“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Adam Smith
"After competing in Abu Dhabi I realized that although I am super close, I'm not where I personally want to be," Serena Williams said in a statement Friday. "My coach and team always said `Only go to tournaments when you are prepared to go all the way.' I can compete - but I don't want to just compete, I want to do far better than that and to do so, I will need a little more time.
"With that being said, and even though I am disappointed about it, I've decided not to compete in the Australian Open this year."
Williams was pregnant when she won at Melbourne Park last year, her Open-era record 23rd Grand Slam singles title. She is one short of Margaret Court's record.
Three women have won returned after having babies to win Grand Slam singles titles in the Open era, including Court and fellow Australian Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who won the 1977 Australian Open seven months after giving birth to daughter, Kelly, and added her second Wimbledon title in 1980.
Kim Clijsters returned from retirement after having a daughter, Jada Elle, in February 2008, and won the 2009 U.S. Open in her third tournament back.
George Will has an editorial promoting a balanced budget amendment--an idea I think is dangerously restricting to the management of an enterprise. But he has within it a very good explanation of why conservatives are so cautious about amendments. He says: "Because reverence for the Constitution is imperiled by tinkering with it, and because the supply of ideas for improving Madison's document always exceed society's supply of Madisonian wisdom, the document should be amended rarely and reluctantly." It also includes Buffett's solution to lousy government: When, absent a war or other emergency, the budget is not balanced, all congressional incumbents are ineligible for re-election.
A major outbreak of coral-eating crown of thorns starfish has been found munching Australia’s world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef. They must not know how important the coral is. It's unnatural. We better kill 'em.
A new report has revealed that 100 to 250 Google bikes go missing every week, on average. "The disappearances often aren't the work of ordinary thieves, however. Many residents of Mountain View, a city of 80,000 that has effectively become Google's company town, see the employee perk as a community service," the Wall Street Journal reported.
Trade barriers and China in the fourteenth century: The imperial court prohibited any foreign trade (without official permission) for about two centuries after 1371, even going so far as to forbid the construction of new seagoing ships in 1436. While these efforts did not completely eliminate trade, they severely curtailed it at a time when Chinese merchants were very active in the Indian Ocean and Africa. China’s action did not stop globalization. But China lost its technological leadership and fell very far behind the rest of the world in military and commercial strength. Eventually it fell prey to political domination by the West in the nineteenth century.
There has been a lot of talk that Obama decreased the deficit while in office. These are the deficit numbers, year by year:
2008 — $459
2009 — $1,413
2010 — $1,294
2011 — $1,300
2012 — $1,087
2013 — $680
2014 — $485
2015 — $438
2016 — $585
2009 — $1,413
2010 — $1,294
2011 — $1,300
2012 — $1,087
2013 — $680
2014 — $485
2015 — $438
2016 — $585
A spousal visa, or H-4, is granted to the wives and husbands of those who have H-1B, or high-tech, visas. But H-4 visas didn't allow a person to work in the U.S. -- until 2015, when the Obama administration enacted a rule that opened the way for people with spousal visas to obtain permits known as employment authorization documents (EAD). . . . Since it took effect, about 104,750 H-4 spouses have been approved for work authorizations, according to the latest data through June 2017 from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The Trump administration indicated it plans to end the program this year. Think about what a bad idea that sounds like.
The AP (1/1, Salsberg) reports that, following a two-year hiatus, “a 2.3-percent excise tax on medical device manufacturers is set for reinstatement” with the new year. Imposed in 2013 with the ACA, Congress suspended it for 2016 and 2017.
Who is...Jeff Sessions?
MedPage Today reported that a review indicated ten percent of “cancer patients who took opioids for the first time after curative-intent surgery continued filling prescriptions a year later.” The data indicated that “among opioid-naïve patients, the risk of new, persistent opioid use was 10.4%.” The findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
"Facebook certainly made an impact last year, but not quite the impact the young Zuckerberg had in mind in his Harvard dorm. A committed believer in globalisation who tends to wear his liberal politics on his T-shirt sleeve, Zuckerberg is reeling. Not only did the masterminds behind the Brexit and Trump campaigns successfully use Facebook advertising to hone and target their ultimately victorious campaign messages; worse, the Russian government appears to have used Facebook in the same way, seeking to depress voter support for Hillary Clinton. Worse still, neo-Nazis seem to have been using the social network to spread their own distinctive brand of hate." This is from historian/economist Niall Ferguson. He goes on explaining the difficulty of controlling of social media, using as an example the impact of the printing press and how its use undermined the Catholic Church that thought it would be helped by it.
One of the wonderful things about the American culture is the ability of people to recover. Last year Bannon was a screaming, alt-right lunatic and he has suddenly become a measured analyst of politics and leadership.
Incidentally, the willingness of the Progressives to expand their anti-Trump dragnet to include his wife and children is a new and seriously negative development in the gangland turf war that masquerades as politics.
A recent article in the Boston Globe said that almost 35% of Americans never spend time with their neighbors. That marks a huge increase from the 1970s. It also pointed out that in the mid 1980s, about half of us said we trusted others; now it’s about 3 in 10.
Can you imagine what the news would be like if the market was down?
Epigrammatic: a: terse and ingenious in expression; of or like an epigram; containing or favoring the use of epigrams.
In Greek epígramma means “inscription, commemorative or memorial inscription, short poem, written estimate of or demand for damages.” Probably the most famous epigram is that attributed to Simonides of Ceos (c566 b.c.–c468 b.c.) for the Spartans who fell at Thermoplylae (480 b.c.): “Stranger, report to the Spartans that we lie here in obedience to their orders,” which is spartan in its terseness. Epigrammatic entered English in the early 18th century.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime marijuana opponent, is expected to rescind an Obama-era policy that gave protections to states that have legalized marijuana as long as they abide by a series of guidelines, the Associated Press reported, citing unnamed sources. An announcement that will scrap what is known as the Cole Memo is expected later Thursday, said the AP.
The news sent cannabis stocks sharply lower, with Nevada-based Cannabis Sativa Inc. CBDS, -27.41% sliding 22%. The company is involved in the research, development and licensing of marijuana products. Colorado-based cannabis farmer GrowGeneration Corp. GRWG, -21.18% slid 21%.
Many of the listed cannabis companies in North America are based in Canada, which is gearing up to fully legalize marijuana later this year. Those stocks were caught up in the downdraft, with Toronto-based medical marijuana distributor Supreme Cannabis Co. Inc. SPRWF, -14.75% down 9.8%, while Ontario-based rival Canopy Growth Corp. WEED, -14.99% slid 9.6%.
And, when you are having trouble coming to grips with net neutrality you can always look to its fallout for guidance.
Yesterday, CES announced that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai would no longer be appearing at the trade show where he was scheduled to take part in a conversation with FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen. No reasons were given by CES or the FCC at the time for the sudden change in plans, but Recode now reports that the cancellation is due to Pai receiving death threats. Two FCC sources said the threats were the cause and that law enforcement had become involved with the issue.
Great. Every little bit helps. But I'll bet it doesn't influence how well either thinks or Brady throws.
Golden oldie:
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steeleydock.blogspot.com
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power--Daniel Webster From the "I've read it but I'...
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The federal debt held by the public was 39% of GDP 10 years ago; it is 75% today. Before last month's tax changes, the debt was projected to reach 91% in 10 years. And--and--transfer payments are now about 70% of federal spending. Often you will hear the argument that borrowing money is nothing new; people do it, governments do it. Many examples will be given, e.g. the Eisenhower plan for a national road system. But there is a significant difference in our borrowing now: Historically we borrowed for the future--the road system would improve out travel and production. Now we borrow money from the future to pay some current influencial group.
Interesting story:
Genetic evidence published in Nature is the first to show that all Native Americans can trace their ancestry back to a single migration event that happened at the tail-end of the last Ice Age. The evidence—gleaned from the full genomic profile of the six-week-old girl and the partial genomic remains of another infant—suggests the continent’s first settlers arrived in a single migratory wave around 20,900 years ago. But this population then split into two groups—one group that would go on to become the ancestors of all Native North Americans, and another that would venture no further than Alaska—a previously unknown population of ancient North Americans now dubbed the “Ancient Beringians.”
The genetic analysis, combined with computer-based population modeling, allowed the researchers to conclude that a single founding ancestral indigenous American group split from East Asians around 35,000 years ago. Then, around 20,000 years ago, this group split into two groups: the ancestors of all Native Americans, and the Ancient Beringians.
The discovery suggests two possible scenarios for the peopling of the Americas. Either two distinct groups of people crossed over Beringia prior to 15,700 years ago, or one group of people crossed over the land bridge and then split in Beringia into two groups, namely the Ancient Beringians and the Native Americans (where the latter moved south of the ice sheets 15,700 years ago). The study also reaffirms a pre-existing theory known as the “Standstill Model”—the possibility that the descendants of this single-source population were living in Beringia until about 11,500 years ago.
Regardless, it now appears that the Ancient Beringians stayed in the far North for thousands of years, while the ancestors of other Native American peoples spread throughout the rest of North America. The new genetic analysis, along with previous archaeological work, also lends credence to the idea that an offshoot of these migrants, known as the Athabascans, made their way back into the northern regions of North America again, possibly around 6,000 years ago (a process known as back migration), eventually absorbing or replacing the Ancient Beringians. More research will be required to bear this theory out.
“The differences between the genomes of the Upward Sun River infants and the genomes of other ancient Native Americans sets the Alaskan infants apart,” Gary Haynes, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada, told Gizmodo, “But there are also similarities which suggest that all the studied individuals are descendants of a single ancestral founding population. The USR population split after 20,900 years from the population that gave rise to all modern northern and southern Native Americans. The critical importance of this conclusion, if it is correct, is that it provides support for the view that a single founding population from Northeast Asia gave rise to all the native peoples of the Americas. This is a significant finding which establishes that all the pre-Columbian native peoples of the New World are members of one family tree.”
"After competing in Abu Dhabi I realized that although I am super close, I'm not where I personally want to be," Serena Williams said in a statement Friday. "My coach and team always said `Only go to tournaments when you are prepared to go all the way.' I can compete - but I don't want to just compete, I want to do far better than that and to do so, I will need a little more time.
"With that being said, and even though I am disappointed about it, I've decided not to compete in the Australian Open this year."
Williams was pregnant when she won at Melbourne Park last year, her Open-era record 23rd Grand Slam singles title. She is one short of Margaret Court's record.
Three women have won returned after having babies to win Grand Slam singles titles in the Open era, including Court and fellow Australian Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who won the 1977 Australian Open seven months after giving birth to daughter, Kelly, and added her second Wimbledon title in 1980.
Kim Clijsters returned from retirement after having a daughter, Jada Elle, in February 2008, and won the 2009 U.S. Open in her third tournament back.
George Will has an editorial promoting a balanced budget amendment--an idea I think is dangerously restricting to the management of an enterprise. But he has within it a very good explanation of why conservatives are so cautious about amendments. He says: "Because reverence for the Constitution is imperiled by tinkering with it, and because the supply of ideas for improving Madison's document always exceed society's supply of Madisonian wisdom, the document should be amended rarely and reluctantly." It also includes Buffett's solution to lousy government: When, absent a war or other emergency, the budget is not balanced, all congressional incumbents are ineligible for re-election.
A major outbreak of coral-eating crown of thorns starfish has been found munching Australia’s world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef. They must not know how important the coral is. It's unnatural. We better kill 'em.
One always hears the debate about government, economics and the ability we have to control our economies. (Strangely, one rarely hears about our abilities to control our own lives or the environment of our children, projects that should be relatively simple.) The failure of totalitarians in the past to do so is no proof it can not be done, we hear. But the idea of systems too complex to evaluate and predict is everywhere.
In 1887, Henri Poincaré proved that the motion of the three objects, with the exception of a few special cases, is non-repeating. Three objects in motion, each close enough to influence the others, is a chaotic system; the historical pattern of object positions has no predictive power in figuring out where these objects will be in the future. There is no algorithm that a human can possibly discover to solve this problem. It does not exist.
This is the Three Body Problem.
The Browns will have two top-5 picks in the next draft.
President Trump, the self-proclaimed "very stable genius," has been furious over the book coming out that is sort of a random, fact-free assault on him and his family. He has criticized the country's weak libel laws. This was printed in the press as his opposition to free speech. Team Angie may need to open a Team Melania subsidiary.
John Young, NASA's longest-serving astronaut, who walked on the moon and flew on the first Gemini and space shuttle missions, died. He was the first person to fly six times into space — seven, if you count his launch off of the moon in 1972 — and the only astronaut to command four different types of spacecraft He was 87.
The temperature atop New Hampshire’s Mount Washington plummeted early Saturday to an astonishing minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the coldest places on the planet.
The summit was tied with the Canadian town of Armstrong, Ontario, as the second-coldest location on Earth, the Mount Washington Observatory said in a tweet.
With the wind whipping at more than 100 mph, the wind chill reached about 94 degrees below zero. It felt colder on the mountain than on the surface of Mars, where the temperature was minus 78 degrees, The Boston Globe noted.
Huh? Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been arrested by security forces for allegedly inciting unrest against the government, Al Quds reports according to "reliable sources in Tehran"
When wondering what should be taught in schools, remember the word "ethics" comes from the Greek word "habit."
Millennials are now dying at such a high rate in the US that it’s driven life expectancy to decline for two years in a row. The reason: opiates.
Bill Gates was Time Magazine's first guest editor in its 94 year history.
A college lecturer and author recently wrote this on Trump:
"Is he fit for office?.... In a way, the very legitimacy of the republic comes into question — if Trump is the best we can do, maybe the system itself isn’t what it was cracked up to be. And then why would we think that removing him from office would make things better? How’s that for an existential quandary?"
From a Freedom of Information search:
We have a sworn declaration from David Hardy who is the chief FOIA officer of the FBI that we obtained just in the last few days, and in that sworn declaration, Mr. Hardy says that all of Comey's memos - all of them, were classified at the time they were written, and they remain classified. -Chris Farrell, Judicial Watch
A new report has revealed that 100 to 250 Google bikes go missing every week, on average. "The disappearances often aren't the work of ordinary thieves, however. Many residents of Mountain View, a city of 80,000 that has effectively become Google's company town, see the employee perk as a community service," the Wall Street Journal reported.
AAAAAAaaaaannnnnnnddddd......a map:
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