What you can do when you own the team
June 8th, 2006
Mark Cuban is a wonderful blogger and a rare billionaire who is happy to admit his childish pleasures:
The good news is I have a smile on my face that no one will be able to wipe off for at least another 3 hours and 20 minutes.
I plan on writing this. Checking somethings and getting on the court to shoot a couple baskets. I have to shoot some baskets on the NBA Finals floor. Period end of story. I wouldnt forgive myself if i didnt.
Visual display of not very quantitative information
June 8th, 2006
I get a lift from Bibliodyssey on a nearly daily basis. Today PK posts some extraordinary drawings on turtle embryology, but I was more struck by the fascinating information graphic from Louis Agassiz relating depth of excavation to species. If I ever have the spare time (and spare money) I could see building a wonderful collection specializing in nineteenth-century information graphics. They really knew what they were doing.
Department of huh? Jacob Weisberg division
June 8th, 2006
Jacob Weisberg’s column in today’s Financial Times is a sensible examination of why president Bush is both wrong to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and why it will fail (subscribers only). But he gets awfully muddled by trying to be politically even-handed.
Any political party counts on having a few hot buttons it can push at those moments when it is a few points behind in the polls with not much time until election day. These issues have certain characteristics – a whiff of pandering, the flavour of insincerity, an aura of desperation. They aim to stir passion but have little, if any, effect on most people’s lives… Flag-burning has long been such an issue for Republicans. Raising the minimum wage sometimes serves the same purpose for Democrats.
Huh? Raising the minimum wage may be a touchstone issue for Democrats and it almost surely does appeal to the party’s base. But how on earth is it “pandering” or insincere? How can anyone argue that it has “little, if any, effect on most people’s lives”? And how can anyone equate an issue that has a real economic rationale (whether you want to argue pro or con) with one that is purely stirring emotions?
If you did an analogy test and claimed flag-burning:Republicans most resembled minimum wage:Democrats you’d certainly fail.