Monthly Archives: November 2012

Cuba Before Castro

Posted on 20121125 by jdm

A long time ago, on a previous blog, I presented this translation. That blog is no more but fortunately I backed it up before nuking it. I’m pretty sure I originally came across it via the ever-so reliable Kim at … Continue reading →

Posted in From Danish, Translations | Comments Off

The Curley Effect

Posted on 20121124 by jdm

Through a long, tangled web of references, the Curley Effect is explained thusly. As defined by Harvard scholars Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer in a famous 2002 article, the Curley effect (named after its prototype, James Michael Curley, a … Continue reading →

Posted in Concepts, Opinion | Comments Off

The Poor Children

Posted on 20121118 by jdm

The following is translated from the Danish website Uriasposten. The post itself is an excerpt from the original post at another Danish website Tidehverv. I will, at least for now, limit the translation to a portion of that seen at … Continue reading →

Posted in From Danish, Translations | Comments Off

Google Chrome Zombies

Posted on 20121117 by jdm

Generally speaking, I’m pretty happy about using Google’s Chrome browser. It works when visiting almost any website which is pretty impressive because almost no website indicates it is supported. I really like the fact that the address box is also … Continue reading →

Posted in Browsers, Computers | Comments Off

The One and Only Political Question That Matters

Posted on 20121115 by jdm

In trying to understand the perspectives of anyone’s politics, there is only one question that matters: How do you react to the statement “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”? There are less provocative ways to ask this, … Continue reading →

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Becoming Root On a Sudo System

Posted on 20121111 by jdm

I find the use of sudo to be annoying (if you have to ask, you can skip this) and it seems that most sudo-systems don’t provide a root login by default. This demonstrates how to overcome this. prompt> sudo su … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Linux | Comments Off

Starting a New Debian Installation

Posted on 20121111 by jdm

There are a whole bunch of Debian Linux distros that are available. On an EeeBox I bought some years ago that was using the out-of-date (and not being updated) Eeebuntu, I managed to get a Debian-based distro called SalineOS to … Continue reading →

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de Toqueville Explains the Most Recent Election

Posted on 20121110 by jdm

Alexis de Toqueville was, much like Ayn Rand regarding the march of modern socialism, eerily prescient in his observations of the experiment that is the United States. A few items extracted from a treasure trove of quotes that explain the … Continue reading →

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Elections

Posted on 20121109 by jdm

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. H L Mencken

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Reynold’s Law

Posted on 20121103 by jdm

Someone was nice enough to note and coin the term, Reynold’s Law: The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then … Continue reading →

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