October 2007

There were 20 posts published in October 2007 (this is page 1 of 4).

Potpourri II

  • Church must pay:

    A federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, Wednesday awarded $10.9 million to a father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by members of a fundamentalist church carrying signs blaming soldiers’ deaths on America’s tolerance of homosexuals.

    It’s low grade to protest at just about any funeral, much less ones of killed soldiers. I suspect the public was overwhelmingly on the Marine’s family in this case. But I wonder about the jury’s basis for the award. $2.9 million for compensatory damages? $8 million for punitive damages? That’s a hefty price for a public demonstration. Better to err on the side of caution when it comes to punishing speech.

  • Ewww:

    Ashley Olsen has a new, older man. The 21-year-old twin showed up to the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel Monday night with Tory Burch’s ex, Lance Armstrong, 36. Our bar spy said, “They came together with a group of friends. Ashley drank red wine, sat on his lap and they were making out all night. They left together around 2 a.m.”

    I know we all have different tastes, and perhaps my non-attraction to the Olsen twins is coloring my view here, but 36 and 21? Can’t Lance, a public ambassador, find someone closer to his own age?

  • A principal at a Massachusetts high school implements several measures, including a yoga class, in an effort to reduce student stress. The rightist reaction is predictably pathetic:

    Bit by bit, the dumbed-down cult of mediocrity, secular extremism, and multicultural madness has infected American public education. Instead of concentrating on the basics and then teaching children to manage and conquer their “stress” through internal discipline, we’re removing every last source of possible damage to their egos.

    I’m not sure what this has to do with multiculturalism or “secular extremism.” Whatever.
    If you want to fault something, fault the method, not the objective. I think a more effective use of school time would be to do something involving exercise, since kids don’t get enough of it these days. That will combat stress and obesity.

  • Heh.

    Two economists find themselves locked in a basement. They’re not sure what time it is, because it’s dark and they can’t read their watches. They think it’s nearly dinner time, cause they’re starting to feel hungry. But they’re not worried; they are not starting to panic – because they know that their demand will create sandwiches for them!

    It’s just a matter of time before we’ll have a lot of new oil created.

Potpourri

The Federal Reserve announces a decision on interest rates today, so a few economic notes:

  • The 3rd quarter GDP is announced at a stronger than expected 3.9%. But consider this:

    Despite rising worries about commodity prices, the GDP price index, the broadest measure of price changes in the economy, rose just 0.8% annualized, matching a nine-year low. Inflation hasn’t been lower since John F. Kennedy’s administration.

    Bonddad says the report should raise eyebrows because deflators are usually over 2%.

  • Macro and Other Market Musings notes the regional differences in United States economic growth. The Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia has a U.S. map showing the latest monthly coincident index for each state. In September Tennessee had between 0.1% and 0.5% growth.
  • The Big Picture has a map showing state by state mortgage loan performance. The Tennessee number of delinquencies, defaults, and foreclosures improved at 0% – 5% rate over the past 12 months.

Elsewhere:

Bill Maher’s “New Rule”: I Scare

Bill Maher commentary from last week’s show worth repeating. Specifically the section starting at 4:03:

An excerpt:

At the Republican debate this week Mike Huckabee said, “Islamofacism is the greatest threat we ever faced.” Really? More then the Nazis? And the Russians? And the Red Coats?
. . .
And you thought that people that were scared of gays and Mexicans were paranoid. Islamic terrorist taking over America? They can barely get across the monkey bars.
Our defense budget is $600 billion a year. They’re using guns they took off a dead Soviet in 1981. I think we can hold Charleston.
We are the most powerful nation on earth, with the largest economy and the best military. And we are made to act the fool by a few thousand cave dwellers who still put out their videos on VHS.
And that’s the problem. Because of the incompetence that goes by the name George Bush we have become the most insecure, paranoid superpower ever. We don’t think we can get anything right anymore. We can’t take care of our own citizens after a hurricane, or plan for our wars, or maintain our infrastructure, and our celebrity rehab facilities obviously aren’t working out.
As a species we are failing at survival trick number one: prioritize the threats.

As Maher notes, the “Islamofacism is the greatest threat America has ever faced” line is wrong on two levels.
First, it’s historically wrong. Back in their day, the German and British armies Americans battled were the most formidable military force of the era. Why are we diminishing the risk those patriots faced by exaggerating today’s threat?
Second, the terrorism hype masks things that we really should be worried about. Don’t get me wrong–terrorism is a real threat which, regrettably, may kill thousands of Americans over the next decade. But in the big picture it’s not the catastrophic event that the vast majority of Americans encounter. Most of us are tested by a health issue, or an auto accident, or crime, or poverty, or some other routine, non-newsworthy hardship.
If you want to worry about something, these are the kinds of things you should be worrying about. Ironically, they are also the issues that some politicians want to avoid discussing. Perhaps that’s why they are always fear mongering with terrorism.

U.S. Drought Monitor

Via Angry Bear, there’s interesting current and historical information at Drought Monitor.
For example, on the main page there’s a United States map showing the current drought areas. Most of the Tennessee Valley is in a D4 “Exceptional” Drought on the October 23 map. The site also has six-week and twelve-week animations. East Tennessee has been in a D3 or D4 drought throughout those periods.
Drought Monitor also has historical maps of the Palmer Drought Index going back to 1895. According to this map, Tennessee experienced severe or extreme droughts 5% – 10% of the time from 1895 -1995. The drought periods in the Tennessee River basin are charted here.

“Sheep May Safely Graze”

This weekend I’m playing “Sheep May Safely Graze” at church.
Here’s a performance of the song by concert pianist Greg Anderson.

I’m playing the melody on the trumpet; someone else is playing the piano.
UPDATE: The piece went relatively well. I missed a note or two, but it could have been worse. I may post a clip if I obtain a web-friendly one.

Australia Braces For Lean Wheat Harvest

Bad news from down under:

THE forecast size of the NSW grain crop has been cut by a further 40 per cent due to dry, hot and windy weather this month and last month.
. . .
It means the 2007-08 harvest is likely to be even smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006-07 harvest and the worst in more than a decade.

Could the outlook be even more worse? Yes.

In the past year the price of wheat has more than doubled, to reach new highs, and this week the UN published a report that said the planet’s water, land, air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in “inexorable decline”.
It warned that the world’s population of 6.75 billion “has reached a stage where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available” and climate change “may threaten humanity’s very survival”.

The report cited is the United Nations Environmental Programme’s Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4). The threat to survival phrase may be a bit over the top, but there’s little doubt in my mind that changes are coming which will impact to our way of life . . . and some of them won’t be pleasant.