Archive for 2015

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO COMMIT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE! Columbia conflict-mediation professor busted for punching boyfriend. “Joann Baney, 54, who teaches International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, was arrested Valentine’s Day, at 10:45 p.m., after she slugged retired NYPD sergeant Walter Frey,46, while he was sleeping, according to a criminal court complaint. ‘I hit him because he cheated on me,’ she allegedly said at the scene while she was being arrested, the documents reveal.”

More violence resulting from modern America’s culture of female sexual entitlement.

UM. 2016 Mercedes-Benz G65 AMG. “As much as we love to drive at high speed, that 143-mph limiter is probably a good idea. At that speed, the chassis will put the fear of God into you. The imprecise steering, perfect for negotiating rocks and off-road obstacles, begins to feel positively vague; body roll becomes excessive; and the driver needs to stay laser-focused to keep the G65 AMG in its lane. He won’t have to stay focused for long: The real-world appetite of 7-to-9 mpg quickly drains the 25-gallon tank. Off road, the AMG versions of the G lose some capability, not least because of their 275/50 high-performance tires on 20-inch wheels.”

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: 3-D Printing Prosthetic Hands That Are Anything but Ordinary. “The Rivermans, of Forest Grove, Ore., could not afford a high-tech prosthetic hand for their son, and in any event they are rarely made for children. Then help arrived in the guise of a stranger with a three-dimensional printer. . . . The proliferation of 3-D printers has had an unexpected benefit: The devices, it turns out, are perfect for creating cheap prosthetics. Surprising numbers of children need them: One in 1,000 infants is born with missing fingers, and others lose fingers and hands to injury. Each year, about 9,000 children receive amputations as a result of lawn mower accidents alone. State-of-the-art prosthetic replacements are complicated medical devices, powered by batteries and electronic motors, and they can cost thousands of dollars. Even if children are able to manage the equipment, they grow too quickly to make the investment practical. So most do without, fighting to do with one hand what most of us do with two.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: Why Libertarians Hate ObamaCare:

I think people have a right to determine where their own money goes and what products they spend it on — even if that means they can choose to forgo a very beneficial product that would make everyone better off. Now, I do not think this right is entirely unlimited — parents can be forced to support their children, for example, and I think that’s entirely just. Even free speech can be curtailed in very extreme situations; it does not cover libel, or the proverbial nuthatch who falsely cries “fire” in a crowded theater. But there are very good reasons for requiring extraordinary circumstances to invoke such restrictions, and I do not think that Obamacare meets that bar. I am well aware that Obamacare’s supporters will disagree, and I doubt that either of us will convince the other, so I’ll leave it at that.

This is not a tedious rehash of my reasons for opposing Obamacare, though two years in, perhaps such a rehash is due. If it is, I will provide it in a different post. This is just a post on why I don’t think that the argument for Obamacare can rest very securely on the argument that we are simply cleaning up some ugly negative externalities, in much the same way that we do with noise ordinance and anti-pollution laws. That is not what we are doing, and if it were, we wouldn’t be doing it.

Also, libertarians hate lies, and ObamaCare was a lie through and through.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Charter School Enrollment Is Up 14%. “Nearly 3 million children attend charter schools in 2014-15, reports the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. That’s up 14 percent from the previous year. More than 500 new charters opened, bringing the total to about 6,700 schools nationwide.”