Assorted Links 2/9/12
- “The screwed generation: Libertarian, not liberal,” by A.J. Dellinger, Salon, February 6, 2012 – “We are the generation that continues to pay into Social Security with every paycheck but suspects we may never see the benefits of it. We are the recipients of degrees that don’t mean much from educational institutions that teach less and cost more. We are the casualties of wars that have gone on for over half of the lifetime of 2012′s first-time voters. In short, we are the screwed generation.”
- 5 things you didn’t know about divorce – “When things start to go bad, remember the five-to-one rule. There are little things you can do to improve your relationship.”
- The Universal Benefits of Competition – “One of the most important reasons why market outcomes dominate government ones is competition: government often rules out competition by law, or subsidizes production in such a way that alternatives are not truly competing.”
- Banks Paying as Much as $35,000 Cash to Homeowners in Short Sales; Why and How Many? – “Could it be these are the real problem loans with clouded titles, questionable practices by lenders, or huge numbers of written complaints by borrowers? Add to that a dearth of willing new borrowers and I think you have the answer.”
- Rebalance your Couch Potato Portfolio with these free tools
photo credit: Tania Liu- Jack In The Box Has Bacon Milkshakes
- Never Let Law Profs Near the Oval Office – “Constitutional law professors should be kept as far away from nuclear weapons as possible.”
- Top five regrets of the dying – “4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
- Street children: do tourist dollars help or hurt? – “Taking a cue from the ChildSafe organization in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, I learn that our money actually does more harm than good. … Next time you see a child with outstretched arms, no matter how adorable, think about the power of your dollar. Give your money instead to organizations that are trained to help break the cycle of street begging.”
- “Some legislators send millions to groups connected to their relatives,” by Scott Higham, Kimberly Kindy and David S. Fallis, Washington Post, February 7, 2012 – “Members of Congress have more leeway than executive branch officials or individuals in publicly held companies, who operate under stricter conflict-of-interest rules that generally prevent them from taking actions that might benefit businesses or institutions where their relatives work. The legislators set and enforce their own rules, giving themselves broad latitude to take steps that can end up directly benefiting their immediate family.”
- Now is the Time to Quit Facebook – “Real friends do more than punch the ‘like’ key on your status updates. Real friends call you directly on the phone, send cards, help you move furniture, meet you for breakfast, babysit your cats, or otherwise make three-dimensional efforts to be there for you.”
- HELPFUL HINTS. – “Are you concerned about bacterial diseases and other impurities in the grape juice your children consume? Grape juice can be preserved in a pure and wholesome state almost indefinitely by adding a little yeast and allowing fermentation to occur.”
- Panic On Wall Street As Anti-Insider Trading Bill Spreads Wider Net Over Information Peddling – “This bill might curtail the ability of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to obtain private information from the Finance Committees.”
- “An L.A. teacher reviews her review,” by Coleen Bondy, LA Times, January 29, 2012 – “It’s hard for those who finished high school 20 or 30 years ago, as I did, to fathom the conditions in a typical L.A. Unified high school classroom these days. Classes are huge. Students face overwhelming family and social issues. Drugs are rampant. Students are incredibly disrespectful, testing authority constantly at the beginning of the year. Teachers must be able to get a strong grip on their classes all by themselves because consequences for bad behavior in class are often nonexistent outside it. My school has two full-time police officers, a full-time probation officer and several full-time security personnel to handle about 3,800 students. Yet we still have a hard time keeping kids from smoking pot on a regular basis in our restrooms.”
- Al rodente: Could squirrel meat come back into vogue? – “There are people around who remember the days when squirrel was a more commonly served meat on the American table than chicken. The Kentucky Long Rifle, with its long barrel and small caliber, was designed for squirrel hunting (the smaller the caliber, the more squirrel left to take home after shooting one.) The ideal shot was aimed not at the squirrel, but at the tree branch directly below it, so that the animal would be killed by the concussion of the bullet instead of the bullet itself. Historians say that this is what won the Revolutionary war; even the most highly trained British soldiers were no match for squirrel killers trained by hunger.“
Tags: A.J. Dellinger, Bacon Milkshakes, David S. Fallis, Girl Hunter, Heather Smith, Kimberly Kindy, Scott Higham, squirrel meat
