Monday, October 07, 2013

Monday's Child

1.  Not very subtle:  Russian tampon commercial.

2.  Investing out in the weeds?  Why not pot-focused equity management?

3.  Dude, I can't find my text.  Quarter-pounder with side of cops.

4.  I don't always agree with Andrew Sullivan.  But I often do.  He's got this right.

5.  The Heart Attack Grill:  serving death means never having to say you're sorry.
MOREMOREMORE...



6.  Coincidence?  Maybe not.  Pretty cute.

7.  Golly.  Chad Henderson fibbed?  I hadn't read that. I had read schmaltz like this.  But now it turns out the young man blatantly lied.  Or, as he puts it, "When I said I enrolled, I guess I got the terminology wrong."  I can see other applications for this.  If I ask a student if she turned in her paper, and she says "Yes," then later when it turns out she did NOT turn in her paper, I'll know why.  She thought about some paper topics, and looked at references.  So when she said she turned the paper in, she just got the terminology wrong.  Worked for Chad!  (Of course, if I talk to person's dad, I can get the straight story...)

8.  This is interesting.  This was an actual PLAN?  Who thought it would work?  Unless the actual objective is a constitutional crisis?  And if that WAS the objective....wow.

9.  A fundamental problem of choosing in groups.  The choice of one faction imposes external costs on everyone else.  That's the biggest "externality" of all.  And yet all the "externality internalizers" of the left never even mention it.

10.
11. If there is a rent, it will encourage rent-seeking.  And if the rent takes the form of a dispensation of a "tax," it is a very efficient way to buy votes.  And it never appears in the campaign finance data.  Brilliant!

12. You posted my Social Security number WHERE?  Since it's mandatory to use it as an ID#, and we can't change it, you'd think the government might be a little more careful.  If a credit card is stolen, I can redo it.  With SocSec, not so much.  So, of course, the government forces us to use SocSec as our ID#.  Even though they promised....not to.  And they insist on persisting in the lie that providing the SocSec# is "voluntary:  It's up to you."

13.  That silly SIRI.  She's a funny girl.  And now we know who she "really" is.

14.  Apparently the Times of India is really bored.  'Cause this is nuts...

15.  Okay, so they aren't actually BURNING books.  But...they are preventing the delivery of books. Bastiat would laugh, and suggest they need a "negative railroad"!  Make it REALLY expensive to get stuff from other countries.  All these roads are just making things worse.  A serious patriot would advocate the blowing up of all bridges, and the closing of all ports.  And, of course, shuttering all the windows and skylights.

16.  This is hilarious.

17.  The more extreme you are, the more superior you feel.  From Duke researchers, where we ALL feel superior...

18.  Unintended consequences of deer hunting regulations.

19.  As usual, bizarre conspiracies are much more fun than actual facts.  The conspiracy theory always starts like this:  "Wouldn't the store prefer you have to walk really far, past displays of processed foods you don't want, to go to the back of the store to get milk?"  These folks always start with you ALREADY IN THE STORE.  That's not how it works.  The biggest competition is to get you into the store in the first place.

20.   The most bizarre "Hallelujah" I have seen. A slow German rap version, with chorus.  This is quite a bit better.  And, for the LMM, the Bon Jovi version.

21.  Religious fundamentalism:  an interesting account.

22.  Eddie Burke versus the Modern Economists.  Quite an accurate account, and one I have myself come to appreciate, as I grow older.

23.  EWWWWWW!!! "A group of nine undergraduates (3 men, 6 women), unaware of our hypotheses, viewed individual photos of each Congressperson, taken from their Congressional website, and rated their mate-value."  The article.  The question:  Did IRB approve this?  And, if so, why do we even HAVE a government?



14 comments:

Anonymous said...

4. Really, this impressed you? Because for a "public intellectual," Sullivan seems to have gleaned much of this piece from chain emails.

Tom said...

Andrew Sullivan wonders how some minority thinks "it has the right to shut down the entire government and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States".

First, nice hyperbole Andrew. The entire government? I only wish. They shut down the pieces of (only) the federal government most likely to inconvenience people who still have to deal with the evil parts of it that are still going full bore. AND the "full faith and credit" isn't yet remotely at issue. Even if the debt limit isn't raised next week, the "full faith and credit" thing is threatened only if Obama (illegally) chooses to keep spending on things that are neither debts nor salary. (We really need a new $98 thousand dollar outhouse!)

Finally, the answer to Sullivan's presumptuous question is that THAT is how your 'democracy' is organized. You like it when its operating on an issue you agree with. I like it when it teaches people that democracy sucks. ...except Sullivan is fuming so much that he can't see the lesson.

Angus said...

Also in Sullivan is this chestnut:

"a stimulus that was the only thing that prevented a global depression of far worse proportions"

GTFO.

Old Odd Jobs said...

Mike was joking about that Andrew Sullivan piece........right? Ok.

Anonymous said...

I was just about to comment on #4 and see it was popular. It is garbage--he talks about race baiting and making race an issue, but the entire article is about race.

Anyone who has taken Econ 101 should know Obamacare is garbage and will do way more harm than good. We haven't had a budget in years and every Obama budget failed to even get 1 vote from his own party. Paul Ryan put forth a budget and the Dems said they didn't like it, but didn't offer an alternative, yet the GOP is just nullifying?

Clinton was impeached and deserved it--he lied under oath, wanting to debate the definition of the word "is".

The sad thing is that he stated the GOP is prepared to destroy the American government and the global economy. Isn't that the real problem? That the global economy relies so heavily on US government spending to exist? Shouldn't that be a red flag that government is too big and too overreaching?

AD said...

There were 15 government shutdowns between 1976 and 1990. Were we in a "constitutional crisis" then?

And I don't get why the fact that the Supreme Court says Obamacare is constitutional is relevant to this debate. If you really don't like a law and you control a chamber of Congress, shouldn't you try to change that law? Isn't that what legislatures do, change laws? This isn't to say that I think the Repubs have chosen the best path for their grievances (then again, I don't think they or any conservative really knows how to stop spending yet stay in office), but Andrew's rant is over the top on every level.

"I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime."

Other than sounding really bad, what does this mean? What are the "insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic" that have occurred since 1981 that are worst than a chamber using its constitutional right to propose a budget that the other chamber and President don't like?

If the current situation is so bad for America, it must mean that we're doing much better than I thought.

We all need to calm down a bit and some recent books by David Mayhew--Divided We Govern and Partisan Balance. Yes, later work has shown that divided governments appear to get less done, but they still get important things done.

John from Canmore said...

It took Andrew Sullivan only three paragraphs before he accused the GOP of racism. The only honest thing he said was the first sentence: "I’ve been trying to think of something original to say about the absurdity now transpiring in Washington, DC."






Jeff R. said...

You guys must have pretty strong stomachs if you were actually able to slog through that Sullivan piece. I bailed out after the second paragraph. Bleh.

Anonymous said...

Comments speak volumes about the readers do this blog

Anonymous said...

"Comments speak volumes about the readers do this blog"

And water is wet. I know you meant that as a brilliant dismissal of the other comments, but almost every blog or website attracts a certain type of reader. And since one of the critical comments comes from this site's co-blogger, the overall negative reactions shouldn't be surprising. Also, their negativity doesn't mean they're wrong.

Norman said...

How can there be an uproar about the Andrew Sullivan piece when Mungowitz just called the original Leonard Cohen version of Hallelujah "A slow German rap version, with chorus"??? You people need to sort out your priorities!

AD said...

@ Norman:
It's because the original version of Hallelujah is awful. I'm just glad that other artists figured out that there was actually a beautiful melody behind the "German rap song with chorus."

Norman said...

@AD Blasphemy! Well, there's no accounting for taste.

AD said...

Rufus Wainwright's version all the way. Sadly, I have to admit that I didn't know the song until Shrek. I'm young. Forgive me.