Fleming ends a man fulfilled

Third time’s a charm for the Chennai Super Kings and their coach, Stephen Fleming. Always sporting a tranquil demeanour, Fleming was a little chirpier than normal after their final win over Mumbai Indians - and it was no surprise why. What the New Zealander couldn’t manage as a player, he did as a coach. And what a journey it has been for him, from player to coach to IPL champion.

“[It’s a] massive sense of fulfilment, it’s an amazing competition to be involved in,” Fleming told iplt20.com.

“It’s long, it’s tough, it’s hot, it has challenges for players and selection and pitches, so it is wonderful to come through after what was a close competition and play like we did today.”

Chennai’s super show against Mumbai Indians was typical of the style in which Fleming led his sides as a player - cool, calm and effective. And they proved their efficiency against a strong Mumbai outfit and a partisan home crowd.

“We did most things right, exactly how we planned,” Fleming explained. “We thought a score of 150 would be  good but we were able to get a good start, a conservative start, get some momentum through the middle and one of our stars in (Suresh) Raina stood up. So it was excellent to get to 170 and we knew our bowling is pretty disciplined and we knew it was going to be tough for them.”

It was indeed going to be tough, as the Mumbai Indians found out when they fell 22 runs short of their target. Fleming admitted he was confident his team had done enough by the midway stage.

“We thought it was an excellent score, we played here the other night and it was a tough wicket, we thought probably we had 20 runs more than we needed.”

Playing against a side containing Sachin Tendulkar was going to be challenging enough but Fleming said it was the late entrance to the crease of  Kieron Pollard that decisively swung the match CSK’s way.

“It’s always tough to play a side [that] he (Sachin Tendulkar) is in and he played a good role considering his hand was what it was. (Kieron) Pollard also is a massive danger [and we] probably got away with it, with him coming in only for three overs.”

Within a short space of time, the Chennai Super Kings have managed to etch their names in IPL history and have already begun to sow the seeds of creating a long-standing IPL legacy.

Human Nature

"With these shortcomings in mind, our aim is to propose a new and more comprehensive framework for understanding global politics, which we term Symbiotic Realism. Symbiotic Realism may be described as a theory of relations in a globally anarchic world of instant connectivity and interdependence. It aims to go beyond the statecentrism of realism, integrating a number of actors that have thus far been either underemphasized or ignored by the realist paradigm. It also attempts to provide a more complex understanding of the workings of the global system by identifying four interlocking dynamics, namely the predilections of human nature, global anarchy, interdependence, and instant connectivity. The actors we believe must be considered, given the substrates of human nature, the condition of global anarchy, and globalization, are: (1) the individual; (2) the state; (3) large collective identities; (4) international organizations (multilateral institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)); (5) transnational corporations (TNCs); (6) the environment; (7) women; (8) natural resources; and (9) information and communications technology (ICT). All are important and help to (re)produce the global order while, at the same time, being affected by it. Even in approaches that attempt to depart from the state-centrism of realism, it is often not clear where some or all of these actors fit. The biosphere (the environment and natural resources) is a particularly important addition, given that it is not usually thought of as an actor per se. We believe that it should be classified as a “reactive actor” since it is reacting to human activities in such a way as to call into question current levels of civilization and to transform aspects of the global system, for example, through global climate change

The game of chance relishes to Dhoni

The eventual IPL 2010 champions, Chennai Super Kings, had a great night after beating the tournament favourites in the final. CSK played superb cricket to take the trophy in style and come up trumps when it mattered.

In a media interaction with MS Dhoni, the captain talked about the success, the factors behind it, the positives and the future with one eye on the Champions League to be held in September in South Africa.

Agricultural Pilot

“After more than a decade of agricultural flying in Africa and in the United States, most of it in turbine aircraft and a few years of mosquito control operations, also in turbine agricultural aircraft, I was amazed at how much I learned in the simulator. I knew there was always more to learn when it comes to flying but I really thought I had the engine handling down pat. Well it didn’t take Andy long to expose some glaring gaps in my knowledge of the PT-6 engine and it didn’t take him long to bring me up to par. There are many situations that can or should only be replicated in a simulator, ranging from loss of oil pressure and hung starts to being caught in a thunderstorm. Experiencing these events in the simulator gave me much more confidence and peace of mind in my daily operations knowing I could handle emergencies and situations I would have been totally unprepared for before my simulator course. I went on the refresher course a year after my initial to bring me back up to speed and I again found that very worthwhile. You don’t want to be scratching your head trying to remember the procedure for an air start while the altimeter is unwinding. Take the course, I’m glad I did.”
Giovanni (Johnny) Falzoi, (Florida, USA)

“I have been flying turbine ag-aircraft since 1981 starting first with a 510 Turbo Thrush and PT6-34AG engine. In 2007 and 2008 I attended a flight simulator course in Orlando Fl, to satisfy a local aviation authority requirement. The course was on an Air Tractor 502 simulator. I always enjoy learning and adding to my knowledge and this course did not disappoint. Much time was spent on engine management, engine failures, air-starts, FCU override practice, along with flying situations such as upset recovery and dead stick landings. After thirty-six plus years flying it was great to be able to simulate all the situations and know the proper procedures to follow. The instructor, Andy Montague, along with being very personable, has many years experience as an aerial applicator. He has a wealth of information to offer, and is also open to student input. I recommend this course to pilots in the Ag business whether for initial transition to turbine aircraft or for seasoned pilots like myself who wish to hone their skills. Currently in my career I fly 550 Turbo Thrushes spraying(PT6-60AG) and AT-802 's (PT6-67AG) in both spraying and fire bombing roles and consider this course a definite plus”.
John Mac Neil (N.B. Canada)

“I have had the privilege of having completed both the Initial and a Re-currency training course on the AT502 Simulator with Andy Montague as the instructor. On both occasions, I left the course with a lot more knowledge on PT6 handling and emergency procedures. I have flown Turbine Ag aircraft for the past 20 years, and have not experienced half the emergencies that Andy gave me in the simulator. For initial training, there is no better instructional tool than the simulator as you can experience emergencies that you cannot experience or simulate in a real aircraft”.
Bobby Tasker (Kwazulu Natal, South Africa)

“I have been in Ag Aviation since 1981 and have gained considerable turbine experience. For the last four years I have attended the AT 502 Simulator course in Orlando, FL on my way to the Cayman Islands to spray mosquitoes. The simulator has been an excellent tool to sharpen up on emergency procedures. All likely scenarios of an engine failure can be simulated along with propeller over-speeds etc. It has been an excellent tool for honing procedures required to handle low level emergencies, dumping the load, restarts, low fuel/ oil pressure, flame outs etc. In addition the simulator has demonstrated excellent qualities for converting piston pilots onto Turbine without exposing a real turbine engine to any risk of damage. Hung starts, Over temps can all be demonstrated along with the necessary remedial steps. This cannot be accomplished with a real turbine engine. Overall I would have to state that the AT 502 Simulator has been from my experience a most worthwhile training concept for both operators and pilots alike.”
Matt Erceg (Vanuatu/Australia)

earn revenue from website

You can post a non-news article piece at your blog that readers will greatly appreciate and find very valuable. They will simply appreciate it and that will be the end of it. Very few will even bother to leave a thank you comment note. But when you post a news article based on a subject of public interest, everything changes at your blog. People will leave comments, some of them very strongly disagreeing with what you have to say. There are bloggers who get very upset when somebody disagrees with what they have to say when instead they should be delighted, because disagreement creates debate and the more heated the debate at your blog, the higher the traffic you will tend to attract. In fact some bloggers have a deliberate policy of saying controversial things in their news article posts in their blogs, knowing full well that this is in fact one of the most effective ways of generating traffic anywhere. And the most wonderful thing that will tend to happen with news article posts is that within a very short time, you will find that you have rapidly accumulated lots of links pointing at your blog.
Later in this series we will discuss how practically any blog can create news article posts that are relevant to the subject, topic of the blog and still present them in the blogger's personal style. This means that literally anybody can do.

Brack Obama 's Collegeous

Few legal scholars have blown as many minds and had the tangible impact that Richard Epstein has managed. His 1985 volume, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain is a case in point. Epstein made the hugely controversial argument that regulations and other government actions such as environmental regulations that substantially limit the use of or decrease the value of property should be thought of as a form of eminent domain and thus strictly limited by the Constitution. The immediate result was a firestorm of outrage followed by an acknowledgment that the guy was onto something.
As Epstein told Reason in a 1995 interview, "I took some pride in the fact that [Sen.] Joe Biden (D-Del.) held a copy of Takings up to a hapless Clarence Thomas back in 1991 and said that anyone who believes what's in this book is certifiably unqualified to sit in on the Supreme Court. That's a compliment of sorts.... But I took even more pride in the fact that, during the Breyer hearings [in 199X], there were no such theatrics, even as the nominee was constantly questioned on whether he agreed with the Epstein position on deregulation as if that position could not be held by responsible people."
Born in New York in 1943, Epstein splits faculty appointments at the University of Chicago and New York University; he's also a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a contributor to Reason. In books such as Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (1992) to Simple Rules for a Complex World (1995), and Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (2003), Epstein pushes his ideas and preconceptions to their limits and takes his readers along for the ride. A die-hard libertarian who believes the state should be limited and individual freedom expanded, he is nonetheless the consummate intellectual who first and foremost demands he offer up ironclad proofs for his characteristically counterintuitive insights into law and social theory.
Indeed, Epstein's enduring value may not be any particular legal or policy prescription he's offered over the years but rather his methodology. He believes in robust and unfettered argument and debate as a way of gaining knowledge. If you don't put your ideas out in the arena, you can't be doing your best work, he argues. "The problem when you keep to yourself is you don't get to hear strong ideas articulated by people who disagree with you," he says.
Reason's Nick Gillespie interviewed Epstein at NYU's law building in October. The conversation was wide-ranging and high-energy--another Epsteinian virtue. They talked about legal challenges to ObamaCare, the effects of stimulus spending and TARP bailouts, and a former University of Chicago adjunct faculty member by the name of Barack Obama, with whom Epstein regularly interacted in the 1990s and early 2000s.
"He passed through Chicago without absorbing much of the internal culture," says Epstein of the president. "He's amazingly good at playing intellectual poker. But that's a disadvantage, because if you don't put your ideas out there to be shot down, you're never gonna figure out what kind of revision you want."
Filmed and edited by Jim Epstein (no relation) with help from Michael C. Moynihan and Josh Swain.

Political Ideas on subsiddies

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol," said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.
"First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
"It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

Of course that's not what the former vice-president said when he was running for president back in 2000:

As President, Al Gore will shore up the agriculture safety net that protects farmers when crop prices or yields fall unexpectedly; open foreign markets to American livestock and crops; reduce concentration in agribusiness; and expand non-traditional uses for agricultural products, such as ethanol and bio-based energy and products.

Now Gore admits:

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

Unabashed by being a pandering political hack who was wrong about corn ethanol ten years ago, Gore is certain that he knows what the proper policy is this time: subsidies for cellulosic ethanol.

Political war on Medical

Doctors who own independent practices sometimes band together to provide a bulk offering of services, at a collectively negotiated rate, for third-party payers such as large health insurance carriers. These groups are called “independent practice associations,” or IPAs, and they’ve been around since the 1950s. IPAs provide tangible value for physicians and patients alike: Doctors get a middleman to deal with the insurance bureaucracies, and patients get access to a wide range of health care providers at discounted prices. But as S.M. Oliva explains in our December issue, thanks to the ever-expanding mission of antitrust regulators, the associations are also under constant attack from the federal government.

How did we not see this one coming?

How did we not see this one coming? It was there right in front of our goddamn faces for almost 40 years, back when Woody Allen was intentionally funny: The solution to the problems posed by the underwear bomber.
More to the point, we are a nation of idjits:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans support the new full-body security-screening machines at the country's airports, as most say they put higher priority on combating terrorism than protecting personal privacy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
But half of all those polled say enhanced pat-down searches go too far.

Which means, I guess, that half of Americans feel that the pat-downs don't go far enough.

Libertarian Party founder David Nolan’s life and legacy

Nolan kept his activism focused on electoral politics, as Poole noted, even while Poole did not, I never got the impression Nolan had shifted much from his understanding of what the Libertarian Party might accomplish from the early days, which I summed up in Radicals thusly:

[Nolan] made no grandiose promises for what a Libertarian Party might achieve. He suggested that it could lead to increased media attention for libertarian ideas, which might bring more latent libertarians out from hiding, create a permanent institution to spur those libertarian into action for their beliefs, and help further a breakdown between the traditional right and left by providing a new home, seriously pro-liberty and anti-state, to the forces on either end of the standard political spectrum that ought not feel comfortable with the rest of their coalition. He pointed especially to, on the left, the Institute for the Study of Non-Violence, and on the right to the Birchers and the Liberty Amendment Committee (his own former far-right home).

Nolan always had great affection for the long-forgotten Liberty Amendment Committee that provided his political home between the Goldwater campaign and the LP; as he explained it to me, “From World War II to the late ‘60s a whole generation had no such thing as an active public libertarian movement, and most of the conservative organizations focused on being anti communist and rooting out traitors at home and making sure we didn’t surrender to the Russkies. Very few honed in on the idea that the free market can and should do 99 percent of the things that need to be done.” Nolan credited the Liberty Amendment Committee—dedicated to passing a constitutional amendment that would eliminate all functions of the federal government not explicitly authorized by the original pre-16^th Amendment Constitution—for having an“agenda that was clean and straightforward, not mixed with religion, anti communism, all those strains of conservative thinking. The pure conservative economics philosophy had virtually disappeared except for the Foundation for Economic Education and the Liberty Amendment Committee.”
Nolan held fast to not diluting the free-market message with other concerns that actually asked for or required government action—he credited his experience with the mostly forgotten Liberty Amendment Committee as priming him to understand why a specifically libertarian political action group was needed. His holding of the 600-strong list of campus folk interested in the Liberty Amendment, and the list of a small business he ran selling laissez-faire themed buttons and stickers, helped him gin up interest in the early LP, and also helped prime the organizational pump of the major 1970s student group dedicated to libertarian principles, the Society for Individual Liberty when Nolan lent the list to its organizers.
Nolan ran for office with the LP a few times through the years after founding it—he talked to me at length about his 2000 run for U.S. Congress from Orange County, California, in which he stressed the drug war as one issue neither major party could stake out. He was pleasantly surprised with how little angry opposition he found when explaining drug legalization to normal voters.
The future of Nolan's party is very much up for grabs, and while Wayne Root, with whom Nolan sparred on the Libertarian Party’s National Committee, hypes himself as a “Reagan libertarian” who thinks the libertarian cause has been infected with too many “liberal” things, Nolan proposed, and the Libertarian National Committee this weekend passed, a resolution holding the party to the notion that:

"WHEREAS we need the support of both former liberals and former conservatives who have come to realize that libertarianism and the Libertarian Party offer a better path to achieving a just, humane and prosperous society,
"The Libertarian National Committee hereby reaffirms that the Libertarian Party welcomes individuals from across the political spectrum who now accept the libertarian principles of self-ownership and non-aggression."

Nolan remained to the end a defender of the notion spelled out well in the popular, and useful libertarian explanation and recruitment tool the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz,” inspired by an old Nolan libertarian ‘zine article and thus knows as the “Nolan Chart”: reminding the freedom-minded that there is a viable approach to politics that is orthogonal to the stale, entrapping, equally liberty-violating left-right American political spectrum. Thanks in large part to his efforts, many hundreds of thousands more Americans understand that; and his last political accomplishment was the above effort to maintain his party as a viable political home for Americans whose love of liberty span the left-right divide.
In the Internet age, the LP is a less important entry point for the young looking for places where their peculiar interests in liberty intersect the real world. While Nolan stressed to me the founding gang of the LP were mostly in their 20s, it’s hard to find many under 35 at most LP events these days. With groups like Campaign for Liberty and any number of online places to virtually congregate and spread ideas, and with Tea Partyism as a possible spur to more genuinely small-government politicians in the Republican Party, the LPs importance may shrink in the future. Nolan himself became a devotee of the Free State Project approach recently.
An anecdote Nolan told me about his college days was exemplary of his lifelong effort to push liberty ideas anywhere he could. He told me how he and his comrades controlled a Students for Goldwater Group, a Young Republicans group, and a Young Americans for Freedom group at MIT. Since the campus rules allowed one student group to run a booth out at the campus’s central crossroads for two weeks straight,, they’d run two weeks of one, two weeks of the next, and two weeks of the third—all pushing the same pro-liberty message he was inspired to by the likes of Heinlein and Rand.
Nolan created an ongoing operation to explain, in a context the greatest number of Americans are prepared to listen and understand, electoral politics,  the basics of a libertarianism clearly distinct, party labels and all, from the two-party political and mental duopoly of America. He thus contributed greatly to the forging of understanding, connection (as well, as any LPer or former LPer will also recognize, for anger, feuding, and splits, but that’s the nature of the beast and not Nolan’s fault), and inspiration among libertarians. (He credited the interpersonal connections and spreading of information that the LP facilitated, which often ended up coming to fruition outside the LP itself, as the LP’s greatest contribution in his interview with me.) Nolan was important in creating an actual lively Third Way in American politics, a Third Way that is far healthier in numbers and brainpower than before he came along. The LP did not elect libertarian politicians, as Nolan always understood it likely wouldn’t; it was still a vital part of the set of organizations and approaches that are both allies and sometimes rivals in the ever-livelier free market of ideological and educational action to change minds for liberty.