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Showing posts from February, 2014

George at the Beach

He doesn't really like water very much, but sand is fun, I guess.

You go, I'll stay here with the couch.

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As I mentioned, the weather was nice. Saturday, MRB and I ran 12.8 in the Wissahickon. Sunday George and I ran 15 in Ridley Creek. George ran off after deer and didn't come back for an hour. I was going nuts and got my legs shredded by prickers wandering off trail looking for him. When he came back he was weak, wet, missing a patch of fur, and may have had blood in his urine. He vomited in the car again and I got a parking ticket for good measure. Monday MRB and I ran 8 in Valley Forge over Mt. Misery and Mt. Joy. George said he wanted to stay home, which is only the second time that has ever happened. He's fine now, so it's all good. Last week I scheduled an appointment at the vet for tomorrow, so it's definitely all good.

Let people build taller buildings

Fine, require that they build a certain (high) percentage of 'affordable' units in these tall buildings, (and tax the developers' incomes at a high marginal rate, and make them build parks, and get rid of mandatory parking requirements while you're at it) but really, unless the housing supply increases, the price is going to go up. Or just move to Oakland. NYTimes Guardian

Valley Forge

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Someone Else's Dog

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Rented a car for the weekend since the weather was finally nice, 55+. Trails were still 100% snow covered, but MRB and I did the standard 12.8 Wissahickon loop and stopped at the dog park on the way home. Nobody tell 3nterpri$e that George barfed in the car three times on the drive there.

Upper Deck Standing Room Only at the Dog Park

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Transparency

I'm like meta-research that talks about p-hacking, the file-drawer, publication bias, specification searching, all that jazz. Especially if they can make a good Star Wars pun. I like that so much I may have already linked to it a few months ago. But I haven't linked to a summer institute I hope to attend to learn more about things along these lines. But who knows, maybe I'll be working for them someday. Stata is still working in the background, so I have a few more minutes. I just watched The Gatekeepers , and Israeli documentary that interviews all former heads of the Shin Bet , the Israeli internal security service. All former heads of the agency have major issues with the occupation. And these are dudes who say "of course I ordered the execution of those terrorists we had in custody" and "of course we tortured terrorist suspects, how do you think we got any intelligence?" (I'm paraphrasing, but honestly not by much.) So it's impossible ...

This makes my palms sweaty.

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Books on the Previous Presidency

In the last several months I listened to Ghost Wars and Private Empire by Steve Coll, The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, and The Dark Side by Jane Meyer. Private Empire doesn't really fit the pattern, but Ghost Wars had been on my list for a long time, and I heard Coll discuss Empire (which is about Exxon) on Fresh Air and was astonished by one (stylized) fact: Exxon cuts a check to Chad essentially 100 times as large as USAID's analogous check every year. Wow. After finishing both of Coll's books, I'm underwhelmed with his writing, as I find it fairly dry. Yet the topics are so interesting that I managed to finish. It didn't hurt that my roadtrips were so long I caught up on all my podcasts and had nothing else to listen to. I'll say two things about Private Empire : (1) if you're going to do business in a country with a brutal dictatorship, it is impossible to keep your hands clean, and (2) oil companies are just like big banks--lemon socialism...

Shame

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