PicoBusiness

Indeed, it does explain a lot.

A gem from Calvin and Hobbes.

We take another step on our inevitable path towards national self-destruction.

Our national character is changing to prefer training over initiative; process over outcomes, paternalism over self-reliance and planning over innovation.

“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas”

Derived from this

If the executives at financial firms were always compensated in a “representative basket” (or random, even better) of securities held by the firm, they would have a much stronger incentive to pay more attention to the longer-term value of those securities.

Plus they’d be a lot easier to regulate – “let me see the list of securities, and let me see the list of securities given to the members of the executive team, and let’s do some statistical analysis”

Inspired by TJIC:

a bunch of sailors speculating about quantum mechanics.

Arrrr… ’tis like the waves of the ocean, but also like me musket shot – at the same time, lads!

My attempt:

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

Arrr, If a great stone falls inta tha sea, and creates a mighty wave, does it not capsize our poor vessel and doom our souls whether we see the stone fall, or not?

Forget the economy: Killer asteroids could pose real danger.

As I’ve said before, it won’t matter how clean our air, water and energy are, if we are unable to deflect/avoid/minimize large scale catastrophic threats. We’re not really the “Stewards of the Earth” if we can’t protect it from armageddon.

So I skimmed this discussion of the gaping hole in the Earth’s magnetic field the other day, and left puzzled, but not terribly concerned – there’s already more than enough to worry about on a day-to-day basis.

One of the things that puzzled me about the article was the scientists’ confusion that a “northward” bundle of solar magnetism is breaking a hole in the field, instead of strengthening it, like it usually does.

Alas, it occurred to me earlier today that this would fit well with the possibility that the Earth’s magnetic field is reversing, an event that is a full 400,000 years overdue.

hmmmmmm

Well, if this graph is using consistent data, this is certainly good news.

Hansen Forecasts for 2000s far above actuals

Hansen’s Scenario A was the one that assumed continued large growth in carbon emissions, consistent with our actual growth in carbon emissions. I think it’s very good news that our actual temperature anomaly over the last 20 years has not followed the projections. Yay, Earth!

Another Fine Rant

That’s what I get for paying off $100k or so of personal and corporate credit cards that I had used to help grow the company over the past few years.

Bottom line – the extroverts noticed that the introverts were starting to gain ground financially and socially. So they changed the rules to put us back into our snail shells. Lucky us!

http://feralchimp.com/blog/2008/12/17/simplif/

On my way to work this morning, I saw a BMW 325xi sedan (all wheel drive, $30k+ new) with a ski rack on top, and a little sticker on the back bumper:

SIMPLIFY

hat tip: tjic

There are many flaws in Atlas Shrugged, deep, abiding errors that haunt her writings to this day. But there is no doubt in my mind that one claim she made is manifestly true – the United States is slowly but inexorably suffocating the value of hard work as a means to prosperity, and replacing it with the value of “who you know in the government”.

You can see this everywhere, if you just look for it – in the favors doled out in earmarks and bizarre addendums to bailout packages, in the secret perks and emoilements of power, in the way that Blago is being castigated, not for wanting to sell the senate seat, but in the direct way in which he went about it. If he had just been a little more subtle, no one would bat an eye at the idea that he’d receive some sort of “favor” in exchange for appointing the right person – a plum position in the Obama administration, or a spiffy ambassadorship, etc. Instead, he demanded a favor with a $ in front of it, and, well, that’s just so middle class.

The Aristocracy of Pull is all about sophistication and refinement – which suits you wear, which Ivy League school you attended, which private academy your children attend. Those are the paths to success in America now. Utterly fail at your business? No matter – if you have the right connections in Congress, you’ll keep your job, keep your perks, keep your salary. Heck, you might even get a big fat bonus.

Slashdot asks a silly question

The question is silly because the answer is so manifestly obvious – 9 times out of 10, government actions are simply terrible – a spiraling disaster of unintended consequences, graft, corruption, rent-seeking and the surrender of freedoms.

Pro-government types will point to the successes of government – the national highway system, maybe the clean air/water acts… maybe a couple of other things. And I will answer – yes – as I said, only nine times out of ten does the solution fail utterly. One time out of ten, the government solution is reasonable and decent.

The biggest problem is that it is nearly impossible to tell the one good idea from the 9 terrible ones, and pro-government types always point to the past successes as justification for all 10 new ideas. So we end up with all of them, constantly increasing the power and reach of government at the expense of our personal freedoms.

So I’m signing up for Google Apps, and, in a fit of incredibly user-friendly behavior, Google looks and sees that I’ve registered my domain name through GoDaddy, and gives me a GoDaddy-specific tutorial on how to change my DNS records.

+1 for Google