Sunday, April 20. 2008
 I will blame Bird Dog for not including a fish photo in our Connecticut post this morning. He thought it would be corny.
Here's a Brookie from yesterday's outing, on its way to becoming dinner. Yes, we did fish with bamboo fly rods, consistent with the old-fashioned sporting ethic of Maggie's Farm.
 Phillips Academy's Addison Gallery of American Art is hosting a show in London.
Image is Winslow Homer's Kissing the Moon, from the Addison.
That's a quote via Kimball on how Ms. Shvarts has inadvertently helped us draw a line between primitive barbarity and art. Indeed, the bar for nauseating the bourgeoisie keeps getting higher, doesn't it, as pop culture digs down into depravity, ugliness, and psychosis for cheap and easy thrills, chills, and barfs? It gave me a cool idea though: I could mix some Texas Medicine with some Railroad Gin, get the video rolling, puke my mind and brains out, and become a famous artist. $$$$. Maybe get recruited as a Junior Assistant Curator at the Whitney. More good comments on the dehumanization of art from Small Dead Animals and SC&A, As Dr. Bob comments: One wants to rail at a society gone mad, at a civilization which has lost its bearings and moral compass, at a decadence fed by materialism and secularism, force-fed with the rotgut wine of postmodern relativism, drunk with the notion that ideas have no consequence and idols worshiped bring no destruction. Yet the time for such anguished mourning seems long past, its passing but a point in a pitiful past history. We have, it seems, entered the post-human age. Our secular prophets have heralded the Good News: there is no God; we are but accidental apes. We have been liberated from the bondage of religion and morals; we are, at last, in this twenty-first century, at the pinnacle of human achievement and potential. The shackles of superstition are broken, the potential of man unbounded, his glory unlimited but by the constraints of his imagination.
My opinion? Tasteless, no-talent attention-seekers have always been with us, as have individuals who find it adventurous (and yet all-too effortless) to degenerate to their inner ape - or to their inner dog turd. What I found most telling in this entire pathetic and disgusting story was Yale's inability to stand for anything. Perhaps their motto should be changed from "Lux et Veritas" to "Whatever." That would be "Progressive," and more accurate. But, even so, how do you explain to your parents the $180,000 they paid for that exclusive "education"?
HSAs are the smart way to buy major medical insurance. Why are the Dems so opposed to a free market in medical insurance?
John 14: 1-14 14“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4And you know the way to the place where I am going.” 5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 8Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” 9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. 12Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
Saturday, April 19. 2008
Barone: The rules change for Obama "The descent of civilization into the fluffy totalitarianism of PC tyranny is accelerating." Privacy and Property Rights
 The fellow at Dovetail Designs makes very nice custom humidors.
We are urging our friend Sippy to do the same.
 It has been in the back of my mind for some time to do some research about the history of the elevator, without which we would have no buildings much over 6 stories.
There's a good, entertaining piece on The Lives of Elevators by Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker: you will learn something. (h/t, Norm)
If Obama were a white Republican, and... Powerline To John McCain: Embrace your inner Teddy Roosevelt Noted theologian Pelosi reinvents meaning of Communion Sorry, Portuguese. You aren't Hispanic enough. Huh? David Brooks as quoted at Betsy, re the debate: Obama and Clinton were completely irresponsible. As the first President Bush discovered, it is simply irresponsible statesmanship (and stupid politics) to make blanket pledges to win votes. Both candidates did that on vital issues.
Both promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 or $250,000 a year. They both just emasculated their domestic programs. Returning the rich to their Clinton-era tax rates will yield, at best, $40 billion a year in revenue. It’s impossible to fund a health care plan, let alone anything else, with that kind of money. The consequences are clear: if elected they will have to break their pledge, and thus destroy their credibility, or run a minimalist administration.
 Sonnet LX
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
 This is a weekly Saturday morning feature that will slowly, over time, turn you into a full-fledged computer expert. More info here.
Lesson 2: File Structure
Brace yourselves, this won't be pretty. No cute pictures of LOLcats, no dancing girls, no saucy remarks about Chelsea Clinton. Just the rather demure woman over to your right getting her gear ready for this weekend's reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg which took place during the awful War of Northern Aggression. [also known as the "Civil War" in some history books] By the way, I live in Florida.
In fact, if I were you, I'd consider leaving immediately. We're going to discuss one of the most boring aspects of the computer imaginable:
File structure.
On the plus side, though, after we've finished there's one question you'll never have to ask again:
"WHERE'S THAT !#$%#&! FILE I SAVED TWO WEEKS AGO?!?!"
So you'll have that going for you.
Continue reading "Dr. Mercury's Computer Corner: Lesson 2 - File Structure"
Friday, April 18. 2008
 We did a little upgrade of our comments editor yesterday, but something went wrong with it. It is rejecting all comments.
Sorry for any annoyance. Fixed now.
Environmentalism, so called, is essentially an urban religion. Like Lenin organizing agriculture from an office, environmentalists have a bizarre worldview based on never really knowing much about the subject at hand. Most environmentalists got all they ever learned about the real world from Bambi. There are many conservators of nature. The only people I ever met who understand anything about nature are hunters and farmers. I never met an academic whose opinion about the natural world was worth a fig.
A person that has killed another beast in the wild, and eats it, has smelled the very musk on the beast, and felt the last shivers of its life ebb away. A hunter knows a lot about a deer you don't. And they didn't do anything that wasn't going to happen to that creature anyway. There are no nursing homes in the forest, and eventually every beast loses a step on the manifold forces arrayed against it. Some sooner than later, as we will see.
A goldfish would eat you if it could get you in his mouth. That's all you need know about Nature. Go out in it, and have something real to do with it. Life and death; or a test of will, anyway. You can never respect it if you don't know about it. And remember it's still as cruel and remorseless as God made it in the first place.
 Whenever Teddy Roosevelt experienced a loss or deep disappointment, he would head off on an adventure - sometimes reckless ones. A paragraph from Candice Millard's fascinating The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey:
"Roosevelt had also concluded that his old friend Father Zahm was not suited to the treacherous passage down the uncharted river. Zahm, like Miller, would continue with the expedition until it reached the River of Doubt, but at that point he would be shunted off to another, less challenging journey. "Father Zahm has now been definitely relegated from the Rio da Duvida trip and goes down the Guy Parana," Kermit wrote to his mother. Even though the trip had been Zahm's idea in the first place and, at his age and with his failing health, he was unlikely to return to the Amazon, few members of the expedition shed any tears for him. "All for each, and each for all, is a good motto," Roosevelt had once written, "but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others." " Photo: Roosevelt with Col. Rondon in South America. Roosevelt lost 57 lbs. during the 1500-mile exploration, and nearly died of malaria and dysentery. He never fully recovered from the ravages of the dangerous and grueling trip down the River of Doubt.
This columnist David Bullard made a good point, and one we have made here in the past: compared to the stone age - or to anything else, Western civilization is a gift. (Which is not to say that anybody wants a gift imposed upon them: change is tough for people.) Too bad he got fired for truth-telling.
Vets rip Time magazine cover Dangerous expansion of the Fed's power. Boudreaux That sick Yale story was fiction. Still sick. Dissent is good, right? Kenneth Green on the global warming dissident scientists Dean Barnett on A Dash of Harvard Disease. A quote: Although hardly identical, Obama's and Frank's sentiments do share critical commonalities. Both evidence an unbecoming condescension to the American people. And both share modern liberalism's assumption that Americans are a bunch of dullards. Perhaps no other trait has so thoroughly harmed the left at the ballot box. Anyone who has ever walked by Harvard Yard has heard the kind of condescending comments that Obama offered in San Francisco. Heck, anyone who has listened to a Michelle Obama speech has heard the same kind of contempt for the American people expressed in unequivocal terms. If you want to find this kind of smug superiority on the left, you don't have to look very hard. If you're of a mind to do some field research, I recommend you tune into Bill Maher's show on HBO next Friday night. I predict you won't have to wait more than ten minutes before Maher and his panel of Hollywood philosophes agree on what a stupid and ignorant place America is.
Related, via Just One Minute (h/t, Insty) Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.
Mount Tom, 1865. That is the Connecticut River in the foreground, near Northampton, MA. 
Thursday, April 17. 2008
From Megan McA: Q: How do hedge fund managers work 27 hours a day?
Continue reading "Joke du Jour"
 Habu needs to explain flag handling to this young lady
Sustenance from Maureen Dowd? Bruce? Bloomberg explains why NYC cannot hyper-tax the hedgies Progressives hate the poor. Climate Skeptic I never thought this book was literature. 65 years of LSD The search for the Phantom Subtext Photo: The popularity of the Bardot vs. Moslem story on the internet may be, in part, due to the opportunity to post a photo. Interesting story, too, though. Where's that link? Aw, never mind. Oh, here it is.
"Seven days, seven more days she'll be comin'
I'll be waiting at the station for her to arrive
Seven more days, all I gotta do is survive.
She been gone ever since I been a child
Ever since I seen her smile, I ain't forgotten her eyes.
She had a face that could outshine the sun in the skies.
I been good, I been good while I been waitin'
Maybe guilty of hesitatin', I just been holdin' on
Seven more days, all that'll be gone.
There's kissing in the valley,
Thieving in the alley,
Fighting every inch of the way.
Trying to be tender
With somebody I remember
In a night that's always brighter than the day.
Seven days, seven more days that are connected
Just like I expected, she'll be comin' forth,
My beautiful comrade from the north."
"Seven Days," written in 1976 but never recorded in the studio. A live performance from that year was included on the 1991 release "The Bootleg Series Vols. I-III," and was revived several times by Dylan during the 1996 spring and summer tours. The song has also been covered by Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, who performs it here at Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert in 1992 (the anniversary being that of Dylan's first album).
 Listening to the Pope. Several pieces at Anchoress
Not nautical: world's largest cruise ship The topic which always bugs me: "root causes" More execution of witches due to global warming DO NOT take vitamins! Sickest story I've seen today. At Yale, of course. Iran torches 7 ancient synagogues A cure for the airline industry. WSJ Corn prices and starvation. Austin Bay A nation of givers. h/t, AVI Like Adlai Stevenson, stylistically? Robo-soldier Photo of a Maggie's Farm staffer (via Theo)
It all started with Enron. The company was just too clever and set aside moral scruples in a feverish drive to maximize reported (as opposed to real economic) earnings.
The next step was auditors, who traditionally were employed by companies’ boards to check the math in the financial statements and ensure that balance sheets balanced.
Occasionally, under suspicious circumstances, they were instructed to conduct what were termed “fraud audits”, where they really took a close look at things like cash, receipts and bank accounts to see if someone was cheating or embezzling.
When Enron’s frauds came out, there was a frantic drive to find someone with significant economic resources - other than Enron’s crooked officers - who could be blamed. Enron’s auditors, Arthur Anderson, long reputed to be the toughest firm in the country, took the hit for not identifying the frauds they were not paid to investigate. Lawyers and frantically grandstanding officials declared Anderson to be guilty, and applied a pre-trial death penalty for the entire firm for the conduct of the partner on the Enron account. Not only was this in gross violation of the U.S. Constitutional requirement of a fair trial, it was enforcement of a notion of collective guilt previously unseen in Western democracies, and it put thousands of Anderson’s innocent employees out of work. As the gentle reader might recall, Anderson received a post-mortem judgment of “not guilty”.
Well, the accounting profession was not pleased, and began to look for a way to strike back.Next, the Securities and Exchange Commission got involved. The SEC had been established to ensure that securities offering documents and corporate reports to shareholders contained full disclosure. Accused by the press and Congress of lax enforcement, the SEC sought to find a way to co-opt the private sector as enforcers of Federal securities laws, and found lawyers and accountants an easy choice, declaring them responsible for finding and reporting any corporate hanky-panky that might be occurring, making corporate advisors into government snitches, and vastly increasing their risk of doing business.
Again, the accounting profession was not pleased, and its counter-attack came when accounting standards boards around the world invented (over corporate objections) a new system they thought was more theoretically pure, called “fair value accounting” with particular aim taken at the recent innovations in financial derivatives. These rules require assets to be valued at whatever someone will pay for them at any given moment.
As an example of the impact of Fair Value rules, if the Kondratiev family were a public company and - like a lot of people - not able to sell our house right now, we would have to write its value way down and take an “accounting loss” for that entire amount, making us technically bankrupt even though we know the house will indeed sell this year or next. Fortunately as a family, we don’t have to follow those moronic rules, and can wait and live in our home until the housing market recovers.
What’s worse, if a public company owns some sophisticated assets like esoteric options that don’t trade often, the rules require that they value them in accordance with a black-box mathematical model – and isn’t that the greatest opportunity for fraud yet invented? Then, if it later happens that there are few buyers of those options, accountants will require around 55% write-off in their value, even if the underlying assets have not diminished in value. Remember when some banks were required to write down assets fully secured by US Treasuries?
Nevertheless, our ivory-tower CPAs hold that regardless of a notion of long-term real value, if you cannot sell something today it has little – or no – value. Just look at the ultimate market proof that that notion is intrinsically false – private equity funds are snapping up these securities by the armload as soon as the banks write them down, and Kondratiev confidently predicts that some Great Fortunes will be made by those funds over the next three years. Business Week will predictably have a cover feature on the brilliant investors who gambled on purchasing deeply-discounted, scorned securities and against all odds won big. Ja. Remember where you read it.
To make a long story short, between SEC rules and new accounting standards, company financial statements are now unreadable by almost everybody except a tiny group of trained professionals, and companies are now having to add annexes to their financial statements that say things like "our audited statements are presented in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, but as such they are not useful in managing our business, so the following figures are the (unaudited) numbers we actually use to manage our business.”
Furthermore, and more importantly, the accounting deck has now been so stacked that every possible financial negative is emphasized and every possible financial positive is deferred. The result for us analysts and investors is that current financial statements are for most part presented in a way that grossly understate the real worth of companies.
“But,” you may well ask, “how did Bear Stearns so overvalue its assets?” Answer: it didn’t. Bear Stearns owned pools of residential mortgages, yours and mine, that might have a default rate of 5% in hard times, 15% in a depression, and was forced to write them down to nothing simply because, like our house, nobody was buying that day. As we wrote earlier this week, Bloomberg and everybody else (except the accounting rulers) knows that the foreclosure rate is expected to be 1.99%, which means that JPMorgan as purchaser of Bear will probably collect over 99% of the face amount of these mortgages, even if the foreclosed properties sell for half the loan balance. Only an accountant could insist that those mortgage pools had an accounting value of 40-45%.
Thousands of innocent people will be thrown out of work due to an intellectual ivory-tower artificiality perpetrated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the SEC.
The accountants’ revenge is complete.
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