And apparently, it can pay dividends: School shootings beget more school shootings. And unlike the days of ParkwaySouth — which I bet you never heard of unless you knew somebody who was there — news coverage may be why. From the CNN article:
Researchers gathered records of school shootings and mass killings from several data sets and fit them into a mathematical “contagion model.” The spread they found was not dependent on location, leading researchers to believe that national media coverage of a mass shooting might play a role.
If you’re the kind of person who prefers to look at the research rather than the media coverage of it, good for you: here it is. Left to your imagination is whether other crimes might be subject to the “contagion model” described by the researchers. My guess is “probably.”
Obama: Apparently somebody else realized that the guy is a tweak to the right of Nixon. Oh yeah, and how dare he actually work with others around the world rather than just telling them all how shit is going down because we’re America and we know best.
A few random food and diet items:milk; resistant starch; sweetened soda isn’t just bad for you, it’s bad for your chromosomes.
Taking care of business: some of the oldest operating businesses in the world; and the history of money.
Halloween is coming: and that means sexycostumes are coming for no good reason.
Mormons: They would like us to know that it’s not really magic underwear.
Some random economy items:rent is going up faster than wages; wealth is growing faster than income, too; and of course that assumes that workers are being paid at all.
Baby Dinosaurs: More accurately, embryos in various states of development.
Follow-up on FPS Russia: Yeah, not a lot of meat on this story. Since when does the ATF get involved in “murder” investigations?
Random items on Real Estate, biased towards Vegas:Foreclosures are returning to where they were before the bust, with Nevada leading. However, prices are 30% higher than last year and distressed sales are down by a similar percentage. Interesting.
When you have a minute: Check out BustedKnuckles‘ new site.
Backtracking:CNN/Money might have thought Chained CPI was a great idea to save the budget a few days ago, but now they realize what way the wind is blowing.
I can’t believe we are back to “Jobs Americans Won’t Do”: They want to solve this “problem” with a new class of serf permit visa. Seems like these hypocrites are all about “let market forces do the magic” when it’s raising prices, but against the same when it might mean paying an American a decent wage! Go ahead, watch a bit of Dirty Jobs and tell me there’s such a thing as “jobs Americans won’t do” with a straight face! It isn’t that Americans won’t do them, it’s that they want more money (and perhaps safety equipment) than an easily exploited semi-legal immigrant worker.
Meanwhile, there are 3 unemployed Americans for every job opening:Yeah. Go ahead and push that serf permit visa program.
At some point, the Baby Boomers decided that they were never going to get Social Security; then they went about insuring just that:1983 was the important year.
Le Petit Prince: Prince Hisahito goes to Kindergarten. You may remember him from this adorable picture.
Ok, I know this isn’t what most of my readers are used to. If it isn’t your cup of tea, I bet you can find the “In Closing” bits in their usual location at the end.
So what do I do about my hair? The sad truth is “not much”:
I make sure I don’t go too long between hair appointments. A lot of bad hair days are caused by split ends and growing out of a good trim. I know it’s tempting for a lady to grow hair out over the winter, but that’s only a good idea if you love ponytails… Every. Single. Day.
I already live in Vegas, where it’s “drier” most of the time. There is no substitute year round for a quality everyday conditioner, and perhaps a weekly deep condition. My hairdresser insists I need a leave-in, and I admit that helps on days where my hair is fighting all efforts to be combed.
Again, this is one I can only get away with because I live in Vegas. Never ever do this if you live someplace it freezes in winter. I am lousy with a hair dryer, so I just don’t use one! I just “gel, scrunch, and go.” As a result, I don’t have to deal with heat damage.
So no, I don’t do a lot special on my hair in winter. My skin is another story! I get very dry skin, and I have a strategy to deal with it. Of course, it involves a moisturizing sunscreen on my face. It also involves a good quality moisturizer on my hands and legs. But there’s more: my daily supplements include fish oil and Vitamin D (which I’m not getting through sun exposure); and quality anti-aging products selected with the help of a physician.
In Closing: yeah, we’ve really made things better for Afghan women, not! (I particularly like the line about “Shockingly” this is common!); using “facts and logic” — I know the bumper sticker says that should confuse a liberal like myself — to prove CRA didn’t cause the housing bubble; How to talk to people at Thanksgiving who are likely to have read “How to talk to a Liberal, if you must” and other family members; the new poor; maybe they liked the scenery; the banks finally stole too much; police bust down the door and kill the dogs… over a stolen Xbox that wasn’t even there (ya know, I bet Microsoft would have gladly told cops what IP address it was on!); as usual, Dave Johnson is long-winded but correct (I’d add “water and sewer” to his list); Grayson is hilarious (and knows the Bible); and Shatner on Turkey.
There’s a restaurant site down the street that does not appear to attract success.
I forget what the place was originally, other than an expensive build. I feel certain that high expenses are what killed the place.
After remaining empty for a while, it became an “Asian fusion seafood restaurant.” Hey, this is Vegas, we can support that sort of thing. Of course maybe if the site weren’t within a few hundred feet of not one, but two nationally known chains of “Asian fusion seafood restaurants,” and down the street from a notable modern sushi bar, it might have done better. Oh yeah, they maybe could have had some advertising. But it was clearly an expensive build, so maybe they didn’t have money to let people know it was actually open.
After remaining empty for another long while, the building got a new paint job in colors that suggested Mexican or some other sort of Latin cuisine, and signage for a new restaurant. It never opened. I remember seeing some sofas out by the dumpster behind the building. Yet another expensive build.
Then the sign changed again, and signs of what was by my count a 4th expensive interior redesign began. The name of the place? Hotel California. Yeah, like this:
Right, because everybody wants to go eat dinner someplace where they’ve got no wine, but plenty of pink champagne on ice. And you have to stab your dinner to death with a steely knife. Oh, and you might not be allowed to leave after you pay your check. Happy Hour indeed.
As if that’s not enough, we have a California Hotel here in Vegas.
Yesterday, I noticed that the sign — which by the way looks like it was painted by teenagers from Acapulco — had changed. It’s now the “Baja California.”
The big, brass, expensive-looking letters on the front of the building still read HC.
To Paraphrase My Source: why do we demonize doctors for over-prescribing (and parents for over-demanding) antibiotics when 80% of them are used on the farm?
Don’t Panic: Yellowstone has risen by as much as 10″ in spots.
Useless:New food labels tell you everything they think you need to know at a glance on the front of the package! Except, of course, how big a serving is.
Let me start by pointing out that today alone, the FDIC had takeover teams at 6 — yes, 6 — different banks in 3 different states. I think that Count Von Count would not be happy to keep track of this. Another number that would fail to please the Count but might make Dr. Evil happy, an anticipated one million foreclosures this year. That situation will get uglier before a healthy market can possibly emerge.
So then, with unemployment what it is, nobody should be particularly shocked that retail sales are down, again, and specifically sales of big ticket items are down. Nobody being able to afford goods leads quite understandably to the possibility of deflation — particularly if you can’t find a way to mask housing prices that are down by half in some parts of the country. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and the poor can, well, do whatever it is they do.
Add to this toxic stew two items: a political party that stillthinks you can raise revenues by cutting taxes, but that making sure that “the least of these” can afford groceries is a bad thing; and a financial reform bill that the nicest thing anybody can say about it is that it’s better than nothing, probably. The safety net is being cut just as we need it most despite our protests, and our largest banks may still have the power to ruin us all.
Next time, assuming I am not distracted by something shiny or butterflies or kittens, The Latte Economy.