Kilted To Kick Cancer - Day 5: Butts in Kilts!

My Sister-From-Another-Mother Brigid was kind enough to put up a post at her place that really drives home what this fundraiser is about.  Being smarter than I, she lead the post with a picture of a lovely butt in a kilt.  Now I may be a slow learner, but you don't have to kick me twice, so without further ado, butts in kilts!

But as with all her posts, there is a story that will tug at your heart.  And so I want to talk about the day that Dad called me and said that he wasn't going to do another round of chemo, but instead was going into hospice.  I wrote obliquely about it at the time.

The Taxotere almost killed him, and he didn't think he could handle another round.  The doctors didn't think that anything less powerful would handle the cancer which had spread aggressively by then.  It was his third round with Prostate Cancer, and each time it came back stronger.

And so he told me that he was settling in to hospice to go in an orderly and dignified manner that would have been well known to the Stoic philosophers of old.

Me, I've never been accused of being a philosopher, or even a stoic.  The pure anger - crystalinely pure - simply consumed me.  This was a good man, a great father, great husband, respected by his peers and adored by his grandchildren.

And he was going to go quietly into that Dark Night.  That is what this fundraiser is all about.  That's why all of us are putting our dignity on the line, so that research can find a cure that will let these good men live.  I'm all in on this - you want dignity on the line?  OK, here you go:

Hawt, eh?  But that's not the point.  Please click through to donate to this cause.  It's fully tax deductible, as a 501(c)3 charity.  The Donate link is here, and please select Team Borepatch.

And if you click through to read Brigid's post you'll see why she is also invested in this - her Dad is fighting that same fight right now.  She is so invested that she's made an enormously generous offer: the first twenty donations of $50 or more via Team Borepatch will receive an autographed copy of her amazing The Book Of Barkley.

Send a screen shot of your Paypal receipt for your donation to borepatch at gmail dot com, along with your snail mail address and we will do the rest.  Remember, while the competition and the goofing are all in good fun, there's a method to our madness, and a reason for this season.

I miss you, Dad.  We'll see what we can do about this.  And I can hear you laughing about my kilted butt.

Flash Terry - Tin Pan Alley Blues

Great Tulsa blues.

Wow, I had no idea how dangerous this was

And where can I get one?  Want.

Hat tip: long time buddy Burt via email.

Remember, that's why we call him "The Big Guy"

It would have been awesome if he'd said that to the guy's wife, LOL.

Kilted To Kick Cancer - Day 4: Edsel's greatest design

A lot of people forget that the infamous Ford Edsel was named after Edsel Ford, who was a very good designer.  How good?  This good:

That's a 1934 Edsel Ford Model 40 Special Speedster.  Here's a picture sans kilt.

That's so sweet you can almost taste it.  Err, the car, not the kilt.  Currently on display (for the next 2 weeks only) at Atlanta's High Museum of Art.  Recommended, if you're in the ATL.

This is Day 4 of the Kilted To Kick Cancer fundraiser for Prostate Cancer research.  If you are of a mind to donate to a great charity, hit their donation page (and please make sure that you select Team Borepatch).  It's a great cause - Prostate Cancer is what took Dad - and it's tax deductible as a 501(c)3 charity.

I love Amsterdam

Let's be careful out there when it's hot.

So who is it that is getting more liberal?

The Czar of Muscovy ponders the political scene and why increasing dissatisfaction with the Democrats is not helping Republicans.  In his (as usual) insightful post, we find this:

Polls continue to show that liberalism is on a massive decline, which happens every other generation. Last time it happened was in the late 1970s, which proved disastrous for Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis. After another generation, the kids got a little more tolerant of liberalism, and you were awarded Clinton, Dole, and Pelosi.

Interestingly, we have something much better than polls that tracks this:

Author’s analysis of the GSS. Sample limited to non-Latino whites ages 30–49 in the survey year.

The General Social Survey, a mother lode of information for social scientists that has been collected annually or biannually since 1972, has asked people in every survey to say whether they are extremely conservative, conservative, slightly conservative, moderate, slightly liberal, liberal, or extremely liberal. A really simple question.


The graph represents the percentage of people who answered “extremely liberal” or “liberal” minus the percentage of people who answered “extremely conservative” or “conservative” in any given survey. I won’t go into the statistical details (for that, buy the book in a couple of years), but think of the classes this way:

Traditional Upper: Someone at the 95th percentile of income, with a graduate degree, who is a business executive, physician, engineer, etc.

Intellectual Upper: Also at the 95th percentile of income and with a graduate degree, but a lawyer, academic, scientist (hard or soft) outside academia, writer, in the news media, or a creator of entertainment programming (film and television).

Traditional Middle: Same occupations as the Traditional Uppers, but with just a bachelor’s degree and at the 75th percentile of income.

Technical Middle: Someone working in the many technical specialties that have proliferated in health, information technology, and industrial technology, with an associate’s degree and at the 50th percentile of income.

Working: Someone working in a skilled blue-collar job, with just a high school diploma and at the 25th percentile of income.

Lower: Someone working at a low-skill job who didn’t finish high school, at the 5th percentile of income.

And so we see that "Gentry Liberals" are becoming much much more liberal while essentially every other economic group (of whites, it must be said) is becoming much more conservative.  And this explains a lot about why the GOP isn't benefiting from the dissatisfaction with the Democrats: they don't offer much to these other groups.

With unemployment at levels not seen since the Great Depression, why is the GOP not surging in the polls and steamrollering the competition?  Because the Chamber of Commerce is all for mass immigration which would further depress wages.  You could list the other main policy areas, and very few would align with the bottom four economic quintile groups.

Of course the Democrats don't offer anything to these groups either, which explains the very widely held "a pox on both your houses" attitude.

Economic analysis is mostly like reading the entrails of dead birds

Ancient Roman astrologers used many methods to divine the future, all of which we think are pretty silly - the direction and formation of flocks of birds, observing the entrails of sacrificed animals, that sort of things.  We scoff because while it was well organized and regulated, it wasn't scientific.  It was never compared to actual data observations.

And so with Economics:

So, say we raise interest rates, we expect GDP growth to slow. We know there're (at least) two effects going to happen: debtors have to pay more in interest so they'll cut back on other things. But obviously savers will get those higher interest payments and so will have more to spend. We think that savers will save some portion of those extra payments thus there will be a drop in overall demand.

But the point it that we don't actually know that this is true. We think it is, we've observed it a few times (and it's stunning how little empirical evidence we really have in this field. In any detail, for perhaps 30 countries over 5 or so business cycles over 5 or 6 decades - and that's about it, a very slim evidence base to construct an entire science upon) and it accords with what we think theory is.

But we're still open to being confounded on this. To change the example a little we would expect people to save less money in a higher inflation environment: might as well spend and get something rather than see your savings losing their value. Yet savings rates tend to go up in even medium (ie, 5 % and above) inflation rate circumstances as people, well, no one's quite sure what they think they're doing. We can construct a story to say that they're trying to maintain the absolute value of their savings but who knows?

Our models that we are computing this macroeconomy forecast with are based on all sorts of lightly observed linkages from our scarce evidence base and as we saw above, absolutely none of them managed to predict a recession when it was only months away. Or, if you prefer, we're just not very good at this macroeconomics stuff.

As to how I predicted the US recession at least, that was simple. I just listened to Dean Baker (a lefty but still a good economist) who entirely ignored all that macro stuff and instead pointed to a piece of micro. There's something called the “wealth effect”. When our assets, stocks, houses, whatever, go up in value we tend to spend more as we feel richer. This is why house price booms raise GDP. But crashes obviously put that into reverse and Baker pointed out that the 2006 or so real estate crash in the US destroyed some $8 trillion of household wealth: of course we're going to have a recession as households reel from such a blow.

Our taxes support an army of economists; we're not getting much of a return on that spend.  We may in fact be getting a negative return when you consider how their very poor model predictions feed public policy at the Fed.

Kilted To Kick Cancer - Day 3 with an awesome old car

I'm doing my very best "Vanna White" Car Show presentation at the Atlanta High Museum of Art Automotive Art exhibition.  Good thing there's a great car here.

It's a 1936 Stout Scarab, envisioned to be a Living Room on wheels.  It was basically the first minivan, but with style.  I posted this picture a couple days ago, but this is the view of the rear.

No, you don't get a view of my rear, although thank you for asking (you perv).  Der Wik describes the insanely cool design:

By discarding the usual running-boards and expanding the cabin to the full width of the car, as well as using a long wheelbase, the Scarab offered a spacious interior. Space was further maximized by placing the engine directly over the rear axle and moving the driver far forward, so that the steering wheel was almost directly above the front wheels. Passengers entered through a single, large common door, and encountered a flexible seating system, that could be configured in almost any arrangement imaginable, except for the driver, whose seat was fixed. Rivaling the seating in modern MPVs, such as the Chrysler Voyager or Renault Espace, there was even a small card table which could be fitted anywhere among the passenger seats if so required. Interiors were appointed in leather, chrome, and wood. Design elements also worked in a stylized ancient Egyptian "scarab" motif, including the car's emblem. Visibility to the front and sides was similar to that of an observation car, although rearward vision was almost nil and there were no rear-view mirrors.

Want.

This is Day 3 of the Kilted To Kick Cancer fundraiser for Prostate Cancer research.  If you are of a mind to donate to a great charity, hit their donation page (and please make sure that you select Team Borepatch).  It's a great cause - Prostate Cancer is what took Dad - and it's tax deductible as a 501(c)3 charity.

Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl

Holy cow, how on earth is it possible that this was recorded 37 years ago?  LBJ was President, for crying out loud*.



That's an old favorite that's maybe turning into a new favorite.  Love this song.

* Go ask your parents, kid.

Another hero takes off on his final flight

Stephen emails to point out that another hero has mustered out:

Wing Commander Ken Rees, who has died aged 93, was the last surviving member of the digging team that constructed the tunnel used during the “Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III in March 1944.

...

A gregarious, high-spirited, and at times irreverent young man (he was 21 years old at the time of his capture), Rees was a restless and troublesome prisoner, always baiting his captors and he regularly found himself in the “cooler” — the punishment block. When Hollywood filmed the escape from Stalag Luft III many drew parallels between Rees and the character of Hilts, the “Cooler King” played by Steve McQueen.

How tough was he?  They cast Steve McQueen to play him.  Fair weather on your last flight, Wing Commander Rees.

I'm not sure who is the bigger idiot

Celebrities who posted naughty pix to a cloud server on the 'net, or the "hacker" who posted the pix with a screenshot showing his name:

All I can say is that I've been posting on this for six years now.  What's different now is that many services (like Apple's iCloud) automatically save everything to the 'net.  All y'all might want to check to make sure this is turned off if you're fixin' to do some modelling in the all together ...

He's not actually the Most Interesting Man In The World

Or he'd be wearing a kilt in the Kroger.

This is Day 2 of the Kilted To Kick Cancer fundraiser for Prostate Cancer research.  If you are of a mind to donate to a great charity, hit their donation page (and please make sure that you select Team Borepatch).  It's a great cause - Prostate Cancer is what took Dad - and it's tax deductible as a 501(c)3 charity.

Traffic

Thanks to co-blogger ASM826, last month was a new milestone here at more than 100,000 page views.  It looks like all the gunny goodness that he's been posting has goosed the traffic by 15-20%.

I'm very grateful to have my brother-from-another-mother blogging here, and very grateful for all of you who stop by.

Kilted to Kick Cancer

It was Prostate Cancer that took Dad, and so after dithing for a couple years I'm going all in on the Kilted To Kick Cancer fundraiser.  On Saturday I went to Atlanta Kilts, where Tony very helpfully got me all decked out:

If you are of a mind to donate to a great charity, hit their donation page (and please make sure that you select Team Borepatch - walking around in a kilt is nothing compared to the loss of dignity if Ambulance Driver that the other guys smoke me on the fund raising challenge).

Cars as works of art

If you are in Atlanta during the next two weeks, make a point to visit the High Museum of Art's delightful exhibit on concept cars.  These are most definitely not your typical Detroit Coffin.

The detail is often more beautiful than the overall lines (which are beautiful indeed).

It's a wonderful exhibit, and has been extended until mid September.  Recommended.

Foreshadowing

Stay tuned for a secret announcement. An under cover announcement, you might say.



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The secret to happiness

Me, I recommend getting a motorcycle.  Your mileage may vary.

About Obama's search for a "strategy"

Clint Eastwood sure called this.

Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen - Hot Rod Lincoln

I'm headed in to the ATL today to go to the High Museum of Art which has an exhibit of concept cars - 1950s ones that look like space ships, that sort of thing.  The art of the car, as it were.  I'm expecting some hot wheels.