Monday, December 23, 2013

Catching up on stories

 this one for further reading, about the Duck family, via Instapundit.

“The surprise should be how liberals dismissed the rise of Duck Dynasty until this fall, when it was too late to stem the show’s popularity. Once it became evident that this family held so much influence, the left suddenly realized they faced the first threat to their decades-long monopoly on popular culture.”

a bit cynical, don't ya think...I wasn't aware the show was a hit...

I've only watched short parts of it a few times (we often get programs months to years later...for example, Lady Mary just got married on Downton Abbey) so I don't have an opinion on the show: But I do appreciate all the honest, hardworking redneck reality shows on TV here, to counteract the sexual gyrations on MTV, not to mention all those shows and movies that make foreigners think all Americans are  lazy, rich, criminals or sluts... 

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Freakonomics podcast on the Pope.

Sachs doesn’t always sound like an economist when he talks about how the economy should work:
SACHS: First let me say I am a believer in a market economy … and I would imagine Pope Francis, too, is a believer in a market economy, but what the Church has taught … is the idea that an economy needs a moral framework. This is a very, very basic idea that we have mostly discarded but that I believe in.

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TYWKIWDBI on why drug testing people on welfare is not cost effective:

the problem of assuming all poor folks are druggies, (and of course there is also the problem of false positive tests).
Critics also say the policy is based on the false perception that large numbers of welfare recipients are using illegal drugs. A new analysis by the state Department of Human Services (DHS) found that participants in Minnesota’s welfare program for low-income families are actually far less likely to have felony drug convictions than the adult population as a whole...

someone once said that Harlem had the same crime/drug/murder/divorce rate as Hollywood; that was years ago, but I suspect it continues to be true.
But rich folks can cover it up...

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Also from TYWKIWDBI: why facebook didn't pay any taxes.

it is a shell game.

And here I am worried that I will have to pay taxes because I cashed in on a little of my retirement savings to help with expenses here (after the typhoon wiped us out). Sigh.

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FYI: Lawrence of Arabia was an anthropologist.

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Celtic Christmas music links

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Christmas Bentos on Pinterest

I'd post on facebook but they require you to let them know your friends and contacts.

Why worry about the NSA when Pinterest and Facebook and voter data bases know who you are?
 Sources with knowledge of the initiatives describe them to POLITICO as:
1. A 50-state voter file that will merge granular historical data for every registered voter in the country with social media and email information being collected by Ready for Hillary. While the super PAC intends to deploy the new database as early as January to mobilize supporters, its real utility would come in building and executing a model of voter coalitions and messages to win a presidential campaign.
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