And then you have McCain advocating the starvation of millions of Iranians. He also studders while speaking of Bob Barr, speaks in the most general terms possible on improving the economy, and talks about cutting spending while wanting Congress to pass housing bills.

Update:

http://www.cnn.com/…

U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said: “Iran’s development of ballistic missiles is a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and completely inconsistent with Iran’s obligations to the world.”

Johndroe mentioned that the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany “are committed to a diplomatic path, and have offered Iran a generous package of incentives if they will suspend their uranium enrichment activities.”

“They should also refrain from further missile tests if they truly seek to gain the trust of the world. The Iranians should stop the development of ballistic missiles, which could be used as a delivery vehicle for a potential nuclear weapon, immediately.”

What obligations? Violation of UNSC resolutions? OOOOHHH scary. What exactly are they doing to do about it?

Listen Iran. Defense if for big boy nations. You need to wait till you grow up to play with such toys and threaten people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

Ordinary Germans have begun to reject euro bank notes with serial numbers from Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, raising concerns that public support for monetary union may be waning in the eurozone’s anchor country.

Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper says bankers have detected a curious pattern where customers are withdrawing cash directly from branches, screening the notes to determine the origin of issue. They ask for paper from the southern states to be exchanged for German notes.

People clearly suspect that southern notes may lose value in a crisis, or if the eurozone breaks apart. This is what happened in the US in the Jackson era of the 1840s when dollar notes from different regions traded at different values.

A group of leading German professors warned at the outset of EMU that the euro would tend to be weaker than old Deutsche Mark, and that it would fuel inflation over time. German citizens were never given a vote on the abolition of the D-Mark, which had become a symbol of Germany’s rebirth after the war.

Many have kept a stash of D-Marks hidden in mattresses to this day. A recent IPOS poll showed that 59pc of Germany now had serious doubts about the euro.

While I’m not sure how justified this action is but I support it regardless. Centralized control of the money supply is one of the most disgusting and insidious forms of theft and economic intervention. If people have lost faith in the money they generally use they should be free to replace it.

http://gizmodo.com/…

A group of hackers has captured the fingerprints of the German Interior Minister as a protest against plans to use biometric data in e-passports. The latest edition of their magazine, Die Datenschleuder, contains a plastic foil that reproduces the whorls and swirls of Wolfgang Schauble’s digit, meaning there are 4,000 copies of the politician’s prints just waiting to be attached to someone’s finger.

The CCC got its hands on Schauble’s prints thanks to a sympathiser, who scarpered with a glass used by the minister during a panel discussion and handed it over to the hackers. Dirk Engling, a spokesman for CCC, defended the group’s actions, claiming it was a warning shot, and that fingerprints “certainly [did] not [belong] in the e-Pass.”

Along with Minister Schauble’s fingerprint, the group also published a wish-list of other politicians whose biometric data they’d like to get their mitts on—including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Guenther Beckstein—as well as a guide on how to capture someone’s fingerprints from a glass successfully.

The lawyer hired by the CCC sees it like this: “If journalists and citizens were to do what the government is doing—that is, the collection and use of biometric data—then the prosecutor would be knocking at their doors.” Meanwhile, a po-faced spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, refused to rule out legal action against the fingerprint-stealing hackers.

Technology can be the great equalizer. As the police state grows there are some of those who will be able to do things such as this to show those in power just how this technology can be used and abused and hopefully place things in perspective. Unfortunately I see these types of stunts becoming more and more persecuted with increasingly harsh punishments. The pols don’t like to be made to look the fool. As long as we have tension between nations however we should be able to at least have international hackers and crackers able to perform these stunts without too much risk.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

In this dependency case (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 300), we consider the question whether parents can legally “home school” their children. The attorney for two of the three minor children in the case has petitioned this court for extraordinary writ relief, asking us to direct the juvenile court to order that the children be enrolled in a public or private school, and actually attend such a school.

The trial court’s reason for declining to order public or private schooling for the children was its belief that parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home. However, California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children. Thus, while the petition for extraordinary writ asserts that the trial court’s refusal to order attendance in a public or private school was an abuse of discretion, we find the refusal was actually an error of law. It is clear to us that enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is required by California law for minor children unless (1) the child is enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually attends that private school, (2) the child is tutored by a person holding a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught, or (3) one of the other few statutory
exemptions to compulsory public school attendance (Ed. Code, § 48220 et seq.) applies to the child. Because the parents in this case have not demonstrated that any of these exemptions apply to their children, we will grant the petition for extraordinary writ.

California’s Provisions for Compulsory Education of Minor Children Article IX, section 1 of California’s Constitution states: “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement.”

“In obedience to the constitutional mandate to bring about a general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence, the Legislature, over the years, enacted a series of laws. A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare. [Citation.] The Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 [45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070, 39 A.L.R. 468], held that: ‘No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.’ [¶] Included in the laws governing the educational program were those regulating the attendance of children at school and the power of the state to enforce compulsory education of children within the state at some school is beyond question. (Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 [43 S.Ct. 625, 628, 67 L.Ed. 1042, 29 A.L.R. 1446]; Ex parte Liddell, 93 Cal. 633, 640 [29 P. 251].”

This is pretty creepy. Sounds like something you’d expect to hear from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or Soviet Russia. How far we’ve come from from the idea that free and independent individuals lead to free, independent and prosperous nations. I really need to read John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/…

A is waiting in line at a movie theater. When she gets to the ticket window, she is told that as she is the 100,000th customer of the theater, she has just won $100.

B is waiting in line at a different theater. The man in front of him wins $1,000 for being the millionth customer of the theater. Mr. B wins $150.

Amazingly, most people said that they would prefer to be A. In other words, they would rather forgo $50 in order to alleviate the feeling of regret that comes with not winning the thousand bucks. Essentially, they were willing to pay $50 for regret therapy.

Regret falls under a psychological effect known as loss aversion. Research shows that before we risk an investment, we need to feel assured that the potential gain is twice what the possible loss might be because a loss feels twice as bad as a gain feels good. That’s weird and irrational, but it’s the way it is.

This article has been making it’s rounds both online and in print and I’ve found it incredibly frustrating. Just like people have been force fed a redefinition of “free market” and “freedom” we are also given a completely distorted theory of economics. Many still believe in the labor theory of value instead of say the subjective theory or marginal utility theory. In Keynesian economic theory and homo economicus. As Ludwig von Mises said in Human Action:

It was a fundamental mistake of the Historical School of Wirt-schaftliche Staatswissenshaften in Germany and of Institutionalism in America to interpret economics as the characterization of the behavior of an ideal type, the homo oeconomicus. According to this doctrine traditional or orthodox economics does not deal with the behavior of man as he really is and acts, but with a fictitious or hypothetical image. It pictures a being driven exclusively by “economic” motives, i.e., solely by the intention of making the greatest possible material or monetary profit. Such a being, say these critics, does not have and never did have a counterpart in reality; it is a phantom of a spurious armchair philosophy. No man is exclusively motivated by the desire to become as rich as possible; many are not at all influenced by this mean craving. It is vain to refer to such an illusory homunculus in dealing with life and history.

Even if this really were the meaning of classical economics, the homo oeconomicus would certainly not be an ideal type. The ideal type is not an embodiment of one side or aspect of man’s various aims and desires. It is always the representation of complex phenomena of reality, either of men, of institutions, or of ideologies.

This idea that it’s not “rational” to choose the $100 first place over the $150 second place is absolutely ridiculous. Does anyone truly believe these things? Who would possibly deny that people have nontangible desires which can be monetized. My guess is that people have been told that this is how things are and assume that while they don’t fit the mold others must. It’s like the idea of altruism. By definition altruism is: Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness. However, there can not be such a thing. Every human action is selfish. What people truly mean when labeling someone “altruistic” is that they don’t comprehend or don’t hold those same selfish desires which are not perceivable or tangible. It is easy to see the “selfish” man hording his wealth but it requires far more abstract thought to see the selfishness in spending time in a soup kitchen. When labeling someone who takes the 1st place $100 as “irrational” people really mean that they can’t understand the reasons why someone would give up $50 for prize status. Given the chemical, genetic, emotional makeup of man… I say the response is perfectly “rational.” What is irrational is acting as if humans are not in fact human.