The Future of Video Media Has Arrived

Do you know what YouTube is?

Most people do now and I can tell by the increasing numbers of hyperlinks to it that are showing up in my inbox.

Essentially it's a free video hosting website. Users upload video clips, YouTube hosts them their servers, and organizes them - allowing tags, comments, ranking metrics, and searching functionality.

Here, an example transcends all literal description. Below is the first clip I saw from YouTube. It's just a photo montage some Georgia girl made for her boyfriend set to Keith Urban's "Making Memories Of Us" - nothing fancy. Click on the video.



As I type this, that video has been viewed over 200,000 times which blew me (and I am sure its author "Holley") away. These videos are getting very easy to make. She used Pinnacle Studio. One just throws some pics together, adds music, and uses the video transitions from the software. Everyone is doing this now. I just made a similar video for my wife using Microsoft Movie Maker (which came with my version of Windows XP) - but instead I used Kenny Rogers' "Through The Years". Sorry, it's on my son's site - not YouTube.

Everything imaginable is on YouTube except porn and gross vulgarity. Kids dancing to music, funny clips from The Comedy Channel, news clips, funny commercials,......

Obviously, there are few ads on the site thus far and YouTube must spend a ton of money on servers and web hosting to be able to handle all of the videos people keep uploading. Whoever owns it must be trying to build up the critical mass even more before selling or partnering out (think CraigsList).

Where is all of this content coming from?

Like the example above, it's all user generated. If a clip is particularly funny, entertaining, shocking, or clever, the virtual word spreads virally and there's no limit to how many people will eventually view it.

This is not just kids dancing to music. I did a google video search on "golf" and found clips of golf tips - and these clips were really actually cleverly disguised ads for golf schools i.e. info-mercials.

Who would sit at home and voluntarily watch commercials? Well that is a dumb question in 2006. Consider that MTV is all commercials. The videos are just ads for the albums.

Back in probably the 1960s, when Coca-Cola first put its logo on a red t-shirt, critics blathered,

"Now who is dumb enough to buy a Coke shirt and pay them to advertise their product?"

Well, if it's a sharp looking and reasonably priced shirt, people will buy it no matter what. And they did.

A lot of the video content on the internet is ripped from television. This is done by,

1) Getting a DVR (Tivo).
2) Getting a FireWire card and cable for your computer.
3) Plugging it into the back of your DVR.
4) Grabbing some free ripping software off the net.

I tried this recently but it didn't work. I think I bought too cheap of a firewire card. Hopefully I will figure it out soon. Too many times I see something on tv and think, "Now, that is blog material". Plus it would be better to put my fisking of Bill O'Reilly side-by-side with video clips of him.

But the impact of pervasive file sharing and cheaply generated user content will be as revolutionary as the advent of the radio. The current TV pipe is just too narrow to satisfy the appetite of media consumers who are also tired of commercials and $60 cable bills. I can't find the link but I read recently that teens are spending twice as much time on the internet as they do watching television now. Sure a lot of it is instant messaging but they are also big consumers of YouTube and the like.

I have been following YouTube for a bit now but one clip I saw really got me thinking. It was a clip on a Boston Celtics blog (I am a huge C's fan) of highlights from a recent summer league game. Now summer league games are barely on television but someone was able to tape the game and put the highlights together. Then they posted it on YouTube. Who needs SportsCenter? What's fascinating about this is that diehard Celtic fans all over the globe were able to see obscure content that technology (and economics) would never before have permitted.

Consider that hour-long evolution lecture video that I linked to in my last post. Very soon, the net will be littered with educational clips. Perhaps some dynamic Calculus teacher will record and publish a year's worth of their lectures? Home schooled kids will be able to sit at home and learn limits, differentiation, and integration from their homes AND at zero cost. Forget "perhaps", that WILL happen, many times over, and on every conceivable subject.

The internet stock bubble may be long over, but the net's impact on every facet of society is just getting going.

Okay, I have been emailed this clip three times already. It's a parody of rap videos - only with white "WASPS" to drive home the point. Having never seen a rap video, my mother-in-law only got half of the joke - thinking it just a mockery of the blue-blooded. At first I didn't think it was that funny, but subsequent views got me laughing harder.

What do I know? It's been viewed a mere 400,000 times in its first week on YouTube.



Here's one of the links I couldn't find earlier.

Study: Only One in Four Teens Can Name Broadcast Networks

Every Generation Blames the One Before

As a new parent, I'm spending more time around families socially these days and noticing things that could never penetrate my old bachelor tunnel vision. For instance, I take my son to a nearby school playground in Brookline and am appalled at how many lunch boxes, mittens, jackets, and backpacks get left behind on the schoolyard each day. My gut reaction for a while was "stupid rich kids". But that has evolved to "stupid rich parents who don't teach their kids to value anything". How can I blame 7-12 year old kids for anything? Shouldn't a parent notice that their kid came home from school without the coat they wore in the morning?

This was by no means a situation-specific epiphany. As I alluded to above, my burgeoning experiences with other parents has opened my eyes to pervasive parental incompetence.

I laughed really hard the other day at a Drudge headline of "Israel on Time Out" - or something to that effect that obviously was a story on the 48 hour air raid break the Israelis gave Lebanon. Nowadays kids don't even get punished; they are put on "Time Out". Apparently life is one big game with 20 second, full, and "TV" timeouts. Heck, let's just grant the poor Hezbollah terrorists a "time out" - anything else would be crudely judgmental.

Everyone knows a government school teacher and has likely heard their incessant complaints about the students' parents. It used to be when little Billy sassed his teacher; his parents would clean his clock (Billy's, that is). For the last few decades however, Billy's parents have rushed in and defended their son against every indictment, notwithstanding evidence and fact. In the convoluted world of Baby Boomer induced logic, an aspersion cast at the child is more importantly, a de facto aspersion towards his parents as well.

Sometimes, for brief nanoseconds, I wish I had a job that gave me more Moron blog material. For example a friend of mine teaches fifth grade reading on Long Island and I just can't believe the stories she tells me. For instance, her class hands out some bullcrap Citizen of the Month award. The mother of one little girl who was yet to win the award came into school to complain. She was thoroughly pissed that her little "Sally" hadn't won the award despite her stellar grades. The teacher tried to explain that it was a "non-academic" award but it 'twas to no avail. Sally's mother righteously demanded to know the grades of the most recent three winners of the award. The teacher calmly explained that she couldn't discuss other kids' grades and said maybe she should go complain to the principal. Sally's mother was actually delighted and enthused that she could take this frivolity up the chain of command.

Let's take a Time Out here. If I were the teacher I would have laughed so hard in this woman's face. I would have mocked her with all my might - as she clearly deserved. Remember, this is all over some STUPID MEANINGLESS AWARD IN FIFTH GRADE.

My teacher friend also told me that many parents demand that she,

"...not correct my child because it's bad for their self-esteem."

That reminds me of these asinine parents who won't say "no" to their kid. This is hardly a unique cavil of mine. Patricia Dalton wrote in the Washington Post,

I've talked to many parents who are so influenced by psychological theories about child rearing that they disregard common sense. Some are critical of the way they themselves were raised, and are searching for another model to guide them. Then there's the romantic, New-Age view: Children come into the world uncorrupted, and therefore are best raised using principles of noninterference. From this viewpoint, "no" is a dirty word, children should be given choices and provided with explanations; punishment and adverse situations should be avoided as much as possible because they might harm the child's fragile self-esteem. There is an unspoken assumption that a child who feels good will never need to behave badly.

Read that whole article. I think she really hit the nail on the head by saying that these incompetent parents opt for "theory" over "common sense". And as I explained in the comments of my last post, these parents have the psychological baggage of guilt leading them astray. Remember, Morons are not necessarily or categorically dumb, but whether the issue is "global warming", taxes, or disciplining children, otherwise clear heads falter. My only addendum to Miss Dalton's piece would be that many parents can't use common sense as a guide for the simple reason that they have none themselves.



My teacher friend gave me a few more nuggets.

She said that her school has a "nutrition committee" to monitor "obesity". This is a hardly a new topic for my blog. From a prior post,

I remember being screened for scoliosis, lice, and cavities in elementary school. But today in Pennsylvania they may send a kid home with a note informing his parents that he is hunchbacked, bug infested, has rotten teeth, AND is FAT. That is right, public schools there are now "screening" the brats for obesity.

Okay, this so-called nutrition committee has banned the cupcake birthday parties that we all grew up with. Remember when it was your birthday, your mom baked and frosted 35 cupcakes for you to distribute to your classmates? Well due to the exploding obesity epidemic, more than a few schools have ended this tradition. What's wrong with a cupcake here and there? Well, my teacher friend said it's chaos with 35 kids' b-days crammed into a 9 month school year - making it one per week. Yeah, the kids with summer birthdays all bring in cupcakes as well, lest they be left out and suffer another jarring blow to their self-esteem.

The nutrition committee has decreed that only one day per month are birthdays to be celebrated. No longer do the kids get their own day, instead they have to share it with the entire month's celebrants, and here's the kicker - ONLY HEALTHY SNACKS ARE ALLOWED.

As I said in the past, soda, Doritos, and cupcakes are probably 1,000th in the hierarchy of government school problems but that isn't slowing down the Obesity Police in your local schools.

It almost goes without saying that the Obesity Police are flexing their muscles in schools all over the country. A local dingbat pol here in Cambridge, Massachusetts tried to actually ban the FlufferNutter sandwich from government school cafeterias. He was roundly (and deservedly) mocked all over the country. People even started mailing him jars of Fluff.

Okay, say they ban all tasty food from cafeterias.... are they going to start searching lunchboxes and lockers for Twinkie contraband? Will they limit what kids can brownbag in?

Enough with this school lunch Fluff. I'll end it by saying that when it comes to school lunches, I am staunchly pro-choice.

I have so much more to say on parental incompetence, government schools, and the Obesity Police that I am going to have to leave it for future posts.



I want to apologize (yet again) for the lack of posting. I happen to be mired in the Hamptons this summer as we are taking full advantage of my wife's maternity leave. I lugged my computer down and am still trading up a storm (these days in the futures markets: gold, silver, oil, natural gas, and Nasdaq futures) but most of my free time is expended at the beach or in the pool.

I have also been reading quite a bit these days - almost all modern history books. I would say that it's completely impossible to hold strong intelligible opinions of the issues of the day without a thorough understanding of relevant context. The salient example du jour is the Israeli/Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon. Any Moron calling for a ceasefire or "peace talks" would be wise to look at the empirical history of such suggestions. (Hint: that has never worked, ever.)

I remember reading my high school American history book and littered throughout the text were non sequitur paragraphs with constant updates on the roles that Native Americans, blacks, and women played in the chronicled events. Usually it went like this,

...And Native Americans, women, and blacks didn't participate, get a vote or a say in [fill in this blank].

While on the subject, did you hear that the California Legislature passed a resolution last week,

... that since women and minorities weren't present at the writing of the US Constitution....they've declared the Constitution, "un-Constitutional"?



By the way, that was a joke - but who would really be surprised if it wasn't?

The older, wiser, and more well-read I get, the more I realize how much complete BS has been propagated and dissembled as "fact", "education", or "news". For instance, take the theory of evolution, a subject that quite frankly I have never thought about since my freshman year of high school. Even then it was only a chapter in a book whose bullet points had to dwell in my short-term memory only until the test. But one thing I did remember is the white moth/black moth study that proved the theory of evolution. Perhaps some of my young readers remember this from school as well. Here's the problem,

THAT MOTH STUDY WAS A COMPLETE FRAUD.

Now frauds are perpetrated in every field, so why am I so mad?

Because my textbook was written long after the fraud was exposed. In other words, the author had his story and he was sticking to it. The publisher didn't care about factual accuracy. The school board didn't care. Your teacher likely didn't care either. Now bear in mind that most states have laws demanding factual accuracy in school textbooks.

I was intending to provide two examples of fallacies from my education - the moth evolution fraud and the gross mischaracterization of Senator Joseph McCarthy - but some googling research has opened up Pandora's Box on this subject.

Here is an hour-long video lecture on the lies and utter falsehoods propagated by scientists, particularly on evolution theory but also touching upon geology and a few other areas. I absolutely dare you evolution theory subscribers to watch it (though I am quite confident you won't). Some Morons have already labeled the video under "crap" and "lunatic".

Did you know that there is no way the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon?

Yet the entire scientific world bleats that it was carved over millions of years by said river?

Why would people have to lie about the origin of a canyon?

Really, find the time to watch that video.

The best part about the video is when the scientist tells the story about bringing his daughter to a museum. Looking at a diagram of the earth's rock layers, the guide pointed to one and claimed it was 70 million years old, the girl asked the museum guide how its age was known. He said it was a good question and answered that they could tell the age of the rock layer by the age of the fossils found in them.

Next they went over to a dinosaur fossil. It too was described as, say 100 million years old. The curious girl again asked how they could tell the age of the dinosaur fossil. The unconscious museum idiot again said "good question" and explained that they can date a fossil by the age of the rock formation that it is found in.

"Whoa, isn't that circular reasoning?", the young girl asked.

After all, he used the fossils to date the rock and then he used the rock to date the fossil. Circular Reasoning couldn't be a more obvious Moron tactic but it's got to hurt when pointed out by a little girl.

One last thing on evolution theory (for the time being), remember that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology.

Q: Why did these species survive?
A: Because they were the fittest.

Q: How do you know they were the fittest?
A: Because they survived.

But my favorite Moron tautology remains,

"rich people have more money..."

The black moth fraud doesn't itself disprove the theory of evolution anymore than "Enron" disproves capitalism as a viable economic model. (Though most other "proof" of evolution has imploded as well - e.g. the Piltdown Man was another complete hoax.)

Back to the more general subject of textbooks. I am hoping that in the future, those politically correct non sequiturs about women and minorities are replaced by addendums more along these lines.

Yes. Joseph McCarthy accused some Americans of being covert Soviet agents. But he was dead right. For over 50 years, educators and media gatekeepers suppressed, distorted, and lied about what transpired. Consequently, the public, has been recklessly ignorant of a vital period of American history.

The media whitewashing remains a huge untold and untaught part of American history.

Everyone knows that history is written by the "victors". Winston Churchill himself even said,

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."

In short, less government involvement in education would remove a lot of the ignorance-inducing text books as ideologues will have no leverage to force them upon the privately educated and the home schooled. And heck, the kids may actually learn something.

Consider this,

According to a 2000 American Council of Trustees and Alumni study, "Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century," not one of the top 50 colleges and universities today requires American history of its graduates.

Believe me, American History is not dismissed at the collegiate level because the kids master it in high school.

Most people know what "McCarthyism" is, or is supposed to be, but hardly anyone knows about the Venona Papers which, despite the obvious waffling from that Wikipedia link, clearly corroborate the almost entirely forgotten and obfuscated point,

That in the 1940s and 1950s, Communists were in high US government positions. And these weren't just innocuous ideologues who thought the rich should be taxed to the hilt, they were actively collaborating with the Soviet Union.

Joe McCarthy didn't want Communist sympathizers jailed, burned at the stake (The Crucible), stamped with pink C's, or deported. He just didn't think they should be working for the government and handling sensitive information.

So what's the really radical position? The converse? An apathy towards the allegiances of government workers privy to, say the Manhattan Project?

That Wikipedia link on the Venona Papers is borderline pathetic. Towards the end of it, they talk about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and how,

Venona has added significant information to the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, making it clear that Julius was guilty of espionage and that Ethel was an accessory, although their contributions to Soviet nuclear espionage were not as vital as was alleged at the time. The information Julius passed to the Soviets related to the proximity fuze, or detonation device, not the actual process of nuclear fission.

Now we are splitting hairs here. Saying that Julius only passed the Soviets info on the detonation device is tantamount to arguing that Bin Laden only killed 2,900 Americans on 9/11 instead of 3,000. What's the point really?

I wasn't alive back then, so forgive my forward suggestion that maybe he shouldn't have been passing anything to Soviet agents. Furthermore, I posit that academics' and media organs' failure to accurately report on Cold War espionage has been at least a gross injustice to the American public and perhaps treasonous itself.

In summary, you may not think you've been influenced by or even retained anything from your 12 year sentence in government schools, but the stuff you weren't taught is actually more important than the deliberate distortions they did throw at you. This process of relearning science and history in which I am amidst, is in no way entertaining. If anything it gets me very angry and invokes that expression, "if you aren't pissed off, then you aren't paying attention."



Like more than a few parents, I want to give my kids more than I had growing up. Not to say that I was deprived or abused, outside of the canned lima beans and the different behavioral standards for my sisters (sorry Mom, therapy can only exorcise so much), but I want my children to have far superior educational experiences than I had, among other improvements. The more I reflect on my own schooling, the more deficiencies I see. There really is no mystery as to why home schooling is gaining momentum all over the nation.

I contend that today's children are comprehensively coddled by society - to everyone's detriment.

Consider that in the last 100 years we have gone from a country that sent nine year olds to work in coal mines to one today where 22 year olds won't take out the trash. Americans, not so long ago, used to get married at age 17. Today, even a most perceptive individual wouldn't be able to tell if that grey, balding man pushing a stroller in Brooklyn Heights is the infant's father or the grandfather. I in no way consider myself a young husband or young father. But at 32 years old, everywhere I go around Boston the parents of similarly aged children are seemingly all 5-15 years older than my wife and me.

The coddling starts with government school. Since parents don't directly pay for schooling, they have very little control over the quality of their children's education. Big Education cares more about protecting their monopoly and playing politics than imparting practical knowledge to its captive students.

School vouchers would be a marginal improvement BUT not a permanent or ideal solution. Sure it will introduce much needed competition amongst abutting school districts. Competition is ALWAYS beneficial - even if not many students switch schools, it will light a fire under most schools to get their act together somewhat.

But vouchers likely won't help lower the cost of schooling. Nationwide vouchers would just recreate Medicare for schooling - let's call it "Educare". After all, patients can pick and choose their doctors and healthcare facilities but medical cost inflation remains largely out of control thanks to Medicare making government the largest buyer. Vouchers will slowly increase in magnitude and when they start to dwarf the out-of-pocket parental tuition contribution, education price inflation will spiral up again.

Don't like my Educare analogy? Well look at college tuitions. There already is a de facto voucher system for higher ed, yet college kids still don't learn anything AND their parents pay through the nose for the privilege of donning those rear windshield stickers.

It'd be one thing if college was expensive but the kids graduated with marketable skills. However, today college is costing $160,000 or more yet kids who go straight into plumbing, landscaping, or police work are out-earning the English majors from Dartmouth. Forget those studies that "prove" college grads out-earn others by wide margins over their lifetimes. That's just educrat propaganda not to mention completely backward looking sophistry. In the past, college was never so expensive nor was it such a joke academically.



(Pictured above: Locust Walk at my alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, perhaps the most beautiful urban campus in America.)

Here's a glimpse into the future of college education. Forbes profiles Neumont University,

Physically and philosophically, there's no confusing Neumont with a traditional university. It is housed in a glass-and-steel reflective office building. Students live in nearby apartments - no campus quad, football games, frat houses or keg parties.

Doxey aims foremost to please employers - not students, not parents, and certainly not the educational establishment. Produce what business needs, he figures, and graduates will win good jobs, which in turn will attract more paying students.

He's onto something. The school's first batch of 27 graduates this past spring all had jobs waiting, with an average starting salary of $61,000 - some 20% more than the average computer science grad and 50% more than DeVry University graduates' starting pay. After a year Neumont's graduates should be able to command $70,000 - $90,000, predicts Joshua Steimle, chief executive of Salt Lake City Web design firm MWI, which hired two grads.

The connection to industry goes beyond job placements. Most of Neumont's profs were recruited from corporations.

At elite liberal arts colleges, the profs disdain practical skills and pontificate about theoretical topics suited to their academic journals. Not here. At Neumont students spend only 30% of their time on theory and 70% learning the newest technology, mostly working in groups on projects. That's the way complex software is written today, in groups.

Neumont's tuition last year was $28,000. Earning the money described above makes Neumont seem like a bargain compared to spending almost $45,000 per year at a school like Boston College and having to scramble for a job upon graduation. A few years ago, while my cousin was in medical school he moaned incessantly about the 250k he'd owe when done. At least he was getting a six-figured secure job for life. Today undergraduate Philosophy majors from Holy Cross will be out 160k, so $250,000 in the hole doesn't look so bad from where I am sitting.

I want to repeat the most important sentence from that link,

Doxey aims foremost to please employers - not students, not parents, and certainly not the educational establishment.

Preparing kids for the real world.....what an earth shattering, profound notion!!!

Let me try to tie some of this hodgepodge together.

Consider embryonic stem cells. Polls today show that around 60% of Americans are in favor of government funding of embryonic stem cell research. Of course those polled weren't vetted to see if they actually understood the slightest about stem cells. And I doubt these polls allowed for respondents to inveigh against government investment in research that the private sector is well-equipped to fund. Anyway, the potential of embryonic stem cell research (not to be conflated with adult stem cells) is pure science fiction at this point. Furthermore, "groundbreaking" studies, used to push the embryonic stem cell prop-agenda have been outed as frauds.

Michael Fumento says it best in an attack on Science magazine, which had to retract some of its ESC cheerleading. In a round indictment of what he calls PsuedoScience magazine, Fumento concludes,

The journal wants to flood unpromising ESC research with taxpayer dollars because private investors know just how very unpromising it is.

Let's see...Fraudulent studies, championed by scientists, that reek of agenda-driven politics....does that remind anyone of the Piltdown Man or the Black Moth experiment?



A month or so ago, I clicked on a Drudge link about how Al Gore and his "Let's not burn oil and fry the Earth" entourage drove a mere 500 meters from one place to another at the Cannes Film Festival (instead of walking). First of all, it was a Reuters news story - that is no longer listed on their server. What I mean is, Drudge didn't write the story - Reuters did. But that point was lost on the Drudge haters and they quickly said that the Gore story was false and accused Drudge of a "smear".

The green blogosphere exploded with vitriol towards Drudge, as if he has the ability to confirm every story he links too. If the story was false, their anger should have been aimed at Reuters. Since Reuters is a green (Commi and terrorist) friendly organization they went after a preferred bogeyman in Drudge. Anyway, I found some lengthy and active blog thread that was discussing the entire controversy and was very surprised to find in the comments, a bunch of homosexual epithets hurled at Drudge from what one can safely assume were liberals/progressives. The most common bleat was,

"Drudge likes fudge..."

Now I had heard once before a rumor that Matt Drudge was gay. But how can the same side that trumpets "gay marriage" and routinely colors its opponents as "homophobic" logically also hold gayness as a pejorative trait. Oh, never mind, hypocrisy scorekeeping gets boring after a while.

Now the other day, a new website called FudgeReport.net was launched. See it for yourself. It's sponsored by the Democratic Senatorial campaign and endeavors to mock the Drudge Report with another less than subtle swipe at Matt's alleged homosexuality.

How does this tie in?

Well let's go back to so-called McCarthism. It may surprise the historically illiterate that the smearing of Communist whistleblowers McCarthy, Chambers, Jay Edgar Hoover, etc. all accused them of being homosexuals ("queer").

History, regardless of who writes it, still tends to repeat itself.

Marginalizing Cramer

My blog has gotten a lot of hits directed from google searches of “Cramer sucks” – not because I have offered much on the subject, but I think because I actually put it in quotes on my blog.

Here is most of what I said,

Cramer’s fortunes will ebb and flow with this mild bull market. He is not recommending any shorts (at least that I know of) and will be pilloried should the market enter a prolonged bear period. One has to remember that he is a SALESMAN, pure and simple. Guys like him are a dime a dozen on Wall Street. They can give you a compelling bull case for whatever stock they feel like. Some of these guys, like Cramer, are so persuasive that you feel like running out instantly and buying whatever they tell you. A great stock recommendation can sound almost like an earth-shattering discovery – to which only you are privy. So you run out and buy it and as you are holding it you start doing some more research. Most times you will find out that that bull argument has been around for years. The stock could languish in the dumps and you may have to wait for another set of docile buyers to push the stock in order for you to get your money back.

Like any dissembling salesman, Cramer often talks out of both sides of his mouth. Sure he has been bullish on Google mostly, but also said to lighten up at $250. And I also remember a show where he said to lighten up on the oil stocks as well.

The $10,000 question is,

Is Cramer making or losing money for his audience?

Devil’s Advocate – Wouldn’t you have to analyze every recommendation that’s come out of his mouth to accurately answer that question?

I have pondered that and come to the conclusion of “No”. Think about how many stock recommendations he has made. Say minimally two per day for a couple years now. He’s had to have pounded the “Buy! Buy! Buy!” button for at least two hundred stocks over the last couple of years. There’s no way that any investors are spreading .5% of their cash evenly on his 200 picks. More likely they are picking and choosing and throwing much larger percentages of their wad at a small subset of his recommendations. A guy with a million bucks to throw around simply doesn’t buy a mere 88 shares of Apple – he’ll probably spend at least ten times as much ($58,000) on 1,000 shares.

So a basket analysis of Cramer’s picks while theoretically fair, would be irrelevant due to practical realities.

Since his viewers are only realistically going to heed some of his advice, their returns will obviously vary widely – depending of course on not only which stocks they commit to, but also when they get in (and out).

Now I know a guy who turned Cramer’s show on last year, heard him tout Google, went and dumped 20k into some call options and has parlayed it into over $600,000 in profits. It is the guy’s first option trade ever to boot – talk about pure luck.

(Of course, anyone that has $20,000 to dump on out-of-the-money calls is by most standards, very financially comfortable.)



But look at a stock like HOKU. The stock was $6 when Cramer pumped it last September, and instantly went to $14 per share. Today it’s a three dollar stock, 50% lower than even before Cramer led his sheepish audience to slaughter. If you were unlucky enough to have bought it above $12, you lost over 75% of your investment.



Capstone Turbine is another disastrous recommendation. If my memory serves me right, Cramer, while pounding the table, said, don’t pay more than $5 per share. Well today CPST is changing hands at a mere $2.01 per share.

Again, it is not thoroughly fair to pick and choose amongst Cramer’s recommendations and generalize there from. But these aforementioned debacles illustrate how risky heeding his advice may have been for many people.

When my wife was a stock broker, her rule of thumb was to never give or discuss individual stock picks with her clients because,

“...if the stock went up, it was due to the client’s own insight, but if it went down, then it would be deemed my (her) fault...”

(Also, lest anyone forget, brokers make all of their money from selling mutuals NOT stock trade commissions and it's been this way for years. Of course financial charltans like Greg Mankiw think otherwise. Read my two comments in that thread.)

The same applies to Cramer. His acolytes that bought Google, Apple, or oil stocks were probably inclined to buy them anyway – he just provided the nudge. And when he touts some boring old industrial company, no matter how persuasive his sell, most people will pass on that un-sexy recommendation.

Plenty of sore losers are already blaming him rather than themselves.

Cramer's schtick is nothing new. Remember Dan Dorfman?

The inherent problem with Cramer is that he does a show five days a week. There simply aren't enough good trade/investment ideas to fill up that much time. In fact, as I near my twelfth year of trading, I find myself trading more and more infrequently. Throughout each year, there are say 20-40 layup trades, that I absolutely know will pan out. If I can focus my energy on identifying and acting upon those, experience has taught me that I'll make just as much if not more money with a considerable reduction in earnings volatility.

Of course it's not just Cramer who's spreading his product too thin. Big Media essentially defines itself by "talking a lot, but saying nothing". Some days or weeks there simply isn't anything worth reporting. In those cases, media consumers would be better off reading nothing rather than fluff gossip, histrionic nonsense, and the entire gamut of manufactured, watered down "news".

Devil's Advocate - Is this your excuse for not posting much lately?

No, it's not. I have just been too busy with the market (commodities and futures trade almost around the clock) and with my two small children. If I had the time (and the money to not work), I would sit at my computer, do research, and blog 18 hours a day. I enjoy it that much.

But my point is, that's it's very hard to offer up original content on a daily basis - even for stalwart intellectuals like myself. This is why the most frequently updated blogs devolve into political and headline du jour diaries. I mean, how many blogs do we need that every day quote a typically disgusting story from the New York Times and offer their particular spin on it?

Don't get me wrong, debunking the Times is good sport and very much a public service, but so many adept and Captious people are doing it, the rest of us needn't bother. Check out this most recent NYT fisking I came upon, click here.

Here is another flip-flop or should I more accurately say, shameless self-contradiction from the Times. They wrote an editorial right after 9/11 with a hawkish tone towards tracking the finances of terrorists. A tone that stands in contradistinction to more recent editorial decisions.





Lemma - The customer is always right....even when a complete Moron.

Whole Foods Bans Sale of Live Lobsters

In some stores, they experimented with "lobster condos," filling tanks with stacks of large pipes the critters can crawl inside. And they moved the tanks behind seafood counters and away from children's tapping fingers.

Ultimately, Whole Foods management decided to immediately stop selling live lobsters and soft-shell crabs, saying they could not ensure the creatures are treated with respect and compassion.

"We place as much emphasis on the importance of humane treatment and quality of life for all animals as we do on the expectations for quality and flavor," John Mackey, Whole Foods' co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement.

Just about everyone who shops at Whole Foods is an Automatic Moron. Check out my prior post.

Yeah I am sure that those organic chickens are humanely sedated before being PLUCKED AND MURDERED.



Do you ignorant dissembling socialists like this jacket? Well, you can buy one yourself from North Face.

There's nothing like espousing patriotism toward failed murderous regimes.

Sort of reminds me of J-Crew.



Now this is funny, if not a tad on the vulgar side.

Suit: NBA Player Watching Porn, Drunk Before Crash

(CBS) MINNEAPOLIS On March 30, Minnesota Timberwolves center Eddie Griffin was drunk and masturbating when he crashed his luxury SUV into a parked Suburban outside a store in Minneapolis, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the man whose Suburban was hit in the crash.

Several of the 911 callers that night said Griffin was drunk. One witness said Griffin told him he was watching pornography in a DVD player mounted on the dashboard of his Cadillac Escalade SUV when he struck a Chevy Suburban parked on University Avenue Southeast.

Obviously it's only funny because no one was seriously hurt.

What's also humorous is how the wire service manifests its anti-SUV bias. Note how a "luxury SUV" crashed into simply a "Chevy Suburban". Since when did a Suburban stop being stigmatized as an "SUV"?



The top caption reads,

"how modern life, biology and genetics inflence our relationship with food"

This graphic is from serial econo-illiterate offender PBS. Notice they don't consider "economics".

"Obesity" is an issue very similar to gasoline prices in that most people (95%?) have passionately ignorant opinions on the whole subject. I have said it before but it needs to be said again and again.

Whatever the actual level of the obesity epidemic, it is almost entirely caused by CHEAP FOOD.

From Daniel Akst and a prior post.

First of all, unbeknownst to most people, food is extremely cheap today. Americans spend only 6% of their personal income on food. That is down from about 16% in 1950. Food prices have been in constant decline for over 100 years.

Daniel Akst writes:

“In America today, food is cheaper than it has ever been. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reports that in 1919 the average American had to work 158 minutes to buy a three-pound chicken; nowadays, 15 minutes get you the bird. Americans spend less than six percent of their after- tax income on groceries, a figure so low they can afford to spend another four percent eating out. It's likely that in no other country is food as cheap as it is in the United States . The U.S. Department of Agriculture, using 1996 data, reports that the Japanese spend 16 percent of disposable income on food, and the Germans 17 percent. But even those figures pale in comparison with Third World countries. People in India , for example, still spend nearly half their disposable income on food.“

Fast-food is a product of cheap food and cheap food is a product of capitalism. In other words, you can't have capitalism without cheap food, they are born of the same market forces. Read Daniel Akst's entire article. It is long but very informative.

But as I said above, you'll almost never hear COST interjected into any theories on obesity, be they from media articles or from your friends and family. Everyone blames television, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Doritos in school vending machines, sedentary lifestyles, etc. The other day a family member of mine blamed "big portions at restaurants". I almost went ballistic on her. How can someone sell "big portions" if food isn't cheap!!!!!! It would be like walking around on planet Mercury and thinking you're hot because you have a sweater on.

Anyway, old and new canards abound explaining the causes of obesity and at some point all you can do is laugh at them. My favorite from this list is air conditioning.

-- Industrial chemicals called endocrine disruptors that disturb metabolism, encouraging the formation of fat.

-- Giving up smoking: people who give up cigarettes very often gain weight.

-- Air conditioning, which establishes a comfortable temperature zone. In temperatures above this zone, people eat less. The rise in number of air-conditioned homes in the United States virtually mirrors the increase in the US obesity rate.

-- Fat people marry other fat people. These individuals may be genetically vulnerable to obesity, a trait that could handed on to their children.



Notice the sign at Geno's Steaks. It reads "This is America, when ordering, SPEAK ENGLISH". (Click to enlarge)

Now this story has gotten much play throughout the blogosphere but still deserves further dissemination. Two funny highlights,

1) Geno's may face legal action for his allegedly offensive sign. I absolutely love his defense that the sign, written in English, can't possibly be offensive to anyone not fluent in the language.

2) Note that the owner, Joey Vento, is the grandson of non-English speaking Italian immigrants. Shouldn't that give him the impunity of a sympathetic victim? Heck if Cindy Sheehan can't be criticized because her son died in Iraq, if black rappers can drop the n-word left and right, shouldn't a descendant of non-English speaking immigrants be free to criticize today's English-challenged Americans? This is a great addendum to Ann Coulter's oft discussed "9/11 harpies" thesis. Read this thread, more particularly the comment I posted in it.



A few years ago I suggested that some people hate President Bush so much they'd blame the weather on him if they could. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, et al, how prescient does my suggestion look now? In fact, even former President Clinton is blaming the weather on his successor.

Clinton Links GOP Policies to More Storms

While on the subject, here is another review of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth",

People are skeptical about global warming because it builds up to the same chorus as every other lefty hymn: more taxes, more hypocritical scolding (the film is the brainchild of Larry David's wife, Laurie, part of the community of people who drive a Prius to the private plane) and especially more America-bashing.

Gore says that America, alone, is the problem. Taking us to China, he ignores the filth spewed into the air by its coal-fired cities. He does not meet with bronchitic citizens who wear surgical masks outdoors and pause to hawk up brown gunk every few minutes. Instead, he tells us America is lagging behind. "China," he says, "is on the cutting edge" of environmentalism. Nonsense.

Personally, I don't care what "scientists" all think but if you are one of these people who's accepted that all scientists believe in global warming mythologies, then click here. The major point is that climatologists are a very tiny fraction of "all scientists" - and even they are split on the issue. A molecular biologist's opinion on global warming is no more educated than the average Joe's. The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the consensus as well (and here too).



Can the Europeans be any dumber?

Air fares 'to double' as Europe votes for green tax

Let's see, you are Europe, you already can't compete economically with America AND you have juggernaut Asian economies to worry about, but nonetheless you decide to smack an enormous "global warming" tax on your businesses and consumers.

Prediction (not just based on the above) - In the next two years, the Euro currency takes a nosedive.

Hopefully I will be short.

Speaking of institutionalized European retardation...



This World Cup mania is out of control.

Now don't get me wrong. I love soccer and I love sports. Though basketball and golf are my favorites, I grew up in a soccer family. Everyone coached, played, and even refereed futbol. But there's something seriously wrong when a game makes grown adults' actions indistinguishable from those of my 20 month old son.

Obviously I am talking about the crazy fans, but also the whackjob players. Despite incredibly harsh penalties (i.e. game suspensions) from FIFA, you still have tons of players unable to control their on-field actions. Those that blame the refs for the spate of cards this year simply don't understand the game. The refs weren't committing slide tackles from behind, kicking players in the groin, or head butting opponents on a world wide stage - no less in extremely important games, that only occur every four years.



Seemingly all of the coaches were fired after the Cup. In fact the Ecuadorian coach went home ignomious in defeat and has had to hide from death threats. For more Copa Mundial inanity, check out this blog post titled World Cup Death Watch.

Elevating the NBA and Marginalizing a Harvard Economics Professor

Have y'all noticed how exciting the NBA playoffs have been this year? Unfortunately many people likely have not. They gave up on pro basketball years ago. I am a basketball junkie who's persevered through the low-scoring, over-coached play of the last 10-15 years. Also smothering the NBA's renaissance are the extremely late games. Everyone should get a DVR and watch the games the next day. I generally watch the first quarter or half at night and then the end of the game around 6am with my crepuscular infant son.

The ONLY reason the play is more exciting is the recent removal of the illegal defense rule.

As I articulated so well (and accurately) in a prior blog:

About twenty five years ago, they instituted the illegal defense rule which basically eliminated zone defenses. The league didn’t want teams double teaming its headline stars. In other words, they wanted to cultivate the superstars in hopes it would drive ticket sales.

But in the real world, actions have reactions. In this case, the elimination of zone defenses forced teams to guard every single player, whether they merited it or not. This misguided rule protected guys who couldn’t shoot because an opposing team couldn’t penalize these non-scorers by leaving them open. Anyway, scoring declined steadily until last year when they eliminated the illegal defense rule. So the points are on the way back, but time will tell whether on not the fans return.

The Detroit Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs are slow-it-down, walk-the-ball-up low-scoring teams. With both of them bounced from the playoffs, I optimistically see it as vindication for a renewed up-tempo and high scoring era of pro ball. Time will tell.

Now is as good a time as any to Marginalize Cedric Maxwell. Last year he went on the radio in Boston and made the outrageous claim that Dirk Nowitski (pictured above) is a better player than Larry Bird. I won't even deign to argue with him - but do click on the link to hear his case. Now bear in mind, that Maxwell actually played with Bird and won championships with him, yet has this ridiculous notion in his head. The only explanation I can think of is that Max simply snorted too much cocaine during the 1980s Celtics championship runs. That is after all why the team eventually got rid of him. (The rumor I heard at the time was that he was trying to get Kevin McHale into cocaine.)



To a math guru like myself, mathematical induction is one of the most elegant forms of logical proof. I apply this philosophy in my Marginalization strategies.

For example, it seems widely accepted that Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe is one of, if not the "best" sportswriter in the country. So I have fired many emails out to him pointing out his errata, misconceptions, canards, and outright distortions. He always responds, quite pathetically I must add, and perhaps one day I will publish these exchanges. My point is that if he is "the best" and a lowly part-time fisker like myself can effortlessly expose his incompetence, then I don’t have to waste my time correcting or debunking the rest of the sportswriting dolts. Marginalizing Bob Ryan inductively makes tidy work of his compadres as well.

Lately I have been applying the same inductive Marginalization to a Harvard economics professor. Dr. Greg Mankiw recently started his own blog, ostensibly as some sort of adjunct to the undergraduate econ classes he teaches. I don’t think he really knew what he was getting into when he decided to put his thoughts and teaching on display for the World Wide Web. I have posted several Captious comments on his blog, most of which rip his posts to shreds. He hasn’t responded to me once, nor to any of the other eviscerating commentators. I can tell y’all right now, Dr. Mankiw hates me and has deleted at least one of my comments.

Why waste my time provoking this guy? Well, it goes back to preference for induction. It’s very efficient just having to show the inanity of a Harvard professor, so I don’t have to bother with others. The man highlights so much of what’s wrong with taxpayer-funded education and displays an astounding amount of generalized cluelessness.



Here is an example of his head-scratching babble:

Am I eating a free lunch?

For the past several months, I have been using the Blogger service to create this blog. Blogger is a subsidiary of Google, which offers the service for free to the public. Google makes money from its search engine by selling ads, but my blog does not have ads unless I authorize them. I keep waiting for Blogger to offer to sell me some add-on services, but that hasn't happened yet.

What's in it for Google and its shareholders to give me all this free service? I am puzzled. I hope one of the commentators can enlighten me.

Can you freakin' believe this guy? He's a Harvard professor and though exudes a remedial understanding of business.

Hey Greg, do you freakin' realize that your supermarket likely sells milk and eggs to you at a loss? Do you need that cosmic mystery explained to you as well?

The guy is technically a "macroeconomist". I put it in quotes because it's an almost meaningless term. Macroeconomists deal with aggregate measures of economic activity. Since aggregates are tough to measure, macroeconomists have (or give themselves) plenty of intellectual license. More often than not, they're merely political propagandists, though very fluent in the abstract rhetoric of their own creation.

Query - How can one make the jump to a "macro" economist when they can't comprehend the most elementary theories of microeconomics? For instance, shouldn't they have a clue about how a company like Google prices its products?

Confoundingly, gross econo-illiteracy pervades much of this Harvard econ professor's posts. His blog is plastered with links to the socialist NY Times yet hasn't once mentioned anything from Forbes - the preeminent capitalist publication. He's got the obtuse notion in his head that economics can be intelligently taught/studied without any direct knowledge of business realities.

Firstly, the guy has never himself worked in the market economy. He's spent the last 25+ years at Princeton, MIT, Harvard, and briefly worked for the Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Taxpayers have involuntarily paid his salary all these years. At root, he is a consumer of wealth created by and confiscated from risk-takers in the market economy.

In his post I Am Not Accountable he declares:

I have often thought of professors as, in some ways, self-employed producers of intellectual output.

Does anyone think this economics professor has a clue about who pays him?

How the bleep can someone so smart claim in the same breath to be both "unaccountable" and "self-employed"?

Greg doesn't have the slightest experience working for so much as a safe large corporation, never mind going it alone in the business world and risking his own personal assets.

Not only is Dr. Mankiw bereft of any time spent in the market economy, he also advises his students to steer clear of wealth creators. Why muddle up good theories with messy facts, I guess.

I recommend that every student planning a career as a professional economist try to spend a summer, or even a year, working at a place like the CEA, CBO, or the Fed.

He's one of these prototypical Overnuanced Morons. He occasionally self-deprecates, but never with due precision or force. Let's just say, that what he thinks are his foibles, biases, etc. and what I think diverge greatly. In one post, he responds to the Wall Street Journal's generalized criticism of professors as,

"...narrowly educated experts" with little experience outside academia. They are "poorly equipped to help college students sort out" their lives."

Dr. Mankiw agrees and chalks it up to higher ed's preference for instructors who've done a lot of research versus those with good teaching ability. Greg loses all of his self-deprecation points with this absolutely pathetic response.

I am open to the idea that we should take a broader view in promotion and hiring than we do. I would increase the weight given to teaching relative to research. I would give some weight to life experiences outside of academia, such as working in policy jobs, writing op-eds, writing books for nonspecialists, and so on. But my perspective is a minority view in my department and, I believe, in research universities more generally.

This dolt wants more emphasis on teaching. Hey dunderhead, all the emphasis in the world isn't going to help if your teachers have no practical knowledge to impart!!!

But even worse was his suggestion to "give some weight to life experiences". Only SOME weight Greg?

How about his jarringly ignorant concept of "life experience".

Working for Big Government and writing op-eds??????!!!!!!

Only in an alternate reality is "writing op-eds" considered a life experience AND mind you it only holds SOME weight in Dr. Mankiw's utopian criteria.

I'll bet my blog readers think I've milked every ounce of inanity from this post.

Think again.



Prior to Mankiw's "some weight to life experience" post, he wrote a blog titled How to Improve Journalism. In it, he agreed with a Wall Street Journal article that deplored the quality of economics journalism. Furthermore, it blamed vapid "communications" courses, "a heavy emphasis on process and theory", and implicitly journalists' lack of specialized knowledge.

Mankiw's suggestion of course was to force more theory on the reporters - though not surprisingly, that of his own.

Here's my radical suggestion to the editors of the world: Require all your economics reporters to have an undergraduate degree in economics. And give a raise to those who spent the extra year or two getting a master's in economics as well.

Note that Greg doesn't suggest not hiring the econo-illiterates in the first place, but rather a company subsidized academic junket that just may in fact drive sales of his textbook.

Greg simply doesn't get it. An academic degree does reporters no good without real world experience. He is the trenchant case in point. He doesn't even understand the concept of a loss-leader (milk, eggs, Google's free blog hosting, etc.) A term which I first learned of over a decade ago while listening to college dropout Rush Limbaugh - an intellectual Neanderthal who unlike Dr. Mankiw, has spent zero semesters at MIT, Princeton, and Harvard. When a renowned scholar like Mankiw clearly doesn't understand basic truths about the economy, I think it's safe to indict all of academia.

There are plenty more econo-illiterate examples on his blog, including one discussion of rising healthcare costs where Mankiw doesn't even mention the albatross of Medicare's role in aggravating prices. This salient point had to be mentioned by a plebeian anonymous commenter.

It's really a quasi-blog because Mankiw hardly ever responds to crippling criticism. He only responds to fawning students who mention how much they've learned from his published textbooks. On second thought, he has responded twice to me, once indirectly when all he could muster was, "I am a bit surprised by the tone of the commentary" and another where he deleted my expressed hope that he "leaves the politics out of the classroom."

Bravo Greg. Ignore most substantive criticism, delete some, and shamelessly highlight the obsequious comments.

What politics one may ask? Well he's routinely posts about non-economic issues like the legalization of drugs, the War in Iraq, obesity, and "global warming" (click here, and here). Like I said above, he inhales the agitprop of the New York Times and like most of its readers, he likely wouldn't know what to think without it. It's simply amazing the level of groupthink produced by our supposedly "intellectually free" academics.



A most nauseating trait of Mankiw is his penchant for diplomatic intellectualism. He is more concerned with being liked (or at least not hated) by unmitigated socialists like Paul Krugman and Brad Delong than he is with the naked truth. For example, in one post of his, he takes former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich to task over an article Reich wrote on rich people and Bush's tax cuts. Though Mankiw catches Reich lying, instead of calling Reich the deliberate socialist that he is, he opts for more friendly diction.

..."facts" about the current tax law that I found so surprising...

These data (which include all federal taxes, not just income taxes) seem hard to square with Reich's second claim...

I don't know what data Reich was using when he made his claims.

If there are data backing up Reich's claims, it would be interesting to figure out why they are inconsistent with CBO data. Comments and explanations from readers are welcome.

As I said in the comment thread:

Greg,

How come when you catch a lying socialist you wonder,

Why, it would be interesting to see why their thesis is inconsistent with the data

Why can't you just call a spade a spade?

How can you possibly think agitprop innocuous?

I am not holding my breath for a response. But this is what it boils down to, professors like Mankiw do in fact think socialism is innocuous, or at least they're scared of an honest treatment of it. After all, Harvard would never have hired Mankiw if they feared he might passionately propagate the truth about capitalism. Personally, as an economics professor, I would consider myself a failure if thousands of little Commi nerds left my classes with A's and B's.

Not only is there no reason to fear haughty Harvard intellectuals, in fact, there's barely a reason to respect them.

To read all of my comments posted on Mankiw's blog click here.

In particular, the comment thread on his Intellectual Property post further illustrates my overall point.

Self-Marginalizers

I think it's safe to say that stupidity correlates positively, though not absolutely, with the number of bumper stickers you have on your car. Now I have never seen so many bumper stickers as I do in the Chestnut Hill area of Massachusetts.

However, I found the one pictured above so funny that I actually thought about plastering it on my Earth-scorching SUVs.

But the notion didn't last long because I have, let's charitably say, a different take on what ails the Commonwealth. Massachusetts just voted down a bill that would have started enforcing the mandatory seat belt law and many Bay Staters cheered. Now there are many reasons one could be happy about this outcome, but seriously, of all the problems this state has, I simply fail to see any meaningful significance. It's not going to lower taxes, improve traffic on the pothole-riddled roads, enlighten the dumbest group of "smart" people on the planet, or stem the Mass exodus to other states.

As I pointed out on a prior blog, the nanny state is still in tact when 40 year-olds with out-of-state driver's licenses can't buy beer at Celtics games.

Now I am not advocating for the failed measure (read my comment in the first link), but why have a law in the first place if there is no mechanism or popular will for enforcement?

It's almost like an open, unguarded border - what's the point?

So some people were excited about the failed attempt at enforcement, but again, this is Massachusetts and everything is relative. It's like when a team is trailing 10-0 with 2 outs in the ninth inning and the clueless fans cheer for a single.

Speaking of Boston, most people are aware that Condoleeza Rice gave the commencement address at Boston College this past Monday. The protests were anticipated and hyped up by Big Media. Of course Rice is seen by some as an architect for an "illegal war" and "mass murder of civilians". Boston College professor Steven Almond supposedly resigned in protest, rather than teach at a school that condoned the devilish Rice. Personally, I would have been more convinced of his sincerity if he had quit mid-year. It seems only a shade above quitting right before you get fired. Anyway, I listened to an exchange between the dissenting Almond and John Gibson. It was kind of childish but one part 4 minutes in caught my attention. Responding to Gibson:

Professor Almond - ...yeah, you know that's what all of us Communist homosexual lefties advocate...

Now, the context is completely irrelevant, and you can listen yourself to the dull debate if you don't believe me. All they were talking about was Condoleeza Rice and her role in the Iraqi War, "Bush lied", etc. Why Almond saw fit to inject his self-portrait into the discussion remains mysterious.

But I was shocked that a man of that profile would be teaching at a Catholic college. Almond's entire protest was ostensibly based on how a Jesuit institution shouldn't be welcoming an alleged architect of murder - that it was inconsistent with the school's mission and most certainly against Catholic dogma.

Someone ought to fill in Mr. Almond on the Church's teaching on homosexuality. And I doubt that the Church condones Communism since it's responsible for 50-100 million deaths worldwide.

Now I don't blame Almond for anything because Boston College hired him in the first place. Professors like that just tend to erode the notion of Boston College being a Catholic school.

There is a lot of this going on up here. Howie Carr, a local radio talkshow host, is supposedly a "rightwing, conservative" yet he spends a lot of time complaining about gouging at the gas pump, and displaying considerable economic illiteracy. Republican governor Mitt Romney is also locally considered a right-wing conservative, even when he's approving mandatory universal healthcare. Heck, the New York Times labeled John McCain a "conservative Republican" this week, a description that probably made Rush Limbaugh's blood boil - at least more than many of their other grave distortions.

And at the risk of sounding like a "both sides" Moron, I also want to add that the self-identified Democrats I know in Massachusetts have absolutely NOTHING in common with the ones I know in say, Philadelphia or Baltimore.

Why would anyone self-identify as a conservative Republican when that could mean anything from John McCain to Michael Savage? The same goes for the term liberal. These terms are essentially meaningless and are usually just impediments to dialogue, government, and progress. Go google these terms on my blog and you'll find that I have hardly ever used them. As of now, a google search on "liberal" of my entire blog turns up only 7 results, almost all of which are in quotes made by other people.

This leads to a new and regular feature of my blog. In response to a few blog readers who have complained at the length of some of my posts...



Rapid Fire Moron Marginalization

1) I'd like to Marginalize anyone who thinks the George Foreman Grill is "easy to clean". What a load of bull.

2) Those older people that don't have call waiting - because they are cheap and/or think it "rude" to put someone on hold to take another call. It's pretty damn rude when you can't get through to whom you're calling because the phone is busy all day.

3) Anyone who says their school district is the "best". I've recently heard that the schools are "best" in Manhasset, Garden City, Scarsdale, Wellesley, and just the other day Brookline. Does that mean that Boston Latin and Stuyvessant aren't any good? I also have read that Charlotte elementary schools are the best in the country. Logically, they can't all be the best now can they? Plus, I am pretty sure that my high school, Saint John's High in Shrewsbury is much better than all of them!!! (kidding, but only partially.)

4) These dads that can't parent. I know a woman who has an 8 month old baby. She's traveling overnight to Boston for work (from NY) and has to take the baby with her (find a daycare facility, etc.) She can't leave the infant with her husband, who "won't wake up when the baby cries". I have already mentioned another male friend of mine that will only change "pee" diapers. These people are unbelievable.

5) Moms who can't parent. I can't believe all of my peers that have nannies. None of us grew up with nannies but my friends seemingly can't live without them. They bring the nannies with them on vacation, to reunions, etc. Some jackasses even think that having a nanny elevates their image. I'd argue the opposite.

6) I need to Marginalize these grocery stores up here in Boston that don't carry pancetta or prosciutto. As my wife says, "too many Mc's up here..." Yes, indeed.

7) Everyone who bores others with the story on how they got a "good deal" on their engagement rings. Invariably the story goes like, "I know a guy..." Yeah, that's all jewelers do - sell diamonds at a loss.

8) These parents that put their kids on "time out". What the heck is that? When my kid screws up, he is going on "death row" or in "the hole". Time out, give me a break.

9) Anyone that complains about someone else being "overpaid". At root, this is pure envy. Stop bitching and go find your own high-compensating low-demanding job. Two different people bored me this weekend with screeds on their personal overpaid villains. What did I do? I told them both I thought THEY were overpaid.

10) I need to Marginalize all of these losers that spend all of their time at "free" events. You know where they are - at the libraries, free concerts, always hanging in the park, spending all day in Starbucks with a newspaper, etc. I once saw an email that was being forwarded all over NYC that listed seemingly every free event in the city. Some people are so God-awful cheap...I could write several blogs entirely on cheap people.

11) Anyone worrying about the avian flu. I read recently that the poultry industry has been losing $27 million a month because customers are eschewing chicken products. You may have noticed that it's been marked down substantially at your local supermarket. These are the same people that have in the past hyperventilated about Sars, Mad Cow, and Anthrax. I say eat the cheap drumsticks and thank your Moronic friends for the discount.

12) Anyone who thinks that a totally white and 100% college educated city would be Utopia. These people need to visit Boston. This city is so white that Sicilians stand out. Everything sucks in Boston: the food, the weather, the economy, and the people. Also, as my buddy concluded the other day...even Don Juan would be leaving Boston bars alone.

13) It's also time to Marginalize all of the stupid adults that used to torture us as kids. These are the people who forbid us from putting our jackets on before we went outside - for fear of "catching a cold". They made us wait 20 minutes after we ate lunch before jumping back in the pool. And what about all of these stupid teachers that insisted we learn the metric system because "America would switch over soon"? It's a depressing thing to think about how much nonsense was thrown at me as a child.

14) I'd like to Marginalize these teachers that say, "There's no such thing as a stupid question." This is one thing that Morons actually do adopt as a life philosophy and they terrorize their co-workers, bosses, and everyone else they come into contact with. NOT ONLY IS THERE A STUPID QUESTION, THERE ARE BILLIONS OF THEM.

15) Also in need of Marginalization is anyone who honestly thinks that a $37 steak from Smith & Wollensky's or other highfalutin steakhouse is better than a $5 combo meal (with cheese) from a fast food joint.

And finally, Moron(s) of the week goes to some guy I know in Manhattan who threw his friends a BBQ last weekend. He CHARGED them all $15 apiece - including a young lady whom he was interested in dating. The loser even said he'd accept Paypal in an evite he sent out. Everyone that showed up must be a bigger loser than him - if that's even possible.



Predictably, Bill O'Reilly is musing why our country isn't "100% on ethanol" instead of gasoline. His profound reasoning, "If Brazil is doing it...why can't we?"

Well Bill, I'll let Forbes' Field of Dreamers give you the answers.

Even studies by ethanol fans concede that achieving energy independence via ethanol requires bullish assumptions. Among them: that refiners will get at least twice as good at making ethanol. That the average efficiency of our vehicles improves to 42 miles per gallon, 68% better than the 25mpg now achieved. And that people will move closer to where they work. If all those fantasies become reality, the U.S. could, in theory, meet all of its transportation fuel needs with ethanol by 2050 without adding to today's current cropland, according to an exhaustive study by the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group based in New York.

(This is what I mean when I call alternative energies, science fiction.)

But what if fuel demand continues on its existing growth trend and there is no improvement in ethanol manufacturing? Then we'd need to plant crops on 1.7 billion acres to eliminate gasoline by 2050. That would mean putting fuel crops on just about every square inch of the country (total land mass, 1.9 billion acres). There would be no room for homes or food crops.

But apart from subsidies and mandates, ethanol from corn doesn't make economic sense. Corn does not grow easily in the U.S., so it requires a lot of energy to produce. How much? That's a matter of debate, bitter debate. But a recently published survey of the various conflicting engineering studies comes up with a plausible compromise estimate: Every unit of energy that goes into making ethanol from corn produces ethanol that yields 1.27 units of energy. To turn the ratio around: If you want to displace a unit of petroleum energy, you have to burn four-fifths of a unit in fossil fuels. Corn ethanol is barely in the plus column. That's no way to achieve energy independence.

Brazil's energy balance is far more favorable. Sugarcane doesn't need as much fertilizer, and Brazil is close to the equator, so it soaks up more sunlight.

What if we repealed the import duties, inviting ethanol in from sugarcane-growing nations near the equator? Heroic assumptions must be made here about the willingness of American farmers and distillers to compete. Assuming public opinion were to swing around to free markets in agricultural goods, new questions arise. Do we want to motivate Brazil to plow under what remains of its forests? And what do we accomplish by replacing a potentially unreliable petroleum supplier like Venezuela with a potentially unreliable ethanol supplier next door?



This whole ethanol push is one giant fraud of which the public is totally ignorant.

About 50 cents of the current per gallon price of gasoline is due to ethanol. Does John Q. Public really want to spend this much money to support a completely infeasible renewabletechnology? I think not.

John Q. Public also has no idea that politicians keep cheaper ethanol out of the country via a 54 cent tariff.

John Q. Public is completely unaware that pols do this to curry favor from corn belt states. This is by no means a one party pandering issue. Note Hillary Clinton's recent flip-flop on ethanol subsidies.

These stupid bleepin' politicians are scared to death of cutting agricultural subsidies (i.e. corn) for states like Iowa because of its standing as the second Presidential primary. The public doesn't give a hoot about these early primaries come November, yet the pols are stuck on this stupid premise. And again, this shows that pols care more about themselves than what is best for the public.

Don't forget that domestic ethanol will NEVER replace gasoline, otherwise corn would be growing on every square inch of the fruited plain.

In summary, we have a science fictional energy, foisted upon already suffering gasoline consumers, only benefitting Midwest corn growers that are only too happy to exploit the misguided fears of no-term-limit Congressmen and aspiring Presidents.

I know that's not such an elegant description, so let's just call it a pile of bull dung.

One of the things I am trying to do is provide if not original, but slightly uncommon insights into the big issues of the day. Walk down the street, and start polling people. No one has any idea what is going on with ethanol. If they do, it'll likely resemble Bill O'Reilly's vacant insight about doing what Brazil does. For all of the "No War for Oil" canards flying around, this ethanol scam is playing out in broad daylight - and it's playing to an empty theater.

Part of this ignorance stems from good old fashioned econo-illiteracy. But make no mistake, Big Media doesn't honestly cover this issue because ethanol realities simply don't fit their "Oil is evil" and "Green/Renewable energies are good" template.

When Bill O'Reilly asserts that the Antique Media is "not looking out for you", about that he is dead right - and ignore that at your own peril. Why anyone would religiously buy a newspaper that systematically lies to them is beyond me.

Bear in mind that I am a little bit crazy, but it's not possible for me to loathe these old large media organs (New York Times, network news, CNN, Time, Newsweek, etc.) any more than I already do. By not even covering this issue, the press is once again giving a giant middle finger to its consumers - especially to those of lower income to whom $3 gasoline is a bigger burden.

It's almost unfathomable that gasoline is 50 cents more expensive than it would be without the ethanol mandates. That means roughly $200 million of American consumers' money is wasted EACH DAY on this fraud. (Assuming 400 million gallons consumed per day.)

$6 billion wasted a month in fact. That's about the current monthly cost of the war in Iraq.

So the next time someone trots out the cost of Iraq, as a ruse no doubt, ask them how much ethanol is costing America.

Where is CaptiousNut?

I have been down in Texas helping to build a wall.

Will be back posting shortly.