In 12 months a guy traded up from one red paper clip to a house in Canada, and while the relative value of a house in Canada is debatable I’d say it’s greater than a red paper clip. What’s amazing to me is that it only took him 14 trades to do it. The jealousy referenced in my title isn’t for the Canadian house, but rather for the creativity exhibited by this guy. I wish I could think of stuff like this.
A 17 year old kid was mowing his lawn and grooving to Metallica on his iPod when he was struck by lightning. It burned the insides of his ears and then followed the wire from the earbuds down his side and then blew a hole in the back of the iPod, leaving a trail of burns as it traveled. You can read about it here and see a pretty nasty picture of the burns.
Maybe this is proof that Metallica is satan’s music.
Here’s a story that helps point out the danger of vigilante justice: a New York city cab driver lost control of his car and hit an 8-year old kid riding a bike. A crowd of onlookers pulled the driver from his car and proceeded to beat him silly until he managed to tell them that he lost control of his car because his passenger smacked him in the head with a metal bar in an attempt to rob him. That’s when the mob turned on the passenger and started beating him and tightened a belt around his neck thus becoming a form of lynch mob. The police eventually arrived and arrested the passenger and got the driver and the boy to the hospital. There’s no mention of anything happening to the members of the crowd who took justice into their own hands.
One of the great things about the "Internet Age" is the wealth of information that’s out there for free to anyone who’s looking for it, and one of the great tragedies of the "Internet Age" is that I have many fewer excuses for my own ignorance. Basically the only remaining explanation for my ignorance is my own lazy-ass habits. Exhibit A in support of this finding is this:
Dartmouth University has made the textbook Introduction to Probability available for free on its website. I’ve often mentioned that I’m mathematically challenged and really I should do something about it, but despite having this resource available to me I don’t feel the least bit tempted to study it. Why? Because I suspect it might be hard and for a lazy-ass guy like me that just isn’t gonna cut it. Now if they come out with a free "Probability for Dummies" we might be in business.
Update: I just checked the preface for the book and it contains the following:
This text is designed for an introductory probability course taken by sophomores, juniors, and seniors in mathematics, the physical and social sciences, engineering, and computer science. It presents a thorough treatment of probability ideas and techniques necessary for a firm understanding of the subject. The text can be used in a variety of course lengths, levels, and areas of emphasis.
For use in a standard one-term course, in which both discrete and continuous probability is covered, students should have taken as a prerequisite two terms of calculus, including an introduction to multiple integrals. In order to cover Chapter 11, which contains material on Markov chains, some knowledge of matrix theory is necessary.
I don’t think so.
There’s a pretty long and important article from the New Yorker about David Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and the purported architect and chief-defender of the Bush administration’s legal strategy in the "war on terrorism." Reading this piece reminded me of Benjamin Franklin’s famous and oft-quoted statement that "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
The article isn’t important just because it highlights a head henchman in the current regime, but also because it exposes exactly how far past historically established bounds our President has pushed his power. Most astonishing to me is how quickly these incursions occured because in my mind a lot of what had happened seemed to be incremental over the years since 2001. That was decidedly not so; the administration moved quickly and aggressively to exert expanded executive powers in 01-02 and most frighteningly did not seem to care whether or not is was legal. Bush, Cheney and their confidantes seemed to say "it’s legal because we say it is so, no matter what anyone in Congress thinks or for that matter what some of our own lawyers think."
The article was written well before the Supreme Court ruling last week that declared Bush’s military commission system illegal, so it will be interesting to see if this is just the first in a series of events that will reassert the balance of power between the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government or if it’s merely a hickup in the Bush/Cheney march to extreme executive power.
I’ve heard many of the administration’s supporters say that this is a time of war and extraordinary circumstances require the president to assert extraordinary war-time powers. This quote from Bruce Fein, who as an associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration I think best refutes that argument:
This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President’s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world’s a battlefield—according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.
Scary ain’t it? Hopefully the Supreme Court ruling signals that the balance of power is truly beginning to be corrected.
Anyone who has lived anywhere near an American city has had some contact with the homeless. My first real experience with the homeless was in Washington, DC in the summer of ’84 when I was working as an intern for NASFAA in their old offices just off of Dupont Circle. I spent a lot of time running errands, taking the Metro to Capitol Hill and walking the city in general. I don’t remember if it was ’84 or ’85 but the homeless situation got really bad when the city had to reduce crowding at Saint Elizabeths, the city’s mental institution, and so one day they just opened the gates and pushed a bunch of patients through. I vividly remember sitting in a park eating lunch with a bunch of other office workers and looking up to see a flood of the recently expelled patients walking towards us. To a person we all grabbed our stuff and walked as quickly as possible in the other direction.
I bring this up only to provide the context of my experience with the homeless. Most that I ran into in DC would fall into the category of people with severe problems that led to their homeless status: mental or physical disease, drug abuse, alcoholism. It was rare that you saw someone panhandling who looked like they were temporarily down on their luck and homelessness was their sole problem; almost all were homeless because of their primary problem. So when I came across this piece on WiredNews I was intrigued, especially by this quote from Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless:
“More have e-mail than have post office boxes,” Stoops said. “The internet has been a big boon to the homeless.”
This is fascinating to me because I wouldn’t have thought that a majority of the homeless would have the capability to work online given many of the aforementioned mental and emotional limitations I personally observed. Is this because I’ve had a very limited view of the homeless? Have I only seen a “hardcore” segment of the homeless population and missed a larger, less “damaged” homeless segment? Or is it that a majority of the homeless population can function intellectually for limited amounts of time but cannot do so consistently enough to hold down a job and function effectively in our increasingly complicated society?
Now I’m not surprised that more people have email addresses than PO boxes. They’re free and they can “move” with the individual. But I know many very successful people, the polar opposite of homeless, who become extremely flustered the moment they get in front of a computer or are asked to do something online. They can navigate modern society with the best of ’em but can’t figure out how to attach an image to an email if their lives depend on it. So how is it that these people who have such a hard time succeeding in our society can function online?
If nothing else reading this has caused me to question my preconceptions about homelessness. The issue is more complex than I thought and quite honestly it is slightly disturbing to me that I haven’t had cause to think about this in years. The phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” probably summarizes it well and that’s shameful. But what to do?
One of the most aggravating things about going to parties and such in Northern Virginia was that the first question anyone asked you was "So what do you do?" and then you could see them compartmentalize you after you answered (if they listened at all). With a lot of them if you were perceived to be below their status or of little future use then they tried to move on to someone else.
Brad Feld has a great answer for that most annoying of questions, and it got me to thinking about one of the first things I noticed when we moved to Winston-Salem two years ago. Instead of asking you what you do most people here ask you "Where’s your church?" I think they also compartmentalize you based on your answer, but I honestly think the motivation is to see if you have a church and if you don’t to invite you to theirs.
The result is that I don’t know what half the people here do for a living but I do know there’s a bunch of Methodists and Baptists running around. Kind of nice.
I’ve had my Dell laptop for about 3 1/2 years and until about three
months ago it was my everyday computer. It always ran a little hot and
the fan made a hell of a racket, but otherwise it performed pretty
well. Then it started acting hinky and I decided to get a desktop and
only use it when I was on the road for extended periods of time.
I came across this story about a Dell laptop that exploded and now I’m thinking I might need to unload the thing altogether. Scary.
Count me shocked, no stunned, that researchers have found that teenagers lie about sex and abstinence. Or is it abstinence and sex? Either way if you’re a social conservative who regularly touts statistics as proof of the efficacy of abstinence campaigns you may want to revise your numbers. Here’s the story.
An economist from the University of Maryland has written a piece in the Washington Post that argues for keeping the alternative minimum tax (AMT). His argument, in a nutshell, is that if the AMT is allowed to stay in place, and if the temporary raise in the standard exemption is allowed to return to $45,000 for a couples and $33,750 for individuals (the new tax bill raises the standard exemption to $62,550 and $42,500 respectively for one year) with inflation there will eventually be a flat tax in place. So for once we would have gradual tax reform without Congress having to do anything. The result:
If the present AMT rates were applied as a universal flat tax — and especially if the AMT exemption were reduced and certain remaining AMT exclusions eliminated — the resulting federal revenue might even come to exceed current expenditure levels. The solution would then be to reduce the flat tax rate (the AMT rate) so that revenue and expenditures were brought back into balance.
In the longer run, the AMT could open the way to more radical reforms that might even change the basic nature of Washington spending habits. One option would be as follows: Each year the president would submit his budget proposal, and Congress, in response, would enact final appropriations. A neutral expert commission would then estimate the resulting federal revenue requirements, and a new flat tax rate, calculated to balance the budget, would be set for the forthcoming tax year. If Congress wanted to go on a spending spree, taxpayers would see the consequences directly and immediately in their pocketbooks.
The Social Security system is another area in which the AMT might facilitate radical change. Social Security taxes could be abolished and the flat tax adjusted upward to compensate for the lost revenue. The Social Security trust fund is largely an accounting fiction, and it is time to integrate the Social Security tax with the income tax system. Alternatively, Social Security tax payments could become a deductible credit from the required AMT payment.
Befuddled 