Quotes of the week

There’s such a direct correlation between how much money you have and what you’re able to do or not do with your budget parameters. We’re better off as indie filmmakers studying South Korean filmmakers or Eastern European filmmakers — artists who have to do a lot with little. I admire the aesthetic of, say, the Duplass Brothers’ movies, but there are ways to bring bigger production value to indie movies without having gobs of money.--Steve Taylor

I fear that in the current climate the goal of "women's rights," with the compliance of politically motivated government policy and the tacit complicity of college administrators, runs the risk of grounding our most cherished institutions in a veritable snake pit of injustice—not unlike the very injustices the movement itself has for so long sought to correct. Unbridled feminist orthodoxy is no more the answer than are attitudes and policies that victimize the victim.--Judith Grossman

There is one thing present: That powerful human need to help. That is our hope -- in Boston, in Newtown, in Oklahoma City, in Columbine. People run toward the danger. People apply pressure to stop the bleeding. People send money they need. People pray for men and women and children they never met. People do stop attacks before they unleash and notice bombs before they go off.
...
Yes, this is our hope. All through the night, people in Boston wrote and talked about the terror and the pain, of course, but what was so striking is that they also wrote and talked about small kindnesses and large ones. They wrote and talked about the spirit of their city, and how it can never be broken. It was haunting and beautiful. And it was deeply true. This is something we hold on to in the moments of darkness.--Joe Posnanski


Rest in Peace Pat Summerall. You let sports breathe. You let Madden talk. And in an age where we so often use too many words to say too little, you let our imaginations fill in the gap.--Joe Posnanski

Quotes of the week

As soon as you crack your knuckles and open up a comments page, you just canceled your subscription to being a good person.--Louie C.K.

Manipulated by the media, voting their pocketbooks, supporting sectional interests or monofocal issues, voters in America and other Western democracies do not show very great signs of transcendent wisdom. Worse, we labor under the delusion (indeed, we foster the delusion) that somehow things will be all right provided lots of people vote. Our system of government is our new Tower of Babel: it is supposed to make us impregnable. The Soviet empire totters; other nations crumble into the dust, Balkanized, destroyed by civil war, tribal genocide, grinding poverty, endemic corruption, Marxist or some other ideology. Not us. We belong to a democracy, “rule by the people.”--Don Carson

Monetarism is not — nor did it appear to policy makers in the 1970s to be — a laissez-faire program.  Rather, it is a program for government control of economic volatility.--Michael Clune

Devote your life to something you love — not like, but love.--Gene Siskel

Poem of the season

And my vision

That I’m living

Is to see two more daughters

Getting married

Dance at their wedding

And then

hoist that Lombardi

Several times

 

By Chuck Pagano

From recording in a Honda Fit to playing on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Maybe America and it's Dream are not dead yet.  Hat tip to my favorite electric bassist.

Story here.

Quotes of the day

... there has to be a predetermined balance between artists and engineers.--Chris Ryan

Music does sometimes kick a door open inside the mind, but it also sometimes insulates the house, secures it from all wayward feelings and thoughts. And when a song does seem to kick a door open, we frequently listen to it over and over again until it loses its power and all of its passion is spent.--Mark Edmundson

Not ready for higher ed

I just spent a beautiful spring weekend walk with my 11-year old arguing over whether Wall-E is a better film than High School Musical, or Up than The Avengers.

Oh, and apparently, all opinions are equal.  (I agreed and affirmed that all people are equal).

Someone please remind me why is 'education' so important?  I'd rather spend all this accumulated college savings on something more worthwhile, maybe helping the world instead of letting it sink under its own elitist, status-seeking weight.

Image link here.

Quote of the day

... if faith teaches us anything, it should be that our nostalgia is for an ideal we can only find after accepting, and passing through, the brokenness of a fallen world. Any other approach, in art or in life, is a form of denial.--Gregory Wolfe

Quote and video of the day

You're a grimy little pimp. As soon as I raise my hands, I warn you, it shall be too late to run.--Lane Pryce, to Pete Campbell

Quotes of the day

Your hands should not, together with the face,
be drawn with the brush
You reveal them in your work
And hide them in the painting.--François Malherbe

It is difficult to say what will happen for Google, but a good dose of self-doubt that they are somehow above it all is a good place to start. Oh yes, and Facebook, if you are listening, all of the above applies to you too.--Joshua Gans

In China, the year is traditionally divided into periods based on the moon’s orbit around the earth and the sun’s path across the sky. This lunisolar calendar is laden with myths and celebrated by rituals that allowed Chinese to mark time and make sense of their world. So too the modern political calendar in China. It takes shape around the mysterious workings of the Communist Party, which rotates its top leaders every decade at a Party Congress, a comet-like event that awes onlookers as a portent of change and renewal. The next congress is set to take place in the fall of 2012—the 18th occurrence in the party’s 91-year history—and is already being associated with unusual phenomena. The most spectacular was last week’s eclipse of Bo Xilai.--Ian Johnson

Don Miller laps Tyler Cowen

Almost an impossibility, the gentle genius that Tyler is.

Quotes of the day

Economics blogs are ... “dim sum for the mind.”--Alex Tabarrok

We are mistaking high resolution and portability as an advancement of culture.--Rick Brookstaber

... we notice the monetary shocks that make us poorer much more than we notice the real shocks that make us richer.--Scott Sumner

Our economic system’s collapse may not seem as exciting as melting ice caps, but people really aren’t going to like it — at least, according to computer models.--Frank J. Fleming

... redistributionist government ... is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.--George Will

The table is set for the Patriots to be in the Super Bowl. A Bronco team comes to town that you already handled Dec. 18, on their home turf. So the chances of getting by Denver are good. I ask you this: Which QB scares you -- Joe Flacco or T.J. Yates? I say neither. Not only is it there for the Patriots to win this week, but if they don't make the Super Bowl, I'd be very disappointed.--Tedy Bruschi

Quotes of the day

Ludwig van Beethoven, widely considered one of the greatest composers in history, died on this day in 1827. Beethoven moved to Vienna from Germany in his early twenties where he became a virtuoso pianist, before beginning to lose his hearing. Some attributed his loss of hearing to his habit of lowering his head into ice-cold water in order to stay awake and continue practicing, though today this theory is dismissed. Despite the composers failed hearing, Beethoven remained committed to the creation of his art. He stayed sane, and even warded off thoughts of suicide, through devotion to virtue and to becoming accepted as an artist amongst the other musical craftsman of his day. It is widely believed that in the age of television and consumer distractions, another Ludwig van Beethoven will not develop.--Don Miller

Smart lad to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.--A.E. Housman

I try not to lose too many yards on sacks. When you realize that you don’t run very well, you try to get the ball out of your hands as fast as you can. Because when the ball’s in my hands, nothing good is happening. But other players have different strengths.--Tom Brady

"Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: 'Everyone is looking for you!' Jesus replied, 'Let us go somewhere else — to the nearby villages — so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.'"--Mark 1:35-38

In other words, sooner or later, everyone gets tired of his own hype.--Charles P. Pierce

I can't begin to tell you the impact [Tebow]'s had on my daughter [Kelly Faughnan, who has a brain tumor]. She's very positive, and she tries so hard, but she's had a struggle. Tim Tebow has built her self-confidence up so much -- taught her to believe in herself -- that when I see people criticize him, I'm just dumbfounded. I don't get it. It's almost incomprehensible to me. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want to see an athlete use his position and platform to do good for people.--Kelly's dad

Mrs. Thatcher was the first and only woman ever to have led a major British political party, and remains so to this day. She was the first woman prime minister in the English-speaking world and the longest-serving British prime minister of either sex since universal suffrage.

...

Even in 2011, only one important Western country—Germany—is led by a woman. Whatever the sterling qualities of Chancellor Angela Merkel, one must judge it highly unlikely that she will be the subject of a major feature film 20 years after she retires. Mrs. Thatcher was, in effect, the one and only woman. That unique status still fascinates.

...

And this Lady was first called "Iron" not by her admirers but by her enemies. After becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, Mrs. Thatcher opened a new, controversial front in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. She questioned the then fashionable idea of "detente." Soviet communism, she argued, should not be accommodated. It should be overcome—by repairing the defensive military strength of the NATO alliance and by holding out to the subjugated peoples of the Soviet bloc the promise of Western liberty.

...

Not many people in the West agreed with her at the time, except one Ronald Reagan, and he was just an ex-governor of California with a dream of running for president.

...

After Mrs. Thatcher had made a couple of stirring speeches on this theme, the Soviet Red Army newspaper Red Star christened her "The Iron Lady." In doing so, it intended to make a satirical comparison with Otto von Bismarck, the 19th-century "Iron Chancellor" of Germany and to paint her as rigid and harsh.

...

And since 2010, as the debt problem gradually mutated from individuals to banks to entire countries, one of Margaret Thatcher's loneliest battles—her effort in the late 1980s to stop the integration of the European Community (subsequently given the grander title of the European Union)—has begun belatedly to win respect.

...

Indeed, it was Mrs. Thatcher herself, a couple of years after she left office, who identified the problem with European construction. It was, she said, "infused with the spirit of yesterday's future." It made the "central intellectual mistake" of assuming that "the model for future government was that of a centralized bureaucracy." As she concluded, "The day of the artificially constructed megastate is gone."

...

There is precious little sign that today's European leaders want to listen to what Mrs. Thatcher said. The manic building of a continental megastate continues apace. But Margaret Thatcher's legacy will never be one of elite consensus. As the Western world sinks deeper into obfuscation, it is her habit of tackling the hard bit of every question that continues to look good and to seem more relevant than ever.--Charles Moore

In my opinion, they’ve turned the NYU graduate film degree into swag for James Franco’s purposes, a possession, something you can buy.--Professor José Angel Santana, who gave Franco a 'D' and then was fired

[Homeless couple Scott and Whitney] have the spending power of a couple earning nearly $50,000 each year, without the burden of having to work. They wake up around 9 a.m. each day, an hour when most New Yorkers are at their desks after a long commute over the subways. In short, this is not a sad story about an impoverished duo. It’s the romantic story of a couple who have figured out that they can live quite well without jobs or a home.--John Carney

Wilpon asked Selig to strike the provision requiring him to enable and assist David Einhorn in his pursuit of majority ownership, if Wilpon couldn’t repay him. The idea would be that Selig would play the bad cop. When Major League Baseball put the kibosh on Einhorn, Wilpon would have plausible deniability, and could throw up his hands and say, ‘What can I do? This is how MLB works.'--Howard Megdal

Our union members and staff have participated in many OWS actions, and we have endorsed OWS’ important message that corporate greed and economic inequality are wrong. So we were disappointed to learn that last week people associated with Occupy Wall Street disrupted the set of an episode of Law & Order: SVU, written and produced by members of the WGAE, and crewed by other entertainment industry union members. The demonstrators’ actions were as misguided and inappropriate as the City of New York’s response – revoking Law & Order’s permit for the shoot and directing the dismantling of its set. Presumably the protesters and police did not set out to achieve a common end but together they prevented the scene from being filmed and the story from being told. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, whether it is the OWS demonstrators’ right to peacefully assemble and protest without fear of retribution or Law & Order’s ability to film in the streets of New York and tell its stories without fear of vandalism from protesters or overreaction by the police.--The Writers Guild of America

Even before the protesters were displaced on Nov. 15, Trinity gave many of them hot chocolate, blankets and a place to rest at a space owned by the church. But when the Occupy movement expressed an interest in setting up an organizing camp on vacant Trinity property at Canal Street and Avenue of the Americas, the church said no. The Occupy Wall Street forces then directed their skills at the church: They took their arguments to the streets. In familiar fashion, police officers converged on the area, standing around the perimeter. A flier distributed by protesters summed up their mood: “While the event may include a reoccupation, the event itself is a broader celebration and expansion of Occupy Wall Street,” it said. It also advised people to bring backpacks, warm clothes and sleeping bags. About 3 p.m., several hundred people began to slowly march along the blocks around the park. They went about five blocks north, then circled back. They were carrying homemade wooden ladders, draped with yellow banners. At Grand Street, the protesters made a move: They threw a ladder fashioned into a portable staircase against a chain-link fence separating the sidewalk from the church’s property. Many people went over the fence that way. Others lifted the fence from the bottom, allowing protesters to squeeze into the space.--AL BAKER and COLIN MOYNIHAN

[If you want to benefit from the seven fat years] you must suffer the seven lean years too, even the catastrophically lean ones. We need free markets, but we need them to be principled.--Emanuel Derman

And now nobody remembers from where Christmas comes
All the festivals and cultures and praise for the sun
Or the charity or giving, how it spread through the land
Then was rightly taken up by our Lord, the Son of Man
Now it’s all about the Benjamins, Bentleys, and bling
And how much in revenues each store can bring.--J.G.C. Wise

Image links here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Quotes of the day

Hugo is the ultimate kid’s movie, in a sense, because its director, Martin Scorsese, turns out to be the ultimate kid. It’s a movie about movies, and the ways in which they came to occupy people’s hearts and minds. There’s a pair of inquisitive children, a hazardous quest, and a wondrous treasure. But the child at the center of the story, looking back more than a hundred years to the wellspring of his art, is Scorsese himself.--Kurt Loder

When Teddy [Forstmann] got to one [Croatian refugee] camp where all the kids seemed to be down with colds and the flu he was distressed. How could such conditions exist in civilized Europe? He pledged a few million dollars to rebuild the camp with proper sanitation. And just before leaving, Teddy spotted a very fetching young lady and gave her his coat. He figured she would need it in the winter. If there was a pretty woman present Teddy would spot her. He was fun in a good cause or a great deal. There was no one else like him.--R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr.

... a wave of firings that has washed away more than 200,000 jobs in the global financial-services industry this year, eclipsing 174,000 in 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. BNP Paribas (BNP) SA and UniCredit SpA (UCG) announced cuts last week, and the carnage likely will worsen as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis roils markets.--Max Abelson and Ambereen Choudhury

The text of the Second Amendment is maddeningly ambiguous. It merely says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Yet to each side in the gun debate, those words are absolutely clear.
...
The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.
...
For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.
...
Justice Scalia [the foremost proponent of constitutional originalism], in other words, embraced a living Constitution. In this, Heller is a fine reflection of the ironies and contradictions—and the selective use of the past—that run throughout America’s long history with guns.--Adam Winkler

In the twentieth century philosophy of mind became one of the central areas of philosophy in the English-speaking world, and so it remains. Questions such as the relationship between mind and brain, the nature of consciousness, and how we perceive the world, have come to be seen as crucial in understanding the world. These days, the predominant position in philosophy of mind aims at equating mental phenomena with operations of the brain, and explaining them all in scientific terms. Sometimes this project is called ‘cognitive science’, and it carries the implicit assumption that cognition occurs in computers as well as in human and animal brains, and can be studied equally well in each of these three forms.--Laura Weed

Do you see the problem with [Ronald] Green’s assertion? He asks us to believe that just because obesity is 80% genetic, it can’t also be 80% due to laziness. But why? What are those two hypotheses viewed as mutually exclusive? Is it because genetic characteristics are viewed as “not one’s fault,” whereas laziness is viewed as a character flaw? But why shouldn’t character flaws be genetic?--Scott Sumner

Students want not knowledge, but certification. Future employers only see your grade and diploma - and the less a professor teaches, the less students have to learn to get the grade and diploma they want. So, human capital extremists, what gives? Do you deny that canceling class makes students happy? If not, how can you reconcile your theory with the facts?--Bryan Caplan

The tax attacks on Republicans therefore look like this:

• Republicans refused to raise taxes as part of a deficit deal. No longer valid.
• Republicans refused to buck Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform. Invalid.
• Republicans refused to raise taxes on the rich. No longer valid.
• Republicans would not raise taxes enough.
• Republicans would not raise taxes on the rich enough.

As you follow the deficit reduction debate over the next year, it will be important to remember how significantly the Super Committee Republicans changed the negotiating playing field during these negotiations, and how their offer has changed the nature of the fiscal policy debate.--Keith Hennessey

In short, the modern revolutionary, being an infinite skeptic, which he must be, is always engaged in undermining his own mind.  In his books on politics he attacks persons for trampling on morality, but in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on persons.  Therefore the modern rebel has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt by rebelling against everything, he has lost his right to rebel against anything…  There is a kind of thought that stops thought, and that is the only kind of thought that ought to be stopped.--G.K. Chesterton

I could summarize the employment environment of the times this way:

Lots of jobs for people who were willing to relocate
Low entry-level pay
Company-paid healthcare
Company-paid training, including external degree courses
Inexpensive cost of living
Clear opportunities for advancement

How's that different from today? The quick answer is that every part of what I described is different. And you need the whole system in place or else the economy can't be a sustained job creation machine. So I don't think we can tweak the current economy, or stimulate it, enough to make much difference. What we need is Cheapatopia.--Scott Adams

Artwork of the day: Pepper spray meme

Source here, via Catherine Rampell.

Quotes of the day

... Mr. Buffett didn’t build his $10 billion-plus stake in I.B.M. overnight. He started buying eight months ago, beginning in March. You wouldn’t have known that if you had been studiously reading Berkshire Hathaway’s filings — known as 13Fs — in which companies must disclose stock holdings. There was no mention of I.B.M. in Berkshire’s quarterly filing in April, nor in August. Instead, if you were looking carefully, you might have found an odd footnote that said: “Confidential information has been omitted from the form 13F and filed separately with the commission.”
...
Translation: Mr. Buffett received special permission from the S.E.C. to keep secret his investment in I.B.M. — and possibly keep secret stakes in other companies that he is building positions in that we have yet to learn about. Mr. Buffett’s special treatment from the S.E.C. is not new — he has long taken advantage of an obscure rule to avoid disclosing his bets to the public before he is good and ready. Mr. Buffett — and other billionaire investors like Carl Icahn, Bill Ackman and Nelson Peltz — essentially argue that the simple disclosure of an investment would cause the price to rise so much as to scuttle their strategy.
...
The rule says that the S.E.C. “may prevent or delay public disclosure of form 13F information for public interest reasons or the protection of investors.” In this case, the rule is clearly meant to protect the investor — Mr. Buffett — not the public.--ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

As a general rule, you can usually assume that someone is trying to screw someone else whenever you find these two elements working together:

Complexity
Money

Complexity is how evil schemes are hidden from the public. Complexity is what caused so many people to get mortgages they couldn't afford. Complexity is how hedge funds hide their treachery. Complexity is how the derivatives debacle was possible. Complexity is how your financial manager can get away with charging you for doing nothing. Complexity is why you don't know if you can get a better deal with another phone carrier.--Scott Adams

I’ve always been curious about successful men, leaders, and what they know that the rest of us don’t. This book was entertaining because Eisenhower was a character, nearly getting himself kicked out of West Point, causing a lot of trouble. But always there was in him a sense of confidence, a sense he would become somebody important. And more than this, he believed the world needed him — that if he didn’t exist, things would fall apart. He believed he was called to be a great man. I wondered, as I read, where he got this confidence.  I found the reason for Eisenhower’s confidence early on in [ At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends.], in a chapter in which he discussed his childhood. Dwight Eisenhower said that from the beginning, his mother and father operated on an assumption that set the course for his life: that the world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence. Eisenhower’s parents assumed, and taught their children, that if their children weren’t alive, their family couldn’t function.--Don Miller

Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.--Dwight Eisenhower

... because Oscar campaigns are always based in part on the terrified certainty that the performance in itself cannot possibly be enough, all three men also come equipped with prepackaged narratives. DiCaprio’s, unveiled in a New York Times "Arts & Leisure" cover story simply headlined “Risk Taker,” is just that: I’m a hard worker who challenges myself with transformative roles for serious directors, and you’re never going to see me sell myself out for Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Shitload of Doubloons. Clooney’s narrative goes something like: I use my star power to get small and worthy movies greenlit, the clear implication being that the difference between The Descendants with Clooney and The Descendants with someone else is the difference between a movie you get to see and a movie you don’t. And Pitt’s, tailored to the tortuous history of Moneyball, is: I stick with projects I believe in for years until they get made. All three of these premises have enough truth in them to be legitimately deployed. But there’s a problem: They all fall into an awards-narrative category that Movieline’s Oscar guy, Stu Van Airsdale, astutely identified a couple of weeks ago “It’s a nice story. It’s just not … charming.”  Academy voters like to be seduced by a narrative, not simply persuaded by it, and a Clooney vs. Pitt vs. DiCaprio contest has a slight whiff of “Which of the three richest, handsomest, most popular boys in the school are we going to choose as class president?” They are, in short, the 1 percent — and this is not an ideal year to be in that category.--Mark Harris

The [Stereotype Threat] study investigated the applicability of previous experimental research on stereotype threat to operational Graduate Record Examinations® (GRE®) General Test testing centers. The goal was to document any relationships between features of the testing environment that might cue stereotype threat as well as any impact on GRE test scores among African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and female test-takers. Among such features were the gender and ethnicity of test proctors and more general factors, such as the size, activity level, and social atmosphere of test centers. Our analyses revealed several relationships among environmental factors and several variations in test performance for all groups. However, we found no direct support for stereotype threat and, in fact, found some effects for proctor ethnicity that ran counter to a stereotype-threat explanation.--Walters, Lee, and Trapani

These angry women have even less of a leg to stand on, now. Ding dong, the Sterotype Witch is dead, at least when it comes to race and gender in GRE performance (unless someone has another study with the same scientific credibility they can point me to).--Cav

Photo link here.

Artwork Title Of The Day: Raising John Boehner Alert Level To Amber

Live illustration series of the NYC Marathon.  Simply awesome. 

Quotes of the day

Dirty tricks were not invented by Nixon; they stretch back to the Fall. Blessed is the Christian whose life is so transparent, who is “trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent” (Dan. 6:4), so that the only way he or she can be destroyed is by making Christian conduct and conviction a crime. ... no legal system can ensure consistent justice. Corrupt people will always find ways of exploiting the system to oppress others and advance themselves. Hidden behind the slogan is a deeper issue. Historically there has long been a tension between positive law theory, in which the only law to be obeyed is that enacted by government, and natural law theory, in which some fundamentals are thought to be discoverable by human beings. In the name of equity and justice, British courts, until fairly recently, would sometimes set aside positive law in favor of natural law where it was pretty obvious an injustice was otherwise being committed. Both in Britain and in the United States, such considerations are now rare. In Britain, what must be obeyed is what Parliament says; in the United States, what must be obeyed is what the Supreme Court says. In both instances, positive law largely prevails, as in ancient Persia. The matter has become increasingly difficult here since Western states have come to think they have a therapeutic role in society, defining the “illnesses” that must be confronted and the “therapies” that must be imposed as they go along. The potential for injustice and inequity multiplies.--Don Carson

Our tax dollars at work… a half-billion dollar loan (actually $529 million) from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a hybrid toy for the wealthy and/or celebri-licious (like Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the first customers) that, in real world driving, won’t get much better mileage than your average crossover utility vehicle. Not only that, but the cars are manufactured in Finland — that’s right, Finland – and shipped here for sale, where their purchasers will then receive a $7,500 tax credit for buying one (the “cheap” base model starts at $96,895, with the full-zoot Eco Chic model going for a bargain $108,900). ... Those Occupy Wall Street-types in their tents at MacPherson Square? If they really, truly are bugged by corporate welfare, they need to schlep their signs and their chants and their anger over to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Right now. Because the Fisker Karma is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to corporate welfare. I have no problem with a group of entrepreneurs raising money from private investors to build a hundred thousand dollar toy for rich folks who want to flaunt their eco-consciousness. When and if that’s the case, may they have all the mazel in the world. But damn, it steams me up when my family and every family in America are forced to pay for it.--Andrew Fox

The more people helping each other out, the better.--Pietro Poggi-Corradini

Earlier this year, a report from Standard and Poor’s indicated that of the 1,485 stocks making up the S&P 1500 index, not a single one had a consensus sell recommendation from Wall Street analysts. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t the odd sell recommendation, it just means that there were no stocks that most analysts agreed had less than rosy prospects. Meanwhile, the S&P 1500 is down 2.77 per cent including dividends to Oct. 19, with the financials sector down 19.97 per cent. --Preet Banerjee

One of the running jokes of Mr. Chandor’s [Margin Call] script  is that the higher a person’s [corporate] rank, the less he is likely to understand what the firm is actually doing. This ignorance is almost a point of pride. “I don’t get any of this stuff” — this line is repeated about Peter’s discovery by Will, then Sam, then Sam’s boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) and then Tuld. In a further absurdity, one person who does get it, Peter’s mentor, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) has just been downsized out of the company. As a security measure his cellphone has been disconnected, which means that his increasingly desperate former colleagues are unable to find him when he might be of most use.--A. O. SCOTT

I thought, This is a very dangerous person.--Sidney Lumet, on meeting Pauline Kael

Parents, you may be onto something: A small new study suggests that teens' intelligence, as measured by the IQ test, may fluctuate throughout adolescence. The changes -- in both verbal and nonverbal IQ -- ranged to as much as 20 points and were correlated with specific brain areas. IQ has long been thought to remain stable over a person's lifetime.--Amanda Gardner

[Steve Jobs] tries to treat [his pancreatic cancer] with diet. He goes to spiritualists. He goes to various ways of doing it macrobiotically and he doesn't get an operation. ... I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking .... We talked about this a lot.--Walter Isaacson, Jobs' authorized biographer

Ohhhh. That cake looks so good.--Kim Kardashian

Italy is house rich, somewhat cash poor, and has a miserable recent history of growth. If you look at the wealth side of the balance sheet, you can easily work up a heady optimism for Italy. If you study public choice theory, it is harder to do so. How many people in that country are either paid to do the wrong thing, or paid to do not so much at all? [The Great Stagnation] reigns. Italy’s privileges and distortions are so often so local, and so concentrated in inefficient professional services, that it is hard to imagine clearing them up quickly in the form of a big bang, in the way that say New Zealand or Chile or Thatcher’s England did. And even those successes took some time to pay off and underperformed for years. Note that if Italy could credibly be expected to grow a mere 2 pct. a year — maybe less — the entire eurozone crisis probably would be messy but manageable. It’s not.--Tyler Cowen

Brian Moynihan is here tonight. He’s the C.E.O. of Bank of America. As many of you know, Brian’s brother Patrick runs a Catholic boarding school in Haiti. Their parents must be so proud to see two of their boys running an underfunded, nonprofit organization.--Steve Schwartzman

Video of the day: For those of you who need a vacation but are too busy

I found this really helpful:

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

I think it actually reduced the aches and pains in this tired body. Via Joannah Lodico.

Designs of the day

Source here, via Sandy Son.

Design of the day: Apple and Steve Jobs

Source here, via Tim Harford.