How to Make a Hockey Stick

Haven't finished reading this myself, but I plan on following the steps as an exercise in learning statistics.

Poitics by way of the Football Sidelines

Liberals vote for Head Coaches who will fire them up and lead them to victory.

Conservatives want an Equipment Manager who will take care of the gritty stuff so that they don't have to concern themselves with it.

I Thought Government Was All About Popularity

"It's been a thrill to be part of the best economic news story in America," Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "Now we are working toward an orderly wind down of this very popular program."

Just think about how well they will handle the popularity of affordable health care.

The One Sign You Need

I might have added Amtrack but the point is made.

Charlie Foxtrot

All of This Will Has No Backing

Kings most commonly, though strong in legions, are but weak in Arguments; as they who have ever accustomed from thir Cradle to use thir will only as thir right hand, thir reason always as thir left. Whence unexpectedly constrained to that kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny Adversaries.

Milton, Preface to Eikonoklastes
Via Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

I have been seeing billboards for the new season of The Tudors (Yeah!). The series really makes Henry VIII a bad ass who has some difficulty mastering his appetites. The billboards are quite simple, Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII on his throne. Parts of the Lord's Prayer are used as taglines. One is "Thy Kingdom Come", and the other is "Thy Will Be Done". The one about Will got be to recall the quote above.

I have observed in the past that many people seem to equate sincerity with Correctness. If they well and truly believe, and if they have more belief than those who oppose them, then the world will reward them by conforming to their desires. Basically it is political science by The Secret.

These beliefs break any political problem into easily manageable solutions. The solutions are so easy, in fact, that there is no legitimate reason not to get with the program. The result is a neat little morality play with virtuous wishers on the one side and the malicious deniers who hide behind excuses of "too expensive" or "not feasible" on the other. Especially vile are those people who have great will but choose to do nothing. Who are these people? They are The Rich, who have the physical representation of Will in the modern world: Money.

This mode of thought is the only way I can think of that would allow people to think that more money to the same old programs will solve the problems that they have failed to solve in to past. Obviously, we as a Society have failed to exert enough Will to get the important things done.

How do you prove how sincere you are? If you have a legislative office, the answer is easy: you measure your sincerity with money. Nothing says "I believe" like an appropriation bill with lots of zeroes. Even better if you remove the capacity to exert Will upon the world from those without the best of intentions.

Sometimes it gets hard to comprehend the shear scale of the numbers being thrown around by the government of late. If I start seeing numbers like that at work I have to shift over to larger units (mega Newtons, giga bytes, kilogram, etc.). Dollars don't have neat prefixes, at least not yet. Unless the government gets a rein on the budget right quick, MegaBucks ain't gonna be just a Lottery.

Controlling Health Care

The Government says that they just want to control the costs. Too bad you can't do that without controlling the health care. Rationing and deciding who gets what will be inevitable.

The cliche says that nothing is more important than your health. So why shouldn't we have to pay for it? I admit that we are absolutely paying more for health care than we did in the past. Then again, wouldn't you agree that we are getting better health care now than we ever have? Given that the care it better than it was in the past, it must also follow that we are getting more health for our money.

So How’s Your Rainforest?

I know that most people who believe in government “solutions” to economic problems do so sincerely. I can’t understand the mental gymnastics necessary to believe that, and this thought is intended to point out the contortion.

Whenever you hear someone say that we need to raise taxes to get the money necessary to fix the economy, remember that they are using the same logic that would say: we need to harvest more teak to get the money necessary to save the rainforest.

My Uninformed Opinion-Oscars Edition

So here is my rant regarding the Oscars that bugs me every year.
One of these years I am going to get into a prize oriented Oscar pool. The basic plan I would go with is that any leading actor/actress that is playing in a biographical film is going to be the front runner.

Lets go to the history:

Julia Roberts- Erin Brockevich '00
Marcia Gay Harden- Pollock '00
Jennifer Conally - A Beautiful Mind '01
Nicole Kidman - The Hours (Virginia Woolf) '02
Charlize Theron- Monster '03
Jamie Foxx - Ray '04
Cate Blanchet - The Aviator '04
Phillip Seymour Hoffman- Capote '05
Reese Witherspoon- Walk the Line '05
Forest Whitaker- The Last King of Scotland (Idi Amin) '06
Helen Mirren-The Queen '06
Marion Cottilard - La Vie en Rose (Edith Piaf) '07
Sean Penn - Milk '08

Granted, I haven't seen either performance, but I can't help but think that having a role as a real-life politically correct hero put Sean Penn over Mickey Rouke's fictional character.

I'm seeing something of an objective bias in the academy despite their pleas of artistic subjectivity.

Random Thought

Few things piss people off more than something good happening to people they don't like.

Save us From the Bad Rich People

Its all about decentralizing the power.