I'm fine with all the different names; Indians, Braves, Blackhawks... I don't find these names any more wrong than Vikings, Yankees, Celtics, etc. But come on people have you looked at Chief Wahoo. He's an offensive caricature. I don't care if he was real person. Somehow I doubt that the cartoon is based on some photo of the chief. He's caricature based on old racist attitudes, and the sooner we admit that and get rid of him, the better off we'll all be.

Lynx,

My point isn't that LED lights are the solution today, but solution for tomorrow. I was being somewhat trite in my statement and didn't mean for people to take it literally. But the main point holds true, we should not only solve today's problems, but actually get ahead of the curve. Just because LEDs has problems doesn't mean we don't try.

Say what you want about credit cards and their profit motive. Personally I like my credit card, don't run a balance, and enjoy the perks. However, there's plenty of reason not to like them, and I'm not going to argue with someone who thinks credit cards an evil enterprise.

That said what people are forgetting here is that credit cards haven't so much replaced cash as much as personal checks. There's no question that credit cards are much more efficient and generally more fraud proof in comparison to checks. I'm glad I don't have to carry around thousands of dollars in cash, and I'm glad that businesses don't have to deal with bounced checks. Say what you will about interest rates, but from a transaction efficiency point of view plastic has benefited society even with the 2-3% charge.

We really should talking about LED lights. More efficient, and no mercury to boot.

While I think there are many plausible arguments to make against unfettered free trade, especially environmental, I don't think there's all that much question that free trade improves the lives of workers at least in a economic sense. Free trade is what drives capital investment and ultimately increased productivity per worker. Do worker share enough of this boon? probably not, but they are still in aggregate better off. It would be hard to the collective masses in India, China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and let's not forget the biggest engine of growth 50 years ago, Japan, that they did not benefit by some form of free trade.

Support of free trade does not need to blanket statement. You can support free trade and support both better environmental and labor practices. It's unfair to indicate that one is in lieu of the other.

All these quant funds are fine as long as everything happens according history. The fact is markets are dynamic, and history is not necessarily a good predictor for the future. Yes the chances were 1 in 4.5 million or something like that but all the underlying assumptions from the past are constantly changing. Quant fund should really only be used within very narrow time frames. Change the underlying rules, and the fund breaks. As we all know the rules of the game are constantly changing

Housing is going to suck for the next couple years. The stock market likely as well. People are going to lose jobs. But you know what - that's OK. Things can't and shouldn't go up all the time. Speculators needs to stop speculating and get back to work...

In high school, my school paper was sued for not printing an Ad from a conservative group in town promoting abstinence. I grew up a liberal town with progressive views. We objected the agenda advertisement. In hindsight we fell right into the hands of the conservative group. They wanted the ad to be rejected, raising more press.

The bigger issue however is when does promoting free speech become a hinderance of free speech? I don't agree with Verizon's actions. The program should be supported and Verizon as a network provider should provide equal access. However there is a slippery slope. Does that mean that Verizon has no power to make informed decisions? While this case is much clearer as it was opt in to NARAL program, what about phone based advertising? Lines do get blurry.

After reading this post I decided to look up the phelps on wikipedia. Apparently Fred Phelps was civil rights lawyer in Kansas who fought for the "good" side to advance civil rights for African Americans. People are complicated, and as much as I detest the action of the man and his cult, I realize part of the reason I try no to hate is that it's always more complicated than we would like to believe. It's easy to hate, it's tougher but better life to love.

The problem isn't that U.S. Carmakers didn't give consumers what they wanted, but they failed to anticipate what the consumer WOULD want. U.S. Consumers loved SUVs, and US automakers rode that wave to a number of profitable years. The failure of management, and most management out there, is to continue to succeed you need to compete with the most succesful product you have. Lazy thinking leads to lazy results.

I'm not sympathetic to unions these days. There was a day when unions were interested in protecting the rights of all workers and not just the self interest of the few. These days, their main interest is keeping their own coffers full, and their members filled with hate for the poor folks in other countries.