Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on Doonesbury

   Oh, the kids come into school smart, but the schools are designed to “fix” that. Some kids manage to stay smart despite being in school so long. And there are some teachers who try to swim against the stream.

2. 3 days ago on Doonesbury

   As a former public high school teach, I can say authoritatively that the public school system does not make children into robots.

   Robots are smart.

3. 5 days ago on FoxTrot

   You are not actually disagreeing with it. You are saying he is correct, and you do not like it. I don’t like it, either, but it’s a more practical system. Otherwise, what usually happens is that the people who run to the store first buy out the entire supply, and they then gouge everyone else on a “black market”, usually for far more than the store would have charged.

   Also, the idea of higher prices producing more supply really happens: I know people who rented a truck, bought all the generators they could find, and drove them to Florida after a hurricane, hoping for a windfall. Without the potential for a windfall, they would not have taken a few days off work to drive to Florida.

   We see a similar effect with hotels during a hurricane: states with anti-gouging laws have a family take multiple rooms, and lots of people have nowhere to stay, while in states without such laws, a whole family will squeeze into one room (because who can afford multiple rooms at “gouging” prices?) and many more families have a place to stay.

   I suggest the best solution would be to allow people to charge any price, but charge 50% tax on prices above 150% of normal, and use the “gouging tax” to help people out. (Of course, the percentages are just a guess at the most helpful numbers.)

4. 5 days ago on Luann

   > Weather Channel…buxom babes…

   I live near where The Weather Channel’s offices are, and when I was in a program for people who already had a first career studying Science Education, the most common background was former meteorologist. It seems they’ve been replacing as many as they can with pretty girls with no (other) qualifications they don’t need to pay much. I don’t know why the people who run it are so “smart” they don’t realize their viewers can push one button or click once to switch to the Playboy Channel, if that’s what they want.

5. 5 days ago on Luann

   Stan Lee was really deep in Shakespeare before he started writing comics. That’s probably why it works so well that the main characters in Marvel movies are often played by people with many years of experience doing Shakespeare on stage.

6. 9 days ago on Doonesbury

   He has probably thrown the garbage in the incinerator chute.

7. 9 days ago on Luann

   If it’s ad-libbed by a TV reporter, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be “a steaming load of bull——”. They get their jobs by being pretty and liking journalism, not by being smart. If you ever see a non-pretty one, there’s a good chance they’re smart; sort of like, when you see a not-especially-pretty actress, you can be fairly sure she can really act (e.g., Anna Torv or Jodie Whittaker or Meryl Streep). But both are in a small minority.

8. 9 days ago on Working Daze

   The people who run big companies are, as often as not, most high-skilled at sucking up to the people who previously ran those companies.

9. 9 days ago on Working Daze

   So your experience is with 2 of the 3 most corrupt unions; I get it. (IMHO, NFT is the other in that very select group.) I used to think that unions were entirely a bad thing, but the non-union world has gotten so bad, for so many people, that I’m revisiting that idea. You may have avoided working at one, but a distressingly high proportion of U.S. companies are now run by psychopaths who are only motivated by their next-quarter bonus or stock option returns.

10. 10 days ago on Working Daze

    There is the argument that, even with the siphoning off of members’ funds to corruption, workers are still better off with a union than without. If the people running companies were sufficiently moral and smart, that would certainly not be the case (IMHO), but given who we actually have running (most big) companies, I find it increasingly difficult to discount that argument.