Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Archive for August, 2006

Competition Forever

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one But the union makes us strong. Solidarity Forever! Solidarity Forever! Solidarity Forever! For the union makes us strong.   History’s most popular [...]

Honor Labor Day

If your teacher was like mine, she told you that Labor Day is our how we honor the American worker. True enough, but it is also a holiday that commemorates the failure of communism to take root in the American labor movement. Unlike any other holiday, Labor Day celebrates something that didn’t happen. You can [...]

Virgopundits

Celebrating a bit over the weekend. Deck finished and family came to visit for my Sunday birthday. I feel some kinship with people born on my birthday: Confucius, Hegel, LBJ, Mother Theresa (by most accounts), CS Forrester, Harvest Books’ Eugene Okamoto, PeeWee Herman, and the blogfodda himself, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. Now that you mention [...]

No facts were harmed in the writing of this story…….

Last week the New York Times wrote about the US Security situation in Iraq. Then Back Talk fact-checked the article using the easily available data. Now a pop quiz to see if you can determine whether the assertions by the Times are true or false. Assertion #1. "The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all [...]

Life: A Series of Unfortunate Events?

The always interesting Virginia Postrel celebrates the ten year anniversary of Clinton’s welfare reform with a smart question in the current Forbes: why is it that people often believe that things are getting worse, when they are actually improving? Column is here, and worth the free registration. Postrel notes an example of this: Nowadays, candid [...]

Heavy stuff

One of the terrific things about science is just how much we don’t know. When I was a kid growing up in LA, we had plenty of earthquakes, but no knowledge of plate tectonics. What? Hasn’t plate tectonics has been around since the Pleistocene? Of course — even longer, actually, but our understanding of plate [...]

Fiasco by Thomas Ricks

On vacation, couldn’t wait to get to Thomas Ricks Fiasco, acclaimed by many as the best writing to date on the Iraq war. Ricks is the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post and the author of an account of Marine Corps boot camp, Making the Corps. He is not an anti-war writer and is not [...]

The JamKid

Here is the JamKid. Roughly normal for 14. Perhaps a bit too influenced by our current Governor, hard to say. Very into computer graphics at the moment. A wonderful, sweet guy, although the forehand is getting nasty and the topspin on the hard serves can surprise the heck out of you. Almost as tall as [...]

Silicon Valley's Hottest Startup

Here is my vote or Silicon Valley’s coolest, er, hottest startup. It is not a hosted software play. Not wireless. Not search. Not software or ring tones for cell phones. Not porn. It is, in fact, an e-commerce company. No, not books. Tesla Motors is an angel and venture-backed Silicon Valley startup that has been [...]