Happy Feast of St. George!

An appropriate celebration activity? Read Canto XI from the first book of Spencer’s Fairy Queen:

The knight with that old Dragon fights
two days incessantly:
The third him ouerthrowes, and gayns
most glorious victory.

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[No, this is not an early return from hiatus]

Brief Hiatus

I should have posted this long ago, but I will be on a brief hiatus until the semester ends. Look for more posts to start coming around a week into May.

Thesis

Grad school is one of the worst times of one’s life to try and maintain a blog.

Thesis

If you cannot confidently answer the question, “What is the purpose and goal of the state?” then you should not vote.

Ridiculous ‘Riting

Okay, new feature. This one is where I point out dumb things people write, then sit back and feel superior. (Feel free to join me.)

“It may be only six days until the clock begins ticking on Mark Mulder.”

Courtesy of Matthew Leach, writing here for MLB.com. The “may” almost saves this one… but not really.

Michele Monday: Sheryl Crow – A Change Would Do You Good

[Michel Mondays were instantiated and explained here.]

Don’t like Sheryl Crow. Not really a fan of this song. But it’s Michele Monday and I shan’t turn back from my duties.

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PS

The Daft Punk video for “Around The World” was next in line for Michele Mondays chronologically. But it was skipped since I’ve already posted it, and an awesome explanation of it’s structure.

Thesis

Anyone who is discussing any ethical/moral issue and uses the phrase, “Who’s to say…?” can absolutely be completely ignored.

Raines

As soon as I saw the first 20 seconds of Raines I knew that: A, it would be fantastic; and B, it would never make it past the first season.

The reason for B is the same reason that it is really only indie directors that make neo-noirs anymore; it’s usually only indie types that are into them. And there aren’t enough indie types that watch network television to support a show (if this had debuted on USA Network, or TNT it might have had a chance).

Here are the reasons it was fantastic:

1. It starred Jeff Goldblum. And not just starred, but had him playing the perfect character. Goldblum is one of those actors that plays a range of the same character. Raines is my favorite pitch within that range.
2. Neo-noir with constant classic noir references. My favorite of these was in the pilot, when the crime scene was the same apartment in which Eliot Gould’s Sam Spade lived in the ’70s remake of The Big Sleep. They even made a comment about the nudists in the apartment next door.
3. IT STARRED FREAKING JEFF GOLDBLUM!

Anyway, anyway…

If you want to see what might have been, check out the seven episodes on Fancast.

The Recession is a Myth

… is the title of a recent article from John Lott Jr. I have been hearing both doomsday stories and reports of media exaggeration concerning the economy for some time now. The doomsday stories almost had me convinced to suspend my normal suspicion of the media on the economy.

And then I read Lott’s column.

Here’s a list of outstanding quotes. The first establishes that, no, seriously, the recession is a myth. And the rest give some indication why we might be confused about that.

Yet, as any economist knows, a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and we haven’t even had one single quarter of negative growth reported.

Over 78 percent more negative news stories discussed a recession when the economy under a Republican was soaring than occurred under a Democrat when the economy was shrinking.

During the 2000 election, with Bill Clinton as president, the economy was viewed through rose-colored glasses. According to polls, voters didn’t realize that the country was in a recession. Although the economy started shrinking in July 2000, most Americans through the entire year thought that the economy was fine.

Indeed, research has indicated that media bias is real. Kevin Hassett and I looked at 12,620 newspaper and wire service headlines from 1985 through 2004 … Even after accounting for how well the economy was doing (e.g., what the unemployment rate was and whether it was going up or down), there was still a big difference in how positive or negative the headlines were. Democratic presidents got about 15 percent more positive headlines than Republicans for the same economic news.