I meant to do pictures with my post of seasons/colors, but pretty soon I realized not having pictures ready was keeping me from writing the post. So I wrote it without pictures. But then someone just happened to take a snapshot of me that was just too easy to crop (though entirely unprofessionally), so now Click Here to continue reading.
I am not a faithful reader of The New York Times. However, if something catches my eye on Google News I can end up browsing their website. Recently I ended up at the New York Times website by that method, and came across several articles of interest.
Three articles, to be precise: The Politics of God, […]
I am not a faithful reader of The New York Times. However, if something catches my eye on Google News I can end up browsing their website. Recently I ended up at the New York Times website by that method, and came across several articles of interest.
The Politics of God
This article caught my attention. It […]
According to this comment over at Calculated Risk, they were charging $17,500 just for the permits to build a house out in an unnamed small city in California. If a new home sold for $200,000 the permit costs would still make up almost 10% of the cost. And that does not count the cost of the labor necessary to obtain those permits (I don’t mean building to code, I mean filling out all the paperwork). Nor does this count all the other tax’s that the builders pay, including a capital gains tax if applicable.
It must be admitted that most new houses in California sell for far more then $200,000. In fact, I would be surprised to hear of new house in California that did not sell for at least $400,000. So permit costs are a far smaller as percentage of total cost then the above example makes it seem.
But the fact that the government puts up such high barriers to entry means that you will never see a builder make a cheap house.
This week’s poem of the week is All the great men die from Andrew Nichols. An alternate version of this poem can be found here.
I have my share of disagreements with Martin Hutchinson. For one thing, I don’t share his fondness for the gold standard. But I do share his convection that the recent fed action was fundamentally unjust.
You have got to like a paper that starts out by saying….
All else being equal, not many people would prefer to destroy the world. Even faceless corporations, meddling governments, reckless scientists, and other agents of doom, require a world in which to achieve their goals of profit, order, tenure, or other villainies. If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I suggest that if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.
Thus begins an excellent exploration of man’s innate tendency to overestimate what he knows.
Progess is always much slower than desired. I don’t feel I have much to report on when I say that we have used the new process for checking claims this week. None of the pickers liked it at all. Some were obviously rebellious. Technically, they have every right to be; I am not anyone’s supervisor. Click Here to continue reading.
Read this post if you want a good laugh at someone else’s pain. A small sample….
What really concerned me was when the doctor mused, matter-of-factly, “Looks like it’s already been used” just before something smelling strongly of fuel oil clamped onto the jig.
One would tend to thing that an ER would have a set of side-cutting pliers on-hand — so to speak — rather then having to pilfer the janitors tool box, but that’s a minor quibble.
I don’t like all the u-tube videos floating around making fun of Muslims. But this one was so funny that I just could not help liking it in spite of my principles. Somebody has way to much time on their hands.