Home schooled...

Home schooled...  Via reader Simi L.

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE: "If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION: "You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My father taught me about TIME TRAVEL: "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

4. My father taught me LOGIC: "Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC: "If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT: "Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

7. My father taught me IRONY: "Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS: "Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM: "Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA: "You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER: "This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY: "If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

13. My father taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE: "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out..."

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION: "Stop acting like your father!"

15. My mother taught me about ENVY: "There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION: "Just wait until we get home."

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING: "You are going to get it from your father when you get home!"

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE: "If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."

19. My mother taught me ESP: "Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

20. My father taught me HUMOR: "When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT: "If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22. My mother taught me GENETICS: "You're just like your father."

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS: "Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

24. My mother taught me WISDOM: "When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

25. My father taught me about JUSTICE: "One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!"

Lithops dorotheae...

Lithops dorotheae...  Also known as “living stones”.  Via BPOD...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  One can never have too much schadenfreude!

Mix of ObamaCare enrollees worse than expected.  Of course it was.

No record of you.  That's what some ObamaCare policy holders are hearing as they try to use their shiny new ObamaCare policies: there's no record of their enrollment.  Well, what do you expect when government is involved?  Service and efficiency?  Surely you jest!

The numbers are so embarrassing ... that U.S. Senator (CO) Mark Udall tried to talk the Colorado Division of Insurance into not reporting them.

Most transparent administration evah says ... we like opaque better, now that we think about it...

Four months after the greatest web site implosion evah, That One's bevy of bozos decides to switch to another contractor: they're dumping CGI and switching to Accenture.  I'd never heard of CGI before, but Accenture is a big name with large enterprises...

Jamul Casino construction started...

Jamul Casino construction started...  At least, that's what's being published at a number of news sources (all of which seem to be written from the same press release).  The stories are all shy on details.  You can read them here, here, here, and here...

Still cooking the books, they are...

Still cooking the books, they are...  The unemployment numbers that came out this morning were, as usual, cooked.  The published “unemployment” number (6.7%) does not include the arbitrarily defined “discouraged workers”, and so therefore does not include all the people who are actually unemployed. The actual labor force participation rate (that is, the percentage of people of working age who are actually working) dropped (again), which would mean the unemployment rate, if measured accurately, would have increased.

Here's the participation rate, 1978 to today (Zero Hedge):

 

1978 – the Jimmy Carter “stagflation” era – is the last time the participation rate was this low.  If you corrected the published unemployment rate using the participation rate, here's what the real unemployment rate would look like (Federalist):

Quite a bit less progress, when viewed with the actual unemployment rate...

Strange coincidence noted...

Strange coincidence noted...  Reader Simi L. noted the strange coincidence of two famous historical sites being located very close to each other: the twin spiral tunnels built for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Canadian Rockies, and the location of the Burgess Shale fossil field, where the Cambrian explosion of (bizarro-land!) species was discovered.  This map shows both of the spiral tunnels, plus the location of the most famous quarry in the Burgess Shale (the Walcott Quarry).  You may have to zoom out a little to see the three markers.  The two tunnels are about a mile apart; the quarry is about two miles from either tunnel.  Both are near the summit of Kicking Horse Pass, just a short drive northwest from Banff National Park. 

If the Cambrian explosion and the Burgess Shale are new topics for you, there's a book you should read: Wonderful Life, by Stephen Jay Gould.

How strange that these two places of historic interest (for completely unrelated reasons!) should be located so close together...

Google unemployment index...

Google unemployment index...  Once again, a result that I'm not quite sure how to interpret.  As you can see on the 5 year chart below, every November there's a dip in the index (presumably the hiring of holiday seasonal workers), and every January there's a sharp uptick (presumably the layoff of holiday seasonal workers).  But this year, the uptick is much higher than in previous years.  What does it mean?  I haven't a clue, but it's hard to see how it could be good news...

Marriage makes you stupid...

Marriage makes you stupid...  Megan McArdle with an interesting post about the effects of marriage, economic and otherwise...

How to tell if your dog is involved in a sex scandal...

How to tell if your dog is involved in a sex scandal...  A picture is worth a thousand words!  Via my mom, who is scandalous in her own special way :)

The millionaire's club...

The millionaire's club ... aka the U.S. Congress.  This year, for the first time ever, more than half of all U.S. congresscritters are millionaires.  That's interesting, and possibly concerning – but certainly not scandalous.  After all, being successful in business is one of the ways any individual might hold him or herself forth as being worthy of a position of political leadership.  I, for one, would feel much more confident of That One and his band of bozos if the leader and his band had some successful business experience.

So I've got no problem with the notion that we have lots of millionaires in Congress.  What I do have a problem with is those congresscritters whose net worths have soared while they are in Congress, with no other income.  Like, to name but just one example, the disgusting Harry Reid.  For that group (and there are members of it on both sides of the aisle), I have a standard prescription:

Rope.
Tree.
Corrupt congresscritter.
Some assembly required.

Ford knows where you drive...

Ford knows where you drive...  This story is all over the place today, usually accompanied by breathless commentary about the evils of corporate data gatherers.  I've got bad news for everybody: there's nothing either unique or surprising about Ford's gathering of GPS information.  This sort of data aggregation is a natural, even required side-effect of the other services companies like Ford are rolling out – usually to our delight, so much so that we're willing to pay big bucks to get them.

Take, for example, today's ubiquitous mobile phones.  They only work because the phone company knows exactly where you are.  Well, more precisely, they know exactly where your phone is.  Of course they keep records of where you've been – and those records allow services that we really, really want.  For example: the only reason that 911 works on your mobile phone is because that data exists.

I could go on in this vein for a long time, for there are many examples – including the services offered (and that people pay for) by Ford, GM, and other car companies that are enabled by the combination of mobile phone and GPS technologies – and the records of your car's location that result.

I don't mean to say that more privacy protections couldn't (or shouldn't) be put into place.  Personally, I favor transparency and liability as the best tools for a solution.  I think companies that use your location (or other private data) should be allowed to do so if they tell you they're doing it.  Then you can freely choose whether to use their service or not, based on your privacy concerns – and companies will find a motivation for increasing their privacy protections, based on consumer reaction.  On the liability side, I think companies should be liable for any breach of their privacy commitments, including consequential damages.  This is a big grey area right now, both in law and in precedent, and outcomes are (a) unpredictable, and (b) very expensive.  We won't see companies working hard to protect our privacy until it's in their financial interest to do so, and under today's liability regime, the incentives are mostly in the company's favor...

Tweet of the day...

Tweet of the day... Byron York, observing Christie's news conference yesterday:

MT @TPCarney: Christie's doing really well, not hedging or weaselling. Only 2 possibilities: he's innocent, or he's a Clinton-level liar.
— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 9, 2014

Yup, that pretty much sums it up!

Stellar speeders...

Stellar speeders...  Several recently-discovered stars in our Milky Way galaxy are traveling at speeds greater than the escape velocity for the galaxy.  They're headed for the great void outside our galaxy – and nobody knows why...

Eggplant-flavored toothpaste...

Eggplant-flavored toothpaste...  And that's just one of the, er, interesting flavors of toothpaste available to Japanese shoppers.  Apparently the toothpaste business over there is much more competitive than ours...