All Things in Moderation

Kind of late, I think. But Jeb Bush is saying some conservative stuff in a campaign-y way. Either he’s testing the waters, or he’s trying to give the candidates currently in the running a little advice on how to try and sound.

We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

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Still not sure how that’s accomplished, but I love the whole gastronomical engineering movement, and hope it continues to expand.

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Gotta a migraine. This is gonna be short.

Dec. 3rd was the 19th Anniversary of the first cell phone text message.

The floor is yours.

— KW

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When the government grows, the private sector shrinks. Or maybe it’s that the private sector shrinks, thus obligating the government to grow.

The 6 Things Movies Love to Get Wrong About the Workplace.

HuffPo says Anti-Incumbent Fever Can Hurt Republicans. Implied, if not explicitly stated, is that it might also hurt the incumbents in the senate and the Whitehouse, as there are, in fact, a lot of incumbent Democrats, too.

Newt Gingrich says the Ryan-Wyden bill is awesome. Wonder who that will hurt more.

Do you like to clip coupons? I do. It’s like money you don’t pay taxes or withholding on. Good deal!

There’s a new Ghost Rider film on the way. I love it when underperforming films get a sequel. That shows moxie!

Climategate continues. Whistleblowers are criminals who must immediately be arrested, if their leaking the wrong kind of emails. Who thinks this is a good idea for dealing with climate skeptics? Whistleblowers were cool . . . back in the day.

Why We Need Serious Welfare Reform. I observed some of the same things over 20 years ago (without the iPhones). I agree in spirit, but it’s not going to happen. There will always be people, and lots of them, abusing the system and teaching that to the next generation. Those incentives will always be present in some form. The blogger is young. She talks like this might change, and it won’t, unless the entire country goes bankrupt. I’d prefer that not to happen, even if it means an ever-growing entitlement class.

Here’s another picture of a puppy:

lmsinca’s Christmas Cookies

I thought this one was pretty good…

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Busy day. Things messing up, meetings coming up and the most inopportune moment, etc. So, in short, I got nothing.

Here’s a picture of a dog.

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To help a brother out, a link to the economic year in graphs

Time chooses the Protestor as its Person of the Year.

And the abstract to a paper in Science about empathy in lab rats.

“Whereas human pro-social behavior is often driven by empathic concern for another, it is unclear whether nonprimate mammals experience a similar motivational state. To test for empathically motivated pro-social behavior in rodents, we placed a free rat in an arena with a cagemate trapped in a restrainer. After several sessions, the free rat learned to intentionally and quickly open the restrainer and free the cagemate. Rats did not open empty or object-containing restrainers. They freed cagemates even when social contact was prevented. When liberating a cagemate was pitted against chocolate contained within a second restrainer, rats opened both restrainers and typically shared the chocolate. Thus, rats behave pro-socially in response to a conspecific’s distress, providing strong evidence for biological roots of empathically motivated helping behavior.”

Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats

— Mike

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I am really pretty sure some of you will find this funny.

—ashot

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The intellectual difference as to how men and women frame their personal narratives.

Can men and women just be friends?

The men answer no, but leave out the obvious answer: “Well, sure, if she’s not attractive.” 😉

I love the fact that, after listening to all these women say that men and women can be “just friends”, he asks the follow up question: “So, do you think he would hook up with you, if you gave him a chance?”

All the pictures you could ever want to permanently crush any hope you might have ever held for the future of humanity.

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I’ve noted elsewhere that lots of people don’t think Newt Gingrich has a prayer of becoming president, not even the Republican nominee.

Lee Stranahan thinks Newt Gingrich is inevitably our next president. Well, that makes two people (Newt, and now Lee). I still remain very dubious.

From back when the Gingrich campaign was imploding, The 11 Craziest Things Newt Gingrich has Ever Said.

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Hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ. I have never been to San Francisco, but this was still very funny.

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Club for Growth has a chart on S&P Returns for the 3rd year of recent presidents. 1995 under Clinton was awesome! The lesson? We should have elected Hilary Clinton.

I’m not a fan of such selective comparisons (if we compare every 3rd Sunday in a Leap Year and take an average, this president is the worst ever), but was curious if there’s anything meaningful to it.

Historically, incumbency is power. I can see Obama losing handily to a solid conservative Republican, given other externalities. If we had the economy of 1996, Obama would sail to victory. As it is, even without the primary challengers, I see Obama as vulnerable. But losing to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich? Incumbency is still awfully potent.

Still, it could be a very good time for a mediocre candidate to become President (unlike 2008), and natural cycles might make a president Romney look a lot better in 2014 than a president Romney would have looked in 2010. So, you never know.

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I got nuthin’. I started watching the new Battlestar Galactica, finally—it’s awesome.

Otherwise, it’s all yours.
— KW

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