In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. --michael crichton
Why is federal spending a great way to create jobs and military spending not a great way to stimulate jobs?
This week the soccer goalie Hope Solo called police for help from threats from her boyfriend, Jerramy Stevens, a former Seattle Seahawk. The police arrived but not before Solo's brother tasered him. The next day the two married.
So now the campaign for the White House 2016 begins.
By the end of the seventeenth century, slavery and the products of slave labor comprised the single largest economic enterprise on earth. On earth! 2 million African slaves were sent to the Americas in the 17th Century and 6 million in the Eighteenth. The vast majority went to plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean with a small percentage (about 5%) to the British North America. While gold, guns and French brandy was the original exchange medium, it eventually became rum--made from Caribbean sugar cane. So an ugly cycle developed: Slaves from African chiefs to traders (mostly British, Spanish, French, and Portuguese) for rum, slaves to the Caribbean to the sugar cane plantations where they were traded for molasses made from sugar cane, molasses was made into rum, rum was sent to African chiefs for slaves. A significant advance in rum manufacturing accelerated the process and placed American rum in high demand in Africa. So the molasses was shipped to New York, Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia and especially Newport, Rhode Island -- where is was distilled into a superior rum, and this trade became the biggest business in the colonies for a while. With America being such a small part of the slave trade, why is it always on the forefront of the debate? Because it promises more.
Leno had a wonderful line about infidelity. How can anyone expect to get away with it when the guy who runs the largest secretive organization in the world with access to disguises, false identities and safe houses can't?
After years of plagiarism, exaggerations and falsifications in the press, with the Petraeus scandal suddenly everyone is worried about "journalism ethics." Why now? If you allow erosion of these concepts they get eroded.
Question of the week: who was Mary Pinchot Meyer?
This year the Marlins have gotten rid of NL batting champion Hanley Ramirez, second baseman Omar Infante and right-hander Anibal Sanchez, closer HeathBell traded to Arizona last month, All-Star shortstop Jose Reyes, left-hander Mark Buehrle and ace right-hander Josh Johnson. That's an All-Star team.
"Blood libel" refers to the widespread belief that Jews regularly murder non-Jews, particularly children, in order to use their blood for magic or religious rites, especially for Passover. It is surprisingly old, dating from the Greeks who believed it of both Jews and their Christian cousins. Much of this in Europe was stimulated by the religious fervor of the Crusades when the Jews of Germany particularly suffered when the hordes of fervent Crusaders passed through on their way to The Holy Land. Spain had several famous outbreaks usually cynically associated with nationalism. In England, the Jews of York committed mass suicide in 1190 rather than fall into the hands of the warriors of the Third Crusade, an event still commemorated weekly in many Ashkenazic synagogues.
Medical insurance for Sydney Crosby is $400,000 a month.
Are we really going to trade Petraeus for Kerry?
Billions of dollars were spent in the presidential campaign alone. The WSJ reports that seven of the 10 highest-spending political entities supported Democrats. Lord knows how much else was spent on the other elections. Why is someone willing to spend so much to achieve so little?
"Homeland" irony update: Brody is worried about his children's truthfulness.
From the IEA: "By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer (overtaking Saudi Arabia in the mid-2020s) and starts to see the impact of new fuel-efficiency measures in transport. The result is a continued fall in US oil imports, to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030."
In the course of his first term, Obama increased the federal debt a little less than $6 trillion and in return grew the economy by $905 billion. So, in order to generate a dollar of economic growth the United States had to borrow about five dollars and sixty cents.
A great scam: A guy who works on the Newark Docks says that the days before the Sandy storm his dock was empty and unloaded so they spent a whole day driving unloaded cars from another dock a few miles away into some massive protected parking lots. He knows of approximately 50 cars that were driven away before the storm. After the storm, they returned, got the cars they had moved and put them back in the middle of cars that got swamped. Like all these cars they will go to auction with a dirty title. The people who know the VINs on these protected cars will watch for these specific cars and buy them as damaged when they were not.
Ernst & Young reported that energy storage totaled more than a third of the $1.1 billion US venture capital investment in cleantech for Q3 2011, which was the highest of any single sector that quarter. In 2009, investment bank Piper Jaffray projected that the energy storage market would be at least $600 billion over the next 10 to 12 years. In the US alone, the Department of Energy has projected that over the next 5 to 10 years, between 10 and 100 gigawatts of energy storage will need to be installed, creating a $35 billion industry. Big stuff.
A religious brother I know said to me after the election: " The only way we can cast him out(!) is with prayer and fasting."
Golden oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/02/bathoes-show-ugly-face.html
Last year, the library at the Institute of Egypt in Cairo caught fire in the midst of the Arab Spring festivities. Several thousand rare books and manuscripts were burnt beyond repair. In an effort to amend the loss, the Emir of Sharjah Emirate, part of the United Arab Emirates, will be donating 4,000 rare books from his personal collection to the Cairo library.
After a weak electoral victory in 1992, Clinton got clobbered in the Gingrich revolt in 1994. Clinton moved towards the center. (Remember "The era of big government is over?") He won in 1996 handily. Obama won weakly in 2008 and got clobbered in 2010. What did he do? He did not change and won 2012. Does anyone think that he will look back over the last four years and be chastened or feel the need to compromise?
AAAAAnnnnnnndddddd a graph:
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