Events

A tongue-in-cheek alternate take for a PSA describing the benefits of AFSCME (NSFW):

Via Fallows, the President today took a few minutes to remind the press that we have serious issues to look at: Fallows is pessimistic this will change anything: "if 'actual knowledge' mattered, the number of people who thought Obama was foreign-born would approach zero by next week -- with exceptions for illiterates, the mentally disabled, paranoid schizophrenics, etc. My guess is that the figures will barely change."

With Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke becoming the first in his office ever to hold a press conference, I wonder whether he'll actually say anything. As I mentioned yesterday, and as Krugman has said for years, Very Serious People worry about inflation even though elementary economics shows there isn't anything to worry about. Fortunately, other reporters are catching on: One question more than any than other is crying out for an answer: Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread...

Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) doesn't seem like a Tea Partier on the surface, but he's started to experiment with right-wing populism. Today his office sent out an email suggesting inflation will destroy us all climb in the near future and hurt Illinois businesses. He even shows a chart from the St. Louis Fed showing how the monetary base spiked during the 2009 recession. Only, the chart doesn't have anything to do with inflation except to show how (but not why) we didn't spiral into deflation during the...

At the moment, this is Chicago's cloudiest and coldest April since 1953. With more clouds predicted through Friday, we look likely to set a new record. At least Saturday we had good weather. Sigh.

(Via Gulliver.) All right, when I said Michelle Obama was not in any danger, I was right, though the National Transportation Safety Board has more information. Apparently the First Lady's plane came within 2.94 miles of the C-17, which is a loss of separation warranting disciplinary action. Now, should the FAA have fired the controllers? No, that seems like an overreaction. Instead, the FAA has changed the rules slightly so that all flights carrying the First Lady will be handled by a supervisor. Well...

I finally took my bike to a shop for a cleaning and tune-up. I haven't ridden in a while, mainly because of my knees, but I miss it. My doctor recommended taking some ibuprofen an hour before riding as he believes it's simply age-related arthritis. I hope he's right. Even if he isn't, I estimate the ride from my house to work will take about 20 minutes (cf. 45 by bus or train), which isn't even long enough to work up a sweat. I'm not planning to ride the North Shore Century this year, though. Let's take...

Via Fallows, UC Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen watched a used book price war between two bots that ended...oddly: Once a day profnath set their price to be 0.9983 times bordeebook’s price. The prices would remain close for several hours, until bordeebook “noticed” profnath’s change and elevated their price to 1.270589 times profnath’s higher price. The pattern continued perfectly for the next week. But two questions remained. Why were they doing this, and how long would it go on before they noticed?...

Apparently cluing into my accidental theme this week of things that scare people irrationally, Patrick Smith had a pair of child safety scissors confiscated, even though he's, you know, the one flying the plane. He worries things will never change: When it came right down to it, the success of the Sept. 11 attacks had nothing—nothing—to do with box cutters. The hijackers could have used anything. They were not exploiting a weakness in luggage screening, but rather a weakness in our mind-set—our...

The news shows were hyperventilating earlier this week about a "near miss" involving an Air Force plane carrying the First Lady and Jill Biden. Only, it wasn't a near miss. It wasn't even a loss of IFR separation (though the planes did come too close for strict wake-turbulence safety). The planes were never close enough to warrant even a stern talking-to by the FAA. No, instead, Obama's plane—a military version of a Boeing 737—came within 8 km of a landing C-17 transport, which is close enough that the...