Archive for 2007
July 31, 2007
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE HITS six-year high. I guess that’s good news.
IN EXPERIMENTATION, A NEGATIVE RESULT IS NOT A FAILURE:
We must report a sad failure; the egg did not fry on the sidewalk, which means that the video evidence of this deadly heatwave will not be posted tonight.
But it doesn’t make for good video.
ARE DEMOCRATS BEING SHORT-SIGHTED ON JUDGES? Jonathan Adler and Stuart Taylor weigh in.
TREATING CHE GUEVARA LIKE DAVID DUKE. Though that comparison is probably unfair to David Duke.
QUITE SOME TIME AGO, I WROTE about signing up for “Amazon Prime” and how the free shipping changed my online shopping habits. (More here). Now this piece from USA Today suggests that I’m not the only one:
Investors saw the launch of Amazon Prime as the latest manifestation of Bezos’ fixation on free shipping, a profit drainer. They hammered Amazon (AMZN) shares down to $30 two years ago after the Seattle company began offering the unlimited free two-day shipping service for a $79 yearly fee.
“Wall Street hates it when we lower prices, give away free shipping, and offer Amazon Prime,” Bezos said in an e-mail interview. “But we know in our bones that siding with the customer pays off for everyone in the end.”
Now, Prime is starting to look like a linchpin to Amazon’s remarkable run of increases in quarterly sales — and investors no longer appear kerfuffled. After the online retailing giant last week reported a singularly sharp rise in sales for its second quarter, its shares shot up 25%, topping $86 — a seven-year high.
Plus, encouraging people to shop online is environmentally friendly!
MORE PROBLEMS WITH SPACE DEBRIS:
Traffic in space is getting so congested that flight controllers in the past few weeks have had to nudge three spacecraft out of harm’s way, in one case to prevent the craft from colliding with its own trash. . . .
Officials and private space experts say episodes like these illustrate the danger of a drastic rise in satellites and space debris in Earth’s orbit. Early this year, after decades of growth, the federal catalog of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) orbiting Earth reached 10,000, including dead satellites, old rocket engines and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and weapon tests.
Now, that number has jumped to 12,000. China’s test of an antisatellite weapon in January and four spacecraft breakups in February, one of them mysterious, have contributed to the buildup of debris. Space officials worry that a speeding bit of space junk could shatter an object into dozens or hundreds of fragments, starting a chain reaction of destruction.
Experts said that moving spacecraft out of the way to avoid collisions, once a rare way of dealing with potential threats, is becoming increasingly common.
Read the whole thing.
SO I’M AT THE SOUTHEASTERN ASSOCIATION OF LAW SCHOOLS CONFERENCE, and there seem to be a lot more bloggers than in the past: I had barely arrived when I got into the elevator with Paul Secunda of the Workplace Law Prof blog. But then, there are a lot more law professor bloggers in general than there used to be.
DUCT-TAPE METHODS TO SAVE THE EARTH:
Re-salting arctic waters with massive salty ice cubes? Stopping glaciers from thawing by wrapping them in insulating blankets? While these methods of preventing further environmental destruction may seem like schemes straight from the Wile E. Coyote handbook, many serious scientists are pursuing last-ditch contingency plans such as these for dealing with the effects of adverse climate change.
I’m glad people are looking at this stuff, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
WOULDN’T A PURSE-SHAPED MACHINEGUN be more useful?
REBECCA MACKINNON HAS MORE on the Yahoo! / China affair. “More documents have surfaced showing that Yahoo! employees knew that they were handling political cases when they received information requests from Chinese authorities on at least two people now doing serious jailtime. This is contrary to previous claims by Yahoo!”
YEAH, THIS IS GOING TO HURT FRED THOMPSON: Richard Cohen complaining that he’s too pro-gun.
UPDATE: Reader Jorge del Rio notes a contradiction in Cohen’s piece: “Basically, Cohen says that it’s ridiculous to think that if students were allowed to carry firearms on campus that any of them could have done something to prevent the Virginia Tech massacre. However, just two paragraphs later he says how he wished he had had a gun when his house was burglarized ‘merely to protect his life.’ I guess he knows better, since he’s not one of those young drunks filled to the brim with hormonal urges like most gun owners.”
This is a time-honored bit of hypocrisy at the Post, going back at least to Carl Rowan.
SPINNING THE SURGE.
UPDATE: Joe Lieberman criticizes war critics. “There is a very strong group within the party that I think doesn’t take the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously enough.â€
IN THE MAIL: John Brenkman’s The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought since September 11.
THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED WE’D SEE A resurgence of anti-blasphemy laws. And they were right!
JOHN TIERNEY EXAMINES REASONS FOR HAVING SEX.
WHAT WOMEN WANT: And more, at the latest Ask Dr. Helen column!
MICKEY KAUS IS AMUSED by Rudy Giuliani’s attacks on nanny-state politicians.
TED STEVENS’ HOUSE searched by the FBI. And IRS.
UPDATE: Don Surber: “Alaska’s three Republicans in Congress are an embarrassment. They should be impeached, er, expelled.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Stevens:
Top White House political advisor Karl Rove told a bunch of us over lunch last week that corruption was the single biggest issue in last fall’s election that overturned the GOP congressional majority. I have always agreed with this assessment, based on exit polls that showed corruption and runaway budget spending were actually more important to voters than Iraq.
So this Stevens business has to be swept away. The GOP should not defend him if he is guilty. Just clean house.
They should. They won’t. And it’ll cost them.
“TOO CAUTIOUS” in showing optimism on Iraq? More here.
UPDATE: Worried the surge might work.
BREAD AND A CIRCUS: Michael Yon posts another report from Baqubah, full of photos and firsthand observations.
July 30, 2007
Personal interests aside, the more fundamental issue is the way we treat the term disease. If something is a “disease,” it is worth treating. If it isn’t a “disease,” you should just live with it. But why? Why not treat a biological condition you just don’t like? (I’m assuming that you are directly or indirectly paying for the treatment.) We don’t have to call Restless Leg Syndrome a disease to acknowledge that it disturbs some people’s sleep and that those people would like relief. Contrary to what you may have heard, the only sort of character suffering builds is the ability to suffer–a useful ability in a world where suffering is the routine nature of life but not a virtue that makes the world a better place.
Besides, if suffering is a virtue in itself we’ve always got Middle School. And the DMV.
WISHING FOR JOHN ROBERTS’ DEATH.
UPDATE: More.
JAMES LILEKS REPORTS FROM A CRUISE: “Walking around and eating is hard work, apparently. I don’t know how the Navy managed to win WW2. . . . Everything here costs something. I was under the impression that everything was included, but no – if it’s the slightest bit fun, it costs extra. . . . The sight of the fellow passengers was quite remarkable; if you could sum it up, you’d have to say this is a boat full of small whales looking to catch sight of a larger one. Everyone waddles to and fro, slowly, panting with the effort of transporting the stored energy of previous meals to the location of the next one.”
WHEN BEING A BOY hurts.