The arguments for regulation of the market for goods and the regulation of the market for ideas are essentially the same, except that they’re perhaps stronger in the area of ideas if you assume consumer ignorance. It’s easier for people to discover that they have a bad can of peaches than it is for them to discover that they have a bad idea.
“I’ve been walking three miles a day. I thought my cardio fitness was pretty good. Then today I tried swimming some laps and found out that my fitness level is not what I thought it was.”
“Yes, well, it’s a good thing that complex life emerged from the seas so we can all spend more time walking and less time swimming. Happy Darwin Day!“
I had three boxes of Coke Zero at the self-checkout. After I took each one out, scanned it and put it back in the cart, I realized that I could have just taken one box out and scanned it three times.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda . . .
Customer to Mexican busboy: “Great soups today! I love the albo-dingus!”
My wife is telling me that the parents of one of our son’s high school friends are moving back to their home country of Japan. She doesn’t understand how parents could move so far away from their children. Their two kids, both in their 20s, are staying here in California.
“Well,” I say, “other people’s kids are often a little disappointing, in my opinion,” and she starts knocking on something that I’m pretty sure is not even made of wood.
Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead Sunday of an apparent drug overdose at his Manhattan apartment.
Police responded to the 46-year-old’s apartment in the West Village shortly after 11 a.m., police sources told FoxNews.com.
A friend found his body in the apartment and phoned police. Hoffman was alone in his bathroom when he was discovered with a heroin-filled needle in his arm, law enforcement sources said.
I am really shocked to hear that. People are shooting up heroin first thing in the morning?! To me, a shot of heroin — like a nice, warm bath — is best enjoyed in the evening, to unwind after the travails of the day.
This is yet another blow to a theory that most Americans believe, which is that wealth is synonymous with happiness.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, he’s in every movie, it seems like. He’s a Top 1 Percent wage-earner for sure. We hate the Top 1 Percent! They’re so rich and smug and happy.
“Oh,” people think, “if only I had a lot of money and I could do anything I want. Then at last I could be happy too.”
Wrong. Not only would you not be happy, you’d be even less happy than you are now, because you’d no longer have lack of money to blame for your unhappiness.
Frankly, I’m surprised that more actors aren’t overdosing themselves on a daily basis. It’s such a minor art form. Someone writes things down for them to say and they say those things. Sometimes a bit of business is written down for them to perform while they say the things that were written down for them to say.
The adulation that actors receive is so wildly out of proportion to the triviality of what they do. Some, like Hoffman, have the limited amount of self-awareness required to recognize this, to their eternal detriment.
P.S. I just saw this:
The “fearless choice of roles” meme with reference to actors has always stuck in my craw.
“So let me get this straight . . . if I take this role, I’ll have to read the script, learn my lines and pick up a check? Nope, sorry. Too scary.”
RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, said this the other day:
“Some of the monies that will come from that will go to other parts of the city too that connect in with that . . .”
OK, that’s out of context and it doesn’t make any sense, but — “monies”?!
“Hi, I’m Eric Garcetti. I have a dollar bill so I have a money. If you give me another dollar, I’ll have some monies.”
No. You can have a dollar or a billion dollars. One word covers all the possibilities and that word is “money.”
“Monies” is a word used by politicians and academians and other posturing pricks who’d like you to think that they’re doing the Lord’s work and not soiling their hands with anything as grubby as “money.”
There’s a story on the TV news about a fire that burned down a local preschool, owned by the same family for 44 years. Fire investigators suspect arson.
The owner is being interviewed. “The Lord will get us through,” she says.
“I’m surprised the Lord let someone burn the place down to begin with,” I say to my wife.
“You can’t look at it that way.”
“I can’t?”
“It’s just something that happened and the Lord will get them through it.”
“I don’t see how the Lord can be given credit for anything that happens as long as it’s good, but when something bad happens, well, it’s just a random incident that he couldn’t do anything about. Where’s the accountability? Is the Lord making things happen in your life or isn’t he? Well, the preschool burned down, that was regrettable. The Lord must have looked away for a moment. But now he is going to take charge and set things right. Make sure we get the insurance money. How does this make any sense?”
We saw Singin’ in the Rain on Netflix this weekend. Why this film is so beloved is a mystery to me. It feels thrown together, like someone took a bunch of unrelated songs and wrote a plot around them. Which in fact is what they did.
And the songs aren’t that great either. In particular, “Singin’ in the Rain” is not a great song . . . the melody is boring and it’s not a great lyric.
The Cyd Charisse sequence seems to have been dropped in from a different movie.
The Music Man is better. Mary Poppins is better. The King and I is better. My Fair Lady is better. That’s just off the top of my head.
The Wizard of Oz is better, but I’m not sure that counts as a musical.
Great dance numbers though.
Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly Don Lockwood, Donald O’Connor Cosmo Brown, Debbie Reynolds Kathy Selden, Jean Hagen Lina Lamont
IMDb rating: 8.3 ( votes)
I wrote an email in Outlook 2013, concluded by saying “Details are in the attached doc,” then clicked Send without attaching the aforesaid document.
I must not be the only person who does this, because when I clicked Send, this dialog box appeared:
Obviously, Outlook is looking for words like “attached” or “attachment” in emails that don’t contain an actual attachment. It turns out that this behavior can be turned on or off in the Outlook Mail options:
I have to admit that I don’t remember if “warn me” is the default option, or if I turned it on at some point in the past and forgot about it.
Carleton College: 10 Foundational Quantitative Reasoning Questions
But I think American liberals have also made the mistake of focusing too much on income and wealth as the measures of success. Every chart and graph we see about America’s increase in “inequality” is about either money, or the likelihood of getting money. Sure, disparities of wealth are distasteful. Sure, money is one thing that confers social status. But by focusing on it obsessively, I think liberals are helping to cement its paramount importance as the end-all and be-all of social outcomes.
I often say, “Well, it’s just over on the other side of that canyon. So all we have to do is go.” It is always surprising to me that other people would expect me to tell them how we’re going to get there directly. That it is not enough to say, “Well, it would be important to get there and there is probably a way. Let’s go.”
Well I hope you come and see me in the movies
Then I’ll know that you will plainly see
The biggest fool that ever hit the big time
And all I gotta do is act naturally
These are the books I read in 2013, roughly in the order listed. The ratings are mine. They don’t represent a consensus of opinion.
Books of the Year: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
In 2014, I hope some sage business illuminato will gather his wits and take a stab at defining the difference between “management” and “leadership.”
Long overdue . . .
From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
I can’t sleep on planes. I’m afraid the damn thing will crash and I’ll miss it.
I don’t believe in anything. I wish I did. It seems comforting to imagine holding the plane aloft with prayer.
I’m not a good person. Why shouldn’t something terrible happen to me?
Things you notice when walking in Tokyo . . .
1) There are lots and lots of people . . .
2) Most of them are not very tall . . .
3) Because there are a lot of people in a small amount of space (even though they are small people), Tokyo is built to take advantage of vertical space. For example, I’ve never seen a two- or three-story fast food restaurant in the U.S. but they’re common in Tokyo. Businesses that usually are two or three stories in the U.S., like department stores, in Tokyo are eight or ten stories.
Flying back home tomorrow . . . sayonara!
