Jinn of Quality and Risk

A disparate group of people linked together without their knowledge. Your family and friends would not be part of your karass. You wouldn't choose its membership, and you may never know who is in it or what its purpose is. Or: a group of people whose lives are thrown together to accomplish a divine purpose. First identified in "Cat's Cradle," by Kurt Vonnegut. [Google glossary] 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studies what makes people truly happy, satisfied, and fulfilled. He is chiefly renowned as the architect of the notion of flow in creativity; people enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. 

Don Norman examines the delivery of toilet paper: When we remodeled our home, we decided to install a dual toilet-tissue holder. 

George Bush, West Point Address to Graduates: Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it. 

John Robb says this is shaping up to be a long-term bear market. Others think we are entering another long-term growth period, i.e. a magnificent bull market.

 

If human cloning is recognised as legitimate and remains legal, we will soon be able to grow new kidneys, hearts, lungs, and other body parts for (self-)transplant. 

The Outer Space Treaty was a strategy by the U.S. State Department to raid NASA's budget ... then ship the money, under the misleading label "foreign aid," to kleptocracies favored by the State Department. American tax money that could have produced amazing feats of exploration was instead delivered to foreign dictators...

Also of interest, Zubrin's The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization: What the Mediterranean was to the Greeks, what the New World was to the Western Europeans, Mars will be to the pioneering nations of the next several centuries; the engine of progress of the coming era. [PDF at Mars Direct homepage] 

On June 4, 1989 the Butchers of Beijing lost patience with the student movement calling for freedom and democracy in Tiananmen square. The army turned its weapons on the freedom-loving students. The book Tiananmen Papers tells the inside story, using documents apparently leaked by "party members" who dislike the way of the Butchers. The picture of one lonely man facing a column of tanks was, and still is, striking. I hope this heroic man is still alive and will enjoy the Blessings of Liberty in his life; may his courage serve as an example for all generations to come.