We create WOW!

We create WOW!  My brother Scott is an artist, gardener, and landscaper in Virginia Beach, Virginia.  He's recently updated his web site with lots of photos of his work, like the landscape at right.  Lots more photos here.  Like his work?  Give him a holler!

The progressive mind at work...

The progressive mind at work...  In this case, the mind of Elizabeth Warren.  Here's a sample of her thinking, exposed in an interview with Pro Publica:

Q: What is Congress doing to help?

A: This is the part that makes me grind my teeth. Right now, the United States government is making huge profits off the backs of our students. Our young people not only have to pay back the cost of the loans, they have to pay billions more in interest to the government — like an extra tax for trying to get an education. That's just wrong. We ought to be investing in young people who are trying to get an education — not making it harder for them.

Q: Student loans are treated differently than many other kinds of debt under bankruptcy law, so it's much harder for struggling borrowers to discharge their student loans. Do you think this should be changed?

A: Yes. I have co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Durbin, D-Ill., that called for making student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. Keep in mind: Young people who have student loan debt — they didn't go to the mall and charge up a bunch of things they couldn't afford — but if they had gone to the mall, they could discharge those debts in bankruptcy. It's only the student loan debt they can't discharge.

Q: So whatshould the government be doing?

A: For both private loans and federal loans, the fixes are pretty similar. We need to restore bankruptcy protections, provide better oversight of the government contractors that work with borrowers and process loan payments, and ensure that struggling borrowers can get help to modify their loans.

“Making a huge profit” is her loaded language for the reality: the federal government charges interest at a rate substantially lower than the private lenders could ever do.  How do we know this?  Because every student has the choice of borrowing from private lenders, and almost all of them don't – because the interest rate is much higher!

Warren's solutions are classic socialism: stop charging any interest at all on the student loans, make it easy and automatic for student borrowers to restructure their loans (skipping or stretching out payments), and allow student borrowers to eliminate their debt if they go through bankruptcy.  Elsewhere she proposes that student loans be automatically granted, without any of those pesky preconditions such as decent grades, the ability to learn, or even the financial need.  All of these measures would cost an enormous amount of money, and of course Warren wants taxpayers to foot the bill.

Reading things like this make me feel like I inhabit some sort of bizzaro world where “up” means “down”, ordinary logic doesn't apply, and incentives work backwards.  I find it difficult to believe that any adult actually believes this bullshit.

But they do.  And the voters seem to love them.

Oh, I feel the doom coming on...

38 Yahoo questions that will destroy your faith in humanity...

38 Yahoo questions that will destroy your faith in humanity...  First let me state the obvious to any regular blog reader: I don't have much faith in humanity in the first place, so destroying the tiny bit that's left doesn't sound very difficult.  These 38 actual Yahoo questions are the equivalent of using nuclear weapons to take out a sick and mostly dead flea.  One sample:

“Scanning a mirror doesn’t work.”

Faith in humanity destroyed?  Check.

Lavabit shutdown: the backstory...

Lavabit shutdown: the backstory...  I'd gotten bits and pieces of this from news reports, but this story is rich in details.  If you love liberty in the sense that our Founding Fathers meant it, as I do, then you will find this deeply disturbing...

You're using the wrong dictionary!

You're using the wrong dictionary!  A persuasive argument for using the original Webster's dictionary, along with the means to make it the default on your computer.

I've been using the electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for years now.  It's mainly a descriptive dictionary, which is not exactly the same tack that Webster's takes.  After reading this article, I'm inclined to start using it alongside the OED...

Donald Knuth: 20 questions...

Donald Knuth: 20 questions...  Every interview with Donald Knuth I've ever read or viewed has been fascinating, and this one is no exception.  Knuth is the author of my favorite works on software, The Art of Computer Programming, or TAOCP, amongst a great many other accomplishments.  I enjoyed the whole “interview” , and then got a good chuckle at the end:

20. J. H. Quick, blogger: Why is this multi-interview called "twenty questions," when only 19 questions were asked?

Don Knuth: I'm stumped. No, wait—Radia asked two.
Incidentally, the eVolumes of TAOCP contain some 4,500 questions, and almost as many answers.

1 in 30 Americans are collecting disability benefits...

1 in 30 Americans are collecting disability benefits...  I find that both appalling and astonishing...

Geek: Amidakuji...

Geek: Amidakuji...  An ancient, simple pencil-and-paper way to generate random outcomes that I'd never heard of before.  As always, Nick Berry's explanations at Data Genetics are fun and easy to follow...

Three great optical illusions...

Three great optical illusions...  The one at right and two more...

100 great journalism pieces...

100 great journalism pieces...  Well, slightly more than 100, actually.  Most of the referenced pieces are new to me.  I read 10 or so this morning, and they were all quite interesting and well-written...