It took the Regular Son to Summerfest last night to hear Bruce Springsteen's drummer, Max Weinberg, and his band. It was great.... fantastic musicians playing classic 1960s and 1970s R&B songs. The main singer was Bill Champlin of Chicago, but the hit of the show was Mindy Abair, a jazz saxaphonist, who is tall and blonde and, well, you get the picture. The only downside was the sparse crowd, probably under 500 people... good music and great musicians apparently aren't enough... if you're not the latest hip thing, or else a big name, you can't draw, I guess. But it was a really fun show, and the Regular Son liked it, so that's all that matters.
Here is Mindy Abair from 2008 with a different group, but it gives you the flavor of what we saw last night.
Time Horizons
We worry about tomorrow's tasks. We worry about our children completing this year's grade, or doing well in this sport's season. We imagine our lives only so far forward; perhaps next year; perhaps only until the end of summer. Perhaps, if of a political bent, we think about the 2012 elections, and imagine that event to be the be-all-and-end-all. Perhaps we think of our "careers," a span of a few decades.
Pope Benedict XVI has a different time horizon: eternity. Today was his 60th anniversary as a priest, and his homily captures the scale and stakes of what he worries about and focuses on (and what we should worry about and focus on):
I know that forgiveness comes at a price: In his Passion [Jesus] went deep down into the sordid darkness of our sins. He went down into the night of our guilt, for only thus can it be transformed. And by giving me authority to forgive sins, he lets me look down into the abyss of man, into the immensity of his suffering for us men, and this enables me to sense the immensity of his love. He confides in me: “No longer servants, but friends.” He entrusts to me the words of consecration in the Eucharist. He trusts me to proclaim his word, to explain it aright, and to bring it to the people of today. He entrusts himself to me. “You are no longer servants, but friends”: These words bring great inner joy, but at the same time, they are so awe-inspiring that one can feel daunted as the decades go by amid so many experiences of one’s own frailty and his inexhaustible goodness.It's like suddenly looking through a telescope and seeing the universe, after focusing your eyes for too long on the motes of dust in front of your face, kicked up by your own meanderings in the desert.
Girls of the Day - Dexter Version
It's only three months until the season premiere of our favorite show, Dexter. So it's an opportune time to recap the main "love interests" for Dexter Morgan's serial killer character. In season one, he met his soon-to-be wife, "Rita," played by the lovely Julie Benz:
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In the second season, Dexter was "stepping out" on Rita with a warped (but luscious) British femme fatale, "Lila," played by Jaime Murray:
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Finally, in season five, Dexter met a girl who might have been his soulmate, a survivor from an attack by another serial killer, a girl called "Lumen," played by Julia Stiles:
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Apparently for season six they've added Molly Parker from Deadwood, which should make things interesting again.
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In the second season, Dexter was "stepping out" on Rita with a warped (but luscious) British femme fatale, "Lila," played by Jaime Murray:
Finally, in season five, Dexter met a girl who might have been his soulmate, a survivor from an attack by another serial killer, a girl called "Lumen," played by Julia Stiles:
Apparently for season six they've added Molly Parker from Deadwood, which should make things interesting again.
Birthday Today
The only birthday of note today is Frank Loesser, the composer and lyricist for one of my favorite Broadway musicals, Guys and Dolls. Here is the opening number for the musical (I am a connoisseur of openings to musicals), and I don't know that there's been a better or more distinctive curtain raiser:
John Higgins (best snooker player)
John Higgins
John Higgins MBE (born 18 May 1975 in Wishaw, North Lanarkshire) is a Scottish professional snooker player and the reigning World Champion. With four world titles in all (1998, 2007, 2009, 2011) he is fourth overall in the modern era, behind Stephen Hendry (7), Steve Davis (6) and Ray Reardon (6). To date, he has won a total of 24 ranking titles and compiled over 400 competitive century breaks, including five maximum 147 breaks. Since the 1996/1997 season he has never dropped below 6th in the world rankings.
John Higgins MBE (born 18 May 1975 in Wishaw, North Lanarkshire) is a Scottish professional snooker player and the reigning World Champion. With four world titles in all (1998, 2007, 2009, 2011) he is fourth overall in the modern era, behind Stephen Hendry (7), Steve Davis (6) and Ray Reardon (6). To date, he has won a total of 24 ranking titles and compiled over 400 competitive century breaks, including five maximum 147 breaks. Since the 1996/1997 season he has never dropped below 6th in the world rankings.
best snooker player
best snooker player
best snooker player
best snooker player
best snooker player
best snooker player
An Obvious Correlation
The obvious correlation between economic freedom and per capita income, personal happiness, life expectancy, and other measures of the "good life," is captured in this nice video from the Charles Koch Foundation:
Not as funny though as the Keynes v. Hayek rap contest:
Not as funny though as the Keynes v. Hayek rap contest:
First... Do No Harm
The Hippocratic oath doctors take includes the proscription, "first, do no harm." The idea is that, if you don't know what to do, doing nothing may be the best course. That's a hard lesson to learn for anyone, but it seems especially hard to do in the nexus between politics and economics. Whenever there's an economic downturn, the public clamors for politicians to "do something." And politicians inevitably do "do something," and the somethings they do often make matters worse. The most recent example is obvious: Barack Obama's failed stimulus, a trillion-dollar "something" that made the American economy worse, not better.
On the topic of "doing nothing" as a strategy, here is another interesting article about what Warren Harding did (or, rather, didn't do) in the early 1920s to avoid a deep recession/depression, written from the perspective of Austrian economics. (It's from the Ludwig von Mises Institute website.) The recipe (so hard for current politicians) was largely to do nothing and let the market cycle work itself out, with government providing only a stable backdrop of consistent policies.
On the topic of "doing nothing" as a strategy, here is another interesting article about what Warren Harding did (or, rather, didn't do) in the early 1920s to avoid a deep recession/depression, written from the perspective of Austrian economics. (It's from the Ludwig von Mises Institute website.) The recipe (so hard for current politicians) was largely to do nothing and let the market cycle work itself out, with government providing only a stable backdrop of consistent policies.
If the Austrian view is correct — and I believe the theoretical and empirical evidence strongly indicates that it is — then the best approach to recovery would be close to the opposite of these Keynesian strategies. The government budget should be cut, not increased, thereby releasing resources that private actors can use to realign the capital structure.
The money supply should not be increased. Bailouts merely freeze entrepreneurial error in place, instead of allowing the redistribution of resources into the hands of parties better able to provide for consumer demands in light of entrepreneurs' new understanding of real conditions. Emergency lending to troubled firms perpetuates the misallocation of resources and extends favoritism to firms engaged in unsustainable activities at the expense of sound firms prepared to put those resources to more appropriate uses.
This recipe of government austerity is precisely what Harding called for in his 1921 inaugural address.
Financial Armageddon Grows Ever Closer
Like one of those movies where a comet is approaching the earth and will destroy all life on the planet unless some intrepid heroes from central casting find a way to destroy it first. Here's an alarming article about Social Security's finances. The takeaways:
- Since last year, the present value of Social Security’s long-term funding gap widened by $1.1 trillion. In one year.
- Last year, the trustees reported that Social Security would be unable to pay all of its promised benefits beginning in 2037; now the expected default year is 2036.
- The year in which Social Security is projected to start running in the red—that is, the year in which it will start adding permanently to the budget deficit—advanced from four years in the future to one year in the past.
Washington is struggling to make a deal that will couple an increase in the debt ceiling with a long-term reduction in spending. There is no reason for the players to make their task seem even more Herculean than it already is. But we should be prepared for upward revisions in official deficit projections in the years ahead—even if a deal is struck. There are at least three major reasons for concern.
First, a normalization of interest rates would upend any budgetary deal if and when one should occur. At present, the average cost of Treasury borrowing is 2.5%. The average over the last two decades was 5.7%. Should we ramp up to the higher number, annual interest expenses would be roughly $420 billion higher in 2014 and $700 billion higher in 2020....
The perfect storm, which could actually happen, is a combination of interest rates going up to more normal historical levels, anemic growth in the economy, and a brand new entitlement program about which no one knows what to expect, turning out (surprise!) to cost a lot more than the Washington bureaucrats told us it would cost. The first one is undoubtedly going to happen at some point, and we need to prepare for it. The second two can be avoided if we elect a Republican Congress and President and repeal Obamacare and, at the same time, lower taxes on individuals and businesses. Then you might have a chance to get businesses hiring again.
The second reason for concern is that official growth forecasts are much higher than what the academic consensus believes we should expect after a financial crisis. That consensus holds that economies tend to return to trend growth of about 2.5%, without ever recapturing what was lost in the downturn.
Third, it is increasingly clear that the long-run cost estimates of ObamaCare were well short of the mark because of the incentive that employers will have under that plan to end private coverage and put employees on the public system. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has already issued 1,400 waivers from the act's regulations for employers as large as McDonald's to stop them from dumping their employees' coverage....
Underestimating the long-term budget situation is an old game in Washington. But never have the numbers been this large.
Fifa Women World Cup 2011 in Pictures
Fifa Women World Cup 2011 in Pictures
Marta, forward (Brazil)
Birgit Prinz, striker (Germany)
Homare Sawa, midfielder (Japan)
Kelly Smith, striker (England)
Hope Solo, goalkeeper (US)
Christine Sinclair, striker (Canada)
Lotta Schelin, striker (Sweden)
Faye White, defender (England)
Yorely Rincon, midfielder (Colombia)
Linda Bresonik, defender or midfielder (Germany)
Wegmans LPGA 2011 Pictures
Wegmans LPGA 2011 Pictures
Cindy LaCrosse
Morgan Pressel
Minea Blomqvist
Angela Stanford
Yani Tseng
Hee Young Park
Paula Creamer
The French Open Nice Pictures 2011
The French Open Nice Pictures 2011
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
The French Open Nice Picture
Rugby Junior World Championship Final New Zealand 2011
Rugby Junior World Championship Final New Zealand 2011
The New Zealand team celebrate at the end of the Rugby Junior World Championship final match against England in Padova, Italy, Sunday, June 26, 2011.
The New Zealand team celebrate at the end of the Rugby Junior World Championship final match against England in Padova, Italy, Sunday, June 26, 2011.
Girl of the Day - Maria Sharapova
UPDATE: Sharapova made it to the semifinals today with an easy 6-1, 6-1 victory over Dominika Cibulkova from Slovakia. The question arises... why are so many of the top women tennis players from Eastern Europe? If it wasn't for Serena and Venus Williams, American tennis would be a wasteland. The men's side is no better... Andy Roddick at 30 is still the highest ranked American at #10 in the world. Where are the young American superstars that will bring tennis back in America? Not playing tennis, that's for sure.
***
Maria Sharapova has made it through to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Care to wager on how much the TV networks want her to make it all the way to the final? I can see why.
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Maria Sharapova has made it through to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Care to wager on how much the TV networks want her to make it all the way to the final? I can see why.
Girl of the Day - Anna Gunn
I had Anna Gunn as the girl of the day when my backyard neighbor and I were watching Deadwood. Now we're watching Breaking Bad, and she's great as the beleaguered wife of the chemistry teacher turned meth amphetamine manufacturer:
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Gay Marriage in New York, Chokeholds in Madison - The Connection
Here are two stories that don't seem to have that much to do with each other at first glance, but actually are the same story.
First, as everyone knows, the New York legislature voted late last week to legalize gay marriage within New York state. Now, I don't spend much time worrying about gay marriage. Although essentially a Catholic, and, at the very least, a person who subscribes to Catholic doctrine on sexuality and the family, I just can't get too excited one way or the other about the issue. The gay men and women whom I've known and been friends with have always treated me well and I hope I've always treated them well. I don't really like the notion that two dudes shacking up is somehow legally equivalent to my wife and I raising our three children, and I think that it's a sign of decadence in our society to pretend that they are, but then there are so many signs of decadence in our society right now, particularly with regard to marriage (the divorce rate, to name the most obvious) that singling out gay marriage as too peculiarly decadent and dangerous for the American family strikes me as a kind of scapegoating. If we could repeal no-fault divorce and make divorces much much harder to get as a parallel enactment to gay marriage, I might sign up. My point: families aren't disintegrating because of gay dudes wanting to wear white one day in their lives; they're disintegrating because straight men and women aren't taking the sacrament of marriage seriously enough.
What does bother me, though, is the fact that this was jammed through the legislature with a lot of lobbying and campaign money changing hands at the last minute. What bothers me is that, if the idea of gay marriage were put to the people of New York for a vote, I doubt very much that it would pass. After all, it hasn't passed anywhere else in America, including California, which is at least as gay-friendly and liberal as New York. So, once again, this is a case of a political elite executing a cram-down of their own values on the people, who have different values. Once again, they know best.
Here's the second story, and it's a doozy. As everyone knows, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Scott Walker's budget-repair/collective bargaining bill in a 4-3 vote, with the four conservatives (including newly-reelected David Prosser) out-voting the three liberals. Apparently a meeting among the justices about the vote turned contentious, and either Prosser without provocation choked a woman justice, Ann Walsh Bradley; or else Ms. Bradley rushed at Prosser with her fists flying, and Prosser, in defending himself, somehow touched her neck. I know which one I believe, but that's not the point.
The connection between the two stories? Maybe it's a stretch, but don't these two stories both suggest that the political class (and party affiliation notwithstanding) behaves in ways that are just alien to how the rest of "Regular Guy" America thinks and acts? To Regular Guy America, marriage is pretty simply defined... it's exactly what your grandmother and grandfather thought it was, which is two young people, a man and a woman, standing up in front of their families and their God, and pledging that they will be true to one another "til death do us part," and meaning it. And in Regular Guy workplaces, we don't get angry and run at each other with fists flying, or choke each other. What were they thinking?
First, as everyone knows, the New York legislature voted late last week to legalize gay marriage within New York state. Now, I don't spend much time worrying about gay marriage. Although essentially a Catholic, and, at the very least, a person who subscribes to Catholic doctrine on sexuality and the family, I just can't get too excited one way or the other about the issue. The gay men and women whom I've known and been friends with have always treated me well and I hope I've always treated them well. I don't really like the notion that two dudes shacking up is somehow legally equivalent to my wife and I raising our three children, and I think that it's a sign of decadence in our society to pretend that they are, but then there are so many signs of decadence in our society right now, particularly with regard to marriage (the divorce rate, to name the most obvious) that singling out gay marriage as too peculiarly decadent and dangerous for the American family strikes me as a kind of scapegoating. If we could repeal no-fault divorce and make divorces much much harder to get as a parallel enactment to gay marriage, I might sign up. My point: families aren't disintegrating because of gay dudes wanting to wear white one day in their lives; they're disintegrating because straight men and women aren't taking the sacrament of marriage seriously enough.
What does bother me, though, is the fact that this was jammed through the legislature with a lot of lobbying and campaign money changing hands at the last minute. What bothers me is that, if the idea of gay marriage were put to the people of New York for a vote, I doubt very much that it would pass. After all, it hasn't passed anywhere else in America, including California, which is at least as gay-friendly and liberal as New York. So, once again, this is a case of a political elite executing a cram-down of their own values on the people, who have different values. Once again, they know best.
Here's the second story, and it's a doozy. As everyone knows, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Scott Walker's budget-repair/collective bargaining bill in a 4-3 vote, with the four conservatives (including newly-reelected David Prosser) out-voting the three liberals. Apparently a meeting among the justices about the vote turned contentious, and either Prosser without provocation choked a woman justice, Ann Walsh Bradley; or else Ms. Bradley rushed at Prosser with her fists flying, and Prosser, in defending himself, somehow touched her neck. I know which one I believe, but that's not the point.
The connection between the two stories? Maybe it's a stretch, but don't these two stories both suggest that the political class (and party affiliation notwithstanding) behaves in ways that are just alien to how the rest of "Regular Guy" America thinks and acts? To Regular Guy America, marriage is pretty simply defined... it's exactly what your grandmother and grandfather thought it was, which is two young people, a man and a woman, standing up in front of their families and their God, and pledging that they will be true to one another "til death do us part," and meaning it. And in Regular Guy workplaces, we don't get angry and run at each other with fists flying, or choke each other. What were they thinking?
Trampoline, or How I Became Uninsurable
Sorry for the lack of blogging. I spent much of the weekend setting up a trampoline that my youngest girl wheedled me into buying. Let me just say (a) stretching 90 springs is a surefire way to have really sore hands; (b) there may be a great writer out there who writes crystal clear, you-can't-screw-this-up written directions for putting together play equipment; however, I've never run into him or her.... everytime I put something together, I just factor in the "oh, fuck me" moment when I have to take it apart and start over again because Step M37 really would have been better if you'd done it before Step C13, not two hours later; and (c) it will be a miracle if my neighbor doesn't end up suing me when his third grader plummets off the thing onto his head.
I don't know how I'll break the news to my insurance agent.
I don't know how I'll break the news to my insurance agent.
Sony Ericsson Open 2011 - Tennis
Sony Ericsson Open 2011 - Tennis
The 2011 Sony Ericsson Open (also known as 2011 Miami Masters), a men's and women's tennis tournament, was held from March 21 to April 3, 2011. It was the 27th edition of the Miami Masters event and played on outdoor hard courts at the Tennis Center at Crandon Park in Miami. The tournament was a part of 2011 ATP World Tour and 2011 WTA Tour, classified as ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and Premier Mandatory event respectively.
The 2011 Sony Ericsson Open (also known as 2011 Miami Masters), a men's and women's tennis tournament, was held from March 21 to April 3, 2011. It was the 27th edition of the Miami Masters event and played on outdoor hard courts at the Tennis Center at Crandon Park in Miami. The tournament was a part of 2011 ATP World Tour and 2011 WTA Tour, classified as ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and Premier Mandatory event respectively.
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