Thursday, July 29. 2010
The asteroid. I read on the internet that global warming causes asteroids.
Did you know that the govt is giving out free cell phones and free airtime? (h/t, Moonbattery)
 Anatomy of a Microburst. Often mistaken for tornados.
Is being a slut liberating?
Pre-Cambrian life forms
The Boy Scout parade
SEC Says New Financial Regulation Law Exempts it From Public Disclosure. Huh?
New Calculator Shows How Much More Taxes Will You Pay Next Year
NYT Reporter Surprised at Lack of Gratitude in Texas for Obama-Care Handout
Heather MacDonald: What Judge Bolton’s Injunction Doesn’t Say
The President Wears Prada
We have had quite a few posts about Woodrow Wilson lately. This from Scott at Powerline:
Reading the scholarly work of Woodrow Wilson is an educational experience. It is shocking to read the expressions of his disaffection for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. As R.J. Pestritto has demonstrated, the intellectual roots of modern liberalism lie in an assault on the ideas of natural rights and limited government. They eventuate in an administrative state and rule by supposed experts. Obamacare represents something like the full flowering of modern liberalism.
I want to go the the museum at the Belevedere Palace in Vienna more to see the Kokoshkas than to see the jazzy Klimts. Klimt is fine, but Kokoshka is one of the gnarly German Expressionists that I get a kick out of. Well, Austrian in this case.
I have a good Klimt quote though:
I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women...There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Who ever wants to know something about me... ought to look carefully at my pictures.
Kokoshka's famous 1914 Bride of the Wind:
Wednesday, July 28. 2010
A quote from his interview:
You know what that rally was? The "me first" rally. "Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line." Well, you know what? I'm not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we'll shine a bright light on it, and we'll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that's how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest."
It's the right time to take on the greed of government unions. Somebody's got to do it before every Dem state goes bankrupt. As I always say, the marriage between government unions and the Dem party is an intrinsically corrupt conspiracy against the people.
Bob Dylan's use of the phrase, "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows" in Subterranean Homesick Blues encouraged the young to make their own decisions, including about drugs, to know what's happening based on changing conditions in order to know about what's coming. It's based on the nautical phrase to know the windward side.
This latest chart of ObamaCare only shows about a third of the complexity of the hurricane and where it is blowing us.
In the garage I still have a copy of the chart for HillaryCare. It was simple, Alice's Wonderland was easier to wend through, compared to this maze, a maze we're doomed to wander in search of care.
Only repeal is real.
 Not my fault. I blame Bush.
Meanwhile I learned about the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, via which you can travel from Rotterdam to the Black Sea by water if you want to.
Could be sort of like America's Great Loop, without the loop.
The Viking/Normans, who explored the Danube from the Med, would have enjoyed that canal.
This article is from the British paper The Star.
This is one of those rare moments in life when you realize you've just read something such as you've never read before, nor may ever read again.
ON 21 July, we published an article claiming that the video games company Rockstar Games were planning to release a version of their popular Grand Theft Auto video games series titled “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.
We also published what we claimed would be the cover of this game, solicited comments from a family member impacted by the recent tragedy and criticised Rockstar Games for their alleged plans.
We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.
It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member.
We unreservedly apologise to Rockstar Games and we have undertaken not to repeat the claims again. We have also agreed to pay them a substantial amount in damages which they are donating to charity.
Rick Moran led us to the real meaning of Dog Days. Via Wiki:
For the ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared just before the season of the Nile's flooding, so they used the star as a "watchdog" for that event. Since its rising also coincided with a time of extreme heat, the connection with hot, sultry weather was made for all time.
Sirius is the shiny dog collar tag in Canis Major:
Here. It was Edwardian: high-fashion with post-Victorian mores and plenty of mineral water. Edward Vll himself loved to hang out there and pick up chicks. Back then, being a bit pudgy was not a problem. We remain in his debt for making tweed respectable, and for replacing white tie and tails with the simple black tie of today.
To enhance Bird Dog's experience with Customs when he visits Europe in a few weeks, we've ordered some stickers for his luggage. Yeah, full body search. If you visit the site, there's one for his female companions.
 
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Richard Feynman, via The Difference between ‘True Science’ and ‘Cargo-Cult Science’ at Pajamas
 City and County Government Associations: Obama Economy Will Create or Save, Eh, I Mean Destroy or Eliminate 500,000 Public Sector Jobs. Toon borrowed from that piece at Ross.
The “does it make me look fat?” question
Caddell: Our Divisive President - "Barack Obama promised a new era of post-partisanship. In office, he's played racial politics and further split the country along class and party lines."
Hawkins: Seven Deceptive Mainstream Media Techniques
Reason.tv: Arthur C. Brooks on the Battle Between Free Enterprise and Big Government
"Temporary marriage" in Iran: "We call on all our sisters who are virgins" to put out for the lonely pilgrims - for cash.
At Thompson:
Greg Lukianoff on knowing why you think what you think.
One of the great harms of speech codes and campus censorship is that it leaves students with the false impression that censorship is what good, compassionate people do.
Reynolds: Taking Photos In Public Places Is Not A Crime: Analysis. "Too many officials think taking photos is a crime. Here’s why they’re wrong." h/t Ace
"Set up a motion-activated camera at a stock water tank in South Texas and you'll catch all manner of critters."
Good advice: Surviving the Low-Level Job. People will need to get used to this.
Tuesday, July 27. 2010
I once booed Jewel at a performance. It was the year she toured with Bob Dylan, and I saw them in New Haven. (She once said that she thought Bob was gay because he didn't hit on her during the tour. Disappointed by that, it seems.)
I booed because she had to bring some political snark into her chatter, assuming as such folks do that their audiences are all on the same page politically. Rude of me, but that sort of presumption bugs me. As usual, my friends were embarassed by my behavior. She was not really known, then.
Here's the whole song that was chopped up on Dr Merc's fun post:
It's good to hear Tom Sowell say it: How Smart Are We? Elites may have more brilliance, but they can’t have as much experience as the people whose decisions they preempt.
One quote:
One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control, and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things being allowed to take their own course. It sounds so logical and plausible that demanding hard evidence would seem almost like nit-picking.
"Things taking their own course" means, of course, people exercising free choice.
Some of us here have been accused of being elites ourselves. If I am in that category somehow, put me in the subgroup that has no interest in controlling anybody but myself. Just that is difficult enough, and often impossible.
 One pesky little computer problem is when you run a program most of the time the computer is up, like an email program, but it minimizes to the Task Bar and clutters up the place with its icon. For 'permanent' programs that run all of the time, the better routine is to stick the icon in the SysTray (the area just to the right of the Task Bar) and leave the Task Bar area for current projects.
Some programs have a setting in their Options that tells them to minimize to the SysTray, so check that first.
To solve this little poser, we have a program with the cheek-pinchingly cute name of Trayconizer. It's not promised to work on every program, but it's worked on the three I've thrown at it.
Home page is here. Get the 'Unicode build'.
Unzip the file to its own 'Trayconizer' folder in a place you'll later be able to locate. This is, if you put the Trayconizer folder in a 'Tools' folder, remember it for the next step.
To set up a program for trayconizing, go to the Start Menu, find its icon, right-click on it and open the Properties.
In the 'Target' box, put the full path to Trayconizer before the path to the program.
(capital letters are only used for clarity in the following)
For example, if you placed the Trayconizer folder in a 'Tools' folder, the path would be:
C:\Tools\Trayconizer\Trayconizer.exe <existing path to program>
If you stuck it in a folder with a blank space in the name, like 'Program Files', you need to put the whole path in quotes:
"C:\Program Files\Trayconizer\Trayconizer.exe" <path to program>
If there's an error in the path, Windows will let you know when you click 'OK' to close the box. If you get stuck, open the Properties of the Trayconizer icon, highlight the 'Location', copy it to memory with Ctrl-C, paste it into the 'Target' box with Ctrl-V.
Now when you minimize the program the icon should go to the SysTray. Single-click on it to get a few options, double-click to pop the program back open.
Good video summary of the American aircraft carrier. Most of our readers probably know it all, already.
For our hillbilly friends, safely below the fold -
Continue reading "Dear Abby"
 I thought it might be interesting to go over a few food combos that sound just terrible when mixed together, yet go great together when a third food is involved.
This will be one of those famous "user participation" posts you read so much about in Blogger's Digress. As we did in Bag O' Links, I'll add any additions left in the comments to the list ASAP. The rule is, two of the foods have to evoke a "Yuck!" when mentioned together, but go perfectly well when a third food is introduced.
Probably the classic is ketchup and grape jelly, or any kind of jelly or jam. Can you imagine eating a bite of jellied toast, then tossing a spoonful of ketchup into your mouth? Yuck! Or eating some french fries with ketchup, then suddenly eating a teaspoon of grape jelly? Uck-yay!
Then you'll be sitting there eating some scrambled eggs with ketchup, and halfway through the chew you'll take a bite of the jellied toast, and there's your ketchup and jelly. And, amazingly, they go perfectly together because of the scrambled eggs.
And there's another small anomaly in the same meal. Would you mix ultra-sugary and ultra-salty foods together? Not usually. Yet there you are, chewing on the ultra-sugary jellied toast while stuffing another piece of ultra-salty bacon or sausage into your mouth, again brought together by the eggs.
Another oddity is pepper on bananas. You never see anyone peppering a banana, just because it would look too weird. In secret, or in the confidence of a mate, perhaps. I wouldn't know, I've never tried. It would just look too weird.
Yet I've peppered tons of bananas in my life. Sliced, on sandwiches. As soon as you add the bread and mayo, the pepper just seems to magically fit and the results are delicious. I'm not sure I'd eat a banana sandwich without pepper, just because it adds so much to the taste.
And here's one I bet you've never tried. How about munching on some barbecue potato chips... then washing them down with chocolate milk? Doesn't sound very appealing, I admit. We're back to that salt-sugar clash.
But, assuming you like egg salad sandwiches, the next time you have one, buy a bag of BBQ chips and your favorite brand of chocolate milk. It's just amazing how well the three go together.
How about garlic bread and soy sauce?
"Yuckypoo!"
Exactly. But there I was the other night, eating some garlic 'Texas Toast' with some Chinese eggrolls, dunking the garlic bread in the soy sauce on the plate. Somehow the eggrolls magically tied everything together.
If you have your own favorite food quirk, toss it in the comments and I'll slap it on the list. If you'd like to include an accompanying blurb like the above, please do so.
Continue reading "Food Quirks"
Monday, July 26. 2010
As I always do before trips, I am catching up on history. This trip will be Vienna and the Danube. I view these places historically as the hinterlands, but you cannot fault their production of music in recent centuries. Music, wars, and sort-of hideous baroque architecture.
Vienna had been a Roman frontier outpost, but surely had been a barbarian settlement before that.
I do recall that European History in high school made my head spin from the endless alliances and endless wars and the reconfigurations of empires, kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and nations. With my ADD, it's a wonder I did so well with it. Forgot most of it. The War of the Spanish Succession.
I did not forget some details of the devastating Franco-Prussian War, but I certainly had forgotten that "German Austria" wanted to be part of Germany after WW1, but the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations forbade it. German Austria reached down into the (still) German-speaking areas of northern Italy. The Austria of today is a relatively brand-new nation (1945 or 1955 - pick the date) although it was a Babenburg duchy in 1156 and later was roughly the core of the Hapsburg's power for 640 years.
The Hapsburgs are credited with keeping the Ottomans out of Europe in 1683, but the King of Poland, Jan Sobieski, deserves lots of credit. There were 300 years of resisting the Ottoman Empire's invasions. I have never understood why Middle-Easterners coveted Europe, but they still do.
I find it amusing to think of what was going on in the wilds of the American colonies at the same time. Only Spain really cared, because of the gold. Otherwise insignificant except as pawns in larger European power games.
In the early 1700s, the Hapsburgs counted among their imperial control Belgium, Sardinia, Corsica, the Duchy of Milan, Naples, and Sicily. Two hundred years earlier, HRE "Emperor" Charles V in 1516 also happened to be King of Spain, bringing Spanish America, for a while, into the bounds of the Holy Roman Empire - such as it was: A crown, a flag, a bunch of castles and palaces, a title, and some truly snazzy outfits with fancy medals on them to impress the gals. Being King of Spain, on the other hand, was probably a cool gig with plenty of perks and babes.
The modern European nations are all younger in their configurations and their governmental structures than the US (except for the post-Empire island core of Britain).
One thought this perspective gave me is that the EU may be little more than an expanded reconstitution of the Holy Roman Empire - combined with the old Roman Empire. In time, it will pass too.
Photo below, Palace Schoenbrunn, first constructed as a hunting lodge in the early 1700s. "Hey, honey, have you seen where I put my camo and my ammo?"
That's from a time when royal governments lived off the labor of the people. Not like now, right?
Stumbled across this web site today. An oasis of calm in a world of chaos. As a semi-amateur photographer, I'm always amazed at the way creative people come up with new ways to make and create new and interesting photos: Mila's Daydreams.
This truly is. If there's a classic fantasy every popular singer entertains, it's putting on a disguise, walking into a night club or karaoke bar, strutting your stuff and wowing the crowd. There really couldn't be a better way to prove to yourself that you really do have that something special; that's it's not all just flashy PR and rabid fans who will drool over anyone.
Lay it on, Jewel.
I would only add that this must have been a fairly surreal experience for those in the audience with musically-adept ears. Myself, I've heard lots of Beatles imitators over the years, and while I might have described some of them as being "eerily close to the original", voice characteristics and singing styles are just so distinctive that it's impossible to nail every nuance. As a quick example, between those two Shakira songs I posted the other day, she sang exactly one word in falsetto. One. Nuance that into your equation. So to be sitting there in the audience listening to some dumpy brunette with a hook nose nail down every single nuance, one after another, must have been surreal, indeed.
An email from a buddy:
 I came across a Japanese Type 14 Nambu pistol. These were reasonably well made Japanese semi-autos, used from mid-1920's until end of WWII. The ammo is available for around $25/box of 50. I had planned on using it for a project that didn't work out
If interested, I can email photos. I'd like just what I paid for it - $300.
I don't need one and do not want one, but it's an interesting firearm from an historical point of view.
Everything about the Type 14 here.
From a review of Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character:
...Made in America is not simply an entertaining narrative history. It is also an argument, or rather a set of arguments, about character and culture. The first is that "modernity" entailed less wrenching and negative change than most today believe. In the realm of culture and society, continuity -- or the intensification of already apparent patterns -- was the rule. Fischer writes, for example, that his is "not one more account of how American character was corrupted by rising individualism, egoism or selfishness." Instead, Americans "remained by Western standards remarkably committed to family, church, community, job and nation." Second, like Potter, Fischer sees abundance as the engine of American history: not simply economic wealth, in his telling, but an ever-increasing stock of security, health, social opportunities, political freedoms, and self-mastery. Third and most significant, he declares a Tocquevillian "voluntarism" -- a highly socialized individualism that led Americans to join groups and build communities -- to be the substrate of national character, the key trait that binds Americans together.
This Sherrod story. I thought I was sick of the story even before it started, but I guess this is a slice of America too. Every country has moonbats but, as Palin would say, these are "sick puppies," determined to live in anger and hatred.
Glassman: Notes on Europe’s Economic Decadence. "Prosperity creates sloth."
Axe falls on NHS services
Examiner: The calamitous effects of Obama's tax hikes. Related at Powerline: Coming Soon: The Biggest Tax Increase Ever. There's nothing like a big tax increase to work wonders on a struggling economy.
Vernon Smith says "no more government spending,...avoid new taxes."
Ariz. law comes after years of mounting anger
Malanga: The Muni-Bond Debt Bomb
Am Thinker: We The Serfs...:
Your tax dollars at work in Rhode Island. How long before those sidewalks are cracked with weeds growing through the cracks?
VIDEO GOLD: Howard Dean Gets A$$ Handed to Him On FOX After Misplaying His Race Cards
From Cato's Investors: Fear the Process That Gave Us ObamaCare, Not Efforts to Repeal It (my bolds):
... the problem is not that the political system is breaking down. That system is working pretty much the same way it always has and always will: it promotes irresponsibility. Republicans and Democrats are merely responding to the incentives created by the system in which they operate. (If they didn’t respond to those incentives, the political system would throw them out and replace them with people who do.) If investors don’t already understand that, the sooner the better.
This is why responsible people want to take responsibility for our health care, etc., out of the hands of politicians.
Sunday, July 25. 2010
Encinitas, where I live, is the last refuge of traditional laid back Southern California beach towns. We have the usual run of art shops selling third rate paintings to tourists, any town's laughing-up-our-sleeves joke on the gullible.
But, the beachside bronze paid for by the local Cardiff Botanical Society (WTF does surfing have to do with botany?) has run into disdain for its insufficiently iconic image. Locals don't consider it realistic enough, and aren't to be treated as gullible by purveyers of public art who foist their artistic sense (or not) upon the populace.
The statue, disdainfully titled "Cardiff Kook" by surfers, has been dressed in tutu and bikini, but the latest Encinitans-gone-wild prank is the best yet.
Overnight, a huge papier-mache replica of a great white shark was erected devouring the statue.
The Sheriff Lt. at the scene said, “It wasn’t considered vandalism because there wasn’t any permanent defacing.” The sculptural addition will be removed, to the sorrow of locals and the crowds who consider it an improvement and stop to admire and shoot photos.
Encinitans will strike again.
What public sculpture in your town would benefit from a puckish aesthetic addition?
While feasting on late after-dinner hazelnut gelati a little over a week ago in the relatively non-touristy lakefront village of Baveno, just up from the small piazza on the main drag, we were drawn to the sounds of a church choir, and sat on the stoop of the side door of the sanctuary for a half hour listening to them practice as darkness fell.
Nothing can make a 20-person choir sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir the way a small stone 900 year-old church can. Excellent group, too, with an exuberant organist.
Saint Gervaso is the patron saint of Baveno. Like many old buldings in Italy, the church was built of stone previously used in Roman buildings, some still bearing Roman markings and lettering. Recycling. We noted that they never took stones from the Roman bridges or aqueducts, though. Smart - and a conservative message.
This is no famous church, just an ordinary village church. Clearly pre-Gothic. The church and tower were built in around 1100 (but the front of the sanctuary was expanded a bit since then), the Baptistery in 1628, and the open hall of the Stations of the Cross probably in the 1700s, when Baveno became wealthy from its quarries of pink marble (which are still in use).
Palm trees right up there near the Swiss border.
More photos of this small, unknown parish church below -
Continue reading "Santi Gervaso e Protaso: a re-post from 2008"
No believer will find his faith shaken by evidence that is evidence only in the light of assumptions he does not share and considers flatly wrong.
Stanley Fish. h/t, Dr. Bob
Edge: Getting at the Neuroanthropology of Morality
Los Zetas drug cartel seizes 2 U.S. ranches in Texas. Is this story true? Possibly not.
Coming Soon: Tax Tsunami
Reid to Netroots: "We're Going To Have a Public Option"
Britain Plans to Decentralize National Health Care
More government intrusion into private sector pay
Race realist Jared Taylor declares the "civil rights struggle was won long ago"
A guy who doesn't want you to have a/c: The Big Chill: Giving AC the Cold Shoulder
Dino: What happened a year ago to permanently change public opinion?
Powerline: The case against Elena Kagan
Obama’s Solar Energy Fantasy
The Lottery Makes a Strong Statement About Charter Schools
From Insty: "THE YOUNG AND THE JOBLESS: New Evidence That The Minimum Wage Has Hurt Teenagers."
Climate and budgets from Coyote:
The climate modeling approach is so similar to that used by the CEA to score the stimulus that there is even a climate equivalent to the multiplier found in macro-economic models. In climate models, small amounts of warming from man-made CO2 are multiplied many-fold to catastrophic levels by hypothetical positive feedbacks, in the same way that the first-order effects of government spending are multiplied in Keynesian economic models. In both cases, while these multipliers are the single most important drivers of the models’ results, they also tend to be the most controversial assumptions. In an odd parallel, you can find both stimulus and climate debates arguing whether their multiplier is above or below one.
Luke 11:1-13
11:1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."
11:2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
11:3 Give us each day our daily bread.
11:4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial."
11:5 And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread;
11:6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.'
11:7 And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.'
11:8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
11:9 "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
11:10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
11:11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?
11:12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?
11:13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
Saturday, July 24. 2010
Via Dallas News' aviation blog:
Mr. Anubis, in situ.
Can you imagine being a person who is scared of flying, and you do not know that there’s a three story tall statue of the Egyptian god of the dead nearby the runway easement, and you’re in your seat in the takeoff roll, and you look out the window – say it’s night time too – and all floodlit standing there staring at you as you’re going past at 150 mph is – Mr. Anubis ?
or, somewhere nearby also at the Denver International Airport, the Blue Mustang?
 We promised that we would bring the Dylanologist, who is stationed in Rome for the summer, a supply of peanut butter. I guess the Italians don't have it. It's their loss. You would think the southern Italians would get sick of tomato sauce. I am, for sure. They would quickly learn to appreciate a PB&J on white.
Fortunately, they do not use much pasta or really any tomato sauce in northern Italy where I am headed tomorrow.
Despite the glories of Italian (non-pasta) cuisine, sometimes a fellow just needs some peanut butter - and not the unpleasant organic kind. Skippy's ultra-chunky always hits the spot. I will squeeze two large things of it into my bag for the guy.
Hope Italian Customs doesn't give me a hard time for this act of smuggling. After all, it would be easy to suffocate somebody with a face full of Skippy's Creamy.
A book review. The sonnet form has a punchy compactness that has let it survive and thrive while other antique forms have been mostly abandoned. I have tried my hand at more than a few, and it is good challenging fun.
In the WSJ: "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege - America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all 'people of color' are unfair. They should end."
America owes no special debt to its black citizens - or to any of its citizens. If any American does not feel fortunate as hell to be here, they should depart - while bearing in mind that half the world would move here if they could. Maybe Webb, an accidental Senator (due to macaca) felt he had to say that for political purposes.
But although Webb, a Dem, does not vote in ways with which I agree, I give him credit for his thought crimes in his op-ed: He seems to believe that all Americans ought to be regarded equally in law and government regardless of the vagaries of skin tone or ethnic background. I agree with that radical postition.
The Other McCain has a more cynical, and probably more savvy, view.
Racial group differences
GM sold GMAC. Now they're buying another credit co. Why? To make subprime loans
Linda McMahon: John Galt in Skirts in Connecticut
The K-man: Beware the lame duck
How John Kerry dodges MA taxes. Hypocrite.
Vanderleun: The Voice of the Neuter is Heard Throughout the Land
SHOCKING VIDEO- What the MSM Won’t Show You From Shirley Sherrod’s Hate Speech
Hot Air:
... the answer to the White House’s needless destruction of good-paying jobs is …. let them eat unemployment claims!
Interesting Data on Increasing Pubic Employment
The authors use data for a sample of OECD countries from 1960 to 2000, and they find that, on average, the creation of 100 public jobs eliminated about 150 private-sector jobs...
Surber: Obama’s damage to Democrats
To be read aloud - even if alone. Coleridge, 1798. Coleridge was a sort-of Transcendentalist.
 PART ONE
IT IS an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'
He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
Continue reading "Saturday Verse: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Friday, July 23. 2010
Advocates of a “public option”, meaning a government medical plan, haven’t given up. There’s a highly debatable $27 billion assumption in the CBO estimate, relating to increased federal revenues from reduced employer spending on medical premiums. I phoned the CBO to clarify.
Congressman Stark requested an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. (Full pdf here.)
The CBO estimate says,
that the proposal would reduce federal budget deficits through 2019 by about $53 billion. That estimate includes a $37 billion reduction in exchange subsidies and a $27 billion increase in tax revenues that would result because a greater share of employees’ compensation would take the form of taxable wages and salaries (rather than nontaxable health benefits) partly offset by an $11 billion increase in costs for providing tax credits to small employers.
Continue reading "Off And On Record With CBO Re: "Public Plan" Analysis"
 People love to make fun of Psychiatry, but here's a sample of what life could be like in a world without us.
Remember that Dr. Benjamin Rush, the founder of American Psychiatry, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was vehemently opposed to the chaining of the mentally ill, and proposed treating them with compassion and understanding. He also opposed slavery.
Image is Benjamin Rush, MD. Charles Wilson Peale, 1818.
Rhee fires 226 teachers.
This is only a big deal because public school teachers are so often unionized. Pre-teachers unions, they were professionals - meaning that their work was subject to their own conscience, honor, best reasonable effort, etc., - and the judgement of those paying the salary. Today, only private school teachers can be regarded as true professionals, even though I acknowledge the vast numbers of utterly dedicated public school teachers (including many who bemoan the industrialization of their chosen field).
Why should teachers get tenure anyway? Nobody else does, not even pastors.
As in the post below about medical insurance, teaching should be opened up. Throw out those worthless teaching degrees and let the marketplace decide. I'd bet there are plenty of retired guys who would love to teach math or literature or history, and could do a better job than kids just out of their education degrees.
The best English teacher two of my kids had (in private school) was a retired Sports Illustrated writer and editor. He knew his way around choice of words and the construction of sentences, but the "idea" and the "image" were keys. Essay structure had to be perfect, Francis Bacon-style.
And with grammar, he would have ripped my posts to shreds (but I "fly casual" at Maggie's, conversational English - and it is a relief for me to do so).
An expert’s review of “The Internet And The Organization Of Innovation” from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) casts light on the Rasmussen poll that “75% Say Free Markets Better Than Government Management of Economy, Political Class Disagrees.”
The Rasmussen survey, by contrast to the 75% of Likely Voters who say “more competition and less regulation is better for the economy“ finds “America’s Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters [“the clique that revolves around Washington, DC, and Wall Street”] narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin.”
Professor Shane Greenstein, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management examines the origins and development of the Internet.
From a synopsis provided by NBER, he “uses the example of the creation of the internet to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of two distinct ways of organizing a long-term program for accumulating innovation.”
One approach, which characterized the early development of the internet, relies on autonomous research institutions ("skunk works") to organize and nurture innovators. The other, which has applied more recently, relies on commercial markets to aggregate dispersed initiatives from a wide array of entrepreneurial participants.
The "skunk works" approach runs the risk that innovation will veer into areas where there is no demand, and thus no economic value. The pre-commercial Internet avoided some of those dangers because the participants in that phase of the internet assessed value from their own experiences. Their managers, in turn, nurtured them and permitted experimentation to blossom -- leading to useful and innovative applications, such as e-mail and packet switching. In addition, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation (NSF) played a pivotal role as "demanders" for innovation. Their substantial funding of research institutions, and their distributed investments to universities, supported the innovative activity that led to the breakthrough technologies that underlie today's Internet. This "skunk works" approach, however, restricted participation and truncated experimentation by excluding innovation along lines that did not support the "acceptable use" requirements of the government agencies. Such restrictions limited learning to an artificially narrow range of issues, and left a wide array of other applications untouched.
In contrast to the early "skunk works" days, the more recent commercial era of the Internet has played to the strength of market-based innovation. It has permitted decentralized exploration from commercial firms facing a wide array of incentives and a wide variety of circumstances. Once released to commercial interests, the Internet became the springboard for a dizzying array of applications that were not envisioned by the sponsoring government agencies. These applications include the World Wide Web and its associated browsing technology.
In other words, government funding or direction of basic research or new programs may be useful and in some cases critical but further development of useful applications, adaptation, and wider spread acceptance and utility are best the province of free enterprise, or as Greenstein calls it "market-oriented and widely distributed investment and adoption."
Instead, in most government programs, the initial laws enacted that seek to foster or enlarge reform or innovation are too often crafted with further government controls in mind or as ignored unintended consequences due to hidden agendas. Not unintended but usually hidden is the self-serving enrichment and enlarged sway of the political class. If initiatives have any validity, they are still often more dangerous than presented just by not being geared to a hand-off to the private sector to adjust and improve but to enlarge the power of the political class while – by the nature of government programs – hindering transparent review and adaptive innovation.
Even in the case of the Internet, as complex and involved in most aspects of business and individual lives as healthcare, if left in the hands of the centralized “skunk works” we wouldn’t have seen the developments we enjoy today. In the case of other government programs, like ObamaCare as one of the worst instances, the clear objectives and consequences are nationalization of close to 20% of the economy and 100% of our lives, and even more stultifying – indeed deadly - to free market development of improved access, delivery and economics.
Hot Air is currently running a video clip of Glenn Beck and his studio guy listening to a Keith Olbermann MSNBC rant and yucking it up. There's nothing particularly hilarious said, but it's always fun seeing celebs hang out off-camera.
But what's notable about the clip doesn't have anything to do with Beck, but with one brief clause Olby spits out during his tirade.
Scenario:
You're an ardent liberal. Keith Olbermann is a god amongst men, perhaps the only man alive with the courage to tell it like it really is.
You believe every word he says.
Shall we run over that check list one more time?
The howling fools of the far right — Check!
The stand-aside pathetic bureaucrats of the Dept. of Agriculture — Check!
The whole of the cowering media, MSNBC included — Check!
(wow, this Olbermann guy is fearless!) — Check!
The whole of the government — Check!
This self-defeatingly above-it-all president — Che-
Wait — WTF?? What did he say?
But this is Keith Olbermann speaking, a god amongst men. You said so yourself.
Ergo it must be true.
The next time you hear some righty screaming for Olby's head, bear in mind the old expression useful idiots. Ol' Keith is doing a superb job.
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