STEPHEN HAWKING: Humans have entered a new stage of evolution.
Archive for 2009
July 6, 2009
ILLINOIS LAW FACULTY respond to the Chicago Tribune.
SO IS THAT A LOT, OR A FEW? Toyota plans to manufacture up to 30,000 plugin hybrids in 2012.
HEH: If your regular life is boring enough, almost anything counts as a stimulant. That’s my real secret.
MICHAEL YON: Some notes and observations on the Philippines.
IN THE MAIL: From Scott Rosenberg, Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters. Looks very interesting; comes out tomorrow.
INSTAPOLL:
OBAMA VOTERS WILL PAY THE PRICE: “When Congress decides how to pay for President Obama’s signature healthcare initiative, some of his strongest political bastions may be footing a heavy bill. And in a political irony, states that went for Obama’s Republican rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, in 2008 are among those likely to benefit most from Democratic healthcare policies.” They told me if I voted for John McCain I’d be protecting myself from high healthcare taxes — and, apparently, they were right!
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: A Modest Proposal for Dealing with the Traitors Who Imperil Our Planet.
IT’S NOT UNDERACHIEVING ANYMORE: Now it’s FUNderachieving! “Numbers provide the backdrop to the story — not just the grimly familiar national unemployment rate, 9.5 percent in June, but the even scarier, less publicized unemployment figure for 16- to 19-year-olds, which has hit 24 percent, up from 16.1 percent two years ago. . . . Mr. Ehrenfeld, a top student who has always held leadership positions in clubs and academic groups, loafs through days, rolling out of bed around 11 and reading or playing trumpet or guitar. Nights, he sometimes meets up with friends who also have nowhere that they have to be in the morning, and they share a few cheap beers.”
As always, IowaHawk was ahead of the curve. But if you’re bucking the trend, see Virginia Postrel.
MORE ON DON’T ASK DON’T TELL. Plus, comforting words for gays from Chris Geidner and Andrew Sullivan. Don’t worry — they’ve got top men working on it!
GEE, I HOPE SO: Are Law Schools Relevant to the Future of Law? After all, I’ve still got a long way to go before retirement.
Actually, I’ve got a law review article on this very topic in the works. Of course, the question Are law reviews relevant to the future of law? also arises . . . .
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? “Coffee May Reverse Alzheimer’s.”
AND NOW A TAX ON RAINWATER. Out West it’s hard to keep it; in the East they want to punish you for letting it run off.
NO-MONEY-DOWN MORTGAGES: A predictable problem.
PUBLIC PENSIONS COOK THE BOOKS.
Public employee pension plans are plagued by overgenerous benefits, chronic underfunding, and now trillion dollar stock-market losses. Based on their preferred accounting methods — which discount future liabilities based on high but uncertain returns projected for investments — these plans are underfunded nationally by around $310 billion.
The numbers are worse using market valuation methods (the methods private-sector plans must use), which discount benefit liabilities at lower interest rates to reflect the chance that the expected returns won’t be realized. Using that method, University of Chicago economists Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua Rauh calculate that, even prior to the market collapse, public pensions were actually short by nearly $2 trillion. That’s nearly $87,000 per plan participant. With employee benefits guaranteed by law and sometimes even by state constitutions, it’s likely these gargantuan shortfalls will have to be borne by unsuspecting taxpayers.
Some public pension administrators have a strategy, though: Keep taxpayers unsuspecting.
It’s worse than Enron, but nobody will go to jail for it.
VIDEO: The Pentagon’s Robo-Hummingbird.
WOULD THE SAUDIS help Israel strike Iran?
SO, TECHNICALLY, IT WOULD BE WRONG TO CALL THE PLAN “SOPHOMORIC:” “In the depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Columbia University wrote in a campus newsmagazine, Sundial, about the vision of ‘a nuclear free world.’ He railed against discussions of ‘first- versus second-strike capabilities’ that ‘suit the military-industrial interests’ with their ‘billion-dollar erector sets,’ and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads. The student was Barack Obama, and he was clearly trying to sort out his thoughts.”
He doesn’t seem to have done a lot of sorting since, actually, to judge from the rest of the piece and what’s going on now. But if you want a nuclear-free world, wouldn’t a good start be to stop Iran and North Korea from getting nuclear weapons? Not seeing much action, there . . . .
INTELLIGENCE: Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook. “The wife of the new head of MI6 has caused a major security breach and left his family exposed after publishing photographs and personal details on Facebook.”
WHAT I DID YESTERDAY: I’m grading law-review comments, each of which is 30-40 pages long and requires completing a 5-page gradesheet. This is so miserable that yesterday I quit to disassemble the dishwasher (well, the filtration part), clean out all the limestone scale with vinegar and a toothbrush, and put it back together — and it felt like fun! Anyway, now the dishes are sparkling clean again, and I’m still 1/3 of the way through the law-review stuff.
A REPORT FROM THE BURLINGTON TEA PARTY, one of 7 in the state of Vermont. “Members of the audience said they were drawn to the Tea Party by a deep unease with the direction of government and the hope of becoming empowered to change that.”
UPDATE: Robert Mayer reports on Tucson: “They’ve definitely got a hold on it! 4000-5000 turnout — even more than April 15 — and another $7k raised for the next event!”
And here’s a report from Sunnyvale, California: “For several hours, the sidewalks around the intersection at Stevens Creek and Winchester boulevards were clogged with crowds estimated at as many as 1,000 people, about a fifth of whom were part of a counter-demonstration. The ‘tea party’ demonstrators decried plans by the White House and Congress to overhaul the nation’s troubled health care system.” Just scroll down for lots more Tea Party coverage from this weekend.
Plus, news video from DC. It’s from “Russia Today” (via Google News) and the coverage seems fairer than most US networks. It’s a topsy-turvy world . . . .
HOPE AND CHANGE: Russia and India Question Reliance on Dollar Before G-8 Summit.