Funmurphys: the Blog

Is Success Hereditary?

German researchers say that success is hereditary -- or at least the willingness to take risks and the willingness to trust other people runs in families. And along the way they discovered that likes, not opposites attract.

Parents shape the character of their offspring, who in turn prefer to choose a partner similar to themselves. These two effects could contribute to attitudes such as willingness to take risks and confidence in others being "inherited" across several generations. At the same time these character traits are decisive, among other factors, for economic success. "Every economic decision is risky, whether it is about buying shares, building a house or just starting to study at university," Armin Falk emphasises. "On the other hand success in business also involves the right amount of trust."

Pamela Is Available

Giving hope to men everywhere, Pamela Anderson is back on the market. I think that's what caused the meltdown on the real market yesterday.

Interlaken Day 4 - Our Trip To Lucerne

We got up in the morning and took the advice of the Tourist Information guy and looked out our window first thing in the morning. We weren't encouraged, as it was another low overcast day with light drizzle. In fact, we were kind of sick and tired of it because it made going into the mountains kind of pointless. When we ate breakfast, the TV channel with all the cameras at mountaintops showed thick fog with light snow. So we made the decision to forgo our last chance at the mountains and instead visit Lucerne. So we took a two hour train ride over the Brunig pass to Lucerne where the weather was nicer - scattered clouds, no rain or snow. The scenery along the way is spectacular: the green mountain sides towering over deep blue lakes with high waterfalls and idyllic villages nestled into the country side. The train station at Lucerne is right in the heart of the city, and it's just a short walk to the famous Kapellbrück -- the covered bridge across the Reuss river.

CHAPEL BRIDGE PLUS OLD TOWN EQUALS TOURIST NIRVANA

THE WATER TOWER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BRIDGE NOW HAS A GIFT SHOP.

We crossed the bridge over to the oldest part of town and admired the paintings on the bridge along the way. Taking a break from gawking at the scenery, the women did some shopping while the men hung out, got bored, and went in search of the women who were in some extremely trendy store. Then it was time for more shopping! Eventually, even the women tired of shopping, or the male whining that accompanied it, and we moved back to admiring the town again. The funWife and I had spent a couple of nights in Lucerne back when we took our pre-kid trip to Europe, and it's kind of neat to look back and see we took a lot of pictures at the same spots then and now. Not neat enough for me to scan the pictures in and show you the contrast, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

I ESPECIALLY ADMIRE THE FREE WATER AND NOT JUST ALL THE FANCY PIPES AND STUFF

I enjoy just strolling around the old cities and towns of Europe. I can go hiking in the Rockies and get almost as good scenery as the Alps, but there is nothing in America to compare to the old cities of Europe. So of course the female half of The Murphy Family wanted to celebrate the architectural glories of old Europe by shopping. The male half decided to sit that out, and did so alongside the river running through Lucerne with one studying the ornamentation of the nearby buildings in detail while taking too many pictures and the other just sitting there. Eventually the two genders rejoined and we crossed the river Reuss again, this time over the Spreuerbrücke. Where the chapel bridge has (mostly happy) paintings depicting the history of Lucerne, the mill bridge has a series of paintings titled Dance of Death so you can imagine the contrast. Thankfully, while the paintings depict death meeting people of all walks of life, not one of them has death meeting a tourist.

Sometimes you just get lucky, and this was one of them. I wanted to go to the history museum, and the Fruit of the Murphy Loins wound up enjoying it. It is the original mathom house, a hoard of objects collected over the centuries and mostly displayed in no particular order. There were the suits of armor and the collection of medieval weapons I was looking for, but cheek by jowl with them were old suitcases and sewing machines. There was a collection of Milanese shields captured from the Burgundians 800 years ago; there was a collection of Roman artifacts dating back 2 millenium (mainly trash to be quite honest, but what trash!); there were artifacts much older dating back to the earliest inhabitants; there was a toy collection from the 40s and a special display area dealing, as near as I could tell, with Swiss rock bands from the sixties. There was a coin collection I must have spent a good 15 minutes absorbed in before I realized I could spend the rest of the day investigating without seeing it all.

Most of the objects are poorly exhibited, a jumble of stuff behind steel mesh bars. But what made it fun for the Fruit were the interactive guides. When we entered, the funWife immediately asked the docent if the displays included English because she wasn't going to plunk down her hard earned cash, even if it was vacation money, to try to puzzle out oddities labeled in French and German. No problem came the reply, we just program these hand held guides to display English, you scan the bar code on every display with them, and you can read the English text displayed about the object. So we had fun with them from the start, and when we got all the way to the top of the Arsenal (the museum is located in the old city arsenal), the Fruit discovered the guides also were programed for treasure hunts and similar games. This allowed the fearless leaders to caucus comfortably in comfy chairs and plan without interruption.

Since my choice of the History Museum had gone over so well, there were no grumbles when we set out to walk along the old city walls. So it was back over the bridge and a walk along the river to the wall. The tower closest to the river was closed, so it was up the big hill to the next tower. The scene was now bucolic; on the outside of the wall, we left the hustle and bustle of the city behind, and instead stood on a verdant hillside, with cows placidly grazing inside the electric fence. I discovered it was electrified with I put my hand on it as I climbed the hill and got a thrilling tingle. Good thing I didn't touch two wires. And that's a couple of things I like about Europe - no warning signs, you're just expected to watch out for yourself, and you can stand in a field in the middle of a great city and admire a herd that has grazed in that field for, what, going on a millennium! We were there in summer and the climb was hot and tiring; the field itself looked a bit tuckered out and waiting for cooler days, but you should see the spot in glorious spring when everything is fresh and new.

"COME ON, OLD MAN" IS NOT PARTICULARLY INSPIRING

Eventually, and with much panting, we made it to the top of the hill and the base of the tower which is open to the public. The Fearless Leaders briefly conferred and handed over the cameras to the Fruit so that they could take them to the top and make a record of the trip. We had climbed every tower in every castle we visited; we had climbed up and down the hillside Lausanne was built on; at this point of the vacation, we simply decided this far and no farther. Plus there was a park bench at the base of the tower and we didn't want it to go to waste. So with admonishments to "Take Your Time!" still ringing in their ears, the Fruit made the climb to the top and took some outstanding photos.

VIEW FROM LUCERNE CITY WALL

ANOTHER VIEW FROM LUCERNE CITY WALL

Eventually the Fruit returned and we continued along the wall. Past the next tower we came to tennis courts blocking the way, so we had to enter the third tower along, but we didn't come out the other side. No, we climbed up to the top of the wall and continued our walk there. This was about the maximum excitement I could take (have I mentioned I have heightaphobia?) but the choice was to give up or continue on. I admit I wondered how many watchman were lost in adverse conditions from the top of the wall, which had the original parapet on the outside and a modern handrail on the inside. Just when I was comfortable way up there, the wall started down hill and took my confidence with it. Passing people coming the other way was torture as I had to get all the way over against the insignificant handrail, and when the rest of the Murphy Family went up in another tower I had to duck in and wait it out in the enclosed space. Still, the view was great and eventually we came to end of the wall and the stairs down. I was glad I got to walk on top of the wall and I was glad to get down.

WOULD THAT ALL SUCH LOYALTY AND BRAVERY WERE HONORED

We set off for the Löwendenkmal or Lion Monument, dedicated to the Swiss guards who died in at Tuileries Palace rather than stand aside during the French Revolution. Swiss mercenaries were double good - they fought well and they stayed bought. We didn't have a detailed map but we found our way there with our usual skill at dead reckoning and attention to concentrations of tourist buses. The monument itself is quite affecting and worth the trip.

THAT'S NO MOVIE STAR, THAT'S MY DAUGHTER

Time was beginning to press since the trains leaving for Interlaken were two hours apart so we skipped the glacier village and the panorama that were nearby and instead made our way to The Hofkirche (Abbey Court Church). Our last time in Lucerne we only saw the outside, and I wanted to see the inside. By this time we were all tired and the rest of the family clearly decided that humoring me would be course of action that let us plunk our butts down on the train the fastest. I could spend hours just recounting the glories of the entrance, but instead I'm just providing a picture of the doors with another work of art. Believe me, the entire front of the church is exquisite, and I have a whole series of pictures of the entrance that I will look at and get all warm and glowy on the inside, but then the inside is also another stunning work of art. We had enough time to devote to seeing the church, but no more, so after we satiated ourselves on beauty, we hustled back to the train station so we could make a visit to the McClean (the cleanest public restroom, and the most expensive, I've ever peed in) and then board our train for the ride back to Interlaken.

We wanted to make our last night a good one, and so on the way back from the train station we would stop at each restaurant, read the menu, discuss if there was something there all four of us wanted to eat. We finally settled on one restaurant, Des Alpes, but after a long wait for any service, we left and started the process all over. One thing about European restaurants - dogs are welcomed, even encouraged. We were a bit quicker about deciding on the next place, and so we had a fabulous meal at the Petit Casino. I don't know that Fruit of the Murphy Loins had eaten at such an elegant restaurant before, and all I can say is kids, hope you liked it because I doubt you'll ever eat at such an elegant restaurant with me again.

Quotes for a New Father

A co-worker (OK, an employee of one of my clients) had a son this week and e-mailed a JPEG of his newborn child--what did people do before digital cameras?--so I sent him these quotes that I thought I would also share with the dozen readers of this blog:

"One of the most important things to remember about infant care is: never change diapers in mid-stream."
Don Marquis

"All is pattern, all life, be we can't always see the pattern when we are part of it."
Belva Plain

"Many men can make a fortune but very few can build a family. "
J. S. Bryan

"Life is full of miracles, but they are not always the ones that we pray for. "
Eve Arden

"Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined."
Leo Rosten

The View From The Other Side

Here's one foreigner not whooping it up over the Democrats victory:

Smart Irish policymakers - several key civil servants, a few farsighted elected pols like Mary Harney, Charlie McCreevy, Bertie and Brian Cowen, and an unofficial cadre of advisers from the private sector acting for the good of the country - realised in the late 90s that for a small open island economy to prosper it would need something more than cheap wages, Guinness and the craic.

So they focused on persuading big technology and pharmaceutical companies to move their intellectual property here. In 1998, the Irish corporate tax rate was slashed from 32% to 12.5%, still among the five lowest in the world. The US federal corporate tax rate is 35%.

In 2004, Ireland simply eliminated the 9% tax on the sale or transfer of intellectual property and launched an R&D tax credit. Microsoft was among the first takers. In 2005 the Wall Street Journal revealed that a little company called Round Island One had become Ireland's biggest taxpayer. Round Island One is a brass-plate office set up in 2001 - a subsidiary of Microsoft. It booked profits of more than $9Billion in 2004. It paid $300million in taxes to the Irish exchequer.

Hat tip to Eamonn Fitzgerald

Torpedoes Versus Mines

Strategy page has an interesting article on naval mines.

But I was bugged a bit by these paragraphs:

Naval mines achieved several striking successes during World War II. In the Pacific, naval mines proved more destructive to the Japanese war effort than the atom bombs. During a 10 week period between April and August 1945, 12,000 mines were delivered by American bombers. These destroyed 1,250,000 tons of Japanese shipping (670 ships hit, 431 destroyed). That's 18 mines for each ship hit. The Americans had air superiority, so losses during these 1,500 missions amounted to only 15 planes, most of them to accidents. Had these missions been flown against opposition, losses would have been between 30 and 60 aircraft, plus similar losses to their fighter escorts.

A conventional submarine campaign was also waged against Japanese shipping. Comparisons to the mine campaign are interesting. A hundred submarines were involved in a campaign that ran for 45 months from December, 1941 to August, 1945. Some 4.8 million tons of enemy shipping was sunk. For every US submarine sailor lost using submarine launched torpedoes, 560 tons of enemy ships were sunk. During the mine campaign, 3,500 tons were sunk for each US fatality. On a cost basis, the difference was equally stark. Counting the cost of lost mine laying aircraft (B- 29's at $500,000 each) or torpedo armed submarine ($5 million each), we find that each ton of sunk shipping cost six dollars when using mines and fifty-five dollars when using submarines. These data was classified as secret until the 1970s. It indicates that mines might have been more effective than torpedoes even if the mines were delivered by submarine.

The best point is the one about submarines delivering mines, since submarines could go places earlier in the war that airplanes had no hope of doing - like Japan's inland sea or even coastal areas. Would we have been better off using mines then instead of torpedos? Good question.

Full disclosure - my father served aboard a submarine in the pacific theater during WW II.

What We have Here Is A Failure To Teach Math

Life is busy busy busy these days. Just not with blogging.

But don't worry, Tim's got a great post about how American schools are failing to teach math - and I have to agree from the experience of my own two lovable fruit whose elementary school math program was english in drag and suffered from the whole 'here's a buch of ways of doing math if you ever, someday but not in this math class, actually do math instead of just talk it to death" approach.

Lemonade

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

I never thought the Episcopalians had this much fire in the belly until I met Chris.

Coming to a Hospital Near You Soon. Or not.

Charles has resurfaced. Welcome back.

Reading time, just one minute.

Why he's worth reading.

Dreamers.

It's amazing what a big buble will do for your self esteem I thought I was Mr. Super Investor (bet you did too).

Culture of Death?

Timing is everything.

Now that's a mandate.

Counterintuitive: Adolescents Reason Too Much

Here's important reading for all of us with adolescents: Risk and Rationality in Adolescent Decision Making.

Is it a good idea to swim with sharks? Is it smart to drink a bottle of Drano? What about setting your hair on fire -- is that a good thing to do?

People of all ages are able to give the correct answer (it's "no," in case you were wondering) to each of these questions. But adolescents take just a little bit longer (about 170 milliseconds longer, to be exact) to arrive at the right answer than adults do. That split second may contain a world of insight into how adolescents tick -- and how they tick differently from adults.
...
It is often believed that adolescents think they are immortal, just plain invulnerable to life's slings and arrows. This notion is often used to explain why young people are liable to drive fast, have unprotected sex, smoke, or take drugs -- risks that adults are somewhat more likely to shy away from.

Research shows that adolescents do exhibit an optimistic bias -- that is, a tendency to underestimate their own risks relative to their peers. But this bias turns out to be no more prevalent in adolescents than in grownups; adults commit the very same fallacy in their reasoning. And actually, studies on perception of risks by children, adolescents, and adults show that young people tend to overestimate their risks for a range of hazards (including car accidents and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS), both in absolute terms (i.e., as compared with actual risks) and relative to adults. Their estimation of vulnerability declines rather than increases with age.

So why do adolescents take risks? Decision research answers this with another counterintuitive finding: Adolescents make the risky judgments they do because they are actually, in some ways, more rational than adults. Grownups tend to quickly and intuitively grasp that certain risks (e.g., drunk driving, unprotected sex, and most anything involving sharks) are just too great to be worth thinking about, so they don't proceed down the "slippery slope" of actually calculating the odds. Adolescents, on the other hand, actually take the time to weigh risks and benefits -- possibly deciding that the latter outweigh the former.

So adolescents engage in just the sort of calculations -- trading off risks against benefits -- that economists wish that all people would make. But economists notwithstanding, research is showing more and more that a faster, more intuitive, less strictly "rational" form of reasoning that comes with increased experience can often be more effective. Mature or experienced decision makers (e.g., experienced vs. less experience physicians) rely more on fuzzy reasoning, processing situations and problems as "gists" rather than weighing multiple factors and evidence. This leads to better decisions, not only in everyday life but also in places like emergency rooms where the speed and quality of risky decisions are critical.

These counterintuitive conclusions about the decision-making processes of young people have major implications for how to intervene to help steer them in the right direction. For example, interventions aimed at reducing smoking or unprotected sex in young people by presenting accurate risk data on lung-cancer and HIV may actually backfire if young people overestimate their risks anyway. Instead, interventions should focus on facilitating the development of mature, gist-based thinking in which dangerous risks are categorically avoided rather than weighed in a rational, deliberative way.

I guess you can throw those books out that tell you to calmly reason with your child to get them to see the error of their ways and go back to "Because I said so!"

It looks like McCoy wins the argument -- who needs a Spock to calculate the odds of almost anything when you can imploy McCoy's fuzzy logic so much faster to arrive at the correct answer.

Maybe its a good thing many teenagers factor in their parent's natural overreaction when deciding whether to engage in risky behavior. So parents, let's up the ante and overreact to just about everything. Put your thumbs firmly on the scale of right behavior.

It supports my personal study of non-adolescent reasoning, namely, that adults simply do what they think is right and engage in reason only after the fact when pressed to provide reasons for what they did.

Sienna Miller Available

Sienna Miller is back on the market. I'm letting you know as just another part of the total information awareness package here at Funmurphys.

Funmurphys Meets You Tube

We got a new computer (another iMac), and the Fruit of the Murphy Loins found Photo Booth first thing. Then it was on to iMovie HD so we made a movie. Not a good one, it's a bit silly. OK, it's far too silly, but it's my only movie, so here it is.

That's 2 minutes of your life you won't get back.

Peggy Noonan Offers Two Priorities for Incoming Congress

We are in a 30-year war. It is no good for it to be led by, identified with, one party. It is no good for half the nation to feel estranged from its government's decisions. It's no good for us to be broken up more than a nation normally would be. And straight down the middle is a bad break, the kind that snaps.
[...]
This is the age we live in: One day in the future either New York or Washington or both will be hit again, hard. It will be more deadly than 9/11. And on that day, those who experience it, who see the flash or hear the alarms, will try to help each other.
[...]
There are rogue states and rogue actors, there are forces and nations aligned against us, and they have nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, and some of them are mad. Know this. Walk to work each day knowing it, not in a pointlessly fearful way but in a spirit of "What can I do to make it better?"

What can you do in two years? The common wisdom says not much. But here's a governing attitude: First things first.

Do all you can to keep America as safe as possible as long as possible. Make sure she's able to take a bad blow, a bad series of them. Much flows from this first thing, many subsets. Here is only one: Strengthen and modernize our electrical grid. When the bad thing comes we will need to be able to make contact with each other to survive together. Congress has ignored this for years.

Make America in the world as safe as possible by tending to and building our friendships in the world, by causing no unnecessary friction, by adding whatever possible and necessary emollients. In your approach to foreign affairs, rewrite Teddy Roosevelt: Speak softly, walk softly, and carry a big stick.
[..]
Those to me are the two big things. Much follows them, and flows from them. But to make some progress on these two things in the next two years would be breathtaking.

Cheap Arsenic Removal

Here's the good news: a cheap and effective way to remove arsenic from drinking water.

The discovery of unexpected magnetic interactions between ultrasmall specks of rust is leading scientists at Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) to develop a revolutionary, low-cost technology for cleaning arsenic from drinking water. The technology holds promise for millions of people in India, Bangladesh and other developing countries where thousands of cases of arsenic poisoning each year are linked to poisoned wells.

Here's the snark: First he lost the election (sort of), then he fired Rumsfeld, now his plans to poison Americans has been thwarted. What more is going to go wrong for Bush?

Runaway

Hey, I thought everything would be different after the election. Instead, we get a real life version of The Black Knight.

Ride My Bipolar SeeSaw

Everything old is new again, and today's example is the so called Bipolar Seesaw freshly discovered. The bipolar seesaw is the swing in temperatures between the two poles of earth, where if its up in one pole its down in the other. But how freshly discovered is it? Well, here's an article from 1998 about -- ta da -- the bipolar seesaw, complete with polar ice cores showing temperature fluctuations.

Even more interesting is this 2001 article by Wallace S. Broecker that ties it all together:

Geologists are now investigating whether these groupings correspond to another new source of evidence of cyclic patterns in Earth’s recent history. This evidence comes from studies of sediment in the deep waters of the North Atlantic. The rock fragments in these sediments are much too large to have been transported there by ocean currents; they could have reached their present location only by having been frozen into large icebergs that floated long distances from their point of origin before melting. During the past decade, Gerard Bond, my colleague at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has studied the makeup of such ice-rafted debris. Noticing that some of the sediment grains were stained with iron oxide, he reasoned that they must have come from locales where glaciers had overrun outcrops of red sandstone. Bond concluded that a detailed analysis of deep sediment cores would reveal changes in the mix of sediment sources over time. This proved to be an excellent strategy, for Bond found something so unexpected that it stunned all of us who study climate history. The proportion of these red-stained grains fluctuated back and forth over time from lows of 5 percent to highs of about 17 percent, and these fluctuations had a pattern: a nearly regular, 1,500-year cycle. Even more amazing, he found that the cycles ran virtually unchanged, in both amplitude and duration, through both ice-age and non-ice-age periods during the last 100,000 years.

Bond puzzled over what might be pacing this cycle. As a geologist, he knew that the sources of the red-stained grains were generally closer to the North Pole than were the places yielding a high proportion of “clean” grains. At certain times, apparently, more icebergs from the far north were making their way well to the south before finally melting and shedding their sediment. Bond hypothesized that the alternating cycles might be evidence of changes in ocean-water circulation.

Ocean waters are constantly on the move, and water temperature is both a cause and an effect. As water cools, it gets denser and sinks to the bottom. In one part of what I like to call the “bipolar seesaw,” the bottom layer of the world’s oceans comes from cold, dense water sinking in the far North Atlantic. This causes the warm surface waters of the Gulf Stream to be pulled northward, as they are today. Bond realized that during this part of the ocean cycle, a large proportion of the icebergs that bear red grains would melt while still fairly far north. But sometimes the ocean reorganizes itself, and the Southern Hemisphere holds sway in driving ocean circulation. At such times, surface waters in the North Atlantic would generally be colder, permitting icebergs bearing red-stained grains to travel farther south before melting and depositing their sediment.

Dale Carnegie Meet John Brunner

Here's some good advice from novelist John Brunner, from his novel The Traveler In Black:

"But -- but I counseled against this foolishness!" stammered Jacques.

"No," corrected the one in black. "You did not counsel. You said: you are pig-headed fools not to see that I am absolutely, unalterably right while everybody else is wrong. And when they would not listen to such dogmatic bragging -- as who would? -- you washed your hands of them and wished them a dreadful doom."

"Did I wish them any worse than they deserved?" Jacques was trying to keep up a front of bravado, but a whine had crept into his voice and he had to link his fingers to keep his hands from shaking.

"Discuss the matter with those who are coming to find you," proposed the traveler sardonically. "Their conviction is different from yours. They hold that by making people disgusted with the views you subscribed to, you prevented rational thought from regaining its mastery of Ys. Where you should have reasoned, you flung insults; where you should have argued soberly and with purpose, you castigated honest men with doubts, calling them purblind idiots. This is what they say. Whether your belief or theirs constitutes the truth, I leave for you and them to riddle out."

Reese Witherspoon Available

For you guys out there interested in this sort of thing, Reese Witherspoon is back on the market.

Sandra Bullock sounds like she's not going back on the market, but then that's the way Kirstie Alley once talked, and look at her now.

I'm just saying.

Suburban Life, The Choice Of America

I have to admit I get a little tired of urban living advocates who sneer at me (OK, not me personally, but in the aggregate as a suburb dweller) for my social isolation. They just assume I don't know my neighbors and sit around in my suburban cocoon all night after struggling home from an awful commute. Well who's sneering now?

Using data from 15,000 Americans living in various places across the country, researchers found that residents of sprawling suburban spaces actually have more friends, more contact with neighbors and greater involvement in community organizations than citydwellers who live in very close proximity to each other.

“Our findings suggest the old proverb may be true: good fences make good neighbors,” said Jan Brueckner, professor of economics at UCI and lead author of the paper. “This contradicts one of the common social and economic arguments against urban sprawl.”

I have to admit I did find it comical when Ray Suarez argued that urban living resembles small town life because everybody knows who you are -- OK, he didn't include the small town life part, but he did claim that everybody knew you.

But I have to wonder if wealth is the underlying causation for the inverse correlation of human density and the density of the weave of the social fabric. I figure wealthier people weave a tighter fabric and also live less densely. Hopefully they accounted for that, but you can't tell from the press release.

The Right Was Right

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I've been warning you people about this, but nobody listened. Now that the election is over, the left is just rubbing our faces in it.

Via Boing Boing

Just Add Air

Not content with their first Ig Nobel prize, researchers at CSIRO have determined that adding air to your shower can cut water use by a third. Last time I checked, my shower is filled with air before I even turn the water on, so I add water to my air to take a shower.

The scientists have developed a simple ‘air shower’ device which, when fitted into existing showerheads, fills the water droplets with a tiny bubble of air. The result is the shower feels just as wet and just as strong as before, but now uses much less water. ... Small-scale experiments using the aeration device found that people detected no difference in water pressure, sensation, or overall perception of showering. ... He expects the nozzle would cost less than $20 and could be installed by householders.

All kidding aside, I hope this device works better than the "low flow" showerheads that have done so much to ruin on of the last enjoyments of life - a long hot shower. No word on whether or not they investigated the actually cleaning done by the shower.

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Will there be less corruption or more corruption now that the Democrats have taken Congress? While you might find it hard to image that it would be more, Don Surber looks at the incoming congress and concludes that based just on those we know already are crooks, it will be more. I suppose I can't complain since I knowingly voted for a convicted felon in the past.

Faith Hill Momentarily Reveals Truth

In other important news yesterday, people are reacting angrily to Faith Hill reacting angrily to losing an award. I am now reacting angrily to them, and please feel free to react angrily to my angry reaction.

Faith claims it was just a joke. Personally, I wish she would have said that her disappointment got the better of her and sorry Carrie, you deserved to win. After the election season, I'm craving a little honesty. Since I don't care for Country music, I have no idea who deserves to win, nor do I care. I mean, after Patsy Cline, what's the point?

I'm wondering if Tom McMahon will create a four block with stupid joke (Kerry, Hill) and who believes it after this one.

PS just in case you haven't heard, Brittany is available again.

Election Day Plus 1

This was an election where neither party deserved a win (IMHO, at least) but the electorate decided in the aggregate to throw the bums out and give the other bums a chance. The Republicans ran the way they governed -- not well. I can't recall any mention about the economy and how it's booming. The Democrats weren't much better, but they were better enough to win back the House and maybe even the Senate. It's my hope this doesn't spark a Republican search for purity but learning, as in learning from their mistakes.

I went to bed with Jim Talent winning and Amendment 2 losing, and awoke to find Talent lost and Amendment 2 won. While Amendment 2 won't actually change anything, Talent's loss will.

The minimum wage increase passed handily. We can all feel good about ourselves now. Too bad for the people priced out of the job market by this (maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.) Yeah, I know the supporters got people with big pointy heads to say this wouldn't affect employment, but can you name any commodity that when you raise the price on it people buy more of it?

What I don't understand is how slow the election returns came in for Missouri. This year voting was either touch screen or opti-scan, both of which log the votes immediately. We should have results seconds after the polls close. Instead, as I write this, there are 68 precincts still not reporting. Did the horse and buggy breakdown?

I feel virtuous today - I voted against a tax on other people (Amendment 3) and voted for 2 taxes on myself - one for the Parkway school district, and one for the Special school district. I would have voted for the tobacco tax (Amendment 3) if the backers had just been honest. I might not be alone in that (hint, hint).

Poll workers must have gotten a commision on touch screen voters because they were really pushing it hard. Glenn Reynolds would be so proud of me -- I voted using the new pen and paper method - the same one I took standardized tests in school with 30 years ago. I did so only because the line was so much shorter for the optiscan than the touch screen.

No word on whether Red Villa voted in this election.

I expect "Mission Accomplished" banners to be hung up in newsrooms across the country. No word if the newsrooms can put 2 and 2 together.

In similar news, Nicaraguans have returned Daniel Ortega to power. The tagline of this blog, The Triumph of Hope Over Experience was certainly in evidence yesterday.

2006 Missouri Ballot Measures

Cable news over the weekend focused on Missouri. Apparently, we're the United States in miniature here. One of the fun things about the Missouri constitution is that it can be amended by simple majority vote, so every year that goes by it less and less resembles a constitution - a statement of how government works -- and more and more it's just another part of the state legal code.

So here are the complete set of amendments and propositions for the entire state.

Amendment 2:
This is an excercise in public relations. It's being sold as a measure that would (1) ensure access to stem stell cures, and (2) outlaw cloning. What it really does is (and why Jack Danforth is so involved) ensure researchers at Washington University will be able to engage in embryonic stem cell research without any restrictions by the state of Missouri.

There are cures will be years down the road. Adult stem cells, which noboby has an objection to, already have cures. Now much is made of the potential of embryonic stem cells, but I'm old enough to remember how interferon was going to be a cure all, and even more recently how cancer was licked. So the idea that Missouri needs access to such cures right now is pure bushwa.

And that brings us to part 2, which is the so called ban on cloning. What supporters don't tell you is that reproductive cloning is baned, but somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning is constitutionally protected by the amendment. That runs counter to my desires - as I have said before, I'm fine with reproductive cloning, but I'm against creating embryos just so they can be destroyed. I don't appreciate the way the ads in support just come out and lie about this, and it's not like this is some oversight, but this is the real agenda of the amendment and the full text is quite careful to make sure that SCNT cloning is not outlawed - just reproductive cloning.

While I don't think this amendment will make much difference one way or another, I'm voting against it because (1) it is deliberately misleading, and (2) it doesn't belong in the constitution.

Amendment 3:
This is a tax on tobacco. I don't have a problem with raising taxes on tobacco, but why does it have to be a constitutional amendment, and why are we setting up the Healthy Future Fund? I'm voting against because it's legislation, and therefore doesn't belong in the constitution. Put it to me as a proposition, make it a straight tax to raise revenue, and you've got my vote. I'm getting tired of all the deception.

Amendment 6:
This amendment will create a tax exemption for real and personal property that is used or held for nonprofit purposes or activities of veterans’ organizations. I'm going to vote yes on this one.

Amendment 7:
This amendment is supposed to stop state pensions for statewide officeholding felons and change the rules about legislator compensation. OK, I'm voting for this one too. I'm all for not paying felons, and let's face it, the legislature is going to figure out a way to get more money one way or another, so I might as well just get it over with now.

Proposition B:
I'm against the whole minimum wage mentality that somehow it represents anything other than the rate of completely unskilled labor and should be set by anything other than market forces. I realize this is a popular measure, but I'd rather see improvements to Earned Income Credits and other forms of poverty relief that provide good incentives than intervention into the labor market, especially one like this that happens every year. In other words, I'm voting no.

Wikipedia, home of the C+ term paper

Or so riffs Ze Frank on his Halloween show. I covered him more than two years ago when his site was full of interactive toys and just a few videos. I don't always agree with his politics but he has started videoblogging with a style uniquely his own.

Posted for those with too much time on your hands. Good night sports racers.

You End Up Getting Your Foot Stuck In Your Mouth

I'm willing to accept that John Kerry was not trying to criticism American soldiers as stupid but mistakenly called them unmotivated, lazy, and ignorant. So I agree with Ms. Barber that Mr. Kerry is being unfairly attacked on this subject:

“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”

That’s a clear reference to Bush, who Kerry implies is dumb. But it came out like this:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

It's bad enough that he's being condescending. John Kerry is where he is today not through diligent application in school, but by being willing to do anything to advance himself no matter what.

But far worse is that he's trying to turn a policy disagreement into a stupid joke. Literally. Great, that's who I want trying to determine national policy. I guess that means Kerry's idol, JFK, is a dumb fratboy like Bush because he got stuck in Vietnam - the original "quagmire".

Not every politician can tell a joke, and it really isn't a senatorial requirement, but I don't think that let's JoKe off the hook. Besides, calling them stupid woudn't have been near as bad as things he's actually called them - war criminals.

What are the things Democrats complain about Bush?

That he's a poor public speaker? Guess what, this latest from Kerry only shows that Kerry's worse.

That he doesn't admit mistakes? Has Kerry admitted his mistake and apologized? Ha, he's gone the blame everybody else route. [And now belatedly apologized.]

That he's dumb? Hey, Kerry got worse grades in school. And he flubbed an easy joke.

Look, I find that Kerry is everything that the Democrats today complain about Bush (including the liar part) only moreso, yet not only can they stomach Kerry, they made him their Presidential candidate in 2004. The Democrats could have been a contender - they could have put the standard in Joe Lieberman's capable hands in 2004 but instead that went with a pathetic loser like Kerry and kicked Lieberman out of the party.