Patrick

Patrick is a mid-40 year old geek with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Information Systems. Nothing he says here has anything to do with the official position of his employer or any other institution.

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35 Responses

  1. Glyph says:

    Ned’s! (“Grey Cell Green” & “Happy” pop up on shuffle periodically). Why did they have two bassists? Who knows?

    No “Spirit of Radio”, Patrick? For shame. And you call yourself a Rush fan…

    Here’s the Stooges baffling Ohioans in 1970 with “TV Eye”:

    http://youtu.be/NuT5kMoYc1wReport

  2. kenB says:

    There’s also The Bobs’ Kill Your Television, but that’s really about bumper stickers.Report

  3. kenB says:

    Oh, and on the “open thread” angle, I thought this study might make for an interesting discussion around here, given all the gender-related topics that’ve been kicked about recently.Report

  4. The Cardiff Kook (Roger) says:

    Television: Marquee Moon

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlbunmCbTBA

    Great rock, CBGB style.Report

    • Glyph in reply to The Cardiff Kook (Roger) says:

      Hey, where were you on my initial Wed. MD music post? 😉Report

      • The Cardiff Kook in reply to Glyph says:

        Missed it entirely. I would have commented that I love both groups.The second side of BIA is about as good as it gets on vinyl.

        I also would have commented on how cool it is picking up precursors to the Talking Heads in Television. I never noticed the connections with Dire Straights, other than the amazing craftsmanship of the songs.Report

  5. Just Me says:

    Just for fun. The best404 Error Pages of all time.Report

  6. North says:

    Open thread eh?

    Cyprus.

    I gotta admit, I’m chewing on my nails a bit on this one. This actually looks like the one that could possibly break the credit union or the currency or the continents banks.
    Yeah, tiny ol’ Cyprus. They’ve got a pair of huge banks that’re in it up to their ears. The government is in the hock for them I’m gathering, I’m not clear on if they have to or if they volunteered a la Ireland?

    The reason Cyprus is kindof different than the previous countries is that Cyprus has been an offshore bank account country for not only Europe but also the Middle East and Russia. There’s a lot of allegedly dirty money in there and that makes em look really unsympathetic. Essentially a lot of accounts for people dodging taxes, people hiding money they’ve pillaged out of the USSR and people doing a lot of dodgy things in the Middle East. Or at least that’s how Europe proper views it. Also Cyprus isn’t very strongly connected to the rest of Europe’s banks so bringing Cyprus down didn’t look on the surface like it’d topple other banks.

    Accordingly there’s not much sympathy for bailing them out. Essentially the ECB is playing hardball. They said to Cyprus ‘Okay you’re in debt because of these banks. Make your banks depositors pay for it. The Cyprus Elite, of course, doesn’t wanna piss off their big depositors.. if their money isn’t safe in Cyprus they won’t keep it there… so instead they go after their little insured depositors. Funny thing about that, the small depositors aren’t politically influential but there’s a huge ton of them. So they riot and the Parliament votes the plan down.

    So they have until Monday to come up with a dumptruck load of money. Like a years worth of Cyprus’s GDP. By monday. And they can’t borrow it either, it has to be free and clear.

    I am puzzling where this could be going. If they manage to stick to their plan A and lay into their creditors what the hell does that mean for Italy, Span etc? Every country that’s looking wobbly could have bank runs. Honest to 1930 bank runs! And that’ll start out killing weak banks but could turn into a wave that kills ordinary banks or even strong banks.
    Plan B is Cyprus flips everyone the bird and bails out of the Euro. Cypress goes to the economic stone age. A lot of people loose a ton of money. And all the other periphery countries might end up with Bank runs anyhow as everyone tries to move their money into Germany. To say nothing of how no one knows how to actually take a country off the Euro.
    Plan C is more more more Austerity but we’re starting to see signs that the periphery is getting sick of it. You have to sell austerity by saying in the medium to long run it’ll be better but people are starting to see nothing but bad into infinity and all that being imposed by foreign Eurocrats. The voters may not stand for it.

    I’m not entirely sure how I feel about solutions. I mean my normal reaction is the ECB and the Germans need to face up to the fact that they have been enjoying their open market playground in Europe for over a decade now; they need to print some damn Euros and pay for it. On the other hand all that bailout money would be going to some severely unsavory characters. It’s no wonder the continent is dragging its feet.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to North says:

      How many bodyguards have the folks in charge of telling this to Cyprus?

      If Cyprus decides to skim off the holdings in the banks, I’d suggest that the folks in charge of telling this to Cyprus may wish to hire more.Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird says:

        I would say there’s a reason that the original Cyprus proposal intended to skim only money off of accounts of 100k euros or less.
        And yes, absolutely, I would definitely agree with your sentiment in general.Report

    • Glyph in reply to North says:

      North – I am a little bit out of my depth here, but you may find this interesting:

      http://dangerousminds.net/comments/capitalisms_fiction_laid_bare_will_the_cyprus_crisis_trigger_a_revolution

      Dangerous Minds’ proprietor, Richard Metzger, is a pretty avowed anti-capitalist/unreconstructed Marxist in my understanding, but he does post these guest economics/finance posts from Charles Hugh Smith; and CHS’ posts read, to my eye anyway, as more libertarian or anarcho-capitalist than anything (which is interesting to me, because Metzger generally HATES anything that sounds even remotely libertarian).

      CHS’ blog is here:

      http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.htmlReport

      • North in reply to Glyph says:

        The EU is fundamentally made up of generally democratic states. The states have individually developed a significant bureaucracy and then over top of those nations they’ve developed a sort of quasi-federal bureaucracy on top of that but if you piss people off enough the democratic institutions underlying this can still knock the technocrats around. If I had any decent knowledge of early US history I’d try and compare the development of the American Federal system with what is happening in Europe right now. Though the USA was considerably more hmm… deliberately designed I’d say than the EU is. The duct tape and bailing twine (and spit) on the EU is showing pretty clearly right now.

        There’s no doubt the Euro and the EU are teetering on the edge of crisis. The questions are:
        -Is this going to be the crisis that is big enough that the EU can’t muddle through and if so then will it result in
        A) the EU going through a significant fundamental restructuring or
        B) the EU coming apart at the seams.

        If the answer is Yes and B we’re gonna be looking at another global economic crisis I’d say. If it’s Yes and A then it’s a tossup and if it’s No then the economy should continue to muddle along and Europe will totter on until a big enough crisis emerges.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to North says:

      From Crooked Timber, the Cyprus Role-Playing Game. (You’ll need a pair of dice.)Report

  7. NewDealer says:

    1. Will the 80s be known as the Decade of the One-Hit Wonder?

    2. The Buggles must be one of the strangest bands to have one-hit.

    3. Queen!!!!!!!!Report

  8. Just Me says:

    Today I learned from my psychology book that an example of emotional abuse is refusing to communicate with your partner. I would have never thought to see that in a list of abuse. Since most people who get divorced say that lack of communication is the largest reason why they get divorced does that mean most marriages are abusive? Or would it take multiple entries from a “this is abuse” list?Report

  9. Brandon Berg says:

    I ran across this chart from the Economist. Leftists talk a lot about the super-rich and top 1%, but what struck me about this chart was how much higher the 80th and 90th percentiles* for the US are compared to every other country but Luxembourg. This doesn’t have anything to do with the very lucky, or the super-rich, or people with powerful connections. It’s 20% of the workforce. These are the levels of income that average people can achieve with hard work and good choices, and they’re far above the corresponding levels in other countries. The US really is the land of opportunity.

    *I cross-checked this with other data sources. The right edge of the bar is definitely the 90th percentile, and not the average income for the top decile, which would be significantly higher.Report

  10. Mike Schilling says:

    This is hilarious. During the primary season, Newt and Santorum were this close to a deal to join forces and seize the nomination from Romney. The only thing they couldn’t agree on was which of the two they’d unite behind.

    Finally, the two candidates spoke face-to-face at an energy forum just before the primary. Gingrich made an elaborate historical argument that when the party hasn’t been able to agree on a nominee, it always settles on the senior figure.

    I picture that, and I wonder if he comapred Santorum to a giraffe.Report

  11. Michael Cain says:

    Because I had to shovel a foot of snow today, and the forecast low for tonight is 7º, I’m temporarily depressed… Came across this Smithsonian piece again recently about how well things have tracked the Limits to Growth standard run for 30 years. No reason to believe that things have improved significantly over the ten years after that. Which suggests that we’re getting to the “interesting” times in the original projection.

    My hopes are based on the fact that global population and resources are not uniformly distributed. There are places where things are better than the global curves LoG produced (and places where things are worse). My hope is that some of those places that have current advantages will be able to preserve them.Report