The U.S.-Europe Relationship

George Friedman of Stratfor always comes up with curious and seemingly truthful articles.  This one is no different and very much aligns with what I have experienced in our nation's relationship with Europe.  I don't think I have too many Europeans that read this blog, but it would be curious to see if their honest opinion matches this article.

Probably one of the more telling sections is at the end:

Whenever I visit Europe -- and I was born in Europe -- I am struck by how profoundly different the two places are. I am also struck at how the United States is disliked and held in contempt by Europeans. I am also struck at how little Americans notice or care.
There is talk of the transatlantic relationship. It is not gone, nor even frayed. Europeans come to the United States and Americans go to Europe and both take pleasure in the other. But the connection is thin. Where once we made wars together, we now take vacations. It is hard to build a Syria policy on that framework, let alone a North Atlantic strategy.

I very much agree that Europe is weak, despite their own opinions of themselves, and they are therefore largely irrelevant on the world stage.  The history of our world seems to be coming down to this: a showdown between Islamists and the U.S.

I hope we come out on top of this struggle.

Information Theory of Economics

This is finally a base economic theory that I can ascribe to more fully.  I have long thought that there is a "true value" or commodity of real value behind the economy, but I had never thought to ascribe it to knowledge.  This seems to have some validity, but knowledge may just as easily be denominated in a unit of "real value" as is every other intrinsically valuable commodity.

Nevertheless, this is a good read.  I am thinking about buying this fellow's book, but we will see.

NSA Encryption Backdoors: Undermining Freedom

Being a conservative, I often fall on the side of the government on these kinds of issues, but the topic of the NSA creating backdoors around all of the common Internet security protocols is, quite frankly, unacceptable.

The NSA is willingly sacrificing everything that we hold dear to protect us.  They are obliterating the very thing that we cherish.  No amount of protection is worth throwing away the trust, privacy, and security that is necessary on the Internet to do any manner of serious business.  The gall of the NSA to decide that it has the authority to simply throw out the Constitution and every other established right in America is sickening, and the programs supporting this effort should be unfunded immediately.

We are becoming that which we fear, and I do not like it one bit.

Facebook Depression

I found a curious article on the usage statistics of Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, and a short analysis of the phenomenon known cursorily as "Facebook Depression" that commonly plagues people who are hooked on social media.

I believe very much that Facebook Depression is a real and dangerous phenomenon, and is the sole reason that I keep Facebook at arm's length now.