j7uy5 | October 26, 2008This little (19-second) gem is from
href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/10/greenspan-and-simpsons.html">Calculated
Risk (the other video there, Greenspan and The
Simpsons, is good too):
That says it all. It is the short version.
The longer armchair version is this:
All economic activity is composed of four basic elements, or "atoms" is
the Lucretian sense. Granted, this is not the most modern of
theories, being based upon
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius" rel="tag">Lucretius'
De
Rerum Natura (On the nature of things;
href="http://www.gutenberg.org/…
j7uy5 | October 21, 2008This is one of those things that take a minute to figure out if it is
serious, or a parody.
href="http://www.injesus.com/index.php?module=message&task=view&MID=CB007FA2&GroupID=2A004N9G&label=&paging=all">Block
African witchcraft curses against McCain and Palin NOW!
Jim Bramlett
Sep 28 2008 04:12PM
Dear friends:
THIS IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS.
Minutes ago I spoke with friend Dr.
Norman G. Marvin,
M.D. and
he is so concerned at what he has learned about Barack Obama's family
in Kenya that he is calling a special prayer meeting in his home to
pray…
j7uy5 | October 20, 2008Carborexia is not a word. Any
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_%28computer_science%29">string
that garners only six hits on Google is not a word.
But the string appears in the New York Times, so maybe it will be a
word soon. Perhaps even by the time you read this.
Carborexia is a cute play in the neologism game.
It refers to a
condition in which a person strives ardently to reduce his or her
carbon footprint, much as a person with anorexia strives to reduce her
or his body mass.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/fashion/19greenorexia.html?partner=rssuserland&…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2008I'm sure I am not the only one who was underwhelmed by the series of
Presidential debates. Here is what the candidates and the
moderators forgot...
1) Regarding energy problems: Government should act more
swiftly to promote solar and wind installations.
Specifically,
they need to do more to promote small, distributed installations.
Because of economy of scale, coal, natural gas, and nuclear
power
generation does not scale down very well. Wind and especially
solar power can be scaled down reasonably . This is
not merely
a question of where the power will come from; it is a question of…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2008NASCAR, for the non-TV-watching geeks out there, is an auto racing
organization. It operates the second-most popular televised
sport
in the USA.
In May, they were troubled, just a bit, by rising fuel costs.
One team, Hendrick Motorsports,
href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/personal-finance/on-topic/sports/racing-fuel-costs-soar-nascar-weekend-warriors/">said
that the higher prices would cost them an extra $760,000 this year.
Perhaps this is, in part, due to the belated
href="http://www.nascar.com/2006/news/headlines/cup/01/20/nascar.fuel/index.html">decision
to use…
j7uy5 | October 15, 2008Now we learn that AIG execs just
href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3InVeHoYnmXZnM2ACXSgjG0-nIQD93R68VO0">spent
$86,000 on a hunting trip.
Oct 15th, 2008 | CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A handful of top
executives from American International Group Inc. spent thousands of
dollars during a recent English hunting trip, even as the New
York-based insurer asked for an additional $37.8 billion loan from the
Federal Reserve ... AIG officials declined to say which AIG executives
attended the trip, which reports have said racked up an $86,000 tab.
Unfortunately, Dick Cheney was not able to attend.
j7uy5 | October 15, 2008This one is illustrated. The photos speak for themselves.
Source
It'll work about as well as the Paulson-Bernanke plan.
j7uy5 | October 13, 2008
href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/paul-krugman-wins-economics-nobel/?hp">Paul
Krugman
href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c61ac54-9922-11dd-9d48-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1">was
awarded the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sveriges_Riksbank_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences_in_Memory_of_Alfred_Nobel">Sveriges
Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred
Nobel.
“It’s been an extremely weird
day, but weird in a positive way,” Mr. Krugman said in an
interview on his way to a Washington meeting for the Group of Thirty,
an international body from the…
j7uy5 | October 13, 2008The Archives of General Psychiatry has an
open-access article about bipolar disorder in childhood (
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/65/10/1125">Child
Bipolar I Disorder). I started to write
about that. But then, as often happens, I stumbled upon
something else.
The LA Times has a consumer-oriented
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-bipolar11-2008oct11,0,5539685.story">article
about the journal article. It is one of those OK-level news
articles. One glaring error: the author cites the "Archives
of General Psychology," which is the…
j7uy5 | October 10, 2008In this video, Hannity
href="http://www.newshounds.us/2008/09/11/hannity_has_a_bullyboy_meltdown_at_suggestion_economy_is_in_trouble.php">tells
us the economy is in fine shape, wonders if it is reasonable
to think that people would really vote against the Republicans due to
the economy.
Granted, it was a month ago, at which time the market was only down by
20%. But he seriously believed that the
economy was in great shape.
I thought it was hilarious when I first saw it. It's even
funnier now. His guest,
href="http://www.squanderingofamerica.com/squandering.cfm">Robert
Kuttner,…
j7uy5 | October 10, 2008But not just any automobile. It's the Maserati
limited-edition 2009 GranTurismo S. And the test confirms the
result
href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/06/autos/Aural_fixation_callaway.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008100810">only
for women:
Experts found that 100% of female participants showed
a "significant increase in testosterone secretion" while listening to a
Maserati engine revving - in fact, measurably more so than for any
other sports-car sound.
Unfortunately, there is no link to the study methodology. It
is hard to imagine any Institutional Review Board granting approval…
j7uy5 | October 8, 2008Computer experts have been weighing in for years about design flaws in
electronic voting systems. Now a computer expert goes a step
farther, saying the whole system is flawed.
From
href="http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/stranger-in-strange-land.html">Linus'
Blog:
That's when you also notice that the whole US voting
system is apparently expressly designed to be polarizing
(winner-take-all electoral system etc). To somebody from Finland, that
looks like a rather obvious and fundamental design flaw. In Finland,
government is quite commonly a quilt-work of different parties,…
j7uy5 | October 6, 2008This is a peculiar article:
href="http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/7/1/16/abstract">Costs
and effects of paliperidone extended release compared with alternative
oral antipsychotic agents in patients with schizophrenia in Greece: A
cost effectiveness study. It's a
open-access article in the Annals of General Psychiatry, dated 28
August, 2008. (Annals of General Psychiatry 2008, 7:16
doi:10.1186/1744-859X-7-16)
Background To compare the costs
and effects of paliperidone extended release (ER), a new pharmaceutical
treatment for the management of schizophrenia, with the…
j7uy5 | October 5, 2008
The photo shows the first commercial implementation of a
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6851">new kind of
solar-powered electrical generation station (source: IEEE
Spectrum).
The problem, of sorts, is that it is not in the USA. It is in
Spain.
The system uses parabolic reflectors to heat a kind of oil.
The oil is circulated through a system that runs steam
turbines to generate electricity. But, is uses only part of
the heat for that purpose. Some of the heat is stored in huge
tanks of molten salt.
A short video that shows the Andasol 1 station, and the manufacturing
of…
j7uy5 | October 2, 2008From the
href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript/">vice-Presidential
debate.
"building our embassy, also, in Jerusalem"
"That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism.
And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so
beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are
unapologetic here."
"freedom is always just one generation away from extinction"
All of these seemed just slightly out of place, as though part of a
subtext that could be woven -- artfully, but not
quite seamlessly -- into the main text…
j7uy5 | September 30, 2008When I was 11 or so, I read Heinlein's novel,
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podkayne_of_Mars">Podkayne
of Mars. I wanted to go to Mars after
that. The thought never really left me. But in June
of this year, I began to have my doubts. Scientists reported
that the soil on Mars is
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7477310.stm">suitable
for growing ASPARAGUS. Forget Mars. Keep
your asparagus.
But as the months passed by, I begin to thing I could learn to like
asparagus. My sisters used to collect wild asparagus near our
home. They enjoyed collecting it, and…
j7uy5 | September 27, 2008From
href="http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2008/09/quotable-on-bank-balance-sheets.html">London
Banker:
"The problem with financial institution balance
sheets is
that on the left hand side nothing is right and on the right hand side
nothing is left."
It's pretty obvious that financial institutions are struggling.
We've had
href="http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html">16
banks taken over by the FDIC in the past two years, 13
so far this year. Other
failing banks have been taken over or merged, lest they too
have the FDIC take them over.
href="http://ml-…
j7uy5 | September 27, 2008Large Wall Street independent investment banks had a nice thing going.
Because much of what they did was not depository banking,
there was little Federal oversight. Instead, the SEC let them
run voluntary oversight programs.
Now, the SEC chairman, Christopher Cox, has
href="http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/26/ap5478528.html">assessed
the performance of their voluntary oversight program:
The financial upheaval of
the last six months has "made it absolutely clear that voluntary
regulation does not work" for the bank supervision program, Cox said in
a statement. The program "was…
j7uy5 | September 27, 2008I can't top this, so I'll just quote. It's from
href="http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/09/so-who-won-debate.html">Mike
Shedlock, the guy with the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau_word">portmanteau
nickname, "Mish":
Careful analysis shows both Obama and McCain lost the
debate...For the first time in history, I am proclaiming a moderator to
be the
winner of the debate. Jim Lehrer asked very good, pointed questions
that neither candidate would answer. Better yet, he forcibly kept at
it, attempting to no avail to get some answers on the economy.
McCain…
j7uy5 | September 26, 2008Quote of the day, attributed
to President Bush:
“If money isn’t loosened up, this
sucker could go down.”
--President Bush, 25 Sept 2008
He's an idiot. Liquidity is not the problem. If it
were, the whole mess would have been solved by now.
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/241162">The
problem is insolvency,
href="http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2008/09/17.html">not
illiquidity.
So here's the question of the day:
Is the US Government too big to fail?
What's the answer, folks? You're all bright people.