Thing is, it’s obviously a different world outside of M-F business hours. http://bringmethenews.com/2015/02/08/group-of-adults-juveniles-detained-after-reports-of-harassment-in-st-paul-skyway/ Quite a few homeless people, quite a few loitering juveniles and younger adults during off hours. Locked doors, security officers, and beat cops is all that’s to solve it. The kid that got smacked on Jan 19 and had his bruise faced picture put up everywhere…. I have passed by him in person several times since. He’s obviously a homeless kid.
Brian Williams… all there is to say at this point is, boy these anchormen are characters, ripe for absurd stereotyping. I think it would be very easy to do a comedic movie script based on one of these guys eh.
This was cute, as we drove by. http://bringmethenews.com/2015/02/08/grounded-hot-air-balloons-inflated-but-couldnt-lift-off-at-annual-festival/ they do it in the middle of the ‘city’, on an elementary school playground. Barely enough space though, and ties up all the side streets.
Dilettante philosopher: On its face I think personal autonomy as literally as you can define it would make for a superseding personal liberty to not take the needle, communal needs be damned. http://theweek.com/articles/537788/limits-personal-liberty Equate it to abortion say, because I do think it’s a proper equivalence to argue. Children are a benefit to the broader community, but an abortion ban justified by the communal need for children would be a non-starter, not subject to a ‘limit on personal liberty’.
Dilettante economist: Needed a laptop yesterday. Ya know like, I was past “I’ll get a new one this year sometime”, my patience was at an end with the 6 year old one, TODAY is the day, need it NOW. Should be easy peazy here with modernity, they carry them at all the stores. Went to Wally World in Hudson, and their shelves were picked bare. Found that odd and not complimentary to their business (I am not an anti-Walmart snob in other respects..). But I think it’s an anecdote that supports an observation that tax refund shopping season starts about second week of February. Anecdote 2: ended up at Best Buy in Oakdale. For all the rumors of Best Buys death, it was packed and they had the best price.
Dilettante economist II: I can see this being the case http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/kill-stock-buyback-to-save-the-american-economy/385259/Whats the intuitive sense here? I mean, you’re supposed to accept that a company buying its own stock off the open market diminishes liquidity in that stock, which will create some upward pressure on price provided people want to buy it. Also, reducing the amount of stock improves whatever metrics you calculate against outstanding shares. This is textbook stuff, so it’s supposed to be intuitive I guess. But the value proposition seems so ambiguous / ethereal, the skeptical critique so credible, that you wonder whether that shouldn’t be the ‘intuitive’ position. Anywho….I think it would be better for the economy if companies spent their profits buying ‘stuff’ rather than chits of paper. Lets get on that, lets tax that.
97% consensus, warmest year ever http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html
Zingy Skyway Lunch 
The Brian Williams thing: I don’t get worked up about this. He’s a celebrity/reporter, who is pretty obviously full of himself. So what? And what he has done is nothing all that unusual. It is a Walter Mitty kind of thing. Bill O’Reilly has done pretty much the same sort of thing, but just refuses to acknowlegde it, much less apologize:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/keith-olbermann-fact-checks-bill-oreilly-baseball-mets-tom-seaver
Pedant weighs in re Seavers height being a point of contention. I do think 6’ 1” was Seaver’s “baseball card height”, with in reality he being about 5’ 11” ¾. He pitched like a short man with that extreme drop and drive off the rubber.