Archive for August 2010
links for 2010-08-30
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I think this quote says more about the Jezebel audience than it does about Mad Men. But it says a LOT about the Jezzies. "I'm crossing my fingers Don manages to pull himself out of this downward spiral and that in the process wins back Betty who has miraculously self-actualized and they live out the remainder of their lives happily ever after while Sally and Bobby become figureheads of second wave feminism and Gene becomes a radical environmentalist. I think I may be watching the wrong show."
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Robert Reich on Zerohedge. LOL.
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"Jobs, and the preparation of students for them, should be front and center in the thinking of educators. The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s."
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This poor mistreated series. They won't let it finish properly on broadcast but you can see the missing episodes here.
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"We loaded up on junk debt, since we answer to nobody – or Congress, which is the same thing. We bought this crap at face value, thereby transferring newly counterfeited money to the investors who unloaded the crap on us, and who then bought corporate bonds with the money we handed over to them. We have subsidized the corporate bond market. That's our job. We never forget this. Congress has yet to figure it out. Neither have the media."
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"The Tea Party began as a protest over bailouts and handouts – that is, theft and corruption within our markets, government and economy. This is a winning position with 90% of the American Body Politic. Any candidate who runs on these issues – and these issues alone, promising to stop it and lock up the scammers – all of them – wins.As soon as you bring the other issues that everyone wants to talk about into this, you will lose."
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Great video. Makes it clear that this was a kind of non-denominational religious love-in, not any kind of Tea Party event. The whole thing seems kind of vague, really. It seems more like an anti-Obama rally that didn't want to talk about Obama.
links for 2010-08-29
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peejaybee Galt's Gulch used to be pretty cool. Now it's like, strollers everywhere. #hipstershruggedabout 3 hours ago via twidroid
links for 2010-08-28
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The good news is that the Obama administration has repeatedly promised that it supports net neutrality. Right now the FCC can lastingly protect freedom and equality on the Net. To establish that authority, the agency needs the support of three of its five commissioners. Two commissioners, Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn, Democratic appointees, have loudly backed the effort. What we need is for the chairman to join them and follow through on the plans he laid out months ago. Mr. Genachowski, we, the citizens of the Internet, are with you.
links for 2010-08-27
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A Fed chair talking about "unconventional steps" really should scare the hell out of you.
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No genuine production has taken place to 'back' these new fiduciary media. However, the money will then be used to bid for real resources. Thus, 'nothing' (money from thin air) is exchanged for 'something' (real resources). The creation of additional money also temporarily (and this 'temporary' factor can become very extended if the inflationary policy is pursued incessantly) lowers the interest rate below that dictated by time preferences, and thus sends false signals to capitalists and entrepreneurs about the amount of savings available to finance production, and the extent of future demand. What ensues is malinvestment, and the consumption of scarce capital.
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When I talk about civil society handling charity and community service better than government, I'm talking about stuff like this.
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What I discovered as I interviewed for jobs disturbed me right away. Every single firm with the exception of one was completely obsessed with math. Entire interviews revolved around “how quantitative are you” and the like. Although I hadn’t had much experience with investing I had enough to know this line of thinking seemed preposterous. What I realized later is the reason they were so focused on mathematicians and Phd’s is that Wall Street was moving away from what it was always meant to be – a conduit between the holders of capital and those that wish to deploy that capital in productive economic activity. Rather than trying to hire a well rounded workforce of intelligent college graduates the firms were hiring a cadre of quantitative robots that would play an instrumental roll in blowing up the world’s financial system.
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An even clearer use of pressure on government workers has been in the governor’s (so far unsuccessful) attempts to reduce state employee pay to minimum wage for the duration of the budget delay. While Chiang and previous controllers have used the old-software excuse to avoid implementing this plan, the message still comes through: State workers are not innocent bystanders in the budget impasse. Their excessive compensation is the reason California can no longer manage its budgets.
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Dear Republicans: Please don't do this. You're just going to look like jerks and generate sympathy for Obama. Even if you're right. Especially if you're right. Losing strategy all the way around. Makes you look bitter and petty.
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Apparently this policy was intended to be some kind of affirmative action program?
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Database humor. Linked for the awesome cartoon.
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Exactly how are the Koch brothers under the radar or underground? They show up every year in the Forbes super-rich lists. Charles Koch wrote a best-selling business book a year or two ago and makes no secret of his belief in free markets and limited government. David Koch ran for vice president of these United States on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980 (where he helped Ed Clark pull over 900,000 votes, by far the highest total gained by the LP). Both are known for a wide range of philanthropic giving, whether to arts and medical outfits or think tanks or political action groups.
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Newman and other strategists believe that investors, especially those whose retirement accounts were decimated by the housing crisis, may be abandoning equities for good. So if hedge fund managers and the black boxes they operate are on vacation this month, then there is no one left who wants anything to do with equities.
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Yes, our central planners at the Fed are so desperate to prop up this bubble the only option they have left is to beg people to spend money they don't have. QE2 anyone?
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So who does need that $8,000 web designer? Let’s be honest, when you pay that kind of money for a website, you’re not really paying for a technology product. Web designers aren’t really in the business of making web pages. They’re more like psychiatrists or life coaches. Their real job is to provide emotional validation.
links for 2010-08-26
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"Our teachers constantly stimulated us by the glittering prizes of wealth, honors, offices, and distinctions, which were certainly within our reach – there were a hundred avenues to wealth and fame opening fair before us if we only chose to learn our lessons."
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"QE to infinity, comrade Bitchez!"
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When the Federal Reserve artificially reduces interest rates below their free-market level, it sends a false message to entrepreneurs. Firms begin expanding as if consumers have increased their savings, but in fact consumers have reduced their savings (due to the lower interest rates). Businesses that churn out durable goods, such as furnaces, cargo ships, and, yes, houses will find business booming, because these sectors respond positively to low interest rates. On the other hand, other sectors don't need to contract, because (unlike the scenario of genuine savings) nobody is cutting back on consumption. This is precisely why the Fed-induced boom is unsustainable — real resources have not been released from consumer sectors in order to fuel the expansion of the capital sectors.
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"Politically, it's awkward to argue that things would have been even worse without the stimulus, even though that's what most nonpartisan economists believe." LOL!
Review of The Colony, Season 1
The Discovery Channel’s post-apocolyptic reality show is in the middle of its second season. I just finished the first.
The premise is compelling. A dozen highly-skilled engineers, mechanics and medical professionals are placed in a simulated disaster setting and expected to build what they need to survive.
The first season took place in an abandoned factory in downtown Los Angeles. The second is set in a small town devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The first step to enjoying the show is to stop worrying about “realism.” The colonists are given a perfect mix of raw materials and threatened by “gangs” that aren’t actually allowed to hurt them. In a real situation they would all be killed or enslaved in 48 hours.
But it’s not a zombie movie, it’s a stress test. It’s a social experiment designed to apply just enough pressure to keep everybody on their toes. The mauraders may be fake but the hunger, filth and dehydration are all quite real.
The show isn’t about torturing the volunteers. It’s about giving raw materials to a bunch of brilliant people and motivating them to build, watching them turn everyday objects into beds, showers, power sources and functional vehicles. It’s about the process of human invention.
Pampered products of the service economy will come away with a profound sense of helplessness and a profound respect for people who actually build things for a living.
The Colony shows us where our comforts come from. It peels away the layers of our modern society and teaches us how the components work. It really is an educational program, recommend for students of all ages, and for anyone who’s inclined to take modern comforts for granted.
Every fan of Atlas Shrugged should see this show. This is the real Galt’s Gulch, populated, not by moral supermen, but by ordinary people using knowledge and skill to improve their world. The finest minds in the building belong to a vegetarian peacenik who looks like Santa Claus and an epic level handyman with zero social skills.
In harsher conditions we might get a serious exploration of charity vs. self-interest but at this level it’s mostly just posturing. The social dynamics feel real enough — walking the line between annoyance and respect as the participants squabble, fight and second guess each other.
My favorite moment occurred early on as blue-collar handyman Michael squared off with engineers Vlad and John C. John C. and Vlad are authentic geniuses, while Michael is the penultimate example of the practical man who can get things done. The Colony needs all of them, but class distinctions get in the way. Michael feels he’s being dismissed because he doesn’t have a degree and goes on a rant about the arrogance of people with letters after their names.
The disdain is largely in his head, and he seems to get over it in later episodes, as shallow stereotypes are overcome by real respect. I paid particular attention to this moment because I think we’re going to see a lot more conflicts like this in the future, as the “service economy” loses ground.
America wasn’t built by people with desk jobs. For two centuries our greatness was fostered by people like this — people who built real things from real stuff — by engineers who found new ways to accomplish common tasks and by the craftsmen who made it all work.
These people deserve our respect, more respect than they’re getting, in an age when everybody wants to be a banker or a rock star. The Colony is a celebration of human ingenuity and hard work. The thugs may be fake, but the good guys are real.
links for 2010-08-04
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But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.
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Bill Gates and Warren Buffett think fellow US billionaires should donate most of their vast fortunes to charity — and they revealed Wednesday that 40 are set to do just that.
links for 2010-08-03
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WANT
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The most interesting part of the Berger and Ward article is about subtle signals as a means of discouraging "poaching" of status signals. It's harder to copy something you aren't aware of. If you don't recognize the subtle signals, you aren't part of the "in" group worth worrying about. Learning to discern the subtleties is a form of cultural capital, like art appreciation. (They compare this to gay men's styles in the 70s and 80s, intended to convey the wearer's sexual orientation only to insiders and not to possibly hostile outsiders.) We've long known that status symbols lose their status when adopted by hoi polloi; now we see a tactic to prevent it.
It's also acceptable for very high status people to use items that look superficially like cheap ones, because they are more secure in their status than the middle class. A British friend once told me he could always tell old money because no one else would ever be seen in such ratty old tweeds (once, of course, bespoke tailored).
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"It's better to walk the dog on a leash than let it escape through an unseen hole in the back fence."
links for 2010-08-02
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Fascinating. This woman is making Ayn Rand's moral argument asserting that you can't have "rights" that impose a burden on others, equating it explicitly with slavery. It's pointless, of course, but she makes it very well.
links for 2010-08-01
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What Paul Krugman fails to wrap his head around is the fact that money is not synonymous with wealth or capital. When the Federal Reserve prints a million dollars it does not also produce steel, nails, or any other type of capital good. The conflation of money and capital is one
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HAVANA — The Cuban government, trying to create more productive employment, will allow more Cubans to work for themselves and hire their own workers, President Raul Castro said Sunday.
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“The recession was unusually long and unusually severe and has proved unusually resistant to unusual amounts of stimulus,” says Neil Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse in New York.
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Waters, 71, has been under investigation for a possible conflict of interest involving a bank that was seeking federal aid. Her husband owned stock in the bank and had served on its board.
Michael B. Duff 