Peter Recommends CXVI
No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children–in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.
14 Responses to “Peter Recommends CXVI”
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Peter Recommends CXV
I want you all to know that I just read through the whole thing with interest, quite impressed, and with a general sort of “aw shucks” sort of attitude about it. Then I hit the last paragraph and wanted to weep.
3 Responses to “Peter Recommends CXV”
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PJ Nasser Says:
March 25th, 2006 at 2:43 pmThanks, Ninme. Thank you, Peter. It’s almost embarassing how grateful I feel after reading that, and getting lots of warm cuddlies.
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ninme Says:
March 25th, 2006 at 11:36 pmHey, just thinking about it these 34 hours later makes me suddenly remember something busying I had to go and do.
(But good heavens doesn’t it just.. just… waaaah)
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Rueful Red Says:
March 26th, 2006 at 1:55 amWaaaaaahhhh!!!
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Peter Recommends CXIV
Hoover Digest - Low Taxes Do What? by Thomas Sowell
Professor Bhagwati was exceptional among leading economists in understanding the need to confront gross misconceptions of economics in the general public, including the so-called educated public. Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and Gary Becker are other such exceptions in addressing a wider general audience, rather than confining what they say to technical analysis addressed to fellow economists and their students. By and large, the economics profession fails to educate the public on the basics, while devoting much time and effort to narrower and even esoteric research.
Yer tellin me.
International trade has no monopoly on economic illiteracy. One of the apparently invincible fallacies of our times is the belief that President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts caused the federal budget deficits of the 1980s. In reality, the federal government collected more tax revenue in every year of the Reagan administration than had ever been collected in any year of any previous administration. But there is no amount of money that Congress cannot outspend. Here again, the confusion is due to a simple failure to define terms. …
At the state and local levels, this confusion of tax rates and tax revenues has led some local politicians to see higher tax rates as the answer to budget problems, even though higher tax rates can drive businesses out of the city or state, with adverse effects on the total amount of tax revenues collected.
Hey so they wanna raise property taxes in Seattle again. Completely unrelated, of course. Just thought I’d throw that in there.
Oh and don’t miss the next point about price controls!
19 Responses to “Peter Recommends CXIV”
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Brett_McS Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:40 amThomas Sowell is a gem. A Bastiat of our time.
He occassionaly remarks how, at 75, he is still very fit, courtesy of modern medicine. When cycling along, he remembers, as a small child, how he used to ride his bike through the neighborhood and see these old men always sitting on the porches, blankets on the knees, practically inert. Then he thinks, they were the same age that I am now. Classic!
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Rueful Red Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:49 amThough it’s not just modern medicine - it’s better housing, better diet and perhaps most important of all that fuller life that comes from being able to engage with ideas and the wider world. These are things which people can only earn for themselves and they cannot be provided by the state - on the contrary, a state-run system has a positive self-interest in maintaining people in a miserable clienthood. Which is why we’ve now got an hereditary underclass in this country.
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Rueful Red Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:53 amPS Not the same Bastiat as played number 8 for France in the seventies? What a beast, he looked a bit like that Russian wrestling bloke in that computer game, only bigger and uglier.
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HalfEmpty Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:54 amAll that and the eradication of ringworm.
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Rueful Red Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:05 amYes indeed - there are any number of diseases our parents’ generation used to get and we don’t - tuberculosis for one.
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ninme Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:56 amI was having a similar discussion (about the horrors of disease back when) with my mother and aunt a couple years ago, and I said “You know what I don’t get, you know how a girl can get a UTI at the drop of a hat if she doesn’t wash six times a day, and has to load up with antibiotics, why on earth didn’t the entire female population drop dead back when they didn’t wash six times a year, much less a day, and obviously didn’t get any antibiotics to clear things up” and my aunt said that apparently we had so many parasites swimming around the body that they’d gobble up any infection before it spread. Isn’t that disgusting?
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Rueful Red Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:05 amNo, perfectly natural. It’s the kids who’ve never so much as swallowed a handful of dirt who are wandering round with immune systems that can’t repel a sniffle. My Dad had the most enormous resistance to pretty well everything the average bug could come up with, acquired during a childhood of picturesque rural poverty. He wasn’t so much a bloke as an ecosystem.
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ninme Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:00 amBut parasites! Like, little worms swimming around the body! Down there!
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Brett_McS Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:31 pmAnyone in a non-fiction mood could check out The Life That Lives On Man. Interesting reading. Spooky photos.
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ninme Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:59 pmOn Man I can deal with. It’s the In Man that freaks me out. Except bacteria. I like our friends the bacteria. One thing no one’s ever been able to explain to me: when you take an antibiotic, does that kill all the good bacteria too?
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HalfEmpty Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:17 pmBacteria are here to Serve Man. But! Hark! To the point! A dear old family friend Mrs. Cooksey (don’t call me Mabel) being of sound mind, sounder body and very Catholic delivered up to this world 11 wonderful yoofs. Sez she stoped worrying about cleaning when she watched her 3rd 6 year old show her 4 year old how to squash a roach with a slice of bread.
They’re all happy. 11 Kids still alive, 36-55. All is well.
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ninme Says:
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:04 pmActually I was talking about parasites, not parasites.
(ba da boom!)
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Rueful Red Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 1:14 am“He prayeth best who loveth best All creatures great and small. The streptococcus is the test, I love him best of all.”
Hilaire Belloc
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Rueful Red Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 2:01 amA propos of nothing at all and completely off-thread, but in an honest attempt to maybe explain the nature of Anglo-Australian relations to our American cousins, here’s a story from the Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2006/03/24/scashe24.xml&sSheet=/sport/2006/03/24/ixsport.html
You can also link from that to pictures from the Ashes series!
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ninme Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 9:49 amThat couldn’t be where All creatures great and small come from.
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Rueful Red Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 9:58 amNo, that’s from an Anglican hymn by CF Alexander 1818-1895. Here it is off the web:
Refrain: All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.
Each little flower that opens, Each little bird that sings, He made their glowing colours, He made their tiny wings.
Refrain
The purple-headed mountain, The river running by, The sunset and the morning, That brightens up the sky;
Refrain
The cold wind in the winter, The pleasant summer sun, The ripe fruits in the garden, He made them every one;
Refrain
The tall trees in the greenwood, The meadows for our play, The rushes by the water, To gather every day;
Refrain
He gave us eyes to see them, And lips that we might tell How great is God Almighty, Who has made all things well.
All fine and good though connoisseurs will get a laugh from the fact that the following verse has been dropped from the hymn in that version:
The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate God made them high and lowly And ordered their estate.
Somehow that verse doesn’t get sung all that much nowadays.
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ninme Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 10:17 amI just realized (before reading that, I’ll have you know) it’s a line from the bible.
Tee-hee.
In my defense, I’m Catholic, and everyone knows that Catholics don’t learn the bible.
…
Yeah, that last verse isn’t quite as socialist’s paradise as they’d like.
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Rueful Red Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 11:48 amBible? Big black book from which they took readings in the Missal, isn’t it?
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HalfEmpty Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 3:38 pmThis is the kinda blog you can go off topic? Dang! Why didn’t anyone say so? I will soon treat with my favorite Crap Pay Receipts.
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Peter Recommends CXIII
“Holy crap, freaky” he says.
lakini malich - Jon seems crazy to be talking to his cat like that
An interesting thing…if you remove Garfield’s thought balloons, it goes from an unfunny comic to a rather sad, poignant story about a lonely man who has wasted his life talking to his cat.
Which he proves (at considerable cost to his free time, I’d say). Poor Jon.
One Response to “Peter Recommends CXIII”
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HalfEmpty Says:
March 16th, 2006 at 2:38 pmwho has wasted his life talking to his cat.
That’s a waste? Lizzie Borden begs to differ.
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Peter Recommends CXI
AP - Isaac Hayes Quits ‘South Park,’
Isaac Hayes has quit “South Park,” where he voices Chef, saying he can no longer stomach its take on religion. …
“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins,” the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.
Quoth Peter: “Burn”:
“South Park” co-creator Matt Stone responded sharply in an interview with The Associated Press Monday, saying, “This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology… He has no problem — and he’s cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians.”
Last November, “South Park” targeted the Church of Scientology and its celebrity followers, including actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, in a top-rated episode called “Trapped in the Closet.” In the episode, Stan, one of the show’s four mischievous fourth graders, is hailed as a reluctant savior by Scientology leaders, while a cartoon Cruise locks himself in a closet and won’t come out.
Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker “never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin.”
Hah!
I’m still not a South Park Republican.
In other Peter Recommendations for today:
- We have the AeroGarden: Grow gourmet herbs, salad greens, cherry tomatoes, chili peppers, cascading petunias, and international basils… aeroponically!
(I already joked to Peter that the dorm-room pot “seed pods” will only be available in Canada, but the joke bears repeating.)
- And, for car enthusiasts, screen shots from Mini’s
new upcomingapparently-already-exists-in-the-current-system-with-a-little-clever-reprogramming (see what you learn when you read?)downloadable program you then load onto your sat nav system (bloody hell) Sat Nav system. Yes yes, it’s very pretty.
7 Responses to “Peter Recommends CXI”
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Brett_McS Says:
March 13th, 2006 at 7:26 pm“Tom Cruise, come out of the closet”, was one of the songs from that episode. What were they trying to say?
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Brett_McS Says:
March 13th, 2006 at 10:55 pmIs the AeroGarden related to the Breatheairian sect? I wonder what ever happened to them? Oh, yeh..
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ninme Says:
March 13th, 2006 at 11:05 pmWhat? …on earth?
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Brett_McS Says:
March 13th, 2006 at 11:47 pmNever heard of Breathe-airians? (not sure of the spelling) It is/was a “religious” group that believed that air has all the necessary nutrients to sustain life. Therefore they don’t eat or drink (according to the spokesman). I think they came and went a few years ago.
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Brett_McS Says:
March 13th, 2006 at 11:53 pmA bit of checking. Breatheairians are based in India (surprise, surprise) and they do drink water. There’s a relief. No one is born into the sect.
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ninme Says:
March 14th, 2006 at 9:10 amWell, I never thought I’d run into a sect weirder than the one that thought urine was all you needed to survive.
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HalfEmpty Says:
March 14th, 2006 at 2:25 pmAll you need is Lou! Lou! All you need is Lou!
March 29th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
:> It harkens back to a prior recommendation of Peters. The awesome If Microsoft Did iPod.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Hehe
Yeah, that was a damned fine Peter Recommends.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
I agree about the Google, though. MSN is probably better now.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
I wouldn’t know. I don’t use M$N.
She says proudly, with a defiant toss of her head.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
I wish Microsoft did a ninme widget.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:33 am
No you don’t.
March 31st, 2006 at 12:49 am
OK I don’t. Why not? (Dunno about anyone else, but I prefer to agree with ninme straight away, it just saves so much time.)
March 31st, 2006 at 4:22 am
Bandwidth savings is huge.
March 31st, 2006 at 9:58 am
Because M$ sucks and it probably wouldn’t work properly or rather it wouldn’t work properly and poor Peter would chew through one of his belts trying to get it to work perfectly because everything he does he tests for both platforms on a variety of browsers which is something that’s never really occurred to the people at Microsoft but Peter has standards and then it would be perfect but it still wouldn’t be as nice as the one on the Mac because Microsoft does evil things to fonts. My blog on a PC is a hideous, hideous beast. I shudder to think of it.
March 31st, 2006 at 10:09 am
My blog on a PC is a hideous, hideous beast. I shudder to think of it.
Really, I think it looks very fine. I’d be curious to find the cost of such a design slightly modified.
March 31st, 2006 at 10:32 am
Does that mean I should log on a whatsit and see what it looks like?
March 31st, 2006 at 10:46 am
Yes you should. Or, I suppose I could post a screenshot, but that would probably be silly. Well, maybe not.
The cost of what design slightly modified?
April 1st, 2006 at 2:21 am
The blog design - if I should ever need such a thing.
April 1st, 2006 at 10:02 am
Oh, well, uh, I dunno. See mine is super-simple (boring, he calls it) but he still spent a bit of time doing the stripes and stuff, so I dunno. I could ask.