The Father of Fracking Dies

George Phydias Mitchell, Galveston son of a Greek Immigrant, as portrayed in the Dallas Morning News.

An opinion on the Zimmerman trial

Appreciated the remarks of Charles Barkley. What has gone on in the public arena since the trial of George Zimmerman has a tribal Lord of the Flies 'Kill the Beast' quality to it. What the book lacked was a reason for the projection of evil which was to be projected into the other. In this case the violence of TM is ignored, his youthful homophobia and all fault is projected into George Zimmerman who came into his circle of consideration. So we have a completion of the 'Kill the Beast' orgiastic excitement. I am genuinely shocked at its primitiveness. The president's remarks are a minor help but certainly don't acknowledge my perception. The national shouting match continues.

Again Greg Mankiw has an article Defending the One Percent. On another topic, I think Obama's decision to extend air cover over a part of Syria is thoughtful. Also I have really been shocked by the fact that if it weren't for the Apaches and Comanches, much of the area north of Mexico would be or have been Spanish and then Mexican. This is part of the perspective of Empire of the Summer Moon.

Greg Mankiw referred to his comencement address the other day. He said in part:

It is an honor to be able to speak to you today. When Mr. Conrad invited me, he suggested that maybe, as a professional economist, I could talk with you about the future economy that you will soon be entering and in which you will be spending your lives. It is true that as an economist, I know precisely what the future holds. But union rules prevent me from sharing that knowledge with the general public. So we economists usually just make stuff up, and it often turns out to be wrong. I won’t burden you with those made-up stories today.

The whole thing can be found through this link and is excellent and perhaps a little sad as the opportunities for mixing in the right community may not be as available to most of us as it was to him but partly that also depends on the individual. His point that community is important is a good one. We should treasure them.

A Turkish man said something not politically correct enough in Turkey and was sentenced for insulting Mohammed and gave a dispassionate and informative critique of the founder of the religion at his 13 month sentencing.

The Phonetic Alphabet

The 'names' for the letters. You know 'papa' for 'p,' 'Bravo' for 'b,' though a commenter says it used to be something else. It is more masculine to say 'b as in bravo' than 'b as in boy.' Anyway the military standards to specify the letters. Did you know that out word 'alphabet' comes from our names for the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta?

I saw a lot of carping over at Brad DeLong's site about Memorial Day. I guess the implication might have been felt that those who didn't volunteer have to rescue a narcissistic deficiency on that day. My sister was saying recently that the happiest time in our parents lives was when my dad was in the Army. he worked at the Medical Nutrition Laboratory, return address MedNutlab, at Fitzsimmons in Denver. I recall looking up at the hospital from my bike while Ike was there with an MI. Anyway for those of us who want to look at the holiday critically I suppose there is always the song, The Streets of Laredo.

The link for contributing to the burned city of West.

A lesson from the KGB

Yuri Andropov, KGB chief during the VN period, reportedly said their propaganda victory during the VN war was their greatest achievement. It was seamless in its strategy. On the one end, in VN toddlers would be set to walk to American soldiers with bombs set to detonate or women in distress apparently needing to give an infant with a timed explosive device to a new soldier. The infants might be shot and explode or thrown off a bridge and explode as the Americans defended themselves. This created a predicate for the charge that the soldiers were baby killers. As Andropov as General Secretary gave us Gorbachev who gave us the end of Russian communism, perhaps we could console ourselves and see VN as a Pyrrhic defeat leading to Russian hubris. This is not to say there were never crimes on our side, but this was part of the context, as a commenter noted, 'context' for a discussion on Bill Ayers.