Housing Recovery: Really?
This is cross-posted from my blog, but I think it’s relevant since Russ has recently been egging on my naysaying. For the “wispy, ethereal” Mepper, I believe you’ll find a lot of hard numbers in here.
Closing Thoughts on a Debate Jehuda Punted
In debate, we have speeches at the close of the round called “rebuttals”. This terminology, despite its use in both high school and college, is something of a misnomer. To rebut something is to disagree, to counter-argue. The rebuttal speeches are actually the middle speeches, where everything being said is a refutation of an earlier argument and few to no new arguments are made. I think the phraseology evolved from the fact that new arguments are disallowed in “rebuttals”, but they should really be called “summations” or “closing arguments”.
Rose in the Red, Brandeis is Blue: Why Closing the Rose is a Brilliant Move
Einstein, a key figure in Brandeis’ founding, would have approved of this move.
Consider this my spirited rebuttal to Greg’s post from Monday.
Brandeis University e-mailed its alumni on Monday, January 26th to inform them of the decision to close the Rose Art Museum. This immediately struck me as a brilliant and courageous move to cut dead weight at an institution reeling from faith in the stock market and the fallout of the Bernie Madoff fiasco. Over the course of the next week, I learned that I was pretty much the only almunus in university history who felt that way (though surely there must be some alumni on the unanimous Board, no?) and that everyone was in a fervor rarely found among Brandeisians not discussing Israeli-Palestinian politics. What happened?
Most Babies Chronically Depressed, New Study Warns
Groundbreaking research out of the University of Iowa today has confirmed what many have long suspected: most babies are clinically depressed.
A shocking 83% of babies have been found to have the hallmark symptoms of a newly identified strain of depression. The numbers may be even higher among infants.
“When you think about it, it makes sense,” noted Steven Bernard, MD, part of a team that led the study. “Most people are able to cope with the struggles of life without breaking down crying multiple times a day. Babies are notorious for being unable to demonstrate these coping skills.”
The Death of Journalism
I know I’m at risk of becoming a one-trick pony here in posting about news stories that are obvious and/or silly over and over, but hey – there’s been a flurry of same lately.
I could almost submit the above without comment, since it seems so self-evidently nonsensical to me. Does CNN think the nation was waiting, on pins and needles, for Hillary’s coin-toss decision between announcing that she would push for a smarter U.S. or a dumber U.S.? Did CNN have a potential article revved up in red “DEVELOPING STORY” border for Clinton announcing that she planned to sit on her duff for four years?
Or perhaps the only alternate headlines considered were “Clinton is this reporter’s personal favorite person alive” and “Clinton ‘could run for God’ in four years”.
Journalism, I miss you.
Misunderestimation
If you ever wonder why everything in the financial world is a stunning surprise and all results are different than expectations, this article should help you stop wondering.
In it, we learn that a worsening economy that lost 2.6 million jobs in a year, almost all of them in the last 6 months, could (mind that word now, could) lose 2.0 million jobs in the next year.
WHAT?
So, economists’ math goes like this:
-2,600,000 jobs
+worse job market
——————
-2,000,000 million jobs
Apparently, a “worse job market” means “600,000 jobs better than a better job market”.
And we wonder how things got this bad.
From the No-Crud Bureau…
Greg’s post reminded me of an old gambit I used to have called The No-Crud Bureau. This was something I made up in high school as a receptacle for all the junk that people would come up with (often in academic studies) that was so obvious as to defy description. And was somehow instead passed off as a stunning revelation.
I guess these days it would more likely go by something like the No-Shit Show, but I didn’t swear at that point in my high school career. The swearing would come later, with the jading experiences and the pathological liar and the hey-hey-hey.
So my own submission to the Bureau today is this stunning study:
Apparently, misbehaving teens may be at risk for major adulthood problems.
Really?
Why would people who tend to have trouble continue to tend to have trouble? Isn’t it more likely that their trouble would suddenly vanish for no reason? Wouldn’t their magical conversion to the age of majority instantly convey a restart of all past indiscretions?
I’m glad people spent the money it costs to track 3,500 people for 40 years to give us this scintillating information. Much better than trying to cure cancer or something inane.