Let me see if I understand this...

We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that's nearly broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

Jesus was NOT homeless

If I hear one more person say that Jesus was homeless, I'm gonna scream. Or maybe puke.

Every Christmas season we will hear the inevitable revisionist version of the Christmas story in order to further government programs. Jesse Jackson was the first to turn Joseph and Mary into a “homeless couple” when he claimed that Christmas “is not about Santa Claus and ‘Jingle Bells’ and fruit cake and eggnog,” of which all Christians would agree, but about “a homeless couple.”

Barbara Reynolds, a former columnist for USA Today, following Jackson’s early lead, scolded the Christian Right for opposing government welfare programs: “They should recall,” she writes, “that Jesus Christ was born homeless to a teen who was pregnant before she was married.” Hillary Clinton, in comments critical of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s homeless policies, sought to remind all of us that “Christmas celebrates ‘the birth of a homeless child.’”

Have these people never read the Bible?

• Mary did not engage in premarital sex. Her circumstances, to say the least, were unique (Luke 1:26-28). Many young girls got married as teenagers.
• Mary went to live with her cousin Elizabeth upon hearing about her pregnancy and “stayed with her about three months, and then returned to her home” (Luke 1:56). Presumably her parents owned a home and did not throw her out when they learned of her pregnancy.
• Mary and Joseph were actually married at the time she learned she was pregnant even though a formal ceremony had not taken place. Joseph is called “her husband” (Matt. 1:19).
• Joseph was a self-employed carpenter (Matt. 13:55).
• An edict from the centralized Roman government forced Joseph and Mary to spend valuable resources of money and time to return to their place of birth to register for a tax (Luke 2:1-7). Joseph’s business was shut down while he took his very pregnant wife on a wild goose chase concocted by the Roman Empire to raise additional tax money.
• Typical of governments that make laws without considering the consequences, there was not enough housing for the great influx of traveling citizens and subjects who complied with the governmental decree (Luke 2:1).
• Mary and Joseph had enough money to pay for lodging. The problem was inadequate housing. The fact that “there was no room in the inn” (Luke 2:7) did not make them homeless. If we follow liberal logic, any family that takes a trip and finds “no vacancy” signs, is technically homeless.
• Joseph and Mary owned or rented a home. It was in their home that the wise men offered their gifts: “And they came into the house and saw the Child with Mary His mother, and they fell down and worshipped Him; and opening their treasures they presented to Him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh” (Matt. 2:11).
• Joseph, Mary, and Jesus became a family on the run when Herod, a government official, became a threat to them (Matt. 2:13–15).

We would be more accurate to say, the Christmas story is about how taxes hurt the poor and government decrees can turn productive families into the disenfranchised by enacting and enforcing a counterproductive law.

Of course, the Christmas story is not about homelessness nor is it about taxes and government decrees. It's about God's interevention into history. It's about His plan to provide a savior, to reconcile sinners to Himself.

Quote of the day

"He's not a grinch, he's an economist." -- the FastDraw guys on CBS Sunday Morning.

DARPA Network Challenge

DARPA, the real inventors of the Internet (sorry Al), is conducting an experiment to determine the usefulness of social networks in solving certain kinds of problems.

Tomorrow they will launch 10 red balloons, tethered at fixed locations somewhere in the continental United States. The first person or organization to submit the location of all 10 balloons will win a $40,000 prize.

Groundspeak, the organization that runs geocaching.com, is enlisting the help of the geocaching community. If they win the prize, they are going to add $10,000 of their own money to it and award $50,000 to schools that need GPS equipment through donorschoose.org.

So if you see a big, red, tethered balloon on Saturday, December 5, email the location to darpa@groundspeak.com.

To follow Groundspeak's attempt to win the prize, follow their blog: 10 Balloonies or follow them on Twitter.

The President Gets It Right

Y'all know I'm no fan of Obama, but I thought his speech last night was nearly perfect. I was surprised by how many times I found myself nodding in agreement. I even said out loud "It looks like he finally grew a pair."

I was impressed that he recognized the reasons we were in Afghanistan, that he acknowledged the overwhelming support that congress gave to going there in the first place, and the urgency of winning the war there.

I could have done without the bashing of the previous administration for getting sidetracked in Iraq, but I had to admit he was correct in stating that it was Iraq that kept us from being successful in Afghanistan to date.

I think the Republican response, as voiced by John McCain, is disingenuous. They are correct that announcing a "date certain" for withdrawal gives strength to our enemies and distresses our allies. But I didn't hear that in Obama's speech. I heard him say that we would BEGIN to withdraw troops in 18 months. I also heard him say that the timetable to complete that withdrawal would depend on conditions in Afghanistan, that we would remain there until our mission is accomplished.

Kudos, Mr. President!

52 New Laws Take Effect Today in North Carolina

I've quoted James Madison here before, but it bears repeating:

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they can not be read, or so incoherent that they can not be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow."--From The Federalist Papers 

Below is a list of the new North Carolina laws that go into effect today. Some are simple housekeeping. Some actually simplify the system (such as consolidating all of the rules on when a record can be expunged).

At least one is unenforceable... it's illegal to send or read text messages while driving. However, it's legal to make a phone call or use the built-in GPS on your cell phone for directions. So how is a police officer supposed to know if I just read a text message, as opposed to glancing at my phone to see who is calling me?

One makes a particular plant illegal... because that's worked so well in the case of another common plant that's illegal. And another makes the sale of glass tubes illegal. There's certainly no potential for abuse of that one, is there?   This is simply more of your tax dollars at work, in the War On (some) Drugs.

And the "Targeted Picketing" thing appears on it's face to be an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.



S.L. 2009-37 (HB 616) OFFENSE FOR PORTABLE TOILETS/PUMPER TRUCKS.
S.L. 2009-93 (HB 1327) SCHOOLS NOTIFIED OF CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION.
S.L. 2009-107 (HB 43) SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS/FAILURE TO DISCHARGE DUTY.
S.L. 2009-128 (SB 1000) MOTOR VEHICLE SIZE AND WEIGHT LAW CHANGES.
S.L. 2009-135 (HB 9) NO TEXTING WHILE DRIVING.
S.L. 2009-147 (HB 440) THE NICHOLAS ADKINS SCHOOL BUS SAFETY ACT.
S.L. 2009-179 (HB 315) PLEA BARGAIN DISCLOSURE.
S.L. 2009-203 (HB 1190) PRESERVATION OF DNA & BIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE.
S.L. 2009-204 (HB 787) INCREASE PENALTY/REMOVE SERIAL NUMBER FROM GUN.
S.L. 2009-205 (HB 722) PARAPHERNALIA CONTROL ACT. (Editorial comment: this one makes the sale of glass tubes illegal.)
S.L. 2009-234 (SB 649) MODIFY SPEED ZONE RESTRICTIONS.
S.L. 2009-300 (HB 885) TARGETED PICKETING.
S.L. 2009-319 (HB 882) MOTOR VEHICLE INSPECTION PROGRAM CHANGES.
S.L. 2009-333 (HB 1105) AMEND LAWS/REFRIGERATION CONTRACTORS.
S.L. 2009-335 (SB 817) INCREASE CHILD SUPPORT COLLECTIONS.
S.L. 2009-336 (SB 65) AMEND COMPUTER SOLICITATION OF CHILD.
S.L. 2009-344 (SB 307) REGULATE OWNERSHIP & USE OF CERTAIN REPTILES.
S.L. 2009-348 (SB 764) REAL ESTATE/SETTLEMENT AGENT EMBEZZLEMENT.
S.L. 2009-349 (SB 1076) MODIFY CRIMINAL JUSTICE PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM.
S.L. 2009-351 (HB 23) STRENGTHEN CHILD LABOR VIOLATION PENALTIES.
S.L. 2009-356 (HB 192) CHILD WITNESS TESTIMONY/PROCEDURES.
S.L. 2009-369 (HB 1185) HABITUAL DWI-REINSTATEMENT PETITION/10 YRS.
S.L. 2009-372 (SB 920) PROBATION REFORM.
S.L. 2009-379 (HB 1256) LARCENY OF A MOTOR VEHICLE PART.
S.L. 2009-380 (HB 1255) SEX OFFENDERS/PERMANENT NO CONTACT ORDER.
S.L. 2009-398 (HB 1077) VENUE/MUNICIPALITIES IN MULTIPLE DISTRICTS.
S.L. 2009-411 (SB 513) NOTICE OF HEARING/UNSUPERVISED PROBATION.
S.L. 2009-412 (SB 1078) DELAY BOND/PROBATIONER ARRESTED FOR FELONY.
S.L. 2009-415 (SB 713) REMOVAL OF ELECTRONIC MONITORING DEVICE.
S.L. 2009-417 (HB 1058) INCREASE STATUTORY HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION.
S.L. 2009-451 (SB 202) APPROPRIATIONS ACT OF 2009.
S.L. 2009-456 (HB 67) LICENSE PLATE FRAME/STATE NAME VISIBLE/STUDY.
S.L. 2009-460 (HB 1098) PROTECT SEARCH AND RESCUE ANIMAL.
S.L. 2009-491 (HB 1117) SEX OFFENDER CAN’T DRIVE BUS WITH CHILDREN.
S.L. 2009-498 (HB 209) SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY/LIBERTIES W/STUDENT.
S.L. 2009-500 (HB 926) CONTINUOUS ALCOHOL MONITORING SYSTEMS.
S.L. 2009-508 (SB 990) INCREASE PENALTY/TIMBER THEFT.
S.L. 2009-514 (HB 775) ALT. TESTIMONY/CHILDREN AND ADULTS WITH DISABILITIES.
S.L. 2009-516 (HB 1269) AOC OMNIBUS COURTS ACT.
S.L. 2009-517 (SB 853) MOTION FOR APPROPRIATE RELIEF/NEW REQUIREMENT.
S.L. 2009-528 (HB 889) CHANGE PENALTY FOR MISD. DEATH BY VEHICLE.
S.L. 2009-531 (SB 295) CLARIFY CLOSEST MARKET.
S.L. 2009-534 (HB 1111) CAMPAIGN FINANCE AMENDMENTS.
S.L. 2009-538 (SB 138) SALVIA DIVINORUM UNLAWFUL.
S.L. 2009-545 (SB 984) ACCESS TO JUVENILE RECORDS/VIOLENT OFFENDERS.
S.L. 2009-547 (SB 726) AMEND HOUSE ARREST LAWS/ADULT/JUVENILE.
S.L. 2009-551 (HB 1261) PROTECT OUR KIDS/CYBER BULLYING.
S.L. 2009-553 (HB 1387) SOLAR COLLECTORS ON RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES.
S.L. 2009-554 (HB 1135) QUI TAM/LIABILITY FOR FALSE CLAIMS.
S.L. 2009-555 (SB 489) EVEN OUT PRIOR CRIMINAL RECORD POINTS.
S.L. 2009-556 (SB 488) ESTABLISH PROPORTIONATE SENTENCE LENGTHS.
S.L. 2009-577 (HB 1329) CONSOLIDATE EXPUNCTION STATUTES.

Ouch!

I've been a lazy guy lately, and it's started to show. And with the holidays coming up, it's only going to get worse unless I force myself to do something about it.

So today at noon I headed over to the Y and started a new workout program: Stronglifts 5x5.It's hard to believe that a 40 minute workout with no weights on the bar could leave me feeling this much pain. Pain isn't really the right word... it's not the "Something is very wrong, call 911" kind of pain. Just the aches that result from working every muscle group to the point where it can't do another rep.

I just hope the results are comensurate with the soreness.

Where were you when wood became a felony?

This is what happens when congress passes legistlation that is so bloated and complex, we mere mortals are unable to comprehend all of it. The Farm Bill passed in 2008 contains provisions that make possession of wood a felony. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country.

And the Federal Government hasn't wasted any time in using this law to protect us from unlicensed wood:

Gibson Guitar Plant Raided by Feds

An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar's manufacturing plant, but no arrests.

Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson's Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.

Gibson issued a statement saying it is "fully cooperating with agents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as it pertains to an issue with harvested wood." The company said it did nothing wrong.

363,000 Words

That's how long the latest version of the health care bill is.

That's 80 times longer than the Constitution (not counting amendments).

That's twice as long as the Bible.

Can anyone know everything that is in there? Can anyone possibly have read the whole thing? I think we can agree that the answer to those two questions is "no." It's just not possible for any single person to have read every word in that document at this time.

Given that we don't know what's in it, is it really a good idea to make it the law of the land? Would you sign a 363,000 word contract without reading it?

President Obama is not Evil

Dick Cheney is not evil, either.

THIS is evil.

What's wrong with this picture?

Taken during Veteran's day ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers:

Perverse Incentives

The unintended consequence of America's anti-poverty program is to penalize poor people for working. When you take into account the loss of means-tested benefits (e.g., cash assistance, food stamps, housing subsidies, and health insurance), and the taxes that people pay on earned income, the return to working is essentially zero for those in the lower two quintiles of the income distribution.

This chart (Source) shows income after taxes and transfers as a function of earned income. Below about $38,000, income after taxes and transfers is roughly flat. Indeed, it could even fall. The bottom line: If you are poor, the government is ensuring that you have little incentive to try to improve your condition.

Obamacare: Unintended Consequences

According to Martin Feldstein, the healthcare bill just passed will have the unintended effects of increasing the cost of insurance, and decreasing the number of insured.

Why?

One of the key features of the bill prevents insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. This is a well-intentioned feature, but it provides a strong incentive for a healthy person to drop insurance coverage. After all, they can easily obtain coverage if they become seriously ill. As healthy people drop coverage, the insured population becomes sicker and sicker, requiring higher premiums to cover the cost. The higher premiums encourage even more people to drop coverage, leaving an even sicker insured population, requiring even higher premiums... until premiums spiral out of control and only people with cancer have insurance.

In an attempt to prevent this death spiral, the bill requires companies to provide insurance, and requires individuals to obtain insurance. But the consequences of not complying are insignificant, compared to the costs of complying.

For example (my example, not Feldstein's), an employer who doesn't provide insurance must pay a tax equal to 8% of payroll. But my employer currently spends 12% of my salary on insurance. It would be much less expensive for him to drop my coverage and pay the tax. He could even give me a substantial raise and still come out ahead.

Feldstein does the math for families and individuals without employer-provided coverage, and shows that they come out substantially ahead by paying the tax instead of buying insurance. And there's no risk, since they can always purchase coverage if they become ill.

Rational consumers will respond to these incentives in the predictable way, leading to ever-increasing costs and more uninsured.

James Madison on the health care bill

Obviously, James Madison never wrote about the health care bill. But given that the current bill is 1,990 pages long and few of the representatives voting on it have actually read it, he seems remarkably prescient:

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they can not be read, or so incoherent that they can not be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow."

From The Federalist Papers

Cheaper health care without higher taxes

The problem with the government trying to "fix" healthcare is that it's the government that broke it in the first place. And they are trying to fix it by doing more of what they did to break it.

It's true that many Americans can't find affordable health insurance. But it's largely because of government-imposed barriers that keep the cost of insurance so high.

Here are a few ways we can provide lower-cost insurance without raising taxes:

1) Allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines. According to the University of Minnesota, 12 million more Americans would be able to buy coverage if this simple solution was enacted. Excessive state regulations artificially increase the cost of health insurance by requiring companies to provide coverage for such things as fertility treatments and massage therapy. Let's allow people to shop for the coverage they really need!

2) Let people take the cash their employer uses to purchase health care and shop for a plan on their own. Currently, employer-provided health insurance is not taxed. But if you opt out of your employer-provided coverage and shop for your own, you pay for it with after-tax dollars. If people could shop for the best deals, insurance companies would be forced to innovate and control costs (or lose market share to companies that do).

Those two ideas are just a start. They wouldn't cost a dime and would allow lower costs for those who have health insurance, and would allow more people to afford insurance.

Surviving the end of the world

The movie 2012 is opening Friday. According to the film's website, it's "an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors."

Am I the only one who sees a glaring problem with that sentence?

I mean, if there are survivors, it's not exactly the end of the world, is it?

I love a good post-apocalyptic story. I even enjoyed The Postman, although the book was better than the movie. (I mean, Tom Petty as the mayor of the city in the treetops? What were they thinking?) But I think I'll skip this one. If the promo materials are that bad, how good can the movie be? And that goes double for any movie with Woody Harrelson in it.

Dads make us human

Robin Nixon, writing in LiveScience, says fathers are the key to making us human.

Some 95 percent of male mammals have little to no interaction with their children. Homo sapiens are one of the most notable exceptions, leading some scientists to think fatherhood is an important part of what makes us human.

Most theories for the family involvement of fathers invoke the familiar "Man the Hunter" characterization, in which dad protects and provides for his young.

While fathers do play key roles in securing the physical health of their children, they also can be important for the optimum development of psychological and emotional traits considered to be primarily human, such as empathy, emotional control and the ability to navigate complex social relationships.

Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?

Jason Richwine points out a peer-reviewed study that indicates they are.

Lazar Stankov, a visiting professor at Singapore’s National Institute of Education, published “Conservatism and Cognitive Ability” earlier this year in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence. Here is a quote from the article’s abstract:

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated … At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, vocabulary, and analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education … and performance on mathematics and reading assessments.

But there are a couple of caveats worth noting: First, by “conservatism” Stankov does not necessarily mean people who favor free market economics. He has in mind a kind of traditionalism probably best described as social conservatism. The second caveat is that social conservatives do not always vote for conservative candidates. Most black Americans, for example, clearly exhibit “the Conservative syndrome” as Stankov defined it—70 percent voted to abolish gay marriage in California—but they routinely give about 90 percent of their votes to the Democratic Party.

The Obama Effect

From Gallup:

"Among blacks, optimism about an eventual solution to race-relations problems has decreased since last summer, from 50% to 42%. In fact, the current 42% is essentially the same percentage that Gallup measured among blacks on several previous occasions."

Congress is holding hearings..

to investigate the NFL. Specifically, the House Judiciary Committee is asking questions about brain damage among NFL players and former players.

Will someone please explain to me why the Judiciary Committee is wasting their time on this?

"Family Guy" not PC enough to be a PC

"Hello, I'm a PC, and I don't think jokes about feminine hygiene are funny."

Or something like that, anyway. Microsoft was set to sponsor a prime time special by "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane as part of its Windows 7 media blitz, but was somehow surprised when the MacFarlane-esque fare didn't exactly "fit with the Windows brand."

It appears that Microsoft doesn't approve of "riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest," so they've pulled out of the project after getting a look at the content. Didn't they look at any samples of MacFarlane's stuff before they signed on? Or did they just think that with a name like "Family Guy," it must be good clean fun?

One comment on the AdAge article says "But fear not as all is saved! I just heard that Microsoft has hired Michael Richards to do some colorful Windows 7 skits."

Dismantling America

From our "I Wish I'd Said That" department: He said it far better than I could, so I'll quote Thomas Sowell:

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

 Click on the link to read more.

So much for the rule of law

The governor of North Carolina is making a terrible (but popular) mistake. But first, some background:

Back in the 1970's, the law in North Carolina was clear: a "life sentence" actually meant 80 years, and with credits for good behavior could be as little as 35 years.

Many people thought that was too lenient, so in the 1980's the law was changed. First, the law was amended to remove the credits for those convicted of the most serious crimes. Later, it was changed so that in some cases a life sentence would actually mean the person convicted would stay behind bars until he died.

The problem is that the state prison system applied these new rules retroactively. That is, until Bobby Bowden filed an appeal with the state's Supreme Court. Bowden (not the Florida State football coach) was sentenced to death in 1975 for murdering two people during the robbery of a convenience store. The supreme court later took Bowden off death row, and sent his case back to be retried. He was given a life sentence.

Bowden filed an appeal four years ago, claiming that according to the laws at the time of his sentencing, he had served his time and should be released. 13 days ago, the state Supreme Court upheld an earlier appeals court ruling that agreed with Bowden.

Now, as a result of that ruling, Bowden and 19 others are scheduled to be released from prison. They have served their time and there is no law that will allow the state to continue to hold them.

Governor Beverly Purdue suggested on Thursday that she will defy the courts, going to jail if necessary, to stop these 20 murderers and rapists from being released. By the end of the day she had backed down, opting instead to have her lawyers go through the fine print of sentencing laws to look for loopholes and make sure the "good-time" credits have been properly applied. In the meantime, the state Attorney General has also asked Federal authorities to try to find some federal law under which these prisoners can be held.

It's hard to have sympathy for the prisoners. They did horrible things and deserved their punishment. Under today's laws, there would be no question; they would all die in prison. But they weren't convicted and sentenced under today's laws. They have served their time and should be released, no matter how much we hate the idea. Because the alternative is to live in a world where our leaders are dictators, who get to change the rules whenever they don't like the outcome.

That should scare us much more than the idea of releasing a few bad guys.

Before and After

I had my final visit with Dr. Schmorr this morning, and she was kind enough to email me her before and after photos of my teeth. She did a great job of making them look nice, and it only took nine months!

Ignorance is bliss?

I met a girl once. She was really sweet, and kind of cute. I asked her what she did; she didn't have a job, because she was on disability -- although there didn't appear to be anything wrong with her. She didn't have any hobbies, either. When I asked what she did all day, she said she watched TV, or chatted with friends on Yahoo, or talked to her sister on the phone. She never read books, or even newspapers or magazines.

That was pretty much the end of our relationship. There just wasn't anything we could talk about.

But I meet a lot of people like her, blissfully ignorant folk with an astounding lack of curiosity about the world around them. These people don't own a single book, or they think a half-dozen Danielle Steele novels is "a lot of books." They are content to sit, mesmerized, in front of the TV. And when they do, they aren't watching CNN... they are feeding their poor, useless brains a steady diet of sitcoms and "reality" shows.

These people are out there, in greater numbers than you can imagine. And here's what scares me: their vote counts the same as yours and mine.

Things that make you go "hmmmm..."

According to Rasmussen, over 60% of Americans oppose proposals to charge overweight people more for their health insurance.

In an related story, the CDC reports that over 60% of Americans are overweight.

Christians burning Bibles?

According to the website of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, they are going to celebrate Halloween by burning "perversions of God's word." These "perversions" include Bibles that are not the King James Version, as well as "satanic influenced music" including the usual suspects (rock, rap) but also "contemporary Christian" and "Southern Gospel."

They are also burning books by such noted heretics as Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and Mother Theresa. As Dave Barry used to say, "I am not making this up."

Oh, and they'll be serving chicken, too! So bring your appetite and your heretical works and come on down!

And the Nobel Prize in Economics goes to:

Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University and Oliver Williamson of Berkley.

Elinor Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes.

Oliver Williamson has argued that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest. The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement. The drawback of firms is that authority can be abused. Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets.

Stimulus and Jobs

From the Wall Street Journal:

"Rarely in politics do we get such a clear and rapid illustration of a policy failure."

Barley Planting Time

The ultimate homebrew experiment begins today. I planted barley in my backyard. If all goes well, I'll be making homebrew beer, using only home-grown ingredients, sometime in the winter of 2011.

First of all, it's hard to get small quantities of barley seeds. When you do find them, they usually are not of a variety that is traditionally used for malting. I was able to get a small sample here; it's a 5 gram sample, about 100 seeds. So the idea is that next summer I'll harvest enough seeds to plant next fall, and the following summer I'll have enough to make a batch of beer (and enough left over to plant for the next crop).

Still on the to-do list for this project:

1. Obtain and plant some hop rhizomes.
2. Develop yeast-ranching technique.
3. Get some unmalted barley and practice malting.

I think step 2 may be the most challenging, but it helps that I have a microbiologist in the house. Then again, there are probably more homebrewers who raise yeast than there are who malt their own barley.

The barley I planted is the Klages variety. I'm growing it using biointensive techniques, so I hope a 100 square foot bed will produce enough to make a five gallon batch of beer. If the yields are not what Jeavons leads me to expect, I might need to plant 2 x 100 sq. ft. beds.

I also want to try some Maris Otter, but I think it may not grow so well in this warm climate.

Too bad I'm not playing SCA anymore. They'd eat this stuff up. Of course, someone would be bound to point out that even in the Middle Ages, specialization had progressed to the point that farmer, maltster, and brewer were distinct occupations.

First-Year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics!

No, not really. But this post on Greg Mankiw's blog made me snort coffee out of my nose!

"The surprise choice of first-year graduate student Quintus Pfuffnick for the Nobel Prize in Economics drew praise from much of the world Friday even as many pointed out the youthful economist has not yet published anything in scholarly journals."

Who knew that economists could do satire?

An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes Theorem

I found this essay incredibly helpful.

As the author says, "When you are finished reading this page, you will see Bayesian problems in your dreams."

"You can't say that."

At the UN, the Obama administration backs limits on free speech.

Clunkers in Practice

Today's Wall St. Journal points out that "cash for clunkers" hasn't been a great success, despite the administration's claims. New car sales for September are down 25% from a year earlier. Some 700,000 cars were sold in the summer under a program that gave buyers $4,500 to do what they would have done anyway. All the program did is steal those sales from the future, exactly as critics predicted.

The basic fallacy of cash for clunkers is that you can somehow create wealth by destroying existing, productive assets. The journal quotes Henry Hazlitt's classic "Economics in One Lesson," but Hazlitt was borrowing from Frédéric Bastiat's "Parable of the Broken Window." You can't raise living standards by breaking windows so some people can get jobs repairing them.

If this is Washington's idea of a program that works, heaven help us when they get their hands on our health care.

Granny arrested for buying cold medicine

Yet another innocent victim in the government's misguided War On (some) Drugs:

Wabash Valley woman didn’t realize second cold medicine purchase violated drug laws

She bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband. A few days later, her grown daughter was ill and asked her to pick up something. So she got a box of Mucinex-D for her daughter. Oops. Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period. Police got a warrant, came to her house, and arrested her.

A wordsmith leaves us

RIP to William Safire, the language maven of the New York Times. One of his books is always on my bedside table.

Does getting spanked make kids stupid?

On the CBS Early Show just now, they were talking about this study.

OK, everyone take a deep breath and repeat after me: Correlation does not imply causation

One possible hypothesis is that spanking a child somehow lowers that child's IQ. That's the idea that the news people seem to be taking away from this study. I haven't read the actual study, that may even be what the authors think. But it's never safe to assume that the mass media are accurately reporting the results of a scientific study.

Please take a moment and consider this alternate hypothesis: IQ is largely hereditary, and less intelligent parents are more likely to resort to corporal punishment.

Wisdom from Dilbert

My new favorite quote: "When you find a big kettle of crazy, it's best not to stir it." Sounds almost like an al-anon slogan, doesn't it?

President Obama: Baseball Commentator?

President Obama was on five different talk shows this weekend... something no other president has ever done. Maybe he did it because he had something important to say. But I wouldn't know, because I watch WRAL's news. And apparently, based on WRAL's coverage, the most important thing he had to say concerned the Yankee's chances of winning the World Series.

First harvest

First harvest
Originally uploaded by gerald_belton
We moved in to the new house in June, and one of the first things I did was start a garden. Today the first produce from that garden was ready -- cowpeas, aka blackeye peas. I got a little over a pound (after shelling) from 20 square feet of garden. There are still a bunch left that aren't ready yet. If they ripen before the frost hits, there will probably be another pound.

An afternoon of geocaching and benchmark hunting

Saturday afternoon I wanted to do some caching, but I also needed to get my car inspected and the oil changed. It turns out that Jiffy Lube has free WiFi, so I fired up GSAK and loaded some waypoints into my laptop. When my car was done, I started with the nearest waypoint:


FY1903 WITCH
An easy benchmark to get started. It's at the edge of the parking lot of a restaurant supply company. Someone has painted a big arrow on the pavement, making it hard to miss. (Incidentally, I realized at this point that I had forgotten my digital camera. I was stuck making photographs with my Blackberry.)

The datasheet says it's flush with the surface... but I had to clean a half-inch of dirt off it. The datasheet also says it's marked "WITCH," but it actually says "WITCHY."

Next on the list were a couple of geocaches. Two quick park n' grabs in the same parking lot.
GC14A06 Pole Position
GCIW18T At the Crossing

After signing those two logs, it was on to search for a benchmark. FY1904 FRASIER. The last recovery for this one was in 1977, and the NC Geodetic Survey reported it as DNF in 1994. The coordinates are "Adjusted" so they should be spot on. And they place it right in the right-turn lane of N. Duke St. All of the reference points mentioned in the description are gone. I can only conclude that the mark was destroyed when Duke Street was widened, sometime between 1977 and 1994.


FY1905 CARVER was a pleasant surprise...I was looking at the NGS datasheet, and not the logs on geocaching.com. The 1994 recovery note says "mark is now recessed 8 inches below the ground." I was expecting to log a DNF because I wasn't equipped to dig, but I found it at the bottom of a hole in the ground.

After a couple of benchmarks and a couple of microcaches, I was ready for a bigger geocache. One where I could leave a trade item and take a souvenier. On to GCTYX4, named in honor of one of my favorite ex-Presidents. The container was big enough to leave something, but I didn't... everythig inside was a soggy mess and smelled of mildew. But it was a nice spot to visit, and a good hiding spot.

I looked for two more benchmarks, FY1906 and FY1907, both of which seem to have been lost to the widening of North Duke Street.

My final geocache of the day was part of the Caches for Wolves series: GC18QP6. This was yet another log-only microcache, but it was fun finding it. It was hidden in a way I had not seen before.

It was nearly time to head for home, but I had one more stop to make on the way home: FY2936 CASH. I had attempted this one once before, but using the GPS built in to my Blackberry. The description says it's "flush with the surface of the ground" but I couldn't find it. Armed with a better GPSr, and a long screwdriver for probing in the ground, I was hopeful of making a recovery.

Most of the reference points listed in the description are gone. There is no fence and no house. But the mark on the utility pole is still there.

And another mark has been painted on the road:

The datasheet mentions a dirt driveway... it appears to have been paved but not moved. Given all of this data, I have a pretty good idea of where this mark should be. But lots of probing with the screwdriver failed to locate it. It's either been destroyed or buried. If I ever get a metal detector  this is going to be one of the first places I use it.

Innumeracy in the news

I was half asleep while watching the news this morning, but halfway through my first cup of coffee this story caught my attention:

Customers speak out about Duke Energy rate increase

"Raleigh, N.C. — Duke Energy customers voiced their concerns on Thursday night about a planned 13.5 percent rate increase.

"Under the plan, people with an average monthly bill of $100 a month would go up about $18."

I hate to pick on my friends at WRAL, but how did that get on the air?

WNCN says the increase is 12.6% -- and their math works out:

"The utility wants a 12.6 percent hike, which would be an additional $150 a year for a household that currently pays about $100 a month."

WTVD also says the rate hike is 12.6%, and claims that it's "about $11 per month." But they don't mention a base rate. If the average bill is around $87, then that works out.

Is the proposed rate increase 12.6%, or 13.5%? Is the average bill going up $11 per month, $150 per year, or $18 per month? Is $18 = to 13.5% of $100?

North Georgia Pastor Killed by Drug Warriors

Another Victim of the War On (some) Drugs:

Family seeks answers after N. Ga. pastor killed in drug sting

Read the story... it appears that this young pastor was leaving a convenience store when a black Escalade pulled into the parking lot, and a bunch of men in black t-shirts jumped out waving guns. He did what I would have done: he tried to get the hell out of there.

Yeah, they were yelling "Police! Stop!" But they were not wearing uniforms nor displaying badges. I'm sure no criminal would EVER yell "Police!" to get a victim to stop. And if he was in his car with the AC going and the radio on he probably couldn't hear them, anyway.

The surveillance video is posted on YouTube -- the freaking cops are wearing MASKS!
YouTube Video

Geotagging

I've been playing around with my GPS lately... geocaching, and hunting for benchmarks, and such. And I also enjoy photography and take a lot of pictures.

The camera on my Blackberry geotags photos with coordinates from its internal GPS, and after I upload them to flickr I can display them on a map, which is pretty cool.

The only problem is that as a camera, the Blackberry is a pretty good telephone. But using it caused me to wonder about geotagging images from a real camera. Flickr lets you drag and drop photos on to their map, but that depends on remembering where you took the photo and being able to find it on the map!

Software to the rescue! There is software out there that takes a track from your GPS, and uses it to tag photos with coordinates based on where you were at the time the photo was taken.

For starters, you need to get the tracks from your GPS to the computer. The software that came with my Garmin works fine for this. But EasyGPS is actually easier to use, and takes up less space on my laptop's tiny hard drive. (The only problem is that easygps doesn't display an actual map, but for our purposes that doesn't matter.)

There are several programs that will merge the track data with your photos. The one I use is Photomapper. (EasyGPS and Photomapper are both free.)

Here's a brief tutorial on geotagging your digital photos.

1) Set the clock on your digital camera. I had never bothered to do this before but it's important for this process. The time and date on your photos has to coordinate with the time and date on your GPS track, so make sure that your camera's clock agrees with your GPS!

2) Turn on your GPS. My Garmin eTrex automatically starts recording a track whenever it is turned on. If yours doesn't, then push whatever buttons it takes to make it start recording.

3) Go out and take some pictures!

4) Hook your GPS to your computer, and using either EasyGPS or whatever software came with your GPS unit, save the track. Photomapper accepts a number of formats for this, but GPS eXchange Format (.gpx) seems to be the most universal.

5) Upload your photos to your computer.

6) Start Photomapper.

7) The "File" menu in Photomapper has only three choices: Import GPS Data, Import Images, and Quit. You can probably figure out what to do from here, but I'll continue. Select "Import GPS Data" and load the .gpx file you saved in step 4. Then select "Import Images" and navigate to the folder with your pictures.

8) Photomapper then matches up the timestamps on the photos with the locations in your GPX track. It will show you a map (from Google Maps) with the locations of your photos, and a list of photos with latitude and longitude displayed.

9) Now click "tag selected images" and Photomapper will add the geotagging data to the image files. It also gives you the option to export them to Google Earth, but I don't because I'm going to upload them to Flickr.

If you are using Flickr, you'll need to set your account to allow the import of EXIF geotags when you upload images. Click this link to set this permission.

After that is done, you can upload the pictures. I saved my test run photos into a set, and viewed that set on a map. It came out looking like this:


If you'd like to see it "live," here's the link: Geotagging experiment map view

Bench mark hunting

Lately I've been playing around with geocaching, using the GPS built in to my Blackberry. It's a lot of fun, sort of a high-tech treasure hunt.

While poking about on the net looking for related info, I discovered "benchmarking." It's related to geocaching in that a GPS receiver is used, but the targets are a little different. They are benchmarks placed by surveyors that were formerly used for tying survey data into the global reference framework. I say "formerly," because modern electronics have rendered them mostly obsolete. But I love a good anachronism, not to mention the challenge of finding something that was placed decades ago and largely ignored since then.

Today during my lunch hour I logged this one:


It's located in the concrete abutment on the west side of the Erwin Road railroad bridge. It's at approximately N 36° 00' 23" W 78° 55' 20" and precisely 417.63 feet above sea level. It was placed there by the National Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1967, and the last documented "recovery" was by the US Power Squadron in 1989.

That one was relatively easy. I have a list of others that will be more of a challenge. I'll post more as I find them (or try to find them).

Boy Scouts build a catapult

For our August camping trip, the project was to practice lashings by building a catapult. It was highly successful!



NOTE: No trees were harmed in building this catapult! We brought our own poles.

Soaring Health Care Costs?

Hedge-fund manager Clifford Asness, writing at Stumblingontruth.com:

Myth #1 Health Care Costs are Soaring

No, they are not. The amount we spend on health care has indeed risen, in absolute terms, after inflation, and as a percentage of our incomes and GDP. That does not mean costs are soaring.

You cannot judge the “cost” of something by simply what you spend. You must also judge what you get. I’m reasonably certain the cost of 1950’s level health care has dropped in real terms over the last 60 years (and you can probably have a barber from the year 1500 bleed you for almost nothing nowadays). Of course, with 1950’s health care, lots of things will kill you that 2009 health care would prevent. Also, your quality of life, in many instances, would be far worse, but you will have a little bit more change in your pocket as the price will be lower. Want to take the deal? In fact, nobody in the US really wants 1950’s health care (or even 1990’s health care). They just want to pay 1950 prices for 2009 health care. They want the latest pills, techniques, therapies, general genius discoveries, and highly skilled labor that would make today’s health care seem like science fiction a few years ago. But alas, successful science fiction is expensive.

In the case of health care, the fact that we spend so much more on it now is largely a positive. The negative part is if some, or a lot, of that spending is wasteful. Of course, that is mostly the government’s fault and is not what advocates of government control want you to focus upon. We spend so much more on health care, even relative to other advances, mostly because it is worth so much more to us. Similarly, we spend so much more on computers, compact discs, HDTV, and those wonderful one shot espresso makers that make it like having a barista in your own home. Interestingly, we also spend a ton more on these other items now than we did in 1950 because none of these existed in 1950 (well, you could have hired a skilled Italian man to live with you and make you coffee twice a day, so I guess that existed and the price has in fact come down; my bad, analogy shot). OK, you get the point. Health care today is a combination of stuff that has existed for a while and a set of entirely new things that look like (and really are) miracles from the lens of even a few years ago. We spend more on health care because it’s better. Say it with me again, slowly – this is a good thing, not a bad thing.

By the way, I do not mean that the amount we spend on health care in this country isn’t higher than it needs to be. Myth #4 covers that.

In summary, if one more person cites soaring health care costs as an indictment of the free market, when it is in fact a staggering achievement of the free market, I’m going to rupture their appendix and send them to a queue in the UK to get it fixed. Last we’ll see of them.

Do you believe in fairies? Unicorns? BMI?

Mathematician Kieth Devlin of Stanford points out that even the CDC engages in junk science occasionally -- and the "Body Mass Index" is his example.

According to this CDC endorsed metric, these people are all overweight: Kobe Bryant, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Will Smith, and Denzel Washington. Tom Cruise scored even worse, being classified as downright obese, as was Arnold Shwarzenegger when he was a world champion body-builder. With definitions like that, no wonder Americans think of themselves as having an overweightness epidemic. (Using the CDC's BMI measure, 66 percent of adults in the United States are considered overweight or obese.)

Outraged over the AIG bonuses?

I was, too. Then I read this.

Dilbert on the abuse of graphics

Since I'm going to an Edward Tufte seminar on Monday, I thought today's Dilbert comic was quite timely:

Language peeve of the week: "forecasted"

I'm seeing this more and more lately. Consider this, from ABC news:

"In a speech this morning at an economics conference in northern Virginia, just outside Washington DC, Romer, noting that 'the deeper the recession, the more rapid the rebound,' forecasted that when the country recovers from its current crisis, it will enjoy a period of 'very rapid growth'”.

Forecast works perfectly well as a past-tense. And doesn't it just sound better to say that Romer "forecast that when the country recovers?"

I know, your dictionary says "forecasted" is ok. Well, Theodore Bernstein says it better than I can:

"If you think you have correctly forecasted the immediate future of English and have casted your lot with the permissivists, you may be receptive to broadcasted, at least in radio usage, as are some dictionaries. The rest of us, however, will decide that no matter how desirable it may be to convert all irregular verbs into regular ones, this cannot be done by ukase, nor can it be accomplished overnight. We shall continue to use broadcast as the past tense and participle, feeling that there is no reason for broadcasted other than one of analogy or consistency or logic, which the permissivists themselves so often scorn."

Forecast is derived from the word "cast." Would a fisherman say "I casted my line into the stream?" I think not.

Source

Ash Wednesday

As befits my upbringing, I have a throbbing headache this morning. Last night I was lucky enough to have tickets to see Dr. John and the Neville Brothers in Chapel Hill. It was a great show but the sound system was cranked up too high, the distortion made it hard to hear the lyrics. (Dr. John provides his own distortion, but Aaron Neville's angelic voice deserves better.)

And for the Neville's portion of the show, there was WAY too much bass drum in the mix. My whole body throbbed with every beat. The musicians were great, but the audio was so bad I had to leave before it was over.

Huh. I really am turning into a cranky old man.

The guru of graphics is coming to town

Geek that I am, I haven't been this excited since I got tickets to see George Harrison in 1974.

Edward Tufte is doing a one-day seminar right here in Durham in March! Tufte is Professor Emeritus at Yale and literally "wrote the book" on the graphical display of complex data.

Business Week calls him the "Galileo of graphics" and the New York Times calls him "The Leonardo da Vinci of data."

Tuesday morning in a cheap hotel

I've been in Marietta, GA since last Thursday. We're here because Angela is having Duodenal Switch surgery tomorrow. This afternoon we'll go to the hospital to have her IV line put in.

My dog was having some issues last week, so I asked the vet to check him out while they were boarding him. They did an ultrasound this morning and his prostate is greatly enlarged, and there's some constriction of his urethra. They are going to do a biopsy.

They are going to call me back later with the results. I have a feeling I may not have a dog by the time I get home.

Atlanta

We're in Atlanta -- ok, no, we're in Kennesaw -- preparing for Angela's weight loss surgery which will take place on Wednesday. Yesterday we visited the home brew store over in Alpharetta. I bought all the ingredients for my next batch of beer, and I also bought a temperature controller. The next batch is going to be a number of firsts for me:

1. My first true lager - hence the new temp controller.
2. My first use of specialty grains. I'm going to steep them this time, rather than attempt a true mash.
3. My first beer not made from a Mr. Beer kit.

Tonight we're going to eat at Copeland's, which is as close to real cajun food as I've been in a while.

Snow day

It's snowing! It's been a couple of years since we had a good snow day here in Durham. It was very tempting to stay home, but as our HR department reminded us in an email yesterday, "Due to the nature of our business all of our employees are considered essential and are encouraged to make every effort to get to work during inclement weather." I didn't want to waste a PTO day, so here I am in the office.

Getting here was a bit of an adventure. First, someone in a big Ford SUV lost it on Hope Valley Road:
She was coming out of the neighborhood across from our apartment complex, and hit the gas a little too hard. She swerved to the right, over-corrected, and ended up in the ditch. I don't think her 4WD is going to get her out of there, either.

When I saw this happen, I almost decided to go back home. But then I realized that the road was really in pretty good shape, and she just screwed up. so I crossed my fingers in hopes that no one else would screw up, or at least that I would see them in time to avoid getting in their way.

Then there was this:
It's a little blurry because I was driving when I snapped the picture, and I was more "focused" on driving than on photography. I really feel sorry for the poor bastard on the bicycle. I hope he makes it ok to wherever he is headed. The driver of the Toyota, on the other hand... Right after I took this picture, she decided it was too scary to try to pass the bicycle. So for the next couple of miles we drove behind him at seven miles per hour.

But I did finally make it to work, and on time, too. It's mighty quiet around here.

Homebrew: Batch #2, Irish Red Ale

I just started batch #2, which is sort of a leap of faith as I haven't tasted batch #1 yet.

For this batch I wanted to make an Irish Red Ale, my favorite beer style. I ordered the Mr. Beer recipe but also ordered a pouch of liquid ale yeast.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe, though. The Mr. Beer recipe says it has a color of 9 and IBU of 14. The BJCP style guidlines suggest a color of 9-18 and IBU 17-28.

So instead of following the normal Mr. Beer procedure, I started with two gallons of water in a big kettle. I added the can of Pale Export UME and brought it to a boil. Then I put in 1/3 of the packet of US Goldings hops that came with the kit -- 5 grams, to be exact. I boiled it for an hour.

When it came off the heat, I added the rest of the hops (12 grams) and the can of Englishman's Nut Brown Ale extract. Then put the pot in the kitchen sink, which I had filled with ice, and cooled it down to 75 degrees. I put it into the Mr. Beer keg, added the liquid yeast (which I had activated earlier today), and added water (previously boiled to sterilize it) to the 8.5 quart mark.

I'm hoping that boiling that small amount of hops will add enough bitterness to make this brew more "to style." Qbrew says this should be around 24 IBU.

Mmm, beer!

One of my favorite gifts this past Christmas was a Mr. Beer home brewing kit. I realize that the true homebrewing aficionados will scoff, but I'm really having fun with it. I live in a tiny apartment, and brewing this little two-gallon batches is just so easy. And it looks better in the dining room than a carboy or a five-gallon bucket.

I've just bottled my first batch and I'm looking forward to sampling it. And I've ordered the ingredients for my next batch. I'm going to brew up an Irish Red style beer and enter it in a competition.

Sshhh, don't tell the guys down at the beer club that my brew came from one of these: