Category: Uncategorized

Just a very short fantasy series review today. But of potential interest to anyone who enjoyed Thieves World.

MJB very nearly pegs it:

Hmm…this being the 80s, he probably cruised around in a Trans Am.

Actually, it was a white Firebird with the T-top. To make it even more obnoxious, a girl I dated then drove an almost-matching white Camaro. As Heather #1 would say: how very! One of the more painful experiences in my intellectual maturation process was realizing that I had not only been a Soc, I’d been the sort of Soc that even Socs hated.

Sorry about that, Ponyboy….

I suppose it was inevitable, given the attitude of female journalists towards the last Democratic president. Even so, ye cats! And by cats, I mean giant freaking striped ones!

The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette….

I figured that my friend and I couldn’t possibly be the only ones dreaming, brooding or otherwise obsessing about the Obamas…. Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president.

She voted in November and she’s heading for the shower.
She’s thinking really hard about that presidential tower.
She’ll spin the dial to massage dreaming of those juggy ears,
Because nothing gets a girl off like the thought of four more years.

White House fever.
She’s going out of her mind.
Obama fever.
It’s in the New York Times.

She’s got a callus on her finger and her wrist is hurting too;
She’s been self-abusing so much that her labia turned blue.
She feels awful for Michelle, but her legs are open wide
Because she can’t miss the chance to give the president a ride.

Obama slapped her on the ass afterwards and had a smoke.
As her husband raged outside, he just laughed and told a joke:
“See, this is how I plan to keep the nation stimulated,
The audacity of hope and change should not be underrated!”

Seriously, what is wrong with these women? And what on Earth possesses them to openly confess their psychotic sex fantasies in the newspaper? I have to note that among the many horrified comments following the column, far and away the best was this one: “Taking a shower and smoking a cigarette—-after having had sex with you, presumably? And it’s somehow unclear what your husband is angry about? Paging Dr Freud to the Warner residence!”

Thanks to the Mises economics blog, more than 800 people took the final exam, but the following list is comprised of the 55 individuals who were more or less engaged in the study and passed the final with a score of 18 or better. The first six individuals listed scored a perfect 25/25 and may henceforth claim their status as Grand AGDers. Well done, everyone!

Zeno
jSinSaTx
David
NaSultainne
cyn.ical
Drifter
Euthyphro
Sarah
Don Corleone
Rantor
Sgt Gideon’s Dad
Ann CScdn$
JK
Something Feral
Rusty
DL Carrol
Scott
HG
Roundtine
Salt
Anthony
Dallas
A Wiser Man Than I
Ian
Phil Mann
Scott G
Cunning Dove
Reader
Triton
Richard
Dr. J
jimmcopp
10S
lloyd
gene L
Lurker
DanG
druidhouse
freestater
Markku
Phi
Skimmed It
Elusive Wapiti
RustyO
Hugh Jazz
Jack
NotSure
Bikerdad
Brad
RL
ROC
Mike
Amiga
Giraffe
Allen

And of course, Guest. If you took your test as Guest, that’s absolutely fine, but that’s also how your accomplishment will be recognized on the blog. I think it was a very successful study, overall, although I wasn’t nearly as involved in the discussions as I should have been. Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit busy of late. I think I may have come up with a solution for that in the next study, which will begin sometime in March, but we’ll have to see. Please note that I still intend to delineate some of my specific differences with the points Rothbard made in AGD in a future post.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that the Voxiversity has officially gotten out of control. I recently received word from a reliable source that one of our intrepid AGDers actually convinced his wife to give their new boy the middle name “Rothbard”.

The Mises economics blog views intellectual property as a modern form of mercantilism:

It was thought in the middle ages that most all products required monopoly production. The salt producer would enter into an agreement with the ruler. The ruler would promises a monopoly in exchange for a share of the revenue. It was thought that this would guarantee access to a valuable commodity. How can anyone make a buck without a guarantee that his hard work would be compensated?

Well, it took time but eventually people realized that competition and markets actually do provide, as implausible as it may seem. As the centuries moved on, markets became ever freer, and we no longer believe that the king must confer a special status on any producer. They still do it, of course, but mostly for open reasons of political patronage.

And yet in this one area of “intellectual property,” all the old mercantilist myths survive. People still believe that a state grant of monopoly privilege is necessary for the market to work.

To me, the most damning point about the wrongness of intellectual property is the fact that the quality of literary and theatrical output was much higher prior to the IP era. I think Jeffrey Tucker is correct to point to historical monopolies as a means of clarifying the relevant issues, as government-protected intellectual property markets show much the same defects that monopoly theory would cause one to expect to see in any commodity market in which legal monopolies were granted.

The reason for the recent rally:

The Dow is heading up, and it’s not because Senatorial opposition to the stimulus is weakening. It started with the news yesterday that the Administration is on the verge of getting one huge thing right and will announce a suspension of certain mark-to-market rules on Monday. This will instantly reduce the risk for financial firms with bad assets on their books from future paper losses that could adversely affect their regulatory solvency.

So, if the financial authorities agree to pretend that the assets held by financial firms are worth more today than anyone is actually willing to pay for them because at some point in the distant future they are expected to be worth more, then investors can pretend that equities across the board are worth more today as well. Taking this logic further, if we all agree to pretend that half the people who aren’t working are actually employed, then the market should absolutely skyrocket!

I’m feeling more confident already. The animal spirits are unleashed. Make way for the Great Bull of 2009!

UPDATE – I don’t know about you, but I am feeling downright stimulated: Amid stunning new job losses and yet another bank failure, key senators and the White House reached tentative agreement Friday night on an economic stimulus measure at the heart of President Barack Obama’s recovery plan. Two officials said the emerging agreement was for a bill with a $780 billion price tag, but there was no immediate confirmation.

The obvious economic consequences of this labor trend appear to escape this NYT writer:

With the recession on the brink of becoming the longest in the postwar era, a milestone may be at hand: Women are poised to surpass men on the nation’s payrolls, taking the majority for the first time in American history. The reason has less to do with gender equality than with where the ax is falling.

The proportion of women who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men, who are heavily represented in distressed industries like manufacturing and construction. Women tend to be employed in areas like education and health care, which are less sensitive to economic ups and downs, and in jobs that allow more time for child care and other domestic work.

Here’s another interesting fact. Those disappearing male jobs in manufacturing and construction tend to produce wealth. Jobs in education and health care are less sensitive to economic ups and downs for the simple reason that they are de facto government jobs, which produce no wealth. If you get sick and I work very hard to get you back on your feet, nothing new has been produced. We’re just back at the status quo we were at before you fell ill. Health care is a great thing, but it is a net wealth consumer, not a wealth producer, as the budget of California should suffice to show. And the panoply of Womyn’s Studies and Art History majors, to say nothing of the high school graduates who can’t pass a simple history exam, demonstrate the worthlessness of most modern American education.

But the trend does suggest a plausible answer to the question that John Derbyshire once posed. What follows in the sequence Farm – Factory – Office? Hunter-gatherer! The economic model of women engaged in economically non-productive labor while men sit around and do nothing is not exactly a new one. I believe it’s quite popular in Africa, as a matter of fact.

The insanely greedy behavior of UK bankers demonstrates that capping executive compensation will keep companies off the government dole:

Banks dependent on taxpayer support are planning to rush out hundreds of millions of pounds in bonuses to senior bankers and traders before a threatened crackdown. As ministers prepared to curb excessive remuneration, it emerged that Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group were poised to follow Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) by paying bonuses within weeks.

None of this is going to help bring about economic recovery, I’d just as soon see the banks allowed to fail and their overpaid executives sent to the People’s Republic of China where they could assemble children’s toys. They’d certainly do far less damage in the future that way.

Remember, the people who struck this deal are largely the same folks upon whom the salvation of 500 million jobs per month is depending:

A government watchdog group says the federal government overpaid for stocks and other assets from financial institutions under its $700 billion rescue program. The chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the bailout funds told the Senate Banking committee Thursday that Treasury in 2008 paid $254 billion and received assets worth about $176 billion.

Well, at least we know where that 18.4 billion in bank bonuses came from.