Gongol.com > Archive > July 2004
Gongol.com: July 2004


The United States of America (7.7.2004)
Speaking of Red vs. Blue
Interesting perspective on how "Red America" and "Blue America" comparisons are really just a bunch of hooey (propagated by uppity leftists who really think that the rancher in Wyoming is really the same kind of Republican as the Christian Coalition member in Alabama. Reminiscent of the Nine Nations of North America of the 1980's, which took a whole-continent perspective.

The American Way (7.7.2004)
More than Half of Canadians Want to Use the US Dollar
The story itself is from 2002, but the support is surprising. Of course, it's buried in a Canadian news story about how 38% of Americans thought that Canada should be annexed. In the long run, some form of political union, at least with the western provinces, seems likely. The burden created by Canada's socialist health-care system, among other problems, is likely to put some pain into the spirit of things up north. There's already a serious "red/blue" divide there -- the West remains strongly Conservative, while the rest of the country is Liberal, less Quebec, which seems to just want to get the heck out. The full province-by-province breakdown is available here. Do note: CTV at least understands that blue is the "conservative" color, and red is the "liberal" color, which somehow seems to have been flipped backwards in most US "red/blue" maps of the last five years.

Socialism Rears Its Ugly Head (7.7.2004)
More Commentary on Moore's Lies
It's not that Moore doesn't have the right to make bad movies, it's that so many people think that anything he makes is a legitimate "documentary" and swallow it uncritically.

The American Way (7.7.2004)
Shocking: Workers Usually Know the Company Better than Managers
There's nothing shocking about it at all. Markets let information filter up and down the corporate ladder much better than any "open door" policy. If only American voters and politicians would realize that markets do the same thing for us socially much better than government intervention.

Science and Technology (7.7.2004)
Perhaps Why We Spend So Much Time On Politics
The time and effort we as Americans expend on watching, blathering on about, and fighting political horse races is one of my most serious pet peeves. All of the nonsense waste (time and money, especially) we're going to expend on the Democratic and Republican national conventions seems to me much better spent on things like, say, actually doing productive work to find a cure for cancer. The article summarized at Marginal Revolution seems to suggest that it's a primal instinct. It still stinks.


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