The American Mind

Alright, I should be asleep, but the good-looking Packers tickets have to be mentioned.
“Packers Tickets Sport a Makeover”

Save and Share:

Neppie inspired me to list a few “best” movies to supplement my list below.
Best Drama: Citizen Kane–Kane is so complex. You love, hate, pity, and want to be him all at the same time.
Best Comedy: Ghostbusters–It has my favorite line, “Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”
Best Movie I Should Have Never Seen: Mr. Smith [...]

To get an invitation to BloggerCon sign up here and get the bulletins. I plan on being there, will you?
On a technical note: I want w.bloggar to have a trackback feature. Right now, I’m pasting the trackback URL into my post and fixing it in MT, but sometimes (as in this case if you caught [...]

James Pethokoukis provides some real examples of event markets at work. He also takes a great shot at Sen. Clinton (D-NY) the Queen of Futures Markets in the Senate.
“Futures Shock”

Save and Share:

A French citizen was being held by Colombian rebels. Here’s what the French did:
A Hercules C-130 transporter landed in Manaus, the closest large Brazilian city to the Colombian border, but Brazil ordered it out, saying France had given no warning over the mission’s nature.
But here’s the kicker:
Ms Betancourt was not freed and the rebel Revolutionary [...]

For full disclosure, here are my picks for the best movies of all time (in no particular order) as given to John Hawkins for his list:

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
On the Waterfront
Citizen Kane
Ghostbusters
North by Northwest
The Wizard of Oz
Memento
Bull Durham
The Natural
Schindler’s List
Fantasia
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Die Hard
12 Angry Men
Blazing Saddles
Airplane!
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad [...]

Kate also links to a story on a surgeon who has come up with some stories for why color-blindness, left-handedness, and homosexuality are characteristics still present in some members of the human race.
A problem with these sociobiological stories are simply that they are only stories. At least in the small article Dr. Leonard Shlain offers [...]

Kate is confident that WMD will be found in Iraq:
After the flak after Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. in February, and all of the false-positives on various items discovered since the start of the war, I have no doubt that any case presented to the world will be iron-clad. My guess is that we’ll [...]

Right Wing News, the VH1 of the Blogosphere, has posted the Greatest Movies of All Time. Being the Internet, Star Wars got the top spot.
“Bloggers Select The 15 Greatest Movies Of All-Time”

Save and Share:

The fantasy football league is half-way filled. There are still 5 spots remaining. Go here for the vital info.
For those of you who have joined and noticed some weird line-ups, that was just me not thinking clearly when I set up the league. If you have any concerns leave a comment or e-mail me.

Save and [...]

James DeLong writes on how the idea of marginal costs have been taken from their theoretical context and distorted as weapons in policy debates. Here’s a key paragraph:
The axiom “prices must equal marginal cost” does not tell you whether the relevant time dimension is a decade, a year, or an hour, which makes it [...]

Saddam Hussein is no longer bad news. He’s a piece of trash waiting to be collected.
–Colin Powell
“Powell: Saddam Is ‘Piece of Trash‘ to Be Collected” [via PoliBlog]

Save and Share:

Let me respond to James Joyner’s critique of PAM:
Indeed. But this is yet another case (TIPS being the most obvious previous example) of a potentially useful program being killed because the geniuses behind it decided to play cloak and dagger with it rather than being up front. Had they approached it differently–and come up with [...]

Justin Raimondo compares Israel’s building of wall between itself and Palestine with the Soviet’s building the Berlin Wall, then goes on to compare Israeli actions to defend itself against terrorists with Nazi efforts to wipe out Jews. Disgusting.
“Mr. Sharon, Tear Down that Wall!” [via Liberty & Power]

Save and Share:

This judge’s ruling, like many from the Left Coast, makes no sense. U.S. District Judge Barry Moskowitz ruled that voters can choose the successor to Gov. Gray Davis even if they don’t vote on whether he should be recalled. This judge is allowing people who can’t make a simple yes/no decision to choose the next [...]