Bennett K

Are there places or situations in Italy where the "standard Italian" used as a koiné / lingua franca for business, journalism, or travel to different regions is also spoken as the mother tongue in the home instead of the local native "dialetto"?

The IJF has repeatedly altered the rules of contest judo for reasons that have little to nothing to do with safety, sportsmanship, or the role of shiai in the practice of the martial art of judo. Kani basami was prohibited even if properly executed (with the leg on the upper thigh, hip, or stomach). Now all pick-ups, including kata gurma, one of Kano's original throws, have been taken out of competition.

The AAU sponsors judo contests fought according to more traditional rules, but these are a small minority of contest in the United States. In Japan, do they play by the IJF rules in traditional tournaments like All Japan, All Japan Collegiate, or the Kodokan's Red and White contest? Or do they play by some more traditional set of rules, in which a fuller set of judo technique may be practiced?

I've been keeping fish for over two decades, but for some reason have never known the answer to this:

Can freshwater aquaria be "seeded" with plankton the way marine aquaria are seeded with live rock/live sand? Are there any references or standard protocols for this?

What I have in mind is establishing euglena, stentor, rotifers, copepods, perhaps daphnia, etc. in an aquarium. Maybe also some worms for the gravel or sand, but I do not know where to obtain them. Gammarus would be nice, but they can destroy plants if they get out of hand.

The idea is to have a more complete food web in the aquarium, so that there are more than just bacteria and snails and whatever incidentals come in through the air. Feeding will, of course, not be replaced (it would take quite a population of critters to sustain the fish in a show tank!) but the fish should be able to nibble, or graze aufwuchs, from time to time.

There are probably some cilliates already there in any tank--maybe it's worth trying to grow them up and see. But rotifers and other mesoscopic, multi-cellular creatures? Probably not.

I've heard that, almost as a rule, languages become less inflected over time. Thus Italian not marking all of the tenses or cases of Latin, modern English being less inflected than old English, etc.

If this is the trend, how did languages (including PIE?) become inflected in the first place?

I'm a recent transplant to the "left coast", land of casual monday-friday, welded-on blue jeans, and unbuttoned collars. I have opera tickets, and it's a bit of an occasion--we'll be celebrating my wife's birthday that night, too.

My tux is the best thing hanging in my closet. It's as comfortable as pyjamas but much better cut. I look and feel like a million bucks with it on and am always looking for excuses to wear it. I don't care that I'll be in the minority and am not looking for general advice (nor your opinion of formalwear), but rather an answer to a narrow question: will it be somehow a faux pas to wear it?

True our false and why: Capital gains taxation is a double tax because the price of a security is the discounted net present value of its future income.

That is to say, when taxing capital gains, one is taxing the creation of an income source, whose income will be taxed in the future, effectively doubly taxing income.

Note that I do not mean "double tax" here in the sense "taxed by two jurisdictions".

See http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/16/obama-bio-bombs-... ; White House staffers have added material to the presidential history section of whitehouse.gov (to articles about other presidents) that is congratulatory regarding Barack Obama and can be seen as trying to promote him or advocate for him.

Does this violate the Hatch Act (against campaigning by government employees)? Why or why not?

Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science" is, if my ears aren't deceiving me, in 4/4 time but with syncopation. If one wanted to dance to it e.g. at a wedding what sort of basic step would be suitable?

There are several academic philosophers who identify as Randist "Objectivists" but all of them, to the best of my knowledge, began as Ayn Rand followers/fans in their teens or early in college.

Are there any serious philosophers, educated in the analytic tradition, who, only *following* serious study, concluded that Ayn Rand's attempt at a closed system was correct or mostly correct?

It is easy to name at least a few respectable scholarly economists (who publish for a general audience of economists and not just in Mises Institute journals) who self-identify as "Austrian School" and agree to some extent or another with the associated heterodox claims about economic methodology. Most or all of these, as I understand it, were already believers in the Austrians' claims as teenagers or very young college students (frosh/soph) and merely stayed committed to that position through the course of their studies.

Are there any scholarly economists of the current generation who, only following or as a result of advanced study, concluded that Austrianism is correct?

It's rather clear, perhaps to everyone save Barack Obama, that "stimulus" is not a synonym for government spending. In principle some sort of deficit spending can ease a recession and get things going again, but realistic implementation seems difficult for numerous reasons.

Does the "flight to quality" mean that the classic objection to deficit spending--that government borrowing eats up funds that would otherwise be bank deposits or investments--holds less than usual?

Also, it would seem that the root cause of this recession is monetary. Wouldn't monetary stimulus thus be superior to deficit spending?

I'm not an economist, merely someone interested in the topic so that he can form an honest opinion of public policy. If some of you who are economists could provide a few answers--and references to the technical literature would be even better--I'd be grateful.