Ran a lot of errands; not feeling very bloggy.
However, Atrios had a nice piece on the concept that “Leaving = Losing” that’s worth a read.
Also, back on Friday, Reddhedd had a long but truly excellent piece titled “A Question of Doing What’s Right” that if you missed it, you should go back and check it out.
Amazing. Anybody, any phone number, any time.
Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls
John of AMERICABlog tests one service out, and finds that their web advertisement is correct:
The company boasts on its own Web site:
Give us the cell phone number and we will send you the calls made from the cell phone number.
So I went to their site, plopped down $110, and within a day I had a list of every single phone number that called my cell, or that I called from my cell, for the month of November. I even had the dates the calls were made, and for a premium I could find out how long the calls were.
I called Cingular and they were shocked by what I told them – yeah right.
No I am not linking to the site in question. I’m not giving them the free publicity. But I’m pissed off. Why this isn’t illegal I don’t know. If it is, someone ought to be going to jail pronto. And if it’s not, it ought to be.
Not only are they massively fuel-inefficient, they are NOT safer for the kiddies:
Children are no safer riding in sport utility vehicles than in passenger cars, largely because the doubled risk of rollovers in SUVs cancels out the safety advantages of their greater size and weight, according to a study.
Researchers said the findings dispel the bigger-equals-safer myth that has helped fuel the growing popularity of SUVs among families. SUV registrations climbed 250 percent in the United States between 1995 and 2002.
“We’re not saying they’re worse or that they’re terrible vehicles. We’re challenging the conventional wisdom that everyone assumed they were better,” said Dr. Dennis Durbin, a pediatric emergency physician who took part in the study, published Tuesday in the journal Pediatrics.
Good. Maybe people will finally stop clogging the roads with them and I will once again be able to actually see more than one car in front of me when stuck in traffic.
Of the many bits of macroeconomic esoterica I studied this semester, one that particularly caught my interest was the bond yield curve. Normally, long-term bonds pay more interest than short-term ones, because you have to lock your money up longer (this is also known as the time value of money). When you plot these prices out on a chart, you generally get a nice upward curve to the line.
However, in recent months, this hasn’t been the case. The yield curve has become virtually flat. A flat yield curve means, among other things, that people believe that the economy will continue to decline.
The Big Picture goes into a great deal more detail of why this has the potential to be a problem. The piece is a bit technical but not horribly so. Here’s his bottom line:
While not every inversion leads to a recession, every recession has been preceded by an inverted yield curve.
In other words, it’s a sign that as 2006 fast approaches, the American economy is treading on very thin ice indeed. We may get through it unscathed, but getting back on course is going to be damn tricky.
ReddHead over at firedoglake has some excellent advice today. She directed it towards lawyers, but I think it’s got applicability in the wider business world as well as the political one:
You do not adequately serve your client by telling him only those things he wants to hear. Period. The most important function you can have as an attorney is to tell your client all the things he does not want to hear — for the sole reason that he must hear them in order to make a fully informed decision. To do less is to fail at your job.
Another cardinal sin is to believe that your argument is the only right one. One of the first things you learn as a litigator is that there is always another side. Always, always, always. And you must give due consideration to every side of an issue to adequately do your job.
Looking at this assortment, I’m tempted to call it the “WTF Edition”. What a mess. That’s what you get when you randomize the entire list though.
Iko Iko – Cyndi Lauper
Wide Open Spaces – Dixie Chicks
Windswept – Bryan Ferry
Carolina On My Mind – James Taylor
Don’t Stand So Close To Me ’86 – The Police
Shape of My Heart – Backstreet Boys
South Ferry Road – The Hooters
Baby Grand – Billy Joel
A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes – Cinderella
God Save the Queen – The Sex Pistols
No new cat pix today, sorry to say.