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25756 [lbo-talk] Varian defends terror futures -- rank: 1000

Brad DeLong wrote: >Wouldn't you have rather had CIA analysts betting small sums setting >publicly-available odds that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from >Niger, rather than having Cheney announce that it was definitely >true? Are those the only two choices? How about an open representative government with an uncorruptd legislature and a lively press? Doug

Document Size:	4962
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 31 12:48:11 PDT 2003

25757 [lbo-talk] Poll: Bush's Summer Doldrums Are About Over -- rank: 1000

Dwayne Monroe wrote: >What is understood to be the foundation of this >nascent recovery? Focusing on manufacturing for a >moment, what sorts of goods are being ordered and by >what sorts of businesses? Hard to say exactly, from the data we have, but investment in equipment and software was fairly strong in this morning's U.S. GDP report, after several years of contraction. Other strong elements: "defense" (up 44% in real annualized terms!) and consumer durables (mostly mot ...

Document Size:	7204
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 31 11:26:15 PDT 2003

25758 [lbo-talk] Markets and the tooth fairy -- rank: 1000

Gar Lipow wrote: >Today's WAPO contains the following: > >http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5696-2003Jul30.html > >>The futures market in orange juice concentrate is a better >>predictor of Florida weather than the National Weather Service. The >>Iowa Electronic Markets outperform the opinion polls in predicting >>presidential election vote shares. Hewlett Packard ran a market >>forecasting printer sales that outpredicted any of its analyst ...

Document Size:	5383
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 31 10:15:30 PDT 2003

25759 [lbo-talk] Poll: Bush's Summer Doldrums Are About Over -- rank: 1000

mike larkin wrote: >Well, I hope you're right. But it seems to me that >Bush has a very low threshold for re-election. He just >needs to stop or reduce the killings of U.S. soldiers >in Iraq, and to extract a mild stimulus from the tax >cuts. Neither may happen, but if I was Karl Rove, I'd >be pretty confident they might. The U.S. economy's looking a lot better over the last couple of weeks. Initial claims for unemployment insurance are down, manfacturing surveys are showing si ...

Document Size:	5472
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 31 09:02:20 PDT 2003

25760 [lbo-talk] Varian defends terror futures -- rank: 1000

Dwayne Monroe wrote: >If your goal is to develop a kind of predictive >ability for events like coups, wouldn't it be simpler >and therefore more elegant, as the physicists say, to >simply have people on the payroll living in the >countries of interest who spoke the language, read the >newspapers, watched the TV shows and possesed some >ground-level understanding of the overall situation? You don't understand market fundamentalism. All that analytic stuff is old and statist. ...

Document Size:	5175
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 31 08:57:40 PDT 2003

25761 [lbo-talk] Varian defends terror futures -- rank: 1000

Brad DeLong wrote: >But simply having people bet on and thus forecast what the Economist >GIU's "stability" indices will be in a year seems innocuous--and >might actually provide some useful information... What useful info? The same kind that brought us TheGlobe.com at $133? Or was it TheGlobe.com at 16 cents? Doug

Document Size:	4915
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 31 07:39:32 PDT 2003

25762 [lbo-talk] Varian defends terror futures -- rank: 1000

[Brad, your colleague needs counseling for a bad case of market mysticism. Love the bit about oil futures - was the oil market right at $10 or at $40? Right about what? Ecological risks? Limited supplies? Or just tomorrow's price?] New York Times - July 31, 2003 A Good Idea With Bad Press By HAL R. VARIAN THE Pentagon-sponsored futures market in terrorism indicators was announced and squashed in all of two days. Too bad. It was a good idea, killed by terrible public relations. Consider the probl ...

Document Size:	11676
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu Jul 31 06:34:45 PDT 2003

25763 [lbo-talk] Fwd: The Offshoring of Tech Writing: A Roundtable Discussion -- rank: 1000

[from the National Writers Union] Last Thursday, on behalf of the NWU, BizTech Co-chair Andreas Ramos hosted a roundtable discussion of SV technical publishing managers regarding the growing threat of the offshoring of technical documentation to India and other countries. Leading tech companies such as Sun, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Bank of America, and others are offshoring entire departments of 150 tech writers and the jobs are being offshored to low-wage countries. Notes and ...

Document Size:	5888
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 30 12:33:57 PDT 2003

25764 [lbo-talk] teens online more than watching TV -- rank: 1000

[executive summary of study is at <http://promotions.yahoo.com/btbw_2003>] TEENS NOW SPEND MORE TIME ONLINE THAN WATCHING TV New Study Details Media Usage Patterns of First Internet Generation July 28, 2003 QwikFIND ID: AAO88L By Tobi Elkin NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Teens and young adults ages 13 to 24 now spend more time every day on the Internet than they do watching TV, according to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive and Teenage Research Unlimited. Media habits Commissioned by Ya ...

Document Size:	8141
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 30 09:37:52 PDT 2003

25765 [lbo-talk] White Male Vote -- rank: 1000

mike larkin wrote: >http://www.hillnews.com/news/073003/gore.aspx > >"Yet Democrats so far have failed to capitalize on >Bushís potential weakness. A new poll commissioned by >the centrist Democratic Leadership Council shows that >the Democratic Party is losing support among white >men." > > >Why is this even an issue? You don't need the white >male vote to get to 50% + 1. Same reason the DLC values the southern vote so highly - it's pulls the party to ...

Document Size:	5120
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 30 09:12:56 PDT 2003

25766 [lbo-talk] parallel universes -- rank: 1000

[scanned, so apologies for any remaining errors] Columbia Journalism Review - July/August 2003 Parallel Universe at the Times by Liza Featherstone For much of the spring, The New York Times seemed to inhabit parallel universes on the matter of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, possibly the most important factual question of the year. In nearly a dozen stories by the senior writer Judith Miller, such weapons were just about to be found or had recently been destroyed. Yet Times editorials and s ...

Document Size:	9549
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Wed Jul 30 09:04:34 PDT 2003

25767 [lbo-talk] prosecution in the Bush era -- rank: 1000

Washington Post - July 29, 2003 No Choice but Guilty By Michael Powell First of two articles LACKAWANNA, N.Y. -- Even now, after the arrests and the anger and the world media spotlight, the mystery for neighbors in this old steel town remains this: Why would six of their young men so readily agree to plead guilty to terror charges, accepting long prison terms far from home? "These knuckleheads betrayed our trust, and we're disgusted with their attendance at the camps in Afghanistan," M ...

Document Size:	17533
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jul 29 16:08:52 PDT 2003

25768 [lbo-talk] backlash? -- rank: 1000

Poll shows backlash on gay issues By Susan Page, USA TODAY WASHINGTON - Americans have become significantly less accepting of homosexuality since a Supreme Court decision that was hailed as clearing the way for new gay civil rights, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll has found. After several years of growing tolerance, the survey shows a return to a level of more traditional attitudes last seen in the mid-1990s. Asked whether same-sex relations between consenting adults should be legal, 48% said yes; 4 ...

Document Size:	6910
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jul 29 13:45:26 PDT 2003

25769 [lbo-talk] Fwd: Racist Bank of America -- rank: 1000

Tom Roche wrote: > > Did you know that in North Carolina and a few other states, it's >> legal for banks to charge certain customers special fees, even if >> it's clear that these fees are racially discriminatory? And how about this for legal discrim? Hertz charges people with Bronx or Brooklyn addresses on their NYS drivers licences twice as much as people with Manhattan addreses. They defend this by citing accident and theft records. Doug

Document Size:	5035
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jul 29 13:28:00 PDT 2003

25770 [lbo-talk] the antiwar student vote -- rank: 1000

Matthew Snyder wrote: >Chuck0 writes: >> The vast majority of anarchists do not vote or participate in elections. >> There may be a few younger anarchists who vote next year, but they do so >> out of fear and failure to totally reject their American social >> conditioning. > >[snip] > >> It will really suck big time if American activists get suckered into >> wasting their time over the next year on pointless electoralism. This >> will ...

Document Size:	5601
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jul 29 12:40:19 PDT 2003