Pie Charts

knave or a fool

The abolitionists had a stock phrase that a man was either a knave or a fool who did not act as they (abolitionists) knew to be right.  So Calvin thought of the Catholics and the Catholics of Calvin.  ........When you know that you know persecution comes easy.

O.W. Holmes

Smart Greek Dude

"A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its
warriors will have its laws made by cowards and its wars fought by
fools."
—

Thucydides


"Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy.
Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on
the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will
come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of
somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is
entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay. "
—

Thucydides

"In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own
shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they
would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by
their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action. Their
enemies,on the contrary, contemptuous and confident in their ability to
anticipate, thought there was no need to take by action what they could
win by their brains."
—

Thucydides

extreme events

Mandelbrot (1983) -
“Even though economics is a very old subject, it has not
truly come to grips with the main difficulty, which is the
inordinate practical importance of a few extreme events.”

Hmmmm

"Social science is a compendium of flawed thinking disguised as scientific understanding."

The wild world of sports

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with
hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic
pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words: it is war minus the
shooting. "  -The Sporting Spirit - Orwell

Wilde

"By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

"If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism."

"If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

In India, a Factory Model for Hospitals Is Cutting Costs and Yielding Profits

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125875892887958111.html


By GEETA ANAND

BANGALORE
-- Hair tucked into a surgical cap, eyes hidden behind thick-framed
magnifying glasses, Devi Shetty leans over the sawed open chest of an
11-year-old boy, using bright blue thread to sew an artificial aorta
onto his stopped heart.


As Dr. Shetty pulls the thread tight with scissors, an assistant
reads aloud a proposed agreement for him to build a new hospital in the
Cayman Islands that would primarily serve Americans in search of
lower-cost medical care. The agreement is inked a few days later,
pending approval of the Cayman parliament.


Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa's
cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a
fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart
hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared
with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000,
depending on the complexity of the surgery.

Albert

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
Albert Einstein

Kill All the Bankers? There’s an App for That…

Among the 100,000-plus applications for the iPhone is one that allows users to “kill” bankers.

The TARP-inspired Bailout Wars

app lets iPhone users “take revenge on bankers” by “throwing them into
the air, blowing them up, shooting them down and shaking them so hard
their clothes fall off, writes American Banker. The point of the game,
made by Gameloft and selling for $.99 on iTunes, is to destroy bankers
in order to save both the White House (and US taxpayers’ money) from
greedy day traders, high risk investors, and finance CEOs.

The game’s description on iTunes reads:

Defend the White House and save the US taxpayers’ money before it
gets stolen! It’s time for you to give them what they deserve! [...]
It’s your only chance to really take revenge on bankers for the
recession they caused [...] Explore many different ways to beat
bankers: tap, grab, or shake them in the air. Bailout Wars current has
a three-and-a-half star rating on iTunes, with 219 users out of 492
giving the app a five-star rating.

Would You Buy 7-Eleven’s House Wine?

Published November 6, 2009

7-Eleven is making and selling its own wine. The convenience-store mega chain is putting out a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon under the label Yosemite Road that will retail at most stores for $3.99.

The move comes after corporate realized that wines priced $5 and under are enjoying double-digit sales. We’re guessing that 7-Eleven is trying to capitalize on Trader Joe’s popular Two-Buck Chuck wine.

http://globestcounterculture.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/would-you-buy-7-elevens-house-wine/

E-Mails Fuel Skeptics

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

......................

At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some
of the science undergirding the global warming consensus, his instinct
was to ignore the correspondence as “just the way scientists talk.”

But
on Friday, he said, after reading more deeply, he felt that some
exchanges reflected a concerted effort to block the release of data for
independent review.

He said that some e-mails mused about a way to discredit him by challenging the veracity of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin by claiming he knew his research was wrong.

“This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people’s reputations in very serious ways,” he said.