Profound: November 2007 Archives
Townhall.com: John Stossel: The Tragedy of the Commons
"When the Pilgrims first settled the Plymouth Colony, they organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share everything equally, work and produce.
"They nearly all starved."
GreenCanary: 4 Non Blonde Canaries
Some people are Doers. GreenCanary says she's a Do-Unto: "The realization that I am where I am because I allow things to happen TO me, rather than make things happen FOR me, is unsettling. And now I find that the path behind me is littered with bad decisions that prevent me from going back and starting over." A commenter says she's "too young to be engaging in this kind of recrimination." But you're never too young for recriminations.
World On the Web: Rules of engagement
Tony Woodlief explains how he's going to handle debate in the comboxes: "I will endeavor to exhibit, and will only engage in discourse with those who exhibit, the following qualities." Those are Civility, Logic, and Humility. About Civility he writes: "I think in a Comments forum, however, which endeavors to be something like a roundtable discussion, and where the participants know relatively little about one another's lives, I ought not to attribute motives, ridicule someone's point of view, or speak in a generally combative or mean-spirited manner. Civility doesn't require that I refrain from disagreeing with someone. It means that I begin with the assumptions that: 1) I may be the only Christ someone meets today; 2) the person I'm addressing has good motives; and 3) my responsibility is to make a valuable point, not to score points."
No Blog of Significance: Fat City
"The pitiful part is that it's just not that hard to avoid becoming morbidly obese. The whole key is to get some regular exercise, to move around. Exercise helps to regulate your appetite; muscle mass helps to regulate blood sugar and keep your metabolism high. It helps keep your cholesterol down and your blood pressure in a decent range. It is almost impossible to pound down calories so fast that a reasonably active person will become morbidly obese. So count on it--if you are morbidly obese, or getting there, you are not getting enough exercise. What you are calling exercise--ain't. If it was, you wouldn't be in danger of needing a belly ottoman..."
Defense and the National Interest: Boyd and Military Strategy
What is an OODA Loop and how does it affect our ability to succeed in war or any competitive situation? Here are a series of lectures given by the man who developed the concept. (Via Hugh Hewitt.)
"Did you catch that, nestled amidst the Cracker-barrel folksiness? 'My friends, we must remember that rights come from God, and not from Government.' It's already creating some buzz because it's a radical statement. And a true one. And a very important one." But it is not a new statement, notes See-Dubya, and he says, "It's big questions like this that I want to hear the answer to more than the small policy details. Like any battle plan, those small things won't survive first contact with the enemy (or the opposition, as the case may be). The principles might."
A final observation from See-Dubya: "One more thing--politically, this is an appealing position because it is religious and acknowledges God without being churchy or condescending or sappy. Compare these terse and reverent invocations of Deity to the showy treacle the Democratic candidates engage in when they take to the pulpits."
