From 1978?

This is from 1978, on BBC.

It is one of the most remarkably racist-without-being-hateful-but-just-dumb things I have ever seen.  "Black" men wearing sombreros ogling and grabbing at scantily clad white women.  Just makes one cringe.

Would you rather get bit by a Pit Bull or a Shih Tzu?

Easy one, right?

Well after reading this story, you might want to think again.

A poor lady ended up in a medically induced coma and losing 3 limbs because of a friendly nip from her Shih Tzu.

Imagine what the dog could do if it was mad!

Of course this story comes from Canada, so maybe Shih Tzu is Canadian for Great White Shark?

Is this Naomi Klein's Kickstarter?

Wow. Tyler von Strauss points us to a super-creepy kickstarter project:

(clic the pic for an even more inappropriate image).

I thought maybe it was just me and my weird ways, so I showed it to Mrs. Angus, who was horrified.

So, so, so wrong.

Some things never change

Lars Von Trier:

"What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. But I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end," von Trier said. "He's not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I'm not for the Second World War, and I'm not against Jews. ...

"I am very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass."

Von Trier went on to say he also admired Hitler aide Albert Speer.

Lars now says he was "joking".

Not so fast

John Taylor called Obama a big spender and unleashed the progressive chorus. Krugman (among others) went after him twice (see here and here).

Here's Taylor's graph (clic the pic for a more glorious image):

It's clearly true that spending automatically rises in (after?) a recession and that has something to do with the bulge around 2009.

But Taylor's beef with Obama is that spending never falls back down in the out years, even though growth is projected to be pretty robust.

Krugman sez that's just due to mandated spending increases and would have happened no matter what. But people, look at the CBO budget projections from 2007 shown in the graph below (clic the pic for a more glorious image):

They show spending out to 2017 at around 19% of GDP, and the trend, if anything is down.

All the automatic spending increase stuff Krugman talks about was known about when these projections were made, so I am not sure how it can be that Obama (and Pelosi and Reid) have / are not proposing a significant expansion of Federal spending!

We are talking about permanently raising Federal spending by 2-3 percentage points of GDP in ways that were not foreseen in 2007.

Rent-Seeking

A classic example of rent-seeking. Because the police can "make money" by distorting their efforts to focus more than is appropriate on marijuana busts. As the Wall Street Journal reported.

In private markets you can only make money if you produce something other people value.

But in the presence of artificial rents like this drug enforcement subsidy, the link between "make money" and "produce something of value" is broken. It is an artificial rent. And the resources devoted to seeking the rent, to the extent that such resources are taken away from other useful purposes (preventing property crimes, protecting citizens) are wasted.

Rent-seeking isn't really about the rent, which is a transfer. The cost of rent-seeking is the wasted resources devoted to capturing the rent.

Here's the bizarre thing to me. You know who IS producing something of value? THE FOLKS WHO GROW AND SELL MARIJUANA! Yikes!

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Kelo Goes to NYC

Columbia Univ gets to steal a bunch of land, and doesn't have to pay retail for it. I know the New York motto is "NEVER pay retail", but....YIKES!

Ilya says what needs to be said, and links what needs to be linked.

Don't know how I missed this.

groundhog day, grasscourt style

Tomorrow, for the third day in a row, Jon Isner will wake up in the morning knowing that he has to play a tennis match against some French guy named Mahut.

Really.

Tuesday, they played 4 sets until the match was suspended by darkness at 9:00 pm London time with the score being 2 sets apiece.

Today, they played the 5th set (which at Wimbledon cannot end in a tiebreaker).

For over 7 hours.

Until play was suspended by darkness at 9:00 pm London time.

With the score being tied at 59 games apiece.

Tomorrow they will get up and do it again (amen).

Theoretically, this could go on forever.

People, the winner would be normally scheduled to play his next match already tomorrow.

Not sure how that will play out, but this is epic.

And it could actually go on forever. There are no other provisions in the rules beyond that a 5th set is played until someone wins 6 games or more and has a margin of 2 games.

Careful with that ash, Kazem

Here's one of the best entries ever in the "minister's explain nature" category:

"A senior Iranian cleric has claimed that dolled-up women incite extramarital sex, causing more earthquakes in Iran, a country that straddles several fault lines, newspapers reported on Saturday.

"Many women who dress inappropriately ... cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes," Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.

"Calamities are the result of people's deeds," he was quoted as saying by reformist Aftab-e Yazd newspaper. "We have no way but conform to Islam to ward off dangers.""

My thoughts:

1. Man, I have GOT to go visit Iceland!

2. This is a pretty warped and sick view of what causes sex. "Of course I had sex with her your honor, I saw her ankle and her nose. What else could I do?"

3. "When in doubt, blame the woman" seems to be a common position among at least some groups of Islamic clerics.

Sophie's Choice

Oh Norman, so sweet, but so cruel.

People, we have a thing in April called the Norman Music Festival. And wonder of wonders, both Dirty Projectors, who made my 2009 album of the year, and Leon Russell who is the absolute nuts are playing. And it's free. And it's an easy walk from my office.

Wow.

So what is my beef?

THEY ARE BOTH PLAYING AT THE EXACT SAME TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How can this be? What kind of cruel joke is this? Do the Dons of Norman think no one could possibly like both the DPs and Leon?

How wrong they are, people, how wrong they are.

I am not making this up. It is a two day festival and there are no other acts nearly this good playing (sorry Evangelicals, you're good but not that good). Yet there it sits in black and white on the event's webpage: Sunday night, Main Stage 9:30 pm Dirty Projectors. Sunday night Jagermeister Stage 9:00 pm Leon Russell.

This is epic FUBAR, people.

Crap like this never would have happened to me if I had lived in the 1880s!

Any advice?

India strikes again

People, you know I love India. It is, in my opinion, the funniest country in the world. (Here are some more gems)

Now they are claiming to be "militarizing" chili peppers!

The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world's hottest chili. After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized "bhut jolokia," or "ghost chili," to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects, defense officials said Tuesday.

The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's spiciest chili. It is grown and eaten in India's northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat. It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili's spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000.

"The chili grenade has been found fit for use after trials in Indian defense laboratories, a fact confirmed by scientists at the Defense Research and Development Organization," Col. R. Kalia, a defense spokesman in the northeastern state of Assam, told The Associated Press.

"This is definitely going to be an effective nontoxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hide-outs," R. B. Srivastava, the director of the Life Sciences Department at the New Delhi headquarters of the DRDO said.

Srivastava, who led a defense research laboratory in Assam, said trials are also on to produce bhut jolokia-based aerosol sprays to be used by women against attackers and for the police to control and disperse mobs.

There is so much good stuff here that I hardly know where to start. Let's toss a few out randomly.

1. How 'bout the name of that pepper?

2. Umm, guys, you do know that pepper spray has been around for decades already, right?

3. How can something both be a food and so smelly that it will force hardened terrorists out of hiding due to its smell?

4. Will Indonesia now make a Durian Bomb?

5. Will India ban exports of this pepper due to national security?

 

The Duke Lacrosse case gets a new twist

The accuser in the case, Crystal Mangum, was arrested in Durham last night:

Police charged her with attempted first-degree murder, five counts of arson, assault and battery, communicating threats, three counts of misdemeanor child abuse, injury to personal property, identity theft and resisting a public officer.

A judge set her bond at $1 million during a Thursday morning court appearance.

This seems like a bit of overkill, as no one was actually harmed, the "arson" is from burning her significant other's clothes in the bathtub, and the "identity theft" is from giving the police a false name when they arrived at the scene. The child abuse is because there were three children in the house at the time of the domestic dispute.

Oh, Durham PD, will you ever do anything right?

I can tell you this right now, If a Durham cop ever tries to arrest me, I will resist to the best of my abilities!

Snow

Here is a picture of the house of a friend in Montana:

All right, no. That is the house of Anonyman, in the DC suburbs. Yikes. More snow comin'. Have fun, Anonyman! Shovel, Anonyman, shovel. Ouch, Anonyman, ouch, don't hit ME with the shovel.... I didn't make it snow.

Markets in everything: Celebrity smells edition

Markets in everything: Omnisexual Valentine's Bison edition

Yes people, America's favorite mascot, Rumble T. Bison (the T stands for The) is available to service your valentine.

Here, let me quote from the solicitation:

Each visit includes a basket full of romantic items, music, and quality time with Rumble.... It doesn’t matter if your Valentine is a man, woman, or child; Rumble will make this Valentine’s one to remember. Call Rumble’s “loveline” for more info.

By the way, it's $249, and that includes tax!

Here's a teaser; a little bison-cake for y'all:

Left and Right agree: soak the "rich"

Tyler reports on health care contingency plans from the right and left sides of the blogosphere and they have one thing in common; the rich should pay.

M. McArdle:   "eliminate the tax-deductibility of health insurance benefits for people making more than $150K a year in household income, $100K for singles."

E. Klein:  "Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy."

Yikes!!!!

How about increasing the supply of medical providers? How about allowing insurance companies to compete for clients across state lines? How about eliminating the tax-deductibility of health insurance benefits for ALL people? How about experimenting more with the Mayo clinic type model which is not (in my understanding anyway) a fee for service model? How about encouraging people to exercise more, eat better and stay healthy? How about tort reform?

Of course the best thing would be to somehow reduce the hysteria about access to health care. Most health care doesn't actually work, and our society wastes billions of dollars annually on the health care game. How about a subsidized national pool for catastrophic coverage insurance and the rest is up to you?

It is a very disturbing trend to see individual groups getting singled out for benefits or tax hits. Unions getting exempted from the "cadillac tax", big banks singled out to repay the TARP money that went to GM and Chrysler, the rich to pay for increased health care coverage, Nebraska getting exempted from having to pay for expansion of Medicaid in the state.  I don't think we can expect good results from continuing this method of getting agreements or financing expenditure in the long run.

Robert Frank pummels a straw man

In todays NY Times "Economic View" Frank opines:

"At the heart of attempts to curb carbon dioxide emissions are two related proposals: taxation of those emissions and a system of tradable emission permits, also known as cap and trade. Both have been attacked as unacceptable restrictions on individual liberty. The attacks have come from both sides of the political aisle, but have been pressed with particular insistence by conservatives and libertarians."

Yet, throughout the entire article Frank goes on to name exactly zero libertarians who oppose a carbon tax and only one conservative, some guy named Henry Lamb.

Let me go him two better in my debunking here:

Greg Mankiw is a well known conservative (and NY Times columnist) and is famously in favor of a carbon tax. I am small (invisible?) potatoes compared to Mankiw, but I am a quasi-libertarian and I am in favor of a carbon tax as long as it is overall revenue neutral (meaning that the increase in revenues from this tax are offset by decreased revenues from other taxes).

Even though, in principle, a cap and trade program can be designed to have the same anti-pollution effect as a given tax, I think Mankiw and myself both dislike the current cap and trade bill because of how the permits are not going to be auctioned off and generally how stinky something becomes once it emerges from our grand sausage factory.

It's nice to see the shout-out to R. H. Coase in the article, but Frank is attacking a straw man throughout.

All taxes and regulations are obviously infringements on personal liberty in some sense, and there may well be libertarians who think our current levels of taxation represent "unacceptable restrictions", but I am not aware of libertarians who specifically object to a carbon tax.

ps. the article also contains the following sentence:

Climate scientists agree that the cheapest way to combat global warming is to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Is that true? Is curbing CO2 is the "cheapest" way to combat global warming?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Here's an update on Jayson Williams:

He's been charged with DWI now.

He's probably going to get his bail revoked.

and, despite video and eyewitness evidence, he's still claiming that he was not the driver of his car when it crashed!

Sweet!

BTW, if you think you had a bad 2009, consider these other Jayson Williams facts from last year:

"His wife filed for divorce, and police used a stun gun on him in a New York hotel after a female friend said he was acting suicidal. He was charged with assault in May after allegedly punching a man in the face outside a North Carolina bar, but charges were dropped. In November, Williams' father, E.J., with whom he owned a construction business, died in South Carolina."

Montesquieu Reincarnate!!

Montesquieu famously had this amazingly racist explanation of the different "characters" of nations. And it was based on....weather! Weather causes "certain" people (for the racist M, that would be "dark" people) to be lazy and no 'count. Check this:

Spirit of the Laws: Book XIV. Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate

1. General Idea. If it be true that the temper of the mind and the passions of the heart are extremely different in different climates, the laws ought to be in relation both to the variety of those passions and to the variety of those tempers.

2. Of the Difference of Men in different Climates. Cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibres of the body;[1] this increases their elasticity, and favours the return of the blood from the extreme parts to the heart. It contracts[2] those very fibres; consequently it increases also their force. On the contrary, warm air relaxes and lengthens the extremes of the fibres; of course it diminishes their force and elasticity.

People are therefore more vigorous in cold climates. Here the action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the fibres are better performed, the temperature of the humours is greater, the blood moves more freely towards the heart, and reciprocally the heart has more power. This superiority of strength must produce various effects; for instance, a greater boldness, that is, more courage; a greater sense of superiority, that is, less desire of revenge; a greater opinion of security, that is, more frankness, less suspicion, policy, and cunning.

In short, this must be productive of very different tempers. Put a man into a close, warm place, and for the reasons above given he will feel a great faintness. If under this circumstance you propose a bold enterprise to him, I believe you will find him very little disposed towards it; his present weakness will throw him into despondency; he will be afraid of everything, being in a state of total incapacity. The inhabitants of warm countries are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like young men, brave.

Now, unbelievably, check this!

The Income–Temperature Relationship in a Cross-Section of Countries and its Implications for Predicting the Effects of Global Warming

John Horowitz, Environmental and Resource Economics, December 2009, Pages 475-493

Abstract: Hotter countries are poorer on average. This paper attempts to separate the historical and contemporaneous components of this income–temperature relationship. Following ideas by Acemoglu et al., we use colonial mortality data to account for the historical role of temperature since colonial mortality was highly correlated with countries’ average temperatures. The remaining income–temperature gradient, after colonial mortality is accounted for, is most likely contemporaneous. This contemporaneous effect can be used to estimate the consequences of global warming. We predict that a 1°C temperature increase across all countries will cause a decrease of 3.8% in world GDP. This prediction is robust across functional forms and an alternative method for separating historical effects.

Wow! Global warming allows lefties to be racists! Yikes!

Don't walk him, but don't give him anything good to hit

As a mere lad, pre Mrs. Angus and digital cable, I followed baseball. At one point in this (admittedly low) stage of my life, I recall watching a show about the Atlanta Braves on the "Superstation" where the pitching coach came out to the mound and offered up the zen koan of unhelpful advice that comprises the title of this post.

Apparently Nicholas Sarkozy watched the same show and internalized the meme:

President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered the head of the French train authority to get Eurostar traffic moving again by Tuesday.

Eurostar has suspended traffic between Paris and London pending tests to determine what caused five trains to get stuck inside the Channel Tunnel late Friday, trapping more than 2,000 people for hours.

On Monday, Sarkozy called in SNCF President Guillaume Pepy and ordered him to get traffic moving again by Tuesday and present measures to assure such incidents don't happen again.

Through the years it has amazed me how often people "in authority" offer up the same useless advice: don't walk him, but.....