STILL WONDERING WHAT KIND OF GUNS RUPERT MURDOCH’S SECURITY TEAM CARRY. Also, Mike Bloomberg’s. Neither has answered my tweets requesting details . . . .
Archive for 2012
December 16, 2012
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Two Types of Artificial Muscle From Nanotechnology.
THE BRITS UNDERSTAND: Susan Rice was brought down by the long shadow of Benghazi, not race or gender.
ADAM GARFINKLE: What’s The Matter With Michigan?
ANN ALTHOUSE EXPLAINS LANGUAGE TO NATE SILVER: “If ‘gun control’ is avoided, it’s because those who would like to push it believe the public doesn’t like it! It’s not that we used to be more neutral and have become more politically charged. . . . There was a time when rights were real to liberals. Now, oh, let’s not talk about some text that may or may not transmit who knows what to us.”
HOW THE ECONOMY killed Gossip Girl.
CRITICIZING THE “DEATH PORN MEDIA.”
THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN “SOUL MATES” ARE 150% more likely to end up divorced.
JUSTIN BINIK-THOMAS: ObamaCare And My Daughter. “In two years, the surgery will cease to be available for the insured due to Obamacare.”
FAILURE MODE: Blue Social Model Driving Banks (and Their Taxes) out of NYC.
New York remains the hub of the nation’s financial industry, but over the past few years, the city has been losing ground to a collection of cities across the country, including Salt Lake City, Columbus, and St. Louis. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the reasons are all too familiar: Banks are fleeing the high taxes, high cost of living, and endless red tape of the city for greener pastures elsewhere. . . .
A financial sector with more geographic balance is almost certainly a good thing for the country, but it’s bad news for New York, where the city’s recent revival has been financed largely through taxes on businesses and employees of the city’s high-powered banking sector. New York has managed to pursue blue policies longer than many of its peers due to its cash cow Wall Street banks. If these banks leave, their tax revenue will leave with them, and the city’s current policies will begin to look much less affordable.
But then again, it is these very policies that are causing the banks to leave in the first place. If it weren’t for big banks, there could be no Big Blue.
The symbiosis is breaking down. Move your banks to Tennessee. We have no state income tax, and we’re solvent.
HIGHER EDUCATON BUBBLE UPDATE: Nathan Harden: The End of the University as We Know It. “In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.”
A WHILE BACK, I MENTIONED Verily Magazine, but I should have also noted that they have a blog.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Who Can Still Afford State U? As public colleges spend more and get less from the states, tuition costs are shifting to parents and students—often putting higher education out of reach.
A number of factors have helped to fuel the soaring cost of public colleges. Administrative costs have soared nationwide, and many administrators have secured big pay increases—including some at CU, in 2011. Teaching loads have declined for tenured faculty at many schools, adding to costs. Between 2001 and 2011, the Department of Education says, the number of managers at U.S. colleges and universities grew 50% faster than the number of instructors. What’s more, schools have spent liberally on fancier dorms, dining halls and gyms to compete for students.
Administrative bloat is a big problem. But the really interesting story is how higher education is being outcompeted in state budgets by various social-welfare programs of the sort that higher education folks tend to support. Oops!
MAYBE THE “PUBLIC HEALTH” PEOPLE SHOULD FOCUS MORE ON, YOU KNOW, PUBLIC HEALTH, INSTEAD OF GUNS, TWINKIES AND BIG GULPS: Chlamydia And Gonorrhea Are On The Rise. “The CDC believes the rise in gonorrhea cases could be due to increased antibiotic resistance.”
December 15, 2012
VIOLENCE AND DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION.
AT AMAZON, Holiday Deals in Home, Kitchen & Garden.
KENNETH ANDERSON AND MATTHEW WAXMAN: Brave New War: What are the ethical and legal considerations of using killer robots?
NATIONAL REVIEW: Eliminate The Deduction For State And Local Taxes. “A tax reform that more than clears the $800 billion mark, falls most heavily upon the wealthy, and has the support of many conservatives: You would think that the Democrats would be quick to embrace such a thing. But to the great surprise of no one, the party’s house organ has editorialized against it.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Todd Zywicki: From Wall Street to College Street: All too often, trustees focus on branding, image, and reputation rather than their academic mission. “I submit that the core principle animating the modern university is a fundamental dishonesty that subverts its core mission.”
PAUL MIRENGOFF: The municipal bond tax loophole — low-hanging fiscal fruit.
MICHAEL WALSH: Where’s Mitt? “The more I ponder the chimerical presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, the more I’ve become convinced it was all a practical joke played on gullible suckers by the GOP’s krack kadre of kampaign konsultants, a phantom ‘run’ designed to hoover as much money out of the fat cats’ wallets as possible and deliver almost nothing in return aside from a few swing-state ad buys. . . . Fortune favors the bold, as the saying goes. The Romney fiasco should be the death knell of the Washington Generals approach to competing against the Democrats, and the whole lot of the Old Guard — starting with weepy John Boehner — should be tossed out and replaced with those who can distinguish between strategy and tactics and who understand that the only acceptable strategic outcome should be total victory over the modern Left and its alien, imported ideology.”