Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

The recent rants of Bernie Sanders about taxing the rich to provide benefits is not really news. Barack Obama said the same thing to Joe the Plumber some years ago. Those who talk about redistribution often act as if people are just inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design. But human beings have their own responses to government policies, and consequently we cannot just assume that government policies will have the effect intended. The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example. In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in th...

  I've been a proponent of goal-setting for a long time. At least 20 years ago, I read the late Zig Ziglar's work on goals, and I intuitively knew that he got it right. So I've been using his basic goal - setting strategy for a long time.  Up until now, what with technology, the only thing missing from the equation was some sort of app specifically designed to track it all, provide reminders, and so on. And I think I've found it. I don't normally endorse products or services, but in this case I make an exception. The app is called "Lifetick" and it works on the web or in your iOS or Android phone: Lifetick has features that closely mirror Zig Ziglar's system, making it a snap for me to decide to use it. I'm not talking about New Year's resolutions here, I don't make any because I have a goal system that works daily and is in almost constant revision. You have Core Values that represent areas of your life, then individual Goals wi...

A level of propaganda I don’t recognize, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. 2014 has been the year of utter nonsense. It just finished in fine form with a 5% US GDP growth number, just to name one example. Really, guys? 5%? Really? With all the numbers presented lately, the negative Thanksgiving sales data – minus 11% -, the so-so at best Christmas store numbers to date, shrinking durable goods in November and all? Plus 5%? The FBI says that it was North Korea that did the Sony hack. Propaganda. Pull apart all the stuff the FBI has been saying - it doesn't compute. Same with the ridiculous 97 percent "consensus" on global warming. Horseshit! 31,000 scientists signed the Oregon Petition stating they don't believe that manmade greenhouse gases are making the earth heat up. The satellite data shows that there hasn't been any warming in over 17 years. But hey - consensus, right? It really doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You have enough people believ...

Upon returning from Israel where I lived and worked on Kibbutz Na'an, I chose to spend several weeks in France, both in Paris and surrounding smaller cities including the countryside in Bordeaux. What I found is that once one gets out of Paris, where Parisians are not particularly fond of Americans, the people are extremely friendly and appreciative of Americans. My aunt Ruth is French, and so my cousins all were exposed to the language at an early age. I grew into French peripherally, and speak enough to get along. There are ten major wine growing regions in France, plus a number of smaller areas. There is commercial wine production in every region of France, except for the five regions bordering on France's north coast. The appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC), which translates as "controlled designation of origin", is the French certification granted to certain French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters, and other agricultural products, all...

Fact 1: The racial percentage of those killed by police hasn't changed. In other words, police are not more (or less) likely to shoot and kill blacks than they were 15 years ago. (In more academic terms, there is no correlation between year and race, from 1998 to 2012, selecting for whites and blacks). Fact 2: Blacks are more likely than whites to be shot and killed by police, but probably less so than you'd suspect. 34 percent of those killed by police are African American. But put another way, 62 percent of those killed by police are white. Fact 3: UCR data on justified police-homicides are notorious incomplete. These numbers are an undercount. But given the data we have, as reported (or not) to the DOJ by local police departments, police kill at least one person a day (426 in 2012, to be exact, 30 percent were black, 63 percent were white). In 2012, police killed a total of 426 people. Of those: white men: 267 black men: 128 white women: 6 black women: 4 "Asia...

Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness, including straightforwardness of conduct, along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc. Furthermore, honesty means being trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere. Most of us want an honest relationship with our mate, or potential mate. People have a need for honesty and openness -- it gives them a sense of security and helps them become emotionally bonded to the one who meets that need. Those with a need for honesty and openness want accurate information about their partner's thoughts, feelings, habits, likes, dislikes, personal history, daily activities and plans for the future. If your partner does not provide honest and open communication, trust is undermined and the feelings of security can eventually be destroyed. We cannot trust the signals that are being sent and feel we have no foundation on which to build a solid...

People on social media are usually pretty quick to jump on the "latest new thing", often without doing any real research. That's why when invited to join "tsu", I declined. Now I feel even more strongly about my decision. Mark Traphagen has an excellent review here   http://goo.gl/SIYzT8 His main points: "If Tsu succeeds in attracting a large number of users, the pie slices of daily royalties will get ever smaller. That may discourage people who are there in hopes of making real money, and they may give up producing new content. Paying in proportion to views means users will likely learn quickly to produce the kind of "lowest common denominator," mindless-but-fun content that sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy churn out like machines. It's a lot harder to attract views with more thoughtful content. Therefore I predict Tsu will quickly become what many consider the bottom feed of Facebook: silly cat memes, vapid quote graphics, and videos of...

Traveling, especially if you have to do it for work, sucks bigtime. For years, I traveled all over Europe and the US, to a Microsoft MVP summit each year, not to mention at least one or two other developer events, either as a guest or as a speaker. The sign reads “Welcome to Chicago.” There’s nothing welcoming about anything though. You’re surrounded by a swarm of cranky people who were just cramped up on a long flight. They’re late for meetings or connecting flights. They’re hungry, thirsty and tired. They probably need to use the restroom, too. The airport I’m talking about is Ohare, but it could very well be any major airport. And the last time I experienced any of that was over 2 years ago now. That was the last big trip I took. Thank god. Over the years, I’ve been to over 15 countries and had some great times as well as some low times. I had a lot of places I wanted to visit. But I don’t care about it anymore; I’ve decided traveling sucks. Here is why: 1. People try t...

  The problem that many people arguing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have is that they have no idea who is who, and what are the historical forces behind the conflict. Most people outside of the middle east think the violence in Gaza is a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But history shows us something different: At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the division of land to be agreed was that the Jews would receive Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea and including what is today Jordan, and the Arabs would receive the Arab Peninsular and what is today Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.  This, in effect, converted the Balfour Declaration into a binding legal document. It was no longer the whim of a British Government with no rights but now incorporated into international law by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers. The Jewish people have the legal right to live and remain in every part of the territory which was part of the Mandated territory of Pales...