File under things that kill a small piece of my soul until I realize that I don't care so I laugh.

Just read; it's great I promise.

Humans are awful

Hmm, something I just read...

So came across this article through Gawker earlier and it made me think...

The Observer article is wholely from the women's perspective and as a dude... I wonder if this is really true or maybe these women are just victims of bad timimg and are kinda just bitchy. So thinking of my experiences, while I've always had a positive change after breaking up or getting dumped. However, I know that this really has nothing to do with them. It's because when they knew me I was still on a path of maturity (and still am, in all honesty). This leads me to think that these women are kinda self-absorbed and just don't get it. And it makes me happy that I'm free of being in a relationship with someone like these women. I mean, life's a journey and either you're on the same tour bus or not. If you don't like something major in my life then you need to switch busses and not try to change the itinerary mid journey. And quit your bitching.

Also, thinking of such things so close to a certain single awareness holiday, makes me think of things to do like this list. I especially love the third one. I mean, doesn't this sound like the best way to spend valentine's day in your (my) single glory:

After some time has passed, press your greasy wine-stained face close to the cute bartender, flutter your eyelashes, and say seductively "Next I'll have the chocolate exploding cake." Then fart and fall off your stool and sleep, sweet viking. Sleep.

Along the lines of WTF... An Opera?

Ok, so this be whack! Al Gore, settle down! Your powerpoint turned documentary turned Nobel prize does not need to be an Opera.

Inconvenient Truth as an opera???

More crappy tv, but some good tv too...

Thank you gawker. People with more time than myself say what I'd like to say. Ugh makes me jealous. Whatever, I still love watching The City, no matter how awful it is. Although, Trust Me's first epipsode was good...

I watch bad tv and follow fashion too closely

So I haven't posted in ages (thank you thesis writing...) but here's something to keep you up to date (well, in terms of nearly everything excepting the work on my thesis, which would bore everyone but me). Nevertheless, I've been watching MTV's The City for a bit now... and well, can't stop watching it despite it being a load of crap. Here's a take on it that mirrors my sentiments exactly:

WELCOME BACK, READERS! I hope you all had a delightful New Year's Eve and that 2009 is treating you right thus far. We are happy indeed to be back in our bitch pants, and boy, have we got a lot to cover. This, for example, was from last week, but I couldn't let it pass without comment:




Behold, Whitney Port making an appearance on The Hills Aftershow (aka My Secret Shameful Pleasure). Now, I learned many things whilst watching The City this week: (a) Whitney Port is truly best as a secondary character who counsels more troubled girls on their personal problems, because she is not a particularly dramatic person on her own, which is great for HER but boring for TV, (b) Olivia Palermo has great hair/will probably prove to be the result of a fling between one of the Heathers and the devil, (c) I have terrible taste in TV, (d) models wore this headdress on the runway of most recent DVF fashion show, and (e) if you're not a model on the DVF runway, wearing this headdress makes you look a bit as though you just fell out of a VW bus on the way to the Renaissance Faire. The models looked lovely, sure, but if there is anything anyone has learned from Project Runway, fashion magazines, Top Model and Fashion Week coverage, I would hope that it would be that runway models are often styled in headgear that is AWESOME for the runway and SERIOUSLY RIDICULOUS for the rest of us fools.

For example, would you wear these in real life?







Let me just say that I would love to see you try it. That means you, Whitney. I long for an episode of The City where Lauren comes to visit and you pick her up at the airport wearing a stuffed animal as a hoodie, or where you go on a date with that Australian dude wearing a Native American headdress and your vague, pause-filled non-conversation is intermittently interrupted by moments where we viewers can tell he is struggling not to ask you what the hell you're doing in it, or one where you go to the office in a tremendous straw hat and accidentally run into a phone pole right outside the front door and knock yourself out. No, seriously. That would be awesome. I dare you.


So, anyways, Thanks to Go Fug Yourself for saying what I've been feeling before I could say it for myself.


Yes, Go Fug Yourself is still relevant, if only somewhat.

A morning laugh

http://www.buymyshitpile.com/

This is really, really, really funny. So read it and laugh and then let the adults talk.

I don't know whether to be envious or awe struck

My friend sent this to me this evening:

Nytimes

here's the full text:

December 12, 2006
Scientist at Work | Nick Patterson
A Cryptologist Takes a Crack at Deciphering DNA’s Deep Secrets
By INGFEI CHEN

Thirty years ago, Nick Patterson worked in the secret halls of the Government Communications Headquarters, the code-breaking British agency that unscrambles intercepted messages and encrypts clandestine communications. He applied his brain to “the hardest problems the British had,” said Dr. Patterson, a mathematician.

Today, at 59, he is tackling perhaps the toughest code of all — the human genome. Five years ago, Dr. Patterson joined the Broad Institute, a joint research center of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His dexterity with numbers has already helped uncover startling information about ancient human origins.

In a study released in May, scientists at the Broad Institute scanned 20 million “letters” of genetic sequence from each of the human, chimpanzee, gorilla and macaque monkey genomes. Based on DNA differences, the researchers speculated that millions of years after an initial evolutionary split between human ancestors and chimp ancestors, the two lineages might have interbred again before diverging for good.

The controversial theory was built on the strength of rigorous statistical and mathematical modeling calculations on computers running complex algorithms. That is where Dr. Patterson contributed, working with the study’s leader, David Reich, who is a population geneticist, and others. Their findings were published in Nature.

Genomics is a third career for Dr. Patterson, who confesses he used to find biology articles in Nature “largely impenetrable.” After 20 years in cryptography, he was lured to Wall Street to help build mathematical models for predicting the markets. His professional zigzags have a unifying thread, however: “I’m a data guy,” Dr. Patterson said. “What I know about is how to analyze big, complicated data sets.”

In 2000, he pondered who had the most interesting, most complex data sets and decided “it had to be the biology people.”

Biologists are awash in DNA code. Last year alone, the Broad Institute sequenced nearly 70 billion bases of DNA, or 23 human genomes’ worth. Researchers are mining that trove to learn how humans evolved, which mutations cause cancer, and which genes respond to a given drug. Since biology has become an information science, said Eric S. Lander, a mathematician-turned-geneticist who directs the Broad Institute, “the premium now is on being able to interpret the data.” That is why quantitative-minded geeks from mathematics, physics and computer science have flocked to biology.

Scientists who write powerful DNA-sifting algorithms are the engine driving the genomics field, said Edward M. Rubin, a geneticist and director of the federal Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif. Like the Broad, the genome institute is packed with computational people, including “a bunch of astrophysicists who somehow wandered in and never left,” said Dr. Rubin, originally a physics major himself. Most have never touched a Petri dish.

Dr. Patterson belongs to this new breed of biologist. The shelves of his office in Cambridge, Mass., carry arcane math titles, yet he can converse just as deeply about Buddhism or Thucydides, whose writings he has studied in ancient Greek. He is prone to outbursts of boisterous laughter.

He was born in London in 1947. When he was 2 his Irish parents learned that he had a congenital bone disease that distorted the left side of his skull; his left eye is blind. He became a child chess prodigy who earned top scores on math exams, and later attended Cambridge, completing a math doctorate in finite group theory. In 1969, he won the Irish chess championship.

In 1972, Dr. Patterson began working at the Government Communications Headquarters, where his research remains classified. He absorbed through his mentors the mathematical philosophy of Alan Turing, the genius whose crew at Bletchley Park — the headquarters’ predecessor — broke Germany’s encryption codes during World War II. The biggest lesson he learned from Dr. Turing’s work, he said, was “an attitude of how you look at data and do statistics.”

In particular, Dr. Turing was an innovator in Bayesian statistics, which regard probability as dependent upon one’s opinion about the odds of something occurring, and which allows for updating that opinion with new data. In the 1970s, cryptographers at the communications headquarters were harnessing this approach, Dr. Patterson said, even while academics considered flexible Bayesian rules heretical.

In 1980, Dr. Patterson moved with his wife and children to Princeton, N.J., to join the Center for Communications Research, the cryptography branch of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit research center financed by the Department of Defense. His work earned him a name in the cryptography circle. “You can probably pick out two or three people who’ve really stood out, and he’s one of them,” said Alan Richter, a longtime scientist at the defense institute.

In 1993 Dr. Patterson moved to Renaissance Technologies, a $200 million hedge fund, at the invitation of its founder, James H. Simons, a mathematician and former cryptographer at the institute. The fund made trades based on a mathematical model. Dr. Patterson knew little about money, but the statistical methods matched those used in code breaking, Dr. Simons said: analyzing a series of data — in this case daily stock price changes — and predicting the next number. Their methods apparently worked. In Dr. Patterson’s time with the hedge fund, its assets reached $4 billion.

By 2000, Dr. Patterson was restless. One day, he ran into Jill P. Mesirov, another former defense institute cryptographer, and mentioned his interest in biology. Dr. Mesirov, then director of computational biology at the Whitehead/M.I.T. Center for Genome Research, which later became the Broad Institute, hired him.

“Really, what we do for a living is to decrypt genomes,” Dr. Mesirov said. Cryptographers look at messages encoded as binary strings of zeros and ones, then extract underlying signals they can interpret, Dr. Mesirov said. The job calls for pattern recognition and mathematical modeling to explain the data. The same applies for analyzing DNA sequences, she said.

One common genomic analysis tool — the Hidden Markov Model — was invented for pattern recognition by defense institute code breakers in the 1960s, and Dr. Patterson is an expert in that technique. It can be used to predict the next letter in a sequence of English text garbled over a communications line, or to predict DNA regions that code for genes, and those that do not.

Dr. Patterson said he also has a well-honed instinct about which data is important, after seeing “a lot of surprising stuff that turned out to be complete nonsense.” Dr. Lander of the Broad Institute describes him as a great skeptic, with the statistical insight to tell whether a signal is “simply random fluctuation or whether it’s a smoking gun.”

Making that distinction is one of the great difficulties of interpreting DNA. In studying the human-chimp species split, the genomics researchers strove to rule out possible errors and biases in the data.

Dr. Reich, with Dr. Patterson and Dr. Lander, and two other colleagues, used computer algorithms to compare the primate genomes and count DNA bases that did not match, like the C base in gorillas that had become an A in humans. Because such mutations naturally arise at a set rate, the researchers could estimate how long ago the human and chimp lineages separated from an ancient common ancestor.

A DNA base can mutate more than once, however. To correct for that, Dr. Patterson worked out equations estimating how often it occurred; Dr. Reich revised their computer algorithms accordingly. Two strange patterns emerged. Some human DNA regions trace back to a much older common ancestor of humans and chimps than other regions do, with the ages varying by up to four million years. But on the X chromosome, people and chimps share a far younger common ancestor than on other chromosomes.

After the researchers tested various evolutionary models, the data appeared best explained if the human and chimp lineages split but later began mating again, producing a hybrid that could be a forebear of humans. The final breakup came as late as 5.4 million years ago, the team calculated.

The project was “our hobby” Dr. Reich said of himself and Dr. Patterson said. Their main work, in medical genetics, includes devising a shortcut to scan the genome for prostate cancer genes.

Whether studying disease or evolution, Dr. Patterson noted, genomics differs from code breaking in one key respect: no adversary is deliberately masking DNA’s meaning. Still, given its complexity, the code of life is the most open-ended of cryptographic challenges, Dr. Patterson said. “It’s a very big message.”

Questions...

Found this on the Foreign Policy site:

The 20 questions we would ask Sarah Palin
Tue, 09/09/2008 - 12:50pm

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Though Republican campaign handlers have resisted the clamoring of "elitist," mud-slinging reporters for a press conference with Sarah Palin, the VP nominee will sit down for her first campaign-trail interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson at some point later this week. While campaign advisor Rick Davis says she's not scared to answer questions, Palin is said to be enduring some intense cram sessions with foreign policy tutors like Joe Lieberman.

Her passport stamps may be few, but Palin and her supporters remain adamant that the barracuda has what it takes to roll with the world's most formidable leaders and even its heavy-hitting bullies. Among the list of credentials cited are Palin's role as commander of Alaska's National Guard, her stint as mayor, and, infamously, Alaska's close proximity to Russia.

We've put together a list of suggested questions for Gibson that we think will reveal how aware Palin is of the issues awaiting her in Washington as well as offer a glimpse of the potential world leader that lies beneath the lipstick-wearing hockey mom. Feel free to suggest some of your own.

1. In a broad and long-term sense, would you have responded differently to the attacks of 9/11?
2. Is Iraq a democracy?
3. What’s the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?
4. What is your preferred plan for peace between Israel and Palestine? A two state solution? What about Jerusalem?
5. How do you feel about French President Nicolas Sarkozy's recent visit to Syria? Do you believe the United States should negotiate with leaders like President Bashar al-Assad?
6. Nearly 40 percent of the world's population lives in China and India. Who are those countries' leaders?
7. Do you support the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, which would lift restrictions on sales of nuclear technology and fuel to India, a country which hasn’t signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty?
8. Other than more drilling, what steps do you suggest the U.S. take in order to move toward energy independence? Do you believe more investment is needed in alternative energy research? If so, how would you recommend this funding be allocated?
9. How would you balance concerns over human rights and freedom in China with the United States' growing economic interdependence with that country?
10. What's more important: securing Russia's cooperation on nuclear proliferation and Iran, or supporting Georgia's NATO bid? If Vladimir Putin called you on the phone and said, "It's one or the other," what would you tell him?
11. Critique the foreign policy of the last administration. Name its single greatest success, and its most critical failure.
12. What do you think will be the most defining foreign-policy issue in the next five years?
13. What role should the United States play in the global effort to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS? Should it support contraception, or abstinence only?
14. You've said that the federal government spends too much money. What, in your view, is the appropriate level of spending as a percentage of GDP?
15. You're an advocate of reducing environmental restrictions on drilling. How much oil needs to be found in the United States before the country achieves energy independence?
16. What are your picks for the three most enlightening books written on foreign policy in the last five years?
17. Who among the world's leaders can be listed as the top three friends of the United States and why?
18. In your opinion, which U.S. president was the most successful world leader and why?
19. Which U.S. political thinkers, writers, and politicians would you enlist to advise you on matters of foreign policy and why?
20. Who is the first world leader you'd like to meet with and why?

Sarah Palin Rumours.... lets take a look

Here's a Gawker post taking a look at the Sarah Palin rumours. Muy intresante.

Full text:

Sarah Palin Conspiracy Theories: The Ultimate Guide

Previewscreensnapz001-12Oh man, remember when right-wing nutcases used the dark corners of the internet (and also Fox News Channel) to spread all kinds of insane conspiracy theories about Barack Obama being a secret Muslim and Michelle Obama hating white people? Well, now a new collection of email chain letters, online comments and blog posts is springing up around Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose entire family seems to provoke endless gossip and scandal. We thought the Palin rumors might dry up at some point, but they just keep coming! In fact, there have been tons of new ones since we last did a comprehensive factsheet. Some of them might even be true! Let's trudge through the thickening swamp of Palin mud, one rumor at a time, after the jump!

Safariscreensnapz003-11Track Palin joined the Army to avoid jail time for drugs or vandalism.
True? Unsubstantiated. Pops up without corroboration on message boards and in email chains.
Notable: The Palin hometown of Wasilla is considered the "meth capital of Alaska." There are rumors Track was one of three unnamed teenagers charged with vandalizing 44 school buses while drunk. None of this proves anything, but it makes it much more fun to speculate!
Why someone would make this up: Sarah Palin made Track's military service a key part of her address at the Republican National convention. If he's a delinquent, those comments were disingenuous, and some conservatives would wonder about Palin's parenting, particularly amid the simultaneous SCANDALOUS pregnancy of Palin's 17-year-old unwed daughter Bristol.

Levi2Levi Johnston was in court-ordered rehab.
True? Almost certainly false, considering someone enthusiastically emailed us this rumor — and swore up and down to its authenticity — just one day before Johnston appeared at the Republican National Convention.
Notable: Citing courtroom sources, our tipster said the rehab would immediately be followed by a shotgun wedding. A dash of truth makes any smear more believable!
Why someone would make this up: Would make Johnston's engagement to pregnant Bristol Palin seem seriously nutty and Sarah Palin foolish to allow it.

82711521Todd Palin had affairs.
True? There is zero evidence for this. It's pure assertion.
Notable: A Wonkette tipster phrased it as "the first dude has a John Edwards problem times ten zillion."
Why someone would make this up: Because if Todd Palin is having affairs, it means his wife must be doing something wrong. If you're a conservative, you might argue she works too much and isn't performing her wifely duties or whatever. If you're a liberal, you might argue Todd Palin cheats because his wife shuts him out of sex because she doesn't use birth control (even though she probably DOES use birth control since, according to Time, she supports the use of birth control generally and belongs to a anti-abortion, pro-birth-control group).

Nationalenquirersarahpalinstorycoverawardsmarkpasetskydavidperel-TmSarah Palin had an affair.
True? If you unquestioningly believe the National Enquirer, which alleged Sarah Palin had an affair with an unnamed business partner of her husband. Palin vigorously denied the report, and the Enquirer offered only a tepid backing of its story.
Notable: The tabloid promised more details, but hasn't yet delivered. Bloggers went after the divorce court records of one of Todd Palin's business associates, thinking maybe he was the guy the Enquirer was talking about, but the records proved barren.
Why someone would make this up: To trash Sarah Palin's judgement and character, obviously.

Sarah Palin had a different affair
True? Even less likely than the other alleged affair.
Notable: This rumor started when liberal bloggers noticed that the McCain campaign denied the one specific affair alleged by the Enquirer with one specific person. What if Sarah Palin was sleeping with someone else? Her denial doesn't apply to that! She could be sleeping with tons of people and having affairs left and right and we'd NEVER KNOW!!
Why someone would make this up: Because he is 1> bored and 2> still traumatized by Bill Clinton's narrowly-crafted denials of his hanky-panky 10 years ago.

2008-09-01-Ktvas-ThumbSarah Palin faked her pregnancy to cover up for her daughter having a love child
True? Still hotly contested. But the Times weighed in today with a story quoting witnesses in and adjacent to the delivery room, as well as state governors who were with Palin when she began leaking amniotic fluid at an event in Texas. Pretty strong case! Skeptics still wondered if this reporting could be trusted, noting how the Washington Post made a big error in a prior story like this. The doubters also still wonder how Palin hiked briskly around Juneau in high heels while seven months pregnant and how she was back at work three days after giving birth (see Times story).
Notable: Officially, Bristol Palin is five months pregnant, which would have to be a lie if she secretly gave birth in May and had the baby passed off as her mother's.
Why someone would make this up: Because it would show that Sarah Palin was secretly ashamed of her daughter's out-of-wedlock child before she decided she had to embrace it publicly. Also, TWO out-of-wedlock babies are maybe twice as bad as one?

82704592Sarah Palin is racist! She said "Sambo beat the bitch!" when Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton.
True? The source on this is a supposed Aboriginal Alaskan waitress named "Lucille" interviewed by the LA Progressive, which also asserted Palin refers to Aboriginal people as "Arctic Arabs" and "fucking Eskimos."
Notable: No one else has interviewed this "Lucille."
Why someone would make this up: The vast majority of Americans have never met or even SEEN an Alaskan up close. They only know these strange pseudo-Americans live in a remote, desolate land and make their money fishing, working with oil and collecting checks from the federal government. In other words, they're rednecks. So what else are they going to do, as far as the elite lower 48 states are concerned, but sit around and be racist all the time?? We're READY to believe Sarah Palin is a big secret racist. So this might seem like an effective and cheap way to smear her. But many of her supporters might also be wary of politically-correct super-elites from the coasts falsely throwing around accusations of racism.

82669355Sarah Palin is a rude, conniving bitch.
True? Well, a blog tipster tried to ask Sarah Palin whether she was supporting corrupt Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, and she totally dodged the question, like some kind of politician or something! Also, a widely-circulated letter from someone identifying herself as Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla, Alaska says Palin "has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help" and is known as "Sarah Barracuda." Juicy!
Notable: Ken Layne at Wonkette said Palin is like the "snarling evil god-obsessed nut who punished you constantly" in junior high but "your parents would never quite believe it because she 'seemed like a nice lady,' from a distance, with her squeaky voice."
Why someone would make this up: Because while Tina Fey will totally vote for a bitch, many voters find bitches threatening. Plus "evil bitch" is way different from "bitch on the side of angels."

Safariscreensnapz004-10Levi Johnston will not go through with his announced wedding to Bristol Palin.
True? This is from our tipster's friend's employee in Alaska, so it's airtight.
Notable: We were told Levi "is not marrying Bristol. He does not want to move to Washington. Sarah is going to abandon her daughter in Alaska... They tried to force a 18-year-old kid to marry. His parents balked. Then they said they are going to sue for child support... This is extortion."
Why someone would make this up: To make Sarah Palin look like a manipulative liar who created a sham marriage to shore up her political future.

82631224Todd Palin is the new Hillary Clinton, wielding undue influence through his spouse.
True? Palin has been accused in a whisper campaign and even in the Times of London of lobbying on behalf of the oil industry, but his work is officially confined to a non-management role as a oil production operator and no reports provide specific information contradicting this. More troubling and substantiated are his ties to the investigation of a state trooper he and his wife wanted punished more severely than had originally been decided by the appropriate state authorities.
Notable: Todd Palin has already, perhaps inevitably, been compared to Hillary Clinton.
Why someone would make this up: Not clear, really. Vice presidents are usually pretty powerless, and it would be surprising if inexperienced Palin was an exception. The amount of damage Palin's husband could do, in turn, through inappropriate influence is miniscule.

Sarah Palin burns books.
She tried to get some books banned, but it didn't work. See our last roundup.

Sarah Palin has a crazy preacher!
He said John Kerry voters would go to hell, LOL. See our last roundup.

Sarah Palin wants Alaska to secede from the union!
See our last roundup.

A very good point that everyone is over looking....

So... here I am in class whatevs....

Nevertheless, here's something I completely agree with. And I really did find Obama's speech highly moving... but I feel that most people aren't really thinking with their heads but with their hearts & emotions. In fact, nearly every argument against either candidate I've heard thus far have been emotionally based. So here, read this: Econ Browser's take on Obama's speech

And here's the text, if you're lazy:

August 30, 2008
Obama's acceptance speech

Barack Obama gave a fine speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday. But I'm troubled by what I see as its underlying economic philosophy.

As I listened to the speech by Barack Obama accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party for the U.S. presidency, I felt I was listening to a very gifted orator. I also thought I heard a cash register go ca-ching every time he finished a sentence.

I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will cut taxes-- cut taxes-- for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class....

I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy-- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels....

I'll invest in early childhood education.

I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support....

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves....

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave....

As the list of things Obama promised to do grew ever longer, I found myself increasingly wondering, What is the underlying understanding of how the economy works that would motivate such a list? All these steps require a commitment of resources. If we are to have more of these things, we must be planning to divert the resources to pay for them from somewhere else. Evidently there is a notion of some kind of existing inefficiency or misallocation of resources-- money is currently being spent on things it shouldn't be, and should instead be devoted to objectives on the above list. But how is the bill for all these nice things supposed to be paid?

Fortunately, in his speech Obama anticipated this natural question, and provided the following answer:

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I've laid out how I'll pay for every dime-- by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less-- because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

I'll discuss that second point about government waste in a moment. But here's my understanding of Obama's central thesis-- if funds could be diverted from corporate profits into the above wish list, then America would be better off.

According to Table F.102 in the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds Accounts, domestic nonfarm, nonfinancial corporate profits amounted to $1,037 billion in 2007. A third of that ($310 billion) is currently being paid as corporate profits taxes, and $487 billion is devoted to dividends, which are taxed directly as income of the shareholders. But doesn't that leave $240 billion sitting around doing nothing worthwhile?

Not exactly. Those same institutions also spent $460 billion on net fixed investment in 2007 ($1045 in gross investment minus $585 billion capital consumption allowance), which was financed by a combination of the $240 billion in retained earnings and corporate borrowing. If after-tax corporate profits were lower, the only way to have the same level of investment is with greater corporate borrowing. Recalling Menzie's recent picture on the empirical relation between the growth rates of corporate profits and investment, it seems unlikely that investment spending would remain the same if corporate profits were lower. And if it somehow did happen, I doubt that increased corporate indebtedness is a wise outcome to insist upon.

I raise this issue because I regard nonresidential fixed investment as the single most important economic variable that will influence America's future prosperity.

As for the second part of the paragraph above indicating Obama's plans to pay for his proposals, I agree with the senator that there is some waste in the federal budget. However, I'd caution against overstating the magnitude of what we should expect to achieve, and I would urge that any dollars saved be used to reduce the deficit before beginning any new programs.

At the top of my personal list of current expenditures that could be cut would be ethanol and agricultural subsidies.

What's on your list, senator?

It's the same thing just rearranged...

This is something that I've felt for a long time regarding people on the right and the left. And it's the reason why I truly believe we need a paradigm shift in the way we think about the issues we're facing and how we execute policies and create policies. It's also part of the reason I probably won't vote this time around. The debates we have are ridiculous because we're not really trying to resolve any issues, just trying to take care of a couple symptoms.

From Stumbling & Mumbling:

Polly & the right: a common cause
Polly Toynbee and the right have more in common than either would admit. What makes me say this is Jackart’s post here. In criticizing Harpymarx for pointing out that benefit cuts don’t force people into work, he says we should blame the poor for being feckless and workshy.
There’s a close similarity here with Polly’s attack upon the rich for their “jaw dropping arrogance” and lack of empathy.
In both cases, what we’re seeing are moral judgments upon the enemy - the only difference being who the enemy is.
In both cases, the question of sampling bias is unaddressed. Is Polly’s sample of the rich really representative of the rich generally? What proportion of the jobless really are “workshy”? We’re none the wiser.
And in both cases, the question of the relevance of moral judgments goes unanswered. It’s a commonplace that in our MacIntyrean world in which coherent moral narratives have broken down, moral judgments are mere expressions of emotion. I’d add that they are also expressions of ego, motivated by the utterer’s desire to seem superior to the judged. There’s also the question: does morality matter in politics? Social structures don’t cease because they are “immoral”; apartheid, communism, feudalism, and Nazism did not collapse merely because they were morally wrong. But Jackart and Polly ignore these issues.
So, the two have much in common. And there is an alternative - social science. So, for example, rather than whine about the rich, we can ask: would it really be feasible to tax them more heavily? Or would Laffer curve effects cause them to cut their labour supply? And if they do, what would we lose; do the rich (bosses, hedge fund managers, lawyers) really do fulfil useful functions?
And rather than whine about the workshy poor, we can ask: are they really more workshy than us? If so, why? And are there any feasible policies that might change their behaviour?
In eschewing these questions, and thinking their morality matters, Polly and the right have a lot in common.

Outta Control, but kinda spot on

SATC will make you a communist. Crazy. Read it!

More Reasons why Europe is in Jeopardy!

So given that we don't get that much oil or nat gas from Russia (despite having major ventures there) who is hurt the most by this current invasion (excluding the Georgians)? It's Europe. Time to be worried. It's also prob time for Nato to keep those Ruskies in check, and from spreading their neo-fascist, state run "capitalist", semi-totalitarian form of governing. I mean, these countries are democracies, just trying to get by.

Here's an interesting piece: an interesting piece on the Russian invasion into Georgia

Short the Euro.... Finally (Updated)

So finally the Euro zone is slowing down (well it has been ever since people have been talking shit about the Dollar) and people in the markets are finally realizing that the Euro zone isn't all that as an economic power house with out America. We both face the same issues, but our domestic situation is better poised for a recovery given our penchant to be entrepreneurial (well that and our greed, I guess). This being said, the Dollar Index has already gained 6% on the Euro; also the Pound sterling has dropped 2.9% to the Dollar. Europe is facing a major slow down in its biggest economy, Germany and the UK is facing a bigger housing price collapse than we've had (as a percentage of total housing, that is). Also, we both import nearly all of our oil energy, but the majority of imported oil is from Canada and Mexico unlike Europe. So here's a thesis, short the Euro and the Pound (hoping for a strong Dollar) and because of crazy events in Iran and Georgia most definitely buy some put options, preferably at a couple different levels for added protections. And thank you Bernanke for doing what you knew to be best during the last year, despite what people wanted you to do. Yay econ PhD's!

Dollar at crossroads amid talk of sunnier outlook for US economy, from the FT


UPDATE:

So more interesting arguments-

Oil & the Dollar, from Econ Browser

Oh Noes! It's Happened!

Crap this is A) so true and B) I know what a Levy skew alpha distribution is. What's next?

Yes!

What is left to say?

Been too long...

So it's been days since my last post... but this sums up a lot of what's been going on... well that and figuring out this 24 hours of LeMons event stuff....

Ah so true...

My sentiments exactly. College is a very unique place.