Shaun Kenney

Work hard, don’t spend, invest well.

Best analogy I’ve ever read: An Indian lying on a mat in Calcutta has more wealth than the average American. While an American may live better, he lives on credit, and all things considered lives most of his life paying off accumulated debt.

The man on the mat on the other hand can never have the mat taken away.

What the analogy proves is that material wealth is really a matter of accumulating capital, not in having “things” that are really leased from the true owner over a period of years. Best lesson I’ve learned in awhile.

Bit long for my tastes, but then again it’s not made for 18-30 year olds… it’s made for 55 and older crowds.

In that respect, this is pretty effective. The production of the video alone Fred Thompson alone answers the “Is Fred Thompson presidential?” question… classic Address to the Nation stance.

This is actually worth watching if you want to get to know Fred Thompson. I’d love to see the other candidates do something similar.

If we win, we’re in.

GO SKINS!

Guess what I got for Christmas?

I used to play violin when I was younger, though not extremely well. Still, being able to play a musical instrument is one of those things that every cultured individual should be able to do (speaking or reading at least one other language is also in this category).

So after some months of waffling between a guitar or picking back up the violin, I went with something familiar… and unique. It was a tough choice though. I’d play every instrument on the planet if I could! I visited a couple of music stores in omaha and that made my decision to get a violin. I even got to rent one for a while just to make sure it was the right instrument for me but it definitely was!

Surprisingly, I tuned it right up using the piano in the living room as a guide, as was barely able to squeak out “Good King Wenceslas” much to the consternation of Marie. It’s not encouraging when your one-year old daughter buries her head in sheets and pillows to get away from the screeching of a poorly played instrument.

Nevertheless, I am undaunted. I have all my old books, and am committing myself to at least 30min of practice every evening. If I get any good, I’ll share!

That’s right… it’s going away.

In an email exchange yesterday with Tom Drapeau, Director of AOL/Netscape development, he said that only a handful of AOL engineers are still tasked with keeping the browser updated. Most of their efforts have been aimed at creating a Netscape-skinned version of Firefox with the Netscape look and feel.

The team has been unable to gain any significant market share against Microsoft Internet Explorer. In fact, recent surveys suggest that Netscape currently has only 0.6% market share among browsers, compared to IE’s 77.35% and Firefox’s 16.01%. This, of course, is the same browser that once claimed more than 90 percent of the market, sparking the browser wars of the 1990s and the subsequent Microsoft antitrust trial.

Drapeau says AOL’s transition into an ad-supported web business leaves little room for any real effort at maintaining and evolving the Netscape Browser.

What a shame…

Listening to Rudy Giuliani prostitute his “experience” in handling Islamic terrorism is like listening to someone who has witnessed a car wreck assert he is the chief medical surgeon at the local hospital, and saved every life in the accident that day.

Jim Bacon is back with his Economy 4.0 series, and this time he has some great innovations regarding a new approach to education in the 21st century .download kids free

Everything you wanted to know from Virginia’s best foreign affairs analyst.

Probably the most fascinating article I’ve read all year:

This is why Frank Capra, contrary to popular opinion, is one of the most challenging of all filmmakers and in some ways the most disturbing. Most “serious films”—the “hard-hitting” “uncompromising” films—ask us only to accept, for example, that poverty is bad, relationships are hard, that politics is corrupt. In short, their “challenge” consists precisely in asking us to accept ideas that we already accept anyway, even if we struggle to know just what to do about them. In these comedies, Capra asks us to accept that the old-fashioned American ideals are still good, that David really can whip Goliath, that our prayers do not go unheard, that the meek shall inherit the earth. In other words, he asks us to accept things about which we have grave, grave doubts. And he is uncompromising in his asking: he doesn’t ask us to accept these propositions as nice or inspirational or comforting or helpful—he asks us to accept them as true. That, my friend, is a challenging filmmaker. That is serious, avant-garde cinema, if you will.

It’s a Wonderful Life is a Christmastime staple at the Kenney estate, as has become the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Print this out and read it over your lunch break.

(h/t to Conservativa)

Here’s the 2007 statistics. Note the cost of entitlements (Unemployment and Welfare, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security):

That’s 58% of the federal budget… not counting the billions spent on the U.S. Department of Education.

Anyone else willing to make the argument that we need more government?