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Archive for 2013
March 9, 2013
JOURNALISM: Gannett Paper Exposes Gun Owners, Hides Hacks. “To be blunt, we have no idea why the Journal News has not notified you. . . . They have left you in jeopardy for over two months.”
UPDATE: Professor Jacobson was on this months ago. But still no action from the Journal News.
WHILE EUROPE GOES GREEN, Russia Muscles In On Mediterranean Gas Boom.
NICK GILLESPIE ON JOHN MCCAIN: “Wacko Birds” Is The New “Jerk Store.” “To their credit, the ‘wacko birds’ are responding pretty sharply. Paul told the press, ‘I treat Sen. McCain with respect. I don’t think I always get the same in return.'”
One of the nice — and effective — things about Paul’s filibuster was its exhibition of old-fashioned courtesy and self-restraint, two characteristics sadly lacking in our ruling class today.
CONFESSIONS OF A NUDE MODEL. “Don’t misunderstand, not all of the photographers operated like this; some were very talented and I was deeply honored to work with them. But the large majority of them were creeps. Despite this, I didn’t stop. The money was too good. . . . Most people don’t believe me when I say this, but a nude art model getting a Brazilian bikini wax is career suicide.”
IS THERE ANYTHING THEY CAN’T DO? Video Games Make Senior Citizens Happier.
PREPPING FOR THE APOCALYPSE? Why Columbia Students Are Hoarding A Ridiculous Amount Of Nutella.
JAMES TARANTO: The Belle Curve: The average woman has average looks. The average man is unsightly. “It is men’s looks that are socially constructed, while female beauty is a force of nature.”
COLLEGE: Where Free Speech Goes To Die.
IN THE MAIL: The Mongoliad: Book Three.
WE REALLY ARE LIVING IN THE FALLEN ANGELS WORLD, WHERE GLOBAL WARMING IS ALL THAT STANDS IN THE PATH OF AN ICE AGE:
Though the paper is the most complete reconstruction of global temperature, it is roughly consistent with previous work on a regional scale. It suggests that changes in the amount and distribution of incoming sunlight, caused by wobbles in the earth’s orbit, contributed to a sharp temperature rise in the early Holocene.
The climate then stabilized at relatively warm temperatures about 10,000 years ago, hitting a plateau that lasted for roughly 5,000 years, the paper shows. After that, shifts of incoming sunshine prompted a long, slow cooling trend.
The cooling was interrupted, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, by a fairly brief spike during the Middle Ages, known as the Medieval Warm Period. (It was then that the Vikings settled Greenland, dying out there when the climate cooled again.)
Scientists say that if natural factors were still governing the climate, the Northern Hemisphere would probably be destined to freeze over again in several thousand years. “We were on this downward slope, presumably going back toward another ice age,” Dr. Marcott said.
Instead, scientists believe the enormous increase in greenhouse gases caused by industrialization will almost certainly prevent that.
In Fallen Angels, environmentalists managed to stop the greenhouse emissions and an ice age ensued. Thank goodness they were less effective in real life.
UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails that this may bring new meaning to the term “Carbon Credit:”
If the Fallen Angels scenario becomes proven, perhaps the EPA will start establishing minimum quotas of carbon emissions that must be produced, with extra carbon credits for surplus.
Heh.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colleges Bleeding Students to Buy Golden Parachutes for Administrators.
College administrators have found an interesting new way to strike it rich: quitting their jobs. Upon leaving his role as executive vice president of NYU for a job with Citigroup in 2006, Jacob J. Lew (the current Secretary of the Treasury) took a $685,000 bonus from the university. Harold S. Koplewicz, an executive at the NYU Medical Center, got a $1.2 million severance after choosing to leave voluntarily. Given that NYU’s tuition and fees are among the highest in the nation, we’re curious how students who took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans feel about their money going towards generous benefits and severance packages for administrators.
At least NYU is a private institution, so tax dollars are not spent to cover its inflated costs. As the New York Times notes, public universities are just as guilty of letting a bloated and inefficient administration drive up tuition costs. The University of Minnesota employs 19,000 employees, and administrative personnel account for 24 percent of its total payroll, compared with only 20 percent in 2001. At Purdue, the number of administrative employees grew by 54 percent in the last decade.
Overall, the number of administrators hired by colleges and universities increased 50 percent faster than the number of instructors hired between 2001 and 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Education. And college’s wasteful spending doesn’t stop at human capital: Total debt at public four-year colleges stood at $88 billion in 2011, and most of that money was borrowed to finance expensive (and often unnecessary) construction projects.
Rather than raising tuition, universities need to begin looking for ways to tighten their belts. For NYU, cutting back on administrators’ golden parachutes would be a good place to start.
Yep. People blame faculty, but most of the increase in cost has come from administrative bloat.
MARYLAND: Where Taxes Are For The Little People.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Office Equipment and Supplies Outlet Sale.
Also, today only: Oreck DualMax Air Purifier (Refurbished), $149.99 (50% off).
JOEL GEHRKE: Public Sector Unions Are Very Different From Private Sector Unions.
Under the National Labor Relations Act, private-sector unions are allowed to extract dues and fees from workers if the employer is a unionized workplace. The NLRA, passed in 1935 during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, does not, however, apply to public-sector employees, including state and federal workers, because the thinking was that this would over-politicize government and cause a conflict of interest between unions and politicians. . . .
Typically, government unions are given the exclusive right to bargain for members in a workforce. If an employee takes a job, they are forced to belong to the union or pay an “agency fee.” This gives local and state unions a lot of power.
A conflict of interest would be as follows: First, government union elects politician by funding their campaign and organizing a massive get-out-the-vote drive; second, politician supports employee pay increases, generous pensions and condition of employment; third, union takes dues (read: taxpayer money) and starts the cycle all over again for selected politician.
In economics, this problem is described in “public choice theory” – the idea that those receiving concentrated benefits (the union) have more of an incentive to spend time and money lobbying than those paying the diffused costs (taxpayers). Eventually, this leads to bloated government as the incentives for public-sector unions and their employees to perform well is eroded.
See, e.g., Detroit.
A BAD WEEK FOR HARRY REID: Heller Bests Reid in Judicial Nomination Fight. “Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., has apparently won his dispute with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., over the nomination of Elissa Cadish to be a U.S. District Court judge in Nevada. Cadish withdrew her name from consideration Thursday after Heller continued to refuse to sign off on her.”
PRESIDENT PUNCTUAL: Obama budget delayed until April. They should pass a bill suspending presidential golf until the budget is submitted.
RAND PAUL: My Filibuster Was Just The Beginning.
The Senate has the power to restrain the executive branch — and my filibuster was the beginning of the fight to restore a healthy balance of powers. The president still needs to definitively say that the United States will not kill American noncombatants. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment applies to all Americans; there are no exceptions.
The outpouring of support for my filibuster has been overwhelming and heartening. My office has fielded thousands of calls. Millions have followed this debate on TV, Twitter and Facebook. On Thursday, the White House produced another letter explaining its position on drone strikes. But the administration took too long, and parsed too many words and phrases, to instill confidence in its willingness or ability to protect our liberty.
I hope my efforts help spur a national debate about the limits of executive power and the scope of every American’s natural right to be free. “Due process” is not just a phrase that can be ignored at the whim of the president; it is a right that belongs to every citizen in this great nation.
I believe the support I received this past week shows that Americans are looking for someone to really stand up and fight for them. And I’m prepared to do just that.
Well, it’s a lot easier to win, if you’re willing to fight.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: UC Berkeley Hook-Ups, A ‘Missed Connections’ Facebook Page, Helps Reconnect Students (In Lurid Detail).
RICHARD BRANSON, TAKE NOTE: What a way to treat a heroine: Royal Navy girl who fought in Afghanistan told to cover up uniform on Virgin flight in case it offended other passengers. Everyone involved should be fired. “To clarify, a British airline who claims to be Britain’s flag carrier won’t allow a member of Britain’s armed forces to travel on their airline in uniform.”
March 8, 2013
TRANSPARENCY: Air Force Erases Drone Data.
WE’RE SEEING THIS COMPARISON A LOT: Politics has become the ‘Hunger Games,’ says former governor.