This map isn't very encouraging

Source here.

UPDATE:  Cav's family is doing fine.  We lost power shortly before 9pm, mostly likely due to this.  While well supplied, we were able to snag a hotel room not far away, where we are grateful for power and plumbing.  Back to work tomorrow.

Bubble watch: K-12 public schools

Between fiscal year (FY) 1950 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased by 96 percent while the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew 386 percent. Public schools grew staffing at a rate four times faster than the increase in students over that time period. Of those personnel, teachers’ numbers increased 252 percent while administrators and other staff experienced growth of 702 percent, more than seven times the increase in students. 

Read the whole thing.  Via Glenn Reynolds.

Most bloggable SNL skit in recent memory

Obama & Romney

I've taken some heat from friends and co-workers for not watching any of the presidential debates (although I watched the VP debate with great interest).

I did watch President Obama's and Governor Romney's remarks at last night's Alfred E. Smith dinner, and I got a lot more utility out of it than any of their debates.  I'd have to give the Most Gracious nod to Obama, although both of them found grace for each other and some self-deprecation for themselves.



Ohio tightens a bit, on 3 days of higher-than-usual trading volume.

Here's a nice summary map of Intrade state-by-state predictions, currently giving the win with 281 electoral votes to Obama, vs. 257 for Romney.

Tony Woodlief has a point

Once people get worked into a frenzy about the goodness of their leader—be he a former oil man who promises to whip the daylights out of the terrorists, or a former community organizer who promises free medical care—they get impatient with people who question their man, and impatient with restraints on his power.

Thus do so-called conservatives back radical expansions of federal power in wars against drugs and terrorists, and thus do so-called liberals restrict the meaning of the word “choice” to the extraction of unwanted fetuses. We’ll do so much good for you, each tribe tells us, if we can just have some running room.

To which the Founders would reply: we shot and bombed and bayoneted a whole pile of guys for talking that way.

Read the whole thing here.

The world's first libertarian?

That would be Samuel, the Old Testament prophet, circa 1050 BC: 

This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

BCWUW4: Be careful what you wish for.  And God told you so.

NAACP leadership finally supporting Dubya

... Washington Bureau director of the NAACP Hilary Shelton sees it differently. Mr. Shelton says the lower standards for minorities reflect what President George W. Bush once dubbed the "soft bigotry of low expectations": "It's, what do they say? 'Soft bigotry of low expectations," said Shelton. "They're really letting the educators off the hook playing it this way. We have to challenge our educators to meet the standards of every child."

Source here, via Ed Driscoll.

Tonight, Joe Biden has helped me

teach my 11-year-old how crooked our elected leaders can be.

Thanks!  That's actually worth something.

And apologies to my kids' generation for the debt we are passing to you.

Photo link here.

UPDATE:  The deficits are not primarily due to military spending in the Middle East (the surge commenced in the first few months of 2008), and we are following Japan, Greece, Ireland and Italy into the abyss:

 Graph sources here and here.

UPDATE:  A smile is an instinctive gesture of submission. Often the submission is mutual, as when two friends exchange smiles or when Maestripieri's strangers break into small talk on the elevator. But when a man uncontrollably smiles at a potential or actual adversary, it is a show of weakness.


I try to avoid, or at least minimize, political party alignment (since I'm not a member of one). But this video is the prima facie type of work that Jon Stewart does, sort of a "presented without comment" type of deal.

Intrade futures after the first 2012 presidential debate

I will not be watching any of the debates, save the VP debate next week.  However, I read up a bit, and this one was my favorite, although it did bring to mind:  who fact checks the fact checkers?

Overall, President Obama's odds moved back closer to parity.  Here is the 60-day chart of how he's traded at Intrade:

and here is the less liquid, but well correlated Ohio prediction futures contract:

I guess that polling data surfacing over the next week will impact prices further, viewership for the second debate will be higher, and Obama, having digested some much needed humble pie, will perform better.

Romney is still trailing far behind.  Should he overtake in not only Ohio, but also Florida and Virginia and one other state where Obama is polling better, he can win the thing.  My gut tells me that Virginia will be the toughest--lots of wealthy government elites live in the northern part of the state, and they will be voting for the incumbent for sure.

Pick me up in the middle of a tough week

A lot of bumps and bruises from work, and I'm about to go another round with the IRS.

I remembered this story, which I posted last year.  There was an update, which really helped me get perspective:




Also, here is a better video of his performance than the original post.

Psalm 2012

A psalm of Cav, inspired by Psalm 23, a psalm of David.

The LORD is my banker, I lack nothing.

       He makes me save into insured accounts,
he leads me to capital preservation strategies,

       he releases me from my greed, envy and materialism.
He guides me along tax-advantaged paths
       so I can give even more to Him and to others in poverty.

Even though I walk
       through the valley of the shadow of tail risk,
I will fear no evil,
       for you are with me;
your offering documents and track record,
       they comfort me.

You prepare a budget for financial freedom before me
       in the presence of my overextended neighbors and Keynesian policymakers.
You anoint my community with Walmart;
       My retirement accounts are overfunded.

Surely, your goodness and love will follow me
       all the days of my life,
and I will be a beneficiary of your trusts and estates
       forever.

Quotes of the day

Who would have thought that Hollywood environmentalists would find themselves aligned with Persian Gulf oil barons? --John Carney

The [Iranian] Fars News Agency, which is close to Iran’s powerful Republican Guard Corps, posted its version of the report on its English-language Web site under the same headline used by The Onion for the original four days earlier: “Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad To Obama.”--Robert Mackey

[Warren Buffett] thinks of cash as a call option with no expiration date, an option on every asset class, with no strike price.--Alice Schroeder

Living off-peak

I try to avoid crowds and lines whenever I can. I don't want to go to a World Series game ever again, nor a concert, no matter who is playing, even if I am being hosted as a business client.

Now, I prefer watching that type of stuff on HD with the inexpensive beer that I bought from the grocery store (or, even better, that Mrs. Cav bought from Costco).  Waiting on line feels like wasting time, time I don't have, time that feels valuable to me now that I am in the second half of life.

I like being in Manhattan during long weekends, when it's easy to get a table at restaurant or hail a taxi.

I like taking the kids to Disney World during the less crowded times of the year, and will plan going to Epcot or Magic Kingdom over Hollywood Studios or Animal Kingdom based on which park is offering Extra Magic Hours, and also employ strategies on where to take the first ride, which way to traverse through each park, how to optimize priority attractions using FastPass, etc.  And I try not to fly on Fridays, Sundays, or Mondays.

So I was really glad to read this:

Via Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That and Go There:

• Best time to get a human being on the phone when calling a company's customer service line: As early as possible (lowest call volume)

• Best day of the week to eat dinner out: Tuesday (freshest food, no crowds)

• Best day to fly: Saturday (fewer flights means fewer delays, shorter lines, less stress)

• Best time to fly: Noon (varies but pilots say airport rush hours coincide with workday rush hours)

• Best time to have surgery: Morning (4x less likely to have complications in the morning than between 3-4PM)

• Best time to exercise: 6-8PM (body temp highest, peak time for strength and flexibility)

• Best time to have sex: 10PM-1AM (skin sensitivity is highest in late evening)

Quotes of the day

Consensus isn’t the same thing as excellence.--Andy Greenwald

Roughly a quarter of all hospitalized patients will be harmed by a medical error of some kind. If medical errors were a disease, they would be the sixth leading cause of death in America—just behind accidents and ahead of Alzheimer's.--Marty Makary

The Emancipation Proclamation destroyed the south's best hope for victory – foreign recognition. From then on they would have to look to their own armies for victory.--Joshua Horn

At least when the Pharisees bragged about their piety and how much they gave to the Temple, they actually performed the rituals and gave money. Leftists brag about how compassionate they are and then don’t give much from their own time and pocket books.--Shannon Love

The group that Marx loved, the non-elite working people who create value and have that value transferred to the bourgeoisie, are the main supporters of the Republican Party, and most likely to hate any of the words associated with Marx like “socialism” or “communism” or "Obamacare."--Half Sigma

When an equation is correct, mathematicians call it ‘beautiful.’ A true equation is beautiful because it is elegant and uncluttered with mistakes or unnecessary steps.--John Polkinghorne

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

Too much schooling is a bad thing.--Eric Falkenstein

Some claim that what sets us apart from other animals is our use of tools. Au contraire. Even sea otters -- a species that has neither reached the moon nor invented the beer cozy -- use stones to crack open the shells of their prey. No, what makes us unique is our staggering imagination and creativity, mostly when it comes to ostensibly obeying laws while utterly circumventing their spirit. We are homo loopholeus.--Patrick Hruby

... the startup job creation rate has collapsed during the last three years and actually fallen lower in 2011 than ever before. I’ll ask: Why did the IRS start cracking down on companies that hire American contractors in 2009?--Tim Kane

Obama reelection chances looking pretty good right now

I can't get excited about this election. The only thing I am pumped for is the VP debate. I hope Ryan's maturity and intellect are properly benchmarked by the nation against the incumbent. The last VP debate was a bit of a draw.

Chart here.

Quotes of the day

... if a male writer wanted to “analyze” gender differences by using a combination of misleading statistics about women, unscientific snapshots of particular men who seem like real go-getters, and musings about how men are adaptive and resilient and possess greater vision, he’d rightly get slapped down for shoddy thinking and poor journalism. What say in the interest of gender equality we hold Rosin to the same standard?--Tony Woodlief

Medical care is famously immune to the usual market incentives; the patient has little reason to make a cost-benefit tradeoff. Doctors and hospitals hardly do either; indeed the opposite seems to be the case. Matters are made all the worse, ironically, by the continual improvements in medicine – improvements which often treat what was previously untreatable, and which improve on existing treatments but at a higher cost.--Rick Brookstaber

I've done several types of work over the years but I don't know another as counterintuitive as startup investing. The two most important things to understand about startup investing, as a business, are (1) that effectively all the returns are concentrated in a few big winners, and (2) that the best ideas look initially like bad ideas.--Paul Graham

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama declared, “I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China . . . because we refuse to make the same commitment here.” Given what’s really happening in China, he may want to think again.--PATRICK CHOVANEC

I was asked whether the new Fed policy will enable Obama’s big spending plans for his second term.  I doubt it.  The policy initiative is too small to decisively impact growth or the deficit, but large enough to take away support for further fiscal stimulus.  Obama will be forced to adopt Simpson/Bowles-style austerity during his second term.  There’s no longer any point in even wasting keystrokes on Mitt’s plans.  He’s done—put a fork in him.--Scott Sumner

How much inequality is enough?

Some interesting reading over at Freakonomics, with Justin Wolfers, Alex Tabarrok and the US Census Bureau.

Still, income inequality was less pronounced in 1988 Soviet Union, with 70% of the population's income between 75 and 200 rubles per month.  I'm not in front of Bloomberg right now, but using the 30-to-1 current FX rate and factoring in the 1000-for-1 redenomination back in 1993, this is $2 to $6 per month, which can't be right.  I'll have to check on that, although, given the new job this year, blogging has been difficult.

My thesis is that wealthy nations have high income inequalities and impoverished nations don't.

Civil War infographic

Via Joshua Horn.

Brought to you by The Civil War Trust