Anyone know if this is a true story?

I heard it attributed to Milton Friedman...

"...Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”

Some things are worse than other things

Raping a maid for instance, is a bad thing.  Ordering the deaths of thousands is a worse thing.  IOZ explains.

Most insightful OS comparison I've read in a while

Can be found here.  For the slightly unconventional definitions of "barbarian" and "civilized," you might want to read some or all of this as well.

In fact, you should probably be reading everything that Venkat writes.  No whining, no tl;dr, just do it.

Farming and Mining

I've been on both sides of the farming/mining divide and I heartily recommend the former over the latter.

Earth with Rings

Pretty neat thought experiment.

It's Over; We lost. No Wait... We Lost, but it's NOT Over?

A bunch of ex-politicians and policy guys say that the War on Drugs is lost.  It is and it has been.  On the matter of the legalization of marijuana, the "science" is settled.  Those who continue to support legalization are on par with the flat earthers or birthers.  These are folsk whose commitment to a view exists entirely independent of observed reality.

40,000 fatalities in Mexico.  The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world (n.b., some doubt China's figures, so maybe we're number two?).  The trillions of dollars down the drain.

This isn't a matter of debating whether or not substance abuse is "good."  It's a matter of the fact that prohibition is far WORSE than substance abuse.  By a long shot.  It's not even close.

Now, this report will come to nothing.  We deserve the government we get because it's the government that we vote for.  Not even California has managed to legalize marijuana, and it's pretty safe to say that the waste of blood and treasure will continue until the entire United States wakes up.  The world will likely follow.  Other nations would probably love to stop watching their citizens die in the tens of thousands due to our tilting at windmills, but the US exerts tremendous pressure on their governments to toe the line.

It's a sad, sad state of affairs.  Think of what good could instead be done with those lives and that money.  This is a global tragedy of huge proportion - dwarfing all the tsunamis and earthquakes combined.

If you've been voting for those who support prohibition, shame on you.

You can't rsync an entire SAN...

And other new lessons for a fearless leader: