Geneses I don't like to keep using articles from Slate, but Slate is where responsible journalists go to play.

http://www.slate.com/id/2224777/

Saletan's argument is a salient, if journalistic, apology for (deistic) ID.

At the end of the argument, the same point as every discussion of origins.

Penn Jillette was wrong. It's intellectually dishonest to say you are an atheist. We can't answer the question of a first cause definitively.

But it's also intellectually (and morally) dishonest to answer the question with the god of the Qu'ran, Bible, or Torah.  ¶ 1:55 AM 0 Comments

  Stock and Bonds (The Medieval Kinds) As of today, the trailing price earnings ratio of the DJIA is 54 right now. Historical averages are somewhere in the 20s. There is significant noise here, of course, but it appears we may have a long way to fall when it comes to asset prices.
(I'm not going to source any of my numbers here, since this is a rough thought exercise)

As of today, Dow is at 9,581. On Aug. 20, 1999, the Dow was at 11,100. If you invested $10,000 in 1999 in the Dow (and did not reinvest dividends), your investment would be worth the equivalent of $5,783 in 1999 dollars. If you'd reinvested dividends, you'd probably recapture $2,000 of that loss or so, but it would still be a loser's day (decade) at the ballpark.

How did the American equity market make it through a decade of profound technological innovation (and related increases in productivity) and unprecedented globalization (and attendant decreases in prices) while the equity markets went worse than sideways?

On a lighter note, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a little green dinosaur next to any link to historical statistics.

Labels: japan's lost decade?

  ¶ 4:05 AM 0 Comments

  death panels? I wouldn't mind being on a death panel or two in my time.

I'd particularly like to be on the panel of the people that actually believe there are death panels. I know that Farhad Manjoo says we should just keep our mouths shut about the death panels and the forced euthanasia, but fuck man. People aren't good at heart, they're stupid at heart.

I don't understand why people want to believe Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (see here) about something that if you just take like 9.58 seconds to think about you could see clearly that they're full of shit. Death panels? They could just replace the 1,000 page bill with a copy of Shirley Jackson's the lottery and that shit would be more believable as our answer to the health care hullabaloo.

Labels: I'd like a living will of my own., old jokes never die, Youth in Asia

  ¶ 12:26 AM 0 Comments

  A run for the ages (and the border)

Usain Bolt ran a 9.58 100 in Berlin.

9

5

8

Holy shit mangs. Just for fun, I'm going to lay out 5 of the most underrated non-team sport athletic accomplishments, in no order:

- Reinhold Messner's solo ascent, without oxygen, during the storm season, of Everest's north face. (Actually, this one is in order. This was so far beyond what anyone had done before it defies logic.)

- Bob Beamon's long jump. The record stood for 23 years (including the advent of steroids), and broke the record by almost 2 feet, whereas the record had previously never been bettered by more than 4 inches.

- Carl Lewis anchor leg of the 4x100 in the 1992 Olympics. This one may have made the list because I remember the feeling of watching it live, but watch the race. He SMOKES the field, and runs an 8.8 second split. 100 meters in eight point eight seconds. Yowza.

- Mike Tyson knocking out Leon Spinks in 45 seconds for the heavyweight title.

- This one is on the list mostly because it's obscure, but Andy Coan deadlifted 1,000 pounds, the only person in history to do so. Can you even comprehend what it would take to deadlift that much weight?

I would have included Edwin Moses not losing a 400m hurdle race for 9 years and 9 months (122 races) but I know that I trot that horse out pretty regularly.

  ¶ 3:58 AM 0 Comments

  Georgie Wilson's War "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world...and then we fucked up the end game." - Charlie Wilson's War

So far, the Iraq war has cost us $550 billion, by conservative estimates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

To put this in perspective, consider the following alternate use of our money:
Current Population of Iraq: 28 million
Annual cash flow of Iraqi war costs invested in 10-year Treasuries: $17.9 billion
Available cash flow per person: $639
At a glance, this sounds insignficant. But consider that the per capita GDP of Iraq is $3,700. A pro rata contribution to per capita in the U.S. would be $8,000.

Potential uses for each individual's funding:College tuition for every eligible studentInfrastructure spending
And....we get all of our money back in the "end game".

Damn.

NOTE: All facts are from U.S. government sources (CIA Factbook, etc) where possible.

Labels: you got a kajillion dollars? we could help a lot of people

  ¶ 4:15 AM 0 Comments

  What If We're Wrong, Part 1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/22/us-census-ageing-population

A few thoughts:

- An aging population does mean a decline in National GDP, but so what? Standards of living are driven by per capita GDP.

- The article contains an interesting fact about the US prewar life expectancy versus the minimum age for Social Security eligibility.

- I personally think the real issue with a declining population is the long-term effects on resource capacity. What happens to all the real estate, office space, and factories that were utilized by the population when it was 20% greater? Anybody seen pictures of Detroit lately....?

Labels: i'll be knowing ye, old age

  ¶ 4:13 AM 0 Comments