Author: Matthew G. Saroff

I Can Now Retire as a Blogger

No Comments

All I have to do is to outsource my political analysis to Jon Stewart, and use this article by Martin Robbins for science:

This is a news website article about a scientific paper

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.

………
This paragraph contained useful information or context, but was removed by the sub-editor to keep the article within an arbitrary word limit in case the internet runs out of space.

The final paragraph will state that some part of the result is still ambiguous, and that research will continue.

Related Links:

The Journal (not the actual paper, we don’t link to papers).

The University Home Page (finding the researcher’s page would be too much effort).

Unrelated story from 2007 matched by keyword analysis.

Special interest group linked to for balance.

I think that there is a Dilbert cartoon in which Dogbert sells a “forever” newspaper, but this is better written, and the article is better drawn as well, or at least the, “picture has been optimised by SEO experts to appeal to our key target demographics,” is.

Rahm Leaves White House to Run for Mayor of Chicago

No Comments

It was made official yesterday.

My condolences to the people of Chicago. I don’t think that he’s done a good job wherever he has been.

He has a real history of failing up: For example, as head of the DCCC, he spent thousands to displace Christine Cegelis with the hapless Tammy Duckworth, and advised Democrats to be hawkish on Iraq in 2006, he was point man on NAFTA in 1994, etc.

I rather expect he won’t get the streets plowed in Chicago.

I would also note that if the LGBT political establishment is interested in getting some respect from Obama and his administration, working to make sure that Emanuel does not win the February mayoral primary would be a good place to start.

If Jon Stewart Goes After You, It’s Because You Are a Jerk

No Comments

Let’s Roll Tape

Not because you are some sort of bigot.

That’s what CNN anchor Rick Sanchez claimed on Pete Dominick’s radio show, but he went further and said that Jews run the entertainment industry.

So, he is now a former CNN anchor.

The lesson here is that if Jon Stewart makes fun of you, look inward for the fault, not outward, thought I do find Conan O’Brien’s tweet a hoot:

Some More Meta on Comments

No Comments

I have a comment in the spam box right now, and blogger is giving me an error when I try to flag it as “not spam.”

Unfortunately, the morons on blogger have made spam filtering of the comments mandatory, and it has a huge false positive rate, so if you don’t see the comment after posting, blame them, not me.

Henry Rollins’ Is Saying Something About Politics

No Comments

A metaphor for our times

Yes, it does sound like our body politic, particularly the bit infected with the teabagger manifestation:

I’ll tear (rip) your mind up, I’ll burn your soul
I’ll turn you into me, I’ll turn you into me
’cause I’m a liar, a liar, a liar, a liar…

Then again, the whole element of pathological need of the person to whom he is lying to keep believing reminds me of a wider range of political fanboi out there.

This Is Bloody Amazing

No Comments

Entwhistle’s bass playing here is completely sick, and Keith Moon is positively insane.

It’s a nice window into the band about a year before they became rock icons with the release of Tommy.

They were playing at the “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,” and they so blew away the Stones that Mssr. Jagger and company did not have the stones* to release the film or album for almost 30 years.

Wow, just wow.

And that fringed jacket is so 1960s.

*Pun intended.

Economics Update

No Comments

It’s jobless Thursday, and the initial jobless claims are out, initial claims down 16K to 453,000, and the less volatile 4 week moving average fell 6,250 to 458,000, a two month low, with continuing claims falling 83K to 4.46 million, and emergency claims falling 293K to 4.88 million.

Generally, the numbers are good, but still firmly in the 450-480K “sweet spot” where the numbers have lingered for most of this year.

Additionally, the revised GDP numbers have come out, and, for once, the numbers were revised up, from the truly anemic 1.6% annual rate releases last month to a (truly anemic) 1.7% annual rate.

In real estate, mortgage applications fell, despite falling rates, though the home purchase application index nosed up slightly.

In terms of the various indices out there, the Institute for Supply Management’s Chicago PMI rose in September, beating estimates.

Generally a good news day for this economy, this.

The DFHs* Eke Out a Small Win on Intel

No Comments

The house has passed an intelligence authorization bill that expands oversight by requiring that the full intelligence committees in both the house and senate must be briefed, and by allowing the GAO to take a small peak at operations:

According to a draft bill that the House sent the Senate on Friday, the White House would be required to notify the full membership of both congressional intelligence committees of presidential directives to conduct covert action, known as “findings.” At present, the administration is required to notify only the so-called Gang of Eight, the chairmen and ranking members of each committee and the party leadership in both chambers.

It should be noted that any administration would have at least 180 days to make the notice, more if it said that it needed more time, so this is still weak tea.

Additionally, the bill also includes language that would for the first time give the GAO some access to the activities of the intelligence community:

The Government Accountability Office seems poised to play an increased role in intelligence oversight, despite a series of legislative setbacks and the Obama Administration’s threat of a veto earlier in the year.

The issue remains alive in the FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act which was approved in the Senate on September 27 and which now appears likely to be enacted into law. The Act (in section 348) requires the Director of National Intelligence to prepare a directive on GAO access to intelligence community information — thereby setting the stage for a stable new role for the GAO in intelligence agency audits and reviews.

Personally, I think that this last bit will be a disappointment, either the DNI will issue a directive that says “go Cheney yourself,” to the GAO, or Obama will author a signing statement gutting this provision, because the intelligence community really does not want anything vaguely resembling accountability, and the state security apparatus owns the Obama administration.

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.

This Means Nothing

No Comments

The House just passed a bill allowing for sanctions against countries that manipulate their currency, which is actually in accordance with free trade theory; an undervalued currency is a tariff on imports and a subsidy on exports.

The “free trade” absolutists would disagree, arguing since free trade creates democracy, cures rainy days, and keeps your daughter from dating that guy with the tattoo and the tongue studs.

Of course what they are really arguing is that they want to do whatever they can to depress American worker’s wages, because that’s how they get their consulting gigs.

This bill means nothing, and it never will, because it will never pass the Senate, and because in order for the tariff to be enforced, the US Commerce department must rule that the currency is “fundamentally undervalued,” which it will never do, because, it’s run by guys who worry that if they do so, their daughter will start dating that guy with the tattoo and the tongue studs.

Well, I Missed a Major Decision……

No Comments

Bilski v. Kappos, a business patent case that made it to the Supreme Court was decided 3 months ago. Basically, Bilski had patented a method of hedging energy based on the weather.

The Supreme Court unanimously invalidated the patent, it was after the unique idea that one should bet on the weather, but by a 5-4 majority, they kept the business method patent, albeit with a tightening of standards:

While all nine justices agreed that the “invention” at issue in the case—a method for hedging weather-related risk in energy trading developed by Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw—was too abstract to merit patent protection, only four signed on to Kennedy’s opinion.

That opinion held that the “machine-or-transformation” test for patentability–created by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in its Bilski decision–was a “useful clue” when gauging a subject’s patentability but shouldn’t be considered the only applicable test.

I think that this was generally a loss for patent sanity, though it does make getting a business patent more restrictive, though, unsurprisingly, SCOTUS didn’t say how much more restrictive the standards should be.

My earlier posts on the matter.

Quote of the Day

No Comments

Same as it ever was

This really does encapsulate Washington, DC, or at least the White and Federal part of the District:

When you can read an entire column by the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz and never once feel the urge to cut out your own heart with a dull knife, you know that you no longer have the sense of outrage that is essential to reporting from our nation’s capital.

–Now former Washington, DC editor for Harpers Ken Silverstein, explaining why, though he will still write for the publication, he can no longer be their Washington Editor.

Basically, he has realized that if you don’t go native, you will go insane, and Mr. Silverstein has chosen to get out of Dodge.

He notes how little that things have changed:

I moved to Washington in 1993, when a young, new Democratic president replaced George Bush and promised to reform politics and be a transformative leader. Backed by huge majorities in Congress and with public opinion squarely in his corner, he had the opportunity to shake things up and change American politics. Instead, he and his party squandered their chance through timidity, weak leadership, a lack of any original ideas and their refusal to confront special interest groups.

Here we are seventeen years later and there’s a young, new Democratic president who replaced George Bush and promised to reform politics and be a transformative leader. Backed by huge majorities in Congress….

Well, by now you can probably guess where this is heading.

I also appreciate his observation that, “The [Obama Health Care] bill is widely unpopular, and not only because of the hyperbolic attacks on it by Republicans and Fox News. It’s unpopular because it’s a terrible piece of legislation.”

He will be working for a foundation doing long form journalism.

Go read his swan song. It’s a great piece of work.

Maryland Court Rules that Video Taping a Cop Waving a Gun Around Like a Lunatic is Not a Crime

No Comments
The Cop is Completely Out of Control

Mr. Graber, was riding a motorcycle had a helmet cam.

He was also speeding and popping wheelies, which attracted the attention of the police, which is unsurprising.

What is a out of the ordinary is a police officer cutting him off in an unmarked car, and jumping out waving a gun and not identifying himself as a member of the police force until he basically had the gun in the guy’s face.

It looks all the world like an attempted motorcycle-jacking.

Well, Anthony Graber had a helmet cam, and posted the footage to Youtube a few days later, which is when things got hinky.

He was arrested, jailed, and charged with violating Maryland’s wiretapping stature, which forbids recording a private conversation without the consent of both parties, and faced 16 years in jail.

Despite the Maryland Attorney General’s advisory opinion that a public arrest is not a private conversation under the statute, the Harford County DA continued to pursue the suit, but the judge, just dismissed the suit:

Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr. had to decide whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy in public space. Pitt ruled that police can have no such expectation in their public, on-the-job communications.

Pitt wrote: “Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. ‘Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes’ (“Who watches the watchmen?”).”

Of course, that was the purpose of the charges, to intimidate people who would otherwise report on law enforcement misconduct.

The basic purpose of the arrest, and the ransacking of his house, and the felony charges, were retaliation for being a whistle blower.

Graber was also charged with possessing a “device primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of oral communications” — referring to the video camera on his helmet. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor that the helmet cam was illegal, and concluded the state’s argument would render illegal “almost every cell phone, Blackberry, and every similar device, not to mention dictation equipment and other types of recording devices.”

A good decision, and perhaps the continued employment of the States Attorney and the police officers involved in this need to end.

This sort of abuse of power is antithetical to the rule of law.

They Who Must Not Be Named

No Comments

I understand that Sarah Palin needs to be covered, as she is a Republican Party kingmaker, and a potential candidate for the presidency in 2012.

That being said, the current kerfuffle as to whether Sarah Palin was booed when she went on stage for an interview on the show Dancing With the Stars, that is clearly a “They Who Must Not Be Named” moment.

So DWTS, which I don’t watch anyway, is now on my list of TWMNBN.

That is all.

If there is justice in the world, Ms. Palin will be on the list shortly as well.

Stem Cell Funding Injunction Rescinded

No Comments

I’m kind of surprised that the court did not tell Judge Lamberth to stop smoking pot.

But they have now permanently lifted the injunction against funding the research:

An appeals court has permanently lifted an injunction imposed by a federal judge, thereby allowing federally funded embryonic stem-cell research to continue while the Obama administration appeals the judge’s original ruling against use of public funds in such research.

Considering the Obama administration’s generally weak support for reproductive rights, I would have figured that they would have slow walked this, but I was wrong.

Background here.

And the Stupid Motherf%$#ers Never Even Tried to Make it a Campaign Issue

No Comments

So a measure to repeal tax subsidies to ship jobs overseas failed in the face of a Republican filibuster:

As expected, a Senate bill designed to end tax breaks for U.S. companies that move jobs and manufacturing plants overseas failed a key test vote Tuesday.

With a 53-45 vote, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic efforts to end debate and ultimately vote on a “jobs” bill.

Top Democrats have claimed the bill would help keep American jobs from going overseas. But when it came to the test vote, four Democrats voted with Republicans to block the bill.

Here is the kicker:

The bill came out of nowhere last week and wasn’t discussed or debated, as a package, by any of the Senate’s committees. It would have given companies a break on payroll taxes for new U.S. jobs that replace positions that had been based overseas.

It’s a f%$#ing election year, and you weren’t using this as a club to beat Republicans over the head with on a daily basis for weeks?

Are these motherf%$#ers trying to lose the election?

Actually, considering the video evidence, the answer to that is probably yes.

Economics Update

No Comments

I guess that the lede here is consumer confidence, which The Conference Board reports has fallen to a 7 month low. My personal guess is that the number is low because of the news reports that the recession has been over for over a year, which is so clearly contrary to what consumers see that it depresses them.

On the other hand, manufacturing jobs are reported to be growing strongly since the beginning of the year, which is a bit of a surprise.

In real estate, and, as Calculated Risk notes, the Case-Shiller numbers are out, and they are positively schizophrenic:

From the Financial Times: US home prices slip in July

From the WSJ: Home Prices Rose in July

From CNBC: US Home Prices Slipped In July And May Stabilize Near Lows

From MarketWatch: Home price growth slows in July

From HousingWire: S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite index rose 0.6% for July

Basically, some of them are reporting seasonally adjusted numbers, and some are reporting non-seasonally adjusted numbers. I would tend to go with the latter with July, since I think that the expiration of the tax credits probably overwhelmed any seasonal effects, and the composite 10 and the composite 20 numbers are a bit different, but basically it’s flat near the recent bottoms.

Finally, we have the various reports from the regional Federal reserve banks: Dallas, up slightly in September, Chicago down slightly in August, and Richmond down slightly in September.