Wednesday, May 4. 2016
From The New Central Planners:
To disguise the value judgments inherent in their regulatory agendas, economists and policymakers justify their proposals as hyper-rational, politically neutral responses to "market failures." To prove these proposals enhance economic efficiency and societal welfare, they produce "cost-benefit analyses." Free markets and price signals work better, they tell us, when we embrace their recommended taxes, subsidies, and mandates. Any rule that requires $1 million of equipment to reduce by 1% the risk of death for 100 people is just common sense; one requiring $1 billion of equipment to reduce by less than 1% the emission of carbon dioxide for one year is the only responsible choice.
All this may be true on classroom blackboards and in abstract computer models. But technocrats armed with sharpened pencils and boundless egos tend not to calculate reliably which market prices are "too low" or which resource re-allocations would produce benefits that exceed costs. The easy recourse to the language of market failure — the claim that somewhere some social cost is going unpaid — reflects a subjective policy preference when we do not know the cost's size or incidence, the extent to which it is unpaid, or what countervailing benefits might be lost through a correction. A cost-benefit analysis that summarizes how many "lives" a rule will "save," how many "jobs" will be "created," and how much these achievements are "worth," is little more than marketing propaganda when the terms are unhelpful abstractions and the estimates unreliable.
"Not every person can reason like a moral philosopher." From Human Nature and Political Society:
Expecting everyone to "reason" like a moral philosopher is based upon the assumption that everyone can. This of course is a rehash of the radical equality principle of all men and fails to recognise that some men are limited in reaching this level of cognition. (Note, it's one of the ways mainstream Christianity inadvertently laid the groundwork for Liberalism.) So anyone pushing this agenda is, in a way, furthering the intellectual supposition that all men are cognitively equal.
But suppose you do accept the fact that there is an inherent intellectual inequality amongst men, how then do you regulate public morality in such an environment, especially when asking men to act in a strongly counter-intuitive way? The only way to do so is by having a strong external apparatus, i.e. Church or State threatening to punish wayward behaviour. i.e. Big Brother. Furthermore, with the collapse of "cultural constraints" the void for regulating behviour needs to be assumed by the state, thus, radical liberalism necessitates a powerful state regulatory apparatus to provide a check against the intuitive tendencies of the masses.
 Toon via Theo
Survey: 34% of Bay area residents want to leave
New York’s last remaining soda fountain signs
Scenes From the First American Shopping Mall, Filmed in 1956
Guru–the most important free market movie ever made?
Guru–the
most important free market movie ever made? - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/05/guru.html#sthash.YrGwG2Cp.dpuf
Wilderness Worship - Back to Neander
Should the Semicolon follow the diastole, the trigon, the interpunct, and the diple?
Michael Bloomberg: Why Safe Spaces Are Terrible Mistakes
The Cumulative Cost of Regulations
I'm calling it: Social networking is over
The return of pseudo-science - The global warming industry lashes out in defense of its funding
Don't Let Government Stifle the next Tech Revolution
Standardized Test Discontent Spreads Across the Nation
Standardized
Test Discontent Spreads Across the Nation - See more at:
http://educationblog.ncpa.org/standardized-test-discontent-spreads-across-the-nation/#sthash.bcJ9FteQ.dpuf
Grand Jury Indicts Three Black Students Who Made Up Hoax of a Racist
Attack Against Them; They Were Actually The Ones Beating Someone Up
(While Throwing Racial Epithets)
The Campus Hate Crime Hoax Epidemic
Activists: Park Ranger Uniforms ‘threaten’ Latinos, Too Similar to Border Patrol - Group asks feds to consider “cultural implications of existing agency uniforms, offices, signage, and other facilities”
Winning ‘Draw Mohammed’ Picture Goes Up On eBay
Harvard 'Experts': Islamophobia Everywhere!
Dem AG Targets 90 Conservative Groups in Climate Change Racketeering Suit
Fighting Political Correctness in the Age of Trump - Republicans must stand up to political correctness or lose.
"Money In Politics," Hillary, And The McDonnell Prosecution
Chelsea Clinton’s speaking fee: $65,000.
David Brooks should stay in his little bourgeois strata
Memo to George Will, David Brooks and others: Stop being stupid on Trump:
I know many of those who voted for Trump, and they are by no means stupid, irrational, racist or anti-democratic. They are frustrated with politics as usual and they are taking their constitutional rights seriously by voting for change.
Second, Trump says what many of us have come to believe is true: that the Iraq War was a tragic mistake that shouldn’t be replicated. He was the only candidate to be so explicit in his denunciation, and I think it helped him with a big chunk of voters.
Third, he has a clear message on the economy that resonates: The middle class is getting screwed because the political class is looking out for their interests rather than for the broader interests of the American people. From being open to increasing taxes on the very wealthy to expressing concerns about trade deals to promising to protect Social Security, Trump is stating clearly that he will change the direction of the American economy.
I am not of the opinion that a Trump candidacy will do long-lasting damage to the party or the country. I guess that’s why I am not part of the conservative intelligentsia.
"I Don't Know How To Explain It" - Confused Clinton Can't Explain Own Comments To Coal-Miner
When I met Bill Clinton and the first time we were together
Get Ready for the Biggest Media Assault You've Ever Seen—Aimed Squarely at Trump
Who is the Host, and Who is the Guest? A Muslim owner of a grocery store in France assigns different shopping days for men and women.
Trouble In Paradise? ISIS Recruiting In The Caribbean
China Needs a Foreign Policy which Makes Friends
An ugly war, seen through the lens of the Vietnamese
Iraq: Washington is in fact groping into a new full-fledged conflict in the Middle East without proper planning and preparation.
Neutering U.S. combat air forces
Tuesday, May 3. 2016
Trump as Samson. We all may be tired of reading about Trump, but VDH has a good one: Trump: Something New under the Political Sun.
I think he is partly right, but I think he underestimates the amount of votes he will have across all sorts of demographics. I will vote for him despite his flaws. They always have flaws. One quote:
Trump supporters are tired of hearing that black lives matter, while no one mentions that all lives matter. They are sick of seeing protestors wave the flag of the country they do not wish illegal aliens to be sent back to and trash the country they under no circumstances want them to leave. They don’t like getting a letter from an IRS that employs Lois Lerner — a letter that would be ignored with impunity by those who are here illegally, or who run the Clinton Foundation. They are tired of wealthy minorities claiming they are perpetual victims of ill-treatment at the hands of people who are less well off than they. They don’t like hearing from elites that huge trade deficits have little to do with loss of jobs or that cheating by our trade partners is just a passing glitch in free trade. They cannot stand lectures from those who make more money in an hour than they do in a year about their own bad habits or slothfulness.
They don’t know what the on-screen savants mean by a leg-tingle or a perfectly pressed pant leg or a first-class temperament or a president as god — and they don’t care to find out. They do not hate political correctness so much as one-sided political correctness, which gives a pass to some to say things that would get others fired or ruined. They don’t want to be lectured that their own plight is part of a larger, healthy creative destruction or a leaner, meaner competitiveness or an overdue restructuring — by those who are never destroyed, rendered noncompetitive, or restructured. And they don’t like to be talked down to by the experts who ran up $10 trillion in debt, ruined the health-care system, dismantled the military, and screwed up the Secret Service, the IRS, NASA, and the VA. Trump is their megaphone, not their solution. The Trump supporters have seen plenty of politicians with important agendas, but few with the zeal to push them through; at this late date, they would apparently prefer zeal without agendas to agendas without zeal.
 When you stress your muscles sufficiently with resistance training, you damage muscle. This only happens with extreme stress to failure and beyond. Not high reps, but heavy weights. High reps are mainly maintenance and toning.
Muscle (but not heart muscle) only grows stronger in the repair, or recovery, process, which can take a week. Without damage, there is no strength-building.
Early on in my resistance training I realized that I was not getting enough protein for good repair. Feeling tired and weak. A hard boiled egg (8 gms of protein) and a glass of milk (8 gms) was not enough. For your maximum strength-building efforts, you probably need 100+ gms of protein/day for repair and reconstruction.
100+ gms/day is not easy. (See gms of protein/serving of meats). Vegans have their own ways but I am not going there.
As long as I am in the intense strength-building phase of things (almost 12 months now with a few to go), I am sticking with these meathead drinks in the photo for breakfast.
40 gms. is a good start towards 100 with a heavy shot of protein after your barbell squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull-ups, dips, etc. You get used to the lousy flavors.
You can make your own sort of thing cheaper with whey powder, some blueberries, some milk, and a blender.
If you do not push and pull weights to the point of good damage, 100+ gms/day is not necessary at all. For maintenance, not needed either. Maintenance efforts do no muscle damage and just keep things working.
The central tenet of Libertarianism is freedom. It is the right to choose. Not just choose 'stuff' while shopping, but everything. Where to live, who you associate with, who you do business with, who you work for or who works for you, and what you want to do with your life. While it is often contrasted with Socialism and Communism, this commentator points out there is a third thread which is often overlooked, but cuts across the philosophical spectrum - bureaucratic centralism. It's my belief that Conservatives are essentially libertarians (small "l") who like having, or believing in, the direction that centralized government can provide. Which is why Libertarians, more often than not, are lumped in with Republicans. In my recent past, I've learned to distrust and, whenever possible, avoid anything government claims to provide, or that people believe it should provide. If I could avoid, or it was practical to avoid, all things the government provides, I would. Unfortunately I don't have that freedom, since it's been taken either by vote or by bureaucratic diktat.
It seems, as a limit, five is the maximum for closest friends, and 100-150 about the max for solid pals plus solid acquaintances. That seems about right to me, depending on how pals and good acquaintances are defined (in this case, by frequency of contact). (h/t, Insty)
 Cruising the Davis Strait
Catching a Flight? Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security
Why Italian merry widows perk up after husbands die
Blood-red Trevi fountain a wake-up call on Christian persecution
No commencement speaker will mention this – the huge ‘gender college degree gap’ favoring women
Undergrad links to Obama’s comments about students being ‘coddled,’ gets ripped by peers
" The employee also referred to one of the students as a man, even though
that student had informed the employee that they identify as gender
neutral."
Heterodox: Freethinking profs – fed up with peers’ blind devotion to leftist tenets – launch their own website
SIU students to hold strike against austerity, racism
Small Acts of Cowardice Are Destroying Our Culture
...how culture wars are lost: through the slow accumulation of individually defensible but collectively unjustifiable decisions not to resist. It’s the decision that objecting during diversity training simply isn’t worth the hassle. It’s the decision not to say anything when you see a colleague or fellow student facing persecution because of their beliefs. It’s a life habit of always taking the path of least resistance, keeping your head down, and doing your best to preserve your own family and career. The small fights don’t matter anyway, right?
I recently spoke to a mid-level executive at a major corporation who had been forced to sit through mandatory “inclusivity” training. The topic was transgender rights, and the trainer proceeded to spout far-left ideology as fact, going so far as to label all who disagreed with the notion that a man can become a woman “transphobic.” I asked if anyone objected to any part of the training, and the response was immediate. “Are you crazy? No one wants to deal with HR.”
Who Speaks for the Working Class? Economic concerns increasingly unite moderate-income whites and blacks.
CNN's Jeff Zucker on the Network's Increasing Ratings: "We May Have Been A Little Too Liberal In the Past"
Why Aren’t We Having a National Conversation About Leftist Violence?
The myth of free trade
...trade is a good thing, but only when it is a net positive to the American people as a whole. Deals that allow plutocrats to shift their costs to the public so they can privatize profits are not good deals. Trump pointing that out does not make him a protectionist. It makes him a realist. It’s the innumerate phonies, clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, desperately trying to shut off these debates, who are divorced from reality. Trade, like all pubic policy, is about trade-offs. Those trade-offs are debated in a healthy society.
Mexico Is Sending Us Colonists, Not Immigrants
Off the reservatio
Sanders applauds supporter who tells billionaire class to 'f--- off’
Monday, May 2. 2016
 It's not really new news, but getting fat at some point in life does seem to alter some physiologic processes for the long term. It seems to retrain the body for a high-caloric life, for a fat life; resets some homeostatic buttons including altering or almost eliminating satiety signals for some period of time.
We have discussed the insulin effects of excess dietary carbs, but there is more: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight
Despite the interesting physiology, I feel the article overstates the thesis and minimizes the role of human agency, human choice. Resisting temptation, calculating consequences, etc. is what makes us different from other animals. For those who have been heavy at some point in life, though, that is more challenging. Mind over matter.
Moral of the story: Don't "let yourself go" because you may live to regret it.
It was the Founders' best shot at closing any loopholes for expansion of Federal power:
The naysayers did not trust the dam to hold. Rather, they were sincerely worried that the national government would expand beyond all recognition, and that, in its broadened form, it would inevitably begin to encroach upon the rights of the people. To help prevent this from happening, they sought a parchment backstop to which they might appeal in such cases as denied their natural liberties.
They already understood that power tends to attempt to amass more power. But how did they know that the masses would, someday, demand more? Wise men, indeed. Freedom from government was their lodestar.
I'm not a blue-collar worker, but I had blue-collar jobs in my younger days. There is a meme floating around right now suggesting people who oppose the minimum wage increases (as I do) are amoral people who believe low income workers 'deserve' what they earn. Many good blue-collar jobs pay pretty well and just require hard work and the desire to do it. The minimum wage really applies to the lowest end of the blue-collar funnel, low-skilled and entry-level labor. And I don't feel even low-skilled or entry-level workers 'deserve' anything, anymore than I 'deserve' something or a blue-collar worker 'deserves' something. We work because we've come to an agreement on a wage and we're comfortable with between ourselves and our employer. Comfortable with does not mean we think it's optimal, perfect, or what we want. It means we feel we can do the job for that sum.
But Mike Rowe points out another key part of the jobs equation. Jobs don't come to us. We have to go to them. If my best job option is going to be in San Francisco or Chicago, rather than here in NYC, then I should be prepared to go to it. If I don't, I really have no complaints about whatever job I wind up with, because I took what's available within the limitations I set for myself. The US has always been a mobile nation. Mobile as in able to move both physically and economically. People move up and down the wealth and income ladder, but they have also transport themselves to where the jobs are. It's been that way for years. After all, that's part of what Manifest Destiny was all about - following opportunity. It's why Horace Greeley supposedly said "Go West, young man." Today it may be better stated as "Go Weld, young man."
It acts like a Black Hole. More on that topic
Sunday, May 1. 2016
Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight, explained with 60+ studies.
Physical exercise has many benefits - but weight loss is not among them. However, fat loss does enhance one's ability to exercise effectively.
From Mikhail Fridman's As Global Instability Spreads, the "Indigo" Economy Rises:
We are entering a disruptive era driven by extraordinary levels of human creativity. A new generation of curious, strong-willed and talented individuals is unhindered by convention or the past. This new “Indigo” generation is now shaping tomorrow’s economy and creating national wealth. I use the term Indigo because it has been used to refer to children with special or unusual abilities. This is an era where abnormally talented individuals and entities are now able to realize new levels of human potential and economic achievement.
...
This new Indigo era undermines the hypothesis that depletion of natural resources is imminent. The innovative potential of developed countries has allowed people to find alternatives to any such shortage. This does not mean that the world no longer requires natural resources. But it eliminates the real or imagined shortage of those resources and deprives commodity exporters of what have been super profits. Oil and gas was the last bastion of these bottlenecks and it too has crumbled, thanks to Indigo economies. The main source of national wealth is not the resource rent but the social infrastructure that allows every person to realize his or her intellectual and creative potential. It is for this reason that Exxon, once the world’s largest company, has been overtaken by Apple and Google. This represents a paradigm shift in which creative, non-linear thinking and random ideas are turned into new scalable services in a short space of time.
From Scott Ott, Titanic Income Inequality: Outraged at the Cruise Ship Caste System.
Amusing piece by Ott. The author of the NYT article has not spend much time on ships. As one who has probably had the pleasure of traveling on ships and boats much more than the average (not including those who served in the USN), I have a few thoughts:
- Travel by ships and boats is a wonderful thing to do. Being at sea is a delight, regardless of weather. Do not cruise the Caribbean. It's a silly thing to do, I feel, unless you go to gamble.
- There are less-expensive mass market cruise lines, and there are "luxury" lines. They are quite different in "atmosphere".
- Regardless of the line, you get what you pay for on a given boat. Same as a hotel. If you want to pay for a suite, you can usually get one.
- Older ships did indeed have three classes. When we were kids, we used to sneak into First Class to check it out. With 5 kids (and thus 3 cabins) no way my Dad was going to pay for First.
- I strongly dislike the mass market cruise lines with their giant Vegas-style hotels on barges. I advise avoiding them. It is not a great experience.
If you want to cruise in comfort with pleasant, interesting people, instead of getting a fancy suite on a tacky ship I have better choices below, and good discounts can be had if they don't have a full ship. These boats (except for Windjammer) have either explicit or implicit dress codes) :
Holland America Line is neither mass-market nor extreme luxe. No classes. Very gracious and civilized with wonderful trips
Windjammer
Windstar
Seabourn
Uniworld's river cruises
Psalm 67
67:1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
67:2 that your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations.
67:3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
67:4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
67:5 Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
67:6 The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us.
67:7 May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere him.
Sent from a pal in California.
Related: Whistleblower: Cockroaches Served for Dinner at Chicago-Area VA Hospital
Whistleblower:
Cockroaches Served for Dinner at Chicago-Area VA Hospital - See more
at:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/04/whistleblower-cockroaches-served-for-dinner-at-chicago-area-va-hospital#sthash.daXFAWgF.dpuf
Saturday, April 30. 2016
The proportion of Americans who participate in philanthropic activities—70 percent—is higher than the number who vote.
American people get together to do things, to make good things happen. Professional organizers not required. Good things happen organically.
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Book Review: 
Eagles