Happy Halloween!

You think you're parents are bad? Check these out.
On an unrelated note, try this puzzle. It's not as hard as they make it seem, once you figure out the trick. There's apparently some cool background music too, though my computer can't play it for some reason.

More NBA

Matt Yglesias demonstrates he doesn't know anywhere near as much about basketball as he either thinks or pretends to. Marion is a tremendoes player. Better in a fantasy league than in the NBA, but not risibly so.
Good stuff from Shirley. Hopefully when he catches on with a team he can still write his weblog.

Pulling weeds

Friedman (Patri that is) gives us a parable I think he came up with.

7 days

The NBA season starts next Tuesday. While my Celtics won't be great, they will be good, exciting, and are very well positioned for the next 5-10 years. My fantasy team is looking very good, a repeat seems likely. And Ali G is in da house! Things are looking good. Now if we could only stop having this crappy, depressing weather.

This is where it leads

What is the public interest? Who determines what is done, and where? Government taking control of the economy (which is what this is on a small scale) favors the rich and powerful.

Uh?

Levitt tells us that 33 years in prison is the equivalent of 30 years in prison plus 1.35 days now. How does he know this? He uses discounting! Wonderful. Don't get me wrong, discounting is a very valuable tool, but using it like this is asinine. Besides, he got the math wrong, it's 2.04 days.

Holy Crap!

The Secret Service is tracking your copying (via MR). Apparently "there are no laws to stop the Secret Service from using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency documents." How about telling us what laws permit them to do this? That is how our system of government is supposed to work, it can only do what it is explicitly told it can do.

Awesome

This guy is the anti-J. Peterman, but apparently it worked.

I seem to be 13 right now

He.
Oh, and 'Happy' Yom Kippur to my Jewish friends. And to my non-Jewish friends who are confused as to the quotes, it's not really a happy holiday.

Back

I'm back in the USA. Berlin and Prague were excellent, and the nieces are great.
On to more serious stuff, I have a feeling there will be a new government in Venezuela within a year.
On to even more serious stuff, I can't believe the Sox were swept! Losing isn't surprising, we all knew there were too many question marks on the pitching staff to expect a repeat. I figured the hitting gave them a chance though, and would certainly win them at least one game, but it just crapped out. Oh well, there is still a good foundation for another run next year, not a lot of moves are needed to stay in the hunt, though the uncertainty about Schilling and Foulke make it hard to know precisely what the moves needed are.