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Friday, April 29, 2011

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Kenyan Runners: Nature or Nurture

Kenyan Runners: Nature or Nurture by Steve Sailer for UPI; Kalenjin, the Running Tribe, steeplechase, altitude, genes, diet, training, Keino: ". The three million Kalenjin make up only one tenth of Kenya's population, and just 1/2,000th of the world's. Yet, these highlanders from the Great Rift Valley win about three-eighths of international men's distance running prizes. Within this region, the half million people of the Nandi district win one fifth of the globe's medals!"

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Photo Tour Of Facebook’s New Datacenter

Bronte Capital: Fatal Risk – the must-read book on AIG's failure

Bronte Capital: Fatal Risk – the must-read book on AIG's failure:
Also the problem with MS and many other financial firms.

"if you put a salesman in charge of a financial institution with large reach and allow him to operate with thin risk control then your earnings will go up. And up. And up. At least until they don’t. Martin Sullivan proves that truism."

Saturday, April 16, 2011

GW Broke with Clinton. Did Obama Break with GW? | Angry Bear

GW Broke with Clinton. Did Obama Break with GW? | Angry Bear

Millions of Gallons of Hazardous Chemicals Injected Into Wells, Report Says - NYTimes.com

Obama's Budget Messages

An interesting insight on the state of political discourse. It really is more like a trial. Politicians are lawyers advocating for their own side.


Obama's Budget Message: You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It Too | Capital Gains and Games: "Unfortunately, debate on policy issues these days is less about finding common ground and making deals than about framing them into all-or-nothing propositions. Those on each side have become more and more like lawyers in a courtroom, saying pretty much whatever they can get away with to advocate their position, whether as prosecutors or defense attorneys, with the idea that the truth will come out in the process."

Reforming Tax Expenditures Can Reduce Deficits While Making the Tax Code More Efficient and Equitable

Reforming Tax Expenditures Can Reduce Deficits While Making the Tax Code More Efficient and Equitable — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

The Origins of Political Order

Fukuyama's new book

The Origins of Political Order - The Barnes & Noble Review: "'The ability of societies to innovate institutionally,' as he writes elsewhere, 'depends on whether they can neutralize existing political stakeholders holding vetoes over reform. . . . This is, in effect, the essence of politics.'"

The Confessions of an Inside Trader - WSJ.com

White collar criminals get to cook burgers with their kids...

The Confessions of an Inside Trader - WSJ.com

Friday, April 15, 2011

The culture that is Japan

The Sun Will Rise Again by Yuriko Koike - Project Syndicate: "Bizarrely, the American rock singer Cyndi Lauper’s concerts were just about the only events that weren’t called off."

Best review of Atlas Shrugged

Kung Fu Monkey: Ephemera 2009 (7): "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Haunted Economics:

Phil Angelides Discusses America's Dual Justice System: One For Wall Street And One For Everyone Else | zero hedge

Phil Angelides Discusses America's Dual Justice System: One For Wall Street And One For Everyone Else | zero hedge:

Why financial crime continues to rise: there is no punishment.

"If someone robs a 7-11, they took $500 and they were able to settle the next day for $50 and no admission of wrongdoing, they'd knock over that 7-11 again."

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Education: Diminishing returns to school | The Economist

Education: Diminishing returns to school | The Economist: ". At the same time, education used to be a lot easier. It's much simpler to teach the median kid to read, write, and do algebra than it is to teach the median kid graduate engineering. And it's much easier to teach the median kid to read, write, and do algebra than it is to teach the underperforming student from a household in the lowest income decile the same thing."

9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes

Monday, April 11, 2011

Speeches on Deficits, Then and Now | MyFDL

What Obama should say this week.:

We have an empathy deficit when we’re still sending our children down corridors of shame, schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of your skin still affects the content of your education. We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than ordinary workers are making in an entire year, when families lose their homes so unscrupulous lenders can make a profit, when mothers can’t afford a doctor when their children are stricken with illness. We have a deficit in this country when we have Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others, when our children see hanging nooses from a school yard tree today, in the present, in the 21st century. We have a deficit when homeless veterans sleep on the streets of our cities, when innocents are slaughtered in the deserts of Darfur, when young Americans serve tour after tour after tour after tour of duty in a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged. We have an empathy deficit in this country that has to be closed. We have a deficit when it takes a breach in the levees to reveal the breach in our compassion, when it takes a terrible storm to reveal the hungry that God calls on us to feed, the sick that He calls on us to care for, the least of these that He commands that we treat as our own. So, we have a deficit to close. We have walls, barriers to justice and equality that must come down, and to do this, we know that “unity is the great need of the hour.”

Speeches on Deficits, Then and Now | MyFDL

China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judge | Reuters

This is the result of the loss of any remaining moral high ground.

China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judge | Reuters

China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judge | Reuters

This is the result of the loss of any remaining moral high ground.

China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judge | Reuters

The Seriousness Of Cutting Taxes On The Rich

The Seriousness Of Cutting Taxes On The Rich

Medicare for Beginners

Medicare is actually a bargain.

Medicare for Beginners � The Baseline Scenario

Saturday, April 09, 2011

The Fragile Success of School Reform in the Bronx

From behind bars, Madoff spins his story

FT.com / FT Magazine - From behind bars, Madoff spins his story: "The fact that so much of Madoff’s story is so commonplace on Wall Street – the tax shelters, black boxes and mysterious returns – is what allowed him to go undetected for so long. And this is why Madoff has sent chills through investors at every level. If the most sophisticated minds in finance were easily duped through an elementary scheme run by one of their own, how can anyone with money invested in the modern financial system know who to trust? This bedevilling question is why Madoff cannot be ignored, even as he �languishes in a North Carolina prison."