Links and Notes

It must be Philosophy in Old Rock Songs Day today.

On the drive into work, I heard “Live for Today” by the Grass Roots, followed by “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones. Also, “I Can Help” by Billy Swan was the first song out of the radio when pulling away from the house, a song that I really like a lot. There is a guitar riff in there that sure reminded me of Les Paul, a connection I’d never made before. One of those runs down the neck, and back up, repeating the same sequence of notes. Here’s a recent version:

Something about the mood I was in made it all sound extra good. I think it’s because I was already in a very good mood, after getting my first good night’s sleep in a quite a few nights. I’m pretty sure this is directly due to my bike ride last night, also for the first time in many days. Went with my youngest boy Jordan, just the two of us, so it’s a win/win. I’ve noticed over the last few years that on days when I get zero exercise, my sleep is low quality. It’s shorter and not as deep, and during the next day, I don’t feel as good, I don’t have as much ability to concentrate, my mood is often inferior, etc. I often wonder how many people who fight problems with sleep and are taking medication for it are sort of barking up the wrong tree.

On to the links:

A night of healing in Iowa – A summation of Friday night’s tribute to Ed Thomas, the coach at Aplington-Parkersburg who was killed by one of his former players in June. He was instrumental, also, in helping rebuild Parkersburg after a devastating tornado mostly destroyed the town in 2008.

Ichiro defies critics and odds – Computers sometimes don’t throw Ichiiro Suzuki lots of love. Proving, I don’t know … that computers can be stupid? Is there a GM that wouldn’t sign him if they had a chance to start a team from scratch and wanted to win a World Series? I sure would. The guy creates team offense by getting on base at a ridiculous rate.

Political Economics 101 – Eric Raymond explains how health care would respond to government intervention in that market. See if you can guess how it turns out!

Oh, come on: one extra club costs Jim Furyk over $130,000 – And that’s why golf is the most honorable game in the world. Rules is rules. It sucks when you forget and break one. Which encourages not breaking them, and rewards those who follow them. The higher the cost of breaking them, the more value they hold.

Chicago street-grid system turns 100 on Tuesday – So … I guess the Chicago City Council has done at least one thing right in the last 100 years.

Commence with the Twits. Um, I mean Tweets.

Twitter users who read my drivel here may want to “follow” me on Twitter.

People often make fun of social networking sites, and they often have many good reasons. I’m not sure any of us need excuses to spend even more time in front of a computer or on an iPhone, to replace even more of our face-to-face communication with the electronic kind.

But I’ve come to view Twitter as a new and improved way to blog, i.e., links to interesting stuff with pithy remarks, mixed in with some funny and biting commentary. You know, like the daily newspaper, only interesting.

And when you’re limited to a max of 140 characters, including a shortened link, now that is what I call pithy!

I’ve also added some WordPress widget on the sidebar with my Twitter feed. Feel the magic.

Or, don’t. Totally up to you.

Just don’t come crawling to me when you eventually sign up for Twitter, and decide to follow me then, and realize that you’ve been missing out on alot of fabulous tweets. ‘Cuz I’ll give you one of those “talk to the hand” moves. That’s just how I roll.

Trying to Care. Not Succeeding.

Yes, it’s been nearly a week since I updated this site.

No, I don’t really miss it.

The Internet is starting to **really** get on my nerves lately, quite frankly. In fact I have an essay I’ve been working on about all of that, and it’s 1600 freaking words.

The editor in me says “prune that thing down, moron.” The writer in me says “but there’s a lot of points to make here!”

Tune in tomorrow to see who wins!

Random Thoughts

(1)
Every time you read a story headlined “Worst Recession in 25 Years”, remind yourself that our economic growth was huge from 1983-2007, and so the statement itself doesn’t say much.  Call me back when we start hitting recessions like we had in the 1970s, and then we can haul out loaded terms like “depression”.

(2)
The rate of mortgage foreclosure during the height of the Depression?  50%.  Just because our period of “irrational overexuberance” is stalled right now doesn’t mean our lives aren’t still pretty good, generally speaking.

(3)
And besides, the best fiscal stimulus is pretty much not spending 800 kajillion dollars on pork. How about cutting taxes?  It has always worked before.

(4)
And one more thing: government can’t “create” jobs, except the useless, “stealing capital from the economy” kind. Which we already have quite enough of.

(5)
Apparently people will still pay to see movies they want to see; this January, we bought 16% more movie tickets than last January (141M vs. 121M). The first billion dollar January in history. Reading between the lines a little bit … if during the last 4 years Hollywood had made movies people like, instead of preachy anti-American-military propaganda like “Redacted”, maybe all that “war fatigue” that was blamed for keeping them away, and saving their money, would have melted away. Funny how that whole “free market” thing works.