Boulder is a Stoopid Place

in Europe has reached the level of the US in 1985, so says the Financial Methods blog.

I particularly like the closing sentence…

Socialist policies, such as enormous regulation and stifling taxation, are likely the underlying causes.

Marilyn Gardner, writing in the Christian Science Monitor has a much more practical idea about how to save energy and supposedly help combat global warming. Long live the clothesline.

Dell is not my favorite computer company. However, they are offering Windows XP again, that’s almost enough to make me change my mind. I hope other companies do the same.

Another irritating factor in buying a new PC is all the junk software that comes with it. After more than two years, I still get occasional pop-ups for Spyware software on my HP computer.

well you know.

The Food and Drug Administration says vitamins, supplements, herbs and other natural substances, including water when it is used to “treat” dehydration, should be classified as drugs, and opponents have only until April 30 to express their concern about the proposals under Docket No. 2006D-0480.

Read more here.

“I really thought the two ladies I interviewed with six years ago were just yanking my chain,” says Cynthia Burr, who manages Charan’s hideous schedule. “I said, ‘Where does he keep his stuff? Everybody has stuff.’ It’s really hard to wrap your arms around something like that, but it’s true.”

The strange existence of Ram Charan

Student Government Asks Reporters to Leave by Monday

Will the press obey?

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (AP) – Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that if she is elected president, she would make her husband a roaming ambassador to the world, using his skills to repair the nation’s tattered image abroad.

Read the rest.

Glenn Reynolds tells you why here.

In the interest of fair play, you can read Alec’s response here. Sounds like he took some maturity pills or something. I’m sure Don Imus would like to “eat some of his words” too.

Here’s the message he left for his 11 year old daughter Ireland. Alec Baldwin is an a$$.

http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_audio/0419_baldwin.mp3

Preventing, or highly regulating Internet access in the workplace apparently is NOT a good recruiting tool.

When I graduated from college years ago I didn’t even consider IBM as a potential employer. White shirt, tie…. absolutely no way. I suspect that’s how the new generation of workers feels about severely regulated internet access.

From Instapundit on Republican’s and the Porkbusters project:

House Republican leaders promise that even if lobby reform stalls – as it has – they will do something to rein in earmarks when they return to Capitol Hill next month. The reason: There’s too much flak over lawmakers who are cashing in on earmarks – legally, as campaign contributions; illegally, as bribes. Even good projects look bad when they’re muscled into spending bills late in the process, anonymously, and with no competition, debate, or chance to delete them.

Read the whole thing.

I haven’t read the whole thing (I’m too tired) but I simply know better then to believe it. When it comes to controlling spending, the last 6 years have been an embarrassment for the Republican party. They just haven’t figured it out yet.

If the price of gold is related to increasing inflation, than inflation must be increasing. If it’s not, the price of gold is definitely increasing, at least as measured in US $’s.

Peter Schiff of Europacific Investments outlines how inflation measurements have been tampered with over time to reduce the CPI and PPI inflation readings.

The first step was convincing the markets that hedonic adjustments were okay. Next came the legitimization of substitution bias. Then the Fed convinced everybody to ignore monthly increases in food and energy. When that wasn’t enough, it got everybody to ignore yearly increases in food and energy. Finally, when even all these tricks were not enough to conceal the growth of inflation, the Fed finally played its trump card by telling the markets that inflation is the poor step-child of its much more import parent, GDP growth.

The global warming advocates are having to reload their ammunition for this years hurricane season. Now they are hoping the real hurricane season, that begins in August will show up. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Unlike the global warming advocates, I can’t predict the future.

This article on the falling SST (Sea Surface Temperatures) in the Atlantic reminds us that it pays to be humble when forecasting.

Forecasting the effects of climate change is a risky business. Predictions of another near-record hurricane season in 2006 might have seemed like a pretty good bet to those who have great faith in climate models and their understanding of global warming. But Mother Nature always seems to find a way to demonstrate to mankind that we don’t understand as much as we think we do, and that the effect of mankind on the climate system might well be buried in the ‘noise’ of natural variability.

The Power Line blog has a great post Joe. If you don’t know, and I didn’t, Joe Rosenthal took this famous picture (among others).

To bad it’s so easy to believe this comment from a Powerline reader…

As soon as I saw that picture I was reminded of the “posed picture” story that my family and I were told when we were on a guided tour in Washington, D.C. several years ago. When we visited the statue, the DC guide told us that, although the picture was famous, it was only a posed picture. She told us that the flag had already been raised before Rosenthal arrived on the scene, so he made them take it down and raise it up again in order to get the shot. I remember thinking it was such a shame that photographers did that kind of thing in order to elicit certain kinds of emotions from the viewers of the photograph.