Short Takes
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
January 17, 2012 | 8:54 pmSays psychologist David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University, who led [a] study published yesterday…
’The baby in order to imitate you has to figure out how to shape their lips to make that particular sound they’re hearing,’’
Can you “figure out” why this is utter nonsense? I should as obvious as monkey see, monkey do. With this sort of thing passing for science, we are surely doomed.
- The Mark of Cain
November 9, 2011 | 3:13 amWatching Herman Cain duel with his female accusers is like watching the Jerry Springer Show. Not a pretty picture. If you partake, be sure an wash you hands afterwards.
- The Truth About Sovereign Debt
November 1, 2011 | 4:01 pmDuring the housing bubble people bet on rising home prices by taking out loans on to-good-to-be true terms and investment banking made bets on the rising home prices by lending on to-good-be-true terms. Everyone drank the Kool Aid. Prices went down. Having made bad bets, home owners should default on their loans and bankers should take their losses. This is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
The nations that joined the EU placed bets on rising economic prosperity that would come from joining the EU and adopting the Euro and borrowing from the EU banks on to-good-to-be-true terms. The EU investment bankers made speculative bets on EU member nations by lending them billions on to-good-to-be-true terms. The borrower economies went down not up. Everyone drank the Kool Aid and having made bad bets the borrowers should default on their loans and the bankers should take their losses. This too, is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
So how do the bankers hold the world hostage to their bad bets? They claim they are too big to fail. In other words, the only game they know is heads they win, tails we lose.
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- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
Category Archives: History
The Arab Spring at Harvest Time
In his essay “If the Arab Spring Turns Ugly” (Sunday Review, NTY), Vali Nasr, professor at Tufts University and author of “The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future”, offers up an informed view of the so-called … Continue reading
Winds of War? (updates at bottom)
In an event so commonplace it hardly makes news, Arab terrorists attacked a bus and two cars traveling to the Israeli resort town of Elat, killing eight and wounding 30, mostly innocent civilians, followed thereafter by an Israeli retaliatory strike … Continue reading
Our Suicidal Minds
History is a story we tell about the past. There is never just one history. There is HIS-story and MY-story, THEIR-story and OUR-story. Everyone has a history that explains their rightness and their rights.
Liberals and conservatives tell different histories to … Continue reading
Arab Spring Update: I hate being right.
As I said in my post last Feb, “They Coming of the New Caliphate” , and several others as well, it was not very difficult to predict the future on the heels of the “Arab Spring”.
In today’s “Islamists Flood Square … Continue reading
The Divided States of America: Can the Union Prevail?
The combatants in the Civil War are at it again. They remain divided roughly along the same lines as was the case in 1860. The Union is talking about ways for all Americans to get along together–to preserve the union. … Continue reading
Hidden Morality
I think there is no single idea in the work of Dr. W. E. Deming’s more important than his assertion: “A SYSTEM has an AIM”. This is the crux of the “Understanding of a System” component of his System of … Continue reading
The “Grouchy Old Man” Theory
The Grouchy Old Man theory is a popular theory that asserts that as a person grows older he or she but mostly “he”, reaches a point in life where remembrance of the past takes on a rosy glow when compared … Continue reading
Time for Some Connect-the-Dots FUN!
There are so many important things going on in the world. It hard to keep up! What’s Anthony Weiner tweeting now? Will Sarah Palin fix American history? Is Obama’s birth certificate really real? Will Steve Jobs’ Ipad take over the … Continue reading
Kristof Connects Some Dots
Nick Kristof, writing in today’s NTY, helps us connect the dots of the Republican story in his essay, “Our Fantasy Nation?“. Here are the dots:
Dot 1 – “[T]he lowest tax burdens of any major country”
Dot 2 – “Government is limited”
Dot … Continue reading
Connecting the Dots
Memorial Day is a day dedicated to remembrance of past events. It presents an excellent opportunity to think about the process of remembrance itself.
David W. Blight, a professor of history and the director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the … Continue reading
You Can Predict Where This Is Going
The media calls it the “Arab Spring”, implying a rebirth I suppose. But a rebirth of what? It’s really pretty easy to figure out the answer.
The entire region of “rebirth” is fundamentally Islamic and profoundly anti-Western, and to be honest, … Continue reading
Piecemeal Peace and Israel’s Predicament
Tired of talk about the Israeli-Palestinian problem? Well maybe it’s time to actually try thinking for a change.
President Obama has put our foot down. The United States’ position is that the Palestinian problem shall henceforth be known as the Israel … Continue reading
Eyewitness Report From The Front Lines
Eyewitness Report – The noon-time summer heat was almost unbearable as we approached the urban battleground. The air was filled with smoke. We rolled down the car windows and crept slowly through the boulevard intersection, headed west to east. Bill … Continue reading
When They Mean What They Say
How quickly American, British and European attention has shifted from the complexities of the mess they have created in the Middle East to flies in the ointment—Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Moammar Gadhafi of Libya. If these bad guys can … Continue reading
Ph.D. Not Required To Solve Our Economic Problems
Like the rest of us, Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Paul Krugman, whom I nominated some time ago as “Best in Breed”, is having dismal thoughts.
“I’m still trying to make sense of this global intellectual failure. But the results are … Continue reading →