So remember when, in that Jane the Actuary sort of way, I spent an inordinate amount of time reading and summarizing and commenting upon Tough Choices and later the whole story of Fiorina getting fired, from multiple perspectives, including The Big Lie? Well, on Friday, the AEI had a piece on Fiorina, “What 50 HP execs said about Carly Fiorina — and what that says about the kind of POTUS she might be,” which pretty much confirms what I had figured... Read more
So this popped up in my facebook feed today: Yes, it’s a fake quote (here’s Snopes, though you hardly need Snopes to recognize that the Pope wouldn’t have said this), and Shriver seems to have figured this out, because it’s no longer on her page. Should I just laugh it off? “What fools!” Only if it’s funny, rather than worrisome, that people believe this — and two separate people, from two separate social circles, one Catholic and the other nonreligious,... Read more
Wow. I just finished watching Still Alice, and I still feel weepy, and I should get turn in for the night, especially since I checked it out from the library over a week ago, but didn’t have the chance to watch it earlier, so I had to watch it tonight after getting back from the “middle school band night” football game (we left after halftime), in order to return it tomorrow morning before the library opens up and the grace... Read more
I mean that in the sense of “by profession” not whether you more generically plan your finances, in an ant v. grasshopper sort of way. If you are (or if you’re a retired financial planner — Danno?), I have some questions for you. I’ve read plenty about how people should plan their finances when they retire, to maximize their living standard while simultaneously ensuring with an appropriate degree of probability that they don’t outlive their finances. But, in your experience,... Read more
I admit — this feels like homework. Not in the sense that I feel obliged to write about the Pope, as a Patheos blogger, because I have gotten myself trapped in blogging, it’s not fun anymore, whine, whine, whine. Not really. More in the sense that feel obliged, not as a blogger, but as a Catholic, to read the speech, after having seen a steady stream of opinion on it on facebook and twitter. What was the speech about? Here... Read more
OK, one might say, “Timothy Snyder gets it wrong on the Holocaust” but no one knows who Snyder is, and it was, in the end, Slate that chose to publish this article, “History’s True Warning; How our misunderstanding of the Holocaust offers moral cover for the geopolitical disasters of our time.” The article, by a professor of history at Yale, makes the claim that the “statelessness” of Eastern Europe was what caused, or at least enabled, the Holocaust. He starts with... Read more
Eh. I dunno. I’m just not all that excited about it. I don’t want to be a George Will-type or the others that pass through my twitter feed saying that the Pope is a Peronist and if he had his way, the entire world would have as cruddy an economy as Peron brought Argentina. I think that read in a favorable light, the Pope is simply pointing out the other half of the story: it is true that greed, a.k.a.,... Read more
Update on Ahmed Mohamed: The other day I discussed reports that his “invention” was just a disassembled and re-assembled 80s digital clock. Now there’s some “new news.” This article from the National Review reports that Mark Cuban, basketball team owner, relayed to Bill Maher his experience of talking to the boy on the phone: Cuban was impressed with the ‘science geek’ and ‘great kid’ in their discussion but noted an awkwardness to him. “I talked to the kid,” Cuban said. “He’s from... Read more
The news is all over. Shock, horror at what Volkswagen has done. Europeans are getting into the act, too, as Reuters reports that A European Union-level inquiry is needed into the emissions-cheating scandal at German carmaker Volkswagen AG and the probe should be extended to French carmakers too, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said on Tuesday. and CNBC reports that in Germany There have even been calls for a special debate in the national parliament over the issue. The German... Read more
Back a year ago, I wrote a little piece I titled “Campus Sexual Assault: I’ll believe it’s a crisis when. . .” , in which I said, of the “1 if 5” study of the day: Glen Reynolds likes to say of global warming activists who jet to exotic locales (in private jets, to boot) and have enormous mansions, “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when they act like it’s a crisis.” This statistic says that, assuming a 4-year college career... Read more
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