Lavish links

1. A wonderful send off for the space shuttle and a glorious F. U. to NASA.

2. 13's digital nips (hat tip to Tyler).

3. Bryan Caplan loses an argument.....with HIMSELF!!

4. The curse of the Jonah Brothers.

Competing views on education

"Education is not the filling of a bucket but the starting of a fire."

W.B. Yeats


"There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it."

H.L. Mencken

The greatest thing to come out of George Mason!

With all apologies to Pete Boettke, it's got to be this (best to watch with the sound off because the guy is kind of an a-hole):

More on this tiny dancer is available here.

Roubini vs. Roubini

Or, saying things are bad has been very very good.

Item 1: Nouriel gives an interview on December 28th with CNBC saying housing prices can "only move down".

Item 2: Earlier this month, Nouriel bought a $5.5 million apartment in Manhattan! He got a $2.99 million dollar ARM (so I guess he made a $2.51 million down payment??)!

Angus vs. Angus

I recently posted (and firmly believe) that, without any spending cuts, the proposed set of "tax cuts" are not real, but rather just represent a temporal re-arrangement of when I will be paying taxes.

Yet somehow, I find myself invested in the cuts passing. I am almost titillated by the prospect of a 2 percentage point cut in the payroll tax.

How can this be?

1. I am an idiot?

2. Maybe I will die before the day of reckoning arrives?

3. More realistically, maybe I can make it into a lower tax bracket (i.e. retire) before the day of reckoning arrives?

4. Maybe large spending cuts are right around the corner?

People, which is more likely; I get to retire before the tax hammer comes down enough or big spending cuts materialize to prevent the hammer from falling?

If this post makes no sense to you, please to refer to point #1 above.