Music allegedly has a virtuoso glut. Talent outpaces opportunity. This has always been the case, though. It’s just that in the past, people grasped it more quickly and moved on. Now, though, anyone can produce their own CD and dream the impossible dream, so the dreams are kept alive and the appearance is given that talent is increasing. Also, the standards against what we call “talent” may be decreasing.
Debtors prisons in 2011.
Stop the presses: Being tall is sexy. For men, anyway.
Should people be giving aid to India when India is giving aid to others? Trickle-down economics, of a sort.
Like him or not, I was impressed about Warren Jeffs’s ability to fast himself into a coma. Then it turned out not to be true. So I guess I’m not impressed after all.
How well-intentioned Medicare price controls are causing a shortage. McArdle wrote on this a while back.
How To Break Your Daily Caffeine Habit And Use Coffee Strategically.
Political prognosticator Allan Lichtman says that an Obama re-election is imminent. His 7-for-the-last-7 streak sounds impressive, until you realize that five of them weren’t close, one of them involved a winner whose actual victory was somewhat dubious, and if he guessed in the 1980 election he got it wrong. Oh, and the Weekly World News Alien’s streak goes back to 1980.
Is Germany stalling? I have been impressed with the German model for a while now, but it’s always problematic to credit policies and models and suggest that they would work elsewhere if given the chance, whether Germany, Ireland, or Texas.
The President of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, has banned cell phones at cabinet meetings. Why, he’s no better than Zelaya! Except that he’s following the constitution and will almost certainly step down without incident when his term expires…
New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson was excluded from the GOP debates due to his low standing in the polls. Now that he’s beating Huntsman and Santorum in the polls (within the margin of error, of course)… they’re still being included and he’s not.
About the Author
10 Responses to Linkluster Achtundfünfzig
Leave a Reply
please enter your email address on this page.
I predict an Obama re-election despite garnering only ~30% of the white vote. Turbulent times ahead.
Santorum and Huntsman (mostly Santorum) are willing to take the sort of cheap-shots that rile up the Republican base and easily fold back into the party.
Johnson isn’t.
Therefore, the TeaParty-infested leadership of the Republicans right now isn’t interested in Johnson, especially since a lot of what he says is already echoed by one of the other candidates.
Talent outpaces opportunity
I would say this is true for most industries in modern America.
Being tall is sexy
For a man, being tall with a good head of hair is to be more than half way home, unless you are literally retarded. Or fat.
How … price controls are causing a shortage.
In other words, what the dumbest community college student learns during the first day of ECON 101. Well, the second day, since the first day is for handing out the syllabus.
Web, I think it’s more of a media thing than anything else. Interestingly enough, Fox News has been supportive of Johnson. Johnson and Hannity debated the drug legalization issue. But apparently Huntsman’s media savvy counts for more than the poll numbers that they said they were going to be using.
RE: debtor’s prisons – I’m a lawyer who does collections work. I’m about to ask a judge to imprison a debtor, not because she hasn’t paid her debt, but for violating a court order. The way this particular case has played out is, I suspect, typical. We file suit and serve the debtor with process. Debtor ignores the suit, thinking it will go away, and doesn’t file an answer. We move for entry of default judgment and serve a copy of the motion by regular and certified mail. Debtor continues to ignore the suit. Court enters a default judgment, which we send to debtor, again by regular and certified mail. Debtor continues to ignore the suit. We send post-judgment discovery to identify assets that we can garnish or execute against. Debtor ignores. We ask the court to compel the debtor to respond, again serving a copy of the motion on the debtor by regular and certified mail. Debtor ignores. The court orders debtor to respond. We send a copy of that order to the debtor by regular and certified mail. Debtor ignores. We set a show cause hearing for the court to determine whether debtor should be held in contempt and formally serve the show cause order and notice of hearing on the debtor. Debtor ignores. When the debtor doesn’t show at the hearing, we request a writ of attachment, which directs the sheriff/constable/bailiff to take the debtor into custody for the purpose of bringing before the court. Debtor appears before the judge and says, “I didn’t know what was happening.” While I’m sympathetic to people not understanding the intricacies of the legal system, it’s not hard to pick up the phone and call the attorney who’s suing you. But they never do. I’m curious as to how many debtors imprisoned never got notice and how many got notice and just ignored it. I’d bet dollars to dimes that a substantial portion fall into the latter category.
Re: Caffeine – When my oldest daughter was a baby, she never slept. And by never slept, I mean she’d sleep for an hour or so and then wake up and scream for twenty minutes. The wife and I were exhausted. During that time, I developed an appreciation for caffeine and how it’s best used. The mistake most people make is to drink lots of caffeine in the morning. Bad idea. One cup is all you need to get going, if that. After your body wakes up, it’s naturally alert. What people ought to do is drink very little coffee in the morning and save it for 2:30 in the afternoon. The human body has a natural lull mid-afternoon. A cup of coffee then will do wonders, IF you haven’t drank several cups in the morning. If you drink several cups in the morning, then you crash mid-afternoon, which is when your body has a natural lull anyway.
Kevin,
According to the article, notification is a big part of it. As is debtor ignorance. The whole thing actually reminds me a lot of the articles I’ve read about paternity claims.
Re: debtor’s prison. It’s hard to believe that the article could be written without reference to family courts and child support. Or . . . not so hard, just infuriating.
Kevin’s account was eye-opening. But I’m still a lot more comfortable with seizing assets than I am with debtor’s prison.
When I saw the title, I thought it was about child support. It’s interesting that many of the same rules on child support are also being used elsewhere.
Heh. Yeah, I don’t think you could do the German thing here. They’ll cut everyone’s pay and hours 25% to avoid laying people off, and people will stay with the company.
What I always thought was disgusting was the eagerness by CEOs to show how great they are at cutting costs by laying people off. I hate to be unpatriotic, but I HATE American capitalism like poison. I don’t know why we got the cruelest version of the free market in the developed world, but I wish I could do something about it, and I know I can’t.
I always find it so bizarre when conservatives and libertarians argue that the “only” job a company has is to protect its bottom line. Capitalism simply doesn’t work with that mentality. That’s not to say that profits aren’t important, but if they make congress pass a law for every unscrupulous thing that they do, they can’t operate. If they don’t do the right thing because it’s the right thing, they ought to at least do it because they want to avoid ever-more laws telling them what they have to do.