AT AMAZON, markdowns on select laptops.
Archive for 2012
March 2, 2012
IN MEMORIAM, ANDREW BREITBART: PJTV Remembers a True Patriot and Friend.
CUTENESS OVERLOAD: Here is a baby sloth in pajamas. You’re welcome.
DID EUROPEANS ARRIVE IN AMERICA before the Indians? “Whoever fashioned that blade was not supposed to be here. Its makers probably paddled from Europe and arrived in America thousands of years ahead of the western migration, making them the first Americans, argues Smithsonian Institution anthropologist Dennis Stanford. At the height of the last ice age, Stanford says, mysterious Stone Age European people known as the Solutreans paddled along an ice cap jutting into the North Atlantic. They lived like Inuits, harvesting seals and seabirds.” Very interesting. So what happened to them?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Law Grad’s Ballooning Student Debt Will Exceed $1.5M by the Time He Retires.
A Touro law graduate who financed his education with a $69,000 loan in 1996 says he’ll owe more than $1.5 million by the time he retires in 23 years.
John Koch, now 46, was unable to pass the New York bar exam, despite three tries. . . . When Koch defaulted on his loan, penalties added $40,000 to $50,000 to the balance, he tells the television station. He currently owes more than $300,000. Now he is deferring loan payments under a federal program, which adds $2,000 in interest to his balance each month. As a result, he will be charged interest on interest, a debt expert tells Cable News Channel 12.
This is why heavy, non-bankruptable debt to finance education is a bad idea.
OMEGA 3 FATTY ACIDS SLOW BRAIN AGING. Slow, not stop. “You’ll still be on the downhill slope. But the slope will be a little less steep.”
ANDREW BREITBART’S next big thing.
WHAT INTERSECTIONS WOULD LOOK LIKE in a world of driverless cars. Very cool, but the animation looks like a tamer version of what goes on in Lagos all the time. Minus the wreckage.
JAMES Q. WILSON has died.
David Frum could not have known Breitbart. At least that’s the most charitable reason I can think of for why he picked the occasion of Breitbart’s sudden death to promote the cheap, bogus meme that Andrew had a “giddy disdain for truth and fairness” as long as a story helped his side. ”Just as all is fair in a shooting war, so manipulation and deception are legitimate tools in a culture war,” writes Frum.
I’ve known right-wingers who were like that (‘See, we attack Kerry with this, and by the time he answers we’ve moved on to the next charge!’) Breitbart wasn’t one of them. Yes, he had a jaundiced view of the left, and a pugilistic–I might say, Frum-esque–view of the Middle East. But he said what he though was true, even when that hurt his side or put his own career at risk.
Which is more than you can say for Frum.
Related: Breitbart’s foes show their true colors.
Also, debunking the WaPo’s civility spin.
And: Andrew Breitbart’s Legacy in Three Words: “Apologize for WHAT?”
UPDATE: Schmuck.
I REMEMBER WHEN NANOMEDICINE WAS CONSIDERED SCIENCE FICTIONAL: Georgia Research Alliance Names First Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology Expert Younan Xia is one of world’s “Top 10” Chemists; Joins Georgia Tech.
They’ve got a big new nanotechnology center there — I visited back in September. Meanwhile, the people who thought Rob Freitas’ book was too far out are proven wrong. In fact, nowadays there are lots of books on the subject.
COMBINED SALES FOR THE CHEVY VOLT AND NISSAN LEAF IN FEBRUARY: 1501.
Related: Another Slow Month For Volt Sales.
So this isn’t the reason that gasoline deliveries are continuing to fall.
IN THE MAIL: From Michael S. Greve, The Upside-Down Constitution.
THIS DOESN’T SUGGEST CONFIDENCE: Dems Threatening Lobbyists Who Back GOP with Tax Retribution. But thanks for the admission that the tax code isn’t about raising necessary funds for the common good, but is rather just a tool for political power and intimidation. Does that mean that tax evasion is morally laudable, or at least morally neutral? Is that the message they want to send?
They’ve been pretty consistent about sending it. But it does kind of undercut all that “fair share” talk.
WALL STREET BANKERS TO OCCUPY SALT LAKE CITY:
Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs is planning to add 300 new employees to its already growing office in the Utah state capital—and these new hires will earn at least 150 percent of the average local salary. Of course, Goldman isn’t doing this out of the goodness of its heart. The state government, seizing the opportunity to boost the city’s economy, has offered it millions of dollars in tax breaks to expand its operations there. Even without those incentives, the move arguably makes economic sense for the firm.
This is big news, going far beyond a few hundred bankers, Salt Lake City, or the Occupy encampments in New York. As we’ve noted, when bankers hurt, New York hurts. Sky-high salaries and bonuses in the financial sector have generated justified indignation, but they have also provided a significant chunk of city and state tax revenues. Without that money, it is hard to see how New York can continue to pay for the bloated blue institutions on which so many of the city’s poor and middle income workers rely.
In the ongoing aftermath of the financial crisis, Wall Street is already shrinking on its own, without any outside help. But as other cash-strapped states catch on to this fact and lay out the welcome mat for disgraced firms, the drain may accelerate accelerate.
Lots of cities will be happy to get these businesses, and with modern technology there’s no real reason for them to stay in New York City if it’s an unhappy environment.
I THINK I KNOW: Why Is The Economy Growing So Slowly?
READER STEVE EIMERS WRITES:
Glenn,
Time to promote the weather radios again!
Batten down the hatches. The Tor-Con forecast for East TN is 6. That is the highest I have seen since 4/27/2011!
Ugh. Still finishing repairs from last time.
JOE BIDEN: We ‘screwed up’ contraception rule. “Vice President Biden acknowledged the administration ‘screwed up’ the first iteration of the contraception mandate, which eventually was changed in an atempt to please angry Catholic leaders.”
UPDATE: Jonathan Adler writes: “The contraception rule was NOT changed (at least not yet). The Administration finalized the interim rule without change, and has merely promised to propose and finalize a change to accommodate objections at some point in the next year. There is a one-year grace period for religious employers, but that’s it. There is no draft proposal, let alone an actual revision, and the pledge has no legal import. Unless the Administration takes further action, the original mandate will go into force.” More here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here:
AT THE LAW AND LIBERTY BLOG, a symposium on David Bernstein’s Rehabilitating Lochner.
Here’s my review of the book in Commentary.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Why Can’t the Obama Administration Make Its Case Without Disseminating Hate? Why, indeed? “Have we ever had an administration like Barack Obama’s? An administration that tries to benefit from pitting Americans against one another? An administration that uses its billion-dollar slush fund, not to mention the resources of the Executive Branch, to demonize private citizens who disagree with its policies? An administration that uses hate as an instrument of domestic politics? I don’t believe that there is any precedent in American history for the mean-spiritedness that now emanates from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
HMM: For Shippers, 2012 Is a Year of Crisis: Dry Bulk Operator. “This week, Indonesia’s largest oil and gas shipping group, Berlian Laju Tanker, defaulted on its $2 billion debt, while Reuters reported Thursday that Denmark’s bulk and tanker firm Torm has asked for an extension for the repayment of its $1.87 billion debt. . . . The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of costs to ship dry-bulk commodities, has already fallen over 55 percent this year.”
BUSINESS INSIDER: The Obama Campaign Just Told Some Massive Lies In The Fight Over Contraception Mandate.
The big lie behind all this is that somehow allowing some employers not to pay for this kind of coverage amounts to a “contraception ban.”
Republicans are coming to steal your ladyparts!!!!!!
Meanwhile, I think we should require every employer to buy every employee a gun. Otherwise, you’re being denied the right to bear arms.
HEY, NO FAIR! Department of Homeland Security Gives Occupy Wall Street the “Rightwing Extremist” Treatment. “When the State decides you are not on its side, it doesn’t matter whose side you’re on; whether yours is a community of a diverse group of white all colors of religious fanatics living outside of Waco, or a group of black liberationists living in the heart of Philadelphia; if you’re an Occupier or a Tea Partier. All of you are disruptors. That’s what matters.”