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Monthly Archives: March 2008
The Moral Hazard
Risk is an inherent feature of all investment. Many people thought they could make a fast buck by buying a house they couldn’t otherwise afford and either selling it in a year or two for a profit, or refinancing for … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events, Economics
Tagged credit crunch, economy, moral hazard, mortgage
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Beware the Economic Power Grab
Benjamin Franklin famously wrote “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”. We are all well aware of the importance of this wariness when it comes to trading our political … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events, Economics
Tagged credit crunch, economy, mortgage, paulson, treasury
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Wisconsin girl dies after parents pick prayer over medicine
My favorite illustration of confirmation bias is Nicholas Taleb’s retelling of a tale by Cicero in his book The Black Swan: One Diagoras, a nonbeliever in the gods, was shown painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, … Continue reading
Posted in atheism, Culture, Current Events, Religion
Tagged cicero, Madeline Neumann, prayer, taleb, the black swan, wisconsin
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Dawkins: If there is a God…
If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed. Richard Dawkins, God vs. Science – TIME
The Clean Energy Scam
From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world’s greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Economics, Technology
Tagged agriculture, amazon, biofuel, clean energy, climate change, ethanol, global warming, oil, rainforest
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Mugabe apparently faces major defeat in Zimbabwe
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — The main opposition party and independent observers said today that President Robert Mugabe was suffering a resounding defeat as election results were tallied, but no official returns were released and capital was rife with speculation that they … Continue reading
The Day of No Magical Thinking
I was on my home from snowboarding today (thanks to the timely arrival of a snowstorm in the Cascades) thinking of writing this entry. When I got home and turned my TV on, I found an uncanny coincidence between my … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Deep Thoughts, Humor, Philosophy, Rants, Religion
Tagged al-Maliki, babylon, christianity, dreams, history channel, iraq, islam, magical thinking, nostradamus, nutcakes, sesame street, shi'a, snowboarding, sunni, two-headed monster
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A Tale of Two Wal-Marts
I was getting ready to simply post a blurb about Wal-Mart’s ridiculous lawsuit against a former employee who suffered brain damage from being hit by a truck, but then I also came across another Wal-Mart related story which I thought … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events, Economics, Rants
Tagged Alice Walton, art, Debbie Shank, heiress, wal-mart, walmart
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The Long Defeat – David Brooks, New York Times
Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign. [...] In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is … Continue reading
