Category: Uncategorized

I hope this will put the issue to bed. What really gets me about the entire affair is that the people pursuing this were so disingenuous. What is even more amazing is how ineffectual everyone was in calling them on it.

It was pretty clear that the birther thing was really all about being sore losers with some nasty racist and class undertones. When people would try to point this out, the birthers would simply shrug and essentially say, “Hey, rules are rules! Don’t blame us if he’s not eligible.” When prompted with this, eyes were rolled and disparaging things were said, but no progress was made.

I am sure the vast majority of people that were in the birther group were perfectly happy sitting idly by while far more important rules were being flaunted. Things like denying habeus corpus, the authorization of killing Americans abroad, and then there is the bombing in libya. It’s funny how the rules involving those things are just ignored.

Actually I know why those things were ignored even though it would have been the perfect comeback to birther nonsense. It’s because neither side thinks much of the rules. People defending the president couldn’t bring these things up, and the birthers don’t actually mind that aspect of his presidency.

Rules are indeed rules, it would be nice if anyone would notice ones that matter.

Silver is now trading at $45 an ounce. I started buying it when it was $17 an ounce, that was just a year ago. What is causing the enormous rise in prices? For an answer, all you have to do is look at the spectacle of the budget drama. The government was almost shut down, insults were hurled, programs were threatened, and in the end a compromise bill was passed and everyone patted themselves on the back for how responsible they were. As it turns out, most of the so called cuts were really just accounting shenanigans. The vast majority of the cuts were simply funds that were previously earmarked but couldn’t be spent for various reasons. In the end, the compromise cut a whopping 1/10 of 1% off of the current budget. And that took effort!

Since then, the president has gone on to explain how we need to keep spending money and S&P has judged that there is a good chance that federal debt will lose its AAA rating before too long. So, it really shouldn’t be too hard to figure out why people are buying metals. The government as a whole can’t, and more importantly won’t, meaningfully trim things back even to what they were in 2000 (a most barbarous time I’m sure). There are no more safe haven currencies to store cash values in, so people are turning to what people have used for money for all of recoded history, metals. Get it while you can I say, there is little hope of things getting better any time soon.

Elisabeth Sladen died yesterday at the age of 63, yet another victim of cancer. She played the role of Sarah Jane Smith, a companion to the third, fourth, and 10th doctors. She had also travelled with the 11th. Of all of the companions that have come and gone over the years, she is usually remembered most fondly. I’ve certainly never known anyone that actually disliked the character.

She was the first of the newer style of female companions. Before her, the girls were mostly there as plot devices. They mostly got into trouble and screamed a lot. Lis Sladen paved the way for real characters for women in the show. More importantly, she was very likable and easy to cheer for. I’ve never heard a negative thing about Elisabeth Sladen, never heard the stories of pettiness, backstabbing, and ego that seems to be par for the course with many actors.

I’m assuming that she had a rather fast acting cancer since absolutely no one saw this coming. She was still filming as recently as December and had agreed to do some more audio plays for Big Finish this year. I think it was the abruptness of it all that is causing so much grief among fans, I know it is for me. Earlier this year, another beloved actor from Dr. Who, Nicholas Courtney died. He was older and in poor health, I doubt many were surprised when he passed away. But Lis Sladen? Impossible, she looked great, she had been working, and you could tell there was so much more for her to do. We’re going to miss you Lis…

Just a test

Got my iPad yesterday and I have today of, what timing! Really enjoying it so far but I’m also surprised at how I’m enjoying it. There’s a few things, like email, reading rss feeds and games that I didn’t think I’d care about that I absolutely love. Add the onscreen keyboard to that as well, I’m flying on this thing! There are a few other things that are going to take some getting used to because they are so different than doing it on a computer. First and foremost is using the Internet. I’m used to having multiple tabs open and flipping between them constantly. Yes, I know that I can use another browser and get the tabbed functionality, but some of the things I keep open in a tab, like google reader, really work better in a native app instead of accessing them online.

This is the first blog post I’ve done on the iPad, we’ll see how well this app does. Still in the process of checking out various apps. I’ll post more once I have a better feel for it. For now, the general impression I have is… Wow!

From Tyler Cowen:

I conclude that economics is not yet a science.  Economics is most like a science when people do not care about the outcome of the argument.

This is something that Russ Roberts has been saying for a while. It is almost impossible to do any real tests of macroeconomic theory. Even when experiments (aka policy) are done, there are too many variables to nail down causes and effects beyond first order effects, sometimes that’s not even obvious.

This post lives up to it’s name of 50 unexplainable pictures. These are the kinds of things you wonder how they were ever thought of, let alone made. Here’s one of my favorites…

Check out the rest of them, you’ll have a surreal time…

A while back, I mentioned a “charity” called Kiva. They are a sort of grey area when it comes to charities. They are actually in the micro-finance world, the people that get this money need to pay it back. Some say that micro-finance is an awful thing, poor people should just be given money, no strings attached. I agree when it comes to life or death things, or things that are of a humanitarian nature. The people looking to Kiva for help are different, they are business owners looking to improve their business. They want to make more money, but capital is difficult to come by in developing countries. That’s where I come in…

I loan money to these folks and I do not collect any interest on it. That’s the charitable bit. Yes, the companies that administer the loans make money, and some people think that those rates are too high. I don’t. The fact is that whatever is being charged by Kiva’s partners in the field is still less than the alternatives available to folks in those areas. The other good thing about charging interest is that it eliminates free loaders and makes sure that the money is used productively.

What I love about this is that the money I put in comes back so that I can loan it again. I have done this for 10 months now. My finances have only allowed me to make one loan per month so far. So that’s $250 I have lent to folks in developing economies. I have now gotten $120 of that back so far. See how this works? If all goes well, I will be able to put $300 a year towards this a year, and I will get most of that back every year as well. So far, there have not been any defaults and the default rates seem to be very low according to Kiva’s numbers. By next year, I’ll have $600 circulating, the year after that, $900, etc.

It’s pretty exciting to have a growing pool of resources to lend to folks. If times ever got really hard for me, I could withdraw those funds and use them myself. What’s not to love? I encourage you to check Kiva out, it’s a worthwhile thing to do…

… That I have to go to the library to get on the Internet. If all
goes well, the Fios guys will be here next Monday (sometime between 8
and 5 grrr…) and I’ll be happily surfing away on super speed
Internet. I should also be able to watch TV on my computer assuming
that my poor MacBook will be up to it. I can’t wait to rejoin the
modern world, only one week to go!

Sent from my iPod

I picked up all of my film when I last went to mom’s place. It’s an
impressive amount, close to 200 rolls. They were meant to be used in
Yemen but the logistics proved too difficult to be practical.

So what am I going to do with it? I still love shooting film, and I
still have nice equipment for doing that, but am I really going to
shoot that much? Some might say that since I spent the money on the
film it would be silly not to use it. I think a more rational way of
looking at it is to realize that money is gone and just look at the
costs involved in going forward.

The big problem is that the film is color. It would cost a ton to get
it developed and scanned. If it were B&W, I’d probably hang onto it. I
enjoy the process of developing B&W film and it’s a far sight cheaper
to develop to boot.

I think using the money that it would cost to develop all that film
would be better used on a new… digital camera. I know, I can hardly
believe it myself. What, you think i’d be without a decent camera? The
thing is that there are finally some good digital cameras that I think
I’d like to use. Plus, many of them are also HD camcorders, it would
be nice to try some more movie stuff after all these years. The new
Panasonic would be the safe bet, but I’m mighty intrigued with the new
Ricoh.

So the time has come. I’m going to hang on to several of my cooler
film cameras, but I’m ready to make the switch. Anyone need a bunch of
120 and 35mm film?

Sent from my iPodl