Tuesday, November 11. 2014
Monday, November 10. 2014
This topic might be triggering to our readers: This is how bad censorship is getting: Discussions of what can’t be said come with a ‘trigger warning.’
Hypersensitivity to the trauma allegedly inflicted by listening to controversial ideas approaches a strange form of derangement—a disorder whose lethal spread in academia grows by the day. What should be the object of derision, a focus for satire, is instead the subject of serious faux academic discussion and precautionary warnings. For this disorder there is no effective quarantine.
It doesn't need satire because it satirizes itself. But in the UK, the government is considering speech permits. That is not a joke. I think it must be mostly about not pissing off their Muslims.
American Women: Julia Lost - Perhaps American women aspire to more than receiving political patronage.
American women: The Rise of the Factual Feminist
There is a new feminism on the rise, however—one that’s marked by the belief that women don’t have to be men to be happy. The American Enterprise Institute’s C.H. Sommers calls it “factual feminism.” These commonsense feminists deny they are being oppressed. Instead of complaining, they embrace their beauty, their innate ability to nurture, and the wonderful gift that is childbirth. Many have careers now but they don’t scoff at the housewife. They recognize her family as the backbone of Western civilization. This week America confirmed their beliefs.
I’m a die-hard liberal. It ruined my parenting.
A real nutjob
Is it better if cities have more compact shapes?
By continuously intervening in all of the markets, the Fed has destroyed the information transmission system that is built into freely trading markets.
Markets Are Overvalued By 2X—Here Are The Reasons Why:
Now the Federal Reserve, Bernanke particularly, believed that if you made people speculate enough and they drove prices up enough that they would feel wealthier and go out and spend. That actually contradicts what economists have known for decades and what Milton Friedman won a Nobel Price largely for demonstrating which is that people don’t consume off of speculative sources of income. They don’t consume off of volatile asset prices. They consume off of what they believe their long-term permanent income is and their view of their long-term earnings power and so forth.
Is it better if cities have more compact shapes?
How to Implement the IPCC Program - Accepting the climate change plan would necessitate the elimination of 90% of the world's population. How could that be done?
New Global Warming Report a Disgrace - Royal Society/National Academy of Sciences propaganda would enrage Newton.
It’s the Culture, Stupid: Welfare Programs Can’t Solve Economic Gap Created by Marriage Decline
The Drug War Divide - The Obama Administration’s more nuanced
approach to domestic drug policy has no parallel south of the border,
where militarized narco-inanity continues apace.
The Ivanpah solar scam
Job Growth Is Picking Up. But What About All the Sidelined Workers?
Geraldo Rivera: There Is No Doubt The NAACP Is A Satellite Of The Democratic Party - Tim Scott and Mia Love are seen as Uncle Toms or Aunt Toms by the NAACP
Academics and media tell minorities: You’ll never succeed because of racism
Shellacking, the Sequel - Tuesday's rout again revealed the limits of the modern Democratic coalition.
GOP majority: Embrace energy abundance and our new status as an energy superpower
Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber: "stupidity of the American voter" was critical to passage...
Time to rethink Hillary Clinton 2016:
“She is smart, tough and savvy and has a capacity to learn from failure and adjust. But . . . people are bored of her and feel like she has been talking at them forever. . . . She is a dull, grating, inauthentic, over-eager, insipid elitist with ideological blinders yet no particular vision and is likely to be reduced to running on a dubious promise of experience and competence while faking idealism and hope — a very common type of presidential contender in both parties, but one that almost always loses.”
Eliz. Warren: Country ready for a Left turn
Iran Rising: Mullah-Backed Rebels Reach Yemen’s Capital
Sunday, November 9. 2014
Barone: Democrats see themselves as the party of the future, but their policies are antique.
I don't think the Left is shrinking in the US, but I do think American Lefty politics and policies are antiquated, obsolete, and backward.
Saturday, November 8. 2014
From the report:
Each year, 4.3 million Americans turn 18, and face competition for jobs from roughly 10 million unemployed Americans, 11 million illegal immigrants, plus the annual inflow of 1.1 million new legal immigrants and 70,000 guest workers.
22 habits of unhappy people (h/t Insty)
Forgiving God?
Why There Is No Wage Growth: One In Five Jobs Added Was A Waiter Or A Bartender
The Pros and Cons of Stock Diversification
The Corporate Neighborhood
RC church still stuck on divorce.
Cities: Traditional Development Is a Municipal Gold Mine
People like human scale and they do not like retail deserts
The problem is that rapists don’t care that it’s wrong. Rapists aren’t ignorant; they’re bad. They’re evil. They’re rapists.
Gallup: Most Americans trust guns in the home
Sen. Tim Scott Calls for a 'Revolution': School Choice
Harsh Winter Outlook Made a Bit More Dire by Siberia Snow
Tech firms hire a lot of Asians, and the NBA hires a lot of blacks. What’s the big deal?
Maine: Stone Brain Rises - The press mocks him, political elites hate him, but the people
of Maine like Paul LePage even more than they did four years ago.
Hatch: No, the Senate GOP should not “unilaterally disarm” after Reid’s abuses
Outrageous 'John Doe' prosecution of Scott Walker supporters in Wisconsin ends
It's called lawfare, and it is disgusting
Dems need some new ideas with new faces:
Democrats see themselves as the party of the future. But their policies are antique. The federal minimum wage dates to 1938, equal pay for women to 1963, access to contraceptives to 1965. Raising these issues now is campaign gimmickry, not serious policymaking.
I can’t live in Tijuana Norte.
Women still fighting the abortion wars. It's over, and has been for a long time.
Did The "War on Women" Campaign Actually Kinda Work?
Works on low-info voters
Election Advice To Dems That They Will Never Ever Take
Obama to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq as campaign expand
Why is the US involved in these ancient tribal disputes? There is no winning.
Hamas attacks Fatah with bombs
Top US general: Israel protected civilian lives in Gaza
Palestinians' "Car Intifada" and Obama's Peace Process
Thursday, November 6. 2014
People voted "for an agenda very different from what they want and need."
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Quite different, perhaps, from what his poor Vermonters "need and want" which seems mostly to be free stuff, no jobs, single mothers on welfare, and plentiful meth and heroin. Thank God for our moral and intellectual superiors. We would be lost without them, just like the Pilgrims and the American pioneers were.
How to Lie With Statistics was the first book I was required to read when I was studying for my Master's in Economics. The book wasn't designed to show us how to lie, but to make a point. It's easy to lie with statistics. 100% of the time. 60% of the time, lying works all the time. It's all about positioning. Al Franken cut his teeth by showing how Republicans lied using tricky graphing techniques, then started using his own special brand of lying to continue to hoodwink his constituents.
The book was really designed to get students to think about context. When I present data, I never present just data, I present context. It's not enough to say that Man-Made Global Warming correlates with the reduction in pirate activity. We all know correlation is not causation, the context of why the lack of piracy is causing Global Warming is critical.
I recently posted about why interest rates won't rise. Part of that discussion continued on in the comments section, regarding inflation and savings. Normally, interest rates are slightly higher than inflation (positive real interest rates), and typically fall below the rate of inflation when the economy is in a rut (negative real interest rates, when people spend more than they save, driving up inflation but eventually causing interest rates to rise in order to attract savings). Yet we have not seen a general rise in inflation or interest rates in the last few years. There are many reasons for this, and those reasons are helping to keep real interest rates negative and low. If we knew the truth, we'd probably see more consumers behave differently, and it's likely the Fed couldn't continue engaging its policy of printing more money. But hiding inflation is exceedingly easy to do. Especially if you utilize hedonic adjustments, which is one of many methods used to delude the populace.
Hedonic adjustments can be justifiable. For example, if a regular banana costs $1, but a banana that keeps you full all day and meets your minimum daily health needs is only $5, it would appear the 'cost' of a banana is 400% higher than it should be, if you want to live. However, if it takes 10 regular bananas to match what you can get from 1 $5 banana, then you've actually realized a 50% decrease in price! Hedonics DO make sense,when in the realm of productivity gains for the consumer.
However, as the linked article from Zero Hedge points out, you can use 'enjoyment quality' to make a 400% increase actually appear to be a 7.1% decrease. You get no real additional value out of a 42 inch plasma TV that you didn't get from a 27 inch LCD. But the government can quantify and justify that the price you paid was actually LESS for the big screen plasma, even if it wasn't. Voila! You've saved money by spending more! Looking at the list of areas where hedonic adjustments are applied show a variety of useless of price decreases, simply so the government can imply regularly that you are spending less than you really are. It helps our politicians maintain "the money illusion." This benefits them, allowing them to engage Keynes' famous quote, “Lenin (the founder of the former communist Soviet Union) was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose”.
So yes, technically our inflation rate has been far higher than you realize, and the Fed has been making your savings worth less and less each year. No, it probably won't end well, so enjoy it while you can, and remember to try and find the contextual support for any government data. There usually isn't any.
At Neoneo:
What Democrats said to Republicans when Democrats were in charge of Congress: We don’t have to listen to you any more.
What Democrats will say to Republicans now that Democrats are no longer in charge of Congress: Bipartisanship forever!
Bipartisanship to get what "jobs done"? Oh, it's about "progress." Althouse:
I'm uneasy at the word "progress." It assumes the existence of a road and knowledge of where it leads. I see no reason to believe in President Obama's idea of "progress." America rejected it yesterday.
When progress means more Federal money, power, control, and force, it's not progress: it's regression towards feudalism. I have some ideas about "jobs to be done" on the federal level which would mean progress to me:
Fix tort law, install a universal flat tax with no deductions and maybe a negative tax for the very poor and hopeless and helpless (or should that be left to the states?), secure the US border, deport illegals and be more welcoming of valuable legals, revise Obamacare to voluntary with a meaningful mix of options, eliminate the useless Federal Dept of Education, eliminate Death Taxes, make unionizing federal employees illegal, get rid of the failed war on drugs, eliminate the Dept of Homeland Security, shrink the EPA back to its original purpose, eliminate all farm subsidies including the ethanol scam and the sugar scam, eliminate all federal subsidies for flood insurance, eliminate the Dept of Commerce (except for NOAA), eliminate the ATF, tighten oversight for Disability, quit funding the UN, put a tight leash on the NSA, ban all government drones domestically along with banning the militarization of police, put NASA back in space - or privatize it, find a way to felonize crony capitalism, eliminate the Dept of HUD, restructure Social Security, get our military out of Europe and Japan and let them fend for themselves, get the federal government out of the mortgage market entirely, eliminate corporate taxes and make the US a corporate tax haven for the world (economic effects would be amazing), shut down the Fed and let markets work freely for better or worse without central efforts at control...and that's just for starters.
Let's get all those jobs done in a nice bipartisan way, ok? If there was ever a time to reach fearlessly, it's now. It might be a narrow window for real progress.
Scott Ott: No, Sen. Reid, Americans Don’t Want Washington to ‘Work Together’, ‘Get Things Done’?
What progress is on your wish list, my fellow Americans?
Wednesday, November 5. 2014
Like some of you, I've been reading about the election from all corners of the web: Left, Conservative, MSM, etc.
One take-home I get from it all is that the Dem core, on which they rely for votes and/or money, consists of single women, billionaires and multi-millionaires, "old money", crony capitalists, Wall St. millionaires, unionistas, Hollywood and its allies and sycophants, black Americans, government-dependent Americans, and urban white Liberals (including nice gentry Liberals, and academics, students, and college townspeople).
That's not news, but I just find it interesting. I can't really relate to any of those bloc-voting components.
The other take-home I get is that those people have an incomprehensible hatred and contempt for ordinary hard-working and entrepreneurial people like me. Why? I do not hate them, and it is unlikely that they would hate me if they met me. I happily work 14-hour days to build our business and to employ and supervise the new people we need.
Our major challenges to continuing growth are competition (good) and government (bad).
Tuesday, November 4. 2014
 About a book: Your God is Too Small
From Salon, The sad, twisted truth about conservative Christianity’s effect on the mind - "Some religious beliefs may alter brain function, making us more prone to anxiety and depression"
Good grief
22 Vintage Adverts That Would Be Banned Today (h/t SDA)
What A 1951 Photo Tells Us About Modern Women’s Loss Of Power
It’s the greatest achievement in human history, and one you probably never heard about
Harvard University To Teach Students How To Have Anal Sex… Yes, Really…
I thought that was taught in grade school nowadays
Shocking Report: Colleges Want more Government Money
What It’s Like To Face The LGBT Inquisition - Dare to question the new moral majority, and you will face an LGBT Inquisition. A bisexual son of lesbian parents speaks up.
Broadcast networks cover Kochs 22 times more than election’s top funder Steyer
Why If It Damages America, It's Good for Democrats
A new young batch of Conservative women
House Republicans could see their first black, gay members in years
Dear Chairwoman Yellen,
This is an open letter urging you to stop money printing immediately. It has created worse economic inequality and tremendously hindered the economic recovery from the longest recession in history...
Rand Paul courts the black vote
I like Rand. For political figurehead purposes, it's too bad he's a little dude who looks like Harpo
From Race and Reaction
We who have never been racist, and who will still not be racist, are beginning to wonder why we shouldn’t adapt to this new reality and accept the fact that perhaps we are not all alike in our desire for peace, that we do not all want the same things, and that what is wanted from us is our surrender and conviction for crimes we have not committed. What is being lost is the heretofore beneficial presumption that we are more alike than we are different.
That's a wow. I have never seen any racial discrimination in my personal life, or any racial tension either so I suspect politicians and media gin it up to keep an old narrative looking alive.
Obama Calls Republicans ‘Un-American’ In Late Election Appeal to Black Voters
Does the president really want black people to hate me? That is sick.
Ben Stein: Obama ‘Is The Most Racist President There Has Ever Been’
Disparate Impact Rebuked By Federal Judge – Court Rebukes The Next AG Nominee, Tom Perez and The Social Engineering Construct He’s Pushing…
Reflections on the Closing of the Russian Mind
Italy’s in terminal decline, and no one has the guts to stop it - Everything that’s wrong with France is worse here
Great place to visit, though - wonderful in every way
Taliban trying to destabilize region beyond Afghanistan
Below via WUWT:
UN Climate Panel: Phase Out Fossil Fuels ‘Almost Entirely’ by 2100
They are insane. Most people pray for some global warming, but it never arrives.
Leading Climate Scientist Bemoans Chicken Little Green Advocacy
Monday, November 3. 2014
 Our Healthful, Mindful, Gluten-Free Religion
Eight Most Absurd PC Police Halloween Rules
Bear Fight in Jersey Suburb
Hush, Art is Happening
Why We Sleep Together - A long time ago, beds were expensive—but there's more to it than that.
More Horror Stories from the TSA Bureaucrats
What about the slur against Scandinavians?
Proposed FDA food-safety rules under the FSMA
show the expensive campaign to modernize food safety shouldn’t be
confused with one that improves food safety.
Want to help veterans? Stop pitying them.
The Ottoman Spring - 1908
I did not know that some feminists support incest
How the Far Left Hijacked a Cat-Calling Debate And Started to Eat Itself - A viral video about street harassment doesn’t fit the desired narrative.
Pharmaceutical regulation is getting tougher
That means fewer new medicines
Pharmaceutical regulation is getting tougher
Meh, same old ‘gloom and doom’ from the IPCC over new climate report
Congressional Democrats Assist Billionaire Hedge-Fund Manager in Wall Street Feud
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Wants a Government of the Oligarchs, by the Oligarchs and for the Oligarchs
Shaheen: 'Right-Wing' Group Behind Study Showing Majority of NH Jobs Went to Immigrants
That right-wing group is the US Census Bureau
Horowitz: Why Are the Senate Races Close?
Islamic State group kills 50 Iraqis
Video: ISIS Enjoying ‘Slave Market Day’, Buying Yazidi Women
Man Says Islam is Violent, Muslims Violently Beat Him
Boko Haram Leader Says He’s Already Married Off Kidnapped Schoolgirls
Is the photo below true? And, if so, why? From Rick Moran:
The Democrats’ real problem is that they apparently think most women support the radical feminist agenda and care more about their sex lives than who can best lead the country. Trying to sell the idea that most Republicans oppose contraceptives was never going to fly and only made their candidates sound ridiculous. And abortion is not an issue uppermost in most women’s minds — especially married women. But the issues were secondary to finding a way to scare women into going to the polls by painting the Republicans as misogynistic Lotharians who don’t care about women being raped or assaulted, and who prefer women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
Saturday, November 1. 2014
Friday, October 31. 2014
 Alcohol-free likker
Taylor Swift: a New Yorker
Hooray: Michelle Obama Ruins Halloween In Philly
University of Minnesota-Duluth: PC Enforcers Tell Student Dressing Up As Disney’s Pocahontas For Halloween Is “Offensive”…
71 Percent of New Jobs Go to Foreign Born Legal, Illegal Immigrants in NH
“People May Not Always Understand Why, But an Armored Vehicle is Almost a Necessity Now
20-Year CBS News Veteran Details Massive Censorship And Propaganda In Mainstream Media
Health-Care Hell - Doctors and patients get burned by the world’s worst middleman.
Why it's time for Libertarians to Vote for Republicans
Dems have the statists and authoritarians in their tent, Repubs have room in their tent for Libertarians (ie, traditional Liberals)
Shocking Harvard poll: Millennial voters want GOP in charge, abandon Obama
The yoots like Rand Paul
The Stupid Party Is For Losers
VOEGELI: Why liberals can’t govern
Massive Non-Citizen Voting Uncovered in Maryland
Boxer: ‘So Sad to See the Party of Lincoln’ Attempting to ‘Suppress the Vote’
Scare the black people: It's Just Like Willie Horton Except Completely Different
... the state of Maine may have had just about enough of Saint Kaci of the Order of Unique Snowflakes.
Fred says:
The crucial question: Do we have more to fear from largely imaginary terrorists, or from the FBI? Your chances of being killed by terrorists are essentially zero, even if you live in Washington or New York, and far less if you live in Memphis or Raleigh-Durham. (To express this we need the concept of negative zero, which I hearwith offer to the mathmatical community.) Your chances of living in an electronically locked-down police state are very high. This is far more dangerous to what the United States was than even a successful bombing of a mall.What goes through the minds of those who are doing this to us?
In my former guise as a police reporter I knew a few FBI types. They were pathologically normal, smelled of too much soap and wholesomeness, resembled armed accountants with the other-worldly assurance of scientologists. They were deeply convinced that they were the Angels Gabriel protecting us from whatever, including ourselves—and they were as intellectual as colonels, which is to say as intellectual as fire plugs. In particular, they did not think in terms of constitutional liberties. Since their intentions were good, they figured that nobody should interfere with them. And they were on a power trip, as we used to say.
Renewables Threaten Europe’s Energy Security This Winter
In France, Muslims Are 7.5% of the Population, Commit 60% of the Crime
Thursday, October 30. 2014
Wednesday, October 29. 2014
Tuesday, October 28. 2014
Saturday, October 25. 2014
 Frank Serpico speaks
Thirty-Three-Hit Wonder - Billy Joel still lives on Long Island, still rules the Garden.
Big Taxi is doomed
Idaho city ordinance bans distribution of Bible to children
Just Another Day In Las Vegas
Study Says Deer Hunting Helps to Replenish Forests
Problem is that we eliminated their natural predators
Save the fishes! Drill offshore
Prohibition Redux: Pennsylvania to Destroy Thousands of Bottles of Wine - Owner violated archaic liquor laws
From My Vantage Point, Social Security Disability is Totally Corrupt
Houston, We Have a Gender-Blind Public-Restroom Problem
Krauthammer: Barack Obama, Bewildered Bystander - He’s angry, but not angry enough to fix what’s wrong.
Hillary Clinton Says, “Don’t Let Anyone Tell You It’s Corporations and Businesses That Create Jobs”
Hinderaker:
As long as liberals’ hunger for power is stronger than conservatives’ desire to be left in peace, the Left will continue to dominate our public life.
Dems on FEC move to regulate Internet campaigns, blogs, Drudge
The UK wants people to exercise to save $ for the NHS
But aren't people cheaper if dead?
John Kerry Thinks Climate Change Causes Radical Islam
North Korea warns against anti-Pyongyang leaflet drop
Shooting balloons is the most fun you can have in NoKo
Friday, October 24. 2014
I know a guy who got an A+ in Physical Chemistry at an elite university, and never went to class. He needed the spare time to practice with his grunge band. He told me he spent 24 hours non-stop going through the textbook with the help of some borrowed Adderal.
I suspect he missed a lot of interesting stuff, but he got the competency.
There are plenty of reasons for "seat time" in many areas of study, but certainly not in all. For example, there really are no valid criteria (in my view) for competency in Art History, or in history for that matter.
Here's the idea: Hacking Higher Ed With Competency-Based Education
Related, competency exams may be racially-biased via disparate impact. Here's that whole story, from Bill McMorris: How the Supreme Court Created the Student Loan Bubble - It all starts with Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
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Veteran's Day: Thank you veterans, for your service 
How 
Book in the mail: Rebecca Bynum's 
Ten Things 
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