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Up top, the fantastic and wonderful world of libraries, where sometimes things are not associated with each other. For example, voters might vote in favor of a bond issue to improve library buildings, but then repeatedly vote against increasing the funding so that big new building can stay open for the same amount of hours. People are strange when it comes to making connections, especially those involving taxes and public services. As a lighter fare from that, some suggestions on how to arrange your bookshelves.
Before the news, another eulogy praising Robert Novak's commitment to journalism over any sort of partisan politics, and The creator of "60 Minutes", Don Hewitt, died at 86 years of age.
And a public service announcement, courtesy of the Michigan Humane Society, although applicable everywhere - consider taking home a certified, pre-owned cat today. Dealer stocks are overflowing at locations all around the country, and for a limited time, you may be able to take advantage of offers like $0 down, 0% financing, and no payments, ever. The units will come with a complete inspection as well as some standard options, like spay/neuter, up-to-date immunizations, and a thorough grooming. All for the low, low price of $0. Of course, some conditions apply, and you are limited to what the dealer has in stock the day you go. So if you want to find the cat of your dreams, hurry on down to your local Humane Society Cat Dealer!
Out in the world today, China may be investing sovereign wealth in United States mortgages - which might give the paranoid even more reasons to believe China will try to engineer an economic collapse (and then take over?) in the United States. They'll do it through investing in companies that have access to the toxic mortgage pools.
In anticipation of elections, more bombs in Afghanistan, and a response crackdown on media coverage by the government. Which does lead to speculation that the primary justification for keeping troops in Afghanistan is a myth. On the other place where lots of troops are, Baghdad took a series of bombings, killing 95 and testing to see whether the government can hold up under the new rules where Americans are asked out, instead of staying outside their bases.
Domestically, uh, Congressman DeLay? Are you sure Dancing With The Stars is the way you want to go?
Reader's Digest is planning a bankruptcy to reduce its debt.
The government moves to block the practice of having drug company ghostwriters write "research" and other papers calibrated to sell more drug product for scientists who lend their names to the author byline.
Kate Dailey, in Newsweek, gives us a fantastic example of the anti-bunny burning crowd in relation to the fact that Michelle Obama wore shorts, attributing to a nameless and unpinpointable "them" who want the First Lady to cover up. That "them" is clearly a significantly micorscopic minority that has been magnified long enough to seem like a threat before returned to actual size, smug pontification done.
On the health care issue, before some seriously good smackdowns, a recommendation that the sick stay home, instead of coming in to infect their co-workers and the populace at large. Yay! Do all these workers work at jobs where they have sick leave they can take for this? No! Why not?
And onward to the verbal sparring. Barney Frank layeth down the verbal smack, when accused of supporting a "Nazi" policy, by pointing out the clear lack of intelligence on the speaker's part and his complete anti-desire to hold a conversation with the speaker, likening it to arguing with a dinner table. Furthermore, we already have death panels, and they're usually brought into existence because insurance companies aren't going to pay the costs of care, leaving someone with the choice of having their loved ones come home to die or bankrupting themselves trying to pay for the care the insurance company won't. For most, the choice, then, is deciding the place and manner of their loved one's death. Just like the supposed "death panels", of which Mr. Klavan provides what he thinks is a serious rendering of what the death panel will be like, because trying to make everything fair always results in tyrrany and otherwise healthy and surgery-needing people will, of course, be left to die in their young old age if we enact any sort of health reform.
In the opinions, after talking about how people looking for Satan's hand everywhere go beyond innocent taking people at their word (sort of) all the way through deliberately misrepresenting other people and their intentions, the Slacktivist unveils what could be the ultimate cynical plan to bilk RTCs of their money and fund the ACLU with it, under the guise of making noise lawsuits on issues they want to contribute money to. In a sense, it's the one step further approach into cunicism, which a commenter pointed out in the original as a possible motivator for the "Satan Inside" crowd.
Before getting into the standard routines of health care and the rest, a reminder from futurists that we need to think not only about what will happen, but what is statisically improbable but rather devastating if it happens.
Mr. Swanson has a list of fifty persons he believes are the top people to be prosecuted for war crimes since 2001.
Not on health care, but more generally on the President himself, Mr. Barone suggests that the dynamic hope and change person elected is really a big-government man who prefers things to stay the way they are and take away the choices of the people, and that young voters who helped elect Mr. Obama should take another look at him. Review is a good idea. Mr. Barone does his very best to portray all the policies of the Obama administration as favoring the status quo, based on his interpretation of union support, health care reform (and the insistence that government reform always stifles innovation to nothing), and Obama's unwillingness to get involved in a fight that potentially would not have disrupted the underlying and oppressive structure of Iran.
Mr. Hanson, instead, takes a look at the perceptions of the populace, and makes some good points on why things are going wrong for Mr. Obama - he flubs a few, too, especially in the leaving out context on partisanship, absolving the Republicans from having contributed at all to the bitterly partisan atmosphere by refusing to negotiate or to make suggestions on how to get better and instead just shouting NO, and he repeats the Orwell mischaracterization, but nobody's perfect.
And at health care, the President penned an op-ed (before he talked much about giving up the public option), for which a Doctor Clark registers his objections, namely that it will cost more, not less, and that the government is patently incompetent (and statist) at administering anything cost-effectively. Along with disputing the part about being able to keep your plan and your doctor if you like them.
And now for the semi-regular derby of the worst excesses of the opinions (and others), with pastry representations, Mr. Phillips makes a solid bronze-level quiche entry by saying the people know an expensive con when they see it, while also saying that every liberal thinks they're smarter tahn everyone else aroudn. Again, we elect people who are supposed to be smarter than everyone else around. Phillips also goes through the standard list of "why this shouldn't happen" - rationed care, the "effectiveness" of the UK's NICE, and so forth. Nothing new here, so only warrants the bronze.
At the next level, the folks at CNS news, who bring down the ire of the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department by claiming that conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states, based on a gallup Poll that says more people do self-identify as conservatives than as liberals... and that the conservative self-identifiers do not make it to 50 percent across the board, and some not even getting up to the 40 percent threshold. As a concession to CNS, I will admit that conservatives most likely do outnumber liberals in this country, but I'm using a scale where European-style socialism and the real left are liberal, which places the center farther to the left than most Americans ever are. We can add in my normal rant about how liberal has become a dirty word in this country, making it harder for people to identify as them, but also take into account the huge amounts of people who identify as independent - usually trouncing both conservatives and liberals for identification. If you sorted all the independents on the spectrum into one or the other, the numbers might fluctuate wildly. One silver quiche and a registration for basic statistical interpretation.
Our winner tonight, though, despite the fact that he's probably telling the unvarnished truth in his fictional account, is Mr. Boortz, who pens a fictional meeting between an owner of a tire company and his employees, telling them about how the Democrats will make his busines hurt, because he's a small business owner (who are apparently more than 99 percent of all employers in the country, and employ more than 80 percent of the populace), and the way he's set his business up, his profits are reported on his personal income tax, so all the "rich people" taxes are going to hit him hard, which he will, in proper capitalist way, under the excuse of trying to preserve the company, pass on to his employees in the form of hiring freezes, no wage increases, and the continued practice of not offering health insurance (although Mr. Boortz's fictional owner apparently believes it is not his responsibility to offer insurance, sending his employees off to individual plans) to his employees, and telling them their pay will be cut by whatever percent is levied against his company because he doesn't offer insurance. He has supposedly promised not to lay people off or cut their wages, which is the only reason why that wasn't also part of his slate of "Things I will do to ensure that I pass off any additional taxes or expenditures squarely onto my employees." He turns it all into an "elections have consequences" moment, offering people to look at his books, where he supposedly makes no salary and pours all his profits back into expansion and paying wages. First, things like expansion costs and wage paymetns are expenses, which must come out of revenues. Profit implies money made above and beyond the covering of expenses, and honest accounting would consider expansion and things like that, even if in the future, to be expenses that would encumber money and remove it from the profit column. So if you've made some half-million in profits, then you do qualify as a rich person/business, eligible for those taxes. The auto owner here is protecting his profits and his business, which, as he says, is his right, but the practice of making additional taxes and expenses the problem of the employees while letting profits for the owner stay untouched sounds remarkably unethical. Maybe those employees will take a look at the books and find out just what their owner is making and will be making, even after new taxes, and politely but firmly demand that he cover his own new costs, instead of passing them on to others. Might even be a union chapter in the making.
In the sciences and technology, the new rat-eating pitcher plant has a name, a pyramidal structure that intends to survive hurricanes as a proposed replacement structure in New Orleans, robots learning to conceal their signals of finding good things so as not to attract other robots, and more metamaterials matters, making for invisiblity cloak chatter.
And last for today, The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department meets the Seven Deadly Sins. The difficulty, however, in reading these graphs is that there's no way of knowing whether high standard deviations is good or evil, and neither the key nor the article helps to explain it. So it's a pretty picture, really, based on crunching some self-appointed categories of numbers.
Before the news, another eulogy praising Robert Novak's commitment to journalism over any sort of partisan politics, and The creator of "60 Minutes", Don Hewitt, died at 86 years of age.
And a public service announcement, courtesy of the Michigan Humane Society, although applicable everywhere - consider taking home a certified, pre-owned cat today. Dealer stocks are overflowing at locations all around the country, and for a limited time, you may be able to take advantage of offers like $0 down, 0% financing, and no payments, ever. The units will come with a complete inspection as well as some standard options, like spay/neuter, up-to-date immunizations, and a thorough grooming. All for the low, low price of $0. Of course, some conditions apply, and you are limited to what the dealer has in stock the day you go. So if you want to find the cat of your dreams, hurry on down to your local Humane Society Cat Dealer!
Out in the world today, China may be investing sovereign wealth in United States mortgages - which might give the paranoid even more reasons to believe China will try to engineer an economic collapse (and then take over?) in the United States. They'll do it through investing in companies that have access to the toxic mortgage pools.
In anticipation of elections, more bombs in Afghanistan, and a response crackdown on media coverage by the government. Which does lead to speculation that the primary justification for keeping troops in Afghanistan is a myth. On the other place where lots of troops are, Baghdad took a series of bombings, killing 95 and testing to see whether the government can hold up under the new rules where Americans are asked out, instead of staying outside their bases.
Domestically, uh, Congressman DeLay? Are you sure Dancing With The Stars is the way you want to go?
Reader's Digest is planning a bankruptcy to reduce its debt.
The government moves to block the practice of having drug company ghostwriters write "research" and other papers calibrated to sell more drug product for scientists who lend their names to the author byline.
Kate Dailey, in Newsweek, gives us a fantastic example of the anti-bunny burning crowd in relation to the fact that Michelle Obama wore shorts, attributing to a nameless and unpinpointable "them" who want the First Lady to cover up. That "them" is clearly a significantly micorscopic minority that has been magnified long enough to seem like a threat before returned to actual size, smug pontification done.
On the health care issue, before some seriously good smackdowns, a recommendation that the sick stay home, instead of coming in to infect their co-workers and the populace at large. Yay! Do all these workers work at jobs where they have sick leave they can take for this? No! Why not?
And onward to the verbal sparring. Barney Frank layeth down the verbal smack, when accused of supporting a "Nazi" policy, by pointing out the clear lack of intelligence on the speaker's part and his complete anti-desire to hold a conversation with the speaker, likening it to arguing with a dinner table. Furthermore, we already have death panels, and they're usually brought into existence because insurance companies aren't going to pay the costs of care, leaving someone with the choice of having their loved ones come home to die or bankrupting themselves trying to pay for the care the insurance company won't. For most, the choice, then, is deciding the place and manner of their loved one's death. Just like the supposed "death panels", of which Mr. Klavan provides what he thinks is a serious rendering of what the death panel will be like, because trying to make everything fair always results in tyrrany and otherwise healthy and surgery-needing people will, of course, be left to die in their young old age if we enact any sort of health reform.
In the opinions, after talking about how people looking for Satan's hand everywhere go beyond innocent taking people at their word (sort of) all the way through deliberately misrepresenting other people and their intentions, the Slacktivist unveils what could be the ultimate cynical plan to bilk RTCs of their money and fund the ACLU with it, under the guise of making noise lawsuits on issues they want to contribute money to. In a sense, it's the one step further approach into cunicism, which a commenter pointed out in the original as a possible motivator for the "Satan Inside" crowd.
Before getting into the standard routines of health care and the rest, a reminder from futurists that we need to think not only about what will happen, but what is statisically improbable but rather devastating if it happens.
Mr. Swanson has a list of fifty persons he believes are the top people to be prosecuted for war crimes since 2001.
Not on health care, but more generally on the President himself, Mr. Barone suggests that the dynamic hope and change person elected is really a big-government man who prefers things to stay the way they are and take away the choices of the people, and that young voters who helped elect Mr. Obama should take another look at him. Review is a good idea. Mr. Barone does his very best to portray all the policies of the Obama administration as favoring the status quo, based on his interpretation of union support, health care reform (and the insistence that government reform always stifles innovation to nothing), and Obama's unwillingness to get involved in a fight that potentially would not have disrupted the underlying and oppressive structure of Iran.
Mr. Hanson, instead, takes a look at the perceptions of the populace, and makes some good points on why things are going wrong for Mr. Obama - he flubs a few, too, especially in the leaving out context on partisanship, absolving the Republicans from having contributed at all to the bitterly partisan atmosphere by refusing to negotiate or to make suggestions on how to get better and instead just shouting NO, and he repeats the Orwell mischaracterization, but nobody's perfect.
And at health care, the President penned an op-ed (before he talked much about giving up the public option), for which a Doctor Clark registers his objections, namely that it will cost more, not less, and that the government is patently incompetent (and statist) at administering anything cost-effectively. Along with disputing the part about being able to keep your plan and your doctor if you like them.
And now for the semi-regular derby of the worst excesses of the opinions (and others), with pastry representations, Mr. Phillips makes a solid bronze-level quiche entry by saying the people know an expensive con when they see it, while also saying that every liberal thinks they're smarter tahn everyone else aroudn. Again, we elect people who are supposed to be smarter than everyone else around. Phillips also goes through the standard list of "why this shouldn't happen" - rationed care, the "effectiveness" of the UK's NICE, and so forth. Nothing new here, so only warrants the bronze.
At the next level, the folks at CNS news, who bring down the ire of the Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department by claiming that conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states, based on a gallup Poll that says more people do self-identify as conservatives than as liberals... and that the conservative self-identifiers do not make it to 50 percent across the board, and some not even getting up to the 40 percent threshold. As a concession to CNS, I will admit that conservatives most likely do outnumber liberals in this country, but I'm using a scale where European-style socialism and the real left are liberal, which places the center farther to the left than most Americans ever are. We can add in my normal rant about how liberal has become a dirty word in this country, making it harder for people to identify as them, but also take into account the huge amounts of people who identify as independent - usually trouncing both conservatives and liberals for identification. If you sorted all the independents on the spectrum into one or the other, the numbers might fluctuate wildly. One silver quiche and a registration for basic statistical interpretation.
Our winner tonight, though, despite the fact that he's probably telling the unvarnished truth in his fictional account, is Mr. Boortz, who pens a fictional meeting between an owner of a tire company and his employees, telling them about how the Democrats will make his busines hurt, because he's a small business owner (who are apparently more than 99 percent of all employers in the country, and employ more than 80 percent of the populace), and the way he's set his business up, his profits are reported on his personal income tax, so all the "rich people" taxes are going to hit him hard, which he will, in proper capitalist way, under the excuse of trying to preserve the company, pass on to his employees in the form of hiring freezes, no wage increases, and the continued practice of not offering health insurance (although Mr. Boortz's fictional owner apparently believes it is not his responsibility to offer insurance, sending his employees off to individual plans) to his employees, and telling them their pay will be cut by whatever percent is levied against his company because he doesn't offer insurance. He has supposedly promised not to lay people off or cut their wages, which is the only reason why that wasn't also part of his slate of "Things I will do to ensure that I pass off any additional taxes or expenditures squarely onto my employees." He turns it all into an "elections have consequences" moment, offering people to look at his books, where he supposedly makes no salary and pours all his profits back into expansion and paying wages. First, things like expansion costs and wage paymetns are expenses, which must come out of revenues. Profit implies money made above and beyond the covering of expenses, and honest accounting would consider expansion and things like that, even if in the future, to be expenses that would encumber money and remove it from the profit column. So if you've made some half-million in profits, then you do qualify as a rich person/business, eligible for those taxes. The auto owner here is protecting his profits and his business, which, as he says, is his right, but the practice of making additional taxes and expenses the problem of the employees while letting profits for the owner stay untouched sounds remarkably unethical. Maybe those employees will take a look at the books and find out just what their owner is making and will be making, even after new taxes, and politely but firmly demand that he cover his own new costs, instead of passing them on to others. Might even be a union chapter in the making.
In the sciences and technology, the new rat-eating pitcher plant has a name, a pyramidal structure that intends to survive hurricanes as a proposed replacement structure in New Orleans, robots learning to conceal their signals of finding good things so as not to attract other robots, and more metamaterials matters, making for invisiblity cloak chatter.
And last for today, The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department meets the Seven Deadly Sins. The difficulty, however, in reading these graphs is that there's no way of knowing whether high standard deviations is good or evil, and neither the key nor the article helps to explain it. So it's a pretty picture, really, based on crunching some self-appointed categories of numbers.
