(h/t The Agitator. Source.) I suspect there is a similar graph to be made of the War on Some Terror But Not That Terror Caused By Random Drone Strikes From Above. Or Cyberwar, But Not The Cyberwar Perpetrated Without Declaration By Us. More good news: Long Beach, along with the DEA, shuts down legal medical […]
Once again, the Onion makes me both laugh and wonder why I'm laughing. The biz starts at 1:35.
He’s a lousy businessman. Any investor who listened to Vanguard’s John Bogle would have done about the same during 1984-1998 – just buy the S&P500 index, and hold it, reinvesting the dividends. The net returns would be ~20% per year — without giant fees or excessive risks necessary. So despite all the middle-class-disrupting, race-to-the-bottom, Swiss-bank-account, […]
Tagged OWSAnd not so much for eating. Drought, persistent 15% unemployment, austerity in the air. Is it me, or does something smell like 1937 around here?
Should be this. Or quote the going rate (you don’t wanna know). The obvious reply is that no one knows everything, and sometimes you just want a quick question answered yourself. But that kind of turns it into a barter economy of favors. Nonetheless, I think I spend a lot more time fixing other people’s […]
I just discovered Tim Minchin: “Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this? Beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable natural world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap manmade myths and monsters? If you’re so into your Shakespeare, lend me your ear: to gild […]
Or at least not looking too good. And there’s such a retreat to steampunk (which I despise): Why are the innovative and rigorously extrapolated visions of the future so thin on the ground and so comprehensively ignored? I’d put it down to us mistaking Sense of Wonder for Innovation. We used to read SF to […]
Hard to believe you could write for the NYT and write this uncritically without thinking of Judy Miller. Though I guess she’s turned that into a good gig on Fox. Mr. Brennan, a son of Irish immigrants, is a grizzled 25-year veteran of the C.I.A. […] a top agency official during the brutal interrogations of […]
I just finished reading the New Yorker article about The Clock [1]. Serendipity. Someone was just commenting to me about how serendipity was hard to come by these days, since no one goes to the library, or reads newspapers, or looks at microfiche. One could argue that serendipity just hasn’t been around that long. Aside […]
Another sign that the Fourth Amendment is completely gone: Let’s put the lie to rest, stop demanding that cops keep breaking the law again by filing false documents at the behest of the administration, and put up a big sign at the midtown tunnel: All persons subject to search. The choice has been made and […]
Tagged another amendment downThe excellent BdL, on the problem with people who are too smart for their own good: I guess I am learning–once again–that executing a dynamic hedging strategy requires that the market be efficient at all times you need to trade except the moment you initially put on the position…
Tagged OWSHumans have been assholes since they first stood up straight. I don’t want to hear about your paleo diet and how we should return to living in harmony with nature like our ancestors did. We killed off our competitors just as soon as we could.
why Steve won the Prize. He’s smarter than the rest of us. It was an honor to take QFT from him, and an even bigger one to watch him in seminars.
Interfluidity (ht: BdL): We are in a depression, but not because we don’t know how to remedy the problem.[..] We are choosing continued depression because we prefer it to the alternatives. […T]he preferences of developed, aging polities — first Japan, now the United States and Europe — are obvious to a dispassionate observer. Their overwhelming […]
Tagged OWS
Los Angeles doesn’t care
So I don't have to search for this link again. Los Angeles doesn't care: Every mode of living is appropriate for L.A. You can do what you want. And I don’t just mean that Los Angeles is some friendly bastion of cultural diversity and so we should celebrate it on that level and be done […]