Wednesday, August 31

Katrina: the aftermath

It sounds aweful.

  • With winds up to 145 miles an hour, Katrina hit land in eastern Louisiana just after 6 a.m. Monday as a Category 4 storm, the second-highest rating, qualifying it as one of the strongest to strike the United States.

  • New Orleans is but one city devasted by Katrina. It has left its mark on numerous Gulf Coast communities. In Mississippi, for example, Gulfport was virtually gone, and Biloxi was severely damaged. The president of Plaquemines Parish, on the southeastern tip of Louisiana, announced that the lower half of the parish had been reclaimed by the river. St. Bernard Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, was largely rooftops and water. In South Diamondhead, Miss., on St. Louis Bay, all that remained of the entire community of 200 homes was pilings. Boats were stuck in trees.

  • The American Red Cross: "We are looking now at a disaster above any magnitude that we've seen in the United States. We've been saying that the response is going to be the largest Red Cross response in the history of the organization."

  • The mayor [of New Orleans] estimated it would be one to two weeks before the water could be pumped out, and two to four weeks before Jason and other evacuees will be permitted to return to the city. Another city official said it would be two months before the schools reopened.

  • New Orleans is below sea level, and the mayor estimated that 80 percent of the city was submerged, with the waters running as deep as 20 feet in some places. Floodwaters were still rising as much as three inches an hour in parts of New Orleans late Tuesday.

  • The [New Orleans] city government has moved to Baton Rouge, 80 miles to the northwest.

  • The looting is so bad that officials in Plaquemines and Jefferson Parishes have been calling for martial law, which is not authorized by the State Constitution.

  • Preliminary damage estimates from insurance experts on Monday ranged from $9 billion to $16 billion, but they were pushed up past $25 billion on Tuesday, which could make Hurricane Katrina the costliest in history, surpassing Hurricane Andrew in 1992, with $21 billion in insured losses.

Link

Monday, August 29

More on the controversy surrounding Fucking

Some time ago I posted on Fucking (and the townfolk's decision against changing the name of their beloved town). Well, their back in the news again and they're f---ing mad as hell. Excerpt:
"We will not stand for the F---ing signs being removed," the officer told the broadsheet.

"It may be very amusing for you British, but F---ing is simply F---ing to us. What is this big F---ing joke? It is puerile."
Link

Sunday, August 28

New Orleans Braces for Powerful Katrina

I hope Jason Zimmerman is taking proper precaution. We're thinking of you. Link

NASCAR Nation

While I've still not mustered the patience to watch a single race in its entirety, I did just recently finish a fun book on NASCAR, titled Sunday Money, by Jeff Macgregor; I rented and watched, to Stephanie's dismay, the NASCAR IMAX movie -- which offers some good action, but its probably not worth the effort; and just yesterday, I just went out and purchased the latest issue of Fortune, which includes a 10-page feature article on NASCAR, titled America's Fastest-Growing Sport -- an excellent article (which is unfortunately not available online, w/out subscription). Here are some interesting factiods from the article:

  • NASCAR is the only major sport that has a growing TV audience: In the past five years, its TV ratings increase by 50%. Moreover, the sport is on pace this year for its highest TV viewership ever; the last time a major professional sport set a new viewership high was the NFL in 1981.
  • Its growing revenues at a fast pace: E.g., licensed retail sales of NASCAR-branded product have increased 250% over the past decade.
  • It has huge brand loyalty: According to a study, 72% of fans are 'more likely' to buy a product if it has the sport's logo on it. Excerpt: "Margie and Phil Chaney, both 45...are living proof. 'Absolutely,' says Phil. 'I don't care what it is -- gasoline, auto parts, or whatever. If it has NASCAR on it, that's the one I'm going to buy.' "
  • The breadth and volume of licensed goods NASCAR sanctions is extraordinary. They range from stand t-shirts and based baseball caps to vegetables. Yes, vegatables. A produce distributor now sells NASCAR-branded potatoes, lettuce, and tomatoes in supermarkets arcross the country.
Last night they raced at Bristol, a small, half-mile track. It was a bump and run race, with spin outs, and some controversy. Or so I'm told; again, I got bored half-way thru, but returned at the end for the highlights. The good news, or bad news depending on your perspective, is that Jeff Gordon, one of the biggest NASCAR stars, broke into the top 10 in the points standings. (For some reason or other Gordon evokes a love him or hate following. Why is there a large contigency of NASCAR fans that despise him? Have not figure that one out yet.) Gordon has been on a nice run recently; in the last four races alone, he has risen from 15th to 10th in the point standings. Anyway, what this all means is that if Gordon holds his 10th position thru (I think) the 26th race in Richmond, then he is one of the 10 racers that participate in what is called "The Chase for the Cup," which begins in two weeks and consists of the final ten races of the season. The racer, among the ten, with the most points after the 10th and final race wins the Nextel Cup. The following link offers a synopsis of the Bristol race, in case your interested. Link

Used shoes on eBay

Just purchased some used shoes from eBay. There are some pretty good deals if you don't mind the fact that they're already broken in. And if you don't get tied up thinking about the circumstances under which one would sell their shoes on Ebay.

Here is my recent purchase. Pretty sweet, huh?

Another item I'm tracking is this pair. I think the current auction price already exceeded my reservation price, but that could change.

Friday, August 26

The "Anti-Sit"

A photographic chronical of anti-sitting architecture in NYC. I never knew such devices existed. Given the large number of photos, I'd guess such devices, while ugly, are effective. Still they are a somewhat jolting reminder that youire not wanted, akin to posting a sign that reads "f*ck you, get lost." Link

Thursday, August 25

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena

Don't click this link unless you have at least 30 minutes to kill. It is fascinating (and addictive). Link

US getting fatter, fast

After consuming two donuts for lunch, this article caught my eye. It reports the findings of a new study, which are rather alarming. Get this:
Currently, about 119 million, or 64.5%, of US adults are either overweight or obese.

According to projections, 73% of US adults could be overweight or obese by 2008.

Percent of obese adults by state
Rank 1 - Mississippi - 29.5%
Rank 2 - Alabama - 28.9%
Rank 3 - West Virginia - 27.6%
Rank 50 - Colorado - 16.4%"
Link

Wednesday, August 24

Vicious Circle

Maureen Dowd sums it up nicely in today's paper. Excerpt:
For political reasons, the president has a history of silence on America's war dead. But he finally mentioned them on Monday because it became politically useful to use them as a rationale for war - now that all the other rationales have gone up in smoke.

'We owe them something,' he told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5 billion). 'We will finish the task that they gave their lives for.'

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle: the killing keeps justifying itself.
Link

Cindy Sheehan momentum

Ms. Sheehan ain't buying Bush's bullshit, and neither are Vets. You must check out this article, if for nothing else the picture of Vet, Bill Moyer, wearing a paper thingy over his ear. It is apparently called a "bullshit protector." Priceless. Excerpt from article:
Veterans wearing 'B.S. Protector' ear flaps sat silently in the audience of the 106th convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Monday in Salt Lake City while Bush tried to compare his failed war in Iraq to both world wars and other great conflicts of the 20th century.

With the anti-war movement finding new momentum behind grieving mother Cindy Sheehan, Bush acknowledged the fighting in Iraq is difficult and dangerous. But he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention the fight is necessary to keep terrorists out of the United States.
Link

Weed, tightwads, and hookers

This title caught your eye and it should. It describes the capital city of Holland, another one of those socialist democracies that my dad points to whenever I criticize one of his wacky policy proposals, like, eg, universal health care. Anyway, Euge forwarded this article to me, presumably in response to my previous post on Finland, and it is a great read. The author, Seth Stevenson does a wonderful job conveying why Amsterdam is such a great place (not just for vacations but) to live. Link

Tuesday, August 23

In Finland's Footsteps

An interesting article on Finland. It offers plenty of fodder to bolster Dad's socialist agenda. Link

Monday, August 22

Cindy Sheehan

I was in the Lowe's parking lot this weekend. We went to town on the garden surrounding our house. The garden looks nice, but that is another story. Anyway, a group of three ladies in the parking lot were giving me the thumbs up upon my arrival to the gardening center. I smiled and fended them off, thinking to myself "thanks, ladies. But I'm already married." I finish up at Lowe's and head back to the minivan and notice that Steph has put up an anti-war sign on the car (a quote from Cindy Sheehan) and she's added a bumper sticker that reads "Peace is a moral value" or something like that. I realized at that point, it was not my male pattern baldness that the ladies were admiring. Anyway, I am glad Steph added these public displays. And I am glad she attended (by herself) the candlelight vigil in Evanston showing support for Sheehan last Weds.

Finally, I read this morning that John Edwards, prompted by his wife, is finally speaking out against the Iraq war. Here is an excerpt of the statement from Elizabeth Edwards:
"The president says he knows enough, doesn't need to hear from Casey's mother, doesn't need to assure her that Casey's is not one small death in a long and seemingly never-ending drip of deaths, that there is a plan here that will bring our sons and daughters home," Elizabeth Edwards wrote in her e-mail last week. "He claims he understands how some people feel about the deaths in Iraq. The president is wrong."
Link I may not completely understand the purpose or objective of Sheehan's protest, but I think what she is doing (in general) is great and the effect she is having on people is long overdue.

Addendum: Ari Fleischer tells us why W. will not meet with Ms. Sheehan for a second time:
"If you allow those who are the most vocal and most antagonistic to get a meeting with the president for fear that publicity will hurt you if you don't, you're creating incentives for your critics to become even more antagonistic and more vocal," Fleischer said. "Then, you're forever stuck in: Will you or won't you meet? You'll no longer lead. You'll just wrestle with meetings."

So is that what he's doing? I think I'd rather he be in meetings instead. Link

Friday, August 19

Sam's first day of school

Steph, Oliver, and I dropped off Sam at East Prairie Elementary school for his first day of kindergarten! The school requires parents to drop off their child in front of the school. We did that, and Sam got in a line leading to the front door with his classmates. Parents of the kindergarteners were swarming in the periphery with cameras, myself included. The kindergarteners were easy to identify in the crowd of elementary school kids. They were all standing in line, silent, and for the most part motionless. To help sooth Sam's nerves, before sending him to get in line, I told him that they did very bad things to children behind those school doors. I think that gave him some solace.

While dad enjoyed the first-day-of-school experience, Mom had tears in her eyes. She cried in the car on the way to school and while dropping him off in front of school. It was endearing. But I think it rattled Sam a bit. She is telling Sam, while she is crying, that there is no need to be nervous about his first day of school. I don't think Sam was convinced.

Cataloging my ruination

I very much enjoy Jonathan Ames' sense of humor, or at least I think he's joking. Here he talks about how he is 41 and absolutely falling apart. You'll enjoy it.

Link

Thursday, August 18

The Universal Packing List

Generate a custom packing list for any journey! The output seems useful, particularly for someone such as myself. Then again, expert packers, such as Steph, may find this silly.

Link

Tuesday, August 16

'Murderball' is marvelous

Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, reviews the movie Murderball. Excerpt:
The movie breaks you down from the first frame, when we see Mark Zupan changing into his workout clothes. Looking a lot like the WWE's Undertaker, Zupan squirms around in his wheelchair, hoisting limp legs and yanking down his pants, dangling those same legs into a pair of shorts, then wiggling his butt so the shorts will reach his waist. There's no background music, no sounds other than a disabled guy trying to get dressed. And you feel for him.
But don't feel to bad...
Zupan has a smoking-hot girlfriend and tons of speaking engagements.
Ok, I feel better now. Seriously, though, I've heard lots of good things about this flick. Link

Insider Trading in Action

This is amusing. A couple weeks ago the blog Malanobis reported that there were clear signs of insider trading activity in Reebok options during the day preceding Adidas' accouncement that it planned to buy Reebok.

Following up on this story, the AP notes the following:

  • the purchaser of these options is apparently a 63 year-old Croatian woman living on a $263/month pension.
  • her account made $2 million on a $130K investment.
  • and, by the way, she has a 25 year old nephew that is a broker in New York.
Link

Monday, August 15

Factory Tours

This is a neat idea. Eric Rasmusen suggests going on a factory tour. Link

And he points to some good sites for researching such an undertaking:

Travel Channel: "Best Factory Tours for Kids in the US" and

Factory Tours USA

Friday, August 12

Ode to the American hillbilly

Entertaining video. Link via Boing Boing

Thursday, August 11

Bobby Knight's reality TV show

Bobby Knight is the former coach of Indiana. Brief digression. Other than the chair throwing incident and punching incident that got him fired, what is most memorable to me is his 1975-76 team (comprised of Kent Benson, Scott May and others), which went undefeated and won the NCAA tourney. They did it by defeating Michigan in the finals. It still hurts. End of digression.

Anyway, believe it or not, Knight is to have his own reality show. Excerpt:
ESPN announced last week that Knight would choose a walk-on from a field of 16 to fill the last roster slot on his 2006-7 Red Raiders basketball team.

The six-part 'Knight School' will start filming next month on the campus in Lubbock, Tex., but it will not be seen until February.

There is an 'Apprentice'-like sound to it - Knight will be able to cut 15 players and presumably teach them defense and life lessons - but the winner will not run anything or get a cent if he wins. He will be the 12th man on the team, but will it be a dream come true or a college player's nightmare?
Link

Wednesday, August 10

Maureen is back with a vengeance

Finally! Maureen Dowd has returned from her sabbatical. Her op ed in today's NYT is not bad. Link

30 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do on the Internet

This article in PC World offers some pretty nifty insights on cool tools, websites, etc. Link

One that I've already found useful is Kayak.com. It is an impressive flight, hotel, car rental aggregator. I located a Days Inn in Ann Arbor for Thanksgiving weekend for $60/night. The hotels primary selling point (for Sam and ODB): "the largest indoor heated pool in Ann Arbor." Lots of qualifiers in that statement, but still a bargain for sixty smackers.

Tuesday, August 9

Real estate bubble: the flatlands vs. the zoned zone

Is there a real estate bubble? It is a hot topic, but one that journalists do not cover very well in my opinion. Too much heresay; short on facts. Alas, I have come upon some nice exceptions in recent weeks. The first is an article by Steven Lansburg, which introduced to me the important effect of zoning regulations on real estate values. Link

Lansburg cites to the research of economics prof Ed Glaeser and finance prof Joe Gyourko. The cited paper appeared in Regulation magazine way back in 2002; the magazine article is a condensed summary of their research, and easy to read. Link

Finally, in yesterday's NYT Krugman picks up on Glaeser and Gyourko's research and concludes that there is a bubble...in parts of the US; that is, a bubble is obvious if you compare the price increases of real estate in what he calls the "flatland" (eg, central Illinois) vs. "zoned zone" (eg, Chicagoland). Price increases in the latter are out of control. Yikes! Link

Monday, August 8

Ivan's waves estimated to have reached 90 feet

Everyday there is at least one article in one or both of Cayman's two national newspapers on the effects of Hurricane Ivan. I might be exageratting a tad, but Ivan is still omnipresent in Cayman. This item, reported in today's Compass, caught my eye. Excerpt:
Hurricane Ivan last year whipped up waves 90 feet high, which could snap a ship in two or dwarf a 10-floor building, scientists have revealed.

The ocean waves generated by Ivan, which left a trail of devastation through the Caribbean, are thought to be the tallest and most intense yet measured.
Link

Friday, August 5

Fuck

Wikipedia now has a list of films ordered by uses of the word "fuck." For instance, Pulp Fiction is #12 on the list with an average of 1.76 "fucks" per minute. Not bad. I think the usefulness of this list is self-explanatory. Link

Thursday, August 4

Hacking Elevators

This guy says that if you hit the "door close" button and the "floor [x]" button at the same time, it'll take you directly to floor [x], without any stops in between.

Nothing about elevator hacking shows up in Snopes.com, so I guess we'll have to give it a try ourselves.

Link

The social benefits of Wal-Mart

Harvard business prof Pankaj Ghemawat does a nice job sizing up the Wal-Mart debate. Excerpt from NYT op-ed:
According to one recent academic study, when Wal-Mart enters a market, prices decrease by 8 percent in rural areas and 5 percent in urban areas. With two-thirds of Wal-Mart stores in rural areas, this means that Wal-Mart saves its consumers something like $16 billion a year. And because Wal-Mart's presence forces the store's competitors to charge lower prices as well, this $16 billion figure understates the company's real impact by at least half.

...

[T]he debate around Wal-Mart ... is a conflict pitting consumers and efficiency-oriented intermediaries like Wal-Mart against a combination of labor unions, traditional retailers and community groups. Particularly in retailing, American policies favor consumers and offer fewer protections to other interests than is typical elsewhere in the world. Is such pro-consumerism a good thing?

The answer depends on who these consumers are, and Wal-Mart's customers tend to be the Americans who need the most help. Our research shows that Wal-Mart operates two-and-a-half times as much selling space per inhabitant in the poorest third of states as in the richest third. And within that poorest third of states, 80 percent of Wal-Mart's square footage is in the 25 percent of ZIP codes with the greatest number of poor households. Without the much-maligned Wal-Mart, the rural poor, in particular, would pay several percentage points more for the food and other merchandise that after housing is their largest household expense.

So in thinking about Wal-Mart, let's keep in mind who's reaping the benefits of those 'everyday low prices' - and, by extension, where the real conflict lies.
Link

Tuesday, August 2

Spot The Fake Smile

From a sample of video headshots, can you identify the sincere smile from the fake smile? I found it pretty hard to tell, but ended up getting 16 out of 20 correct. Its a fun excercise. Link

Posner responds to Krugman's family values

Two posts down from this, I point to and quote from a Krugman op-ed. Posner takes issue with what he believes is a significant omission from Krugman's analysis. Posner's hypothesis is that European policy deters competition and, hence, impedes assimilation of immigrants. Such barriers, Posner argues, act to provide a breeding ground for terrorists. In Posner's words "The less fluid, less competitive, less market-oriented, and indeed less materialistic (the only color important to businessmen is green) a national economy is, the less opportunity it will provide to alien entrants." From this he concludes that the cost of such policy (think 9/11, Madrid and London bombings) outweigh the benefit (think 3-hour midday siestas, and monthlong vacations on the Cote d'Azur). Ok, I had the same initial reaction. However, once you get over this urge to kick Posner's ass, you come to realize that he makes some interesting and valid points. Excerpt:
Krugman's failure to relate the European model to Europe's Muslim problem is telling...The assimilation of immigrants by the United States, compared to the inability of the European nations to assimilate them--with potentially catastrophic results for those nations--is not unrelated to the differences between economic regulation in the United States and Europe. Because the U.S. does not have a generous safety net--because it is still a nation in which the risk of economic failure is significant--it tends to attract immigrants who have values conducive to upward economic mobility, including a willingness to conform to the customs and attitudes of their new country. And because the U.S. does not have employment laws that discourage new hiring or restrict labor mobility (geographical or occupational), immigrants can compete for jobs on terms of substantial equality with the existing population. Given the highly competitive character of the U.S. economy, in contrast to the economies of Europe, employers cannot afford to discriminate against able workers merely because they are foreign and perhaps do not yet have a good command of English. By the second generation, most immigrant families are fully assimilated, whatever their religious beliefs or ethnic origins...

Thus, it is not poverty that breeds extremism; it is social policies intended in part to eradicate poverty that do so, by obstructing exit from minority subcultures. If Muslims in European societies do not feel a part of those societies because public policy does not enable them to compete for the jobs held by non-Muslims--if instead, excluded from identifying with the culture of the nation in which they reside they perforce identify with the worldwide Muslim culture--some of them are bound to adopt the extremist views that are common in that culture. The resulting danger to Europe and to the world is not offset by long vacations.
Link

Monday, August 1

Who's Paying for Our Patriotism?

Uwe Reinhardt, on moral hazard:
The strategic shielding of most voters from any emotional or financial sacrifice for these wars cannot but trigger the analogue of what is called 'moral hazard' in the context of health insurance, a field in which I've done a lot of scholarly work. There, moral hazard refers to the tendency of well-insured patients to use health care with complete indifference to the cost they visit on others. It has prompted President Bush to advocate health insurance with very high deductibles. But if all but a handful of Americans are completely insulated against the emotional -- and financial -- cost of war, is it not natural to suspect moral hazard will be at work in that context as well?

A policymaking elite whose families and purses are shielded from the sacrifices war entails may rush into it hastily and ill prepared, as surely was the case of the Iraq war.

***

When our son, then a recent Princeton graduate, decided to join the Marine Corps in 2001, I advised him thus: "Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded." The intervening years have not changed my views; they have reaffirmed them.

I am not at all impressed by people who resolve to have others stay the course in Iraq and in Afghanistan. At zero sacrifice, who would not have that resolve?
Link