Westward, ho!

Road trip to Boulder, CO. Follow my progress here.

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Dress Like Harvard

HT to Daniela

http://www.pheedcontent.com/click.phdo?i=e0c13888eaec6d0331c4d8d4dc5166c5

The true Harvard man wears Harvard Yard.

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Settlers of Cataan

The game I love to hate -- can't decide if it's worth the family tension or not. I sat this one out.

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Wonder what he does in Las Vegas?

HT to Daniela for this amazing man's Global Vision of his Goddess. Inspiring. I was a little confused by this, however:

I have an apartment in Westside of Los Angeles where I spend most of my time, but I am a Nevada citizen and make several trips per year to Las Vegas (I have zero interest in gambling). With the success of my computer technology, my vision is eventually to have one mansion in Los Angeles and another mansion in Las Vegas.

What is he doing in Las Vegas if he isn't gambling? Perhaps it's research for his forthcoming book:

If she has been a prostitute, that is GOOD!! We can discuss it at length. I have written a book (not yet published) entitled, Resurrecting the Innocence in Prostitutes. Fascinating topic! And it's an important part of my Global Vision.

So brave. I hope and pray he will find what he is looking for. How can you look into his old soul eyes without feeling for him?

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What a difference 30 years makes

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

via nytimes.com

See: Obama, Barack.

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Beyond salvation

via yglesias.thinkprogress.org

You really have to wonder at what point these high unfavorables for the Republican party among all ethnic groups other than whites will be beyond repair. Even if the Republicans find a Hispanic national candidate, will that lead to a 180 in the way Hispanics perceive Republicans? Or will Republicans have so badly poisoned the well that Hispanics will revise their view of the candidate to the negative, not of the party to the positive?

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Busted Evan Bayh

Vanilla Ice cream with Nestle Quick Cocoa powder on top, yummy.
Now to go off topic as usual. I just watched Republican Senator Evan Bayh on the Fox Morning Show. Sen. Bayh very intelligently explained that President Obama was handleing the Iran situation in the correct and smart way. How refreshing to see a Republican Senator support our President and break from partisan politics to speak the truth. This is the kind of young Republican that can restore our Republican Party and break from the ignorant nasty rhetoric of the Limbaugh, Hannity mob.

— mike allen

via thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

Not sure if this commenter is in on the joke, but I thought his pegging Evan Bayh as the "Republican" Senator to lead his party out of the doldrums was hilarious. It's kinda like when the kid on the other team keeps hitting the volleyball into the net and you're like, "He's the best player on our team."

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Like rabbits? Like macaques.

Do Monkeys Pay for Sex?

So asks Time’s Krista Mahr. I think both the article and the research paper on which it’s based seems to be really stretching to analogize this to human prostitution:

According to the paper, “Payment for Sex in a Macaque Mating Market,” published in the December issue of Animal Behavior, males in a group of about 50 long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, traded grooming services for sex with females; researchers, who studied the monkeys for some 20 months, found that males offered their payment up-front, as a kind of pre-sex ritual. It worked. After the females were groomed by male partners, female sexual activity more than doubled, from an average of 1.5 times an hour to 3.5 times. The study also showed that the number of minutes that males spent grooming hinged on the number of females available at the time: The better a male’s odds of getting lucky, the less nit-picking time the females received.

If you think about human society, “paying for sex” denotes a pretty specific kind of social practice—prostitution—and isn’t a catchall phrase to cover every mutually beneficial relationship that involves sex. You could probably do a study of married human couples that would show that sex is more likely after a husband is nice to his wife than after he’s been a jerk; I don’t think you’d call that a study about “paying for sex” among married couples.

via yglesias.thinkprogress.org

3.5 times an hour? I might pay for a break ...

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Low blow

CIA Hiring Failed Wall Street Analysts

by Dollars and Sense

ShareThis

According to the Wall Street Journal, the CIA is recruiting out of work financial analysts from Wall Street.

Why would they seek out the financial expertise of the people most directly responsible for the global economic meltdown?

The CIA now produces a daily Economic Intelligence Brief for President Barack Obama, chronicling economic, political, and leadership developments that could impact the world economic order.

Describing the importance of the new briefing, CIA Director Leon Panetta told reporters in February that its purpose was “to make sure that we aren’t surprised by “the implications of the world-wide economic crisis and what happens with countries throughout the world as a result of that.”

We can only hope that this explanation is only a cover for their real mission: covertly placing Wall Street's failed finest in charge of the financial and economic sectors of our worst enemies.

--d.f.

via dollarsandsense.org

I'm fairly certain that it wasn't the analysts truly at fault -- I wouldn't assign the blame for the financial crisis to them. I'd assign more of it to their supervisors and managers who were most likely the ones guiding the analysis, choosing methods, ignoring problematic results, and setting policy. Blame them for choosing the wrong industry for, potentially, the wrong reasons; don't blame them for blowing that shit up. They're probably guilty of being "yes" men and women, but they weren't setting the course.

(HT to Daniela.)

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Very different from the GMAT essay

Are You Smarter than a French Teenager?

Alex Massie

Thursday, 18th June 2009

The Bac began today with, as is traditional, the philosophy paper. Via Charles Bremner and Art Goldhammer, here are some of the questions our French friends had to answer:

For the Literature Stream:

1) Does objectivity in history suppose impartiality in the historian? 2) Does language betray thought ?

For the Science Stream:

1) Is it absurd to desire the impossible? 2) Are there questions which no science can answer?

Well, is it absurd to desire the impossible? Have at it, Spectator readers...

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