On this day in 1959, near Clear Lake, IA, an airplane crash killed The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and …

Buddy Holly

As always, you can find the rules to WikiWednesday in the right sidebar.

PS – To satisfy a competitive streak, I’ll declare that last week’s contest was won by The Coach.

It seems this “accessory” for a Lada is pretty much just a bolt-on operation which can be removed for normal driving.  Here is it in action (don’t bother trying to find the website.  It’s no longer operational):

HT: English Яussia

Steve Jobs

*As always the rules to WikiWednesday can be found linked in the sidebar.

Man #1 is pious.  He is kind to those he meets, helps his neighbors and cares for his family.  He gives regularly to charitable organizations and attends church religiously (sorry).  He’s a hard worker at his middle class job – conscientious even without supervision and has unmatched integrity and sincerity.

Man #2 is… well, not.  He claims to hold mainstream moral values but his lifestyle (outside his once a week church visit) proves otherwise.  He’s on his third wife (obviously needing to move churches each time to avoid the poor opinions of others) and that relationship isn’t going well either.  He’s a Wall Street type and outside of flings with his secretary, his only passion is money; making it, hoarding it and spending it.  He is 100% dedicated to his own image as far as it concerns others believing that he has it all together and has the world at his finger tips.  Greed – followed closely by the desire for power – is the driving force that animates his efforts and he will tell anyone anything to achieve those ends.

Now, I don’t think it would be considered judgmental to label Man #1 as more worthy of respect for his personal life and perceived ethos.  But, which of these – determined on the basis of results – would be considered more beneficial to society?  That’s not quite so easy.

What if the story was expanded to show that Man #1 took that piousness to the extreme and become a suicide bomber?  Does his personal integrity and dedication trump what he’s done?  I assume that’s a question that doesn’t require an answer.

And Man #2.  What if his intense desire to turn a profit, pad his pockets and increase his status leads to thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of families being financially viable into the future?  His singleminded selfishness has the effect of paying for the college tuition of children and grandchildren across the nation.  It means that a aging couple will be able to afford to stay in the house they’ve owned for 30 years after retirement.  It means that middle-class families (well below the personal financial level of our second man) can count on continuing their modest lifestyle into the future.  It gives a respectable return on investment to the pension funds of teachers, laborers, engineers and truckers.

I guess I’m trying to make 2 points, which are somewhat related.

1. If corporate execs, bankers, traders and fund managers are obeying the law and doing their jobs (ie. providing jobs, money and financial returns to people in virtually all levels of society) then why are their motives important?  They have a task before them to take someone’s money and use it to make more money and they generally achieve this.  Strictly judging by their societal benefit, they are productive.

2.  This is why our system is the best ever conceived.  It pragmatically takes into account (unlike socialism) how humans *actually* behave and uses that to provide money to the people who have the ideas – with the help of their hard-working fellow man – to turn some money into more money to everyone’s benefit.

I know this is a bit heady for a lazy Tuesday afternoon but do any of you have an opinion on this?

If they can make Avatar, they can make anything.

HT: LGF

This morning I was listening to a podcast in which one contributor (a Brit) mentioned that he had been recruited to play on the international football team for the micro-nation of  Sealand.  Never having heard of this tiny (I mean, really tiny) Shangri-la, I started to look into it.

As it turns out, Sealand (ironically) isn’t land at all.  It was built as a gun platform 7 miles off the coast of England during WWII as a defense against German air strikes.  In 1967, being outside internationally acknowledged British territorial waters, a guy named Roy moved there, crowned himself prince and instituted a semi-constitutional, hereditary monarchy which still exists today.  This little platform has had international incidents (firing on encroaching British navel vessels), fought a war (invasion and capture of sovereign territory by Dutch citizens – resulting in prisoner of war negotiations) and fields of variety athletes who compete for the flag.  Sealand’s national airsoft team – based out of Sheffield – is quite accomplished.

Here are some facts about Sealand:

Head of State: Roy of Sealand or Prince Roy (Acting Head of State: Prince Michael)

Population: 5 (estimated)

GDP: $600,000 USD

Area: 550 Sq. Meters

Based on a newly-aquired understanding of Sealand and facts above, here are my favorite lines from the Sealand website:

Units of the navy [UK] entered the territorial waters claimed by Roy of Sealand. As he was aware of his sovereignty, Roy of Sealand threatened the navy by undertaking defensive activity. Shots were fired from Sealand in warning.

In August of 1978, a number of Dutch men came to Sealand in the employ of a German businessman. They were there to discuss business dealings with Sealand. While Roy was away in Britain, these men kidnapped Prince Roy’s son Michael, and took Sealand by force. Soon after, Roy recaptured the island with a group of his own men and held the attackers as prisoners of war.

The presence of an active and rapidly growing high-tech internet industry in Sealand has changed the character of the Principality; once more, Sealand rings with the sound of voices, boasts regular support ferry services, and is host to a growing and dynamic population.

And for your viewing enjoyment – and because I know you’re all wildly curious – here is a picture of this beautiful nation.

From sea to shining sea

To answer your inevitable question: no, we won’t be immigrating to Sealand.  I already asked and Sarah said no.

Our Judith

I doubt many readers noticed that I added a new RSS feed blog in the sidebar.  Please check out Judith blogging* from our former residence at the Hope Center.  Her commentary are both very readable and – in all honesty – more informative than most of my updates from camp in the past year.  Click through from here or check her out at HereIamLordSendMe.wordpress.com.

*and yes, her blog header is her own work that I shamelessly stole to add to a previous post.

As always, rules to Wikipedia Wednesday can be found in the sidebar link.

Harry Reid in all his glory

I must assume that most readers are at least vaguely aware of the curfuffle regarding recently released quotes by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV).  I don’t suppose my commentary on this topic is surprising but I am compelled to share my opinion as there exists a wide range of reactions from the conservative ranks.

By way of summary, Reid is quoted in a soon to be released book as having said of President Obama, he’s “light-skinned” with “no negro dialect, unless he wants one,” during the 2008 campaign.  Many conservatives and even more Republicans (the difference there lies in which identifier a person places more emphasis) are upset by these “racist” remarks and that there seems to be no significant outrage, due Reid’s party affiliation.  I am partially in agreement with this… but only partially.

Reid says this and is given a pass based on the “passionate leadership he’s shown on issues of social justice and I [President Obama] know what’s in his heart.”

During the same campaign Vice President Joe Biden (who seems to have been wisely banned from speaking by the White House) said of Obama, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man,” and then was picked as his target’s running mate.  Around this time he also claimed that he would be likely to get significant votes in southern state because, quite obviously, Delaware (his home state) was a slave state and there must be some affinity there.

Former Republican majority leader Trent Lott on the other hand, stated at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party that had he beaten Harry Truman in 1948, the country would have been better off (interestingly, Thurmond was a segregationist Democrat at the time, a view he later repudiated after his switch to the GOP).  Lott was castigated by none other than Sen. Reid as not being worthy of Senate leadership and was eventually drummed out by his own party for the audacity of saying something nice – off the cuff – about an old man at his birthday party.

I intensely dislike this double standard and I don’t for one second buy the excuse that since a person is a Democrat* and thus more likely to receive African-American support, they can’t possibly harbor any discriminatory tendencies.  Nor do I believe that it’s wise to read into selective comments and assume racism.

Consider this…

Thurmond’s 1948 position was primarily one of state’s rights and Lott is entitled to feel that this would have been preferable to a federal government run amok.  He could make this statement with absolutely no endorsement of segregation specifically.

Reid was making an observation that, while perhaps not based in reality (did President Obama’s lighter skin tone make him more electable as a black man?  I don’t think so), isn’t really that objectionable.  Additionally, both Obama and Hilary Clinton put on and removed “negro dialects” during that campaign – depending their audience.

Biden is harder to explain but I assume that he intended to compliment Obama the candidate and by “clean” (the most disturbing of his adjectives) he meant something more like “clean-cut.”  I’ll just put down to misstatement his contention that Obama was the FIRST African-American to exhibit these characteristics.

There’s where I part ways with some Republicans.  I don’t think Reid is a racist.  I don’t think that Lott is a racist.  I don’t even think that Biden – with an impressive collection of idiotic statements – is a racist.  A moron, but not a racist.

The more we misuse that term, the less meaning it has (racist, not moron).  Further, this degeneration of the language is particularly disturbing when it’s only allowed to be applied one direction across the political isle.

*Politically, all of this may be academic since Reid looks likely to lose his reelection bid in November; the second Democratic Senate leader to crash out in a decade.

I’m pretty sure I won.  Did you know that Colorado once had 4 Governors in one year and the unique record of 3 in one day?  Some of the procedural details are a touch dry but here’s the essence of it:

Governor Peabody

Governor James H. Peabody was elected in 1902 with a promise of restoring law and order in the midst of a particularly bitter and violent labor dispute centered around Cripple Creek (which I just notice for the first time is a somewhat insensitive name).  It seems that the miners’ union had successfully gained a virtual monopoly on miners by shouldering out all non-labor workers and then striking.  Obviously the mine owners didn’t like this much and brought in outside labor while petitioning the state to use the militia against the tough union tactics (aimed at preventing non-union miners from stepping in). Peabody was particularly sympathetic to these requests and took an extremely pro-business stance.

By 1904 the public was losing patience with Peabody and he faced a tough re-election campaign against Alva Adams.  Here’s where it gets weird….

Adams appeared to win but later claims of election fraud caused the legislature to act to overturn the election.  As it turned out both candidates probably violated election law in a massive way.  A compromise was reached by which on March 17, 1905 (a day that should live in infamy) Alva Adams was inaugurated and then immediately removed.  Peabody was reinstated – having only been out of the position for a matter of hours – and then promptly resigned, leaving Lieutenant Governor Jesse McDonald to head the state.  Count ‘em, that’s 3 in one day.  To make it even more interesting, it was Adam’s 3rd time as the governor.

Also, I came across a fantastic – if not quite flattering – quote by the head of the Colorado militia, a General Sherman Bell.  In response to criticism for holding suspected criminal members of the unions without charges, he stated, “Habeas Corpus, hell.  We’ll give ‘em post mortems.”

Interesting stuff and it puts a fine point on the fact that it’s an absolute tragedy the education system doesn’t put a greater emphasis on teaching state history to our kids.

I learned some interesting pieces related to the Colorado labor wars of the early 20th century when I was in college but I didn’t realize until yesterday how brutal that conflict was – from BOTH sides of the issue.  I can now understand a little better why the national guard was brought in.