unwind—a process that could prove painful—it is too soon
to applaud Mr Greenspan's record."
Posted at 05:05 PM Read More Wed - January 18, 2006Microsoft intentionally put backdoor into WindowsAccording to the Security
Now! podcast ("Windows MetaFile Backdoor"), the recent Windows
metafile exploit, which placed fully patched Windows systems at risk of
infection merely by visiting a website, must have been put into the operating
system on purpose. While no one knows what the "purpose" of planting such an
exploit could possibly be, it is generally thought that it was done without
malice.
Posted at 09:09 PM Read More Thu - December 29, 2005Another Windows Security Flaw: "Zero-Day Exploit"Microsoft has issued yet another security
advisory, one which attacks fully patched system. Here's how it works. Thousands
of websites are distributing spyware that replaces the user's desktop background
with a message warning of a spyware infection. A prompt then appears asking the
user to enter credit card information to pay for a spyware cleaning application
to remove the offending spyware. In other words, spyware to remove the
spyware!
Posted at 11:21 AM Read More Wed - December 21, 2005Stalin's plan to cross apes with humansAccording to recently uncovered secret documents, the Soviet
dictator and mass murderer Josef Stalin ordered Russia's top animal breeding
"scientist," Ilya Ivanov, to create a "living war machine" to fill the ranks of
the Soviet Army. "I want a new invincible human being," Stalin told Ivanov,
"insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they
eat."
Posted at 09:34 AM Read More Tue - December 13, 2005Internet pornography and .xxx domainThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) has recently given up on supplying an .xxx domain for
pornography. Apparently, the decision came about as a result of 6,000 letters
sent to the Commerce Department, allegedly from a "cell" of evangelical
Christians—in particular, from a group calling itself "Concerned Women for
America" (CWA). No doubt, these well-intentioned women were seeking to combat
the ubiquity of pornography on the net. They were worried that the .xxx domain
would give pornographers a "new platform." What they accomplished, instead, by
agitating against the .xxx is to make it harder to control internet
pornography.
Posted at 04:27 PM Read More Fri - December 9, 2005Book Review: Blank SlateBlank
Slate by Steven
Pinker
This is one of the most important books to appear in recent decades. For most of the 20th century, social scientists have engaged in a long and fruitless denial of the biological factors influencing human behavior. Never mind that this denial goes against nearly everything expressed in great literature about human nature; nor that most of human history stands as testimony against it. Posted at 04:49 PM Read More |
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Published On: Oct 08, 2007 04:45 PM |
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