I had everything planned to get the laundry done on Sunday so that Clancy would start her week with a fresh batch of clothes to start from.

Things didn’t work out that way as the washer just upped and died. Well, it didn’t die. It went on strike is more likely, holding up a sign saying “I am not locked!” as it pickets the utility room. All of this being my clunky or clever way of saying that the problem seems to be relatively straightforward. It’s not properly locking, and without locking it won’t start a load.

Which meant that I got to spend Labor Day at the laundry mat. I have been to the laundromat a couple of times for heavy blankets. The one I go to is on the sketchy side of town, mostly because it’s the one that came up when I initially googled it, and now I’m familiar with it.

I had vaguely figured that the best time to go to the mat is in the morning. Most of the people most likely to use it don’t seem like the type to be early risers. This seems to be wrong, as each of three times it’s been busy when Ight the entire place was neat. For the most part. Her patience wore thin and for the second time she strung together the sentence “Want to go home.” Had it not been so busy, we would have been home by that point. She was a real trooper, given that it was hot and I was tyrannical about constantly telling her where she could not go.

Expecting that it would be as hot as it was, I actually wore shorts today and put Lain in the same. I almost never wear shorts. There’s a certain practicality to it when it’s 90 degrees out.

There was a guy there who (objectively!) thought Lain was beautiful and was very friendly to me throughout. He let me know when a device opened up. While we were outside, he came out to smoke a cigarette and we talked. Nice guy but… I very much got a Virulent Racist vibe from him. Race barely came up and he didn’t say anything that could be construed as such. He had some body art, but nothing that jumped out at me (no “88” much less a Swastika). And yet… something about him.

By the time we left, of course another kid right about her age came in. And they were immediately drawn to one another. It would have been great if they weren’t ships passing in the night. I guess still exhausted, Lain was still okay to leave her new friend. I explained that on Tuesday she would be starting preschool and she’d have more friends than she would know what to do with.

We were taught that getting married later in life is better for marital prospects. While this is true up to a point, it may have its limitations and there may be such a thing as waiting too long.

This post, about overdevelopment of low-cost housing, would be a lot more interesting if it told us where it is.

North Carolina farmers are buying grain from Brazil because moving it by water in the US is made unfeasible by the Jones Act.

Alan Moore, grand innovator of superhero fiction, has come to believe that they are a cultural catastophe.

Late last year, Shinzo Abe’s government was linked to some far-right hate groups (“Kill, kill Koreans”).

Laura Seay and Alex de Waal discuss how to help people victims of international violent conflicts.

I didn’t know anything about King Edward VIII other than the whole “Eddie the Quitter” thing. I definitely didn’t know about the Nazi thing.

Tanzania has lost 2/3 of its elephant population in the last four years.

Micro-apartments are making a splash in the midwest. I’ve done the “micro-apartment” thing, of sorts in small-town Deseret.

Trees will make you feel younger and wealthier.

I’m actually just a slight bit sympathetic to this spoiled young lady, if her story is accurate: her parents really should have taught her better.

Samuel Liu looks at the self-segregation of Silicon Valley between white and Asian students.

Buffalo may be making a comeback.

The West Is Best! And the South is cool, too.

The next couple of images are Ashley Madison-related, paying customers and amount paid per capita.

So, Colorado, what have you to say for yourself? (It looks like Alabama has comparatively few people spending a lot of money. Not sure what’s up with that.

Last week, Burt Likko showed off the flags under consideration for New Zealand:

Of the four, I rank #3 (bottom left) the best, followed by #2, then #1 and #4.

For those of you who do not know such things, here are the five rules of flags:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Use meaningful symbolism.
3. Use 2 or 3 basic colors.
4. No lettering or seals.
5. Be distinctive or be related. (Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections.)

Here are how the four score:
Flag #1 (top left): 5/5
Flag #2 (top right): 3/5, losing points for simplicity and being four colors.
Flag #3 (bottom left): 4/5, losing points for simplicity.
Flag #4 (bottom right): 5/5

So by pure vexillological standards, #1 and #4 are the best. Yet I prefer #3, followed by #2 and then #1 and #4.

To be honest, #4 has a weird almost fascist feel to it. I’m not sure why exactly. I’m also not sure about the black and white. But if you are going to have black and white, #1 one looks pretty cool. Even though the stars make it a little too complex, I still prefer the other two on account that they stand out. Even apart from the rules, I’m not a big fan of the four colors on #2. If you were to take the red out of the stars, though, I might prefer it to #3.

You can see New Zealand’s current flag to the right. Since it exists apart from the UK, other than the monarchy, it may seem odd that it has the Union Jack. I mean, Canada doesn’t ever since they got rid of the Red Ensign. However, it’s really not that unusual. Of course, among those that have kept the flag is Hawaii, which I can’t say I approve of.

I wonder what Australia would have done if the republican referendum a little over a decade ago had passed. As the Queen of England remains their queen, there is no pressing reason that it should be changed. But that applies to New Zealand as well.

Sweden’s tumble in the international education rankings has been blamed on school choice, but could at least some of it be immigration?

Nima Sanandaji argues that Scandinavia’s success as a social democracy is exaggerated, and it’s success was despite rather than because of its welfare state.

As oil prices tumble, drillers are finding ways to cut costs. The refrain, though, never changes.

From a consumer standpoint, I’m glad that they’re making breakthroughs in storage space… but memory is the bigger hold-up lately and given the industry trends towards streaming that’s likely to remain the case. On the other hand, presumably cheaper storage will allow for better cloud usage and the like, maybe?

Julia Belluz looks at the evidence we do and do not have surrounding ecigarettes, and the different approaches between the US and UK.

The “Gig Economy” thing may be more myth than fact, as there has been no increase in self-employment among Millenials.

Will Boisvert makes the case for California keeping its last nuclear plant.

Oh thank god.

The high cost of cheap pork.

One of the arguments that confounds me is “Who cares if the threshold of proof is low and the standards of evidence are stacked against you when the only consequence you face is getting kicked out of a college?” The logical next step, though, is that it not be just one college.

Amy Tuteur argues that obstetricians may have gone too far in trying to prevent elective early deliveries.

How can those left behind rebound?

Maybe the solution for Puerto Rico is to ditch the US and rejoin Spain.

I have been meaning to post about this since the trip to Alaska, but it slipped my mind.

I didn’t have very many preferences when it came to the wedding. It was mostly as Clancy wanted it because when she wants her wants more than I want my wants, she gets her wants. She wanted to have it in Genesis, preferred that it be done by a judge. Fortunately, the things I did want were things she wanted just about as much. I wanted a crawfish boil involved, as did she. We both wanted Ben Folds’ The Luckiest played, and so it was.

One of the things I did want, though, involved the readings during the service. Specifically, I did not want the Corinthians passage played at every wedding ever (“Love is gentle, love is kind…”). Also, I wanted Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 read. They go as follows:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Sounds simple, right? Except that I got my desire on neither of these things. The judge we hired had two “services” to choose from, both of which included Corinthians. The only difference is that one had part of the verse and one had the whole verse. The decision on which one to go with was made entirely to minimize the amount of Corinthian in said service. As for Ecclesiastes, that was held up by something else.

Originally, Clancy’s two sisters were going to be her maids of honor. A friend from high school and a friend from college were going to do the reading. That became a problem with Ellie, Clancy’s middle sister and the one who was married in Alaska, announced shortly before the wedding that she was going to be getting a divorce. That was not wholly unexpected, but unfortunate nonetheless because everybody liked the guy. I didn’t realize that it would end up a problem for Ecclesiastes.

The first effect was that Ellie announced that she no longer wanted to be a maid of honor because, since she was going through a divorce, it made her feel hypocritical to be front and center in somebody else’s wedding. Ooookay, I though. No biggie. The next one, though, was that she would be glad to read. There was, however, one rule: Nothing from the Bible. At all. Now the other reader, Clancy’s friend from high school, already had something picked out that specifically meant something to her and Clancy as a part of their friendship. So that wasn’t going to budge. We couldn’t pick another reader entirely because family.

And so… no Ecclesiastes.

I have oddly had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it ever since. Nothing that prevented me from forming an absolutely great relationship with my sister-in-law. But… dangit, I just wanted one thing and her stubbornness at a couple of points prevented that from happening.

I did more or less get over it, which lead to my laughter in Alaska.

I had to leave the hall to take care of Lain, who was a getting fussy. I mean, I was kind of giddy that she was able to string together the sentence “Want to go home” but… oh well. So I took her outside. So I was only barely able to hear Clancy’s mother, reading, at Ellie’s wedding…

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—
a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes that nuclear war was averted by peace-loving aliens. (Also, Buzz Aldrin, nailing it.)

Sarah Kliff of Vox watched all of the Planned Parenthood videos (up through 8/13) and put together a surprisingly fair report. I hope she does so again after they were all released.

Chris Cuomo put his finger on the real problem with the ISIS/sex slavery story… it feeds negative stereotypes.

The EPA holds polluters accountable, but who holds the EPA accountable?

I tend to assume those politicians that talk about keeping Chick-Fil-E and such out of their town are chest-pounding for the cameras. Turns out, looks like they mean it.

I will absolutely watch Dante’s Devine Comedy film(s), but I will absolutely go into it with low expectations.

“Unless the doctor’s pay is somehow linked to performance, there is a good chance that the quality of care in the public sector would be worse than in the private sector.”

This makes sense: Vox reports that during recessions, college students pick money-making majors.

A look at data and elections, from Texas.

If you’re worried about political self-segregation online, it’s apparently nothing compared to real life.

An all-important question has been answered: On Friends, how much does Joey owe Chandler.

Well, I suppose bribery may indeed be an inelastic good.

Tina Rosenberg looks at the kidney market in Iran.

Razib Khan looks at the history of the British and the Caste System of India.

Meet Moore’s Law’s evil twin.

Senator Claire McCaskill made public the widely known secret that her campaign did what it could to help Todd Akin become her Republican opponent in 2012:

So how could we maneuver Akin into the GOP driver’s seat?

Using the guidance of my campaign staff and consultants, we came up with the idea for a “dog whistle” ad, a message that was pitched in such a way that it would be heard only by a certain group of people. I told my team we needed to put Akin’s uber-conservative bona fides in an ad—and then, using reverse psychology, tell voters not to vote for him. And we needed to run the hell out of that ad. {…}

If we were going to spend that kind of money on ads for Akin, I wanted to get him nominated and start disqualifying him with independent voters at the same time. By that prescription, our ad would have to include Akin’s statement that Obama was a “menace to civilization” and that Akin had said of himself that he was “too conservative” for Missouri. This presentation made it look as though I was trying to disqualify him, though, as we know, when you call someone “too conservative” in a Republican primary, that’s giving him or her a badge of honor. At the end of the ad, my voice was heard saying, “I’m Claire McCaskill, and I approve this message.”

This is hardly the first time that this has been done. The GOP has been known to pump money in Green Party efforts to split the left-of-center votes. And, of course, there is always at least talk of crossing during the primaries in order to vote for the weaker candidate on the other side’s roster. And while it’s been done before – or tried – it’s also going to be done again.

This may be sketchy, but it is presumably legal. Isn’t it? Rick Hasen, who initially believed it was, had second thoughts:

On reflection, I think the stronger issue is whether McCaskill made an unreported and excessive in kind contribution to the Akin campaign by sharing the results of her polling data. If she gave the campaign something worth more than the limit (which was probably $2600 in that election) she’d be giving an in-kind contribution, and a contribution worth that much would have to be reported.

Well did the Senator give Akin something of value? It looks like it. After all, we know it is valuable to him because the Senator writes “Akin did not have money for polling,” and she provided the information he needed to clinch the primary (at least in the Senator’s telling). Elias’s response to this point is: “There’s no suggestion she shared ‘polling data’. She only ‘gave clearance, allowing [pollster] to speak in broad generalities.” Perhaps that distinction will work, but I still think the issue is a serious one and merits a fuller analysis (and certainly fuller than I can give it now). I’m not suggesting the Senator broke the law, but there is enough here to justify a closer look.

I wanted to buy into this argument, and it may indeed be legally correct. However, if I am being honest with myself, if this is in fact illegal it’s likely against a law that I oppose or would oppose application in this particular case. This strikes me as free speech and free assembly on a pretty fundamental level.

I will also say, in defense of it, that it’s not strictly dishonest. McCaskill opposes Akin and all she did was say so! And it’s hard to get too excited about it, given the inevitability of Use Every Tool At Your Disposal, even if it involves things like improving your odds with reverse psychology.

Be that as it may, this comes across to me as sausage-making stuff and there is something unseemly to me about bragging about it. Harry Reid’s lies about Mitt Romney were constitutional, and a part of the game so to speak, but not exactly something to be proud of. The same goes for Jon Huntsman’s shot across the bow to Mitch Daniels, though in that case being silent about it while everyone blamed Mitt Romney was itself a bit of a problem.

This one at least has the virtue of assisting people, in a way, finding their preferred candidate. A plurality of Missouri voters preferred Todd Akin. And people who voted for Ralph Nader wanted Ralph Nader as their president or at least wanted him to make more rather than less of a dent in the tally. In addition to the other bad things it’s not, it’s not cheating.

It is, however, hard for me to overlook the bad faith. I have the notion that things work better when the elections are between the best possible holders of the position. “Best” is subjective here, but it seems unlikely to me that if McCaskill were to lose, that she would prefer lose to Akin instead of Brunner. That she would actually consider Akin rather than Brunner to be the representative of state. And it’s not inconceivable that Akin could have won, creating a Lester Maddox situation. As it is, of course, the gambles often pay off for the gambler. The voters in Missouri were left with McCaskill and a more undesirable option. Arguably, the responsibility of the party system, and the primary system, and the current state of the Republican Party, more than McCaskill herself… but a situation engineered in good part by McCaskill.

Perhaps it can be said that more light is better. That McCaskill’s fessing up merely makes the phenomenon more known and that maybe voters will avoid being manipulated – if we want to call it that – in the future. I personally see if as taking the dirty part of politics, and reveling in it. Finding something of a glitch in the system and bragging about its exploitation. Haha, we didn’t even like the guy, but we did everything we could to bolster his chances at becoming a US senator because it helped our odds somewhat. Aren’t we clever! A cleverness not only accepted, but celebrated.

I have a friend from Louisiana who argues – and truly believes – that Louisiana politics is no more corrupt than an any other state. It’s just that Louisiana is more open about it. It’s a function of honesty, rather than corruption, that Louisiana has the reputation that it does. No doubt corruption levels outside of the usual suspects (Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, etc) is higher than we sometimes believe, but the land of Edwin Edwards gets a lot of attention in part because it becomes so audacious that even Louisiana cannot ignore it. And even then, the voters accepted it repeatedly. Which is what happens when something becomes a norm and, to a degree, celebrated (“Edwards may be a crook, but he’s our crook!”)

All of that bringing to light Edwards’s last re-election, with the informal slogan “Vote for the crook, it’s important!” The slogan was bandied about because the alternative was David Duke with incumbent Buddy Roemer finishing third. Edwards got lucky because it’s unlikely he would have been able to beat Roemer. Perhaps today the wiser course of action would be to lend money to the Duke campaign, and give Louisiana the choice that favored him. With the added bonus of being able to express in a book how clever you are for lending support and aid to a fascist.

Sonny Bunch blames the rise of Donald Trump on pop culture and professional wrestling.

In Ferguson, some Oath Keepers decided to arm black protesters in solidarity.

Vice asks the very Vicey question: What are things going to be like for Jared Fogle behind bars?

When more than half of the stadium was empty, I thought that might register with media depiction of the event, but the media keeps letting him pretend the stadium was full.

Contrary to the claims of Trump and other lefty weirdos, Jeb Bush’s PAC did not actually photoshop him on to a black guy, and it was kind of a weird theory to begin with.

In the tenth anniversary of Katrina, Owen Courreges wishes that people would stop calling New Orleans better after the disaster.

I’m on board with re-evaluating the Confederate Flag and other things, but this is silly.

A bear poking its head through a doggie door? I’m going with scary.

A millionaire in the UK is fined after recycling gravestones for his patio.

South Carolina passed some rigid laws to prevent pesky calls, but a recent court decision has placed it in jeopardy.

George Orwell recently turned 110, and a Dutch Artist celebrated by putting party hats in surveillance cameras.

Even if they’ve made the long transition from scourge to the cute mascot of anti-global warming efforts, maybe you should hunt polar bears because polar bears will hunt you.

A couple that was getting it on fell in a moat and died.

You have maybe seen the videos of the bears playing in the pool. Uncle Steve makes a good point, which is that while it may be an exotic novelty to most, it’s probably a common plague to them.

Tim Harford on chain proliferation:

But an alternative explanation is that large companies [like Starbucks] deliberately open too many stores, or launch too many products, because they wish to pre-empt competitors. Firms could always slash prices instead to keep the competition away but that may not be quite as effective — a competitor might reasonably expect any price war to be temporary. It is less easy to un-launch a new product or shut down a brand-new outlet. A saturated market is likely to stay saturated for a while, then, and that should make proliferation a more credible and effective deterrent than low prices.

A recent paper by two economists from Yale, Mitsuru Igami and Nathan Yang, studies this question in the market for fast-food burgers. Igami and Yang used old telephone directories to track the expansion of the big burger chains into local markets across Canada from 1970 to 2005. After performing some fancy analysis, they concluded that big burger chains did seem to be trying to pre-empt competition. If Igami and Yang’s model is to be believed, McDonald’s was opening more outlets, more quickly than would otherwise have been profitable.

And here I thought Starbucks was trying to bring about the end of the universe.

I can’t say that I dispute the findings of the paper, but I will say that there is a difference between having a Starbucks across the street from somewhere, and down the street. especially in populous areas, crossing the street is a pain in the arse! And it actually can be the difference between my choosing to stop off for coffee, or my choosing not to. It was better for me if the Starbucks was across the street, and therefore required a much-dreaded lefthand turn, but that would have been bad for Starbucks.

I miss the west. So few coffee places out here. But enough about coffee.

I still can’t believe that there are only two McDonald’s in Stone County (pop 30k). Especially given how ridiculously busy one of them is. If nothing else, having another McDonald’s – even one across the street or even just down the street – could help handle the overflow.

In other franchise/chain-related observations, an auto shop with a Popeye’s within walking distance is the best kind of auto shop.