TMF picks up the earlier NYT story on happiness, noting that it has been scientifically proven that money will not make you (permanently) happier (unless you’re really actually poor). Nonetheless, people keep thinking about exciting new ways to make money, like micropayments, and of course, they go on Bravo! to have people buy them cool new furniture for their cool urban lifestyle.
Note that New American City covers an old favorite subject of mine: the LA River.
Forbes is carrying an editorial about European pension systems and how they’re underfunded and over-generous, that taxes and pension funding make it too expensive to employ people, etc. etc. The implication is that the US has it all right. Bullshit. Yes, tax burdens on employment are lower, for the employers, but they fall onto the employees instead, which is pretty close. And of course the big issue is not how generous the pension, or how early the retirement age is, or how much vacation you get, but whether it’s funded properly. In the US and in Europe, it’s a PAYG system: Pay As You Go. Meaning that the workers today pay for the retirees of today. And if there are more retirees than workers, then you have a structural problem, and that’s the problem that most of the developed world is having. Not just those [epithet] Europeans.
It’s jingoistic and misleading to imply otherwise.
According to the Motley Fool Calculators, I can buy a typical Boston-area one-bedroom condo by increasing my savings to well above my income and making a down payment significantly larger than my net worth.
Sounds like I should get involved in gun-running for Halliburton.
Also, financial advice for you youngsters out there: never breed. Single most significant correlating factor for personal bankruptcy is child-rearing.
But jeez, Neal, 3,000 pages? Newton invented calculus in less time than it’ll take to read about it.
Hot authors get more influence over their editors because they’ve got an established fan base, so they don’t have the discipline needed to cut, delete, tighten, a novel into something readable.
My writing teachers used to say that the one great lesson of good editing is “murder your darlings,” which means you should cut a sentence, paragraph, chapter if it doesn’t fit, even if you love it. It’s not the whole, it’s not the end product. Be especially harsh on the parts you love best: the more you like it, the more likely you are to leave it in, even if it needs to go.
So, Alabama has a reputation as a place where cops are thugs. Recent news about the criminal justice system there doesn’t do much to dispel that. Also covered in TalkLeft and the (mainstream newspaper) Mobile Register.
Woah. They tore down the Liberty Book Bin Adult Entertainment Center and Book Store that’s been one of the fading outposts of the ‘Combat Zone’ in what is now the upscalifying Chinatown and Washington Street Corridor. Amazing, and a big step for Chinatown, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and so forth.
When I got the bike, I said to myself, I’m not going to behave like one of those boneheaded biker people I see everywhere. Everybody says motorcycles and scooters are dangerous, and they are, but most of that danger comes from sheer stupidity: inadequate safety gear, overpowered sport-bikes, riding on the shoulder or between lanes to cut in front of cars, speeding… Within a week I was riding around in sneakers (wear the same boots every damn day?) and a t-shirt, creeping up the shoulder to make a right on red. But I do have a good full-face helmet, kevlar gloves, and of course a bike with a 50cc engine, no acceleration, and minimal testosterone-stupidity factor.
But yesterday I managed to do two things that were breathtakingly boneheaded. First, I made a wrong turn and got stuck on Route 2. Route 2 has a speed limit of 65 and a practical minimum of about 70. My bike doesn’t go above forty. I was there for one white-knuckled, shoulder-riding, profanity-laced mile before I managed to get on the exit. Then, on the way home, doing 35 in a 30 zone, I got pulled over by a cop who noticed that not only was I speeding, but if I was going to be driving that fast, I’d need a license plate. A what? I’ve got a plate, it’s right… uh, well, somewhere, stolen or fallen on the side of the road. So today will include a trip to the RMV and a call to the police to report a lost or stolen plate. Joy of joys. At least I got off with just a warning on the speeding ticket. Who goes only 30 on Mass Ave?
Brad DeLong comes through again with one, and two whoppers from Bush.
Discourse.net has a touching story about how our grandparents knew about creeping fascism and we’ve grown complacent. As I’ve asked before: how do you know when to leave? You don’t. You just don’t.
And the humor section is an email that’s been floating around of Bush/Cheney ’04 bumper sticker slogans. Here’s a few of the best:
Four More Wars!
Apocalypse Now
Because the truth just isn’t good enough
Compassionate Colonialism
Deja-voodoo all over again!
In your heart, you know they’re technically correct.
Leave no billionaire behind
Less CIA — More CYA
Lies and videotape, but no sex!
Doh. Forgot to go to Andrea’s lamp and art show this weekend. Especially annoying of me because I skipped her housewarming party, and because it’s so dark in my cubicle. And artless.
More self-injury in the news– parents freak out about this shit every couple years, it seems. It’ll be gas-huffing next year, then they’ll be back to kids chugging DXM to get high, and then maybe sex and STD’s. See also apotemnophilia, non-fatal suicidal gestures, trepanation, mass hysteria, recovered memories, ritual satanic abuse.
Secretly Ironic 