Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Choice and Its Enemies. By Pejman Yousefzadeh / TCS — Permalink H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy." Being a libertarian-conservative means being possessed of the haunting fear that someone somewhere is itching to play busybody on a level one might have once thought was inconceivable. Read remarks from Steve Antler, Roger L. Simon, Pejman Yousefzadeh, and Glenn Reynolds. [memeorandum] Quote from the related NYT article - In another study, she found that people who chose one chocolate from a selection of 30 expressed more regret and uncertainty about their decision than those who chose among six kinds. That's because with 29 other options, there is a bigger chance of losing out on something better. For me, this gets at the casuality issue.  Maybe it wasn't uncertainty about the decision due to the choices.  Maybe it was because they were in the store longer and all the shouldn't and don't, mothers editing about chocolate had a chance to start to play.  Not enough data to make that decisions either. Today's news seems to have a theme for me - - do you want good? do you want bad? there are no other choices for you, you big dummy! 6:33:22 PM    comment [] Pharmacies Balk on After-Sex Pill and Widen Fight in Many States. NYT — Permalink CHICAGO, April 18 - As a fourth-generation pharmacist whose drugstore still sits on the courthouse square of his conservative small town downstate, State Senator Frank Watson knew exactly what side to take when Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich ordered pharmacies to... Read remarks from TheAnchoress, Chris Mooney, Riggsveda @Corrente, and Tom Maguire. [memeorandum] GREAt COMMENT FROM THE REMARKS LINK Maybe David Cronenberg has designed a female reproductive system that operates the way the Pharmacists For Not Doing Their Fucking Job and that crazy lady from the Massachussets Citizens For Assuring That Americans Are Viewed as a Laughing-Stock thinks it does. 6:07:19 PM    comment [] Retirement Account Overload. Roth or regular? 401(k) or annuity? Where's the best place to park your investments? [The Motley Fool] 5:53:35 PM    comment [] Markets Up on Pope Pick. After last week's major slide, the indexes look up following the successful conclusion of the Papal Conclave. [The Motley Fool] GREAT ARTICLE on what DOESN"T make the market move- -- cause, uh, we don't really know!! See quote below That's because every day, many times a day, we're treated to titles that attribute the market's short-term movements to all manner of stimuli -- many of them every bit as nonsensical, from inconsequential macroeconomic data to far-flung political events to a single company's quarterly results. Whether the assertions are correct or even demonstrably plausible doesn't matter at all to the folks who write this stuff. The journalism machine refuses to say " I don't know," and it takes solace in the knowledge that no one can prove that this daily tripe is not true. If the indexes had dropped today, I guarantee you the headlines would have attributed the decline to the billion-dollar loss at GM (NYSE: GM), just as they were all proclaiming the death of all "tech" after IBM's (NYSE: IBM) dismal showing a few days back. But they didn't, and do you know why? Me neither. The market's daily gyrations are completely inexplicable. No matter what those headlines or cherry-picked analyst quotations claim, no one knows why the aggregate indexes move one way or another on 99.9% of trading days. And here's a big secret: There's nothing wrong with that. It's only by admitting that you can't know everything that you'll be free to concentrate on the things that do matter. 5:51:15 PM    comment [] Services for Older Jazz Musicians. Organizations such as the nonprofit Jazz Foundation of America and Billy Taylor's Jazz Mobile are two groups striving to help older jazz musicians in need. Another organization that is supposed to help musicians is their union, the American Federation of Musicians, but it has been criticized for catering mainly to classical and Broadway musicians. Hear the second in a four-part series. [NPR Programs: All Things Considered] 5:12:21 PM    comment []

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