Archive for November, 2003

The County of Los Angeles has requested that equipment vendors avoid using the industry term “Master/Slave” in product descriptions and labelling.

This post is mostly for my reference. I responded at a local forum in answer to some questions about the nature of wages and the effects of productivity improvements. I don’t have much experience debating economics (as opposed to capitalism) so suggestions are welcome…
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VodkaPundit: “I’ve always joked that Jews who don’t stay Jews end up as either communists or Objectivists.”
How true. I have two compounding explanations for this: (a) For historical and cultural reasons, Jews are more educated and intellectual than the average citizen, so they are more included towards participating in two the dominant philosophical trends of our time: Marxism, and it’s opposite: Objectivism. They are also more intelligent than the public (for social rather than biological reasons I’d say) so they are more likely to seek and adopt the root of the philosophical tendencies they are exposed to. (b) A history of persecution and holding unpopular minority beliefs had led many former Jews towards more radical social solutions, especially utopian ones. Ironically, this led Jewish intellectuals to be some of the strongest supporters of the Weimar-era philosophical and political movements that brought about Fascism. It also created the utopian socialist vision that brought about the State of Israel, for better or worse.

Sold Brides Endure And (Barely) Survive: To flee oppression, many North Korean women escape to marry Chinese men. Here are two tales of desperation.

Fox News analyst Mansoor Ijaz:

Al-Zawahiri was seen within the last two weeks, and bin Laden was spotted in July, says the network’s foreign affairs analyst Mansoor Ijaz.
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Iran’s provision of safe harbor, finances and logistical support for al-Qaida is a measure to counter the possibility that U.S. action in that region could result in democracies on both sides of the country, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ijaz said a warlord who controls Afghanistan’s western provinces, Gulbuddin Hektmayer, is working with al-Qaida on a plan to bring a large army of Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops into Afghanistan during the winter months to attack U.S. interests and to try to take control of the entire country.

Iran does not want to see us succeed in building a democracy in Afghanistan under any circumstances,’ he said.
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‘But it was my judgment,’ he said, ‘that it was vitally important for the broader part of our government’s decision-making apparatus to know exactly what it is that’s going on there, because it’s very clear that the Iranians are trying desperately to not only hang on to power, but to fuel the terrorist enterprise in that part of the world.’

Last year, I started watching 1979-era Battlestar Galactica episodes on the SciFi channel. The show was pretty decent, and when I heard that a new series was being made, I was initially excited. Then I read the intro: