DeathSpa

LOL

Misery

Urban winters are not fun.

Jennifer Hudson: Fugly

J-Hud Strikes a "Pose"

While I was waiting in line for a government sponsored free copy of "An Inconvenient Truth"...

I realized that global warming sounds like a dream come true.

Bleecker Street this morning

Socialism: Crushing Industry and Spirit Worldwide!

From an editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

The values that might impact dynamism are of special interest here. Relatively few in the Big Three report that they want:

• jobs offering opportunities for achievement (42% in France and 54% in Italy, versus an average of 73% in Canada and the U.S.);
  
• chances for initiative in the job (38% in France and 47% in Italy, as against an average of 53% in Canada and the U.S.),
  
• and even interesting work (59% in France and Italy, versus an average of 71.5% in Canada and the U.K).
  
• Relatively few are keen on taking responsibility, or freedom (57% in Germany and 58% in France as against 61% in the U.S. and 65% in Canada)....

How depressing is that?

The Polidore Curve

Inspired by my co-author, this is the Polidore curve:
Here is Tim's satirical version:

G-7 Officials Recommend Vigilance on Hedge Funds

Of course they do!

Given the strong growth of the hedge fund industry and the instruments they trade, we [governments] need to be vigilant.

I love how these jet-setting socialists worry more about economic growth than Islamic terrorism. What exactly do they fear from hedge funds? Hedge funds make markets more efficient and rational. In the United States, we don't need market regulations like price caps and trading halts because our sell-side traders are able to detect and profit from irrational market changes. Asian and European markets are far less efficient because of their costs and regulation. But it's the hedge funds that we should fear.

Some other G7 concerns:

• Dwindline energy supplies
• Not in China where they're building thousands of coal power plants.
• Also, get used to dwindling energy supplies: the greens won't let us build nuclear power plants or burn fossil fuels, aka the substances that have saved more lives than any other in human experience.
• Foreign exchange fluctuations
• These just expose the failure of statist economic policies. Time to have a fixed FX rate and maybe some tariffs or a wall too.

Just another anti-globalism globalist club.

Milton Friedman on Legalizing Drugs

I've always been an advocate of legalizing drugs, since I think enforcement and black market activities cause more problems than the drugs themselves. Friedman does a better job stating a similar opinion:

Milton Friedman on Limited Government

The best argument I've ever heard for limited government.

New York City Diggnation Meetup - February 13th

The biggest losers in the world's most important city meet up. 90 * 0 is still 0:

Alight guys and hopefully girls, go to the theaters website and buy Diggnation tix here. This is merely a theater operation fee. There will be pizza, soda and beer there too. It will be a first come first serve basis. There's room for about 90 people so get in while you can.

read more | digg story

Vista: Built-in Drivers

Windows has built-in support for many types of hardware such as USB memory sticks and USB headsets. My install of Vista had trouble with these devices until I started telling it to search the following INF path:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERSTORE\FILEREPOSITORY

I have to tell windows to search this path for every single piece of basic hardware on my machine, but now everything works.

Vista: Sleep Mode

That Vista emphasizes sleep mode over power down is obvious when you look at the start menu:
So it's quite difficult to do anything but enter sleep mode. The problem is that sleep mode won't work if you share music with Windows Media player. This is not an obvious "feature". The only way I've seen to turn it off is the following in Power Options:

Digg

Is Digg the worst web page on the Internet? It's certainly a fast way to keep tabs on technology (don't even try their news categories), but reading digg has become severely taxing to the point where I can just wait for Slashdot or Ars to get the article.

• It's just creepy how often Digg's creator is mentioned in articles about, you guessed it, Digg. Somewhere around 5% of all articles on Digg are about Digg and "Kevin" is mentioned in most of them. I think the site's contributors are suffering from some kind of relationship disorder.
• Grammarz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Hatred of Microsoft. This is an Internet-wide trend, and it's just weird. I mean, I get sick of their mistakes sometimes too, but I, along with millions of other Americans, make my living using Microsoft products.
  
• The discussions. They're full of vitriol, stupidity and one-upsmanship such that they've become completely useless. Fark and Slashdot do a much better job.

Really, it's just devolved into a childish nightmare, far worse than even yourspace.