Multiple Things

I have been wanting to write a post about multiple things, and this is it. There is no coherent pattern, other than that these are all things that intrigued me when I came across them.

This article , which says that regulation usually fails, pissed me off, but I read it anyway. I'm pleased to be able to say that I read it in advance of reading the Kristof article I mention below. That still doesn't mean I liked reading it, because I didn't. How can this possibly be true, you bastards are trying to pull yet another fast one. And then I read this:

It was not an absence of regulation, but rather improper regulation that played a major role in fueling the current crisis. Fed officials and administrators don’t want to believe that capitalism without failure is like religion without sin—but it is. It simply doesn’t work, and no amount of increased supervision or regulation will make it work. That is an unpleasant lesson of the current crisis.

Well, I thought, that might be true. It certainly does appear to be true that the things that were done were usually legal, or the kind of thing that you really can't regulate, until you regulate so much stuff that you've got a nation of auditors. But thats not to say that its right to do those things, just because you can get away with them, which is what I thought that article was saying. Now, I still don't agree with the article, because it concluudes by promoting the idea of government as lender of last resort option (I think thats good, but without oversight before then? No way). But overall, its not bad. It does make decent points along the way, particularly the idea that all financial operations ought to be reflected on the balance sheet -- none of this some on/some off stuff, a la Enron.

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I don't like math. I am not as math-phobic as I once was -- but still, not fond of it. Slowly, over time, I've grown to appreciate it, just a bit. So when I came across this site, giving fairly straightforward videos on Trigonometry, Algebra, and Calculus, I was taken by it. Have I watched it all? No way, Jose. But some? Yeah. Some. I still don't get a lot of it, but I'm trying.

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I'm not exactly sure what this site is all about. I think it's intended for science instructors, but they also present a science novel that's actually not badly written, assuming you live in the 1950's. Unusual site. I think it's worth messing around with, though.

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Saw the Obama on Leno interview, including the comment about Special Olympics. It was okay. You could really see him trying to stay on message, which is hard when you're also going for laughs, as I think he was. I didn't particularly care for the SO observation, but I didn't think he was being the foul bigoted person some have said. (My wife said That was IT?) I guess, to tell the truth, I didn't think he should have done the show at all. It was a bit too glitzy for me. It also reminded me that the rich and powerful get better access to the President than I do, and I didn't care for that.

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This is the Kristof article. I don't usually read things by him, because he appears a little too smug, to me, but a blogger I like mentioned it, so I looked. He does make some good points -- though, if you follow what he says, maybe I only think that because he's saying some things I've thought -- and that I've seen in The Audacity of Hope. Its pretty tough, finding those things that you don't actually agree with, but which you're willing to quietly admit, to the right people, might have something to them.

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I've mentioned this doctor's site before, I think. I don't usually read doctors blogs, because lots and lots of them are smug, telling me things I don't want to hear, either because I don't believe them or don't want to hear them or, and yeah, I know this is silly, just don't want to give them the satisfaction of agreeing with them. But this guy is different, usually, so I read it. This particular article is about electronic medical records, which is a concept that I think makes a lot of sense. I know that its a killer to implement, an absolute killer, and that you can actually kill your practice if you do it badly. But its still worth doing, and worth encouraging. Some doctors will do it because its the right thing to do, some will do it to make money. I don't care why. Side note: I wish I could be part of making it work. Unfortunately, I'm damned if I see how, since the field is very, very heavily oriented to companies that are founded and run by doctors, as being the only ones whose opinions on the practice of medicine truly matters. Or so they say.

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Okay, that's a wrap.