Category: Thoughts

Well, the economy has collapsed. Oops.

I imagine we’ll find a way around it.

But it’s going to make it hard for me to sell my motorcycle this week.

Brad Delong: Why Are Republicans So Awful For The Economy?

Not sure how I missed this, but it is currently setting the interwubs on fire:

Look funny? Live in a mobile home? If you’re in the Twin Cities, the cops are going to take your house and leave you barefoot on the side of the goddamn highway.

Why isn’t this being reported?

In preparation for the convention, cops in the Twin Cities are rounding up and arresting hippies. It’s OK, hippies are gross. FDL has more.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has a pretty clear stance on abortion and an even clearer stance on church and state and heathens.

Oops: “Mrs. Wooten is wearing a red shirt that says, “Merced: Invest in California’s Future.” Which is pretty much how all the trouble began.“

Bank boards up a foreclosed house, only to have people break in and steal the boards. They spent $10,000 to sell it. Final sale price: $1, although the new owner will need to pay back taxes and water bills, and the house now needs a new roof, windows, siding, plumbing, wiring, fixtures, flooring… oh, and the garage caught fire.

I thought the stimulus check plan was dumb, so the Globe confirms it: The people who most need them are least likely to get them.

Not enough people recycle their direct-mail pieces. Funny, I keep a recycling bin right next to the mailbox so they can be recycled right away. I guess the goal is to drive me to recycle them after reading? Whatever.

Web radio is getting choked. Well, that’s a damn shame.

There’s got to be a thesis in the similarities of SATs as a way of measuring the ability to learn and FICO as a measure of creditworthiness. It’s all about tying something very abstract and diffuse to a number, then idolizing the number and ignoring the actual thing it’s supposed to refer to.

Yet more evidence that Dan Grabauskas should not be in charge of the MBTA.

Headline in the Boston Metro: “So What Is Real?”

Of course, they’re talking about the amount of fakery in this year’s Olympics, but still, it’s an unusually philosophical question for a paper that usually covers firefighters, kittens, and Owen Wilson.