Miljenko's Blog

So here’s the thing. The recent “war of words” with North Korea revealed an important point – we don’t really know very much about what current capabilities he has. And in that context, the escalation of rhetoric is exactly what is needed. A guy who talks tough needs to be drawn out to show his cards or else we are just guessing. In an analogy with Poker, he has 3 cards and the rest of the world does not know what those are. If he can be compelled to show his existing 3 cards, then knowing what cards the rest of the world has gives a reasonable set of probabilities that can be estimated. Just like in those Poker TV shows where odds of winning of each hand are estimated because we can see each hand with cameras under the table. So the trick is to have him flip his 3 cards. If I were the US I would ask him in a few days “so you said there were going to be 4 missiles splashing into the ocean near Guam as a show of force – where are they?”. I would push him to ...

There is this building myth in the media by the likes of Chris Cuomo that immigrants to North America were somehow all the "huddled masses" of the fundraising poem written on the Statue of Liberty. That is patently untrue - it was not the least capable and down on their luck people in Europe who emigrated to America (and Canada) in the early parts of the 20th century. If you were homeless, stupid or had no self-motivation you could not get onto the boat to book passage to th e New World. In many ways it was the best and the brightest, the people who had the gumption and the ability and the courage that decided to embark on such a challenge. Not the meek and the docile. You think the village idiots booked passage to the New World? Think again. And no wonder they did as well as they did when they arrived there. A great many of them. They were entrepreneurial and smart and go-getters. If your grandparents were immigrants think of the family memories of them. Were they ...