Some Brief Notes

Dr. X posts this from the Miscellaneous section of the Vassar Miscellany News:

"The Laird's video has damaged my synapses so severely I am reduced to brief comments.

"Item: We are finishing our fourth year on this little blog. First post was August 29, 2003.

"Item: President Cheney. Glad that's over with, and President Bush has assumed full control again.

"Item: I am sick of these political hacks using government agencies for their smear tactics! Oh, wait, that was Spitzer.

"Item: In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Scheve and Slaughter point out that globalization is not working for most Americans. Moreover, most Americans now know this: 'policy is becoming more protectionist because the public is becoming more protectionist, and the public is becoming more protectionist because incomes are stagnating or falling.' What to do? Well, they say, you could try improving education HA HA HA!!! OH GOD, STOP, YOU'RE KILLING ME...besides, they say, it would take too long to work. The only thing to do is redistribute some of the gains from the rich to the poor. Consider this: 'Of workers in seven educational categories -- high school dropout, high school graduate, some college, college graduate, nonprofessional master's, Ph.D., and M.B.A./J.D./M.D. -- only those in the last two categories, with doctorates or professional graduate degrees, experienced any growth in mean real money earnings between 2000 and 2005.'

"Item: So long Michael Vick.

"Item: Did you know the French still can't agree on what the French Revolution was about (this little book is an excellent review). I was going to mock them for this, until I remembered that half the country can't remember who won our Civil War.

"Item: I had not known until watching a documentary the other night, just how horrible the Invasion of Japan would have been, had we not dropped the bomb. (We were readying gas attacks, the Japanese were working up some nice bacteriological treats.) In preparation for the attack, the U.S. ordered up 500,000 Purple Hearts. There has not been a Purple Heart order since - they have been awarding from that lot for over 50 years, and there are still over 100,000 of them left.

"Item: Detroit's Metropolitan Wayne County Airport is surprisingly nice (10th-busiest in the U.S.). Weird. There's no city left in Detroit, but it has a great airport."