Well, back at home. Links?

1. A use for that valve cap.
2. Yer gubmit, looking out for … well, no good reason I guess.
3. No no no, don’t slander the teacher, if anything slander the administrators.
4. Speaking of teachers ….
5. Gender and quotes, not unexpected results.
6. Consequences for not towing the party line.
7. Prayer of very different sorts, here and here.
8. Of cold and calorie.
9. The IRS and implications.
10. Of hard drives and failure.

Good morning.

1. From the economists, trouble ahead and rebuttals to the notion that minimum wage increases don’t actually help the poor are very weak.
2. Why are you laughing? I’m trying to figure out why the side of his head is melting! That seems a lot more relevant than what he’s saying.
3. An unusual Iranian (putting it somewhat mildly).
4. Mr King.
5. On standing on the right side of history.
6. This would be a better side, or at least a side I’d like to, well, own.
7. Uhm, that would be yes.
8. Still a dumb idea, GOP people for impeachment seem to forget that as bad (horrible) as Mr Obama might be and whatever he does, Mr Biden would be far worse.
9. Mr Biden apparently thinks the Detroit economy is doing just fine.
10. Maybe? Don’t hold your breath.
11. Gills?
12. Editorial bias?
13. Nah, it’s a master-race kinda novel.

Links?

1. So there’s this survey …. I have a beef with one of their questions. There is a question asking if you value higher self-control or creativity. This is a confusing question to answer, I think creativity is incredibly important. I also think that self-discipline/self-control are a pre-requisite for creativity. If you think calculus is valuable can you weigh the relative importance of the ability to do algebra or calculus higher? I answered algebra, because calculus. Is this how we distinguish liberals from conservatives, liberals are those who don’t think creativity requires discipline? What? Do they think creativity just sort of “happens” magically?
2. A died in the wool classical liberal.
3. Mammals can learn.
4. So, cui bono and the minimum wage. When you factor in how much a higher min wage boosts automation, you can pretty much set aside notion that the beneficiaries are the “the poor”.
5. Ignorance, democracy, and gun control.
6. Safety nets.
7. Haute couture.
8. Obamacare. And the coming bailout.
9. Climate change, I’m missing the part where this is bad.
10. More on climate here.
11. A quality American education, eh?
12. “Republicans” do that? Not all of us.
13. Bigotry exemplified. Don’t judge on the quality of the work (content of character) but the gender count of your references, i.e., the color of your skin.
14. Income inequality.
15. That voter fraud.
16. Go girl!

Links?

1. A question of bias. Case in point.
2. Zoooom, or should that be “hyper-zoom”.
3. Eating only fast food, what really happens.
4. Moving towards single payer, because we all wish our health care was as good as the VA. The wealthy just wish they had it so so good. This is their strategy for getting that. File *that* under “cunning plan”.
5. Reading between the lines that means plastic = cheese and the big companies like Nabisco &c have figured out how to make sawdust taste “good”. Apparently we can thank Ms Obama.
6. Copyright silliness.
7. Our brilliant, err, cunning foreign policy plan. I recently read a hisory of the Crimean War. Cunning plans seem to spring up in foreign policy quite frequently. (as in Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words “I have a cunning plan” marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation?)
8. Poverty is ended in the US. Who knew? By the calculation a single person making about 11k per year is “below the poverty level”  but that same person typically gets 20k in aid .. putting them well above the poverty line, hence my conclusion. Oddly enough a single young 20-something makinger 11k per year but who live at home with his parents counts as “below the poverty line” by their calculation I think.
9. Our tone deaf and aggressively stupid Administration, exhibit A.
10. Putting Mr Coates down a few notches.
11. Diet and exercise are the key I suppose.
12. No no no. Congress-critters are on a par with used car salesmen, it’s the life long bureaucrats and executives that are on a par with criminals.
13. Well grammar is one culprit, I suspect “because they don’t read” is the other.
14. This was known before Oct. 1 2013.
15. Hint: people who defended Mr Obama vis a vis the IRS scandal don’t have a leg to stand on regarding criticism like that without being hypocritical.

Links?

1. So, will this news spread? Or will left wing MSM loyalists quash it successfully?
2. The scandal of the day, it’s been my impressions that people are also saying “the cover up is making it worse.” If cover ups always made it worse, politicians would learn an never do it. That they do, gives reason to believe that most of the time, the cover up is successful. Which likely means that like icebergs 90% of the crap is under the surface.
3. Watch for the smears to begin.
4. So, in the wake of a cold snap, we are warned that “weather doesn’t equal climate” … except apparently when it is convenient to pretend it does. Consistency is apparently not required.
5. Obama and Afghanistan. Has there been a more shallow President, ever?
6. Cross-aisle praise.
7. Thesis sometimes should begin with the letter “F” at the start instead of the di-graph “Th”.
8. Crime and concealed carry.
9. Stupid laws across the pond.
10. What is a right (hint: not having healthcare/job/food/home provided)?
11. An MIT climate scientist speaks on climate.
12. Modeling and economics.
13. Cold weather and verse.
14. A commercial has “people talking” … how they talk beyond saying … “that’s really dumb” escapes me. I suppose they could enumerate the many ways in which it is really off the rails.

Well, we made it home Saturday. Then it snowed. Then it got cold. The diesel didn’t start when we got home (not because of any diesel fuel issue but because of a dead battery). Since it was snowing … and today it was -20 F we didn’t trickle charge it yet. We’re going to charge it tomorrow and then try starting it Wednesday when the temps are supposed to get north of 10.  We’ve discovered some things about packed snow, ice, and salt.  When temps are below -15 salt doesn’t do squat. Snow melted/softened by salt which then is cooled below 10 or 15 below is hard as a rock. Squeeky snow (which is snow below 0) is very slippery on the roads. The only solution is to go slow … and finally, I live on a road which is on about a 15% grade. You can’t drive up it for the last few days. You can only go down. If your speed gets above about 5mph … you’re out of control and won’t be able to stop without pinwheeling a it. Creeping is only way.

A reminder, the difference between 60 and 20 is the same as the difference between 20 and -20. Think of what you wear at 60 compared to 20. Stay warm out there if you’re out and about in this arctic blast.

OK.

1. An economics question (dismal science indeed).
2. Bike meets phone.
3. Growing up is hard to do … apparently.
4. An amazingly bad analogy.
5. The right corrects the right regarding Obamacare.
6. Gains given up. Regrets? Or not?
7. I haven’t read the paper yet, but I suspect there’s a catch.
8. Misunderstanding Plato noted.
9. Guns are one thing, perhaps we need less emphasis on gun control and more on intelligence minimums for politicians.
10. Rules like this have completely eliminted gun violence in Chicago, oh, wait.
11. Actual science imitates 1970s Michael Moorcock  science fiction. His character Jerry Cornelius was big on optical stimulation for various effects.
12. If something can’t continue, it won’t.
13. Look what a little confirmation bias can get you.
14. Relationship advice.

Well, after a good almost full day of skiing … my injured knee stiffened. Kids are having a blast which is the important thing.

1. Obamacare wins an award.
2. And it losing (apparently) the hard left.
3. Bio oil from a different source.
4. Hmmm.
5. Examining the lack-of-logic behind  the thoughts of those desiring to ban guns.
6. A case for which shooting drones (as suggested by that Colorado town) makes perfect sense.
7. Seems to me, when you discuss other’s sins … you should remember 1 Timothy 1:15.
8. He’s not saying that … he’s saying higher taxes lead to greater economic growth. That’s not right, but that’s what he thinks.
9. China, children, and economics.
10. Climate models.
11. Star Trek mocked.

Have fun with those resolutions. (Which are so often summed up via Spike Lee’s enjoiner “Do the Right Thing”).

1. Well, in January, it seems I’ll be following the rich and famous (that is to say having a my colon scoped). My results will not likely reported by ABC News.
2. Without cause. Oh, goody.
3. Good news presented as bad.
4. On the hand, perhaps “if true” needs to be appended to the above.
5. Father Time is a T. Rex.
6. Who is surprised?
7. What a perfect landing looks like.
8. I’d share some of the other links, but my guess none of my readers would be interested in things like this.

Posting in general seems to have slowed. Have a good New Years day!

Links?

1. Hypocrite of the year award in the field of privacy law sense … voting and nominees.
2. Resolutions and advice.
3. World currency. Which brings to mind the classic Rocky and Bullwinkle series  of cartoons in which the world economic leaders despairing of a basis for currency settle on “box tops”, which a particular moose in the Dakotas has an abundance.
4. Lassiz-Faire defended.
5. A book reviewed.
6. For the Palin fans.
7. Mr Gandleman, showing how to jump to the wrong conclusion. This is evidence primarily of the increasing failure of scientific credibility. Exhibit A, elsewhere “climate change, formerly global warming, formerly global cooling” is another.
8. Another NSA whistleblower.
9. On crossing the aisle.
10. Affluence.
11. And … a flash mob.

Yo. Links?

1. A book noted, still in my inbox.
2. Some lessons forgotten in peacetime.
3. Some science and short animations.
4. Tax money wasted.
5. An Evangelical and the East.
6. As a Rightie who “supports” him (in the sense of don’t fire/suspend), that one supports the right of a man to say a thing doesn’t (oddly enough) mean you support what he says. That seems to be lost on the linked blogger.
7. Some income inequality for discussion.
8. Missing a major point, that is, the reason that civilians are being targeted it because the rebels dress like and hide among the same. War crimes beget the same, but the original crime it seems can be laid at the feet of rebels.
9. Remember this.
10. A meaningless statement by the Democrat organ of record noted.
11. An elephant does the high hurdles. There’s a lesson here on government eptitude.
12. After all, the more time a doctor spends doing paperwork/data entry the better off we’ll all be, according ACA supporters is yet another one of their non-economic economic claims. Kinda like taxes on new medical equipment development will spur the same.

Well, we made it to the East coast, i.e., Jersey. Today we were doing a college tour for my youngest.

1. I don’t get cable, but apparently there is a “reality” show about Ducks … (two remarks on that here and here). Seems to me the situation is basically as follows,  the left purports to want to enter into “conversations about race/gender/marriage”, but they really don’t. If you really want to “have a conversation” when the other side speaks their mind, you reply, you engage in conversation, you …, uhm, talk. But no. What the left does is try to shut you down and fire you. That’s not engaging in conversation, that’s naked coercion. Persuasion by force and coercion (a) doesn’t work and (b) is highly unethical. So in the absence of people like Mr Schraub and the left leading (or at least entering) the hew and cry to reverse the suspension, those on the left are left with that unfortunate choice of asking themselves, “am I stupid or evil.” (the assumption here being that attempts at persuasion by coercion is evil). The first link makes an interesting point, you can’t refuse to sell a cake based on your beliefs, but you can be fired saying what you believe, hmm.
2. Faith and commerce.
3. Cinema.
4. A really bad whoops moment noted.
5. Theotokos and Nativity.
6. Situation and being awake.
7. Obesity. I’ve seem some remarks about obesity and whether or not it should be treated as a disease and why we so often blame the obese for their condition. I think the salient insight on why we tend to blame the obese for their condition in the US is that those of us who are not oveweight realize how easy it would be to eat to much and not exercise. The non-obese have to work at it to stay thin, their feeling is that those who are not thin just didn’t do their due diligence and got where they were.
8. What the administration is setting aside.
9. A book noted.
10. Of war and human nature.

Tomorrow, train ride to East coast begins. In ze meantime … links?

1. Trickery of the shoe varietal.
2. From the same source, of memory, loss, and recovery.
3. We can thank the White House for this Christmas gift.
4. If true, amazingly stupid.
5. Selfie … pretty close to selfish.
6. On those manmade gasses and their effects.
7. Fundamentalist Islam and the UK.
8. Well, at least they can claim a better rollout than the US, that it didn’t cost $1 billion, and took less than 6 years to develop.

So, recently in my attempt to back in shape, I’m trying swimming, which is new to me. I’m really (repeat) really slow (to put it pointedly, there are pool meet records posted on the wall, I can’t beat the times posted by “under 8 y/o girls” yet) … and I can’t swim very far before being winded. But I’m improving. I think I need to grow lats before the slow thing can be really solved.

1. Not liking the Obamacare thing, the uninsured.
2. Vulnerable?
3. Yes, but to be honest, you have to give the Admin a bit of a break there. Those other Presidents didn’t have their projects done by no-bid contracts with their buddies company.
4. The President’s commission reviewed the NSA procedures and made recommendations .. and he spoke as well. Remarks on that here, here and here.
5. Ohio moves against homeschooling.
6. Of course you can talk about it (see liberals think if you can’t talk about it, then it is evidence of bigotry).
7. In which “a great idea” means take a bad thing and make it even worse.
8. Make sure you are not drinking anything near a keyboard when reading this headline.
9. Apparently athletic ability no longer a criteria in politically correct land.  After all, we wouldn’t want to judge people on ability or character …. just the color of their skin or the group to which they adhere.
10. But I guess once you truly embrace the stupid you can’t stop.

So, I’m figuring out my schedule as I’m kinda off this week.

1. So, more “scientific discoveries” of the restating the obvious sort, this time from economics. The old folk saying “40 below keeps the riff raff out” from North Dakota comes to mind.
2. Again, science restating the obvious. To get good at anything takes lots of practice. To get world-class good at something takes that plus lots of talent. Duh.
3. Staking claims and property rights … on the moon.
4. Woops.
5.  A commercial noted.
6. The global warming, err, climate change crowd are probably crowing about this (to which a reprise of their own comments on cold weather is in order) … but it’s cool anyhow.
7. To whit.
8. “Judge Leon” three posts, here, here and here. Unfortunately for me, the phrase “Judge Leon” brings this for me.
9. Speaking of names and associations. Jack Bauer is in the news.
10. You can keep your doctor, liberal New Yorker impact.
11. Pre-game go go go (and a counter opinion). Upshot, consistency won out.
12. You can take the gymnast out of the gym, but … you can’t take the gym out of the gymnast.
13. Art and the ant.
14. Of church and state.