Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* I loved these wonderful sentences from a posting by ChicagoBoyz's Shannon Love:

Europeans need to stop thinking of America as a giant France or Germany, and Americans need to stop thinking of Europe as a United States where Nevada inexplicably invades California once a generation.

* ChaiTeaLatte visits a show of quilts, and demonstrates how to spend a civilized afternoon.

* I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it's certainly one resourceful way to make use of Google Maps. (Thanks to Poynter Online for the link.)

* Christopher Floyd thinks "Hitchhiker's Guide" might be six times the movie the latest "Star Wars" episode is.

* John Ray points out a sad WashPost story about Africa's Bushmen, who are being pushed out of the lands they've inhabited for thousands of years. Why aren't human-rights groups protesting? Steve Sailer comments.

* Steve links to a Boston Globe article showing that John Kerry did slightly worse than GWBush did in college. Oops: there goes the Dem pretence that they market smarter candidates than the Republicans do. Steve asks the key question: "How in hell does a country of 300,000,000 come up with two mediocrities like Kerry and Bush as the only choices for President?" Half Sigma comments, and supplies additional links.

* Tyler Cowen has a vision of the movie-watching future.

* Many people don't realize how political and rigged the markets for textbooks are. Alex Tabarrok explains how they got that way.

* Alex also links to a new interview with Milton Friedman. A passage that fans-of-modest-government-who-think-that-necessarily-means-Vote-Republican might want to wrestle with:

He ... said it was no coincidence that budget surpluses appeared during the Clinton administration, when a Democratic president faced a Republican Congress.

"There were no big spending programs during the Clinton administration," he said. "As a result, government spending tended to stay down, the economy grew like mad, taxes went up, spending did not, and lo and behold, the deficit was turned into a surplus."

The problem now, he said, is that Republicans control both ends of Washington.

"There's no question if we're holding down spending, a Democratic president and a Republican House and Senate is the proper combination."

Sez I: Vote for -- or at least hope for -- gridlock. Even Randall Parker, who's generally rightish, thinks we'd be better off if Al Gore had been elected President in 2000.

* USA Today thinks that the reason many recent college grads wind up back home with Mom and Dad is that kids -- er, young adults -- today can no longer bear the realities of starting off at the bottom of the ladder. Instead, they expect to start where Mom and Dad left off.

* Fred Reed is sick of all the excuses. Fred's an inspired and amazing writer, if in a hard-to-pin-down way: part gonzo, part snob, part white-trash. Why isn't he a better-known and more widely-syndicated columnist than he is?

* David Sucher wonders what Apple is up to. An informative commentsfest follows, with helpful contributions from Glen Raphael and others.

* The Terry Teachout essay about cultureblogging that Fenster discussed recently is now readable online. It's first-class.

Best,

Michael

http://googlesightseeing.com is a much less controversial use of Google Maps, quite an interesting place to pass some time.

Posted by: Peter on June 9, 2005 07:45 PM

I read the USA Today article, and was mostly struck by the use of a couple of seeming anachronisms in the text. One was a reference to "color televisions." That is like so '60s! Back then, a _color_ TV set was supposed to be the height of self-indulgence and conspicuous consumption at a time when most people still had black and white TVs and color sets were expensive. But prices came down later and B&W TV sets began to disappear. I had to go somewhat out of my way circa 1978 to buy a black and white TV, and probably somewhat after 1980 or so, consumer TVs were pretty much all color. Now it's 2005, and saying "color TV" is simply old-fashioned, obsolete, and redundant.

The other thing was a reference to "coupon clipping." That's one of those terms whose original meaning has been lost, but somehow it got applied to something a bit different. That is, originally, a coupon clipper was someone who lived off his investments without having to work (other than by clipping coupons). I'm not even sure I understand it completely, but I think the deal was that you weren't sent stock dividends automatically, but had to cut out a coupon from the certificate every so often and send it in to get the money. That's obsolete now, and coupon clipping has changed to mean someone cutting out coupons for 10c off on a can of cat food. Instead of being idle rich, a coupon clipper is someone who lives frugally.

--Dwight

Posted by: Dwight Decker on June 9, 2005 11:25 PM

"Coupon clipping" was associated with corporate bonds rather than stock certificates. Many bonds were issued in "bearer" form, and anyone in possession of such a bond could detach a coupon at set intervals and send it to the transfer agent for cash. Obviously, bearer bonds had to kept in secure locations, and today they've largely been replaced by registered bonds that are useful only to the registered owners.

Posted by: Peter on June 10, 2005 11:11 AM






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