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.
That's the title of a piece by Kling. A quote from his fascinating essay about post-industrial work:
The recent trend in job polarization raises the possibility that gains in well-being that come from productivity improvements will accrue to an economic elite. Perhaps the middle-class affluence that emerged during the latter part of the industrial age is not going to be a feature of the information age. Instead, we could be headed into an era of highly unequal economic classes. People at the bottom will have access to food, healthcare, and electronic entertainment, but the rich will live in an exclusive world of exotic homes and extravagant personal services. The most popular bands in the world will play house concerts for the rich, while everyone else can afford music downloads but no live music. In the remainder of this essay, I want to extend further this exercise in imagination and consider three possible scenarios.
The people who used to be bank tellers are not the same people who design and build ATM machines. Clerical jobs are disappearing fast. Secretarial jobs have already disappeared. Sales and service jobs are entering the maw of the internet: people buy their insurance, cars, and books online. Semi-skilled jobs are disappearing. Soon, teaching jobs will shrink with digital education. Productivity (ie, fewer employees) abounds. Outsourcing of everything, including legal work, abounds. Heck, even Wall St. jobs are disappearing. (However, there will always be work for skilled labor: carpenters, painters, electricians, plumbers, gunsmiths, firemen, masons, etc)
Kling wonders what the immediate future might hold for people who want to work, but who, despite education, lack specific skills. As I have said often here, a gentleman's liberal arts education is a wonderful thing indeed and helps produce good dinner companions but it is not work-related. It was never meant to be.
As Vanderleun guotes:
The graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with a liberal arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?" -- Jane Haddam
The current market on Wall Street is driven by a number of outrageous factors. Europe and U.S. Debt, Fed Quantitative Easing, Hot IPOs, and large scale fraud are headlines each day.
Last night, an interesting IPO was priced, and it could be a bellwether, as its movement may be indicative of market conditions.
The business plan was good. This was going to be a moneymaker. The problem with the deal was optics. Rendering is a nasty business.
So are businesses with low costs of entry. One of the sure signs of bubble behavior is herd mentality that becomes contagious and self-reinforcing.
Also via Insty: Have you considered the myriad difficulties associated with carrying concealed while shopping? Here are some great ways to overcome those issues.
Cain lacks the grounding and depth needed to be president. If he is serious about wanting to be president, he should be running for the U.S. Senate, or for a governorship, to prepare, because if anything is clear right now, it’s that experience matters. (By the way, it’s interesting to see how widely Republicans are responding to his avuncular warmth; my teenage daughters just love him in the debates, probably because we usually get hard-to-love cold fish, or raffish jerks, as our candidates.) Yes, he’d be better than Barack Obama as president. Much better. And yes, it’s nice that he’s black and conservative, and all these white Republicans are embracing him. But if the GOP’s goal is to win, Cain is a distraction. At the end of the day, if he is the candidate, we lose — even if it turns out that he had no behavior, ever, which could be confused with sexual harassment.
Our contributor Gwynnie will not be seeing this sunset from his duck boat in the reeds this fall, due to (non-serious) medical repairs.
Nice weather and clear skies are terrible for duck hunting. What you want is wind and snowy sleet, because when you are uncomfortable, the ducks are too - so they fly around. Otherwise, they sit and loaf and work on their tans in huge rafts out in the middle of the lake. Photo is not the lake itself - it's a good-sized bay on the lake.
Sunset is quittin' time. When he gets back to the lodge, he would typically clean up and dress in tweeds and a bow tie, and have a couple of single malts and a Habana ceegar in front of this fireplace before dinner. And probably some ancient port and another ceegar after the pumpkin pie with Maple Syrup on top, at the evening post-prandial confab at which non-PC jokes and lies predominate. Women not allowed as guests here. Jimmy Doolittle used to sit in front of this fireplace on his duck hunting trips (It's easy to tell that I'd like to be there now):
A re-post from last December - it's not snowing here yet this year - except for last weekend -
Still snowing heavily up here. Lovely evening for a smoke or two and a Scotch or three, and, as usual in the winter, I am encountering the problem of maintaining humidification.
I generally like to keep them in the mid-high 60s, but mine keep dropping to nearer to 50% in the dry air. And yes, I do keep them well-packed with good and bad smokes of all sorts.
Here's one bit of advice on the topic but, unless you have an electronic system, I suspect you just use solid heavy wood boxes and try to do your best to smoke 'em all - and not try to save a large collection. You can always buy more.
Here's something even better:
A pal who read my piece about humidors in winter was thoughtful enough to deliver me an Opus X along with two 72% Boveda gel-packs. Those packs are news to me. He promised that putting two Boveda packs in there will get your humidor through three months in the winter up here, where our humidity can be quite low in winter. The packs don't activate until opened.
America does have social classes, to some extent, based on all sorts of familial tribal signaling and shared understanding, but the mystery to most pundits especially on the Left is income mobility among economic levels. Social class and income are not the same thing. See "genteel poverty." Via The poor don't stay poor, the rich don't stay rich:
The data showed that fully 56 percent of those who in 2001 were in the lowest 20 percent quintile of income earners had moved up to a higher income quintile by 2007. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 66 percent of those who in 2001 were in the highest quintile of income earners dropped at least one quintile by 2007. And, as Perry notes on his Carpe Diem blog, lest anybody think the period spanning those years might not be representative because of the housing boom that triggered the Great Recession of 2008, data cited by the Fed point to the same pattern of high income mobility from 1996 to 2005. Fully 57.5 percent of those in the top 1 percent of income earners dropped to a lower quintile by 2005, while 57.8 percent of those in the lowest quintile in 1996 moved to a higher one by 2005.
In America, economic "class" is just a moment in time for most people.
If sociological reportage describes one main stream of commentary about Occupy Wall Street, yearning nostalgia describes the other. It turns out that 1960s radicals never die, they just turn rancid and say ridiculous things. They may long ago have lost track of their love beads and peace pins, but somewhere deep down there lives an unextirpatable feeling of solidarity with the Age of Aquarius. The New York Times has been one reliable source of the phenomenon. The columnist Nicholas Kristof, for example, took one look at the spoiled children and social misfits cluttering up Zuccotti Park and declared that it was “reminiscent of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.” Here’s a question: How many things had to go wrong in Mr. Kristof’s brain for him to make that comparison with a straight face? “Reminiscent of” implies “analogous to.” In what sense is an aggregation of permanent adolescents in a park in downtown Manhattan analogous to the regime-changing tumult that exploded in Egypt last winter? In no sense. Mr. Kristof’s heady tweet was nonsense.
It's a good piece, but I have grown weary of these clowns, half-wits, and sociopaths.
The "MF" in MF Global does not stand for "Maggie's Farm". But it could stand for "Massive Fraud". What's amazing, as the MF Global story unfolds, is how one of the liberal standard bearers, Jon Corzine, put his future and his reputation on the line to make more money than the tidy sum he already has. He was, after all, known as a risk taker. But he was also one of the Left's golden boys.
There's nothing wrong with making money, and nobody should begrudge Corzine what he earned. However, I was happy to see him removed as my governor, due to the hypocrisy of his rhetoric and his disastrous leadership. His political views, contrasted with his behavior as CEO of Goldman Sachs, were inconsistent. He claims to be a man of the people, seeking to right wrongs and help the poor. He also gave support to, and received support from, unions. As CEO of Goldman during the run up to a public offering, he cut staff, fought unions, and tried to lower wages. In doing so, he oversaw a successful IPO, but was eventually ousted.
It's always intriguing to see liberal hypocrisy laid bare and listen to the spin. After all, it was recently speculated that Corzine might be a Geithner replacement. Few of his Democratic colleagues have jumped to defend him.
Corzine could, and should, have been much smarter about this. After all, MF Global purchased a firm which had executives jailed for exactly the same kind of fund commingling which seems to have just occurred. So it seems reviewing history was not helpful to the management of MF Global. Does a connected politico earn a jail cell for his behavior?
Deutscher was a fine example of the scholar who knew a lot and understood little (including, or especially, himself). A man may smile and smile and be a villain. A man may read and read, and experience and experience, and understand nothing.
I have a GI friend and colleague who makes most of his living sticking tubes down people's esophagi and up their behinds.
He told me that he recently took on a 1 day/week job at a Medicaid clinic to keep busy in this economy, and to do some low-fee work for the benefit of the community. Apparently people who pay or partly-pay for their own scopings are putting it off.
After four months of it, he was frustrated. He told me that over half of the scheduled patients do not keep their office appointments, and 2/3 do not show up for their scope appointments. He is quitting that experiment (leaving them without any GI person), and told me "No wonder these people are on Medicaid. If they cannot at least treat their doctors' time with respect, how can they hope to function in the normal world? It almost seems like they just do whatever they feel like doing. I end up just sitting there, like a chump while I pay my malpractice insurance bills to cover the work."
Well, yes, often enough. That is, of course, not an effective life plan for them. A sense of entitlement will get you nowhere in life.
Readers know that I donate one day each week to a charity clinic at which I decided to take no compensation. It is a component of my tithing. I told him that I give my charity patients two chances, but he rightly explained to me that, as a specialist with only consultation appointments, people feel no ongoing relationship with him, view him as a free government technician while he wants to be caring, engaged, and of help to them. Their physician, in other words.
I told him what he had already learned. The poor often do not have good health stats because they do not take care of themselves, and are often stuck in bad circumstances because they do not function reliably or behave respectfully in the world. I advised him that he was wrong to take it personally. He said that he could not help but to take it personally because he had made a serious decision to be of help to people in need and could not tolerate the lack of gratitude and respect. Said he would rather be on the golf course where his frustration would be on his own terms.
Also, forgot to mention his relevant unpleasant detail that when they do show up, they often have not accurately followed the pre-scoping directions, making his job impossible and disgusting. "It's a set-up for lawsuits," he said. "Can't see a freaking thing. I am not Roto-Rooter."
I tell him that that is the same as people who lie to me. He is right that some greedy and dishonorable people are looking for lawsuits anywhere they can find them, but you cannot practice good medicine with that at the top of your mind. Medical care is not a "service," it is a very human collaboration. Fortunately or unfortunately, you cannot "service" your body and/or mind like you do your car.
That is something that the bureaucrats just don't get. They will want us docs to be auto mechanics.
We all must adapt! With Global Cooling hastening our certain death and doom by freezing to death, we offer this info in our annual Winter in New England series. God willing and if we survive Climate Change, we will extend this series next fall with some new additions.
Let's face it: 4 WD is is for petite blond yuppie wives who do not know how to drive in snow and mud while chatting on their cell - and for hunters who like to take vehicles to gnarly places. There's a cheap solution.
Snow and mud tires are called "Winter tires" nowadays. They are made of a softer rubber (so as to provide better suppleness in cold temperatures), which is why they don't last as long as regular tires. That's the reason to put them on in November and to take them off in March or April (around here, anyway). At that rate, they will last 3-4 seasons at the minimum.
Important safety considerations with winter tires: Always put them on all 4 wheels and never replace just one: replace all 4 at the same time.
Decent snow tires will turn your old Chevette into the rough equivalent of a 4 WD. But how do you know whether you need them? In my opinion, if you need them, you will know it - but here's a piece on the subject.
With global cooling picking up its pace, everybody may need them soon. 4 WD is good but, where you need them, winter tires are as good or better.
Fears don't match facts, often, because people want to pretend they are in control of Fate. Eat your broccoli and tofu and skip your immunizations, suckers.
If you're a mature, sophisticated adult (that is, over 50), then you remember Cracked magazine as being one of the staples of your early youth, right alongside Mad magazine and Playboy. Gotta get your education from somewhere, right?
Well, IMHO, Cracked has turned into the premiere comedy/parody/satire site on the Web. There are a handful of imitations around, but Cracked is the best-written and most polished. Some of their stuff is exceptionally clever.
I found the following Cracked article both revealing and insightful, and immediately confess to being guilty of a huge number at least one of the sins he mentions. My thought at the end was, anyone getting on the Internet for the first time should read this first.
Oh, before we start, would you mind if I asked a rather delicate question?
American life, as journalist Sebastian Junger observed in 1999, "has become staggeringly easy," even "vaguely unfulfilling." The context of Junger's remarks was an exploration into why some people deliberately seek danger nowadays, whether it's bungee-jumping from a high bridge or teasing grizzly bears in the (ultimately fatal) manner of Timothy Treadwell.
The political parallel to Junger's thesis is the oft-cited "solution in search of a problem," of which the Our Children's Trust lawsuit is but one example. (For others, I need only refer you to any Democratic Party political platform.) While it is certainly true that our water and air are not 100% pure (whatever that may be), the fact is that the goal posts keep getting moved back with every improvement in observation that we achieve.
Mayor Mike said this morning that if there is anyone to blame for the mortgage crisis that led the collapse of the financial industry, it's not the "big banks," but Congress.
He is an amateur. That's part of why people like him, but not a reason that people will decide to vote for him. Obama is still surprisingly popular.
Israel: A true ally in the Middle East - Israeli contributions to U.S. national interests, underappreciated by many, include enhanced counter-terrorism, intelligence and technology useful in urban warfare.
Magnificent place, wonderful gardens. Gardens make a house a home. Hydrangeas and cottage gardens make a garden homey. Note that many if not most of the charming homes in Woodstock are second homes, summer and ski-season getaways. This one too, no doubt:
However, the science is settled (via Watts): there is probably or possibly a short-term (centuries) warming trend, if the data is worth anything (about which I am a skeptic). Nothing to think twice about unless you plan on bringing farming back to Greenland in 300 years:
Note the dramatic correlation with global CO2 emissions! None. Here's a better correlation which shows some real proof: Global temperatures caused by decrease of Mediterranean pirates.
QED - it's a linear inverse relationship This cause is therefore settled science, and the obvious solution to refrigerate ourselves is to import more pirates into the Med until we are cold enough.
Brain science “will eventually begin to influence how the public views justice and responsibility,” Dr. Gazzaniga said at a recent conference here sponsored by the Edge Foundation.
And there is no guarantee, he added, that its influence will be a good one.
Prof Gazzaniga is a good, humble scientist who knows the limits of what his area can offer us.
The Reins Act is part of the Republican Jobs Bill, antithetical in most respects to the Democrats killing-jobs bills and regulations that we’ve suffered the past 3-years. There are 192 co-sponsors (text and sponsors) in the House, and growing. Check and see if your Congressman has signed on yet. The major media, of course, has not paid much of any attention to the Reins Act. President Obama would, of course, veto it, but he may not be in the position to do so after next year’s elections. Then, await the howls of the legions profiteering from the federal regulatory behemoth. But, Congress must be held accountable for regulations promulgated in its name.
Last week, House Speaker Boehner said of pending job-killers, “Today there are 219 such rules that are sitting in these agencies ready to come rolling out and to impose new costs on a private sector that’s struggling to keep its head above water and to create jobs.”
Amity Shlaes points out that in 1933 President Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration “had generated more paper than the entire legislative output of the federal government since 1789.” (The Forgotten Man) In 1935, the US Supreme Court found the NRA unconstitutional for infringing on the separation of powers by delegating powers to the executive properly those of the legislative branch.
Firm action by Congress to rein in costly regulation is sorely needed. Over the past few years, the cost and number of new regulations have increased dramatically. This increase did not begin with President Obama, but it has accelerated markedly during his tenure. From inauguration day 2009 through March of this year, regulatory agencies imposed some 75 major new regulations (defined as those costing $100 million or more), imposing some $38 billion of new costs annually on the economy and consumers.[1]
This is on top of the continuing burden of the existing stock of red tape, which has been estimated at some $1.75 trillion per year.[2] This burden not only increases costs for consumers but hinders enterprises from growing and jobs from being created.
[A] bill to increase legislative control over and accountability for federal regulatory policy. The central provisions of the REINS Act provide that new “major rules” – those regulations expected to cost over $100 million annually – may not become effective unless a joint resolution of approval passes Congress. The Act would further create an expedited review process designed to ensure that there is a prompt up-or-down vote in each house of Congress on all new “major” rules, which represent less than five percent of the 3,000-plus federal regulations promulgated each year….
The question is not whether we would have “more efficient and more effective regulation” but whether we would have regulations that more closely follow the value preferences of the American people. Existing regulatory decisions are not made by “scientists and engineers” who have regulatory authority due to their independent expertise, but by executive and independent agencies that are headed by political appointees who are granted regulatory authority by Congress. Their regulatory decisions are informed by scientific and technical information, but the ultimate regulatory choices are based on normative judgments – whether it is worth imposing X amount of costs for Y benefits, whether it is fair to impose particular costs, risks or burdens on particular segments of the population, whether environmental gains in one area are worth safety or environmental losses in another, and so on. These are legislative policy judgments for which legislators should be held accountable.
Critics of the Rein Act say it will gum up the works. But, as Heritage points out, there are not hundreds but a few dozen such regs a year, "hardly an unmanageable number." And, surely more worthwhile for Congress to analyze and act upon than much else that it does. -- Regulatory threats led to the housing values meltdown. Next Friday, in what's billed as a major speech, Mitt Romney will address government spending at Americans For Prosperity Tribute to Ronald Reagan dinner. Americans For Prosperity supports the Reins Act. Let's see if Romney does.
Still snowing heavily up here. Lovely evening for a smoke or two and a Scotch or three, and, as usual in the winter, I am encountering the problem of maintaining humidification. 
A coming book from Charles Murray: 
I have a GI friend and colleague who makes most of his living sticking tubes down people's esophagi and up their behinds. 
If you're a mature, sophisticated adult (that is, over 50), then you remember Cracked magazine as being one of the staples of your early youth, right alongside Mad magazine and Playboy. Gotta get your education from somewhere, right?
