Somebody accidentally cut an undersea Internet cable off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, which disrupted Internet service in India by a great deal.
I didn't know there were cables spanning the Pacific! That's a lot of water. The description of the cable is amazing as well. 14 cm thick with several layers of steel wire mesh guarding a narrow (like, 1 cm) wide fiber optic core that actually carries the data. It would take some heavy equipment to break that.
But a coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, is sold on the idea that outdoor education programs can inspire children in a way that video games and television cannot.
The coalition wants state lawmakers to create a No Child Left Inside Fund with a 1 percent tax on TVs, video games and video game equipment. The fund would help pay for outdoor education throughout the state.
Joseph Henchman says:
The fundamental purpose of taxes is to raise revenue necessary for programs, not micromanage people's decisions with subsidies and penalties. If a tax targeting video games is justified, it should be on the basis of actual negative externalities, not the whims of social engineers picking things they don't like at random.
For myself, I can say without ambiguity that I vastly prefer this type of policy to efforts to ban certain types of video game content. One advantage is that a direct tax creates a disincentive to hurt the industry. More ambiguously though, I agree with the philosophy of government given by Mr. Henchman. While it's appealing to think that Parks'n Rec would be paid for by Gamestop, as a service, parks and rec should be paid for by people that use it, not by people that don't. People should want more outdoor activities, government should try to 'make them want' more outdoor activities.
I just wrote this, it has something of the tone of a rant. And although I'm still in the same mood that I was when I wrote it, I think I like it.
To be truly free, is to accurately be the living breathing image of an all knowing, all powerful God that loves the people around him so much, he is willing to sacrifice his own flesh to help those people become more like himself.
Huntington's point about culture is true, immigrants will change a culture, and ideal characteristics that attracted the immigrants are likely to be watered down or eliminated. But immigration is the very freedom that allowed those settlers to create this nation in the first place and removing that freedom seems very wrong to me. A wall on the border, for it's own sake seems like a perfectly reasonable project to me, but not for the purposes of keeping immigrants out. The great wall of china was built for real security reasons, I have no problem with that. I'd support the wall, if open immigration were in place on a very permanent basis.
A hacker group called Anonymous, has declared war on the 'church' of Scientology. So far they seem to have successfully executed a DoS attack on the Scientology website, and a prank on the church's hotline.
I fight the urge to support Anon in this solely because of the quality of their videos. But really I don't see what they're going to do. They can't cause any real harm by pulling pranks like a DoS or phone line redirects. They'd really have to cause financial messes, like stealing money from the 'church' and sending it to the FBI, then send an email politely asking them to spend the money investigating the 'church.' That would be impressive, because it's really hard to do. So until they show themselves to actually be serious in this, I have to write them off as a bunch of kids playing important on YouTube.
I value God, Freedom, Personal Improvement, and Honesty.
My favorite books are the Bible, Wealth of Nations, and Rich Dad Poor Dad. My Books My Profile
> Scarcity is unavoidable > Choices are made only by individuals > All tastes, preferences, and perceptions are self-interested > everyone acts with a purpose > everyone learns > everyone has transitive preferences > People's basic motivations do not change when they change jobs > Incentives matter > Choice takes place at the margin > Unintended consequences happen. > Not all costs are money costs > Costs are 'bads' & not 'goods.'
Somebody accidentally cut an undersea Internet cable off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, which disrupted Internet service in India by a great deal.
