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[03 Jan 2010|08:41pm] |
I was watching some old "The State" skits tonight. Unfortunately, the most famous one, the "I'm Going to Dip My Balls In It" sketch has embedding disabled on Youtube. So you have to go to YouTube yourself. :P
But here is some silliness anyway
The State, "Cereal Commercial"
Kids in the Hall, "Sex Girl Patrol"
Monty Python, "Sit on My Face"
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[31 Dec 2009|11:39am] |
The End of the Aughts
For the first time in over 15 years, I am looking forward to New Year's. Maybe it's just that I rarely see the significance of arbitrarily designated ends of years and I thought too much of a deal was made about the numerological importance of the year 2000 and the new millennium (in 2001). Yet, I'm greatly looking forward to the end of the Goose Eggs' Decade.
A decade of Brittany Spears, Hummers, excess consumption, terrible action movies with bloated special FX budgets, accounting scandals, mindless unilateral military actions, complacency, and an environment where douchebags like Thomas Friedman were considered "intellectuals". The decade that gave us Linkin Park, George W. Bush, a brief renewal of McCarthyism, David Lereah and real estate prices that could "never fall again!", gay marriage "bans", the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, and more terrible rap and nu-metal than one could ever care for.
Here's to the 2010s!
Let's make this decade much better than the last one! :)
P.S. At least we'll know what to call this decade: "The Teens".
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| Pointer Sisters Kick Your Ass! |
[30 Dec 2009|01:03am] |
LiveJournal seems really dead lately, so I've decided to torment the remaining lot with awesomely bad Pointer Sister videos!
"I'm So Excited"
"Jump (For My Love)"
"Neutron Dance"
"He's So Shy"
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[19 Nov 2009|06:48pm] |
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music |
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Pixies, Bossanova |
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Why Obamacare Will Fail
I love Seth Jayson's argument here. The real issue, at its core, is a lack of accountability in our system and Obama's solution doesn't solve the problem. Our medical resources are finite. On the other hand, medical insurance in America is a redistributive system; one that provides few incentives to keep costs/resource usage down. So we have a finite resource and incentives to use it excessively at any cost. No wonder our costs are spiraling out of control!
Why do you think you pay $70 to see a doctor for 5 minutes? Would you pay that much if you didn't have insurance? Maybe if your life depended on it, but probably not otherwise.
But since all pricing is based on what insurance providers will pay, you do pay $70 ... or rather, your insurer does and you pay a meager co-pay. But it's not the insurance providers that are ripping you off --- most of them have thin profit margins. The people making out like bandits are in the medical industry itself. It has no incentive to keep costs at a reasonable level.
This is where Obama's proposal is flatout wrong --- Obama talks about how the medical field is such a huge part of our economy w/o realizing why this is --- it's the same exact reason real estate and homebuilders were such a huge part of our economy earlier this decade. It is not a good thing. We are using too much healthcare and paying too much for it.
Those in the industry that benefit will continue to push their services even if you don't really need them. After all, your insurance will pay for it, right? You'll take advantage, b/c ... after all, your insurance is paying for it, right? The insurers have to raise premiums b/c everyone is using so much healthcare and few in the industry care about keeping the costs down.
Obama's solution does not solve the problem, since it leaves the private insurers in place, which causes the chain reaction that leads to spiraling out-of-control costs. But even worse than that, Obama's "solution" makes the problem even worse by passing these "spiraling out-of-control" costs to the taxpayers. So now, not only does America have an inefficient medical system, but you are forced to subsidize it whether you like it or not.
The only real solution I can think of to this problem would be for insurance networks to create their own medical systems. The insurers want costs to go down, too, but they can't get them down because they have no control over the medical industry. However, if an insurance and medical establishment joined forces, they could theoretically keep costs down, since their overall profitability would be based on a model where there would be an incentive to keep costs down. Only problem is that this sort of solution would probably have to come from the private sector.
I don't have much faith in the American government to solve the problem because it has a notoriously dismal record with cost efficiency. And I'm not really an anti-government person; in fact, I think Canada's single-payer system is spectacular. I also question whether it would succeed in America, because the underlying issues behind high costs are still being ignored.
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[04 Nov 2009|08:37pm] |
And in stupid news of the day, a guy from near my home town makes the local news headlines for seeing "Jesus" on his truck:
Jonesborough resident sees image of Jesus on truck window every morning
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but "Jesus" looks an awful lot like a '90s grunge rocker such as Kurt Cobain or Dave Navarro. Notice the neatly trimmed, shoulder-length hair and the well managed goatee. If it really were a '90s grunge rocker, this would be sheer irony since the same people using this to claim "Jesus was here" were probably the same people calling all grunge/alternative/metal/goth/anything-that-doesn't-suck music "satanic".
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[30 Oct 2009|05:01am] |
Ameryk-a?
One thing so interesting about history is how perception is often a more important guide than reality. It's been a common mistruth in the American/European historical dialogue that Columbus "discovered" the Americas. Perhaps more accurately, the mistruth is that Columbus was the first European to "discover" the Americas. Yet, historical evidence suggests that not only had the Vikings reached North America nearly five centuries before Columbus reached the West Indies, sailors from the English city of Bristol also appear to have reached Newfoundland sometime in the two decades preceding the 1490s.
Which leads to another popular mistruth: America was named after Amerigo Vespucci. This appears to have been an assumption of most 16th Century Europeans, and the origin might have been the famous Waldseemuller map of 1507. The Waldseemuller map is the first known printed reference on a map labeling the newly discovered land masses as "America".
I bring it up, because I was reading an article on BBC yesterday about the map:
The Map That Changed the World
It appears that Waldseemuller, himself, was confused as to the origin of the name "America" and in a footnote to the map, noted that it was named after Amerigo Vespucci. However, his assumption was likely incorrect. While it's still uncertain and somewhat speculative, it would appear that the most likely explanation as to why America was given its name would have to do with Richard Ameryk, a wealthy merchant in the English city of Bristol, who financed several voyages and fishing expeditions in the Northern Atlantic waters. It's seems more likely than not that the sailors on these expeditions reached Newfoundland before Columbus set sail and discovered the West Indies in 1492.
It would appear that there are documents suggesting that some influential figures in Spain, including Ferdinand and Isabella, were aware of the Bristolian voyages via envoys in London. It's not particularly clear how this knowledge filtered its way into London and into Madrid; nor is it clear when, where, and how the name "America" originally started being used to describe the new continent. It's possible that the Bristolian sailors had named the land "America", but not realized the significance of their discovery.
It's also possible that once John Cabot reached America, he realized it was a new landmass. Cabot was an extremely knowledgeable Venetian explorer and merchant who was commissioned by Richard Ameriyk in 1496. Unlike Columbus, who believed till his death that he had landed in East Asia ("the Indies" as it was known in Europe), maybe Cabot connected the dots. Columbus really was not the most brilliant man ever and it's well-known that his knowledge of the world was much lesser than those of many of his counterparts.
Which brings us to another historical tale. When we were all growing up, most of us probably heard about how brilliant Columbus was because he thought the world was "round" and everyone else thought it was flat. In actuality, it was commonly known at the time amongst knowledgeable Europeans that the world was round. Many even knew the relative size of the world (one of Columbus's blunders was believing it was about 33% smaller than it is in actuality). Apparently, the "Columbus proved the world was round" garbage originated with Washington Irving, the author of "Rip van Winkle".
The reason most navigators knew it was round was because ships in the far distance would disappear below the horizon; they wouldn't if the world were flat. So, there's so many interesting tales that have woven their way through our historical record of which are completely false; yet they've shaped things throughout history so these "mistruths" have become part of history, in a sense.
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[19 Oct 2009|12:18am] |
I can't sleep, so time for "Kids in the Hall":
( More )
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[16 Oct 2009|06:54pm] |
Anti-Hitler Resolutions Are Back!
John McCain presses Obama to pardon Jack Johnson
More proof that people in Washington are more concerned about pushing meaningless symbolic legislation through than do anything that actually impacts people in the here-and-now. And McCain should be crowned World Champion of meaningless, toothless acts.
Yeah, it was totally rotten that Jack Johnson was imprisoned 100 years ago or so for dating a white woman. No doubt about it - in fact, 90%+ of the nation probably agrees with that sentiment. But really ... it's probably a good thing that meaningless 'feel good' acts aren't near the top of the President's docket.
And let's be clear ... McCain and all these Congresscritters regularly pass these meaningless "Anti-Hitler Resolutions" to pretend they are doing something to impact the nation, when in actuality, they completely lack the spine to stand up against any modern day equivalents of Jack Johnson's arrest. ... Read More
Hey, maybe in another hundred years, Congress can apologize for the Iraq War, supporting Saakashivili in S. Ossetia, and egging on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under the Bush Administration!
P.S.
What's truly amusing about this is that it sounds like McCain is trying to subtly play the race card. Which young, snotty, rich-kid PR guy on his staff do you think came up with that idea? Here's a newsflash: OBAMA IS BLACK!!! You can't play the race card when OBAMA IS FUCKING BLACK!!!
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[10 Oct 2009|12:05pm] |
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The "Double Dip" Recession, Foreign Oil, and a National Rail Network
By Jake Huneycutt
The Upward Society Blog
Economist Nouriel Roubini recently advanced the proposition that higher oil prices, rising government debt, and a lack of job growth will throw us right back into recession once we finally start to escape from the current one. Roubini labeled this potential phenomenon a “double-dip recession.” In essence, it’s a giant “Catch-22” — we can’t have continued prosperity without cheap oil and we can’t have cheap oil without a bum economy. This unfavorable scenario presents itself to us precisely because American policymakers over the past few decades have ignored our nation’s most pressing concern: the energy crisis. Undoubtedly, we’re all aware of America’s massive reliance on foreign oil. Instinctively, we all realize this is most likely a detrimental thing. Yet, very few people have ever laid out much in the way of a comprehensive plan to deal with the crisis. There have been some attempts, however. In 2009, oil magnate T. Boone Pickens unveiled his “Pickens Plan,” which called for the US to develop its wind power and natural gas capacity and increase the usage of more fuel efficient automobiles. It was a noble package and I do believe that American needs to increase usage of cleaner energy sources such as wind and natural gas, but we also need to address some of the underlying infrastructural problems with the American economy. If we want true energy independence, we have to disentangle the American economy from foreign oil. There is no easy cure that will solve our problems over night. There is, however, a major way to reduce our reliance our dependency on oil while improving America’s infrastructure by increasing the availability of rail transportation and expanding public transit systems. What we truly need is an integrated National Rail Network. ( Read More )
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[06 Oct 2009|07:12pm] |
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music |
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Queen, "Don't Stop Me Now" |
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I'm completely exhausted, but this song and thoughts of a certain someone make me very happy:
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[24 Sep 2009|06:53pm] |
Delicious, healthy whole wheat pizza!
I meant to take a picture before I started eating it, but I was really hungry and forget. It's half no-cheese, half light-cheese. I topped it with pepperoni. You might think it doesn't sound that good, but you don't know what you are missing! This thing was better than Domino's or Papa John's!!!
Trader Joe's is awesome! They sell whole wheat dough patties that are spectacular. They also sell a very good marinara sauce. I got the pepperonis from Harris Teeter.
Total cost of this pizza = $2.50
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[23 Sep 2009|10:32am] |
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music |
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Frank Zappa, "Bobby Brown Goes Down" |
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I <3 Frank Zappa:
Zappa on the Decline of the Music Industry
"Bobby Brown Goes Down"
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[19 Sep 2009|01:52pm] |
It's not that Keynesian economic theory didn't work. Contrary to the objections of market fundamentalists, Keynes was absolutely correct in understanding the demand curve, the root causes of deflation, and the sheer destructive power of a "deflationary spiral." Keynes was a doctor who gave the patient (the economy) a few prescriptions that effectively treated the illness.
No, it's not that Keynesian theory doesn't work. It's that it worked too well. Once politicians learned that they could use the basic building blocks of Keynesian theory to manipulate economic cycles for maximum electoral advantage, they began to do so without any regard for more long-term effects on the economy. Keynesian theory was warped into an exaggerated and unrecognizable form where massive and highly wasteful stimulus packages rued the day and deficits spiraled out of control.
Keynes promoted very modest deficit spending. By 1980, Reagan had warped that into a debt-free-for-all and it only got worse after Reagan got away with it. The Federal government and various state and local governments adopted spending programs without much hesitation, while simultaneously, adopting "small government" low-tax policies.
Of course, it was all bullshit. Both the Democrats and Republicans spent for a "big government" and taxed for a "small government." It won them re-election time and time again. Those who went against this dynamic and promoted economic responsibility and prudent long-term growth were soundly defeated.
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