I'd imagine it is very very difficult being an armed police officer (or anyone else having to use guns). Only if you are a very poor shot.  ;)  And, from my perspective, guns are a tool that can be used or misused according to the mental/emotional/physical acumen and stability of the user/abuser.  ...

What I find interesting is that Bryan Fischer is just as "forthright" in his opinions as Hitler was and yet (I hope) he isn't a real threat because he doesn't get support despite having a radio show. I guess there are thousands and thousands of people who are just as twisted as Hitler and ...

That Bryan Fischer has a wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Fischer To avoid being classified as a hate group, the AFA has officially repudiated Fischer's views on Muslims, Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, The Holocaust being caused by homosexuals, the outlawing of homosexu...

"How can it be a lawful killing if he didn't have a gun?" Seriously? How about if he was behaving violently within 21 feet and had a knife, or a club, or weighed 300 pounds, or was hopped up on pain-suppressing drugs, or... I don't know the circumstances of what that poster is referring t...

To be clear here, I don't think it's really so much racism as it is culture-ism. Both white liberals and white conservatives like black people and hispanics who happen to share their interests, worldviews, preferred career fields, income bracket, level of education, religiosity, choice of vehicles,...

One could say the same about state-run lotteries though.  I like to refer to them as a "stupidity tax."  Although I guess you could argue for them as a form of entertainment. Like you I'm no fan of state lotteries. In the UK, our national lottery seems to be an engine of cronyism, channel...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has acknowledged its role in Operation Choke Point and is taking dramatic steps to reverse its policies in targeting legal and legitimate industries that are disfavored by the Obama administration. It sounds a nightmarish example of abuse of bureaucratic power. I...

Kbg, I'm especially impressed at how the whipsaw chop of 2011 didn't do anything worse than simply make the 3x version less than 3x the 1xETF version (and so only "disapointing" if a better than 3x the 1xETF result was envisioned). But, do (would) the 3xETFs  in reality manage to track any...

Kbg, isn't it true that if the asset classes are keeping to a trend, then the (internally daily adjusted) 3xETFs + cash (so deleveraged to be back to 1x but not rebalanced every day) will out perform the 1xETF whilst if the asset classes are whipsawing, then the 3xETF + cash will suffer? Was mid 201...

Perhaps I should have mentioned that the best strategy if there was only one player would be to have 100% socialization of the winnings. You'd steadily gain if you did that whilst without socialization, you'd lose essentially everything after a while (1.5x0.6=0.9<1). BUT clearly it becomes more comp...

Playing monopoly with my brother's children prompted me to dream up this game. It would only require some coins and a note book and could help make arithmetic fun for children to practice. It is a sort of "national fiscal policy game". I guess the aim is to entice wealthy residents into yo...

Has Prof. Krugman given a pronouncement on the new Greek government? It will be interesting to learn what he says. After all, the new Greek Prime Minister is an ideal Krugman candidate, as he keeps portraits of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in his office to serve as an inspiration as he proceeds to ...

WiseOne, I'm thousands of miles away in the UK. Hope its all well with you guys in NY.

I've not had a chance to watch it yet but that sounds awful. I googled because I'd not heard about Malmo. This seemed to offer some hope perhaps: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190468#.VMa7dP6sVqU Malmö's Muslim community supports the city's Jews, local representatives told the Swe...

Reub, I just saw something about the blizzard with a map of where the snow was going to be 3foot and thought that's where Reub said he lives. Hope it all goes OK.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kalecki220510.html I agree with moda about how overall demand across the whole economy needs to be viewed in order to understand this. Individual motivations are very important for ensuring people do useful work rather than wasteful work but IMO economy wide issu...

I agree with moda about how overall demand across the whole economy needs to be viewed in order to understand this. Individual motivations are very important for ensuring people do useful work rather than wasteful work but IMO economy wide issues need to be heeded to make sure legions of people (and...

Benko, you get some economists saying that the only reason for unemployment is government meddling -that in an unadulterated free market we would have full employment. It's weird then that the one period in the past couple of hundred years when we had persistent low levels of unemployment was the on...

I thought this was interesting: http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2012/07/unemployment-a-brief-history.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451cbef69e201774371b49d970d-pi What stands out here is that a highish rate of joblessness is quite normal. It is ...

Does the decline correlate with the decline of the original Caliphate? I only know about this from the wiki page I'm afraid. According to that, its heyday was around the transition after the Umayyad Caliphate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%60tazila#Origin This school of thought emerged as a reac...

I thought this was interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%60tazila Mu`tazila (Arabic: ????????? al-mu?tazilah) is an school of Islamic theology based on reason and rational thought[1] that flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad, both in present-day Iraq, during the 8th–10th centuries. ...

I thought this was an interesting comparison between how current central banks try and foist structural reform on countries and how the potato famine in Ireland was handled in the 1840s: http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-sharp-but-effectual-remedy.html Between 1846 and 1851 about a milli...

I thought this was fascinating: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/open-book/2014_reith_lecture3_edinburgh.pdf   And there have been many studies like this, but the most rigorous one was done at the Massachusetts General Hospital and they took patients with Stage IV lung cancer. So this is incurable ...

Wild about Harry, thanks for the tips!

Dindin, I just saw the film; thanks for your recommendation. From what I can see Japan did much the same as the rest of the developed world though with slightly different timing but perhaps all with the same motivations. BUT why is there a sea otter at 37min?  I also thought this was an interesting ...