I especially love the fact that Paul Krugman did not bother to read a whole sentence before going ballistic. Well, that does seem to be his personality.
The whole story is worth reading and tells you a lot about Black and Amiel. It also, wonderfully, tells you a lot about cats.
I particularly love one great moment:
Though covered in fleas and sewage, she peered out at the world with fierce blue eyes, her determined appearance accented by her sewage-spikey hair and smudged nose. I have never encountered a more indomitable countenance, even on a mighty statesman or a great beast.
I think maybe he sees himself a bit in that cat; I see him that way.
Telephone ad just now said "I get free phone calls to India and Pakistan." Now that is a feature I do not need. But it is amazing that enough people do to get it into a TV ad.
Our finance minister, as a federal minister, is not what I expected from his provincial history. And sadly the CBC has decided there is something more interesting than Flaherty explaining to some dumb reporter that maybe consumers benefit from a higher Canadian dollar, and maybe export industries need not be sucked up to constantly. Hey wait! Maybe that is the Flaherty I remember!
And hey! We can buy capital goods at lower prices now!
One should not draw too much from this but it does tell one small compelling story; in the right circumstances people can do a lot better on their own than when controlled by some other idiot's idea of how things should work.
Another great example is of course the advantage of roundabouts over light-controlled intersections.
Of course if you have ever driven in England, you discover that roundabouts have their problems at high congestion (one direction can get starved, for example), and, even worse, if you start out with roundabouts, and then try to fix problems with regulation, you end up with the worst thing I have ever seen in my driving experience, the traffic-light-controlled roundabout!
But really, looking at that video, it seems obvious the lights are harmful.
My neigborhood is full of four-way stops, which are better than lights in that context, but it would be even better, I think, to have four-way yield signs.
To be honest I thought the participation of the Saudi women - a judoka who lasted just over a minute, and an 800 runner who ran 2:45 (I once could run that!) in the 800 was just a waste and certainly should not have been viewed as at all liberating.
Media coverage that buys this story reinforces the claim that women who do not cover are somehow less Muslim. This only slows down women’s progress in conservative societies against barriers that have everything to do with patriarchy and nothing to do with faith.
That anyone took these covered athletes at all seriously, and that an audience politely applauded them, says nothing much good about us; that we tolerate THIS as what the Saudis decided to toss a more civilized world as a symbolic gesture is pretty sad. I feel sorry for the girls involved (except that they probably had a hell of a lot of fun in London, and one of them does not even have to pay for it by living in Saudi Arabia), but I think the whole enterprise was an embarrassment to the Olympics and should be an embarrassment to the Saudis, who appear to be beyond embarrassment in their attachment tp primitive treatment of women.
I was tired from a lot of walking and ultimately missed much of the Olympic closing ceremony.
But at one point I looked up and could not believe what was happening! Wait! No! It cannot be Daltrey and Townsend. Like I got to see the end of their second final farewell tour. With some pretty good symbolism, Entwistle died at the start of that tour. Years ago in Toronto. And it was their second farewell!
And here were these old guys again. (Do not get me wrong - they might be younger than I am but ....).
Do the Brits really think these tired old songs are the best they can represent to the world?
It depressed me no end. Part of me thought I was just waiting for the start of a CSI episode.
Finish dammit with Rollin' in the Deep - everybody leaves feeling really good and like there is a future, not dominated by near-skeletons. A beautiful, likely fecund, gorgeous woman who can not only write great songs but make them rock and roll.
The closing ceremony should point to the future, not wallow in some almost ancient past. Who the hell reviewed the program? I thought the opening ceremony vaguely defensible. Not the closing, at least what I saw.
I love how irrationally we can get engaged with fictional characters.
I am SO pleased Callie Cargill on 'The Glades' has passed her board exams!
This seems to me in a way pretty funny. To start with she is not a real person. Secondly her fictional existence occurs only within a TV show on Arts and Entertainment, and so I would guess just is unknown to almost anyone I know.
But damn I am really happy!
I will say though, I am not sure whether Jim should stay with Callie or move on to Jennifer. I confess I find them both really fetching.
