We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
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Hope you all had a great week and are looking forward to a relaxing Saturday. Bulldog back again, providing morning links because Doc Mercury was busy howling at the moon late into the night. Something about that salt air...
Leftist media hates censorship, unless it's their censorship. Media Matters seeks to quiet Joe Kernan and have CNBC spend more time discussing the perils of AGW. If CNBC could just get some viewers, what they say might be worth censoring. 42,000 signatures is important, because, you know, it's a consensus.
I do loves me a Big Mac every once in a while, but how will raising the minimum wage affect Mickey D's? I will not pay $17 for a Big Mac (I paid only $5.50 a week ago). A $15.00 minimum wage will only make it more difficult for the poor to feed themselves.
The problem with anyone feeding themselves is that everything they eat will kill them. When I read articles claiming "Collard Greens May Cause 85% of all Colds!", or articles about things that cause cancer (or almost any disease) my inner skeptic is aroused. For example, recent studies linking meat to Alzheimer's. Note the key word in this, and virtually every other title of this nature. Could. One of my favorite sites utilizes an acronym, MMC, for these articles. May, Might, Could. In fact, the article on red meat even points out:
Dr Marie Janson, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This study suggests that during Alzheimer’s, iron could accumulate in an area of the brain that is critical to memory, but it is not clear whether this build-up might be a cause or consequence of the disease."
Correlation does not imply causation. If we study football statistics, we can see that teams which take a knee win an overwhelming amount of the games. A new headline: "Studies Show Quarterbacks That Genuflect Win 90% of Games". A new strategy I hope the New York Giants adopt because, after all, science proves it works.
In this case, however, the word "May" carries an entirely different meaning. You take your Molly, or any hard drug, you take your chances.
Apparently, the bar scene isn't even all that safe these days. Guess you take your chances anywhere.
Even the dead don't get much peace. I grew up near Jim Thorpe, this is about the most excitement they've had, well, ever.
Moving a body is contentious, and so is patent and copyright law lately. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue. Jeffrey Tucker's view is a Libertarian stance, which someone once explained to me this way: "If I light a match, then someone else lights another match from mine, and this fire is passed from person to person, who owns the fire and why should we limit ownership rights?" Too simplistic for my taste and there is a role for patents and copyrights, but perhaps in the modern media economy the length or application of them should be reconsidered. After all, can we honestly say the one-click shopping Jeff Bezos patented is deserving of one?
Tucker made the following comment, which is informative:
How important are playbooks in sports? They are gold. And yet they are not covered by "intellectual property" law. You can't copyright, patent, or trademark them. Every team is free to steal what they see every other team doing. Mass thievery? Nope. It's called information anarchism and its makes for a vibrant and dynamic game that is ever evolving and changing. It just works.
Speaking of mass thievery, or at least some form of it, several people asked about Bitcoin the other day. Here's a primer, and another. I'm no expert on the concept of crypto-currency, but I know a good idea when I see one, and this is one which has got the digerati very excited. Bitcoin, oddly enough, could serve as a new reserve currency, which is one reason why the US government is concerned by its growth and use. The US has benefited from being a reserve currency for years, and it's one reason the growth of our money supply has not yet led to rampant inflation.
One place where there has been rampant inflation is in Peyton Manning's performance on the football field. Against a defense that was supposed to be very good, Peyton threw 7 TDs, a feat performed by only 5 people before, and not since 1969. It's one game, but what a game it was. Sadly, it was a precursor to this heart-rending annual event.
Speaking of aerial attacks, it's interesting that Obama won election in 2008 on an anti-war platform. But it's 'just politics' that part of his platform in 2012 was anti-war-with-Syria.
He also won with a jobs-creation platform. Sure, jobs have been created. But not as many as are actually being originally reported due to downward revisions and people dropping out of the workforce. Or maybe that's not the real cause of our unemployment woes. Perhaps the decline of working actors could have been limited with these.
To make matters worse, Obamacare is causing jobs to be reduced to less than 29 hours per week, and his administration is lying about the impact.
Few of the unemployed and part-time worksers are likely to buy this. Too expensive. It's odd, too, as far as I'm concerned. Tablets and smartphones? Yeah, sure. Glasses and watches? I guess there's a niche for this stuff. The people I see wearing Google Glasses just look like they're trying to be digital hipsters.
Finally, because I promised Doc lots of pictures of fluffy puppies...have a great weekend!
seeks to 
Tracked: Sep 08, 10:00