Election in Sochi

The mayoral race in Sochi (future site of the 2014 Olympic Games) includes an ex-KGB officer and an international fugitive wanted for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Why am I not surprised?

Russian election takes Olympian turn – LATimes

Peter Fox – Haus am See

This Peter Fox guy makes some pretty interesting, outside-the-box music. I love the strings, and I like how original he is, incorporating the Southern marching band percussion into it. I’m still not sure if I really like this yet — it’s just too new and too weird.

Flo Rida – Magic

When Flo Rida first came out, it seemed like he was positioning himself as the elder statesman of ringtone rap. But now on his new album, R.O.O.T.S. (due out March 31), Mr. Rida is establishing himself as this decade’s Puff Daddy–he’s essentially reduced most of his beats to barely hidden samples of songs from past decades (like Diddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You”), and turned them into “new” songs. First was his Dead or Alive ripping “Right Round,” which is the number one song in the country, and now it’s “Magic” which has a prominent sample of Pilot’s “Magic.”

I generally don’t like this brand of rap, but I dig the beat and the sample. Catchy.

Via Prefix Mag.

Pizza

North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong Il has accomplished a miracle: Pizza in Pyongyang.

It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the technology to launch a project very dear to its leader’s heart—the nation’s first “authentic” Italian pizzeria.

For those of you keeping score at home:

New York, center of capitalism: 1,520 pizza joints
Pyongyang, communist hermit kingdom: 1 pizza joint

And the Pyongyang v. New York pizza smack-down above doesn’t even take into account per capita figures. New York has 9 million residents. North Korea has 24 million (starving) residents. Thus this charming contrast:

Despite the food shortages high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.

Kim Jong Il’s plan to provide pizza for the toiling masses of North Korea seems to have worked out better than his earlier plan to alleviate food shortages by breeding imported giant rabbits, which was aborted when the greedy Dear Leader decided to eat the initial batch of rabbits himself.

Kimchi Pizza? – Reason Magazine

Medicare Ponzi Scheme

As we criticize Bernie Madoff, I’d like to point out that the government’s running a bigger Ponzi scheme in Social Security and Medicare.

-John Stossel

At some $35 trillion in unfunded obligations, the government’s Ponzi scheme is some 538 times larger than Madoff’s.

Economic Competitiveness

I had some shows like Greed or Is America No. 1?, which discussed why America is prosperous. You ask kids, and they say it’s because we have democracy and we have natural resources. I point out, well, India has democracy and natural resources, but India’s poor. They’d say, India’s overpopulated. Actually the population density of India is the same as that of New Jersey, and New Jersey’s doing OK. And Hong Kong has no natural resources and 20 times as many people per square foot as India, and Hong Kong got rich. In 50 years it went from the Third World to First World because, as Milton Friedman points out, economic freedom is the answer to why a country’s prosperous. The British rulers in Hong Kong enforced the rule of law, kept people and property safe, and then they sat around and drank tea. They left people alone. To me, that’s such a valuable lesson for kids.

-John Stossel

Interview link

Economic ‘Justice’

This hatred of business—I’m not sure what that’s about. I used to think it was envy, that the college professor is angry that his slightly stupider roommate is making more money than he is because he’s in business. Then you think about the kings and queens of Europe. People didn’t hate them for all their wealth, and their wealth proportionately was vastly greater than now, but they hated the bourgeoisie. They gave them that nasty name. They hated the very people who sold them the things that they needed to make their lives better. What’s that about?

My best guess is that it’s the intuitive reaction that the world is a zero-sum game, that if he makes profit off you, you must’ve lost something. If you don’t study economics, that is how people think. I see why politicians think that way, because that’s how their world works. One wins. Somebody else has to lose. We have a lot of work to do to explain that free commerce doesn’t work that way, that everybody gains.

-John Stossel

Interview link

Education Monopoly

John Stossel: More recently, we did a special called Stupid in America, which was about education. [...] It argued pretty forcefully that choice and competition [charter schools] might make a big difference. There’s this argument that the reason that public education is failing is that we’re not spending enough money. We’re spending $11,000 per student. If you do the math, that’s more than $200,000 per classroom. Think what you would do with that money.

Editor: Drive the kids up in limos?

Stossel: Hire four excellent teachers. It just shows that government monopolies waste money

Interview link

Media Bias

The people with whom I work read The New York Times and The Washington Post, and that’s their world. Everybody around them agrees with them. They all lean left, and they think that’s the middle.

-John Stossel, interview

Mess-ame Street

Fire!

When a fireman sees a house on fire, he sounds an alarm, dons his turnout gear, bravely rescues the occupants and puts out the fire.

When an investment banker sees a house on fire, he quietly sells the burning house short, uses the proceeds to buy a larger house for himself and, when someone suggests that his taxes be raised to help the homeless, he rails against the dangers of socialism.

Fire! – The Big Picture

Putin and Reagan

Vladimir Putin (left), then a KGB agent, posing as a tourist for Ronald Reagan’s 1988 visit:

Picture: Putin Pretending To Be Tourist During Reagan’s 1988 Visit To Moscow – TheHotJoints

Progress

Toda la historia del progreso humano se puede reducir a la lucha de la Ciencia contra la superstición.

The history of human progress is simply the battle between science and superstition.

-Gregorio Marañón

Via Microsiervos.

Rumsfeld’s Logic

John Mayer on Rumsfeld’s unknowns:

Donald Rumsfeld’s quote about ‘known unknowns and unknown unknowns’ is actually correct and quite rational. [...] Known unknown: ‘bringing my jacket, it might rain today.’ Unknown unknown: ‘it ended up raining lava.’

If you live near Mt. Vesuvius, however, this logic fails.

Twitter – John Mayer (Tweet 1, Tweet 2).

Cafe con leche

King Alfonso XIII visited Las Hurdes [a backwards region full of destitute hillbillies] in 1922 in order to display the concern of the crown. The king and his retinue lived in military tents planted near the town of Casares de las Hurdes. During the king’s visit, a strange incident took place: A local village chief, concerned that the king was drinking only black coffee (a consequence of the king’s aides distrusting the quality of the local milk owing to unsanitary conditions in the area) served the king a small jug of milk saying, “Your Majesty rest assured that this milk is totally trustworthy,” which turned out to be milk from his wife who had recently given birth. The king became aware of this fact only after having had his café con leche.