Pete Leeson is one of my favorite young economists, and probably the brightest star of the latest generation of Austrian school economists. He's been AWOL from The Coordination Problem for a bit, but is back with a post on anarchy in Somalia. Pete Boettke also links to a video on some of the work which…
The Costs Of Limiting Terrorism
Bruce Schneier has a post on the topic, linking to a study of Islamic terrorism post-9/11. I follow the point and agree that the government has taken things rather far. Treating Islamic terrorism as a war-fighting exercise, I would argue, worked: as the article authors noted, Al Queda was not responsible for any attacks inside…
New SDL Tools Available
I'm a fan of Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle. Michael Howard and team have done a great job of cleaning up a number of problems inside Microsoft and making security a bigger focus. They have some new tool releases, including a threat modeling tool update.
First, Do No (More) Harm
Senator Ron Johnson wants a moratorium on new regulations until unemployment reaches 7.7%. I want to go a lot further and begin dismantling regulations wholesale, forcing all regulations to be sunset within 4 years and requiring an act of Congress to renew any particular regulation. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, Congress has abrogated its authority…
The Department Of Bogus Activities Sponsored This
Iowahawk lets us in on the real reason that Gibson guitars was shaken down by the government: to put illegal guitars in the hands of Mexican drug lords.
Calculate The Scam
Political Calculations has a tool to figure out the rate of return for Social Security based on a few key statistics. Considering that the Social Security Administration estimates a lifetime payout of 78% of payments for people under 30, the high-end estimate returned sounds reasonable (noting that the tool calculates _rate_ of return, not _total_…
In The Papers: Human Action
Gene Callahan has a relatively old paper that I just recently found, entitled Oakeshott and Mises on Understanding Human Action. Abstract: Although Michael Oakeshott and Ludwig von Mises were arguably two of the more profound theorists of human activity in the twentieth century, there has been remarkably little comparative study of their ideas. That is…
EPD: Popular Admiration Of Great Thieves
Now in chapter 14 of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, we reach the chapter entitled, Popular Admiration of Great Thieves. The most famous example is Robin Hood, but Mackay also brings up other famous villains, such as Jonathan Wild (who had the audacity not only to be a major thief, but also…
Powershell Prowess Tested
Sean McCown has a quick Powershell test for DBAs. Here are my answers, as a Powershell program. After the fold, so you don't cheat. The script requires SQLPSX to be installed, and I am assuming that you are starting from a standard Powershell window rather than from the SQL Server Powershell instance. I did leave a…
On The Japanese Surrender
Steve Sailer has an interesting post in which he attempts to piece together why the Japanese surrendered when they did. The two major narrative themes tend to be either the atomic bomb forced their hand (or gave them an honorable way out), or the Soviet declaration of war forced their hand. I tend to discount…
36 Chambers - The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max! 