H/T Underbelly for the following link.  I first heard of the author of Moneyball around the time I was in Underbelly's class.  A great book about baseball and investing.  Not that I believe the stock market, typified by Wall Street, is dead by any means.  But his central theme, that investing is a game to be mastered, still hits home for me.

Slacker Town

Take Hollywood out of this town, take out the Dodgers, take out surfing and business sophistication and it would be a very different place.  Yesterday I went downtown and, ignoring the decayed opulence of any of its buildings, the town has the feel of any of a number of inland cities - Stockton, Sacramento, Spokane or Fresno.  Cities designed with grain hoppers and train tracks in mind.  Streets now vaguely smelling of dried urine.  Minor league towns.  Towns with some city life, but one with a direct link to the past.  Guys drive hot rods, wear pomade and listen to three-chord punk and the girls cultivate a Betty Paige look.   It's a backward looking thing.  It's a "what are we gonna do next" attitude.

Man that girl can take it.  One thing, tattoos and greased hair only look good until about thirty or so.

Here We Are

I wake this morning happy that last night was not just a dream.  The evening left me spent in celebration.  This morning, my mind remains child-like.  See here for a good speech kinda place for a discussion.  See here for more of the kinda speech (mendacious, distorted, ideologue) that can't seem to understand its failure was a failure of ideas.

And enjoy.

The Battle for Hawaii Minds

Honolulu's afternoon paper, the Starbulletin, has a loose comments policy.  A number of wing nuts on the Mainland (and, to be fair, in Hawaii too - and there is someone from Japan) have figured out that Barack Obama is from Hawaii - he's Hawaii's favored son.   So every piece he gets in Hawaii's press attracts a string of comments loosing forth.  The attacks are of the "how can you all be so stupid" variety - the writers have an interesting take on fact.

In the spirit of countering bad speech with good, readers may want to start work o, their argument skills here.  And then take a good long shower.

I don't normally read sites with this kind of stuff on it.  I'm basically a NYTimes reader.  I read the Starbulletin and LA Times for local news.  But swimming in these comments makes me wonder how many otherwise average people are truly unhinged.  For instance, I had not heard about it before, but this one really startled me.  Our marketplace of ideas seems to not trade very well.  Maybe Churchill was right when he said, "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

Could we please have a nanny state?