The Carnival of the Capitalists
Since April Fool's Day is around the corner, I gave some thought to an appropriate theme that would be appropriate for the carnival and for this special time of year. Thus, this carnival is dedicated to that truly American family of capitalists, the Popeils.
However, we the blogosphere, are wasting much time and bandwidth on routine posts. I see many time-constrained bloggers wasting a few minutes each week merely to provide their readers with the current location of various carnivals. This is silly and inefficient. Even the business oriented Carnival of the Capitalists follows this wasteful practice. However, Jay Solo deserves kudos for creating one constant email address for new submissions: capitalists -at- elhide.com.
Instead of continuing this poor use of time, I propose the following. Each carnival originator should create one page for their carnival. For example, Bigwig, as the originator of the Carnival of the Vanities (COV), should maintain an URL such as this: http://silflayhraka.com/cov.html. All bloggers who wish to link to the current COV would simply set up a bookmark with the aforementioned URL. Each week, Bigwig would change that one URL to redirect people to the current carnival.
This time-savings approach could be used for more than just carnivals. Poliblogger could use it for his Toast-a-Meter. The Watcher's Council could use it for their weekly roundup. As motivation for people to increase blogging efficiency, I will link to any (non-crude) carnival bookmark that implements my suggestion by the end of March. While I frequently change my links, I will leave your link up for the rest of 2003 even if I don't care for your particular carnival.
Think globally, act locally.
Signal + Noise reports on a recent study that shows the results of a coin flip are not a 50/50 proposition after all.
Insults Unpunished discusses the geoengineering idea of the "Geritol Solution" - a proposal to dump iron dust in certain parts of the ocean. This results in the massive growth of plankton, which traps carbon dioxide in dead plankton that finally get buried on the ocean floor.
Davids Medienkritick shows German Chancellor Schroeder has a large case of chutzpah. He expects, or pretends to expect, that the US will support the Schroeder's administration for a permanent seat on the UN security council. I don't know if Schroeder is that clueless or is simply desperate about his low support among German citizens. My guess is that he is hoping Bush will soundly reject his idea which might increase Schroeder's support with the anti-American Germans who put him in power. If I were Bush, I would just ignore Schroeder.
This follows Chinese and French attempts to influence their election.
The election is tomorrow.
Boots & Sabers found a tool that allowed me to see how well my experience represents my community. By simply entering my address, the Fundrace 2004 robot looks up the public donation records of everyone near me. If you check on your own neighbors, and I know you will, be patient. Even in the wee hours of the night, it took a few minutes for a response.
I was surprised by the results. There were many more donations for Bush than for the Democrats. This was not that surprising, most of the Republican money comes from small donations while the majority of Democratic funding comes from special interest groups (e.g., unions) and liberal millionaires. In addition, there were quite a few donations for various Democratic nominees (Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, and Dick Gephardt).
The surprise was that the nearest person who donated to John Kerry lived over 75 miles away from my house. I live in a battleground state. This does not say much for the enthusiasm of John Kerry supporters. It does improve the already high opinion I hold of my neighbors.
He has finished his first book about his experiences. It is entitled Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel. The book includes some of my favorite columns which prove life is indeed stranger, and more ironic, than fiction. What novelist would make up feminists who asked their fathers to resolve their problems for them? Yet Adams has encountered this situation at least twice in his experience. Adams also investigates stereotypes such as Ridiculous Man-Hating Lesbians and Narrow-Minded Religious Bigots.
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Category: Domestic Politics , Category: Education , Category: Entertainment , Category: Humor
It appears we're facing the political equivalent of a rout. Now it's only a question of how far it goes and how many other nations lose heart and quit. In addition to having contributed 1300 troops of its own, Spain led about another thousand troops contributed by nations like Honduras and El Salvador. It won't be very surprising if they all give up now, too. The real question will be whether it spreads beyond the Spanish-speaking nations involved in the coalition.Den Beste is understandably irritated at another government showing weakness toward terrorism, but he is exaggerating a bit. I would hardly call one or two more withdrawals a rout. Further, I do not believe all the Spanish speaking nations will leave. According the Washington Post, Salvadoran Defense Secretary Gen. Juan Martinez said Tuesday that the country would keep its troops in Iraq no matter what. "We have to follow through with what our government decided"
This is actually subtle for the Chinese. In 1996, the Chinese were even more blatant.
Yesterday, just four days after the terrorist attack, Spain held a national election. Until the terrorist attack, the Spanish Popular Party was expected to win the majority of votes. They are the party in power, and have been a strong ally in our war on terror. The first promise the Spanish Socialist party leader made (the main opposition) was to remove Spanish troops from Iraq if elected. Because of the terrorist attack, enough Spanish voters changed their minds and placed the Socialist Party in power. The surprising results of yesterday's elections have major implications.
I have not posted about this because I have been hesitant to ask for a law to prevent this. As desirable as that would be, I also have problems with giving the government even more power. We should be able to resolve this without government involvement. I have solved it for my family by simply refusing to take my children to any more movies (the Attorney has been to a movie theater just once in his life and the Engineer has been twice).
However, I ran across another way to help achieve my objectives. The Lion & Lamb Project was started to reduce the marketing of violence to children. They have a form for parents to complete when they see a movie preview that was inappropriately shown to young children. When I start allowing my children back in movie theaters, I will use this form as appropriate.
I hope that sharing these thoughts, and by enabling a forum for comments on them, that we can do our small part to improve the world.
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Category: Admiral Quixote's Roundtable , Category: Quests for Change
Today I discovered some research about the benefits of a new technology . Oxygen is required for most known forms of life on earth and it allows the corrosion of many of our products. Scientists have recently discovered an inexpensive form of deoxygenation for situations where oxygen is not desired.
Aquatic organisms often hitch a ride in the ballast tanks of ocean-crossing ships, ending up in ports far from their native habitats. Upon arrival, these alien species can wreak havoc in their new environs, forcing out native species and incurring huge economic costs.Sounds like a win-win situation to me. Hopefully the actual practice will be as successful as the lab testing....the new technique still provides an environmentally benign and economically attractive method for reducing the number of potential invaders.
...our study shows that the anticorrosion benefit of this technique is a strong economic incentive for the shipping industry.
It is tempting to say this bodes poorly for Kerry, especially since many Democrats have been using the alleged high voter turnout to support their prediction of a Kerry victory. However, I think it actually shows a reasonably well-informed electorate. The states with high turnouts were mostly the ones where the outcome was in doubt. For example, Edwards won South Carolina, not Kerry.
By the time Super Tuesday rolled around, Kerry's victory was assumed by almost everyone. Indeed, the only real news was that Kerry did not win Vermont. So while if Super Tuesday had shown record turnouts, the Democrats may have been justified in seeing this as a sign Bush's reelection is in trouble, the reverse does not hold. Democrats may or may not be excited about Kerry. But American voters are smart enough to know when their votes do not matter, and I can understand why many Kerry supporters would have stayed home on Super Tuesday. Their candidate already had the election wrapped up.
Der Cowboy attackiert Mr. Flip-FlopYep, the election 2004 in a nutshell: President Cowboy vs. Senator Flip-Flop
This research has important public policy implications. As Stellman and Garfinkel (1989) documented, one's risk of lung cancer increases with cumulative tar intake. Given the results of this survey, it appears the current policy of increasing the cost of cigarettes will have a much smaller impact on reducing lung cancer incidence than politicians expected. This is not to say the policy has been a complete failure, the increased cost of smoking has motivated some smokers to quit the habit. However, there appears to be little benefit for those who continue to smoke since they tend to increase their tar and nicotine consumption.
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Category: Domestic Politics , Category: Economics , Category: Science and Technology
As an adult, I underwent radial keratotomy (RK) surgery about ten years ago (this was when laser surgery was still very experimental; today I would recommend laser surgery over RK). That corrected my vision to 20/25 in one eye and 2/35 in the other and also gave me a mild case of astigmatism. The astigmatism was well worth the improved vision; I am fond of water sports (swimming and rafting) and the ability to see well without losing a contact was great. I also enjoyed the newfound ability to see the clock across the room when I woke up at night.
My vision remained constant at 2/25 (right eye) and 2/35 (left eye) until last fall.
As a group, the Democrats continue to raise more money than the Republicans. This slight edge has grown by a full percentage point since I last reviewed the situation in November. Yet, as a wise man once said, a house divided against itself will not stand.
One of the advantages of incumbency is that their party's money is usually not spent in a primary fight. President Bush has $104 million dollars on hand in his warchest. Senator Kerry has $2 million. Even if the Democrats continue to raise $1.19 for every $1.00 the Republicans raise, and it all goes to Kerry, the Democrats would have to raise $537 million dollars (compared to the Republicans raising $452 million) to pull even. Unless George Soros or Teresa Heinz decide to commit a major portion of their wealth, it is not going to happen.
It's almost a truism that women who have abortions are more pro-choice than those who carry their pregnancies to term, and it stands to reason that they generally have more-liberal attitudes about sex and religion. It also seems reasonable to assume that parents have some influence on their children, so that if liberal women are having abortions, the next generation will be more conservative than it otherwise would be.His conclusions may or may not be true (e.g., an alternative explanation is that that baby boomer culture, as a whole, is liberal. Thus, the younger generations more conservative beliefs could simply be an outgrowth of normal rebellion), but this idea is interesting enough it deserves more study. On December 9, 2003, Taranto started calling this idea the Roe Effect.
Why should it surprise anyone that those people lucky enough to have been born since 1973 would be more conservative than their elders, especially on abortion?Up to this point, I believe Taranto had made a compelling, albeit circumstantial, case for the Roe Effect. Today he confused me.
The other surprise, although much less of one, was that Kerry most likely won Georgia. With 95% of precincts reporting as of this post, Kerry had 46.7% of the vote compared to 41.5% for Edwards. The exit polling in Georgia was interesting too.
My web host is having technical problems. I can't post anything, and no one can read anything. I think my post on the TSA is good, so please be patient.