Oh, the joys of blogging. For the past several days, I’d intended to write something up on corporate income tax.  The Chicago Tribune has had multiple articles lately on “inversion” — the process in which a U.S.-domiciled corporation acquires a foreign corporation and moves its headquarters to that foreign country, with lower corporate tax rates.  Walgreens, a local drugstore, is considering this move with its acquisition of Alliance Boots, a European drugstore chain headquartered in Switzerland, and recent articles have... Read more

Here’s a comment I made on a marginalrevolution.com post yesterday, about Israel’s actions in Gaza, in reply to a comment saying, in effect, that “even Egypt doesn’t want to take over Gaza because it’s so dysfunctional”: I’m increasingly inclined to think that that’s the only solution, at least so long as the military is effectively in control of Egypt, not the Muslim Brotherhood. Gaza is so dysfunctional that they need adult supervision (almost literally — they have such a high... Read more

I can’t believe Weird Al Yankovic is still around (maybe I’m not that old after all?) and cranking out music, in this case, a song for all grammar fiends. Read more

So I was thinking about “immigration reform.”  I’m sure I’ve griped about this before (and someday, when I finally manage to put labels on my posts, I’ll be able to pull up these prior posts), but consider the fact that immigration-expansionists have managed to control the vocabulary around the topic: First, newspapers decided that “illegal immigrant” was verboten, and took to using terms such as “undocumented” or “without proper papers” (which implies that it’s just a bureaucratic lapse or, a... Read more

So a couple months ago I revealed Jane’s Weight Loss Secrets (don’t snack, especially after dinner, and get up off your butt), and was quite pleased with myself for having lost 5 of the 10 pounds I had gained while telecommuting. And then we had a couple birthdays, with birthday cakes, and I started getting into the habit of after-dinner snacking again, and we started with the after-dinner or afternoon walks or bike rides into town for treats with the... Read more

(Originally posted July 11th, 2014) I popped over to The Atlantic just now to see what they had to offer and there it was: “The WHO Wants All Gay Men to Take HIV Prevention Medication.” This is insane. The medication in question is Truvada, a once-daily pill, initially used in HIV treatment and now proven effective in preventing new infections among at-risk men.  I had read about this a while back but discarded it, but this makes the debate over... Read more

Today there was an editorial in the Washington Post on immigration.  The editorial itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy, but the comments were:   nearly all against de facto or de jure open immigration. On Thursday, the New York Times published an opinion piece by the billionaire trio of Sheldon Adelson, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, calling for a large boost in H1-B and similar visas for prospective highly-skilled immigrants.  The comments were largely skeptical, believing that these men are motivated by... Read more

One year ago on Sunday Jane the Actuary opened its doors and I invited the world to witness my attempts at commentary on the news and to discuss it all with me. I’ve been thinking about how to mark the occasion. I have a draft post in which I tell my readers what I’ve learned, and haven’t learned, over the year, and how this project is going.  But it’s a lousy post, too full of navel-gazing and whining about wanting... Read more

I’ve started to poke around the Mother Jones site, for kicks, and landed on an old article, “The Spam Factory’s Dirty Secret.”  I’m not sure if it’s their usual practice to “recycle” older articles (this dates from 2011), but here it is, an extended description of Hormel’s actions:  “First, Hormel gutted the union. Then it sped up the line. And when the pig-brain machine made workers sick, they got canned.” Now, “getting canned” isn’t really the right statement. Hormel did... Read more