South Park Conservatives and "Sexual Harassment Panda"

In Sexual Harassment Panda, the kids of South Park Elementary sit through a confusing presentation on sexual harassment in school — from a guy in a panda suit, naturally — then start suing one another, and the school, for what used to be acceptable playground taunts.

Kyle's lawyer father, Gerald Broflovski, keeps buying newer, bigger houses with all the money he makes at everyone else's expense:

Gerald: You see, Kyle, we live in a liberal, democratic society. And Democrats make sexual harassment laws. These laws tell us what we can and can't say in the workplace. And what we can and can't do in the workplace.
Kyle: Isn't that fascism?
Gerald: No, because we don't call it fascism. Do you understand?
Kyle: Do you?
Gerald: [rises] Just look at how big this house is, Kyle. Just look at it.

Iron, by Henry Rollins

In Iron, Henry Rollins tells the story of his journey from self-loathing to self-respect. His advisor would be arrested for such "tough love" today:

Then came Mr. Pepperman, my advisor. He was a powerfully built Vietnam veteran, and he was scary. No one ever talked out of turn in his class.Once one kid did and Mr. P. lifted him off the ground and pinned him to the blackboard. Mr. P. could see that I was in bad shape, and one Friday in October he asked me if I had ever worked out with weights. I told him no. He told me that I was going to take some of the money that I had saved and buy a hundred-pound set of weights at Sears. As I left his office, I started to think of things I would say to him on Monday when he asked about the weights that I was not going to buy. Still, it made me feel special. My father never really got that close to caring. On Saturday I bought the weights, but I couldn't even drag them to my mom's car. An attendant laughed at me as he put them on a dolly.

Monday came and I was called into Mr. P.'s office after school. He said that he was going to show me how to work out. He was going to put me on a program and start hitting me in the solar plexus in the hallway when I wasn't looking. When I could take the punch we would know that we were getting somewhere. At no time was I to look at myself in the mirror or tell anyone at school what I was doing. In the gym he showed me ten basic exercises. I paid more attention than I ever did in any of my classes. I didn't want to blow it. I went home that night and started right in.

Weeks passed, and every once in a while Mr. P. would give me a shot and drop me in the hallway, sending my books flying. The other students didn't know what to think. More weeks passed, and I was steadily adding new weights to the bar. I could sense the power inside my body growing. I could feel it.

Right before Christmas break I was walking to class, and from out of nowhere Mr. Pepperman appeared and gave me a shot in the chest. I laughed and kept going. He said I could look at myself now. I got home and ran to the bathroom and pulled off my shirt. I saw a body, not just the shell that housed my stomach and my heart. My biceps bulged. My chest had definition. I felt strong. It was the first time I can remember having a sense of myself. I had done something and no one could ever take it away. You couldn't say shit to me.

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron.

Surveillance After London: Threats and Opportunities

In Surveillance After London: Threats and Opportunities, Arnold Kling makes a number of points that "at first may seem counterintuitive, but which I believe make sense once you consider them":

1. "Homegrown" terrorism represents an opportunity as well as a threat to security.
2. Security cameras are an inferior surveillance technology.
3. Screening at potential target sites is an activity with high costs and low benefits.
4. The group most in need of intense, systematic scrutiny is the Department of Homeland Security.

How is homegrown terrorism an opportunity?

Many people are upset by the fact that some of the London bombers were British citizens. If you thought that terrorism could be prevented by requiring ID cards, systematically searching for illegal aliens, and deporting everyone without proper papers, then this might make you think twice. But I was never in that camp to begin with.

On the other hand, if you believe that the best way to deal with terrorism is to infiltrate the terrorist organizations in order to obtain strategic and tactical intelligence, then the existence of homegrown terrorism is an opportunity. It is pretty hard to insinuate a CIA agent into a clan-based cell located in some remote -stan. But if terror cells include people who otherwise appear to be ordinary English-speaking citizens, then infiltration should be much easier.

When Is Losing $112 Per Passenger Good News?

Nick Gillespie of Reason asks When Is Losing $112 Per Passenger Good News?:

When you're Amtrak — the nation's passenger rail system and terrestrial version of NASA — when you compare it to the $208 per passenger loss in sleeper cars on the Capitol Limited.

Didn't Bill Clinton end welfare as we knew it? Somebody forgot to tell Amtrak, which is sucking up $1.2 billion in federal gravy this fiscal year and is poised to get $1.82 billion next FY (thanks to those cost-cutting, gov't-starving Republicans).

The 'Bad' Guy

I still haven't read Everything Bad Is Good for You, but I did enjoy The 'Bad' Guy, about the book and its author:

When it comes to gaming, Johnson invokes some of the neuroscience he studied for his last book. Human brains are drawn to systems, he suggests, in which 'rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment.' The exploration part is key: Gamers have to figure out the rules as they go along, and 'no other pop cultural form directly engages the brain's decision-making apparatus' the way video games do.

With television, Johnson's argument rests more on economics. Complex narratives that 'force you to work to make sense of them' have been rewarded by a marketplace where profit now depends heavily on repeat performances, whether on DVD or in syndication. Making shows more challenging to decode makes perfect sense if you're assuming they'll be watched more than once.

Games aren't 'Hamlet' or 'The Great Gatsby,' Johnson writes; they're more like mathematical logic problems. As such, 'they are good for the mind on some fundamental level: They teach abstract skills in probability, in pattern recognition, in understanding causal relations that can be applied in countless situations, both personal and professional.'

Harry Potter and the Half-Wit Prigs

Greenpeace has decided that US readers should boycott the US edition of the latest Harry Potter and buy the Canadian edition instead, because the Canadian edition is printed on recycled paper.

Harry Potter and the Half-Wit Prigs explains, scathingly, why this isn't a good idea:

We can leave aside all those inconvenient little facts about the paper industry, like people go out and plant the trees that they later turn into books, that paper recycling itself produces waste (including, it is said, dioxins) and that the collection of paper to be recycled is highly energy intensive. Indeed, if we try and pick our way through the claims and counterclaims of which is best for the environment or the economy, virgin or reused, we will no doubt end up as deranged as a Greenpeace member.

Fortunately we don't have to. We already have a simple and convenient system for measuring whether one process or another uses more or less resources. It's called the price. This is exactly what markets do, they aggregate all the costs of production into one single set of digits. A lower number means less resources used, a higher one more.

In This Corner, in the Flouncy Skirt and Bowler Hat...

In This Corner, in the Flouncy Skirt and Bowler Hat... describes pro wrestling, or lucha libre, as practiced in El Alto, Bolivia:

'The cradle of freestyle wrestling is Mexico because that's where the best fighters were — Hurricane Ramírez, the Jalisco Lightning, the Blue Demon,' explained Juan Carlos Chávez, promoter of the Titans.

But now, he says proudly, Bolivia has its own stable of wrestlers who tussle in choreographed matches. And Bolivian organizers have introduced the innovation of fighting Cholitas, the indigenous women who wear bowler hats and multilayered skirts.

'I wanted to get people's attention and fill up the coliseum,' said Juan Mamani, 46, the president of the Titans and a wrestler himself. 'At first, I thought of fighting dwarves. I even brought in one from Peru. Then I thought of Cholitas. It's been popular ever since.'

Oh, for the days before Crecy!

Oh, for the days before Crecy! claims that "fetishizing the good old days [WWII] as a model for today’s modern military is about as useful as longing for the era of chivalry following the Battle of Crecy" (where English archers wiped out a force of French knights).

I particularly enjoyed this comment by FDChief:

This thread reminds me of the evening I sat and talked with my FDO — a hell of a bright guy who is now an attorney (Erik, if you're reading this, take a bow, sir) — and we agreed that since 1972 (when the draft was ended) we had entered the 'Marian' period of the Republic. The general public no longer has an obligation to serve (as in the early Republic) but the old tradition of a small peacetime army, mobilizing the people and electing consuls (read, officers) for wartime service (the Cincinnatus tradition) has given way to a large standing professional Army with long-service troopers. And if you think back, you can recall what happened to the Republic once its fortunes were in the hands of men who, while tough, smart and honorable, thought of themselves as soldiers first, citizens second...

What the Fido and I reasoned was that by using the excuse of the 'increasingly complex' nature of war and the need for a 'highly trained' Army the folks who wanted to USE the Army — the civilian leadership and most specifically the service chiefs and the Joint Staff — had removed the most fundamental of democratic checks to the military, the participation of the citizenry, and replaced them with 'Marius' Mules'. That this would provide a new window for military adventurism — it's a lot easier to fight Fuzzy-Wuzzies with Ortheris and Learoyd than with Joe Public. The Legion can do things that the 'troupes metropolitains' just can't do, politically...and that, just as the Romans had, we Americans might find that somewhere in our future was our Caesar, and we could wake up to find that were were no longer citizens of the Republic but subjects of empire.

The is not to say that we haven't produced a superbly trained Army — we have. But to concentrate the instruments of military power in the hands of a professional military class, regardless of the need, is to give that class the ultimate authority over civilians.

So let's be realistic about the choice we've made: in order to provide the country with an Army that is unsurpassed in defending the country, we have produced an Army politically isolated and socially distinct from that country that it defends. This IS a potential danger to the country, and we would be well informed to be cognisant of that fact.

You can either have a house pet that barks indifferently well or a savage guard dog that views anything weaker than itself as prey. The war dog is by far the better at protecting the house but is an ever-present risk to maul the children.

Cafta's Benefits

Cafta's Benefits makes a case for the Central American Free Trade Agreement:

Start simply with the appeal of greater two-way trade: The vast majority of Cafta-made products already enter the U.S. duty-free under the Caribbean Basin Initiative. Cafta opens the way for more U.S. products going south. The agreement also boosts intellectual property protection in Cafta countries, as well as competition in financial and other services in which the U.S. excels. American farmers alone expect to increase exports to Central America by some $1.5 billion a year. All that goes away if Cafta fails.

We are also told that Cafta can't work because the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 didn't work. And while it's true that Nafta didn't cure cancer or turn Mexico into Switzerland, those who argue that Nafta failed are ignoring the evidence.

In Nafta's first decade, annual two-way trade between the U.S. and Mexico almost tripled, to $232 billion from $81 billion. During that same period the U.S. created 18 million net new jobs and, even after the dot-com implosion and the recession of 2001, the current U.S. jobless rate of 5% is lower than it was (6.4%) when Nafta became law. U.S. productivity and wages have all climbed steadily. Ross Perot's prediction of a 'giant sucking sound' proved to be a fantasy.

But what about 'the trade deficit'? Well, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) reported last week that, since the birth of Nafta, U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico have grown 55% faster than they have to the rest of the world, while imports from Mexico and Canada have only grown 20% faster. NAM says that Nafta partners make up just 10% of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods.

Hillary vs. the Xbox: Game over

You can tell that Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, had some fun composing this open letter to Senator Clinton, cited in Hillary vs. the Xbox: Game over:

I'm writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious 'Grand Theft Auto' series.

I'd like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids — a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.

I'm talking, of course, about high school football.

(Hat tip to Boing Boing.)

Why Hedge Funds Hunt for Animals, Search the Stars

From Why Hedge Funds Hunt for Animals, Search the Stars:

When Alan Ware started his hedge fund, he found plenty of investors, a comfortable office in midtown Manhattan and a strategy to make money. But a big problem remained: 'All the Greek gods were taken.'

So were many animals, mountain ranges, rivers, roads — even solar systems.

He and his partners slogged through maps, the Internet, Latin words and suggestions from friends before finding a suitable name for their firm, which oversees about $100 million. 'It was harder than naming my children,' says the father of two. They settled on Pike Place Capital Management, after a prominent farmers' market in Seattle, the city where Mr. Ware was born.

That was three years ago, before thousands more people set out to start hedge funds, private investment partnerships for rich individuals and institutions. Now, with more than 8,000 hedge funds world-wide — twice as many as five years ago — managers are bumping into each other in their quest for the perfect name.

Firetrucks Go High Tech

From Firetrucks Go High Tech:

Fire engines aren't what they used to be. Today's trucks are bigger, faster, safer and smoother-riding. They look like traditional firetrucks, but they can be equipped like ambulances or command centers, with state-of-the-art electronics, communications systems and climate control to make sure vials of medicine are kept cool. In addition to putting out fires, these trucks are used to extract people from crumpled cars, resuscitate heart-attack victims, reinforce collapsing buildings and analyze chemical spills.

The price of a single rig frequently exceeds $500,000 and occasionally tops $1 million. The Federal Bureau of Investigation paid $1.4 million for a high-technology command center vehicle to coordinate security at last January's presidential inauguration. Although the number of trucks sold in North America has held steady at about 5,500 annually for the past five years, revenue at their makers has been increasing as equipment prices have shot up. Firetruck makers estimate the industry's annual revenue at $2 billion, a number that is likely to rise as municipal budgets rebound.

Hoover's Institution

Laurence Silberman opens Hoover's Institution with some eye-catching credentials:

I recently completed a rewarding year as co-chairman of President Bush's commission on intelligence, and I propose to discuss our recommendations regarding the FBI in light of my own unique experience with J. Edgar Hoover.

His experience:

I became deputy attorney general in early 1974, after the "Saturday night massacre." Having seen printed rumors of the "secret and confidential files" of J. Edgar Hoover (who had died in 1972), I asked Clarence Kelly, the very straight and honorable director of the bureau, whether they existed. He assured me that they did not. If they ever did they must have been destroyed.

I was shocked then, when on Jan. 19, 1975, as acting attorney general, I read a front page story in the Washington Post confirming the existence of the files. The story pointed out that the files contained embarrassing material collected on congressmen. When I confronted Kelly, he was initially mystified. He then realized the Post must be referring to files in his outer office, in plain sight, which he had inherited but never examined. Sure enough, they were the notorious secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover.

The House Judiciary Committee demanded I testify about those files, so I was obliged to read them. Accompanied by only one FBI official, I read virtually all these files in three weekends. It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service. Hoover had indeed tasked his agents with reporting privately to him any bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King, or their families. Hoover sometimes used that information for subtle blackmail to ensure his and the bureau's power.

His point:

The notion that the FBI's purity would be endangered if its counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations were a more integrated part of the intelligence community seems laughable. If the FBI were to be corrupt, as it surely was under Hoover, no organizational structure would solve that problem. And if it is honorable, as it surely is under Bob Mueller (and has been for many years), then a separate national security service with a close relationship with the new director of national intelligence promises only benefits to the country's security.

I'm not sure his point naturally follows. But this recommendation makes some sense:

Former Director Louis Freeh initiated the practice of taking new FBI recruits through the Holocaust Museum to show what can happen when the law enforcement apparatus of a country becomes corrupted. I have always thought that sort of extreme example was a bit farfetched for our country, but there is an episode closer to home. I think it would be appropriate to introduce all new recruits to the nature of the secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover. And in that connection this country — and the bureau — would be well served if his name were removed from the bureau's building.

Fortress America?

Fortress America? addresses a recent proposal to spend $5 billion more on policing the borders:

Never mind that since 1986 the U.S. strategy of spending more and more money on militarizing the border hasn't worked. According to a recent Cato Institute study by Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey, 'By 2002, the Border Patrol's budget had reached $1.6 billion and that of the [Immigration and Naturalization Service] stood at $6.2 billion, 10 and 13 times their 1986 values, respectively.'

Over the same 16-year period, the number of border patrol officers tripled, and the amount of hours spent patrolling the border increased by a factor of eight. By 2002, Professor Massey notes, 'the Border Patrol was the largest arms-bearing branch of the U.S. government next to the military itself.'

Meanwhile, the illegal immigration flow has only increased, and all of this extra 'enforcement' is arguably one reason. When illegals felt they could more easily cross the border, they'd enter the U.S. on a seasonal (or sometimes even daily) basis or when they needed the money. Then they'd often return home. But with the difficulty of re-entry so much higher in the last 20 years, many more migrant workers choose to remain here permanently. The risk of staying is lower than the price of re-running the border gantlet.

The alternative:

Based on the fact that the vast majority of migrants come here in search of work, Senators McCain and Kennedy aim to lower the level of illegal immigration by expanding our relatively few channels for legal entry to meet the demand. Giving economic immigrants legal ways to enter the U.S. will reduce business for human smugglers and counterfeiters. Moreover, it will allow our border authorities to concentrate their resources on chasing down real security threats instead of nannies and gardeners.

Down Over Moving Up: Some New Bosses Find They Hate Their Jobs

The Wall Street Journal's latest "Cubicle Culture" column, Down Over Moving Up: Some New Bosses Find They Hate Their Jobs, notes that a promotion often isn't all it's cracked up to be:

Conditioned all their lives to play their cards right, they aspire ever upward, unaware that the less appealing aspects of a low-level job (navigating expense reports and the sharp shoals of the HR and legal departments) are greatly amplified if they hit the big time. It's only later that many managers discover that the office with their name on it is private primarily to help them concentrate on budget items, overdue performance reviews and the menus for going-away parties.

John Emsley, Poison and 'The Elements of Murder'

NPR interviews chemist John Emsley, whose new book The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison, "chronicles cases of accidental and intentional use of lethal substances throughout the ages."

Rare island birds threatened by 'super mice'

The Sci-Fi channel may need to make a movie about super mice. From Rare island birds threatened by 'super mice':

'Monster mice' are eating meter-high albatross chicks alive, threatening rare bird species on a remote south Atlantic island seen as the world's most important seabird colony. Conservation groups say the avian massacre is occurring on Gough Island in the South Atlantic, a British territory about 1,600 kms (1,000 miles) southwest of Cape Town and home to more than 10 million birds. 'Gough Island hosts an astonishing community of seabirds and this catastrophe could make many extinct within decades,' said Dr Geoff Hilton, a senior research biologist with Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

'We think there are about 700,000 mice, which have somehow learned to eat chicks alive,' he said in a statement.

The island is home to 99 percent of the world's Tristan albatross and Atlantic petrel populations — the birds most often attacked. Just 2,000 Tristan albatross pairs remain.

'The albatross chicks weigh up to 10 kg (22 lb) and ... the mice weigh just 35 grams; it is like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus,' Hilton said.

The house mice — believed to have made their way to Gough decades ago on sealing and whaling ships — have evolved to about three times their normal size.

This is a common phenomenon on island habitats — for reasons much debated among scientists — where small animal species often grow larger while big species such as elephants display 'dwarfism' and become smaller.

In the case of the mice of Gough Island, their remarkable growth seems to have been given a boost by a vast reservoir of fresh meat and protein.

The rapacious rodents gnaw into the bodies of the defenseless and flightless chicks, leaving a gaping wound that leads to an agonising death. Scientists say once one mouse attacks the blood seems to draw others to the feast.

The Great Alaskan Morel Rush of '05

Those crazy mycophiles are at it again. From The Great Alaskan Morel Rush of '05:

Alaska's 2005 morel season actually started in the summer of 2004, when the state experienced its largest recorded wildfires, which burned more than 6.7 million acres, much of it around Fairbanks and Tok. Fairbanks locals wore dust masks for weeks, and a resident of Chicken, 60 miles from Tok and on the fire line, expressed the opinion that 'there are two seasons in Alaska, winter and smoke.'

What was a trial for humans and wildlife was a treat for mycelia, the underground fungal webs that produce mushrooms. In a process known as mycorrhiza, mycelia form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of trees and other plants, the fungi receiving sugars and amino acids they need to grow, the roots receiving water and minerals. But morels are clever, as one theory has it, and instead of dying when trees do — in a fire or by insect infestation or other major disturbance — they tap a rush of nutrients from the decomposing roots, and thrive.

Tracking wildfires in order to locate next year's crops is Wild Mushrooming 101. And most species that grow on the West Coast are reliable: Every spring there will be morels from Northern California to British Columbia; chanterelles flourish in the Pacific Northwest's coastal regions in late summer; and come fall in central Oregon there's the matsutake, a mushroom so highly prized by the Japanese that in years past it has sold for $1,200 a pound.

Of course, dependent as it is upon acts of god or accidents of nature, the mushroom trade is extraordinarily risky. Colloquially known as 'cash in the woods,' it can be quite profitable. In 2004, Alpine Foragers' Exchange, the company Jay Southard buys for, purchased more than 200,000 pounds of chanterelles for as little as $1.50 a pound and sold them for as much as $6.50 a pound. But it can just as easily be ruinous: This year's morel harvest in Oregon was one of the worst on record.

Alaska is the great unknown on the mushroom circuit, having produced them on a commercial scale only once, after fires in 1990 resulted in what are often recalled as 'carpets of morels' near Fairbanks and Tok. If this ever happened before, no one had paid much attention, but by the spring of 1991 wild mushrooms had become a culinary essential, and a few prescient buyers made their way to the state. They were amply rewarded. That year, the 98,000-acre Tok River Fire yielded a morel harvest of 300,000 pounds. By comparison, this year's burn is nearly 70 times larger.

(Hat tip to mi amigo, Todd.)

Robots to offer Japan's elderly new lease on life

Robots to offer Japan's elderly new lease on life describes the new HAL 5 exoskeleton:

The sleek, high-tech get-up looks like a white suit of armor. It straps onto a person’s arms, legs and back and is equipped with a computer, motors and sensors that detect electric nerve signals transmitted from the brain when a person tries to move his limbs.

When the sensors detect the nerve signals, the computer starts up the relevant motors to assist the person’s motions.

Sankai says the suit, dubbed “Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) 5,” can let a person who can barely do an 176-pound leg press handle 397 pounds.

“The big goal is to expand or strengthen the physical capability of humans,” said Sankai, who set up a venture firm last year to market the robot suit and plans to start leasing HAL-5 to the elderly and disabled in Japan this year.

Danica McKellar

Paul, of GeekPress, says "None of my math instructors at MIT ever looked like her" in reference to Danica McKellar, the actress who played Winnie on The Wonder Years before going on to get a degree in mathematics. From the New York Times profile:

Ms. McKellar was 13 when "The Wonder Years" started in 1988 and when it ended five years later, she took a respite from acting to attend U.C.L.A. She expected that she would resume acting when she graduated, and she expected that she would major in film.

In her freshman year, though, she found that she missed the structured logic that she had enjoyed in high school math, and she started taking math classes at U.C.L.A. "I felt my brain was getting mushy," she said.

To her surprise, she excelled. Later, she was surprised by her surprise, because she had done well in math classes from elementary school through high school. But she had never considered studying math or science in college.

"It wasn't like I thought about it and thought, 'No, I can't do that,' " she recalled. "It just never occurred to me."

Next, she took the more complicated complex analysis course. The professor, Lincoln Chayes, invited her to enroll even though she had not taken all of the prerequisites. And then she had another class, real analysis, also taught by Professor Chayes.

She quizzed him with enough questions that he offered her and another student, Brandy Winn, the opportunity to tackle some original research, the first time he had given a research project to undergraduates.

There's now a Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem.

Buyout Mania

According to Buyout Mania, American-style private-equity firms are moving into the European market — and the Europeans don't like it:

The backlash against American 'locusts' in Germany reflects recent wrenching shifts in the way continental Europe does business. Germans in particular have taken pride in their 'humane' form of capitalism, characterized by relatively short working hours and high pay, in contrast to what they see as a more cutthroat, competitive American way. But as global competition grows, European firms are under pressure to trim costs. Private-equity transactions — in which investors buy up a company using substantial amounts of debt, overhaul operations, then sell out after a few years — have been common for years in the U.S. and Britain. They used to be the rare exception in continental Europe, where financial leverage has long been frowned on and relationships with investors were based on tradition. No longer.

Starting in the late 1990s, all the big U.S. players, including Blackstone, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), Carlyle Group and Texas Pacific Group, set up small-scale European operations. They're now bustling, growing rapidly and accounting for ever more of the U.S. groups' business. In four years, Blackstone's investments in Europe have jumped from about 10% to 30% to 40% of its total business, and the firm has opened offices in London, Hamburg and Paris. 'It has become quite a significant part of our business,' says Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone's CEO and one of its co-founders. 'It's a moment of structural change in Europe.' The American moneymen last year were involved in about one-third of all European buyouts, doing deals worth more than $25 billion. That's triple the amount in 2001 (see chart). And there's no end in sight: several of the groups, including Blackstone and KKR, are in the process of setting up new investment funds aimed in part or entirely at Europe.
[...]
One reason Europe is attractive: such huge firms as electronics giant Siemens, automakers DaimlerChrysler and Fiat and the French media company Vivendi Universal have shed operations they deem no longer core to their fundamental business. Also, investors have been buying medium-size companies whose family owners are looking to sell. Once the Americans take over, they move fast, prodding the firms to make their operations leaner and frequently reshuffling management. The worse off an operation is, the more money the investors stand to make from selling after turning it around. "We like the complexity of Europe," says Jim Coulter, a San Francisco-based founding partner of Texas Pacific. "It often means there is more inefficiency."

That's where the controversy kicks in. In their drive to reduce working capital and improve cash flow to pay off the debts incurred during the buyout, managers can't afford to be sentimental about businesses that don't do well. They spin off, reorganize or shut down poorly performing subsidiaries. Thousands of workers can lose their jobs in the process. But what's bad for the workers is good for the company's financials.

Hawaiian caterpillars hunt like spiders

Hawaiian caterpillars hunt like spiders:

'Although all caterpillars have silk glands, this predatory caterpillar uses silk in a spiderlike fashion to capture and immobilize prey,' Daniel Rubinoff and William Haines at University of Hawaii wrote in their report.

The caterpillars of the newly described species, Hyposmocoma molluscivora, are small — about a third of an inch (8 mm) long. Wrapped in their cocoons, they 'lumber along' leaves, Rubinoff and Haines said.

'The caterpillars do not eat plant foliage, even when starving,' they wrote.

Instead, they hunt Tornatellides snails.

When they find one, 'they immediately begin to spin silk webbing attaching the snail shell to the leaf on which it rests, apparently to prevent the snail from sealing itself against the leaf or dropping to the ground,' the researchers wrote.

'The larva (caterpillar) then wedges its case next to or inside the snail shell and stretches much of its body out of its silk case, pursuing the retreating snail to the end of the shell from which there is no escape. We observed 18 attacks by 10 different larvae following this sequence.'

Sometimes the caterpillars decorate their silk casings with empty snail shells, probably as a form of camouflage, the researchers said.

The caterpillars eventually become small moths.

The researchers say they are surprised by the findings and note the caterpillars join a range of unusual Hawaiian fauna, including spiders that impale their prey in flight.

'Caterpillars and terrestrial snails co-occur widely on all the continents where they are present, but only in Hawaii have caterpillars evolved to hunt snails,' they wrote.

The Personal MBA 40

Josh Kaufman has finalized The Personal MBA 40, the 40 books he thinks you should read to learn what you'd learn in business school (instead of wasting all that time and money):

1. Mastery by George Leonard
2. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton
3. Getting Things Done by David Allen
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
5. What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
6. Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business by Ram Charan
7. On Competition by Michael Porter
8. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
9. Seeing What's Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
10. The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
11. First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
12. The One Thing You Need to Know by Marcus Buckingham
13. The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett & Lawrence Cunningham
14. Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger
15. The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Finance for Nonfinancial Managers by Robert A. Cooke
16. Essentials of Accounting by Robert Newton Anthony and Leslie K. Pearlman
17. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt & Jeff Cox
18. Lean Thinking by James Womack & Daniel Jones
19. The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel
20. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
21. Economics in One Lesson by Harry Hazlitt
22. The Marketing Playbook by John Zagula & Richard Tong
23. Purple Cow by Seth Godin
24. Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin
25. The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
26. The Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin
27. Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
28. On Writing Well by William Zinsser
29. How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
30. Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
31. The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
32. Flawless Consulting by Peter Block
33. Real Estate Principles for the New Economy by Norman Miller & David Geltner
34. Getting To Yes by Fisher, Ury, and Patton
35. Principles of Statistics by M.G. Bulmer
36. A Primer on Business Ethics by Tibor Machan & James Chesher
37. Brand New by Nancy F. Koehn
38. American Business, 1920-2000 by Thomas K. McCraw, John H. Franklin, and A. S. Eisenstadt
39. The Little Book of Business Wisdom by Peter Krass (Editor)
40. Re-imagine by Tom Peters

At 6, Koby Blunt Is Retiring at the Top In Mutton Bustin'

I'm sure you can catch mutton bustin' late at night on ESPN8, The Ocho. At 6, Koby Blunt Is Retiring at the Top In Mutton Bustin':

Koby Blunt gently lowered himself into the rodeo chute, climbing down the white fencing until he straddled his opponent: 250 pounds of bleating ovine.

He wedged his right hand under the riding rope wrapped around the sheep's chest, squeezed his legs tight around its shaggy flanks and positioned his boots, spurs at the ready. He lifted his left arm into the air and instructed his assistants: 'I'm ready, boys, let him out.'

When that gate flew open at the Winchester Open Rodeo earlier this month, it was a bittersweet moment in Koby Blunt's career. The rodeo was one of the last times Koby will compete in mutton bustin', the event he has dominated in Washington state and the Idaho panhandle. He can't compete after this season because he hit retirement age on July 6: 6 years old.

'I'm the goodest sheep rider in the whole world,' Koby says. Then he catches himself and adds: 'Except Jesus.'

Wannabe rodeo stars start small. They ride sheep. Like bull riders, mutton busters are scored on a scale of 100 points. The rider must stay on the animal for six seconds, at which point the judges award half the points for the style of the rider and half for the aggressive qualities of the sheep. Some sheep refuse to leave the starting chute. Some go for a leisurely stroll in the arena. But some leave the chute in a fury, trying to get rid of the weight on their backs. 'If the sheep runs out and starts bunny-hopping, you'll have a nice score,' says Koby.

In most rodeos, mutton busters can't compete after they turn 6 or weigh 50 pounds, whichever comes first. When they get too big, they have to move on, usually to calf riding, which leads to steer riding, which leads to junior bull riding, and finally ends with senior bull riding — eight seconds of chaos on the back of an angry 2,000-pound mass of muscle, horn and hoof.

Tinted Contact Lenses For the Weekend Warriors

Tinted Contact Lenses For the Weekend Warriors describes one more high-tech sporting good poised to make the transition from the pro leagues to the consumer market:

The Baltimore Orioles have an unlikely secret weapon this season: Brian Roberts's contact lenses.

Mr. Roberts, a second baseman who leads the American League in hitting, has been testing a new type of prescription contacts developed jointly by Nike Inc. and eye-care-products maker Bausch & Lomb Inc. The tinted contacts, which give Mr. Roberts a devilish red-eyed appearance, function much like sunglasses by cutting down on glare.
[...]
Nike's MaxSight Sport-Tinted Contact Lenses will sell for about $20 a pair. Nike says a red-colored version cuts blue light to make a fast-moving ball stand out more clearly. A green-colored pair enhances red and green light to help a golfer better see the slope of a putting green.

'When I first put them on, it was the last day of spring training and it was bright and sunny, and it was just perfect because guys at the plate couldn't see anything when they were hitting,' Mr. Roberts wrote in an email. 'They would come back from the dugout saying, 'I can't see!' and that day I went 3 for 3.'

The Contest Between Taxeaters and Taxpayers

In The Contest Between Taxeaters and Taxpayers, City Journal contributing editor Steven Malanga discusses his new book, The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today:

The original framers of the War on Poverty were well-intentioned if naive and ultimately wrongheaded. Sargent Shriver declared back then that we could end poverty in a decade and President Johnson declared that massive urban aid would help create 'cities of spacious beauty and living promise.' But somewhere along the way the War on Poverty got hijacked by a new brand of social service professional just starting to come out of our college and university social service departments at a time in the late 1960s and early 1970s when they were becoming radicalized. These folks were intellectually at war with our free market system and wanted to use the War on Poverty as a means of ramping up government spending which would force taxes higher, thereby helping redistribute income in our country, they believed. They did things like help turn welfare from a program of temporary assistance into a permanent 'civil right' for many recipients. They introduced the notion that the poor in our cities were not only suffering economically but that our system had robbed them of their sense of community and inner worth, which could only be revived with the help of government social service programs. Not only did these kinds of changes in attitude, especially about welfare, wreck havoc on the lives of millions and create a new kind of urban, inter-generational dependency, but they created a whole economy of people whose profession revolved around government funding to fix social problems.

Good Old Fashioned Fiscal Discipline

Good Old Fashioned Fiscal Discipline describes the Republic of Genoa's unique fiscal policy institution:

Government budget deficits are a worldwide problem. Ondrej Schneider, an economics lecturer from Prague's Charles University, recently proposed a solution. Schneider outlined the idea of an independent non-partisan regulatory body, which would oversee fiscal policy in the same manner as central banks govern monetary policy. It has been convincingly shown that truly independent central banks can successfully tame inflation and reduce the risk of monetary crises. Why not use a similar prescription to cure the chronic fiscal diseases of modern economies?

The very notion of political independence of fiscal policy may sound oxymoronic to many. What's more political than state budget and public expenditures, after all? However, Schneider's idea not only has sound theoretical background, it is also time-tested. An arrangement based on an independent fiscal policy regulatory authority once worked in the Republic of Genoa — successfully for centuries.

From 1407 until 1805, there was a financial institution called Officium procuratorum Sanctii Georgii super diminutione debitorum (St. George's Supervisory Authority to Reduce Indebtedness, literally translated). San Giorgio, for short. It was a specialized financial institution aimed at protecting the interests of government bondholders and diminishing the risk that the Republic would not meet her obligations.

San Giorgio was built on no profound economic theory. Its origins were purely practical. Until 1528, when energetic leader Andrea Doria came to power, the Republic of Genoa had suffered from notoriously weak government, the result of persistent conflicts between feudal nobility and the merchant class. The credit quality of the government was poor. Creditors formed associations to protect their interests. These organizations were subsequently recognized by the government as formal partners. By the beginning of the 15th century, public debt became so heavy that the Republic created San Giorgio, formed on the basis of these associations. San Giorgio was a tool to reduce the debt burden of public finance, says Professor Michele Fratianni, who wrote a remarkable and extremely thoughtful paper on Genovese financial history.

San Giorgio's legal status was as a joint-stock company with a banking license, whose shareholders were creditors of the government. It purchased government debt for its clients' money and collected the due part of taxes. San Giorgio was far more than just an interest group lobbying on behalf of creditors, though. Its main strength was expert knowledge in the field of public finance and risk management. The institution managed fiscal policy to the point that it dictated to the government the extent of maximum allowed indebtedness — in a similar manner in which modern risk management departments dictate commercial banks the allowed level of credit risk. Besides that, the government partially outsourced tax collection to San Giorgio — tax farming, as this practice was called. The most important favorable result of the independently governed fiscal policy was reduced risk of government default. The Republic of Genoa thus could have borrowed money at lower rates than it was common in other Italian city-states.

San Giorgio introduced an investment security that hasn't quite been replicated since:

The financially savvy Genovese also invented a special class of securities: sort of a cross-breed between government bonds and preferred stocks.

"The Bank of San Giorgio issued, on behalf of the Republic of Genoa, placements of perpetual bonds, called luoghi, at a nominal value of 100 lira each. Their income was secured by specific taxes farmed out to the bank. The luoghi did not pay a fixed rate of interest […] but paid dividends which depended on the amount of taxes collected after payment of the expenses of the bank," write Sidney Homer and Richard Sylla in their book, A History of Interest Rates.

The luoghi can be viewed as either dividend-paying government bonds or government preferred shares without voting power. Such a class of securities does not exist in the modern financial world, which is certainly a pity.

The dividend government bonds would be welcome in many risk-averse portfolios of pension funds and insurance companies worldwide, since they are inherently inflation-adjusted (unlike conventional bonds and stocks), carrying sovereign credit risk (as government bonds), but offering theoretically unlimited room for growth (as stocks). Their risk-return-correlation characteristics would most likely make dividend government bonds a desired class of securities. They would offer investors more possibilities of portfolio diversification, while reducing risk of government default and providing government treasuries more flexibility. Not surprisingly, luoghi were in high demand among charities in the times of the Republic of Genoa.

Take a Hike

In Take a Hike, Duane D. Freese explains that "It's what kids do, not what adults say, that matters regarding obesity:

Research shows TV advertising aimed at kids — in terms of dollars spent by the industry, minutes on TV and actually attention paid to it by youngsters — has gone down even as childhood obesity has gone from 11% in the period 1988-90 to 16% in the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

As Todd Zywicki, a former FTC director of policy planning and now a George Mason University law professor who examined research on child advertising and obesity said, 'The case for saying advertising is the cause of increasing obesity in children is pretty weak.'

A recent Lancet study explains the real problem: kids aren't active anymore.

Just two to five hours of brisk walking a week — 17 to 43 minutes a day — would prevent girls gaining 9 to 20 pounds, according to the study.

At Starbucks, a Blend of Coffee And Music Creates a Potent Mix

Starbucks sells more than coffee and scones; it sells lots and lots of CDs. According to At Starbucks, a Blend of Coffee And Music Creates a Potent Mix, one challenge is choosing the right music for their increasingly diverse customer base:

Five years ago, about 3% of Starbucks customers were between the ages of 18 and 24, 16% were people of color, 78% had college degrees, and overall they had an average annual income of $81,000. Today, however, about 13% of the company's customers are between 18 and 24, 37% are people of color, 56% are college graduates, and they earn on average $55,000 a year.

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism

Bruce Hoffman describes The Logic of Suicide Terrorism:

First you feel nervous about riding the bus. Then you wonder about going to a mall. Then you think twice about sitting for long at your favorite café. Then nowhere seems safe. Terrorist groups have a strategy — to shrink to nothing the areas in which people move freely — and suicide bombers, inexpensive and reliably lethal, are their latest weapons. Israel has learned to recognize and disrupt the steps on the path to suicide attacks. We must learn too.

Evolutionary economics

In Evolutionary economics, Bob Rowthorn reviews Paul Ormerod's latest book, Why Most Things Fail:

Ormerod gives many examples of social interaction leading to outcomes which are impossible to predict. The most striking example is Schelling's model of residential segregation. In the US, there are few racially mixed communities and most blacks and whites live in neighbourhoods which are populated almost entirely by their own kind. This might suggest that there is a strong antipathy between the two groups. Yet a large amount of evidence suggests that this is not the case. Most blacks and whites would like to live in neighbourhoods where their racial group is in a majority, but they are perfectly happy to have a large minority of people from the other group as neighbours.

To explore the implication of such preferences, Schelling ran a number of simulations in which individuals were allowed to move house if they found themselves surrounded by too many of the other racial group. These simulations demonstrated two things. In the course of time, the typical result was that blacks and whites spontaneously relocated themselves into highly segregated neighbourhoods. It was impossible to predict where the boundaries of these neighbourhoods would lie or where any particular individual would end up. But it was a safe bet that the bulk of people would end up surrounded largely by people of their own race. This outcome showed clearly that social interaction may magnify small variations into very large differences. It also showed the limitations of the conventional approach to social phenomena, which assumes that large differences must have large causes.

But whose law should prevail?

But whose law should prevail? discusses "church, state, and the courts in America":

The first sign of secularism in American politics came in the late 19th century, largely to camouflage sectarian anti-Catholicism. Nobody objected to public schools teaching the Bible — indeed politicians would have been horrified by any school that did not — as long as it was the Protestant version. When Irish immigrants wanted to use their Catholic version, the Republicans came up with a series of crafty provisions to ban public money from helping teach popish nonsense.

A Poverty of Dignity and a Wealth of Rage

Thomas Friedman notes an unpopular fact in A Poverty of Dignity and a Wealth of Rage:

There are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans. Angry Norwegians. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims, over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?

The End of Europe

From The End of Europe:

Consider some contrasts with the United States, as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. With high unemployment benefits, almost half of Western Europe's jobless have been out of work a year or more; the U.S. figure is about 12 percent. Or take early retirement. In 2003 about 60 percent of Americans ages 55 to 64 had jobs. The comparable figures for France, Italy and Germany were 37 percent, 30 percent and 39 percent. The truth is that Europeans like early retirement, high jobless benefits and long vacations.

Gangster's birthday party spells panic in Rio

If you go to Brazil, stick to the areas your Brazilian friends recommend. From Gangster's birthday party spells panic in Rio:

Rio has one of the world's highest murder rates, with many of the deaths in slums where drug gangs rule. More than 1,200 people were killed in the first three months of this year, including deaths due to police enforcement, official figures show.

Police killed nearly 1,000 people last year, about the same as in 2003, with human rights groups accusing authorities of excessive violence.

Actor Vince Vaughn: Everybody's Buddy

NPR recently replayed an old interview with Actor Vince Vaughn: Everybody's Buddy, who co-stars in Wedding Crashers, which opened this weekend.

Research Changes Ideas About Children and Work

From Research Changes Ideas About Children and Work:

When Americans think about child labor in poor countries, they rarely picture girls fetching water or boys tending livestock. Yet most of the 211 million children, ages 5 to 14, who work worldwide are not in factories. They are working in agriculture — from 92 percent in Vietnam to 63 percent in Guatemala — and most are not paid directly.

'Contrary to popular perception in high-income countries, most working children are employed by their parents rather than in manufacturing establishments or other forms of wage employment,' two Dartmouth economists, Eric V. Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik, wrote in 'Child Labor in the Global Economy,' published in the Winter 2005 Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Families don't make their children work out of heartless callousness:

When he started working on child labor issues six years ago, Professor Edmonds said in an interview, "the conventional view was that child labor really wasn't about poverty." Children's work, many policy makers believed, "reflected perhaps parental callousness or a lack of education for parents about the benefits of educating your child." So policies to curb child labor focused on educating parents about why their children should not work and banning children's employment to remove the temptation.

Recent research, however, casts doubt on the cultural explanation. "In every context that I've looked at things, child labor seems to be almost entirely about poverty. I wouldn't say it's only about poverty, but it's got a lot to do with poverty," Professor Edmonds said.

As families' incomes increase, children tend to stop working and, where schools are available, they go to school. If family incomes drop, children are more likely to return to work.

When Vietnam suddenly allowed rice exports, it made rice farming much more lucrative:

In the interview, Professor Edmonds said he expected that the booming market for rice would lead more children to work in agriculture, if only on their own families' farms, because the value of their labor had risen substantially. But that was not what happened.

"Instead, it looks like what households did was, with rising income, they purchased substitutes for child labor. They used more fertilizers. There was more mechanization, more purchasing of tools," he said, adding, "It was the opposite of what I expected to find coming in."

Simulations of Attacks By Terrorists Illustrate Challenge Officials Face

From Simulations of Attacks By Terrorists Illustrate Challenge Officials Face:

Sometimes there is no 'right' response, except in retrospect. If, after a bombing, you dispatch scores of medical, fire and police personnel to evacuate the wounded and secure the scene, many of them will die if terrorists have set a second bomb to detonate there. If you first order the bomb squad to sweep the area, the delay may doom the wounded.

'A terrorist incident is different from an accident or natural disaster,' says J. Richard Russo of Cornell University, an expert in decision making. 'You're dealing with an intelligent opponent. If you prepare for A and they find that out, they'll go to B.'

Even absent clearly right responses, 'there are definitely wrong responses,' says Col. Dave McIntyre, director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security at Texas A&M University and former dean of the Naval War College. If both EMT and fire crews are sent to the site of an attack, for instance, authorities have no one to dispatch if there is a second attack. If officials don't close the first freeway exits out of a city, evacuees will all slow down to get off at the first opportunity (Col. McIntyre says everyone makes a beeline for the first motel), hopelessly snarling traffic all the way back to the city.

'And if you fail to tell people within 30 minutes of an attack that their kids are safe and being sheltered in place, it's too late to tell parents not to go pick them up,' says Col. McIntyre. 'Then the fire chief tells you he can't get his people to the attack site because the roads are jammed.

When Bad Chickens Come Home to Roost, Results Can Be Good

When Bad Chickens Come Home to Roost, Results Can Be Good describes a refuge for ex-cockfighters — the actual roosters. A little bit about the "sport":

Cockfights are legal only in Louisiana and New Mexico, but illegal combats and betting are common throughout the country, where there are an estimated 100,000 gamecock breeders. The fights, which take place in an enclosed area, end when one of the duelers dies or one of the handlers concedes victory. They can last more than 30 minutes and can generate tens of thousands of dollars in winnings.

To prepare the birds, breeders trim their combs, wattles and earlobes to reduce weight. They inject the roosters with testosterone and methamphetamines and snip their spurs — nails on the back of rooster legs — replacing them with 3-inch steel blades. The roosters fly up into the air and dig the blades into rivals' flesh.

Schwarzenegger making millions as muscle mag editor

The man knows how to make money. From Schwarzenegger making millions as muscle mag editor:

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be forgoing a state salary as California governor but he is still pulling in millions of dollars a year as an editor of two bodybuilding magazines.

American Media Operations, which publishes 'Muscle & Fitness' and 'Flex' magazines, said on Wednesday it was paying the former Mr. Olympia $8.15 million over five years to serve as executive editor of those magazines.

The Seat-Belt Solution

Freakonomists Dubner and Levitt look at car seats in The Seat-Belt Solution:

They certainly have the hallmarks of an effective piece of safety equipment: big and bulky, federally regulated, hard to install and expensive. (You can easily spend $200 on a car seat.) And NHTSA data seem to show that car seats are indeed a remarkable lifesaver. Although motor-vehicle crashes are still the top killer among children from 2 to 14, fatality rates have fallen steadily in recent decades — a drop that coincides with the rise of car-seat use. Perhaps the single most compelling statistic about car seats in the NHTSA manual was this one: ''They are 54 percent effective in reducing deaths for children ages 1 to 4 in passenger cars.''

But 54 percent effective compared with what? The answer, it turns out, is this: Compared with a child's riding completely unrestrained. There is another mode of restraint, meanwhile, that doesn't cost $200 or require a four-day course to master: seat belts.

For children younger than roughly 24 months, seat belts plainly won't do. For them, a car seat represents the best practical way to ride securely, and it is certainly an improvement over the days of riding shotgun on mom's lap. But what about older children? Is it possible that seat belts might afford them the same protection as car seats?

The answer can be found in a trove of government data called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which compiles police reports on all fatal crashes in the U.S. since 1975. These data include every imaginable variable in a crash, including whether the occupants were restrained and how.

Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts.

The Computer That Said No To Drugs

You simply can't make up something like The Computer That Said No To Drugs.