Clipmarks | Rustee's 'history' clips

Leftist Economic Nonsense

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:42:42 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

It was astonishing to hear Maxine Waters openly discuss nationalizing the oil industry. She was talking to the heads of America’s oil companies, and she was a little worked up, so it was also possible to say that it was just one person, speaking impulsively in a moment of anger, and easily dismissed.

What left most conservatives and libertarians staring in slack jawed wonder was when Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) stood before the press and advocated nationalizing the oil refineries. While most have known about the socialist beliefs of the left, what surprised them was the matter of fact manner in which they were suggesting socialist controls over the oil industry.

Finally, the socialist trifecta was complete with Obama supporter Malai Lazu, of the non-profit group Oil Change International calling for “price controls” on Neal Cavuto’s “Your World.” As she simply put it, “When Congress can set prices, Congress can set prices.”

Clip Source: www.allamericanblogger.com

For thousands of years, governments have attempted to set the price of different products with disastrous results.

This was all done for the “salvation of the people.”

Throughout history, it has been shown that price controls are good for creating three things:

Shortages

In the free market, a producer knows what it takes to create a product.

When government enters the picture, they don’t consider the creation cost.

Rationing

The government now enters the scene again and tells people how much of a product they are allowed in a specific time. So, if the Democrats nationalize the refineries and shortages follow, it is likely to see them tell you how many gallons of gas you can have per month.

If the government’s allotment isn’t enough, there is only one place to turn.

Black Markets

The black market is created as a result of the state. Always.

Setting prices on gasoline and oil will not do what the socialists in Congress claim it will do. History shows it never has, and never will.

Tags: economics

What to Celebrate on Independence Day?

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:34:47 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks: Duh.

Clip Source: capmag.com

"Independence Day" is a critically important title. It signifies the fundamental meaning of this nation, not just of the holiday. The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution--and a nation--founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights.

The Declaration of Independence was a declaration against servitude, not just servitude to the Crown but servitude to anyone.

What we hear from politicians, intellectuals, and the media is that independence is passé, that we've reached a new age of "interdependence."

We hear demands from trust-busters that successful companies be punished for being "greedy" and not serving society. But this is not the message of America.

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society.

Independence is what should be celebrated on Independence Day.

It is a legacy we should keep, not because it is a legacy, but because it is right and just.

Tags: history, government

Rich Dictator, Poor People

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:52:37 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

Chávez imposes his Bolivarian curriculum, which intends to promote Chavista ideology and eliminate the democratic history of Venezuela. Instead of focusing on educational standards, schools today are becoming miniature military boot camps. It is no surprise that literacy rates are dropping.Children with green uniforms and red berets are handling guns and shouting, “Fatherland, Socialism or Death.”

This horrifying phenomenon is fueled by Chávez’s determination to condition the Venezuelan youth into believing his own skewed interpretation of history, through which they will likely become little soldiers for his cause.

Clip Source: www.energytribune.com

Chávez has claimed to be the savior of the poor. In reality, he has used them as a political tool to gain power. His neo-communist and militarist model continues to be funded by oil wealth that belongs to all Venezuelans.

Before Chávez took over in 1999, when oil was selling for about $10 per barrel, PDVSA was the world’s second-largest energy company and one of the leading foreign suppliers of crude oil and refined petroleum products to the U.S. Under Chávez, with oil selling for over $100, Venezuelan oil production has fallen almost 50 percent.

Never in Venezuela’s history has there been such rampant and shameless corruption. According to Domingo Maza Zavala, former director of the Central Bank of Venezuela, “Now, in Venezuela, there is more poverty than there was before Chávez.”

In March 2003, the Chávez government adopted what they called “socialist” innovations in healthcare, but completely failed to maintain basic medical functions.

Tags: hugo chavez, socialism, venezuela

U.S. Confidence in Various Institutions

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:50:59 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, come on down! You've made history.

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

At the bottom of the heap, displacing HMOs as our worst institution, one finds the second branch of government, our Congress, at 12%. The Gallup folks noted it is "the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question." Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, come on down! You've made history.

Hard to miss as well is that just below the military's high-confidence interval comes, of all things, the cops.

What the U.S. military and the police have in common is successful self-reform of their institutions.

Many institutions are caught between a divided politics pulling hard at opposite ends of the rope. The public's sourness is just a symptom of this tension. Peace of mind – assuming people truly want that – won't come until voters decide whether the future direction of their country should be set mainly by the institutions of the private sector or by institutions of the public sector.

Tags: economy, government, polls, opinion

South Pointing Chariot - Ancient Chinese Invention

Sun, 18 May 2008 02:26:53 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks: It was invented, forgotten, re-invented, and modified many times throughout Chinese history. While none of the historic South Pointing Chariots remain, full sized replicas can be found, along with smaller sized working models (some have even been made with LEGO's).

Clip Source: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

The South Pointing Chariot is widely regarded as the most complex geared mechanism of the ancient Chinese civilization, and was continually used throughout the medieval period as well.

The chariot is a two-wheeled vehicle, upon which is a pointing figure connected to the wheels by means of differential gearing. Through careful selection of wheel size, track and gear ratios, the figure atop the chariot will always point in the same direction, hence acting as a non-magnetic compass vehicle.

The differential in the gear system integrates the difference in wheel rotation between the two wheels and thus detects the rotation of the base of the chariot. The mechanism compensates this rotation by rotating the pointer in the opposite direction.

Clip Source: www.odts.de

The old device still lives in the symbols of moden languages: The Japanese shinan, the Korean chinam and the Chinese chih-nan - meaning "point south" literally - are idioms used to express "to teach, guide, instruct".

Tags: engineering, invention, china, history

Martin Luther King Jr - An Inventive Mind

Sun, 04 May 2008 20:05:50 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: www.uh.edu

King gave us all a lesson in teaching. Using the tools of reason, literature, and history, he took us to the heart and meaning of non-violent protest. It was a disciplined performance.

I still hear him saying to us,

Our aim is as much to deliver the white man from the wrongs of segregation, as it is to deliver the black man. If we forget that, then we've failed.

King had the same quality of intellectual detachment as a theoretical physicist. But he also had a genius for communication.

Invention is a three-part process. The inventor must dream, he must think, and he must execute, King did all three. He harnessed his dream of racial harmony to powerful abstract and ethical engines. Then his dream rode those engines into a world that was, for the most part, delighted and stunned by what he'd forged.

I remember him laying out left-brain means for realizing a right-brain dream.

I remember that this dream-driven man of action was also a great intellectual of our times.

Tags: history

Galileo's Experiment

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:53:34 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

This was one of the first controlled scientific experiments. Like most of today's experiments, it was imperfect. But this experiment changed Galileo, and it changed history.

Clip Source: www.uh.edu

Galileo took an interest in rates of fall when he was about 26 years old and a math teacher at the University of Pisa. It seemed to him that -- with no air resistance -- a body should fall at a speed proportional to its density. He decided to test this modified Aristotelian view by making an experiment.

Controlled experiments were almost unknown. So Galileo's report was pretty skimpy. He seems to have dropped different balls from a tower.

One result of the experiment surprised Galileo, and one surprises us.

But what surprises us is what Galileo says happened just after he released the two balls. He says the lighter ball always started out a little bit faster than the heavy ball. Then the heavy ball caught up. That sounds crazy.

It turns out that when you try to drop them both at once, your strained muscles fool you. You consistently let go of the lighter one, the one you've been gripping less intensely, first.

Tags: science, history

The Most Ancient Technology of All

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:54:13 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

Its function is to put reality in terms that make sense. That means dramatizing what we see -- transmuting it into something more than what's obvious.

Clip Source: www.uh.edu

What's the oldest technology? Farming came late in history. Before farming, settled herdsmen and gatherers made clothing, knives, tents, spears -- but so did nomads before them. Go back further: archaeology tells us that pictures and music were among stone-age technologies. Some really magnificent cave paintings survive, along with evidence of rattles, drums, pipes, and shell trumpets. Even the Bible -- the chronology of the Hebrew tribes -- identifies musical-instrument-making as one of three technologies that arose in the 7th and 8th generations after Adam.

Music is the most accessible art, and -- at the same time -- the most sophisticated. In almost any age, or any society, music-making is every bit as complex as other technologies.

Music is clearly as old as any technology we can date. Couple that with the sure knowledge that whales sing -- that the animal urge to make music precedes technology, and I offer music-making as my candidate for the oldest technology of all.

Tags: music, history

Does War Influence Ingenuity?

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:47:53 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

We're told that "necessity is the mother of invention," but history doesn't really bear that out. The true mother of invention is our powerful driving internal need to invent. We invent because we want to invent. It's freedom that's the real mother of invention.

Clip Source: www.uh.edu

The common wisdom tells us that war speeds up invention -- that airplane performance, ship technology, and engine design all raced ahead during WW-I and II -- that governments can speed the creation of ideas. But there's good reason to ask if this is really true.

I'll use airplane speeds to show why I have doubts, but any other technology would show the same thing. Airplane speeds are a good thing to look at because we know how badly everybody wanted to speed up their planes during WW-I and II.

The remarkable fact is that throughout its history the speed of flight has doubled every nine years. The rate of increase has been dead steady from the first primitive airships in the 1880s right up until orbital flight made speed a non-issue. That nine-year doubling has been absolutely untouched by war, depression, or presidential proclamations.

What government commitment does increase during war is production.

But human ingenuity is quite a different creature.

Click here for audio of Episode 35.

Tags: science, history, war

6 truths about slavery

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:53:34 GMT

clipped by: willhelm
clipper's remarks: So much revisionism about this period of time. My favorite revision is that the South were fighting for states rights. No, they were not. They were fighting to maintain the institution of slavery, plain and simple. Every state in the south stated as much in their notices to secede. However, that is not the only point of which people are ignorant. There is little accuracy left about the history of this time. Hopefully future historians will straighten it all out.

Clip Source: townhall.com

1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION. At the time of the founding of the Republic in 1776, slavery existed literally everywhere on earth

2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.

3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.

5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.

Tags: slavery, united states, america, histroy