Friday Mid-Day Blogging

Sparse lately, I know. About to make up for it though.

How Texas avoided the real estate meltdown. I've already some folks who are skeptical, but it's worth reading anyway.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker undressing the government's numbers on ObamaCare. I've already posted my thoughts on this, but I'll say it again. Anyone who thinks the health reform bill will lower the deficit either a) has not looked at the analysis, b) is a partisan, or c) is really dumb.

Equality shoes.

The world's weirdest vending machines (slidewhow).

Nissan Leaf priced at $32,780. I'll be interested to see how sales go. This would definitely be on my short list for cars if not for the dogs, but I think being an early adopter, in this case at least, has more drawbacks than benefits. I'm sure Austin will make a push to ensure that recharge stations are available, so it might be more practical here than elsewhere.

Speaking of cars, I'm probably going to be getting rid of my beloved Frijole Negra (Mazdaspeed 3) and getting an SUV. Short list right now is Audi Q7, Mazda CX-9, and the Buick Enclave (yes, a Buick), but just getting started on the research.

Hello Kitty wine. Vomit.

Amare Stoudemire posterizes Anthony Tolliver. Vicious dunk.

Rare photos of life inside North Korea.

Apparently, the Taliban suck at shooting.

Saturday AM Blogging

Private equity jumps into the health care arena. Here is one blogger's take.

Obama plan to rescue homeowners. I have huge problems with this approach, and I'll let Keith Hennessey tell you why. "Imagine twin brothers, each with $180K of annual income. One rents, and the other has a $700,000 mortgage on a home that declined from $800,000 in value to $600,000 in value. Both brothers lose their jobs. Why should the renter pay higher taxes to subsidize his brother’s mortgage payments?"

Why women don't want macho men. Interesting article in the WSJ on evoultionary psychology and some recent studies. "After crunching the data—including the women's facial preferences, their country of origin and that country's national health index—the Face Lab researchers proved something remarkable. They could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation's World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease."

Good graph showing how the health care bill is being financed. By the way, I mean that the graph itself is good. The actual financing of the bill is a joke.

Mexican police chief decapitated by cartel. I'm sure if we just keep doing what we've been doing that this will stop eventually, right?

Religious stampedes kill the most people. "Over the past 30 years, stampedes have killed at least 7,000 people and injured another 14,000. That's the conclusion that Edbert Hsu (Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) and colleagues reached after a painstaking trawl of news reports in the world's English-language media."

Ha...this is pretty cool, especially if you shop on Amazon as often as I do. (via The Agitator).

Friday

Every time I think our press corps could not suck any harder than they already do, they write something like this.

Sprint's new HTC Evo, it's first Wimax phone.

Ezra Klein on the menu labeling provision in the health care reform bill. Since most of this info is already available if you ask, I,m not a huge fan of micro-managing how restaurants have to display this.

Fascinating online dating statistics.

Indian military weaponizes world's hottest chili. I actually heard an interview on NPR yesterday with the owner of a burger joint in San Antonio that serves a burger with these chiles. He said that customers have to sign a waiver, that they have had to call EMS a few times, and that the cooks have to use gloves when preparing and that they have had to clear the restaurant a few times when they have been left on the grill too long.

The business model of Somali pirates. I love stuff like this.

Thursday

That doesn't exactly inspire confidence. No case citations in Florida health care lawsuit.

Picture of Russian Blackjack Bombers Over Scotland.

Take the DSM-V Disorder Quiz.

The Great Baseball Card Bubble. I was a huge baseball card collector. I went to the shows, built sets, order rookie cards in packs of 100. I LOVED baseball. Growing up in Wisconsin, my brothers would challenge me to games in the dead of winter and it was on....in three feet of snow. My first job was as a paperboy and it was, by far, the best job I ever had. I made like $800 a month as an 8th grader and I think I spent about 90% of it on baseball cards.

Texas first out of the recession. I'm sure it's just an accident.

I don't know if this is serious, but it made me laugh out loud. Is the new tanning tax racist?

Hmmm....More Foreclosures, Please.

Wed Links

How the tablet PC will change the world.

Tyler Cowen on health care reform. My response: It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Via Radley Balko, the awesomeness of Axecop. Axecop is a comic written by a 5-year old and illustrated by a 29-year old. It's outstanding.

Health reform caluclator to find out how it affects you.

Why does Italian academia suck?

Pretty good interview with the world's best chess player, 19-year old Magnus Carlsen. He seems to be pretty grounded. Aware that he is awesome at chess, aware that there are other things in life.

Health Care Reform

Well, the bill is passed and signed into law. I've read a lot about the content of the bill in the press just to see what is getting reported and what is not. I wrote previously on some of the problems I see with the bill, but it was pretty brief. So now I'll give you a litany of reasons, but I'll start with a positive of the bill.

The bill definitely expands coverage to a number of people. Whether we will be able to afford to subsidize that coverage for long is another questions, as is whether people will be able to find a provider and what level of quality we will be able to provide. Of the may problems in the bill, which I'll get into below, I think the biggest one that has gone undiscussed is the lunacy of many of th CBO assumptions. CBOs scoring of the bill is allowing the President and the Democrats to declare that the bill will actually reduce the deficit. It won't and everybody at CBO and among the Democratic leadership knows this for a fact. I'll get into that below.

Medicaid expansion. Many providers don't take Medicaid right now due to the low reimbursement rates and because Medicaid patients are notorious for no-showing (a result, IMHO, of contribtuing nothing to the cost of their care). The bill includes a massive expansion of Medicaid. Now we can give everyone a piece of paper that says they have coverage, but that doesn't make it so. The final package also includes a bump in Medicaid provider rates to Medicare levels, but only for a short period of time after which the states get to pick up the tab.

Individual mandate. It's weak. So weak that it will not accomplish anything close to what Democrats are claiming it will. The math just doesn't make sense. If you have a choice between spending thousands of dollars on health insurance premiums or paying a small fine, the choice is pretty clear. This is especially true when you take into account the requirements that insurers not underwrite for pre-exisiting conditions and must sell policies at artifically low rates. People will be making a wise choice to put off purchasing coverage until they get sick.

Adverse selection. A corollary of the weakness of the individual mandate. Individual premiums will go up, and not by a little, despite the CBO estimates (more on that below).

Medicare. No SGR fix. This was removed from the bill only to improve scoring. The assumption that Medicare will go forward without a problem as providers face massive cuts in reimbursement rates is a fallacy.

The accounting tricks. See here for just a few.

CBO Assumptions. Where to begin?

• For starters, CBO makes a number of predictions about individual and employer behavior in response to the law. They have to in order to score the bill. But it's a complete and total guess and they basically just make it up. Don't believe me, well believe Uwe.
• CBO assumes individual rates will go up by around 10%. But this is how they get there. They assume the cost of policies will go up 30% based on new benefit levels, then they assume that changes to insurance regulation and an increase in those with coverage would offset that by 20% resulting in a net 10% increase. Here's the problem, there is plenty of info to support the changes of the bill causing individual rates to go up by 30%, but the assumptions offsetting that by 20% are guesses.
• The CBO assumes the individual mandate will be effective. I don't know why as the math makes it a pretty simple decision to forego coverage.
• The CBO ignores the impact of substantial new taxes on GDP.
• The CBO assumes that the independent Medicare commission will effectively control costs. Again, this is just made up, literally. They have zero evidence to support this conclusion.
• The CBO assumes Medicare costs will drop significantly but notes that it may be due to greater efficiencies or lower quality....they aren't sure. This is kind of like the SGR problem. They assume lower costs for scoring purposes and then threaten to make the reductions, but they don't follow through. If the reductions don't materialize there is no repercussion. Congress will just spend anyway. This is how government accounting works.
• The CBO bases the premium subsidies necessary on projected cost increases in health insurance. This is just another case of them assuming costs will be lower, despite the lack of cost controls actually in the bill. The result will be that ever higher tax support will be needed to fund premium subsidies, or the subsidies will by less coverage. But since there is a required floor in coverage, there is only so far you can buy down benefits before subsidies have to be increased.

Cost controls. There isn't really too much in the bill to control costs. Ezra Klein talks about the most important ones, but it's a pretty weak list. The exchanges have some promise, but I don't think of them as a real cost control measure, especially when you take into account the required benefit levels whcih is going to drive how much a premium costs. The Medicare Commission? Time will tell, but put me down as skeptical. I won't discount it, but I think we have seen efforts like this before and Congress can basically override them. The excise tax is actually a good idea, but it is set so far out and so high that it will be a while before we know. I'd also bet that it never actually happens. Medicare bundling has some promise, but it's not a cost control in and of itself. It's good policy though and we need to move in that direction, but I'd count this as equal parts quality and cost control right now. Changing the politics of reform. This one is just pathetic. I know he's grasping, but come on.

This is a short list. There is a lot more in there which is problematic, especially on the insurance reform side, but this will do for now.

Vegas Redux

Vegas was both brutal and fun. Some observations:

1) I lost a lot of money.
2) Whoever invented bottle service is a genius. Evil, but a genius.
3) Nove Italiano is still one of the best restaurants in Vegas
4) I'm not a big night club guy, but Tryst at the Wynn was very cool.
5) I think a total of three points in games cost me about $2000. These guys who set the odds, they're good at it.

Wed- Sports heavy

In honor of March Madness, today's post will be basketball heavy.

I've already ordered Michael Lewis' new book The The Big Short, but WSJ says just read this Harvard undergrad's thesis. Pretty impressive.

Where US foreign aid goes.

The real life Matrix.

Erin Andrews' ordeal comes to an end, kind of.

Congratulations to Houston Yates for winning the Texas state championship. They are currently ranked #1 in the country on MaxPreps and they broke the national record for consecutive games scoring 100+ points. They took some grief for running up the score on some teams. Well, I finally got a chance to see them play and wow are they good. They press the entire game and just run waves of people off the bench. Hard to explain how difficult it is to play against a team like that. Even if you have superior talent, it is tough to win because you kind of have to play their style and the problem with that is that is is "their" style. They practice it every day and you don't.

College basketball's most valuable teams.

NYT article on the nun who keeps Xavier basketball players graduating. "Xavier, a Jesuit university in Cincinnati, is entering the N.C.A.A. tournament seeded sixth in the West Region with a 24-8 record. But Sister Rose Ann Fleming is a perfect 77-0. Since she became the academic adviser for Xavier athletics in 1985, every men’s basketball player who has played as a senior has left with a diploma." That is incredible.

The UConn women have now won 72 games in a row (breaking their record of 70) and have won all of those games by double digits. That's phenomenal. Unfortunately, this guy is right.

In Which My Wife Makes an Excellent Point

So my wife and I were discussing the travails of Rep. Eric Massa. I pick it up in mid-conversation.

Leigh: Well, he's obviously gay.

Me: It doesn't necessarily mean he's gay.

Leigh: Have you ever tickled any of your friends?

Me: (long pause) No.

Leigh: Ok then.

I lose. Slate tackles the story on tickling here.

Sunday Morning

Still upset about that lost hour of sleep. On to it.

The 50 best websites of 2009. Somehow, I did not make the list.

Jonathan Cohn on how the health care vote will proceed. From the post: "As I've said before, the point of holding one vote rather than two is to spare House members an explicit vote on the Senate bill. And, as I've said before, that seems utterly pointless to me. Come November, the distinction between voting for a bill directly and voting for a bill indirectly, via "deeming," isn't going to make much difference." I could not disagree more. One of the takeaways from the MA Senate race was that people were not just displeased with the content of the bill, they were especially displeased with the process. The "backroom deals", the "Cornhusker kickback", the "Gator Aid", the proposal to use reconciliation, etc. Utilizing the "Slaughter solution", which basically allows the House to deem the Senate bill passed rather than voting on it directly, allows Republicans to attack the process. The Democratic leadership seems content to go back home and contest elections on the merits of the bill. I'm not sure they want to defend the merits and the accusations that they used a corrupt process to get it done. Seems like a blunder to me if they do.

NYT article on the rise of for-profit trade schools.

Nissan GTR smokes the Bentley Supersports. GTR costs under $80K, the Bentley upwards of $250K. I report, you decide.

Funny police composite sketches.

Parody Becomes Reality

Here is Nancy Pelosi commenting on the need for health care "reform":

"Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance."

Here is the post from Stuff White People Like on free health care:

"But the secret reason why all white people love socialized medicine is that they all love the idea of receiving health care without having a full-time job. This would allow them to work as a freelance designer/consultant/copywriter/photographer/blogger, open their own bookstore, stay at home with their kids, or be a part of an Internet start-up without having to worry about a benefits package. Though many of them would never follow this path, they appreciate having the option."

Sat Morning

Going to look at some dogs today. Been a rough year around the Wolfe household as we have lost three of our dear pets (actually a rough 18 months). Looking at all the pictures of the dogs at the rescue agencies makes me both happy and sad. Happy that I know we'll be giving an animal a great home (seriously, you don't even understand how much we spoil them). Sad because I can't save them all. In other news, I'm heading to Vegas next week with a group of friends for the opening weekend of March Madness. Cannot wait. On to it.

Absolutely disgusting dunk by J.R. Smith.

Woman turns three shares of Abbott into $7 million simply by reinvesting dividends.

Athletes going broke stories. "Almost 80 percent of National Football League players are flirting with bankruptcy two years after they retire, according to Sports Illustrated. NBA players aren’t faring much better. 60 percent of former National Basketball Association players end up broke within five years of retirement."

Some light weekend reading of the Examiner's Report on the Lehman meltdown. Here's a good short version. The report is 2200 pages long, but I'm definitely going to slog through it.

Add Tom Hanks to the list of morons in Hollywood.

HeeHee.

Felix Salmon said this is the best thing written about regulation of credit default swaps, so read it.

The new Audi R8 Spyder, yet another car I will never own.

Friday

Bruce Bartlett on the national debt. James Galbraith in defense of deficits. Galbraith is wrong about why Wall Street hates deficits and his attempt at explaining why they do is pretty pathetic. He also hand waves away the problems that come from massive deficit spending, but he also makes some very valid points about deficits. In particular, the difference between government spending and household spending. "It may seem like homely wisdom, especially, to say that "just like the family, the government can't live beyond its means." But it's not. In these matters the public and private sectors differ on a very basic point. Your family needs income in order to pay its debts. Your government does not."

Greg Mankiw succinctly explains why claims of "deficit neutrality" on the health reform bill miss the point. I'd also add that the deficit reduction the health reform bill purports to achieve assumes that CBO assumptions are correct. If this were purely a case of CBO measuring expenditures versus revenue I'd give it more weight, but CBO is also engaged in trying to predict behavior of individuals if the bill passes and they have ZERO expertise in this.

Really bad cars. Notice anything?

About damn time.

Awesome video of street fighter laying the smack down on a gang of guys.

Arne Duncan is a really smart guy, but this is probably the dumbest sentence I've read this week: "The cost of college should never discourage anyone from going after a valuable degree."

Tribune Company CEO bans certain words from being used. Stupid? Probably, but read the list. He may doing a public service. How did "game changer" not make the list?

Megan McCardle on "green jobs". "But green jobs have become the ginseng of progressive politics: a sort of broad-spectrum snake oil that cures whatever happens to ail you. They are the antidote to economic malaise, an underskilled labor force, the inherent unwillingness of the public to suffer any significant economic and personal dislocation in order to save the environment. They enhance nationalistic vigor. (If we don't act now, the Chinese will steal all of our green jobs!) They stave off aging of stale political platforms. And I'm pretty sure they're good for bunions, too." It's like favoring "multi-lateralism" in foreign policy.

Thursday

I know I've been bad lately. Sporadic. They've been making me work. Anyway, on to it.

The Art of Chess. Crazy chess sets.

What if everybody in Canada flushed at once? Awesome graph of water consumption from the US v Canada hockey game which, by some accounts, was watched by 80% of Canadians.

The world's most beautiful college campuses.

Somehow it doesn't bother me when my industry is criticized by these people. I guess they are not content with having destroyed the auto industry, California, and public education in the United States.

National memory championship. "Mostly won by Britons, last year's world championship was clinched by Briton Ben Pridmore, who memorized a randomly shuffled deck of 52 cards in 24 seconds."

6 of the 10 richest counties in the country are in the D.C. area. Gee, I wonder why.

A debate between Van Jones and Andrew Morriss on green jobs over at The Economist.

8 Unconventional Ways to be Buried.

This is old, but I still love it. Absurd escapes from the old G.I. Joe cartoon.

Saturday

Keith Hennessey explains the mechanics of the two bill strategy for health care reform, then h explains the challenges of that strategy.

In defense of Sean Penn's work in Haiti. Good for him.

Wal-Mart pushing its suppliers to meet environmental standards. "We heard that in the future, to become a Wal-Mart supplier, you have to be an environmentally friendly company," Fung said. "So we switched some of our products and the way we produced them."

From Wired, The Future of Money. Banks and credit cards have had a virtual monopoly on the ability to move money around. This is an interesting take on how that may soon come to an end.

Clausen Puts NFL Teams in a Pickle. Since I'm a huge Domer, I've watched Clausen more than most NFL scouts, certainly more than the average football viewer. My take on him: Clausen is almost perfect technically, his throwing motion is textbook, though his release is a little long because I think he has an average arm (by NFL standards). He throws fades as well as any college QB I've seen. Immature and cocky has been the rap. I really don't know anything about that part, but his teammates defend him and I also watched him take a brutal beating for two years behind one of the worst offensive lines I've ever seen and always get up and never complain. I think it will be his physical limitatiomns that will be a problem, not the other stuff.

NPR story on sexual assaults on college campuses. "He found them by, over a 20-year period, asking some 2,000 men in college questions like this: "Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated [on alcohol or drugs] to resist your sexual advances?" Or: "Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn't want to because you used physical force [twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.] if they didn't cooperate?" About 1 in 16 men answered "yes" to these or similar questions."

Photo essay of Iraq as it prepares to vote.

Friday

Monsieur IOZ bitch slaps Thomas Friedman. By the way, IOZ is a gay, nihilist, who writes one of the funniest blogs around. I have to keep my Merriam-Webster link open when I read it though because his vocabulary is expansive.

The Day Trader's Paradise. "Originally there was to be 60 monitors, a mix of 19s and 24s however, it changed a bit and there is now 40 24" monitors and another 20 monitors offsite for development. There is six computers running all the monitors, each computer has a core i7 975, 24 gb of DDR 3 memory, two SLC SSDs in raid 0 and a large amount of nvidia NVS 420s as well as Nvidia 9800 GTs." Pfff....only 40 monitors.

How to save $148 on an iPod touch.

India's Overworked Elephants. This is sad.

Cars I want That My Wife Will never Let Me Purchase Update: Lotus Evora and the Porsche 918. By the way, the Porsche is a hybrid that gets 78mpg and gets you 0-60 in 3,2 seconds.

What Adam Smith thought of the role for government.

Sunday

Hamas U. (from the Boston Globe). Interesting story about the rise of Islam in Gaza and the Islamic University of Gaza.

DNA Deception. "A Texas Tribune review of nine years' worth of e-mails and internal documents on the Department of State Health Services’ newborn blood screening program reveals the transfer of hundreds of infant blood spots to an Armed Forces lab to build a national and, someday, international mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) registry." Who the hell signed off on this?

Obama Bullshit bingo. Great idea for staying awake during Obama speeches.

Federal spending as a share of GDP chart. "Obama’s budget shows that interest payments will start rising rapidly next year and hit 3 percent of GDP by 2015. And that’s an optimistic projection."

The coming collapse of the commercial real estate market.

The story behind five banned toys and games (Popular Mechanics). I like lawn darts.

One cool thing for foodies in Austin has been the rise of some awesome food carts. Here's a website dedicated to them. G'Raj Mahal has become one of my favorite places in Austin, especially since it is right next to Clive, which is also very cool.

I didn't think they had a depp run in them this year because the talent mix on the team is just weird, but what the hell has happened to my Horns?

The Best Investment

In these uncertain economic times, the best investment is clearly a new car (right honey?). I gove you the Maserati GranTurismo convertible which might be the most beautiful car I have ever seen.

Saturday

Crazy week around here. Committee hearings, travel, and hardwoods installed at the house so didn't get a chance to post anything. Pretty lame week anyway.

8.8 quake hits Chile. That's hundreds of times more pwerful than the quake that hit Haiti. We'll see a slew of articles over the next few weeks comapring the two, but we're about to see the difference between countries with infrastructure.

I think this initiative by the Obama administration is wrongheaded. First, it's a complete sop to organized labor which is apparenty not content with destroying California and Michigan. Second, I'll let Alex Tabarrok explain the objections. Short version: "long term consequences of creating a dual labor market in which insiders with government or government-connected jobs are highly paid and secure while outsiders face high unemployment rates, low wages and part-time work without a career path."

The Exile goes under. This is too bad. I discovered The Exile when I started reading The War Nerd column. If you ever get a chance just sit down on some weekend and read all of his columns. They are awesome. The War Nerd, Gary Brecher, writes about various conflicts all over the world and he has spent most of his life just studying war.

This article had me at "an iceberg about the size of Luxembourg".

Cool photos of lions, but the dedication of the photographer in getting the pictures is pretty crazy.

Boozy ape sent to rehab. I would add more, but the headline pretty much tells you all you need to know since it is about a boozy ape (he also smokes) who gets sent to rehab.

Mark Cuban pwns Al Franken.

Obama Facebook updates. This is pretty funny.

This, however, is not funny. From the NYT, Infections Unfazed by Antibiotics.

Monday

Enjoy wine more by overpaying. "In one experiment, Mr. Hodgson served 100 wines to actual California State Fair Wine Competition judges, over the course of four years. The tastings were blind, and each judge was presented the same wine three times, each time from the same exact bottle. What Mr. Hodgson found was remarkable: On a 20-point rating scale, from 80-100, judges typically varied in their ratings of the same wine by plus-or-minus four points. The same wine could be rated a 90, an 86, and a 94, all by the same judge in the same year." A nice find here was the essay by Richard Quandt that is referenced in the article- On Wine Bullshit.

Great article on the size of international remittances. It's estimated at $338 billion which is staggering, especially when you consider all foreign aid equals about $100 billion (per the article). Money quote: "Pritchett recently calculated that sending 3,000 Bangladeshis to work to the United States for a year would provide more capital for Bangladesh than a year’s worth of loans from the celebrated Grameen Bank – the microfinance lender whose founder, Mohammed Yunus, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. “If I get 3,000 Bangladeshi workers into the US,” Pritchett asked facetiously in a recent lecture, “do I get a Nobel?”

Two very good posts from Mark Cuban on understanding salary caps and risk management in sports. The second one is really interesting, don't let the risk management thing deter you.

Just read this.

Fareed Zakaria on why Iran can be deterred.

Saturday

The top five cities for green jobs, via CAP. Detroit and San Francisco are two of the worst run cities in America. Portland strikes me as being a lot like Austin, except with rain. New York basically runs like a Scandinavian welfare state with high taxes on big earners and a ton of people on public assistance or with municipal jobs. And Boston, of course, rules.

His-panic. Article from American Conservative on the myth of high Latino and immigrant crime rates. I'm withholding judgment until my brother, a self-appointed expert on crime statistics, gives me his take. His initial thought was that it was sloppy.

The Chemist's War. Wow. Today's must read. Story about how the US government actually poisoned alcohol during Prohibition.

Daryl Morey is a badass and one of the reasons I'm quickly becoming a Rockets fan. Kevin Martin is a heart throb among all the people enamored with PERs, Hilton Armstrong is a nice, athletic big, Jared Jeffries is an elite defender (and has the best first name possible), the draft picks are huge, and I think Jordan Hill may be the most underrated part of this deal. Yes, giving up Landry sucks, but the Rockets clearly come out on top in this trade.

America's best health care economist discussing cost controls. I think he actually takes it pretty easy on Rove here. The "buying insurance across state lines" idea has never made a ton of sense to me. I'm with Reinhardt on it, it's probably not a bad idea, but you're really not going to get much savings out of it. Part of the fantasy of health care reformers, both conservative and liberal, is that there is some way of tinkering with the regulation that will somehow radically reduce the cost. There isn't.

"Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, and more than half disagree with the theory that humans developed from earlier species of animals, according to the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll." Here.

Friday

Obviously, it's not a justification for flying a plane into a building, or for violence of any sort, but the law in question does seem unfair.

Yes we can!

I can't tell if this is real, but if it is real then I'm really concerned for my country.

Roger Ebert profile in in Esquire. He's battling cancer right now and has lost the ability to speak.

Do spies and assassins really wear fake beards? They sure do.

The World's 18 Strangest Airports.

The importance of vacations. “The practical lesson for an individual is that you derive most of your happiness from anticipating the holiday trip,” he said.

I Love Kevin Durant

From Bill Simmons:

"Let's leave out the historical possibilities this time around. (You know, like the fact that he's already at 5,000 career points, that no forward has ever averaged 30 points a game three times and he might do it 10 or 12, that he might have a 37 PPG or a 55-45-95 shooting percentage season lurking in him, etc.) Just look at this particular season. How is Durant not our No. 2 choice for MVP?

The young Zombies have quietly climbed to 30-21 and third in the league in defensive field goal percentage. Durant goes into every game knowing two things: (1) There's a decent chance nobody else on my team will make more than five baskets tonight; and (2) If I suck, we almost definitely will lose. They're 17-8 in their past 25 games; he has scored at least 25 in every game, racked up 29-plus points in all but three and averaged 32.4 PPG (first in NBA in that span), 7.8 RPG, 52.3 FG percent, 88.6 FT percent (third) and 51.9 3FG percent (first, minimum 50 attempts). His plus/minus in those 25 games is plus-194, second only to LeBron. His team is improbably headed for 48-50 wins in a loaded Western Conference, with a top four that's 21, 21, 23 and 20 years old, without anyone averaging even 6.4 rebounds or 1.1 blocks a game. And Durant has scored nearly as many points as his best two teammates combined. I could go on and on. Other than LeBron/Cleveland, Durant means more to that team than anyone else means to any other 2010 team. You can't tell me differently.

UNSTOPPABLE

Players who scored 25-plus points in at least 25 consecutive games over the past 30 years.

Player	Streak	Dates
Kevin Durant, Thunder	25	Dec. 2009-Feb. 2010
Allen Iverson, Sixers	27	Jan.-March 2001
Michael Jordan, Bulls	40	March 1988-Dec. 1988
Michael Jordan, Bulls	40	Dec. 1986-March 1987

Thursday

Didn't find too much interesting to post for a few days. Plus, I actually had to work.

Awesome kid gets detention for being hilarious.

Cavs get Jamison. I think this is a way better pick up for the Cavs then Stoudemire would have been. Jamison is probably a better rebounder, he's a crafty scorer, good teammate, and he fits in with Shaq on the frontline much better.

The $555,000 student loan burden. Finding it hard to muster too much sympathy for this doctor who made a number of terrible decisions and then basically said "maybe some of it was my fault."

Holy Rasputin! Marine cheats death, many times.

Why Google failed in China. Some interesting facts about Chinese Internet users and how they differ from Internet users in other countries.

Canadians choose bacon over sex. At least, 43% of them did.

The use of food by police during interrogation.

Sunday links

A Stone Age Subculture Takes Shape in the US. From Der Speigel, about the folks who are going back to the caveman diet. One thing I think such people ignore is how bad it must have sucked to be a caveman.

Torture Lawyers on Trial (from The Nation). I don't consider them to be a particularly credible news source, but I think the legal ramifications of whether a government lawyer can be disciplined or prosecuted (not to mention whether they can be prosecuted in a foreign court) for developing a legal strategy are pretty important.

The Fable of Market Meritocracy. It seems to offend some people that the market rewards people they believe lack "merit". I would think those people would be cheered by the fact that you can be an idiot in the overall sense and still get rich.

The 5 Most Notorious Recalls of All Time.

The case against banning the word "retard." I don't understand the idea that we should not use certain words because people have taken the original meaning and turned into a term of derision. That seems backwards. I mean I get that using the N-word or dropping random F-bombs is frowned upon, but those are intended to offend.

Saturday (but really Friday's)

Well, my wife accurately pointed out that one of the reason my blog sucks (there are many) is that my links never really describe what's in the article very well. So I'll try to do a better job.

A simple health care fix fizzles out. The current health care system we have really does not concern itself much with results. That's primarily because the reimbursement system for providers really doesn't have anything to do with results. The system rewards volume and high cost interventions (often ones that are not too effective).

In honor of the Winter Olympics, a slideshow of the 10 hottest female athletes participating.

Are snobby bicyclists their own worst enemy? Let me go ahead and answer that. Yes. It will be interesting if more "normals" start biking. Then biking won't be hipster enough anymore and they'll have to find something else that makes them special.

How do you judge a camel beauty contest? Yeah, it really is about camel beauty contests. "We are looking for camels with big heads, firm ears, broad cheeks and big whiskers. There is no single important thing - the neck and body should be long, the hump and the back should be big, and we also look at the colour and posture of the camel."

The best shooters in the NBA. If I were teaching someone to shoot...let me start again. If someone was dumb enough to ask me to teach them how to shoot, I would tell them to watch Ray Allen. He has one of the most beautiful jump shots you will ever see. Steve Nash's isn't as pretty, but as you see in the link, his numbers make it pretty clear he's the best shooter.

Crazy, crazy article from the NYT on the "My Way" killings in the Philippines. From the story:
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Awesome pictures of sled dogs.

Depressing Wednesday

Goldman v. AIG

Schools and sex abuse in Sierra Leone.

More higher education bashing

A new era of joblessness?

Third hand smoke.

Please, make him stop.

Monday Morning

Colts lost. Pretty sure the biggest turning point in the game was that I had picked the Colts to win. The onside kick and the interception return for a touchdown were big, but you can overcome that kind of mistake. What you can't overcome are the cosmic forces involved when I wager on a game. Oh yeah, congrats to the Saints, that's a nice story. So, onto some interesting links.

"The unpalatable reality that few, self interested industry participants are prepared to admit is that much of what passes for financial innovation is specifically designed to conceal risk, obfuscate investors and reduce transparency. The process is entirely deliberate. Efficiency and transparency is not consistent with the high profit margins on Wall Street and the City. Financial products need to be opaque and priced inefficiently to produce excessive profits." That's Satyajit Das from his recent blog post on the current proposal to regulative derivatives. He's considered an expert on CDS'.

This is pretty interesting. Graph of how many second mortgages are held by large financial institutions and why that complicates any plan to modify first mortgages. I was not aware that the Big Four held such a high percentage.

Fire department's charging for services. Pretty outrageous if you ask me. I think this does raise a lot of questions about spending priorities and crowding out of certain priorities.

Looks like over 100 million people watched the Super Bowl. Crazy. The NFL is so much more popular than any other sport in the US. I wonder how fans will react if the anticipated breakdown between the owners and the NFLPA comes to pass. I mean people did not really care when the NHL pulled this, and they cared about it a bit when baseball did it, but neither of those sports are anywhere close to the NFL in popularity or ratings.

Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor. The sheriff in this story should be fired.

Glad everyone got so riled up about that Tebow ad. By the way, I don't get offended like some people do by the Super Bowl ads and their supposed misogyny, but I am pretty sick and tired "be a man" type ads. They are annoying, usually unfunny, insulting to both sexes, and tired. If they were funny I could live with the other stuff.

Super Bowl Sunday

The myth of CPR

NYT article on gender imbalances on college campuses and the impact on dating. My BS detector went off a bit reading this. Favorite quote is from a Ms. Jayne Dallas who is a senior and offers the following: "Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent”. Nice math skills.

Ryanair and the shafting of your customers as a reputational strategy.

America's dismal record ending wars.

I'm taking the Colts.

Friday Stuff- Lots!

D's like socialism. I've never understood why people get so bent out of shape about people calling Obama, or other politicians, socialists. I mean, he is. He's not the murderous red type, but his political and economic beliefs are pretty similar to your boilerplate Eurostyle socialist parties which, by the way, openly run as socialists.

Interesting NYT article on Haitian emigres.

This is really, really disturbing. Really.

Yikes. 25 foot crocodile that has eaten over 200 people.

Innocence Project clears 250th person wrongfully convicted.

Cool pictures of Pluto.

Antidepressants no more effective than placebos.

If Colleges (or Air Tavel) Worked Like Health Care.

Guy's wife cries at every movie. He records it and puts it on youtube. Then he started his own site.

Why single women eat salad.

Tuesday Night

What's a degree really worth. (Wall Street Journal). I've often been thankful for how easy I got off relative to today's students. I came out of five years of college (Super senior!) with "only" about $20K in debt. A lot of that was due to scholarships and grants, but it still seemed a manageable level of debt. I have many friends that are managing $75K+ in debt. In my house it was just assumed that we were all going to college (my dad's an academic). I wonder if that would be true today. Probably so. But it sure is crazy to read about college tuition levels today.

Pretty good article on the NFL labor negotiations. Money quote: "If we can't get this resolved, we will collectively be the dumbest people on the planet."

Keith Hennessey on Obama's budget.

The World's 25 Dirtiest Cities. Africa is well represented.

Rasmussen poll from the Texas Governor's race.

Tuesday

What's the matter with you Americans?

Fall out from credit card industry "reform". Click on the links in the story too, they're interesting.

How to fall 35,000 feet- and survive.

North Korea vs. South Korea from satellite. Any questions?

Good grief. Who is waging the war on science again?

Saturday Night Stuff

Just watched "Up". It was awesome, you should watch it.

Moron. Seriously, how does this guy have a column? I could learn as much listening to dorm room conversations.

Axe body spray. Hahahahahahahaha. Stuff makes Drakkar seem like a subtle touch of class.

Growing Share of Americans' Income Comes From Government.

CNET's review of the IPad. I'll probably wait a little bit.

Here's a picture of a dinosaur.

Wednesday Wamblings

Barnes & Noble customer "service".

Food carts in Austin.

This seems like a reasoned and well thought out response.

I feel pretty certain that our robed masters are going to be the hammer on this issue.

A Tale of Two Cheaters.

Looks like my crazy ass brother was right about cell phones. Doh.

We spend a lot on the military.

Tuesday Tidbits

The Rise of Dog Identity Politics

Hatch-Schumer Payroll Tax Cut Plan.

The Problems With the Bank Tax.

Ulysses S. Grant. Underrated.

Public Priorities of People from Pew.

Pants on the Ground.

Monday Interesting Stuff

Will Wilkinson pwns Paul Krugman

What is prop trading?

"The government has chronically oversubsidized Mortgage lending and home ownership."

Women aren't big enough jerks according to this guy.

Sunday Interesting Stuff

Why do women have trouble negotiating?

Everything you want to know about the budget reconciliation process.

Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to do Harm.

Difficulty of regulating prop trading.

Matt Welch on the Citizens United case.

Interesting stuff

Garry Kasparov article on chess and artificial intelligence. Great read.

Mexico's economy is hugely dependent on the drug trade.

Biggest time suck ever. My Africa geography is getting much better though.

Toyota FT-86 concept.

Slime Mold Beats Humans at Perfecting Traffic.

Moscow's Stray Dogs.

Citizens United v. FEC

Predictably, there has been the hue and cry from all members of the press and the Lefty blogosphere about how the Citizens United v. FEC decisions will lead to the downfall of the United States. I was in the process of writing my own very lengthy post regarding the decision when I happened across the following post by Glenn Greenwald which pretty much nails it.

Adoption

So Leigh and I are heading to an adoption meeting tomorrow night. This will be our second round in the adoption realm; we also looked at it when we were struggling the first time but opted to go the medical route. That didn't work and I came away from the entire experience with an even more jaded view of the medical establishment than I already had- which is saying something. We took a breather after that and are going to take another look. One of the most difficult things about the decision to adopt, at least for us, is being open and honest about all the things that you give up when you have kids. That is, you have to be honest about being selfish.

Entrepreneurs

I love that word. So, good post on Entrepreneurs and Risk which leads to a good post by Felix Salmon on the same which links to a good article by Malcom Gladwell. So in case you have an hour to spare, have at it.

Grad School

Great post from Felix Salmon on the costs and benefits of grad school. Took me about an hour to read because the links he includes are fascinating in their own right.

I think about grad school on a weekly, if not daily, basis. My dad is an academic, brother #1 just graduated from law school, brother #2 is working on his third masters, sister #3 did grad school for English, sister #4 graduated with the awesome military history major that she is using for her grad school in interior design, and sister #5 is working on her masters in English. So I've got a bit of an inferiority complex about it for starters.

Things I Think Are Interesting

Megan McCardle on the commercial real estate bust.

Drug rehab centers in China don't provide treatment, but do allow forced labor. Duh. But does it work?

Bizarre (read awesome) hand draw movie posters from Africa.

Was explaining the origin of the phrase "All your (insert whatever) are belong to us" to my wife the other day. Here it is.

Tyler Cowen with interesting facts about Yemen. Definitely check out the architecture link.

Apparently, retailers should not hire good looking people.

Horns Lose

Horns lost the national championship to Alabama 37-21. The game was closer than the score as Bama tacked two on late. Personal opinion was that Alabama was the best team all year and that they deserved to win. However, it sucks to lose your stud QB on the 5th play of the game and play your true freshman QB against the best and most aggressive defense in the country. Garrett Gilbert did some growing tonight and I'm proud of him and the Horns for not wilting.

Ryan Avent on Urban Development

In another life I'd probably have gone down the path of urban planning. It's a fascinating topic for many reasons, not the least of which is the extraordinary impact that urban design and development have on our every day lives. I've also been intrigued by what distinguishes "successful" cities from those dying on the vine. I think it started for me as a result of living in Milwaukee from grade school through high school. Milwaukee could very easily have gone the way of Detroit. It still has its shortcomings, including the openly corrupt city council and public sector unions, but it has also reinvented itself in many ways and attracted people to live there. I just got back from Milwaukee and it was negative one million degrees there, so it's not faint praise to say "we actually got people to want to live here."

Anyway, here is a great, great post by Ryan Avent responding to a piece in the American Prospect on urban development (which is also worth reading). I don't agree with all of his writing, or even much of it, since he would like to centrally plan pretty much everything. However, this is worth reading.

Never Talk to the Police

Regent University Law School Professor James Duane explains why it is always a bad idea.

What a Crappy Decade

Wow. Knew it was not great, but didn't know it was that bad.

Round Up

Showdown with the public sector coming.

Cost sharing in US healthcare. I don't agree with all of this editorial, certainly not the assertion that the reason we spend more is limited to 1) our exceptional medicine and 2) because we encourage overuse. Those are reasons, but there are many more. However, the editorial does highlight one of the myths that continually circulates in discussions of US health care- that US consumers have higher out of pocket costs than people in other countries.

Felix Salmon has the economic statistic of the decade.

Awesome.

The 20 Most Important Philosophers of All Time. Observations: Surprised Aristotle does not nab the top spot, but at least it was close. Embarrassed that I did not know who Frege or Leibniz are. Descartes might be a little high, Aquinas a little low.

Cold

In Milwaukee visiting my family. All 12 (My parents, 4 brothers, and 5 sisters) of us together for the first time in I don't know how long. It is crazy cold up here (20 degrees or so) and I had to drive in snow and ice for the first time in forever as well.

Big plans are to hit Elsa's (if you ever got to Milwaukee it's a must) and the Sprecher brewery, one of the finest breweries in the world, if I have time.

It has been great to see everyone, although visiting always makes me realize how odd my family is. But I guess that's kind of true for everyone. While there is still time for someone to qualify (it might even be me), I have to give my parents props because you'd figure that out of ten kids that at least one would be some type of screw-up. I mean the odds just kind of suggest it.

Health Care "Reform"

Well, the US Senate passed the health "reform" bill on a vote of 60-39. Very few people know what is in the bill outside of the general descriptions we have heard from the press which has done its typically horrendous job covering this issue.

The short(ish) version:

The bill expands coverage to a number of people without coverage right now through a massive expansion of the Medicaid program (good luck finding providers) and through new subsidies for those purchasing small employer coverage or individual coverage through the new exchanges. The bill is paid for through a variety of new taxes, including an increase in the Medicare payroll tax, the excise tax on "Cadillac" plans (which somehow contains costs while generating ever higher revenues), and taxes on insurers, pharmaceuticals, and DME (all of which will simply be passed along to consumers through higher prices).

The bill makes substantial changes to the insurance market by preventing insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, limiting rate variation through adjusted community rating mechanism, regulating loss ratios (a truly idiotic idea), guarantee issue, minimum benefits, no lifetime caps etc. The new exchanges will operate as a single marketplace for coverage but also as a regulator by determining which plans are eligible to be offered.

The bill contains a number of pilots aimed at reducing cost, but really the strategy in the bill for dealing with health care costs is to pray they won't go up. (The bill does make it more affordable for some people by subsidizing coverage, but that's not the same as addressing cost of coverage).

And that's really the problem. The goal of the bill was never to address the primary issue in health care- cost. The goal was to expand coverage, enshrine universal care as a right, and deal with tricky issues like "how the hell do we pay for this" later...or never, which is far more likely. Look at the Medicare program, the current system operated by the government. Slated to run out of money in eight years, $70+ trillion in unfunded liabilities, and no plan for how to deal with it. Maybe that's not entirely fair. There are some plans out there, they're just laughably awful. Like- let's establish a center that measures whether certain health care procedures are really worth the cost. See, once we have evidence that something isn't really effective (which already exists) then people will see it should not be paid for (like annual mammograms!) and health care spending will go down. See? Everything will be fine.

At the end of the day, the Medicaid expansion and the subsidies will expand coverage significantly through a transfer of wealth from higher income earners to lower income earners. See Keith Hennessy's outstanding post on the impact for people by income bracket. The bill, as noted above, does almost nothing to address cost. But I think that's a calculation of the bill's supporters. Going backwards on entitlements is very difficult to do. Once you get universal coverage in place you can deal with the cost issue later- just like we have with Social Security and Medicare. Except not at all. The problem will be "dealt" with through large tax increases, which I suspect many of the bill supporters find to be a pleasant side effect.

Can't wait to see their energy policy!