Great Site!

SteepAndCheap.com is my new favorite website. It posts a product at an extremely discounted price(usually over 50%) and sells there supply until it is gone. After the product is gone, they bring in a new product. It is great. Best of all, the stuff is usually hiking-related or eco-friendly.

Right now, the Origo Rendezvous Peak Series Altimeter Watch, usually $170, is going for $68. 

The products change about every 2 hours. It is a fun thing to check on when you are surfing the Internet waves of boredom.

Buying What They're Selling

This is an excerpt from an article refuting the woes of middle class and the "recession." The whole article can be viewed here:

Terry Fitzgerald, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says...(f)ar from declining..."the economic compensation for work for middle Americans has risen significantly over the past 30 years."

The mistake made...is looking only at wages, narrowly defined. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, adjusted for inflation, fell by 4 percent between 1975 and 2005. But those figures deceive because they omit fringe benefits like health insurance, pensions and paid leave, which make up a bigger share of total compensation than before. The numbers also rely on a mismeasure of inflation.

When those flaws are corrected, a very different trend leaps off the page. Median wages, says Fitzgerald, rose 28 percent between 1975 and 2005. Nor were the gains restricted to Bill Gates and Hannah Montana: Significant gains occurred in the middle as well.

The same pattern holds for households. The figures that suggest families are struggling to stay even overlook some types of income, and they don't account for the fact that households have gotten smaller on average. After accounting for such things, Fitzgerald found that "inflation-adjusted median household income for most household types increased by roughly 44 percent to 62 percent from 1976 to 2006."

None of this alters the fact that some people have done worse. Domestic and global competition, which raise living standards, also spell trouble for many companies and workers. A 50-year-old who loses a $30-an-hour job on the Chevy assembly line may never find anything comparable. But the steady, broad rise in living standards makes it clear that—at least until recent months—our economy consistently spawns more good jobs than it destroys.

Thanks to American capitalism, ordinary workers and families are better off today than they were a decade or a generation ago. In the midst of scary economic times, that's a heartening fact to keep in mind."

Boredom!

The Neverending Fun Page

This website is awesome and a great way to kill time. 

Mr. Two Bits

George Edmundson

Thank You

Pre-K for All!

An interesting piece about universal pre-kindergarten:

With Obama most likely being our next president, there is a high possibility of universal pre-kindergarten being a part of America's future. This video discusses how UPre-K would be a bad idea.

O-Line

I love offensive linemen. They are my favorite players on the field because they make everything happen. Good protection leads to a good passing game. Good run blocking leads to a good ground game. However, these unsung heroes are usually overlooked by the media unless they are a Jake Long or Orlando Pace.
That is why I am giving LG Carl Johnson some love this week in my blog. Johnson got the job after Jim Tartt went down a couple of weeks ago. The Gator line looked pretty darn good in his 1 start vs. LSU. Here are Johnson's comments after the LSU game:

Referring to Ricky Jean-Francois's comments:
"Somebody calls you out in your own house, what are you going to do? Barbecue or mildew? You pick."

Referring to grade A beef's superiority over Louisiana fried chicken:
"Either you eat steak or you eat Popeye's Chicken. Me personally, I love steak. I don't want no Popeye's Chicken."

Greatness.

Vote or Die!

I am not using this clip as a statement to promote one party over another. I just thought it was funny.

The McCreadys

"Marriage is the death of hope."

-Woody Allen

I tried to find the most depressing thing I could say about marriage. I think I won. Either way, two friends of mine are getting married today. I think it is the tops. I met Mary and Steve at Thursday Night Frisbee when I first moved to Gainesville. Steve thought I was Max and I body slammed Mary for no good reason. Three years later, they are getting hitched! 

PS Woody Allen has been married three times, not including his 12-year relationship with Mia Farrow. 

Lew Alcindor

I decided to change my blog name. I thought it would be a good idea to change it because I spend very little time training Maggie or subbing. I hope this helps my blog become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. 

Or at least World B. Free. 

This also serves as a nice introduction to basketball season. The NBA has already started their preseason. The Gators will start soon enough. I can't even explain how pumped I am about this season. For the Heat, it is seeing if some players(Beasley, Quinn, Anthony, Blount) can perform. For the Gators, it seeing if we got any heart and inside presence(both closely related to Mo Speights).

Almost National Champions

If you know me, you know I do not care for the bailout. Not one bit. It goes against all the things I believe about government and the market. I think it sets a dangerous precedent. I have been thinking about the bailout and the Great Depression because the media seems to think they are one in the same. Either way, I found an interesting article out of UCLA about the Depression and government intervention. 

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

Final Four losers

George Mason University economist and author Russell Roberts, who blogs at the always interesting Cafe Hayek, sat down with reason.tv to talk about the nation's shakey economy and the government's bailout plan. Watch this six-minute interview to learn where the problems came from, why the bailout won't address them, and what sort of hurt we're in for over the next several weeks, months, and years. "The real cost of this," warns Roberts, "is that we have said to people, 'Risk taking is not as risky as it used to be.' That's a mistake. It's a horrible mistake and it will lead to a lower standard of living down the road because investment will be more cavalier and less prudent."

The Doctor is In

The video clip is of Lou Holtz defending his choice of Tim Tebow being a better quarterback than Colt McCoy. Holtz "loses" the argument to Mark May--McCoy supporter--and assumes the cameras are off. You can watch the rest for yourself.

The Fountainhead

I started reading some Ayn Rand this week. It is all apart of this focus I have on politics as of late. It has happened during the last two presidential elections. Last election, I voted for John Kerry. The vote was cast for two reasons: opposition to George W. Bush and ostentatiousness. Since 2004, I have come to realize that the role of the government, as set forth in the Constitution, is to protect the personal and property rights of every American. I believe that this is at the heart of the Republican message. However, the last 70 years have seen this message change a dramatic amount. 

That is why in 2008, I am voting for Bob Barr, the presidential candidate of the Libertarian party. If you value the importance of the Constitution, your rights, and the free market, I suggest you do too. Otherwise, we will have another four years of legislating morals, foreign occupation, and economic clusterf*cks.

A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.

- Thomas Jefferson

Conan O'Brien

The new Ben Folds song is featuring Regina Spector and is called "You Don't Know Me." It is directed by the wonderfully funny Tim and Eric. It is a pretty good video. I saw the live version on Consy last night. 

Gators are on today! Redemption will be sweet in Fayetteville.

Comedy

Bone Crusher is a judge on Iron Chef America. That's right. Bone Crusher. The rapper. If you don't know who he is, you might know it from this song.

Anyway, this is his profile on FoodNetwork.com

Bone Crusher

From: Atlanta

Profession: Rapper/Rock Star/Actor/Cook

Interests: Food/Music/Good Times

Ideal secret ingredient: Garlic

Culinary inspirations: Grandparents

Favorite restaurant: Busy B's

Favorite food: Healthy soul food 

Food you won't go near: Pork

Weirdest thing you've ever eaten: Jalapeño ice cream 

Favorite food destination: Germany because it tastes like the 80's

Alternative dream job: I got it!

Sarah Silverman and Jonah Hill make this the most amazing voting PSA ever.

"Who cares the economy's in the toilet? Who gives a shit? I don't care. I have so much money."

"I've never fought a war on drugs. I've never done shit on drugs besides played Halo 2."

"Darfur? I don't even know what the fuck that is. That sounds like a t-shirt company to me."

"You can literally register to vote while pooping...if you have a laptop."

"I'll wait too...I'm gonna take my bra off under my shirt."

"Rampant like herpes but for positive."