Beard Of Wisdom.com

The blind want noisier cars:

On Wednesday, the president of the NFB’s Maryland chapter planned to present written testimony asking for a minimum sound standard for hybrids to be included in the state’s emissions regulations.

Prince, Radiohead, and Nine Inch Nails have decided to “concentrate on their art”:

 Highly successful artists have started abandoning albums as a way to make money. They are now giving away their music for free. Instead of selling albums, they are concentrating on building their fan bases, putting out quality art, and making their bread through touring and merchandising.

Polled Republicans are as dumb as ever:

While 60% of respondents said they want the next president and Congress to continue cutting taxes, 32% said it’s time for some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to reduce the budget deficit and pay for health care.

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Oh, and completely paid for with tax dollars.  CBS Evening News has a good segment on Rep. Charlie Rangel’s $2 million “Monument to Me.”

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Well, according to the people at Sportsbook.com anyway. Gambling911.com ran a story a bit ago about Ron’s odds going from 100 to 1, to 15 to 1, and finally down to 8 to 1.

“The old taunt reflects a deep economic principle: Talk is cheap, but if someone is willing to risk money, it means they’re serious,” writes Tim Harford of Slate.com, a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics. “Put the principle into action and you realize that electoral forecasters should pay as much attention to the betting odds as to the opinion polls.

“When money is on the line, informed people, perhaps including insiders, have an incentive to turn their knowledge into cash by making big bets. In the process they make the odds more accurate. And of course, there are several reasons to lie to pollsters, but no reasons to make a money-losing bet.”

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Thinking about it, it doesn’t really surprise me.

What I did *love* about the article was this insight:

Linda Skitka, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said it’s possible the liberals in the recent study appeared more flexible than the conservatives because the population was skewed.

“We’re more likely to find extreme conservatives in the U.S. than extreme liberals,” she said.

Anyone ever heard of DailyKos or Moveon.org?

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Brendan at Social Science++ took an amusing look at how free a country is likely to be based on what it calls itself. I think it’s interesting that “kingdoms” tend to be more free than “republics”. But the moral of the story: don’t take a job on the People’s Democratic Socialist Island of Islamic Arabs.

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For the August issue, Cato Unbound has Peter Leeson, Bruce Benson, Dani Rodrik, and Randall Holcombe answering the question of who needs government. I don’t want to get into all the details here (and don’t have to since the whole point of the discussion was to allow you to read the thoughts of four very smart people on the subject) so I’ll just point to two of the opening essays of interest.

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The beginning is a little rough, but it gets better.

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