Too few journalists (and people in general) go out of their way to point out when they are wrong or did a bad job. It seems like in our popular culture if you admit to making a mistake you lose all credibility regarding anything you've ever done.

Of course, it's the opposite that is true. And of course you weren't profoundly wrong, just a little sloppy.

I also thought Waldron's letter was very well written.

Keep up the good work and civil dialog.

It's interesting to note that AAPL has been vastly outperforming MSFT for years now. In fact, if you bought and held one or the other stock, you'd have to have bought MS mid 1993 for MSFT to give better returns than AAPL.

Check out the 10 year comparison:

http://finance.yahoo.com/charts#chart12:symbol=aapl;range=19970902,20070906;compare=msft;charttype=line;crosshair=on;logscale=on;source=undefined

... they are trying to put Stephen Colbert out of work by providing the punchlines themselves.

It will be interesting to see them close all public services down once the spigot of constantly rolling over appreciating property values stops and goes backwards.

It doesn't work like that, at least in MA. Property taxes (keeping things simple) are calcuated as (tax rate [$/$1k in value]) * (property's assessed value). But here's the thing: The tax rate is calculated as (total local got budget) / (total assessed value); it's a dependent variable.

What determines your property tax is a function of a) the total gov't budget and b) the % of the total assessed property value that you own (unless your town/county has differential tax rates for different property classes, but let's ignore that here). If everyone's assessed value doubles or halves, your taxes won't change. Just the tax rate.

Of course, if everyone in your town suddenly feels poor due to lower assessed values, they may push for lower town budgets, but it is not a direct connection.

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

John Maynard Keynes

So, people didn't like this article very much.

I can't blame them. I was OK through page 1, but page 2 went off a cliff. Something about the argument about societal collapse as rational choice didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

But I think some of the authors' basic arguments are pretty salient. I love the line "Environmental tales of tragedy begin with Nature in harmony and almost always end in a quasi-authoritarian politics." Truth be told, many environmentalists are guilty of this storyline (triumph through command and control); I sure as hell used to be.

The closing paragraphs are pretty innocuous. The authors are peddling a message of joy and optimism; reading this frankly reminded me of people like William McDonough. Sure, McDonough sells a little snake oil from time to time, but I find his messages a hell of a lot more inspiring and inspirational than your typical gloom-and-doomer.

I think this is a pretty bad article, but it didn't have to be. The authors came pretty close to an interesting essay, but got lost on page 2, and didn't quite tie things up neatly.

Perhaps we've reached one of Paul Krugman's (the accomplished economist, not the hack columnist) multiple equilibrium points?

http://www.pkarchive.org/crises/opec.html

Here's the punchline:

The fact that oil is an exhaustible resource means that not extracting it is a form of investment. And it is an investment that might look attractive to a national government when oil prices are high. If a country does not want to spend all of the massive flow of cash generated by a sudden price increase on consumption, it must do one of three things: engage in real investment at home, which is subject to diminishing returns; invest abroad; or "invest" by cutting oil extraction, and hence reducing supply.

The electric/plug-in hybrid work is already known:

http://www.epri-reports.org/

Remember: If you are going to be a good snarky, cynical contrarian (it's a great hobby), yous gots to Google first to make sure you have a leg to stand on.

Otherwise you look like a poorly informed, snarky cynic, which is a lot less interesting.

This Schilling-painkiller-etc thread is dumber than dumb. The slow death of logic and clear thinking in the US continues.

Try this search on Google: ibuprofen site:wada-ama.org

Wada is the World Anti-Doping Agency. Search returns nothing; it's not even mentioned on the site. Try the same with steroids. Different result!

My point: Not all 'drugs' that might help an athlete are equivalent. Some are clearly allowed. Others are clearly not allowed, and still others are both not allowed and are also illegal (for non-medicinal use). Hence the Balco grand jury.

Everything done with Schilling in 2004 was allowed and above board. If you want to take cheap shots, stick with the sock (another idiotic claim) or that he's a loud blowhard (much more substantive).

2 things:

Kaufman picked the Pats. His kids went with the Cowboys.

I am also A-OK with anyone favoring the Indians. They need the love. The Red Sox do NOT need the hype; they get plenty of that.

Frankly, I'd say the Sox-Indians series is a coin toss. Which ace (I count 4, 5 if Dice-K does a Derek Lowe) falters?

I pick CC.

Here's a travelogue from early 2006:

http://www.richardbarrow.com/unseen-thailand/market-on-the-railway-tracks.html

complete with a link to a video taken from the train:

http://www.thailandvideoblogs.com/content/view/21/28/

OK, conspiracy theorists, find the same people wearing the same clothes, so we know all of these market shots were filmed the same day.

But WAIT! They'd know we'd look for that, so they probably had multiple casts of extras and/or multiple sets of clothes...