Passengers as Guinea Pigs?? “Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787’s” —headline, NY Times (1/16/2013) Certain software makers (rhymes with schmicro-soft) are famous for releasing products that are “not-ready-for-prime time.” So, too, it would appear that Boeing’s new jet, the 787 “Dreamliner,” was put into service before all the kinks were worked out. I don’t...Read More
Double-Standard? And How! If the U.S. government handled the housing crisis the same way it treated Wall Street after the 2008 financial crash (emphasis on “treat”), here’s what would have happened: 1. It would long ago have purchased — at inflated cost(!) — the homes of every underwater homeowner in the country; 2. It would then...Read More
Is There Such a Thing as “Triple-Edged?” (Excluding Shaving) Speaking of office meetings . . . another good, overheard line regarding the term “edgy” at yesterday’s. As in, there’s “good edgy” and “bad edgy.” Not sure that I can (or want to) to define the difference . . . but I know it when I...Read More
Onto Fiscal Cliff #2 (and #3, and #4, and . . . ???) Statistician Nate Silver has advanced an interesting explanation for ever more frequent (and seemingly more acute) attacks of political gridlock nationally — the just-averted Fiscal Cliff fiasco serving as Exhibit A. Namely, politicians on both sides of the aisle have conspired to...Read More
Removing the “Capitol” from “Capitol Gridlock” “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” –Proverb “Seven of the richest American counties in 2011 were in the Washington, D.C. region. Fairfax, Loudoun and Arlington counties, all in Northern Virginia, have higher median incomes than every other county in the United States. Whence comes this wealth? Mostly from Washington’s...Read More
Grantham Embraces “Accounting for Earth” “The full replacement of our resources is somewhere between very expensive and impossible, so our measurement system simplified the issue by ignoring it completely.” –Jeremy Grantham I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I came close, in this post three years ago: “Just consider how GDP now accounts for...Read More
