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Showing posts from August, 2011

This is the Glory

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Photo by Jennifer near sunset this evening. The title is her's, meaning the shining solar glory of rays revealed in clouds. It was 98 degrees today. We haven't had more than a passing shower of rain in over two weeks. Often the heat index is over 100 degrees. Everything is wilting. Our grass is mostly brown and crunchy.

Call Me Skywalker

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A pic of me standing at Guano Point on the western rim of the Grand Canyon last week. The vista is about 20 miles wide from here to the furtherest viewable ridge. From cruising altitude on a bright, mostly cloudless summer morning the landscape of our nation turns from green across the southeast gradually to tan about central Texas and then to reddish-brown somewhere over New Mexico. I flew into Phoenix last week with my boss and the other managers where I work for a meeting with a Utah-based corporation we represent throughout the south. A direct flight to Salt Lake City from Atlanta was three times as expensive as a stop-over in Arizona. So, that was the route we took. It was the first time I’ve flown since my pleasure trip to Boston two years ago. I am a complete, unashamed tourist when it comes to flying. I prefer a window seat and I thoroughly enjoy gawking like a child at whatever might be below. I saw three rather large wind-farms along the way. The dry region of wes

Into the Fog of Growth

In February of this year, Professor John Van Reenen , a leading British economist, addressed an audience in Hong Kong on the future of economic growth . In that lecture he highlighted areas from which growth was most likely to emerge. Among other things Professor Van Reenen stated growth would best manifest itself via: "...trade policies, relaxed planning, less distortionary taxation, proper subsidization of research and development, and improved management...” The point that struck me as I pondered this lecture and other readings online about growth from a macroeconomic perspective was that there was no mention of emerging opportunities or a novel transition from service-based economies to whatever might come next, if anything. If the service-economy is the summit of economic evolution then we are in big trouble, no matter how optimistic many trendy economists might wish to frame things . Professor Van Reener was using the old accounting trick of simply moving numbers and agr

PMD and GB2 Arrive

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The newest wargames in my collection with their original versions from 1992 and 1994 respectively. Roughly two years ago I placed separate pre-orders for reprints of two board (as opposed to computer) wargames I initially bought back in the early 1990’s. They were being independently re-published by different designers, companies, ideas, and production schedules. I enjoyed both original versions of these wargames and played each for years in times of hobby. Their recent reappearance in my life was coincidentally and spontaneously simultaneous. That’s the way karma works, or, better, that is the stuff of karma. I want to blog about karma soon but it is slippery territory and you must be able to articulate your meaning well; very tough to do with all those preconceptions out there among other people as well as within yourself. Both wargames arrived within three or four days of each other about three weeks ago after all those many months of foreign separateness. One game is the second pri