HOPE AND CHANGE: “According to a new poll, 29 percent of Iranians hold a positive view toward the United States, down from 34 percent in February 2008.”
Archive for 2009
June 13, 2009
BUSINESS WEEK: From bank bailouts to auto bailouts to executive pay, business is increasingly nervous about the heavy hand of the Obama Administration. And this, of course, hurts investment and, hence, the economy.
MICHAEL TOTTEN: Iran on Fire (Continuously updated). Lots of pictures and video.
TEA PARTY UPDATE: Hundreds Rally at the Fairtax Tea Party Protest In Columbia, Missouri.
NATE SILVER: Statistical Report Purporting to Show Rigged Iranian Election Is Flawed. Hmm. I’m inclined to suspect fraud based on who’s involved, but that’s a separate question.
SWINE FLU UPDATE: “A new analysis of the current swine-origin H1N1 influenza A virus suggests that transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the existing outbreak.”
WHAT’S ON a helicopter pilot’s bookshelf.
My 18-year-old nephew is a helicopter pilot. I’m not sure what’s on his shelf, but I gave him a copy of John Birmingham’s How to Be A Man a few years ago. It seems to have worked.
GOOD NEWS: Prokineticin 2 Cuts Appetite In Mice. Lose weight painlessly! But wait, there’s a catch: “The brain injection part isn’t exactly appealing.”
Still, a happy forecast: “While we are living in an era with a high prevalence of obesity we are nearing the end of that era. 20 years from now I expect obesity to be rare in developed countries as drugs that suppress appetite hit the market.” Or, alternatively, the economic collapse may just solve the problem for us sooner . . . .
HOWARD KURTZ: “Most major newspapers haven’t covered the Letterman/Palin imbroglio, and it does make me wonder whether there’s a different standard for Palin.”
Related: Sarah Palin, en famille.
THE NAVY’S NEW 100 Kilowatt laser weapons. You need a pretty thick extension cord, though.
THE NEW PALM PRE: Better than the new iPhone?
ON THE LATEST PJM POLITICAL: Will Soft Despotism Mean Lights Out For The West? With Mark Steyn.
AN INSIDER-TRADING SCANDAL FOR DICK DURBIN? More here. “The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.”
ANOTHER CAYMAN TECH REPORT: So while I was on Grand Cayman, we rented these underwater scooters from the folks at DiveTech. I last did an electric-scooter dive in 2003, and the technology has come quite a ways. The newer ones are more reliable, have controllable speed (instead of relying on you pulsing them on-off) and — most importantly — can be ridden in a human-torpedo fashion rather than held onto by both hands; there’s a saddle on the front, and you straddle the scooter instead of having it drag you along. The human-torpedo approach is a lot better. You just steer by leaning your body where you want to go, and the electric-motor noise (a major issue last time I did this) is much reduced by virtue of much greater distance between the motor and your ears. The rental was a bit steep ($40/hour) but the scooter lets you go places that are kind of far to swim. I don’t think I’d buy one, but they’ve got their virtues, and the technology has improved a lot in just a few years.
Downside: When you go fast, the drag on the regulator in your mouth becomes noticeable. Also, while you can cover a lot of undersea ground while riding these, you don’t see nearly as much of any particular patch. Still, they’re nice, particularly at the Cobalt Coast area, where the Cayman Wall is a pretty long surface-swim from the dock.
“REGIME UNCERTAINTY” KILLS A PROJECT: New downtown Knoxville Mercy hospital shelved. “Mercy Health Partners said Thursday it has shelved plans to build a new downtown hospital because of the economy and uncertainty over the national health care debate. . . . The Obama administration has announced its intention to enact sweeping health care reform this year. ‘The only certainty is that reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid are going to go down,’ Askew said. Mercy Health has also put on hold any future capital expenditures at all of its campuses other than what has already been started.”
JON HENKE ON BLOOD LIBELS:
The ongoing efforts to conflate the Tiller and Holocaust Museum murderers with the Right, conservatives or Republicans – or to imply that criticism of government is responsible for these murders – is absurd and offensive. Would the critics change their political views if it turned out that one of the killers was a left wing militant? No.
What’s more, it’s not something any of the critics actually believe. Recall their outrage when Andrew Sullivan suggested that a fringe on the Left would fight against the US. Of the idea that this fringe on the Left would “ramp up its hatred in the days and months ahead”, Duncan Black said, “Sullivan was one of the earliest adopters of the idea that the most appropriate response to September 11 was to figure how to to use it to pit American against American.”
On the other hand, there’s this: “Conservatives who object to being tied to Von Brunn were eagerly associating Obama with Ayers and Wright.”
Except, you know, that Obama actually did associate with Ayers and Wright, while it’s not as if anybody who matters on the right was hanging out with von Brunn.
BLOOD SHORTAGES IN KNOXVILLE: I’ve donated twice this year; guess I’ll have to do it again soon. I’m afraid this problem is more general, though.