Monthly Archives: March 2007

Only Seven Wonders?

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

Demonstrating democracy in action less than 1/10th of 1% of the worlds population have so far voted an average of 7 times each to select a new list of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Washington Post has pictures of the 21 nominees.
It might, though, be more appropriate to call it a list of the seven man-made wonders of the world. Certainly it is perfectly fine for us to identify some number of human artifacts that exemplify the height of human ingenuity, creativity or engineering skill. All the candidates are impressive and possibly deserving from this perspective.
However, none of them hold a candle to many other wonders of the world. A few examples:

  • The natural backdrops of Machu Picchu (Picture 3) or Sao Paulo (Picture 4)
  • Tubeworms and Spider Crabs or any other living or extinct life form
  • Pick your favorite mountain
  • Pick your favorite river

And so on.
NB: With respect to the 3rd picture are people voting for the statue, the water faucet or the remarkable natural setting?

Via The Volokh Conspiracy.

Card Check Voting and Unions

This entry was posted in Economics on by

There are plenty of words being spilt over the Empoyee Free Choice Act and the proposed card check voting system. For instance, yesterday’s Washington Post guest editorial on this legislation. Eric Folley responds:

To be fair, the Post does say that the current system is tilted too far in favor of employers, and they suggest a number of tweaks to the system: shorter elections, greater union access to the workplace, and harsher penalties for intimidation by employers. But this seems to me to be just another way of skirting the main issue, which is: if a majority of workers want a union, they should get one. And since card check is the fairest way to determine the will of the majority, it should be allowed. QED.

He couldn’t be more wrong with respect to his main issue.
If any number of workers, a minority or a majority, want to form a union they must be allowed to do so.

What they can not be allowed to do is force any other workers to join their union or pay dues to it.

Meta-Modulator

This entry was posted in Modulator on by

A few changes:
1) Kip says: –Host-based trackbacking is out; Technorati Trackbacks are in. I have added a Technorati View blog reactions link to my templates. However, I still like host-based trackbacks and continue to support them.
2) If you look at individual posts on Modulator (click on the post title or the Permalink at the end of the post) you will see at the bottom a link to Social bookmark this page. This link utilizes the Socializer service. Please take advantage of this. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get this to work on the main page.
3) I’ve removed the Top Referrers Blogroll from the top of the right sidebar. When the stats got messed up on my host for 6-7 months last year I stopped updating this blogroll and have not started again since the stats were fixed. No one seems to have noticed and everyone that would have been there is still on a left side bar roll.
4) I’m doing some other blogroll tweaking and will report on this next weekend.