Month: August 2009

These have been floating around a while, and seem apropos. This first batch are regional/philosophical forms of capitalism. U.S./TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income. FRENCH CAPITALISM You have two cows. You go on…

In general, I prefer blogging when I have something to say about something, as opposed to when I have to find something to say about something. * That’s because the former is more sincere, and less driven by a sense of “blogligation” than the latter, which in my case often takes the form of saying…

I live in a densely populated student neighborhood characterized by a lot of moving in and moving out, and when either thing happens, stuff gets discarded — typically on the area between the sidewalk and the street — and the rule is that it’s free for the taking. I’m not much of a green thumb…

Rep. Tim Bishop (D) from New York is getting a lot of heat from voters in his district about Global Warming. After a run up starting with the Health Care Bill the Global Warming stuff starts at 3:50 in. A really well informed citizen starts speaking at about 5:00 in. He talks about carbon taxes…

Malay Bansal has an interesting and not too complex article explaining the problems in the Commercial Real Estate (CRE) market. Let me give you the short version. Valuations will fall by about half and the declines (already in the pipeline) will manifest between now and 2015 as the various loans become due or the current…

Socialized medicine can be painful. According to this news report from England, literally: Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS,…

I can’t stop thinking about a statistic I read in a piece by Jennifer Rubin that Glenn Reynolds linked yesterday, that a full six percent of Americans believe Barack Obama is a conservative. Where are these people, and how come I never get to meet them? According to many statisticians, six percent is a higher…

As if any reminder was needed about the insane and cruel nature of Islamism, a Sudanese woman faces 40 lashes for wearing what millions of American women (and our Secretary of State) wear — trousers. Such chilling accounts are so routine that I can’t blog about them all, but what interested me about this one…

Pizza Ordering in the very near future. Perhaps you would like to contact some people after seeing this. Here is a list: House of Representatives The Senate The President Cross Posted at Power and Control

As this post by Tom Maguire (which Glenn Reynolds linked yesterday) reminded me, there are many gradations of Birthers, many types of Truthers, and many types of “believers.” Including Birthers, True Believers, True Believing Birthers and “honorary” truthers like Tom Maguire and (quite shockingly) even Andrew Sullivan. What is the Truth anyway? There are only…

As regular readers know, I love guerilla and underground art. So naturally, I was quite taken by the ObamaJoker image discussed here, that Glenn Reynolds characterized as speaking truth to power. I really don’t care who is “behind” it as it speaks for itself. (Let no one claim credit for it, and just allow it…

Eric F via e-mail alerted me to the fact that Microsoft has made the Feynman lectures on physics freely available. You can watch them here. And as a very helpful adjunct may I suggest the book version: The Feynman Lectures on Physics Cross Posted at Power and Control

When I saw an eye-catching mouthful in a post by Ann Althouse, I wondered whether Andrew Sullivan had finally succumbed to one of the fatal smackdowns that have been inflicted on him over the years. But alas! To my great disappointment, the startling admission did not come from Andrew Sullivan, but some writer I’d never…

One of my pet peeves is that whenever a gunman opens fire on unsuspecting victims, there’s a flurry of finger-pointing, and a haste to blame almost anyone besides the gunman, often with blatant political overtones. The fallout over the recent shooting at an Israeli gay center (in which the gunman killed two and wounded twelve)…

I saw Hot Tuna Saturday night at the Rockford Theater courtesy of the first mate. They have added another musician to the line up, Barry Mitterhoff, who plays a wicked mandolin among other instruments. Naturally the Rockford hippie contingent was out in full force. We met a lot of very nice people there and made…

This is how a Cash for Clunkers car is destroyed. Now think of what this will do to the low end used car market. People who depend on these low end vehicles to get around will no longer be able to afford transportation. Socialism at work. Here are a couple of other things I have…

I’m glad the war on sex hasn’t spread to include dog sex,* or else there’d be a movement to have the government ban the sexual dog dummies that Glenn Reynolds linked earlier. While their use as a novelty or toy seems new, sex “dummies” of various sorts have been used in artificial insemination for years.…

Megan McArdle’s piece on why she opposes national health care got deservedly wide coverage, and provoked some generally limp objections, such as this offering from Ezra Klein: For all its waste, elevating the U.S. government to sole purchaser seems to ensure a much-higher rate of military technology innovation than if we left it to the…

While I agree with Glenn Reynolds that the Obama administration’s softening stance on obscenity prosecutions is a good thing, I’m enough of a worry wart that I worry about how the consequences will play out. Because of the way politics works, any action that can be perceived as softening the war on sex will be…

One of my worst nightmares involves the idea of driving on the freeway in a reasonable and prmudent manner, only to have a pedestrian suddenly appear in front of me. I’ve hit a couple of deer before, and that is an unpleasant experience, but deer are animals, and what can you do? If they dash…