{ Monthly Archives }
May 2009
- Contest - Let’s say you had upwards of $20,000 to spend via Amazon. Presented with that highly unlikely scenario, you might elect to purchase either a fully assembled wedding chapel or your very own JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. Admittedly, these aren’t legitimate Amazon products, but rather offerings at the Amazon Marketplace.
That said, I offer a challenge to readers. Somewhere on Amazon, someone must be selling land. If you can find a piece of real estate being sold through Amazon’s website, then slap the link into a comment. Money is no object; whoever gets the most acreage wins.
On the other hand, you could just kill time by reading the customer reviews of the Badonkadonk Tank. They are quite humorous.
- Program - Don’t consider this statement to be any kind of endorsement, but the season finale of Spike’s Deadliest Warrior will feature a hypothetical face-off between Al-Qaeda and the Irish Republican Army. Spike doesn’t appear to make semantic distinctions between terrorists and freedom fighters, just so long as they cause mayhem.
- Jersey - The Sopranos started off as a really decent show, but, well, let’s just say that nothing has an unlimited life-span. I kind of wish they’d produced a big Sopranos series finale and promoted the hell out of it; it would’ve either been memorably excellent or so disappointing as to immediately void from one’s long-term memory.
Nonetheless, memories of the better days of The Sopranos bring untold amounts of unintended comedy to The Real Housewives of New Jersey, who, while the least deplorable of the Housewives franchises, have an unsettling penchant for remitting large stacks of Benjamins.
Nonetheless, a person has to respect the show’s calculated attempt at misdirection, which involves throwing the only non-familial of the housewives under the proverbial bus by way of vociferous implications that she may have, in her youth, been a stripper, prostitute, cocaine mule, and kidnapper. If one must watch television that fails to stimulate the little gray cells, then this program might be among the less reprehensible in that category.
At the same time, you could read Chuck Palahniuk’s latest novel, Pygmy, instead. More on that in 104 pages.
- Employment - Sometimes, a person will see a product or service and think, “Hell, I could do that.” For me, this feeling grows more pervasive as I stories move up the media stream.
Take, for example, Nicholas Kristof’s Times column yesterday, which centered around the content of a Miller-McCune article I had noted two weeks prior. Sure, Kristof may have gathered a sprinkling of information himself and chosen his own angle, but, really, he just re-purposed the content of a low-circulation non-profit journal. At least I had the decency to leave it as a link. [Note: The website of the study in question was down when I wrote the original bullet, but now it's back in action. Not only does it provide procrastinatory fodder, but seeing the results of the moral and cognitive surveys gives one the impression that the desire for simple answers may be fundamental to conservative thought.]
In preface to our second example, I should note that my viewing of the 4am repeat of Countdown should be taken as a sign of the current drought of arguably worthwhile television programming. Number 1 on the eponymous countdown was the statistical rebuttal of right-wing assertions that previous contributions to Republican politicians were indicative of a Chrysler dealership on its way to losing its franchise. Like so many statistical arguments, this one was based on the work of unofficial Statistician Laureate Nate Silver, essentially bringing his pertinent post to the medium of television. Please know that, in the yesterday morning’s iteration of the quest for talking points, I read that post, debated linking it with commentary, and deemed its background rumor too impertinent for your erudite eyes.
Here’s the point: If you happen to run a media outlet in need of a capable researcher/writer/contributor, then please email me at blog [at] levikafka [dot] com.
[Addendum: If you happen to visit 538, give them some credit for adding levity in the way of such headlines as "More About the Unbearable Lightness of Abortion Pills", "Grandmother of World's 23rd Best Economist Posthumously Offended by Sonia Sotomayor's Spending Habits", and "Operation Gringo".]
- Economy - Thus far, Planet Money has provided only one podcast this week, and it wasn’t exactly laden with good news. In the report of their secular outlook, PIMCO, the world’s largest bond holding/management company, projected small growth and relatively high unemployment as the “new normal” carrying through 2013. This Bloomberg article states the numbers as 2% growth and 8% unemployment, gives them some context, and provides evidence of a material consensus among profit-seeking capitalists. [Note: Although that article provides a projection of 9.2% for May unemployment, this venue will delay comment until the official preliminary report is released next Friday.]
Beset by this morning’s other deadlines and a mere layman’s understanding of the NAIRU concept, our hero can suggest the gloom and doom of PIMCO’s report may be vitiated by its inflationary query being temporal rather than boolean — not whether or not but when. Unfortunately, he cannot, at this juncture, undertake the research necessary to support that suggestion with a coherent argument.
Of course, the flat growth and unemployment numbers appear a bit more viable is one believes Paul Krugman’s assertion that current inflationary fears are a straw man. As he notes, “economists sometimes disagree.” I guess that’s why they play the games.
Update: Now I remember…stagflation; ugh.
- Ads - Why love the New York Review of Books? The first line of their appeal for me to renew my lapsed subscription is “Clearly there has been an oversight.”
Why did I just see a television ad for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor? Justices are not elected. Perhaps the people who produced it could explain.
Who is The Most Interesting Man in the World? As Slate explains, he’s an unknown actor giving a fictitious endorsement. Thus far, my favorite detail of the persona is that “He once had an uncomfortable moment, just to see what it felt like.”
In preparation for 2010, the National Republican Senate Committee has already slapped together a commercial attacking Harry Reid. As has often been the case of late, however, they are without a ready alternative.
- Sotomayor - Barring some unforseen actual news, this bullet should be the last on this subject until such time as Senate confirmation hearings are underway. I’d just like to make it plain that there are other potential sycophants, besides myself, who are looking somewhat askance at the prospect of Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. That she should have served so long without providing more information about her own underlying opinions on divisive topics seems odd and somewhat unsettling.
- Gesture - June 3, 2009 will mark the inauguration of National Fist Bump Day. Read about it at Mother Jones or the official website which touts the holiday as “Knockin’ Knuckles for Knchange.” Prepare yourself for dap delivery.
- Classifieds - Slate’s would-be business section has an interesting article on the philosophy behind Craig’s List. Refreshingly amusing is the revelation that these commercial anarchists, unlike so many revenue-challenged memes running on the fumes of venture capital, claim to neither have nor seek a strategy for maximizing revenue. Also, there’s the whole thing about ads for sex being amoral rather than immoral, for the more licentious among you.
- Rebrand - Perhaps you, having been blindided by commercials for Ally bank, with its dubious promise to “alert you when your money could be working harder and earning more” — never mind that money tends to “work” by putting itself at risk — have absently wondered where the hell this new national bank originated. If so, then you probably haven’t heard the news that GMAC, since incorporating as a bank holding company to receive TARP funds, has given its retail banking division a new name. As the saying goes, a rose by any other name retains its underlying liability concerns.