Re the financial hysteria: The real measure of our wealth is how much we\u2019d be worth if we lost all our money.<\/p>\n
\u00a0This year the world\u2019s largest cruise ship will be launched, a 220,000-ton behemoth for more than 6000 passengers.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n
\u00a0The other day Fran and I got into a debate about cosmology, which became particularly heated over the topic of\u00a0 whether we were talking about the \u201cobservable universe\u201d or simply the \u201cuniverse.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Google that distinction if you care to.\u00a0 So very \u201cus.\u201d\u00a0 I forget how it ended finally (certainly not resolved, but that\u2019s not the point).\u00a0 I do love her so.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Some of the following comes from an online debate on the question: Why does the freest nation in the world, the United States, have the highest rate of incarceration (about 1 out of 100) in the world, compared to say Sweden (more like 1 out of 1500)?<\/em> The discussants noted that it is uncertain if the U.S. can rightly claim the title of\u00a0 \u201cfreest\u201d and in any case the rate of incarceration does not necessarily indicate the degree of general freedom. Freedom can be only be determined by the limits of your body, the comparative strength of those who oppose you, and your willingness to accept the consequences of your actions.\u00a0 One conception is that a nation will be freest when citizens are willing to, and frequently do, commit acts deemed illegal by government.\u00a0 In that case, the U.S. could outrank Sweden, whose citizens might be more restricted by their obedience to law than Americans are restricted by the threat of the bars of a jail cell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Re the financial hysteria: The real measure of our wealth is how much we\u2019d be worth if we lost all our money. \u00a0This year the world\u2019s largest cruise ship will be launched, a 220,000-ton behemoth for more than 6000 passengers.\u00a0 Why? \u00a0The other day Fran and I got into a debate about cosmology, which became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}