Yet one more czar...

or tsar, or csar... is to be created by Obama soon. I really wonder how many czars one country can have. Under my understanding of the primary and secondary definitions of czar, we would seemingly be limited to some extent. But hey, what's one more czar when we already have a border czar, homeland security czar, and health and family services czar... What? A health czar? Apparently so, and it isn't the Secretary of DHFS...

President Barack Obama filled out his health-care overhaul team Monday by naming Nancy-Ann DeParle, a veteran of the Clinton administration, as the White House health czar.

DeParle will join Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary

Now I'm confused. From any of the definitions linked above, it would seem unlikely that someone who is a czar would be a member of a team... Alas, another example of our cultural obsession with overusing a word because it sounds cool.

Also, for those three readers out there, I apologize for my long dry spell of posting. It has been a busy couple of months... coaching little league (2 teams), buying a house, selling a house... a lot going on. I guess I need a blogging czar to keep me on track.

Get a laugh...

and you'll get the number. That's an old partially chauvinistic adage I heard from a quite chauvinistic (and depending on your viewpoint, mildly successful or completely reprehensible) self-professed professional bachelor. I haven't seen the full details of this study, but from what appears on CNN, it may be more true than I ever believed. Of course, it's important to remember that some women's sense of humor isn't exactly on a parallel plane with the everyday guy's view of funny. So, as a general rule fellas, stay away from the "dead baby" and/or "poop" jokes... For one, they won't impress the ladies, and secondly, they really aren't funny to anyone with much of a brain. Most of the laughs generated are at you and the fact that someone would say something so stupid.

If ladies like guys who can make them laugh, is the converse true? Well...

Do men also think funny women are more intelligent and honest? Time constraints prevented McCarty from exploring this question, but he said research suggests that men don't care much about women's sense of humor.

"A man wants a woman who laughs at his jokes and...

Well, the study doesn't complete the thought I had, but I think any man being truthful with themselves can figure that one out.

death by shopping...

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 is chastising Wal-Mart for allowing a death on Black Friday in one of their stores.

"This incident was avoidable," said Bruce Both, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500, the state of New York's largest grocery worker's union. "Where were the safety barriers? Where was security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner?

Avoidable? No kidding! Death by shopping... that has to be seen as some kind of sick indication of our society... Wal-Mart should not be given a free ride on this, but seriously, this could have happened a lot of places from the little I've seen of Black Friday shopsotic behaviour. Can the deal be that good?

OMG! Obama is a Muslim...

Or so this beefcake of a pastor from Wichita is wont for us to believe. I found this kind of amusing, until I realized that this guy just got some time on CNN (CNN!) for his whack job actions... Wow.

Friday afternoon public service announcement...

Safe sex is a good thing. I am not one to care how we get it on... as long as we can get it on. Well, there are some interesting ideas on how to make this happen out there.

5. Spray-on protection

Since his teens, Jan Vinzenz Krause struggled to find a condom that fit correctly. He thought the pursuit of the perfect prophylactic was hopeless -- until he went to the carwash.

Inspired by the spray-on soap and wax, the German Krause developed a spray-on latex condom, which he claims always fits perfectly and feels natural.

However, many men find the design off-putting; the spray-on condom comes in a hard phallic case.

Men slide themselves into the cylinder and layer on the latex, providing full coverage.

The Jolly Joe, as Krause dubbed it, frightened many men during the testing phase -- they only put the case on their fingers. (Spray on gloves anyone?)

Others felt the loud hissing wasn't sexy and the latex takes too long to dry -- three minutes.

Krause explains to Time, "It needs to be ready in five to ten seconds." So for now, Krause is waiting for a quicker-drying latex.

Uh, yeah three minutes is a bit too long Mr. Krause. But keep trying hard...

Krugman wins the Nobel Prize...

Congratulations to Paul Krugman for winning the Nobel Prize in Economics. I try to read all of Krugman's columns, and have to say he has enlightened and enlivened a number of issues for me. Perhaps more than any other, he has consistently reminded us that health care must be fixed.

So congrats Paul, and keep up the good work.

Them pinko farmers...

Hardwick, Vermont is uniting around food to save the town. It is an interesting read on how collaboration between farmers is growing the local ecoonomy. I'm especially interested in the concept of pooled capital. I think this may catch on... well maybe.

“Across the country a lot of people are doing it individually but it’s rare when you see the kind of collective they are pursuing,” said Mr. Fried, whose firm considers social and environmental issues when investing. “The bottom line is they are providing jobs and making it possible for others to have their own business.”

Uh oh! He just said collective, in reference to farms... this will likely not help the local food movement.

Economic reality...

Leonhardt has a solid column in the Business section of today's NYT regarding the perils of ignoring economic reality. He points out that the impact of the all the bailout (or rescue, if you are JM) plans on the federal budget will likely be in the hundreds of billions over the next few years. This obviously doesn't help the federal budget deficit or debt load. So, what do we do to fix it?

The short answer is that the budget problems the country seemed to have a year ago are now even worse. Next year’s deficit (relative to the economy’s size) will probably be the biggest since 1992, and maybe since 1983. Taxes will have to rise or government spending will have to fall, if not both.

This significant increase in the deficit is importnat, but maybe isn't the area we should be focused on to avert the next big problem. There are a myriad of areas that could be seen as the next big issue for the feds, but it seems to me (and Leonhardt) that it starts with health care.

Despite everything, the biggest fiscal problem remains, far and away, health care. Based on the rate that medical spending has been rising, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that Medicare and Medicaid will take up 10 percent of G.D.P. within two decades, up from about 4 percent now. In today’s terms, that would be the equivalent of adding at least $900 billion to the deficit every single year, in perpetuity. It makes the cost of the bailouts look like a rounding error.

When it comes to health care, we have a situation that is blatantly unsustainable. With the right choices, we can prevent that. But so far, we instead seem to be hoping that the situation will magically resolve itself, which is a recipe for big problems and perhaps even a crisis.

Let’s see. That doesn’t sound familiar, does it?

Also in today's Business section, is an article on the effect of the credit crunch on states and municipalities, which is an area of personal interest that you just don't normally see much coverage of in the NYT. The ability of less than perfectly rated municipalities, states and school districts to raise short term revenue is a huge deal, as a few failures to make payroll and a lot of stuff stops getting done. Who will bailout the government? Uh... the government?

Live blogging the debate...

"Bailout, when I believe it's rescue." McCain just before going off on the "I rode my horse back to Washington and showed them motherf'ers how to maverick up on this here rescue package.

I am also anxious to see if Brokaw keeps scolding the candidates for taking too long on the follow up discussion minute.

This is my first live blogging experiment, so I think I'll just use the comment thread.

Buffett braves the crisis...

An interesting article in today's NYT compares Warren Buffet's current actions with those taken by JP Morgan in the early 20th century. I wasn't around for JP's insights and work, but I have to admit there are few people who seem to get business better than Buffett. I've read a couple of bios on the Sage of Omaha (a new one just released is the first authorized one, so I'll have to pick that up), and it seems clear to me that the guy just gets it. You can hate on him all you want for being extremely rich and appreciating the profit motive, but it is important to recognize he isn't what you might envision when you think of the personality of the world's richest man. An example of his mindset and values can be gleaned in the final few paragraphs of the article:

As far back as 2003, Mr. Buffett had warned that the complex securities at the center of today’s troubles — once so profitable, but now toxic — were “financial weapons of mass destruction.” These securities were engineered by the math quants on Wall Street, and in the interview Mr. Buffett expressed his disdain: “Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”

To help pay for the rescue, the government should raise taxes on the wealthy, Mr. Buffett suggested. “I’m paying the lowest tax rate that I’ve ever paid in my life,” he said. “Now, that’s crazy.”

A rich guy who recognizes he isn't paying his far share and that he could pay more without the world ending? Can't be. I've been convinced that if you raise taxes on the wealthy then they will stop investing in anything, sit on their asses, and we will all suffer. Or, maybe Warren is right and the right wing pundits are wrong?

A blue economy...

The Dow Jones is off a few hundred points this morning, dropping it below 10K for the first time in almost four years. I vividly remember when the Dow crossed 10K for the first time in 1999, as I was required to track the market in high school History/Econ classes. (Ah those high school history classes, a wonderful memory. Especially when I recall a particularly astute conservative young man always pushing back against my evil liberal ideals.) It is hard to believe that in March that will have been ten years ago, and we seem to be spinning in place, at best. It is also difficult to understand how the market could have been at an all-time high of 14.1K just one year ago. Now we are down 30% from that peak, and it is entirely possible more losses are ahead.

Dog Days of Summer '08...

I have not been in the writing/blogging mood at all recently. I am attributing this primarily to the weather and the busy schedule around coaching Little League baseball. One of the primary interests on my radar, however, has been the continued inflationary pressures in the economy. This article in today's NYT highlights just how bad it was in the month of June. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the economy is recovering yet and with inflation pushing up prices, we are caught in a situation that precipitates reminiscent talk of the stagflation days of the late 70's.

The Consumer Price Index, which measures prices of a batch of common household products, rose 1.1 percent in June, the Labor Department said. That increase caps a year where inflation has surged to proportions seen by some as threatening the stability of the American economy. In the last 12 months, the price index has risen 5 percent, the biggest annual jump since May 1991.

The report reinforces what many economists, including those at the Fed, have warned about for months: Americans are being forced to pay significantly higher prices even as the job market weakens and big employers like General Motors are laying off thousands of employees.

Tim Russert, the mircale man...

Hitchens says some things that need to be said about the media coverage of Russert's death. It seems that the media has been taking every good deed, coincidence and random occurence surrounding Russert's life and death and making them out to show something impropably "special" about him. I, along with Hitchens, can agree that Russert was a pretty solid journalist and that no right minded person is happy to see a father of a young man die, but to canonize the man and overzealously mysticize the death ceremony is to dive headlong into the strong superstitions that still bind too much of humanity to this day.

In John Updike's brilliant novel In the Beauty of the Lilies,* the son of a Presbyterian minister who lost the faith is listening to those who eulogize his departed father and suddenly realizes how the myths about Jesus got started in the first place. Surveying my e-mail traffic this week, I could see another such bubble of legend begin to swell. And I remain unshakably certain on two points. The first is that no benign deity plucks television news-show hosts from their desks in the prime of life and then hastily compensates their friends and family by displays of irradiated droplets in the sky. (I bet you now that it won't happen for Brokaw or Williams or Olbermann, even if they all convert to Catholicism, and you know I am right.) My second bet is that Tim Russert, a man of firm but modest faith, would reject this foolish superstition and the silly cult of celebrity. This latter cult belongs to the material world, which in the absence of a supernatural one is the only world we have.

The first of these two points could hardly be more indicative of the mired logic of the overly religious set, that proclaim that "god took him for a reason." My guess is that if god is real, and follows the tenets laid out by the Christian right, he would have no place or need for a Russert - who despite his personal beliefs - seemed to mostly welcome dissent and dialogue. He would have called on Hannity.

*If you are unfamiliar with this work, you really must read it. Updike is brilliant, and this work may compete for tops on his list of work.

Crisis in Darfur...

Keeping with today's theme of reprehensible actions, I would point those concerned with humankind to Darfur, where rape is becoming the norm for women and young girls.

Thousands of women -- as young as four -- caught in the middle of the struggle between rebel forces and government-backed militias have become victims of rape, they say, with some aid groups claiming it is being used as a weapon of ethnic cleansing.

As if the rape isn't horrible enough, it is being used as a method for ethnic cleansing... absolutely sick.

And what does the Sudanese government say? Well, there is no rape in Darfur:

"There is no rape in Darfur," says Mohammad Hassan Awad, a Humanitarian Aid Commissioner for West Darfur, who accuses foreign aid workers of persuading people in refugee camps to make false claims.

god and medicine...

I find stories, such as this one in Oregon, absolutely ludicrous. I have always been troubled by the deference the state and society give to religious groups with regard to the treatment of children. In this case the kid was 16 so I can see the age of consent argument being made, but anyone who has been exposed to religious extremism should agree that rejecting the "worldy doctors" is the likely action of a completely indoctrinated young man. The failure to provide adequate medical care to children is even more reprehensible than my other favorite religious fringe move of denying and vilifying "worldly education."

Killer Tomatoes...

Are you scared of the tomatoes in your refrigerator? Apparently, lots of fast food restaurants and industrial supermarkets are, after the recent salmonella outbreak. The truly scary part of this outbreak, is that the CDC hasn't been able to decipher its origin.

Although the origin of the outbreak has not been determined, the Food and Drug Administration has released a warning against raw red plum, red round and red Roma tomatoes from geographic areas it does not oversee.

After tracing the patterns of salmonella and looking at production and distribution pattern information, the FDA has compiled a list of areas not associated with the current outbreak.

The real kicker here, is that the FDA has compiled a "safe list," whereby a consumer can feel confident that the tomatoes are fine, which would be wonderful if it weren't for the industrial food change completely displacing the consumer's ability to make this judgment. My recommendation for those in the Madison area is to head to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning and stop by Real Food, a Mennonite (or maybe another Anabaptist sect) ran operation out of central Wisconsin. They have some marvelous tomatoes that are "grown in real dirt," as the sign says. These outbreaks should be a wake up call that the industrial food chain is unnecessarily adding processing, packing and shipping steps to our food supply. Generally, the more steps involved, the more processing and treatment needed to keep the "food" fresh. Why do we have to make it so complicated? I am not sure, but it is probably something to do with our delusion that we can have cheap, healthy, fast, and safe food. There are obviously a number of balancing factors in weighing these variables against one another, but as the economists love to say -- "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

The vanishing lake...

Lake Delton, just a few miles north of Madison, has completely vanished. The lake was surrounded by resorts and condos, so this is a significant issue for the Wisconsin Dells area. The governor has vowed to replenish the lake, but I have to believe that rounding up 700 million gallons of water will take a little time. The good news is that I haven't heard of any injuries related to this event, only property damage. This property damage is immense, but I believe can be overcome.

Feminism, Poverty, Crime, Electric Cars, 11 Big Ideas...

and more. All in the July/August edition of The Atlantic. This issue is being billed as the "ideas" issue, which being the donkey I am begs the question, what are all the other issues supposed to be? But on a more SERIOUS note, there are a number of very interesting components to this summer issue. I would love to link to each of these articles or essays, but unfortunately they are not up on the website (previously linked) as of the date of this being published. Following is a brief rundown of the issue's more interesting components:

Hanna Rosin discusses the rise of crime in many American cities, specifically those of the mid-sized variety. This article focuses on Memphis and specifically on the correlation between crime and the prevalence of Section 8 vouchers in an area. There are countless issues that arise out of discussing this correlation, and many officials are wary to do so, but even if it isn't causal (and what is really when you talk about poverty and crime) there is plenty of room for discussion here.

Nicholas Carr offers the cover story on the effects of the Internet on our brains. I know that a couple of the passages resonated particularly strongly with me, such as

"What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."

I know the feeling. It does seem we are altering our ability to handle large swaths of difficult text.

I didn't read the article on "What Rumsfeld Got Right," because I'm pretty sure the correct answer is two words: Not much.

The 11 1/2 biggest ideas of the year, penned by a variety of contributors (including Fallows, Crook, and Sullivan) offered promise -- but came up a bit short to me. The surge, renting, post-partisanship, mass-market atheism, torture, social networking politics, the return of regulation, personal genomics, not bombing Iran, Carbon Consciousness, the End of 9/11, and being lonely at the top (an aside on the sexual escapades of the powerful) all seem so intriguing, but are glossed over a bit... Maybe they read the Carr piece?

Jonathan Rauch's piece on the Chevy Volt (electric car) project was a good read and offered an interesting look at a project that has lots of hope for America, the world, the environment and GM. All this hope, of course, makes one wonder if it can possibly fulfill it's promise. Rauch doesn't hold out much hope for the behemoth of a company being able to fulfill all of the promises made, but seems to think some good may come from this. We shall see.

Goldberg offers us a piece on the science of "neuromarketing," whereby scientists attempt to map our brain's activity and response to images. This could be used to discern the success of an advertising campaign of course, but as Goldberg points out is more likely to be a vanity project for the well to do and overly self interested in the near term.

"Distracting Miss Daisy" is another argument for limiting the number of traffic signs all over the American roadway. This idea has been floated around before, but we seem to love the idea that a sign makes us safer, when studies and statistics seem to indicate otherwise. The biggest boon to traffic safety is more aware drivers, and four way stops are just one example that makes true awareness of the surroundings secondary to obedience to signage.

I skimmed the article on Rupert's plans to take the Wall Street Journal to war with the New York Times, which probably makes Rupert happy and the author Mark Bowden said, given that Rupert's idea of journalism is focused primarily on scooping a sensational story and using that to fill the content of all his various outlets. Damn, I have to reread this article just to piss him off now.

The Critics section has a lot to offer as well, with Hitchens on Rushdie; Sandra Tsing Loh on modern women's work, parenting, etc.; and Virginia Postrel on a new theory of the leisure class based around inconspicuous consumption. The Tsing Loh and Postrel pieces are very good, and should be read for yourself, so I won't go into too much detail here.

Wow, kind of a long post, but I have to admit this issue was one of the most satisfying print mags I've read in quite some time... and I'm totally SERIOUS.

Prince and Radiohead...

Apparently, Prince covered Radiohead's Creep at a concert and now Prince's label has blocked the video on YouTube. This has disgruntled the super awesome Radiohead front man Thom Yorke.

Yorke added: "Well, tell him to unblock it. It's our ... song."

This is a battle of epic proportions, as we see the one of the greatest rock bands of the last twenty years battle ________ (I'm not sure, but I think he is Prince again.) Go Radiohead! Protect the rights of the people, especially since Radiohead doesn't normally do Creep anymore.

100 metro areas carbon foot print...

per capita. Brookings has issued a report ranking 100 metro areas on their carbon footprints. I found it interesting that the bottom five were all either in or close to the good old Hoosier homeland. Of course, I shouldn't get too high and mighty as I sit here in Madison, where we are apparently 81st. Oops, so much for being a green city.

I haven't read the entire report, but I would be interested to see how certain elements were handled. The article in the NYT mentions the effects of centralized transportation hubs (e.g. ports and railway centers), but I would also question the validity in comparing some of the smaller Metros to the very large ones. For example, it seems quite likely to me that there is a fixed cost (in carbon footprint) of creating, transporting and providing the infrastructure, goods and services to the population of any area. It would seem, however, that with exceptionally high density (e.g. New York or LA) that the incremental cost for additional residents should be significantly lower than for a smaller metro. I think this is just another example of the Brookings Institute's West Coast Bias, which is promulgated by employees who are trying to get even at the college sports media for always dissing the PAC-10.