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Familia TD took a brief sojourn to our local museum, where I was blown away by the conceit of this exhibit. The visual concept of Brooklyn artist Lorna Simpson is to juxtapose vintage images with poses intended to duplicate them, in order to deliberately create a false dichotomy, to make an artistic point. I juxtapose this with Dmitry Orlov’s piece on an interview involving Michael Betancourt, noting that our planet’s entire economy is based on semiosis, rather than anything, you know, real. (Think about it: electronic impulses stand in for pieces of paper that stand in for pieces of metal...

In these already depressing times, it saddens me (perhaps more than it otherwise might) to see one of my genuine heroes succumb, in this case, the great Grete Weitz, who passed away this week at 57, from cancer. Grete, of course, was an unprecedented nine time champion at the New York Marathon (including three in a row in world record time, a multiple Olympian (taking a silver medal in the 1984 marathon) for her native Norway, and had numerous other distance running accolades. Every October, the New York Road Runners Club stages their annual “Norway Festival” in Central Park, featuring...

The usually sober and sensible business writer,Joe Nocera, writing in the Grey Lady’s op ed pages, suggests that the destruction of remaining potable water supplies in the Northeast United States iddy biddy “alleged environmental problems” associated with gas-extraction-by-fracturing, or “fracking” (presumably referring to the term for “garbage” from Battlestar Galactica) is really quite minor and can be easily solved with proper first-rate drilling methods and robust local regulation. I simply wonder what Joe is smoking country Nocera is living in… surely, it is not the USA of 2011, where every corner will be cut and every regulator will be bought...

Well, it’s one of them milestone birthdays for our old friend, the Unseen Editor, one of the prime movers of this here blog (not to mention, our fellow college classmate.. along with those n’er do wells Miguel Estrada and Barack Obama.) Happy half-century, big guy! In other news, we’re still at war with Eurasia Eastasia Iraq and Afghanistan, and now… Libya, the national political debate has shifted to which party can dismantle Medicare the fastest, and my soundest political and financial advice remains grow your own vegetables, stock up on bicycle tools and parts, and maybe make friends with some...

Although the April 1 edition is a traditional favorite here at TTD, this year I’m having a particularly hard time keeping a straight face with this year’s entry… I warn you… DO NOT be drinking soda or anything that might come out of your nose. OK– you’ve been warned. Wait for it… B.H. Obama, that beloved all-American guy we elected President because we loved his God-fearing red-blooded White grandparents (his grandpa fought in the Battle of the Bulge with Patton for Chrissakes)… is actually a Black man. And… this might even be harder to believe… the “B.H.” actually stands for...

Say what you will about the President’s pre-prime-time speech yesterday justifying his inexplicable (“Hillary made me do it?”) decision to inject American military forces on the rebel-side of the evident civil war going on in Libya, but I note that uber-neocon Bill Kristol liked it… a lot. Look… we’re already hearing about photos of the victims of “kill teams” in Afghanistan, we’re still in Iraq… and over 100 other countries… So why not place our personnel in a position to commit yet more atrocities (or have some inflicted on them)? I’m sure that like most stopped clocks, Bill Kristol is...

Gorgeous day here in NYC– high 40’s, low 50’s– full sunshine. And so, the weather is probably just fine in Turtle Bay, just a few miles away in mid-town Manhattan, where the UN Security Council authorized the mother of all jihads a no-fly zone and other international military intervention against the Libyan regime (and in favor of Libyan rebels), after the United States government finally got behind such a proposition, it seems that the President shifted in favor of same because Hillary wanted him to. (on this point, Althouse goes much farther than I would, or than is reasonable… and...

The devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan that has killed countless numbers of people (thousands are still reported missing) hit home, literally, as the tsunami washed away at least one California man who was too close to the ocean as he tried to take pictures of the waves. Ginormous earthquakes are just something else to consider when thinking about the benefits of… nucular power… although some of the danger appears to be receding, Japan has about five of the suckers on high alert right now, because, ironically, the loss of electricity caused by disruption of a big earthquake prevents the...

For no particular reason, I’ll pass along this primer on a government/military industrial complex program so insidious, it might well kill us all… before everything else does, of course. Not to make light of it… just to… you know… put it out there. This rain-soaked and wind-swept Sunday, your talking dog hit a rare feat– a personal best in a road race, albeit only my third try at the distance, in this case the Caumsett Park/USATF National Championship 50-K race… Frank at Run Dangerously has a report on the race (I finished too far back to figure in any of...

On this final day of February, I offer you this graphic depiction of United States revenue and expenses by somewhat controversial financial world figure Henry Blodget. It notes that for 2010 fiscal year, U.S. revenue was approximately $2.2 trillion, against expenses of $3.5 trillion (the article doesn’t say it, but GDP is estimated at around $14.7 trillion). It’s an interesting chart– I for one, thought that interest on the debt was a much larger chunk of the budget; it does explain why the Fed has been so desperate to keep interest rates so low for so long, of course. Mr....