From James Buckley's Claremont Institute article:
...Over the years, however, our federal government has engaged in massive raids on the constitutional prerogatives of the states. Today there is virtually no governmental responsibility beyond the reach of federal authority. As a consequence, our nation has been converted into an administrative state overseen by unelected officials who issue regulations that reach into every corner of American life. Few appreciate the extent of this transformation. In 1935, at the outset of the New Deal, the United States Code consisted of a single volume containing 2,275 pages of statutes. Today, it comprises 30 volumes of statutory law. When I was in law school, Title 42, which contains the federal laws relating to public health and welfare, consisted of just 128 pages. Today it contains over 6,200 pages, more than twice as many as the entire body of federal law at the beginning of the New Deal.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
The China Game
One of Apple’s main manufacturing subcontractors is Foxconn. It’s the biggest company you’ve never heard of. They make electronic components and, in some cases, full pieces of assembled equipment. For example, Foxconn makes all of Apple’s iPhones and iPads. The company has just over a million—you read that right—employees. Its biggest factory is a facility in Szechuan that houses, literally, 420,000 workers. Employees eat, sleep, work, and play on the premises, a gated complex that sprawls for 1.16 square miles. Foxconn City, as it’s known, would be the 44th-largest city in America.
Read the rest of The Weekly Standard article here.
First Paragraph
Ever since Jack Aubrey had been dismissed from the service, ever since his name, with its now meaningless seniority, had been struck off the list of post-captains, it had seemed to him that he was living in a radically different world; everything was perfectly familiar, from the smell of the seawater and tarred rigging to the gentle heave of the deck under his feet, but the essence was gone and he was a stranger.
- From The Letter of Marque by Patrick O'Brian
- From The Letter of Marque by Patrick O'Brian
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Buttered Toast and Effective Communication
I was recently reminded of the event that George Orwell relates in his book on the Spanish Civil War. Both sides would shout slogans at one another across the "no man's land":
The man who did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative.' Buttered toast!'--you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt that, like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past, but in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a Fascist mouth watering. It even made mine water, though I knew he was lying.
That is effective communication.
The man who did the shouting at the P.S.U.C. post down on our right was an artist at the job. Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative.' Buttered toast!'--you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt that, like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past, but in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a Fascist mouth watering. It even made mine water, though I knew he was lying.
That is effective communication.
Weaknesses
Over the years, I have heard people speak of having various weaknesses. Few only have one "weakness" and that term may not even apply to some of the items but here's the uncensored and unranked list:
- Ambition
- Impatience
- Lack of focus
- Need for control
- Need for approval
- Need for conquest
- Indecisiveness
- Bluntness
- Temper
- Sense of being an impostor
- Shopping
- Need for variety
- Materialism
- Lack of ambition
- Sarcasm
- Grammar
- Cruelty
- Cowardice
- Procrastination
- Detail-orientation
- Cynicism
- Math
- Naivete
- Caring
- Sloth
- Booze
- Drugs
- Sex
- Chocolate chip cookies
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