Category: Wasting your time

[Update: The WSJ reports that you’re now bailing out AIG.] For years working in Washington, I listened to libertarian tripe about how privacy law would prevent free markets from operating, and how banks should be able to freely trade personal information to assign risk and create new credit products. The “Miracle of Instant Credit” was…

It’s been an exciting day here at UC Berkeley. Four helicopters have been buzzing the office since about 8 AM, because the UC decided to erect a scaffold around the lone tree left in order to extricate the tree sitters. I got to watch about 12:00 today. There were probably 400 observers for the final…

The nerve! Carolyn Jones of the Chronicle reports: In their most recent demand, the tree-sitters said they would come down if the university gives $6 million to environmental and Native American groups, creates a public committee on campus land use and allows protesters to use the stump from the oldest tree in the grove, which…

So, due to circumstances beyond his control, Ed over at Dispatches won’t be able to plan our Michigan party, so we’re going to do it in the Detroit metro area on Saturday, Sept. 20th. I don’t have the place yet, but I’m getting the idea that there are a few definite maybes. Let me know…

Berkeley’s latest political battle may be coming to an end: the UC has won a series of decisions in cases brought by local activist groups seeking to prevent the destruction of grove of trees right next to the law school. UC wants to build a sports facility there for our athletes. The battle over this…

We’re still working on a Michigan meetup to celebrate our millionth comment. Ed Brayton, who has to trek over from the west side of the state, has suggested a more central location (not unlike early Michiganders). Rather than SE Mich, there is some interest in Lansing or East Lansing. If forced to trek up there,…

So the alties hate real medicine. They come over here and bemoan modern medicine’s failure to address behavioral changes that affect health, such as diet and exercise. Then I write a long post about internists’ duties viz public health and health behaviors, and the gun nuts think I want to disarm them and PRY TEH…

Today’s Journal reports on the delicate task of creating a monument to Galileo Galilei at the Vatican. But there’s still some opposition. Check this out from the very end of the article: On the other side of the barricades, meanwhile, some Roman Catholics think the church has already done more than enough to make up…

The new students have arrived at UC-Berkeley, closely pursued by hordes of credit card marketers. Right by my office is a bank that literally has 12 employees out front hawking credit cards and new accounts. Freshman friends, don’t get your first credit card from the guy on the street offering you a t-shirt or worthless,…

Gawker published this gem today.