There she goes, my beautiful world
There are of course a number of ways in which Americans traditionally spend the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, many of which have nothing to do with the significance of the founding of this nation, or for which the significance has been forgotten along the way.
Now, a day off is a day off, and I don’t want to be the one to spoil anyone’s barbecue. You can’t really go wrong in my book by spending the … Read the rest
I’ve recently set up a local server on a Beaglebone Black, which is a credit-card sized computer with a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. I’m using it as a cloud server to sync my calendar and contacts, having moved the ownCloud instance (mentioned the other day) from my hosted VPS to my local network.
I created a self-signed certificate authority and an SSL cert for the server and discovered that, contrary to most of my experience running … Read the rest
I finally got sick and tired of the sync dance with Apple and Google not wanting to talk to one another. I use a Mac but I also have an iPad and since recently I now have an Android phone. I had been syncing with iCloud and a long time ago I imported all my contacts into Google, but I haven’t had sync on that for quite a while.
After tearing my hair out trying to come up with a way … Read the rest
I like Omnifocus1 a lot. I can’t say that I’ve mastered it to the point where it has fully become a trusted repository for my tasks, but it is useful for keeping track of the things I have to do. The new version looks great. I got the demo version to test out before buying the upgrade and it is a big improvement. The price tag is somewhat high but in my opinion it’s a worthwhile upgrade.
So why … Read the rest
Two nights ago I went out with the telescope to look at the Moon and the planets. Right now the moon is so bright and lately the air has been so hazy that even though I would like to start looking for other kinds of objects, it’s got to wait for some time that I can get up into the hills and away from the City. But I ended out there until after the Moon had not properly set but … Read the rest
An early version of this story referred to Sabine Parish as Sabish Parish. Monochromatic Outlook regrets the error.
There has been a little controversy over the case of Lane v Sabine Parish and the question of whether a teacher telling a kid that his family’s religion is «stupid» is unconstitutional. One side says the Constitution provides «separation of church and state» (words which do not appear in the Constitution) and the other side says that the idea of such separation has … Read the rest
I’ve been wanting RonPaulCoin(RPC) for some time. I’m not bullish on the currency, in fact, I think it’s a bad idea. Naming a currency after a personality, especially a living one (Teslacoin could be kind of cool) is a terrible idea. But especially because Ron Paul is such an anti-fiat-currency goldbug, I thought it would be funny to have one RonPaulCoin.
Back when RonPaulCoin was trading around $18 it was too much, even for the novelty. I … Read the rest
It seems a little strange to refer to Das Keyboard as «the Das Keyboard» because of course «das» means «the». It’s something like asking for the «hot salsa picante sauce», except that «keyboard» is not German for «keyboard», placing Das Keyboard firmly in the realm of branding. Das Keyboard isn’t even made by a German company — the keyboards are manufactured in Taiwan and they are designed and sold by a company in Austin Texas.1
This is perhaps a … Read the rest
Bryan Caplan’s 20 January post at EconLog presents an interesting question of the sort that is often overheard at parties and coffeehouses as an example of a question that ought not be asked. How do you put a value on a human life?
The question comes up after some judge or jury awards damages in a wrongful death suit, or some news item in nature both lurid and legalistic. Usually the discussion never gets past the notion that life is priceless. … Read the rest
Most Americans ought to be familiar with the recurring gag in the comic strip Peanuts in which every year Lucy offers to hold the football so that Charlie Brown can kick it. Each year, Charlie Brown complains that Lucy never acts in good faith and that she always pulls the ball away at the last minute, leaving poor Charlie Brown flat on his back after a flubbed kick attempt. Lucy invariably comes up with a compelling argument why Charlie Brown … Read the rest