Busy getting ready for a trip to Pittsburgh, so not a lot of time for posts this week! So here are a few random nuggets from the Sisters:I think Darious Rucker - pictured here - is hot. I haven't heard his new country song, but I still love to pop my Hootie CD in.
Sister and I are addicted to Starbuck's new Vivanno, but we like it for dinner! My new morning drink is Caffe Misto, java and steamed milk, 1/2 and 1/2.
I've traded in my People magazine for a serious book: Hot, Flat and Crowded by economist Thomas Friedman. Sister gives me props for reading it - you know, I'm the pop-culture Sister, not the academic one. It's a fascinating account of why, economically, we can't afford not to go green. In the meantime, I've also discovered his columns, and he speaks for me. Christian, what's the call on this econo-dude?
I'm officially in overload with the election. I'm even giving up my cable news. And what's up with Grata Van Sustern's obsession with the Palins? She needs to get back to what she does best - the OJ trial. Hello - there's an OJ trial going on.
5 comments:
Thomas Friedman is BRILLIANT. I love everything he writes. His other books "The World is Flat" and "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" are both about understanding globalization, and they're equally wonderful. Love his columns, too. As for political overload, I do not ever want to hear anything about Palin again. I don't want to hear her screeching voice, see her '80's updon't, or read about her gun-toting, salmon-catching lifestyle. Enough!
First of all, you wouldn't listen anyhow about Friedman's CWisdom. He has authoratarian views on how markets work, especially energy ones. He's hard core on free trade, and believes in freedom when it comes to the free flow of labor and goods, which I like. He dramatically underestimates the existential war going on between western and islamic culture and writes hapazardly on that subject, thinking that it is a "background" issue more than a daily issue. Though he does very much understand that Islam is a backWARDS culture and that poses dangers for the west. See eg. Princeton Prof Bernard Lewis, "What went wrong."
Turning to what you care about: Friendman's authoritarian approach to energy markets is a bad idea because subsidizing one industry (wind for example) creates inefficiencies in the marketplace that have dangerous side effect - including snuffing out other innovations because of command economy decision making models. Friedman can argue for a "new way", as he does in his book (and some politicans seem to do lately) but ultimately it is the "old" way of doing things: by legislative or bureacratic fiat - akin to Mao's Five Year Plan or some other disproven tactic for generation of new technologies. It might FEEL good to say, "we need wind, we need biofuels" - but to get there by command, or incentives or other government interference in the market, makes us all worse off.
Regarding Vice President Palin:
"screeching voice"
"80's updon't"
Nice reasoned debate. Good to see.
Anonymous clarifies:
The Conventional Wisdom (should have taken more time in the first instance) is all over the map because his views are all over the map depending on what the issue is. So it isn't worth listening to conventional wisdom on him because there is no such thing (as you can see from the remainder of the post). And, you may disagree with my "conventional wisdom" on the energy issue because I don't believe in a command and control economy on energy. This impacts what to do with other aspects of renewable and trendy terms like "sustainability" - which opens up a whole separate discussion on what is the best way to "sustain" anything - and I go back to the point made in the first post that markets and vibrant unfettered innovation is preferable to command models.
Anon is back! I actually chuckled a few times reading those comments....what is coming over me?!? Welcome back!
And y'all have FUN and be SAFE on your trip!
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