Ken Nelson

 
      The advertisement                       what was delivered….

Source: Twitpic.com

The 8th floor pool at my high rise apartment building in San Diego. I miss it.
It will be 105 here tomorrow.

The terrifying part is that the President is promising to do something about it. Mr. President? Please. Just. Stop.

Ace of Spades on the new 9.6% August unemployment data

His advisers described his attentiveness – noting, for example, that he discussed the economy with New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) for 15 minutes before golfing – but got little traction.

The Washington Post on Barry Soetero, professional vacationer, caring about the economy.

You know that he doesn’t “care” about the economy. He “cares” about what the those hurt by the economy might do to him electorally.

Bergeson said he’s a firm believer in AYP, but just doesn’t think it’s an accurate measure.

The quotation is from The Spectrum newspaper, quoting Larry Bergeson Principal, Dixie High School on why his school was identified as failing on the Annual Year Progress test of the No Child Left Behind Act.

I’m not sure who to question more on this quotation. The principal who “firmly believes” in an in-accurate measure, or the reporter who didn’t feel the need to question further such an oxymoronic statement by someone entrusted with thousands of kids education.

11 schools in Washington County failed the AYP goals.

I disagree with the NCLB, mainly because I don’t think the Feds ought to be sending money to local schools. Secondarily because I think it squelches what little teacher initiative is left in our overly bureaucratic and large school systems.

Short version:  Run away!

Long version:

I assumed this movie was a film rendition of the recent popular novel “The American”. It isn’t.

It has been some time since audience members have left a movie I’ve attended. The viewing I saw was sparsely attended, but lost about 1/3 of the audience before the movie ended.

It wasn’t that it was so bad… just that it was BORING.   Really boring.  At least I had some onscreen gun assembly / silencer building that could interest me, pity the rest of those suffering with me.

Anway, don’t go.

I think mocking and humor, like this, will get libertarian and conservative issues farther than engaging liberals in shout fests on talk-TV/radio.

70% of iPhone apps cost money. About the same percent of Android apps are free.

So as a professional developer… where should I invest my company’s resources?

Oddly… when I consider mobile projects, I lean towards the Android. Why? It is easier to program, and I don’t have to get Apple’s permission. Plus, I think the iPhone’s glory days are nearly ended.

The acid test will be the DroidPad, which I think will kick the snot out of the iPad both on price and features.

In the near future Apple will be hard pressed to be as totalitarian as they have been and I expect longer term that the iPhone will be marginalized like the BlackBerry rapidly has become.  Since phone turnover is extremely rapid, this can happen quicker than you think.

I didn’t notice til I was a grownup and my kids started watching, but… exactly what crime did most of these fools commit?

Via awesome viral site “I’m bored”.

The most dangerous and powerful people you never heard of

That question is essentially what Michael Pento is talking about in his article, Bernanke Out of Bullets but not Bombs.

But what are bombs?  Well, bullets are the traditional way the Fed exerts influence – controlling the cost of its money. But what does it do when that money is free?

Basically, it finds new routes to get it to you, stepping around the pesky banks that are taking the free money but not loaning it out due to profit and reserve goals (and common sense).  They could, in fact, just print up a few trillion and then cut out the middle man:

The Fed could buy a trillion-plus dollars worth of S&P 500 stocks. Consumers that sold stock to the Fed would receive funds that didn’t previously exist. M1 money supply would boom as demand deposits surged

or since things seemed kind of good in the go-go housing days, maybe they could:

guarantee ‘no down payment’ loans of any amount to any borrower, with a promise never to foreclose or seek compensation in the result of default. By making home purchases risk-free, such a policy would surely re-energize the housing sector.

I’m sure they are getting huge political pressure to do just these sort of things. And they have signaled strongly that they do not want… cue ominous music… ‘deflation”.

So… do you prepare for deflation, or inflation. Inflation, of the hyper-kind, seems likely.

I just wish we didn’t have a Federal Reserve, private money seems much more secure.

I enjoy the Letters of Note site.  Sometimes the letters are silly, maudlin and just wrong. But usually they hark back to a kinder, slower, and more polite mode of communication.

Today, for instance, it has a letter from Hugh Hefner responding kindly to a collector who thought Playboy was important enough to collect:

A copy of the issue Hugh sent him is now hawked for $30 grand.

And.. I think I need to spruce up my letterhead.

Our family writing on the Tea Party Express.

I’d add “except for the 16th amendment” if I had to write it again.

Note that we are above the “gun toten redneck radical from Overton, NV”

How little did that radical know that I was probably packing bigger heat than him (-:

Brian explains to Santa his wish for a scorpion free world.
(showing him where a scorpion got him on his finger)
Dec 2001.

A recent finding by a New York researcher could be an important step to stopping Alzheimer’s Researchers have been trying to prevent growth of the plaque that causes Alzheimer’s by preventing a core component of it (gamma secretase which is used to make beta amyloid) from being made.  But the methods found so far of stopping it had too many other side effects elsewhere in the body.

Dr. Greengard has found a way of stopping gamma secretase  in the brain only.

That was what he had found: a targeting protein that sets in motion the activity of gamma secretase, which makes beta amyloid. To further test the discovery, he genetically engineered a strain of mice that had a gene for Alzheimer’s, but he blocked the gene for the gamma secretase activating protein. The animals appeared to be perfectly healthy. And they did not develop plaques in their brains.

As usual, more work is needed. Primarily in how to keep the drug in the brain. 

I hope this work is fast tracked, and I hope the FDA pulls its act together and realizes and permits Alzheimers and cancer drugs to market much quicker.  Time is running out for tens of millions entering the years of life where these diseases take hold.

After seeing my grandmother suffer from Alzheimer’s I do not think there is a pill or shot I wouldn’t gladly risk to avoid that fate. Almost any side effect would be better.

The latest from Merle Hazard America’s blue grassin’ist economist!

After watching this I want to get my mandolin out and chop a bit.