Yet another belated tab clearing post

• Economics of Ticket Scalping
• The end of newspapers and the future of newspapers
• A tech support secret handshake

Economics for five year olds

Arnold Kling has a great post on explaining economic development to five year olds, with the hope that journalists understand it. The version he came up with was this

There are lots of people in the world who will give us things that we want, as long as we give them something they want in return. This is called trading. Some of the things we trade are hard to see--they are like nice thoughts. Other people keep thinking up nicer things to trade with us, and we keep thinking up nicer things to trade with them. We keep trading nicer and nicer things. Many years ago, people had not thought up all of these nice things, so they did not have as much to trade as we do. That is why people who lived back then were poor, and we are not.

Now if he'll only do one for deadweight loss.

Kudos to CNN.com

I'm linked from their From the Blogs Section on this story.

A riduculous commentary on America

The most controversial Attourney General in years resigns and the main headline everywhere is an athlete's admission of guilt. WTF?

Meaningless op-eds masquerading as human interest stories

From the CNN.com article: Muslim women: My headscarf is not a threat after telling a story about rudeness at Walmart while wearing a hijab (which they put in quotation marks for some reason).

Such stories are not altogether uncommon for Muslim Americans.

Wow, not altogether uncommon! I guess it's not unlike a problem of variable merit. There's also the annoying use of the term Muslim American (implying ethnicity or nationality) instead of American Muslim.

The rest of the story is of dubious logic and follows the same pattern as all other CNN.com stories about group identity, which is

1. An offensive incident
2. A quote of data after some seemingly arbitrary date
3. Quote from expert
4. Further interview with subject, telling everyone that he/she wants to be different while remaining the same.
   

The in-laws crack the mainstream media!

Actually it's my brother's in-laws, but anyway, they were recently recognized by the Atlanta Journal Constitution

Cobb couple showing soldiers they care

Mary and Ed Ettel spend most weekends in their basement creating care packages for troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Kosovo/Serbia. In 16 months, they have mailed 376 boxes weighing 5,723 pounds and helping 6,365 service members.

The east Cobb couple and about a dozen volunteers packed 16 boxes Saturday with snacks and hygiene items. During summer mailings, they add baby wipes, salty snacks and water bottles. They also put in Beanie Babies, candy and sometimes soccer balls for soldiers to give to the children they meet.

The Ettels get requests for items through a program called AnySoldier.com. Soldiers post items they need on the Web site and volunteers kick into action.
...

How cool!

Bashing the education system

Reading the AJC's education articles are always a source of malicious fun for me. The articles can be tedious, but the forums are always fun. For some reason people like to pretend that if only we could crack down on some group (the parents, the taxpayer, the students) the problem would solve itself. Grammar and spelling tend to leave quickly as well. This one was my favorite

I'm a career educator with more graduate degrees that the detractors of public education.

Let's put it in a sports analogy so the neo-luddites can understand, break the legs of the starting offense of the GA Bulldogs and complain about why thy can't win a championship.

He starts off with a misspelling, and then misuses "Luddite". Luddite is a proper name, and has no sports meaning.

When one thinks about it, it's amazing public education works as well as it does. When you have a system where the producer, the consumer and the financier are all different people, why should it work at all?

One other thing that annoys me is the pejorative refrain of "teaching to the test". Of course, teachers should teach to the test the same way drivers should "drive to the road" and cops should "enforce to the law". That's their job after all.

As I'm in rant mode, I suppose I'll share the other annoying shibboleth of the teaching establishment, which is saying someone is a good student "but doesn't test well" which is like saying someone is very tall, "but doesn't measure well".

Department of horrible statistics

Case in point today, Jay Bookman of the AJC

the influx of good-paying, high-tech jobs has had an enormous impact. Twenty years ago, per capita income in Ireland was 60 percent of the average in the European Union. Today, on a per capita basis, Ireland is the second-richest nation in the EU.

Think of how meaningless that is. Were they already the second richest country per capita? Did they have a meager rate of growth and the rest of Europe went down? Who can tell?

Bookman goes on cite things he approves of (of course) but doesn't anyone edit these things?

Willful blindness in the media

I read the headline of this CNN.com article Ohio lethal injection takes 2 hours, 10 tries and was thinking how tough that guy must be, after all, 10 tries! Then I read

Death penalty opponents called on the state to halt executions after prison staff struggled to find suitable veins on a condemned man's arm to deliver the lethal chemicals.

The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.

...

Officials said the delay was due to Newton's size -- he weighed 265 pounds. In May 2006, the execution of Joseph Lewis Clark was delayed about 90 minutes because the team could not find a suitable vein. He was a longtime intravenous drug user.

This is ridiculous. Not being able to find veins is quite common in any hospital, nursing home, or drug den. After a prolonged period of being jabbed with needles the veins (quite sensibly) appear to retreat and get much harder to find. A high percentage of body fat will makes it hard as well. It's not like this guy withstood the lethal dose ten times or anything.

This is why everyone should read The Corner.

Local music legends mentioned in the mainstream media

Atlanta based garage rock duo The A-Sides are briefly mentioned in today's Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Two from Slate

• Hitchens on Falwell - a nice vicious hit job, closing with

  It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

• On Generals - An interesting piece on the lack of turnover at the Pentagon due to the Iraq war. Unmentioned is the lack of turnover as a result of 9-11, which should be the larger clue.
  

If Granny had wheels, she'd be a trolley

Starting with this review of a CNN.com Michael Moore's movie "Sicko is Socko". It prattles on and on about the inequalities and suffering that result from illness. All true most likely. Read that and ask yourself, "So What?" Is the same leviathan that brought you the Iraq War (or "Peace" if you prefer) likely to improve matters? Or for that matter, one that couldn't even find a way to discreetly have sex with interns?

The second one is "What if Lincoln Had Survived?", also on CNN.com. If they had the medical technology of today but not the 25th Amendment, what would have happened?

Isn't there some news site that caters to the person who is interested in news?

For far better non-news brain candy, check out this history of the 1920 Wall Street bombing. The perpetrators of that attack, much like the anthrax mailer, were never caught.

Lou Dobbs is the perfect man of the age

By repeating the dumber parts of the conventional wisdom in a solemn tone he continues to be taken seriously. Case in point, his newest CNN.com column (he drags down the whole franchise IMHO) A call to the faithful. It's an adventure in the non sequitur. While lauding the separation of church and state he points to examples of church based groups having opinions on matters of pure politics, i.e. Iraq and immigration.

Neither of those are religious matters. If they were trying to implement Sharia, force church attendance, establish a state religion or mandate that government personnel had to be of a particular sect, or any sect, that would be one thing. But these are either pro/anti war choices, or pro/anti amnesty choices, which have no inherent religious significance. Religious people may care a lot about them of course, but so can a lot of people. He then quotes Romans 13, with

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

In a democracy, the governing authority is the people, and the above verse would seem to encourage public participation in the process. Dobbs would seem to want separation of people and state.

The belated Imus post

I'm not sure whether I said this already in a post or an email, but in any case..

Imus said "Nappy Headed Hos".

The outrage industry sprang into action, because that is their entire job.

The media covered it, because all of the major players were happy to come to them, and news coverage consisted largely of replaying existing footage, or cutting and pasting press releases. This equaled a cheap to produce (in time and dollars) article or news segment, especially compared to the two wars that are going on right now

People liked it because it was widespread and easy to understand. Anyone could shoot his mouth off to anyone else and not get schooled by someone who knew more about the topic. There was also no personal connection to anyone they knew, so no feelings could be hurt.

There is no deep meaning to the "controversy".

Bold new insight

Barack Obama is a lot like Lenny Kravitz. Both have a well defined personal story which makes for an easy story for critics and pundits. They both sound just like vague rehashes of the Kennedy era so they seem familiar to those in the pundit demographic. Both were barely born then, so the talking heads can proclaim them to be "new". Both are of mixed race ancestry so people can feel good about themselves for saying they like them. Both have problems with "authenticity".

Where's my CNN.com column?

Those crazy Germans

I read this fawning article on the future of China in der Spiegel. The go on and on about the benefits of state owned industry, and a central strategy for all of China's economic activity. And not once do they use the term "National Socialism"!

Semantic annoyances

It's annoying that Colin Powell calling Iraq a civil war is news. When there are two wars going on the media decides to make media pronouncements news stories. Pathetic.

More annoying is that the current conflict doesn't bear that many resemblances to a civil war as they are usually defined, and a lot resemblances to a traditional gang war. Come to think of it, that's probably the most useful way to think about it.

Nick was right!

The FoxNews.com website really did take a turn for the ugly and unusable. CNN.com sadly is blighted by the beligerant economic illiteracy of Lou Dobbs, which mars otherwise fine website.

In FoxNews.com defense, they do have periodic columns by Wendy McElroy and Radley Balko. CNN.com has no interesting columns I know of.

Why doesn't the AJC have editors?

This is easily the most poorly written article I've seen in a long time. Granted, its all filler, and contains no new data. And being, the AJC, it mentions diversity (for no obvious reason) at least twice. The bolding defies explanation as well. Some strange passages:

It's no secret in the world of big-time drug trafficking, federal agents say: If you want to be a major player in interstate drug peddling you have to have an operation in metro Atlanta.

Recent multimillion-dollar drug busts suggest that Gwinnett County has become that place in metro Atlanta for these drug cartels.

...
In 2005, Gwinnett's local task force seized a total of $34 million in illegal drugs. Those figures dwarf the amount of drugs seized in surrounding counties. A Cobb County drug task force, for example, seized $9 million in illegal drugs last year.

The words flow like a piano through a blender.

Weakest statement ever

From CNN

With higher gas prices and tax incentives, some hybrid vehicles make economic sense, Edmunds.com says

Wow, some!