New Phone Number
30-Dec-10
I have a new number! Please use (415) 894 9474. My old number (650) 773 6419 will continue to work for a month or so, but then it will no longer be active.
Thanks!
Chris
When the ball drops at midnight this Friday, December 31st, it will not only close out the year, but mark the deadline for the Thiel Foundation’s $250,000 matching grant. As of right now, we have raised a total of $240,824. This means that with 3 days remaining, we have only $9,176 to go!
Meeting this goal would be a huge accomplishment for the young seasteading movement. It would demonstrate to the Thiel Foundation that The Seasteading Institute is successfully broadening our donor base (from 6% non-TF donations in 2008-2009 to 33% in 2010!), help maintain our full 501(c)3 status with the IRS (which has requirements for breadth of support), and put us on a solid financial footing going into 2011.
via seasteading.org
Seasteading seems like the best long term solution to the problem(s) of bad government. If you agree, consider making a donation. (Full disclosure: I do some contract work for TSI, so have a financial interest in their success. But I would support them regardless.)
Whoa…
24-Dec-10
…I just woke up in bed with a 165 lb Great Dane named Harry and Alice in Wonderland on repeat.
TruckTransformer
22-Dec-10
via trucktransformer.com
The TruckTransformer is an innovative patent pending truck body swapping system from Simpson Innovations. The system is designed for medium-duty work trucks and allows you to easily swap between detachable truck bodies, load equipment, containers and more. It works like a forklift attached to your truck. Total truck body exchange takes less than ten minutes!
Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office.
via mindfully.org
via hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com
From my grandparents’ flowery explanation and frequent use of the word “miracle,” I went in expecting to be blown away by the production. Unfortunately, the church moms and the pathetic excuses for actors that they called their offspring failed to bring the characters to life in the way I had hoped. And the story just seemed to center around everyone being really impressed with Jesus and there wasn’t much suspense and not a single battle scene.
Trafficking / “Rescue”
21-Dec-10
be wary of how often the word help is just a nice way of saying control. I think there’s no more applicable place than in the world of anti-sex worker activists. Sure, the line is, “We want to help women escape the sex industry”, but what’s really being said (and done) is, “We want to control other people’s choices about their own bodies and dictate politically correct employment options to people whose complex situations we don’t care to understand.”
via feminisnt.com
Via Dan Lyke.
Facing the Pension Mess
21-Dec-10
But funding of public pensions has been woefully short of what’s needed to make good on those promises. The shortfalls are “off balance sheet” liabilities that run into the trillions of dollars.
Here’s the bad news as reported by Professors Robert Novy-Marx (University of Rochester) and Joshua Rauh (Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management):
* Unfunded liabilities for public pensions run by the 50 states total $3.23 trillion — $21,500 per household.
* Underfunded pensions for municipal and local government employees add another $574 billion of hidden debt — $14,000 per household.
The data from federal sources is also grim:
* Unfunded US military-retirement obligations now amount to $30,000 per household.
* Unfunded federal civilian-employee pension obligations represent another $16,000 per household.
That means every US household (including the half that normally pay no taxes) would have to kick in $81,500 today to enable federal, state and local governments to meet just their cur rent pension commitments.
via nypost.com
Infinite sets
20-Dec-10
Within the logic of infinite sets, apparently larger infinite sets are actually the same size as seemingly smaller infinite sets. For example, the set of all natural numbers (1, 2, 3…) is the same size as the set of all even numbers (2, 4, 6…), though you might think it’d be twice the size, because the first natural number can be mapped onto the first even number, the second onto the second, and so on, to infinity, without any natural numbers left over.
via markvernon.com
I find this very hard to wrap my mind around, even though the logic seems sound.