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Tuesday, August 30, 2005

John Derbyshire on Intelligent Design on National Review Online

An excellent article that encapsulates my view on Intelligent Design.

It is a theory best left to late night post-bar discussions not the 7th grade science room.

Monday, August 29, 2005

The New Yorker: Fact

I finished the article. My first reaction was it is short. For some reason, I thought it would have been longer, but I guess, if Mickey Kaus is correct, then short and sweet with a smart-sounding perseveration like "moral hazard" makes its reader feel more intelligent.

Second, I do think MG is correct to focus-in on the moral hazard underpinning of HSAs. I'm just not convinced it isn't important as Mr. Gladwell seems to imply.

Third, he uses the work of two Hah-vahd researchers (who else could make the faux intelligentsia feel less faux!) to rebut the moral hazard arguments. My concern is how a fraction of the 45 million uninsured are representative of the whole.

I recall an article on the efforts by the State of Maryland to coerce its uninsured into an insurance program which included a stat that 70% of its uninsured elcted to be that way!

If that is the case, and representative, would the extremes used by the Harvard researchers be appropriate?

And that is where my analysis comes to a halt. An argument based on faulty premises is not a good one.

Of course, I think it is a liberal one though.

UN Ambassador John Bolton read a UN report with a red pen in hand?

Why did the Democrats oppose him again?


Able Danger Mystery Solved? - Bloggers may have figured it out. By Mickey?Kaus

I know why I can read Kaus.

"P.P.S.: Like many New Yorker policy articles, Gladwell's reads like a lecture to an isolated, ill-informed and somewhat gullible group of highly literate children. They are cheap dates. They won't think of the obvious objections. They won't demand that you "play Notre Dame," as my boss Charles Peters used to say, and take on the best arguments for the other side. They just need to be given a bit of intellectual entertainment and pointed off in a comforting anti-Bush direction. [Like highbrow sheep?--ed You said that.]"

I feel the same way. Not about the New Yorker, as I won't read it, but about those who do.

FYI: When I went to print Gladwell's article from the New Yorker website, I got an ACLU pop-up.


Fresh call for a longer school day

I agree.

""What do you think about children having assigned reading during the summer?" I asked Donald Coppola (a Carmel NY psychologist).

"I hate homework," he said. "I think it's the ruination of the American family."

"I think that parents are burdened, and children are burdened all day long with what they have to do. Parents come home and get on their kids' backs about homework," he said. "There is no time for the family to sit around, play a board game, relax, enjoy themselves."


Wednesday, August 24, 2005

The Left wants to bludgeon John Roberts with his assessment of 'comparable worth."

Did they clear this with Hillary? She has sponsored a bill authorizing the Labor Department to set "voluntary" wage guidleines for various occupations.

How is the Labor Department imbued with the power of God to know what various occupations should pay.? Will these Labor Department founts of all-knowingness be political appointees?

As these questions are simply answered "They aren't" and "Yes", this is nothing more than a bureaucratic takeover. Some would say have a department of the State determine wage guidelines to be socialist.

Does Hillary want all the useful idiots and dupes in the MSM to know she is sponsoring a socialist program? And if it was refuted 20 years ago and she still holds it dear, is there any reason not to examine any of her other previously held views?


Is this good for her duplicitious move towards the "middle"?

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

courant.com | No Child Lawsuit Disputed

The problem underlying the opposition to accountability isn't an unwillingness to test but the knowledge that a certain portion of those taking the test are going to fail regardless of teacher quaility.

And the teachers will be held responsible for the gene pool.

There are other reasons, I am sure, but this one is foundation upon which all others are built.

The $10,000 Question

Op-ed columnist, John Tierney challenges the NYT readership to bet on the unsustainability of the American way of life.

No doubt, he'll receive few takers, but many invectives lambasting his racist/jingoistic views.

Peak Oil is a great theory for ideological cudgeling. I doubt it will play out as a financial analyst predicts.

However, the prognosticative abilities of financial analysts will be unremembered in the Left's efforts at.....Geez, I don't know what the purpose would be.

To have us going back to the pre-1869 days of steam power?

To have us consuming less?

To becoming a gian commune of free love?

I just have no idea what the Left wants.




Monday, August 22, 2005

Pop?

By statistical measures, the housing market is in a bubble.

I question whether or not a market characterized as a "bubble" could deflate in calmness.

If an event is a statistical outlier/anamoly, how does is get back to normal? Should there be an opposite reaction of equal magnitutde that would "average out" the bubble?

Friday, August 19, 2005

An interesting article on used car demand in Westchester County NY.

Specifically, used SUVs.

I accept the premise that buyers want vehicles with higher gas mileage and are trading in their low gas mileage vehicles in response to skyrocketing gas prices. Spending $35 to fill-up a Chevy Malibu is ridiculous. Spending $50 to fill a Honda Odyssey is worse.

However, I only see the resellers (read: car dealerships) of these vehicles as being desparate to take action. Those of us who may consider buying a used SUV, and with a family of five a Prius is not practical, can simply wait. The prices of these vehicles are entering a loooooooong, downward trend. I would even go so far as to say "spiral."

After I run the Malibu into the ground, a used SUV may be perfect!

(Obviously, my disgust with the prices of filling a gas tank revolve more around a sense of value than around financial distress.)

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Funding of Palestinian Propaganda By U.N. 'Unacceptable,' Bolton Says - August 18, 2005 - The New York Sun - NY Newspaper

Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray!

Why anyone would object to Bolton on pro-U.N. grounds remains beyond my common-sensical grasp.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Why Hold a Losing Fund

I think the investor psychology is more attuned to not wanting to sell the loser and watch it get better after the investor is out.

The investor doesn't want to double his error. The first was buying the wrong fund. the second was selling the wrong fund.

Friday, August 12, 2005

The Ny SUN is a very good paper that feeds the need for substantial articles a la NYT and WaPo. Unfortunately, its influence is minor. The other NY dailies swamp its circulation.

However, I have seen links on Instapundit and in the Corner at National Review online. Hopefully, the Sun's influence will spread.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

TKS on National Review Online

I know Able Danger is no Valerie Plame but this does seem to be quite important in the narrative of 9/11.

Nevermind, the very real fact of the USS Cole bombing in October 2000 by Al Qaeda.

Who was fiddling then?

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

My posts are getting farther and farther apart.

This has occurred for two reasons.

The first is burnout from the 2004 election. I am just tired of reading and staying up-to-date with the latest semantic parsing of each side of the political debate. And without doing so, this blog will be even less informed than usual.

The second is there are only so many ways to comment politically, and frankly, there are those who do it better than I do.

National Review is one. Powerline Blog is another. Captain's Quarters is good but I discern it is not in the same class as the first two, and neither is Little Green Footballs.

The MSM bores me. I've concluded any newspaper who gets their reporters from the New Republic are inherently biased, and, as the major newscasts take their lead from the newspapers, I can obtain their spin from a few minutes of watching those.

I have found myself becoming more appreciative of the New York Post - fervently pro-America and anti-criminal and conservative. It also has a sports section devoid of Martha-Burkesian columnists. Add in comics and Scrabble, and I'm satisfied. It'd be nice if the NYT crossword puzzle were there, but as I've posted previously, I can do those already so why care. (I max score the Scrabble puzzle everyday but I still like it!)

Something may strike me that I'd want in e-posterity so I will be back.


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