SHOCKING NEWS FROM SCIENCE: Millionaire men happy to date non-millionaire women; millionaire women mostly interested in millionaire men. “It seems that financially independent men want to share their wealth with those less fortunate. With women, the story is much different.”
Hogamus hergamus, women hypergamous.
SHELDON RICHMAN: Americans Aren’t Bound To Pay The Government’s Debts. If a Congress can’t bind a future Congress, how can a Congress bind the people?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Long To Nap For The Biggest Brain Benefits.
MY POSITION EXACTLY: So there’s no life on Mars — that just means there’s more room for us.
If Mars proves to be a dud, we will not be under any obligation to treat it as an irreplaceable nature preserve, any more than we do Earth’s moon—not that we are doing much with that yet. Instead of dreaming of a handful of doomed, miserable one-way colonists munching hydroponic quinoa in an inflatable tent, we could start imagining more ambitious terraforming projects, envisioning how we would change Mars on the grand scale in order to make it more habitable.
Want to hit Mars with nukes to construct underground caves for later occupation? Or seed it randomly with shiploads of our own hardy “extremophile” micro-organisms and see which ones thrive? Let’s go for it! Nobody’s using it! Maybe the party’s just getting started.
Indeed. Meanwhile, here’s a nice piece by my former student Robert Pinson on the law and ethics of terraforming Mars, from the Environmental Law Reporter. And here are some thoughts from Ron Bailey.
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: So I of course have water and gas shutoff tools, but the Insta-Wife seems to always confuse them. Since she might have to shut off utilities when I’m gone, I finally got this shutoff tool that’s for both, with clear GAS and WATER labeling. Now everything’s easy and clear.
OUT THIS WEEK: From Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter.
MORE TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT? Sorry, Valets: The Automated Parking Garage is Coming. “The parking garage of the future will be an automated, human-free experience—a vending machine for cars.”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Computational design of protein-small molecule interactions.
IF THIS IS TRUE, AS BOB BEASLEY POINTS OUT ON TWITTER, then it suggests that Americans must have dispensed with the notion that the Republican Party is conservative. Americans are more conservative than they have been in decades. “The latest update of Stimson’s policy mood series suggests that the American public in 2012 was more conservative than at any point since 1952. . . .While the slight increase in conservatism from 2011 to 2012 is too small to be significant, it continues a marked trend that began as soon as Barack Obama moved into the White House.” At the very least, the GOP hasn’t been very good at capitalizing.
Related take: Barack Obama Has Created More Conservatives Than He Has Jobs.
IN THE MAIL: From Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 144.
AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN: John Hinderaker: The Associated Press Goes To Bat For The Democratic Party.
UPSIDE OF A BLEAK JOB MARKET: Millennials Creating Opportunities.
For Millennials, creating startups is a way to connect with other passionate individuals, especially those in their peer group, and fill a niche in the economy that is being passed over by larger corporations. Cheung explains, “Homejoy breaks down barriers, and in an economy where 11% of 18-29 year-olds are unemployed nationwide, we create options both as independent service providers on our platform and as employees at our headquarters in San Francisco.” Startups often grow based on the social networks of those involved, fanning out to include the friends and classmates of founders, yet their reach expands even further with technology.
According to data from a survey conducted by the computing solutions company j2 Global, technology is increasingly enabling young entrepreneurs to run businesses. Vice President of j2 Global, Mike Pugh said in their release, “Millennials have grown up immersed in technologies that let them connect and collaborate anywhere on a host of devices they always have with them.”
Well, it’s all fun and games until you have enough employees to come under ObamaCare.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama plans Asia trip to borrow billions more.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How To Turn A Campus Into An Indoctrination Center.
AT AMAZON, deals on costumes and more at the Kids’ Halloween Store.
Also, new Fall Toys.
And, today only: SINGER 7258 Stylist Sewing Machine, $129.99 (57% off).
MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: The Obama Presidency and Government’s Damaged Brand.
GLOBAL CHORTLING: Ed Driscoll on a weatherman’s Twitter meltdown.
Related: Top MIT scientist: Newest UN climate report is ‘hilariously’ flawed. “They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.”
MICHAEL S. GREVE: Government for Profit: The NAFI Regime.
J.P. Morgan paid $920 million to settle investigations over its “London whale,” who managed to lose something like $6 billion in exotic trades. There’s no allegation that J.P. Morgan defrauded anyone in those transactions; nor any contestation of the fact that the bank lost a lot of its own money; nor any doubt that Mr. Dimon was livid, fired everyone in shouting distance of the fiasco, and tried to get to the bottom of it. The settlement is mostly over whether Mr. Dimon’s decision to withhold certain information from the bank’s audit committee and the authorities until he was sure he knew the whole story violated federal law. I’m no securities lawyer, but I know the answer: $920 million. The same day, J.P. Morgan also agreed to a $389 million settlement for alleged marketing abuses in its credit card agreements and debt collection. Bear in mind that the “settlements” settle practically nothing—not a pending SEC civil investigation in the London whale matter, and not pending or impending actions by the CFPB, a gaggle of state AGs, and class action lawyers in the marketing abuse matters. Mr. Dimon should consider the combined $1.3 billion an annual dividend. Remember: the government is your No. 1 client.
Inasmuch as this form of tax farming is becoming standard m.o. across the wide range of regulators (from financial agencies to HHS and the FDA), maybe we should ask where the money winds up, and with what effect.
Start with the $389 settlement: it consists of $309 million in customer “refunds” and $80 million in penalties, with most of it going to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). You have to be nervous about a form of law enforcement that amounts to a government-sponsored class action without the (Rule 23) protections defendants would get in a private lawsuit. Plus, the government need not show that any customer actually relied on or was harmed by the defendant’s conduct. “Restitution” in these kinds of cases is basically cash dropped from a helicopter. As it turns out, that’s the highest and best use.
Read the whole thing. Money taken in by law enforcement should always go to the general fund, never to the enforcing agencies. This would be a good general legislative proposal for Congressional Republicans — they might even get some significant support from the left.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama Wants A Government Shutdown. “In the past, he’s always done better when he can accuse somebody of some terrible thing and go campaign against them. I think he wants to say that Obamacare is working … He’ll want this war to continue.”
IT’S A START. MAYBE AFTER THAT, THEY CAN GRILL SOME REAL ONES ABOUT BENGHAZI: Congress Set to Grill Phony CIA Employee. “Two committees will hold hearings tied to a case in which a former Environmental Protection Agency official pretended to work for the CIA for the last 13 years and improperly billed the government for more than $880,000.”
RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON Muslim Extremist Attacks in Kenya and Nigeria.
Related: Brendan O’Neill: I’m sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern Islamist terrorism. “In Western news-making and opinion-forming circles, there’s a palpable reluctance to talk about the most noteworthy thing about modern Islamist violence: its barbarism, its graphic lack of moral restraint. This goes beyond the BBC’s yellow reluctance to deploy the T-word – terrorism – in relation to the bloody assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya at the weekend. Across the commentating board, people are sheepish about pointing out the historically unique lunacy of Islamist violence and its utter detachment from any recognisable moral universe or human values. We have to talk about this barbarism; we have to appreciate how new and unusual it is, how different it is even from the terrorism of the 1970s or of the early twentieth century. We owe it to the victims of these assaults, and to the principle of honest and frank political debate, to face up to the unhinged, morally unanchored nature of Islamist violence in the 21st century.” Yes, but doing that might require unpleasant actions — or, worse, uncomfortable thoughts.
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