There is some Carbon Tax stuff going around again. These people can not get enough of the working man's money. This is Blair on it: It’s a plan designed to harm American manufacturers, raise prices for every single American consumer, and prop up uncompetitive expensive sources of energy like solar and wind. It places trust in the federal government to manage yet another massive welfare program, while giving the Left a significant opportunity to extract more and more money from taxpayers. Killing a carbon tax dead in its tracks isn’t only good policy, it’s a basic IQ test for modern day conservatives.
Who , or what, is .....Alpha Zero?
Cochran on protectionism and the rule of law: "Everyone depends on the whim of the administration. Who gets tariff protection? On whim. But then you can apply for a waiver. Who gets those, on what basis? Now you can get subsidies. Who gets the subsidies? There is no law, no rule, no basis for any of this. If you think you deserve a waiver, on what basis do you sue to get one? Well, it sure can't hurt not to be an outspoken critic of the administration when the tariffs, waivers and subsidies are being handed out on whim. This is a bipartisan danger. I was critical of the ACA (ObamaCare) since so many businesses were asking for and getting waivers. I was critical of the Dodd-Frank Act since so much regulation and enforcement is discretionary. Keep your mouth shut and support the administration is good advice in both cases."
Hagridden: worried or tormented, as if by a witch.
The hag in hagridden has always meant “evil spirit (in female form), ghost, woman who deals with the Devil, a witch; an ugly, repellent, malicious old woman.” The noun is very rare in Middle English (hegge appears once in the 13th century, and hagge once in the 14th) and becomes common only in the 16th century as heg, hegge. Hag is generally believed to descend from Old English hægtesse, hægtis “a fury, witch,” akin to Old High German hagazissa, German Hexe (cf. hex signs on barns, especially in Amish country), from West Germanic hagatusjōn-. Hagridden entered English in the 17th century.
With the school shootings one wonders if home schooling will rise.
Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of DeepMind and an expert chess player himself, presented further details of the system, called Alpha Zero, at an AI conference in California. The program often made moves that would seem unthinkable to a human chess player.
“It doesn’t play like a human, and it doesn’t play like a program,” Hassabis said at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in Long Beach. “It plays in a third, almost alien, way.”
What’s also remarkable, though, Hassabis explained, is that it sometimes makes seemingly crazy sacrifices, like offering up a bishop and queen to exploit a positional advantage that led to victory. Such sacrifices of high-value pieces are normally rare. In another case the program moved its queen to the corner of the board, a very bizarre trick with a surprising positional value. “It’s like chess from another dimension,” Hassabis said.
Hassabis speculates that because Alpha Zero teaches itself, it benefits from not following the usual approach of assigning value to pieces and trying to minimize losses. “Maybe our conception of chess has been too limited,” he said. “It could be an important moment for chess. We can graft it into our own play.”
This is really scary, in several ways.
$1 invested in Jan 1, 2000 in the S&P was worth 91 cents in the S&P Dec. 31 2009. Read that again.
A finance guy who is pretty rigid and conservative in his views said on the radio that the second half of the Clinton term when Gingrich was running the House was the best run American administration in 60 years.
Good news. Democracy is alive and well in Venezuela. Maduro was reelected.
I wonder when Sean Penn will be visiting next?
As anti-government as I can be, it is also true that only 12 years elapsed between 1957 when Sputnik was launched and 1969 when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
Golden oldie:
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steeleydock.blogspot.com
R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) said that “In order to understand imagination’s true meaning one must be acquainted with the work of Coleridge”....
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It's good to see that Starbucks is opening their seating and bathrooms to non-customers. That should really improve conditions in the library.
It is said that the advertising value of the logos on the jersey of a jockey in a pre-Kentucky Derby interview of several seconds was worth 1.5 million dollars.
Although blacks make up 14 percent of the U.S. population, they account for only 8 percent of MLB baseball players. This disparity has been enough to prompt articles in US News, NPR, and Vox that affix blame to the decline in black baseball representation. Someone must be at fault. Vox summarized it as a generic sense among white fans that “baseball culture should stay white.”
So a "sense" among white people influences the behavior of black athletes, apparently from great distances and over time. Call DARPA.
The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 3% or higher every day recently. It has reached its highest point in almost 7 years as data continued to demonstrate the labor market's strength. The number of people receiving jobless benefits was at its lowest since 1973. Unemployment is also currently at an almost 17-year low. The numbers suggest the economy is likely reaching full employment.
So 4% unemployment is full employment?
"In its short-lived existence, Spy magazine had a lot of fun with Donald Trump. The New York-based monthly is best known for making fun of the size of Trump’s fingers, but its deepest cut may have come as part of a 1990 prank.
Spy correspondent Julius Lowenthal wanted to know just how cheap some of the city’s richest figures were. So he set up a company, called the National Refund Clearinghouse, and sent letters with checks for $1.11 enclosed, “for services that you were overcharged for.” The letters went out to 58 “well-known, well-heeled Americans,” 26 of whom promptly cashed them. Curious as to how low they might go, Lowenthal sent those 26 “nabobs” a second refund check, for $0.64. This time, 13 people cashed them.
Finally, he sent those 13 respondents a check for $0.13. This time, only two people cashed the check. One was an arms dealer. The other was Donald Trump."--from Mother Jones
Entertainers update: Netflix has secured a deal with President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama to produce series and movies for the streaming service. The former first couple will, according to announcement Monday from the company, potentially work on scripted and unscripted series as well as docu-series, documentary films, and features.
Government and entertainment--it just feels right.
I don’t understand it. The trade deficit is a terrible gauge of the economy. Or, let me put it in reverse. If we’re in a position of having a large trade deficit that means we’re growing, and we’re growing faster than the rest of the world.
We’re importing capital, and that capital can build factories, can put up car plants, whatever. It’s fabulous.
--Kudlow on NPR
Actually he doesn't understand it.
We’re importing capital, and that capital can build factories, can put up car plants, whatever. It’s fabulous.
--Kudlow on NPR
Actually he doesn't understand it.
Has the greatest global two-year cooling event of the last century just occurred? If it has, is it important?
From February 2016 to February 2018 (the latest month available) global average temperatures dropped 0.56°C. You have to go back to 1982-84 for the next biggest two-year drop, 0.47°C—also during the global warming era. This has been reported as really important information that counters the global warming frenzy. This, of course, is not true. No one or two year thermostat reading can tell a trend--on either side of the argument. Were talking about a biosphere billions of years old. Jumping on a cold spring or a warm winter is myopic--or dishonest.
Aaaaaaannnnnddddd.....a graph:
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