Monday, July 08, 2013

Monday's Child

1.  NPR Planet Money:  Rhino horns and clean water....

2.  Division of labor:  A mouse, a bird, and a sausage walked into a house....

3.  Will Wilkinson on social norms.  (Via LeBron)

4.  Nice "deer fence."  Watch til the end, when they all come back.  They are extremely destructive, beautiful, delicious creatures.  (UPDATE: Note, link repaired)

5.  Risking one's life for ethnography.  I'm pretty sure Angus got a paper cut once, from some computer output.   I've never actually gotten hurt that way.
(more after the jump)




6.  "He makes me laugh; I like that."  But not if one if feeling competitive.

7.  "You gave me the wrong change...by more than $3,000.

8.  "Upon Further Review..."  On calling penalties, and challenges, in ACA.

9.  Sometimes, the comments are the best part.  Not always, but sometimes.  This is one of those times.  (And you will NOT find this on BrendanNyhan.com, folks!)

10.  ProTip:  If you want to be a ruthless behind-the-scenes despot, perhaps a name other than "El-Sissi" is in order.  Or on second thought, maybe that's the perfect disguise.

11.  I often hear the complaint that ObamaCo doesn't believe in capitalism.  But that's not true.  They believe in it too much, and expect it to be robust to enormous regulatory burdens.  They think that pricing commisars can simply dictate lower prices and that companies will take it out of their "excess profits."  But that's not really true.   The cool thing is that, after they squeeze all the private companies out, they will declare a market failure (from "excess greed", presumably) and just nationalize the thing, at much higher costs to the consumer/taxpayer.

12.  I expect that Angry Alex will be needing one of these....

13.  Matt Ridley on "choice."  Is "cobblers" bad?  UPDATE:  So you think YOU can cobble?

14.  King George takes questions on faltering counterinsurgency program....

15.  Another neo-con goofball realizes--about 11 years too late--that elections are not the same thing as democracy.  Where were you people during the build-up to attack Iraq and impose "democracy" by holding fake elections?

16.  Mississippi pretends to be anti-Bloomberg.  But in fact they are on the same team.  Who woulda thought?

17.  Economic costs of hangovers...

18.  It was a shame, how the USSR used to publish lies about how repressive the US was, in the Cold War days.  But it's even worse, now that Russia publishes the truth about how repressive the US is.   It's bad when your opponents simply have to quote you verbatim and in context.

19.  And she's climbing a stairway to ...nothing.

20.  Library censors web sites on pagan religions, on theory that some religions are more equal than others.  Librarian threatens to report researcher "to the proper authorities" if researcher asks sites to be unblocked.  You just can't make this stuff up:  this witch hunt is being conducted in SALEM, Missouri.

21.  Currency clause in the TPP:  That's messed up.

22.  SNAP is a genuinely bad program.  And the defenses that are offered are stupid.

And, in headlines:

1.  The Ward Boss sends this gem:  Pig in sweatpants found in man's hot, filthy car.
Yes, really. Note that this happened in Seattle.  Does Raoul have a pet pig?  Although this doesn't sound like him.  He dresses up his farmyard friends in lace teddies.

5 comments:

John Thacker said...

I believe that 11 years ago they were calling people who thought that Iraq couldn't have real elections racist.

Mungowitz said...

Well, JT, I think it depends on the reason. If you say that Iraq (Egypt, etc) can't have elections because they are Arab, then that's racist. If you say that no country can have elections unless they have rule of law, that's different. I would argue the latter.

Anonymous said...

"So you think you can cobble!"

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/So-you-think-you-can-cobble-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8476277_.htm

Simon Spero said...

It's Cockney rhyming slang; the base phrase is "cobblers' awls", glossing as "round objects".

[Who is Round, and to what does he object - HA]

Jack PQ said...

Why is SNAP a bad program? I'm sure it could be better targeted, but it seems to be a fairly straightforward food assistance deal. A while ago, my wife and I were in grad school, poor, and food assistance helped.

(I agree that the Dems' spin is laughable. It's called *supplemental*, jeez!)