Where in the World is Tony?

I am stealing this whole thing, but I think it is great!

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=22277

For a quick, and somewhat trite answer, it is because it is not capitalism, the system we have. Now, like most debates about a binary choice, the ‘grass is greener’ nature/motivation/neural imperative of humanity comes into play, but even this conservative bastion noted something funny….

I think most people alive would agree that college graduates, 27% of Americans as of a few years ago would be considered the ‘winners’ of society. Well, all would at least agree they tend to be the winners relative to those without a degree…but now if you are a winner, according to the WSJ, your post-inflation earning ‘only’ fell by 4.5%

Wow, what a deal! Assuming this trend extrapolated out, in 25 more years those with college degrees could be earning 25% less than they are now, which is a contraction from 5 years before. A trite extrapolation to be sure, but 5% is fairly significant.

I always hate it when someone is pissing on me, and then gets offended that I don’t think it is rain, which is basically how I feel towards the raft of recent conservatives who saw the poll numbers showing a rise in support for socialism vis-a-vis capitalism, and launched their typical teeth-gnashing …shocking isn’t it that one might not be satisfied with a system where being a ‘winner’ means only loosing 1% of your inflation-adjusted income a year.

When I was reading ‘Supercrunchers’, there came a short section detailing the standard deviations among IQ and the associated bell curve distribution. Based on what I tentatively know about my IQ, an this chart, I am between 2 and three 3 standard deviations above normal. (I offered more than 3 but Andi firmly informed me of where I was. (She would know because she is probably more than 3 above) At two standard deviations above normal I have a higher IQ than all but 2.5% of people. Since I am between 2 and 3, I would put this as less than 1%, but I really have no idea. But I wonder if I am smart enough? this link on the future of neural enhancements points to a new world where people take loads of drugs to enhance neural outputs, which just sounds so appealing to me……also very scary since the pre-cursor world of professional sports shows what happens to those who drop out of the arms (steroids, HGH, GBH). Either you opt in, or loose. As the article hinted at, if 25% of people start taking these neural enhancers, everyone else would be defined based on them….

Really though the article just made me think….I don’t think I am smart enough at better than all than.5%. I think this is still not smart enough for anything really interesting….I think my IQ just puts me at the level to make me aware of others’ staggering limitations. more painfully aware of my own limitations (based on higher contextual standards) and my painful awareness of both these facts.

Is my only option to get in this arms race before everyone else…certainly not in the EFL world….no great need here

I love reading and storing information like this guy

What can I say….diet really seems the best word here. I feel like those who don’t have much intellectual curiosity must be starving.

I was at a crowded Subway yesterday. As I was standing in line, a large group of Asians got up and left, leaving their table in a revolting shamble. Since the people behind the counter were hardly lounging about, the odds of the table getting cleaned any time soon seemed unlikely….and sure enough, by the time I got there, I had to remove the refuse myself. Hardly a mission, but then again I certainly didn’t sterilize the table to the point that a new customer wouldn’t be offended.

Interestingly, the table in question was quote large, so at the other end, several more Asians sat down….amid the filth…and proceded to sit there…eating among the filth. It just seemed very interesting to me, the passivity on display. Believe me, I know a lot of Americans wouldn’t clean up someone elses mess, but I doubt many would passively sit in someone elses squalor.

Oh yeah, the Germna family at the table next to ours…when they did leave…..spotless…as was mine

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/04/fiscal-responsibility.html

Mankiw is right to comment on the stupidity of the Obama admin spending time f^%$ing around with a tiny fraction of the budget….it is a game…a stupid one…just like every time a Republican opens his mouth regarding the seriousness of Earmarks, which make up a tiny fraction of a percent of the national budget….stop wasting our time!

I just listened to your Klosterman dialogue, (between him and Simmons) and I felt that he missed a critical issue in the relative nature of your ESPN position “the box” versus a columnist for a paper, and that would be the threshold. What I mean, specifically, is the level of difficulty needed to find an alternative. On the internet, you are displayed prominently, which is good for me because I specifically remember searching for your column. But, save for the truly technologically illiterate, this was not a terrible challenge. In the same sense, it isn’t hard for me to find someone else. It is the ease of finding someone else that makes all the difference in the world. Chuck even commented on this on how he often quickly clicks on a ‘most mailed’ link, finds out he isn’t interested, and moves on. But he could easily stay. If it was interesting he could stay, and what did it take him to find out…..5 seconds perhaps?

Can you do that with a newspaper? Lets say there are 5 newspapers in your area. You buy one…you don’t love it….and now your going to buy another? Really? See the threshold is too difficult.

This goes back to how all these talented writers left the newspapers. The internet lets you throw them all up on ESPN, granted some more prominently featured, but they are all there, and can be accessed. The newspapers have a finite space…they all aren’t there…and it is much harder to actually get to an alternative if you are dissatisfied…the finger click verse the acquisition of a second newspaper. That’s the difference.

This is not to say the writers at the Boston newspapers (never read any B.T.W.) never once made it on merit…but once they did…that was it….you (and others on ESPN) have to make it over and over again…because your competition is only a click away

I like Unions for giving you a good wage for good work. That is why I support them, but there needs to be a fine line between making living wages possible, and allowing people who don’t deserve to, to keep their job.

Just finished ‘The black Swan’. It makes an interesting point that events can vary greatly from the norm, and this variance can often be bad (stock wipe-out) or good, serendipitous book sales. Of course, the latter only occurs when the outcome exceeds expectation. Here I mean expectation based on output of resources, not some dude in a fluffy arm-chair with nothing ventures, hence the absence of gain corollary. In ‘The Black Swan’, there was even a section on book sales versus output of expectations. I thought of this when I saw the following article on the $5 Million advance for the next book by the author of ‘The Time-Traveler’s Wife”, which I read and enjoyed. My question is, with $5 million already laid out, what are the odds this does well enough to beat expectations?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/books/11niff.html?hp

It’s funny how and when something actually moves you. I have never been a fan of the over-the-top pomp and stagecraft and politics. When I worked for Kerry, the only times I ever tuned out was when some pol started to speak, be it on a conference call or in person. I know I am atypical, but it is just not the way I am moved. So when I watched Obama win, and then get inaugurated, I felt it a little, more so at the latter. However, it was Beyonce singing at the Presidential Ball that did it for me. I just saw it yesterday, when she sang ‘At Last’ by Etta James. Even though the event was hyper-scripted, the look that she gave to them as she said those words was in no way scripted.

It said something deep and profound about struggle and perserverance and discrimination and suffering and finally getting to where you want to be in a way that no words or images had done so for me, prior to the look she gave.

As a liberal who never supported Bush, even in his post 9/11 halcyon day on 90+ % approval rating, Obama does feel like my President, even though I did far less to help him get elected than I did for Kerry. (Which, in a way, really sums up my motivation since the minutae of Bush’ destruction was a much more palpable force in my life than the words of Obama) But, after seeing that look in Beyonce’s eyes, I am ready to recognize that maybe, just maybe, he is a bit more her president than mine. As someone who is trying to include everyone and be somewhat bi/post-partisan, I doubt Obama wants anyone to feel this way, but it is ok with me that it means more to a black person to have Obama as president than it does to me. You earn these kind of things through suffering, and black people have done far moe of it than my lilly-white ass.

P.S. I am still waiting for my Jewish candidate, and I don’t count Lieberman…he is a grade-A douche.

I feel that there is a bit of a bubble her, regarding what is happening around the world. Real pain just hasn’t reached me yet, I am just scared. I, like everyone else, hopes it just misses me, magically. That I am, by random chance, lucky enough to miss the storm, but I highly doubt it. It is a weird and powerless feeling. All I can do, is not succumb to fear, to not not spend. But then, if I am the only one, I am foolish not to curtail my expenditures. Who knows. I guess I just feel that it is important to record something of my general feeling, before the other shoe drops, as it were.

It just seems so ridiculous that basic decency and common sense were flushed down the toilet recently by those in charge, leading to this feeling that we are over a precipice. I just really worry about the people I know who have no safety net at all, from not having been fortunate like me to having wealthy relations to not personally making more of an effort to make sure their own personal habits contribute to their safety (save something). I think of my boss, who has been here ages, for a long time was a DINK, a has nothing in the bank to show of her time. What happens to people like her?

I really wish I believed the Conservative mantra that people know best, and the less regulation the better. Clearly they don’t, but I hate that others have to regulate. I am so grateful to my father and the values he imparted on me, which I hope one day to impart on my kids. When did restraint and sobriety and delayed gratification become such silly passe ideas?