Month: November 2008
Leverage and the Housing Bubble
The housing bust has been well chronicled elsewhere and I won’t add much to it by summarizing it; let’s assume that readers of this blog know the outlines (and details) of the story. But while everyone has learned the (often bitter) lesson that housing doesn’t always go up, it also comes down, they haven’t fully digested other elements of the financial picture. High LEVERAGE on a flat or declining investment makes the “buy” vs. “rent” even more skewed away from “buying”.
Good Times!
Caroline Glick offers a grim preview of US policy towards Iran, Syria and Israel in the Age of Obama.
I used to think that Glick was shrill and alarmist. Unfortunately, she has been right about most of the big issues facing Israel since the late ’90s. We’ll know within a few months if she’s wrong now. I hope so, but I doubt it.
Thanks Foster. Science & Ploughboys
I want to thank David Foster for putting up his post and thus allowing me to comment in a rambling manner. I’m one of those people who doesn’t know what I think until I say it – and having a forum is better than daily analysis. (Indeed, given the results from Woody Allen’s intensive time on the couch, Jonathan is probably more justified in charging a fee to posters & commentors than are some highly paid analysts.)
Some comments assume those in the hard sciences, engineering and business are likely to be conservatives/Republicans. Since, of course, I agree on their broad picture, I haven’t nit picked. Their position echoes Horowitz’s opponents, who also assume business & engineering departments are conservative. Liberal arts & social science colleges are more heavily weighted (in some, I’m sure, Nader got more votes than Bush). But I’ve seen studies finding most colleges within universities (business, engineering, hard sciences) lean left – just not as far. Shannon notes that they are more centrist and that is probably true. And, practicing engineers and scientists may well move right. Academia attracts leftish sympathies and peer pressure is a factor.
Nonetheless, the only college likely to be majority Republican is the same that probably would do such projects as those cited by Chel and Anonymous – Ag schools. They are also often geographically separated from the university because of the land-consuming nature of their research. I support funding that research and many who share my general political positions would. I came out of one of the great American institutions – the land grant college – and respect that history.
Subdivision Wildlife
My posts about cougars here and at LITGM drew a lot of traffic. It seems as though it is a subject of interest to a lot of people (a new cougar link dump soon to come). Gerry’s post here about coyotes also drew some links and clicks. The common thread is the encroachment of wildlife in typical non wildlife domains. I am not talking about “urban sprawl”, or people moving into areas where there is already wildlife established. I am referring to animals encroaching back into populated areas. This photo below was taken on the way to work this morning. Before bashing my photography skills, some background. Just outside of my house is this four lane highway. A deer was running down the median in the center, right next to my car. I changed lanes to the right lane and slowed down, all the while getting my camera out. When the deer randomly decided to cross the road I was ready and was able to slow down and snap this admittedly crappy photo with the one free hand I had (the other on the wheel). You can see the deer in the left lane here. It was a very large doe. She crossed the street, looked back at me and went into someone else’s yard. Click photo to enlarge.
Car deer accidents cost insurance companies (and, in the end, us) millions upon millions of dollars. This is a very good pdf put out by the Wisconsin DOT that gives a lot of good information about car deer crashes.
What is funny (or not funny) about this is that outside of extending the hunting seasons I don’t see any way that this problem will go down or go away – and I think it is getting worse. I see deer alongside the road (dead and alive) almost every day that I drive to work. When I was a kid it was a BIG deal to see a deer in the wild.
The deer has very few natural predators around here any more. The only ones I can think of are wolves (only in Northern Wisconsin), and coyotes if they hunt in a pack. We also have the random cougar that comes by on occasion. One other predator of deer is winter. I hate to do this to myself, but I am wishing for a bitterly cold winter to kill off a bunch of the deer. I would rather suffer through a few months of bone chilling cold than risk my safety or the safety of my family due to a car-deer crash.
Cross posted at LITGM.