Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Shannon Love Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
Nada.
Zero.
Zilch.
Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization.
As much as leftists like to call Sarah Palin stupid, I’m think I can confidently assert that she knows the difference between liability and comprehensive automotive insurance.
I have long assumed that the demagoguery by Obama and other leftists against the insurance companies was just cynical “eat the rich” politics. I assumed that behind closed doors, these Ivy League grads did actually understand that insurance provides protection against statistical risk only and not protection against absolute certainties. I assumed they understood that money being payed out in claims has to be balanced out by money paid in as premiums or the entire system will collapse very quickly.
However, hearing the President speak on the matter of insurance over the course of the past year, I’ve come to the conclusion that he, personally, simply does not understand how insurance works. I fear that no one else around him really understands either.
I say this because if he did understand how insurance worked, he would know that the story about his car insurance would make him look like an idiot.
So, I bought this little iPhone app called “Sleep Cycle alarm clock“.
It’s an interesting idea. It uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to monitor the motion of your bed while you sleep. Like so:
It uses the motion of the bed as a proxy measurement for your REM states. When you’re not moving much you are more likely to be deep asleep and when you move more it means you’re more likely nearly awake. You set a 30 minute time window in which you wish to awake and the app wakes you up when your motion peaks so you wake up alert instead of dragging yourself up out the depths of REM and starting the day feeling vaguely stunned.
It’s a neat idea and the basic idea is scientifically sound but that’s not what I’m blogging about.
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I really shouldn’t be seeing grand political metaphors in a Failbooking post, but I just can’t help seeing Obama’s emotive, metaphorical, fantasy-driven worldview in the first post and the real-world-grounded, non-leftist worldview in the second.
All the more since it turned out that chanting “Yes, we can,” wasn’t an actual plan for governance.
Prompted by an Instapundit link to a THE BEST SPORTS CALENDAR EVER!!!!!!
… I now present “The Invention of Curling”
Scene: Scotland circa a long time ago.
Duncan: “Och, Angus tis winter! There’s nay work, nay hunt’en and nay fight’en. We’re bored.
Angus: “Oh, aye, we’re bored.”
Duncan: “We’ve got naught to amuse our persons with save a frozen pond, some smooth river boulders and our wimmen’s brooms.”
Angus: “Oh, aye, and we’re drunk.”
Duncan: “And we’re drunk.”
End scene.
Yes, like all winter sports, curling began as a drunken bet. (Come on, you can’t tell me that the luge, ski jumping or ice dancing were invented by sober, thoughtful people!)
Yet, now there is something relentlessly bourgeois about curling (and it’s not just because the players wear polyester slacks and sensible shoes). Curling is a sport of thought and patience. It is the sport of moderation. It’s the sport for people who get up in the morning, every morning and quietly go forth to make the world work.
I find it endlessly fascinating and I can watch it for hours. I was born in the wrong clime for I should have been a curler. I tried Texas style curling by shoving armadillos across the hot asphalt at discarded tires…
… but it’s not the same.