Mike Lukovich is the finest political cartoonist working today. I can’t stop laughing.Today’s effort by Glenn McCoy was not so bad, either. 
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Bad Hollywood Script or Texas Politics?
Under Pressure, Prosecutor in Texas Won’t Run Again | New York Times
The following quote from the beleaguered Texas prosecutor proves that Texas politics has earned every bit of mockery that it has received.Â
Mr. Rosenthal has sought to keep the e-mail messages sealed, citing “zones of privacy†carved out by the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 ruling overturning the state’s ban on sodomy — although Mr. Rosenthal had argued the case for Texas and the legality of the anti-sodomy laws.
Toyota vs GM: Round 2
Toyota announces plan to sell 9.85M vehicles in 2008 | USATODAY.com
Toyota’s public announcement of its plans to go for General Motors’ jugular is bold. Even though it is a safe bet according to consensus, the announcement runs counter to the typically conservative Japanese way of conducting business. Â Whatever the outcome, the two facts in this story that ought to raise people’s eyebrows are
- the battleground between GM and Toyota is not the United States or Europe. The war is being waged in developing economies.
- the Corolla is considered a sub-compact vehicle in the US?
The former proposition follows from the economic woes that have received ample documentation in business pages all over the world. The latter is surprising because it was Toyota models like the Tercel, Echo and Yaris that were traditionally considered the subcompact models. The Corolla was always the compact model. Does mean that the SUV effect has been so dramatic that monstrosities like the Camry are now considered “compact” vehicles? So, the Yaris is a micro-compact? Or could it be that USA Today’s writers are still conspicuously error-prone?
World Clock & Mortal Statistics
World ClockÂ
What is the perfect accompaniment to a beautifully rendered world clock you may ask? Why, all the statistics about death that you could ever want or desire.
The Economics of Health Care
I Am Not a Health Reform | New York Times
The most bizarre aspect of the current American “debate” on health care reform is the fact that the only people who talk about the economics of health care are the “liberals”. In this opinion piece, two Harvard researchers emphasize the horrific waste that characterizes the current system.
With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic presidential hopefuls sidestep an inconvenient truth: only a single-payer system of national health care can save what we estimate is the $350 billion wasted annually on medical bureaucracy and redirect those funds to expanded coverage. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama tout cost savings through computerization and improved care management, but Congressional Budget Office studies have found no evidence for these claims.
The Congressional Budget Office‘s studies and projections over the past 20 years or so have been remarkably accurate. The reasons why “conservatives” who are ostensibly pro-business oppose realistic health care reform that is guaranteed to save ungodly sums of money and even rescue companies like General Motors elude me utterly. Why is Kucinich the pro-business candidate?
Model Spam
Moran Atias | Moran Atias Nude
One of the blogs that I maintain has been inundated with Spam from the site above. According to the site, this woman is a “Palestinian model” and television presenter. I have no idea what either means. I am struck with a tinge of pity, however, that there are models who feel as if they need to resort to spamming in order to achieve the sort of groundswell from the internet underground that lifted Cindy Margolis and several other models whose names are not worth seeking or remembering.Â
Alas, even the title of the site is misleading. She’s not nude. Was this out of respect to her Muslim heritage? Is she a traditional Palestinian Christian? Would she reject an Israeli agent or photographer?
Ah, useless questions that hound us in the primordial soup.Â
For inexplicable reasons, I did more research. Her Wikipedia entry and her official site (Italian) imply that she is Jewish of Moroccon descent. Her portfolio includes little work that would be recognized in the US. So, these damned spam bots are working overtime on any site that happens to mention Italy.
Is this fortunate or unfortunate for her? Â
Another Useless Car Chase
2 Florida Deputies Killed in Car Chase | New York Times
Statistics on car chases are unequivocal: they cause far more havoc and damage than serve justice. In fact, they don’t serve justice at all. Suspects, who are clearly not bright people, are easily traced through records and apprehended at home. It will be interesting to see how this remarkable tragedy will affect policy.
One wonders why American policy is invariably born of tragedy at all. Â
Upgrade to a Slow Computer
Windows XP Significantly Outperforms Vista, Tests Show | Windows | InformationWeek
Wow. This is truly unbelievable. Information Week conducted tests to show that Windows XP outperforms Vista–Microsoft’s upgrade to XP–in every category, even if the computer is equipped with all of the latest hardware. This is the greatest testimony to Microsoft’s monopoly power. The company is forcing computer makers like Dell and HP to sell an inferior product. Instead of suffering losses, it is recording higher profits, to boot!Â
My upgrade to Leopard was not totally smooth, but now that I have worked out all the kinks, it’s truly phenomenal. This thing rocks. I think I will stay with Apple a little while longer. They actually deliver something for the price they charge.
Addicted to Apple Macintosh
Yes, I knew I was addicted to my mac, but thanks to a web site, I now have a quantitative measure of this addiction.
Crime and the Punishment of Municipalities
Detroit declared most dangerous US city | Yahoo! News
The American obsession with rankings and the “competition” that rankings are believed to spur is so fervent, so strong and so overwhelming that any ranking–no matter how unscientific, how thoroughly biased or how flawed–is bound to get press. The college football and basketball rankings, the US News & World Report’s annual college rankings, hospital rankings, etc., etc., etc. So many rankings exist that they have obscured the more important question of whether all universities, hospitals or whatever are competent at all. After all, overall competence and excellence is the goal of standards, not individual competence or excellence. Who cares if you have 50 good universities (or even 200), if 1000 universities are lousy? A thousand competent hospitals do much more for public health than five stellar ones.
The 14th annual  City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America published by Congressional Quarterly threatens to be the most irresponsible of such rankings primarily because it is published by a trusted source. When a report on crime is anticipated by such criticism from the highest sources on criminology, the reasons why anyone gives it press become baffling. The criticism included in the above article include:
The study drew harsh criticism even before it came out. The American Society of Criminology launched a pre-emptive strike Friday, issuing a statement attacking it as “an irresponsible misuse” of crime data. Â
…
Critics also complain that numbers don’t tell the whole story because of differences among cities.
“You’re not comparing apples and oranges; you’re comparing watermelons and grapes,” said Rob Casey, who heads the FBI section that puts out the Uniform Crime Report that provides the data for the Quitno report.The FBI posted a statement on its Web site criticizing such use of its statistics.”These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region,” the FBI said. “Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents.”
But, most appalling is the CQ Press’s own insistence and admission that the study is worthless:
 CQ Press spokesman Ben Krasney said details of the weighting system were proprietary.   Â
Thus, the publisher asserts that it is propounding a hypothesis–their statistical model–that they refuse to have tested independently. This runs contrary to all scientific principles of inquiry. In all sciences–including social sciences like sociology–openness is the most essential ingredient. Without it, hypotheses cannot be tested independently in order to be verified. Without independent verification, there is no truth. By making the hypothesis proprietary, CQ Press is disallowing scrutiny and forbidding independent verification. Thus, CQ Press propagates an untested notion, a falsehood. In effect, it is acting as a propagandist.Â
Hopefully other silly rankings will soon be discredited by similar confession of inadequacy by their publishers.Â