EUTube

The EU has its very own YouTube page. There is some useful stuff there as well as some rather amusing material. Indeed, the opening video is both surreal and hilarious.

Anyway, happy birthday EU!

When Urkobold Was Made Flesh

I wonder if the various fleshy incarnations of Urkobold include the great satirist Timon?

A Proposed Amendment To The U.S. Constitution

Perhaps we should create an amendment which allows us to ostracize dangerous politicians. Initially I'd propose that two thirds of the state legislatures would have to agree before one would be ostracized. I'm not quite sure at this point what sort of nomination process I could get behind. Perhaps a sort of "reverse" form of "election" that resembles our primaries might do.

How To Preserve Power

It is fitting also that the magistrates on entering office should offer magnificent sacrifices or erect some public edifice, and then the people who participate in the entertainments, and see the city decorated with votive offerings and buildings, will not desire an alteration in the government, and the notables will have memorials of their munificence. - Aristotle, Politics, Book 6, Part VII, trans. Benjamin Jowett

Here Aristotle was referring to the efforts of oligarchs to remain in power.

Goodhart's Law

What does Goodhart's Law say about monetarism? It does lead to me lack confidence in it.

Brothers

This is my favorite scene from "Band of Brothers." That is the "servile scum" portion.

How To...

Destroy An F-14

Of Philosophy & Frogs

Blessed is the man having
perfected intelligence.
One can learn this in many ways.
For this man of proven good sense
will go back home again
for the good of his citizens,
for the good of his own
relatives and friends,
on account of being intelligent.
So it is refined not by Socrates
to sit and chatter
casting aside the pursuits of the Muses
and neglecting what's most important
in the art of tragedy.
But to spend time idly
in pompous words
and frivolous word-scraping
is the act of a man going crazy.

-- Aristophanes, The Frogs, ed. Matthew Dillon

Keep in mind that this isn't the first time that Aristophanes has mentioned Socrates; he presents him in The Clouds as representative of the pompous nature of Fifth Century Athenian "academia."