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We’re in the process of updating our theme; so, if you notice that something isn’t working or appearing correctly, please let us know.
We took the best of our old theme, which we had adapted from a theme by Nate at Refueled.net, and modernized it quite a bit. Plus, we made it bluer; we didn’t like the purplish look on certain monitors.
Regular readers and friends, please let us know what you think.
There are still many small tweaks and annoyances to correct, but it seems ready to… Read the rest
The Wall Street Journal is chock full of good op-ed columns today, June 22, 2009. This is the third one we’ve written about, and we’d write about a couple of more if we had the time.
Fouad Ajami’s may be the best of the lot. It is entitled Obama’s Persian Tutorial. It is much recommended, especially because he does a nice job of summarizing Obama’s world view and diplomatic tactics and linking Obama’s perspective (and self-perception) to Jimmy Carter’s failed worldview and Presidency.
Despite our high regard for the column’s… Read the rest
We did nothing to deserve it, but we are very grateful to have been born in the United States. (Granted, that was tempered by being born near Pittsburgh, but we write that qualification mainly in jest.) In fact, we doubt that we did anything prior to our birth to deserve it, and haven’t done much since that day to be worthy of citizenship, but, hey, we do tend to pay our taxes on time and under-utilize our share of government services. (That has to count for something and likely makes… Read the rest
According to The Holland Ring, almost every American has heard of the tale of Hans Brinker. We’re not sure if that is true, but he is the little Dutch boy of fiction who noticed a small leak in a dike and plugged it with his finger.
Little Hans stopped the levee from failing and prevented a flood that saved many fictional lives and much fictional property, and everyone lived happily ever after. We heard the tale when we were a child, and being… Read the rest
Computer, what type of moron talks to an inanimate object like a bicycle? (For some reason, we find the gawky, spinster-in-the-making redhead talking to and then riding the bicycle to be much worse than the dweeb talking to the fishing rod.)
Dear computer, you sit there dusty with your fan whirring while I suffer an allergic reaction to the inane commercial. Yes, computer, I will require medication to dull the pain and curb the tendencies and impulses. Plus, computer, the TV is too expensive and the neighbors are too close and… Read the rest
Thursday evening we posted a brief note encouraging the freedom seekers who are now (quite bravely) protesting in Iran. We doubt that any of them will ever see our post, but we felt compelled to write something nonetheless. They are very brave people who deserve our support and prayers.
We were about to go to bed this morning when we decided to peruse The Wall Street Journal‘s web site, where we noticed a new column by one of our favorite writers, Peggy Noonan. Her essay… Read the rest
We get only an occasional web site visitor from Iran.
We blame that absence on the repressive Iranian regime as we’re sure there are many intelligent, knowledgeable, and sophisticated Persians looking for insights that span from deer to girls basketball to the financial crisis to risk-neutral default rates.1 We write the previous sentence in jest–but only slightly.
During the past year or so, we have begun to truly appreciate the freedoms (of speech, of religion, of the right to bear arms, of mobility, etc.) that we… Read the rest
Paul Volcker had an excellent op-ed column in Tuesday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal that we’re finally getting around to mention. It is entitled, “Moral Hazard and the Crisis.” It’s not actually a column but excerpt of a speech that he recently gave in Beijing.
If they haven’t read it, regular visitors of our site can skip Mr. Volcker’s speech because we have already discussed just about everything that he proposed, including the elimination of prop-trading at insured institutions; the titular problems of… Read the rest
Despite a few interesting weeks of activity in the world, we have not posted much lately. That’s because we’ve had a variety of computer problems at world headquarters. We woke up last Wednesday morning to a BSoD or Blue Screen of Death on our desktop/network server. Our Western Digital Raptor hard drive had failed. It was unbootable and inaccessible.
We replaced it the following day with a bigger and slightly faster VelociRaptor.
At the same time, we decided to upgrade from Windows XP (Media Center) to Vista Ultimate. As… Read the rest
