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Archives for 2009

Forty Years Ago Today We Took Off For the Moon

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It is still incredible that we went to the moon — and returned our people safely home. This is an achievement to be celebrated both in itself and for what it represents — that we are a society that is willing to do big, bold things. Here is a short recap and some photos (via […]

The Housing Boom and Bust

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Thomas Sowell’s new book, The Housing Boom and Bust, would be worth a read by those wanting to learn more about the housing bust and its role in the current financial crisis. From the Amazon product description: This is a plain-English explanation of how we got into the current economic disaster that developed out of […]

Cost Versus Efficiency in Health Care

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From economist Greg Mankiw’s blog: Advocates of government-run health insurance like to point to Medicare’s low administrative costs (which, as I noted yesterday, is a controversial claim). But even if that factual claim were true, the argument would hardly be dispositive as to the greater efficiency of a publicly run system. As I put it […]

On The Declaration of Independence

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With the fourth of July coming up, it’s a good time to review the Declaration of Independence. The Two Best Paragraphs in the Declaration The first two paragraphs in the document give you an entire philosophy of government in themselves: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve […]

Phantom Traffic Jams Explained

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From Fast Company: “A team of MIT mathematicians has developed a model that describes how and under what conditions such jams form, which could help road designers minimize the odds of their formation.”

The Safety of Airplanes

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Two major airline crashes in the last month is tragic. Fast Company has an interesting article on “why, in the 21st Century, do aircraft keep plummeting out of the sky?” I gave some of my answer last month in my posts on why airplane crashes happen and the role of communication styles in airplane crashes, […]

Back from China

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I’ve made it back from China and spent the last week or so catching up on some things. It was an excellent trip. I really like China and its people, and we learned a ton. One of my colleagues on the trip is an incredible photographer. If interested, he has posted some of his pictures […]

China Updates

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Things are going well here in China. Also, I’ve discovered, entirely by accident, the incredible value of getting up at 3 in the morning. I wonder if there would be a way to adapt that practice once I’m back in the US… You can see some of my updates and some pictures, if interested, through […]

Off to China

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I’m going to be in China for the next week or so. I hope to be able to do some posts from over there, but if not here are some posts from the last nine months that you might find helpful: What this Blog is About, Part 1 What this Blog is About, Part 2 […]