How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect. “When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.”
This, of course, is beside the point. If enacted, a massive expansion of government into the health care industry is unlikely to be reversed even if the GOP wins control of the Congress as a result in 2010 or 2012. With this new health care entitlement in place, the Republicans would be relegated even in victory to a role like that of the Tories in Britain, arguing over exactly how much taxpayer money to spend instead of whether to spend it at all. Accepting what is likely to be a permanent expansion of the size and scope of government for the sake of short-term electoral gain, as Rove does, seems like a poor trade-off for conservatives.
Fixing ‘Too Big to Fail.’ “During the crisis it was often said that officials at the Federal Reserve and Treasury would do ‘whatever it takes’ to avoid a Great Depression. Now they must do whatever it takes to address one of the key causes of the financial crisis: the existence of financial institutions that consider themselves too big to fail – but which are run in such a way that they are bound to do so.”
Crowds Are Really Individuals. “What really happens in crowdsourcing as it is practiced in wide variety of contexts, from Wikipedia to open source to scientific research, is that a problem is broadcast to a large number of people with varying forms of expertise. Then individuals motivated by obsession, competition, money or all three apply their individual talent to creating a solution.”
John Thune: Time for a TARP Exit Strategy. “It is time to bring an end to the TARP emergency measures and come up with an exit strategy to get government out of the business of running businesses. The administration owes the American people a timeline for how it will do this.”
Nile Gariner on the Great Irish Surrender. “The Irish ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon will pave the way for the biggest erosion of national sovereignty in Europe since the Second World War.”
The Unintended Consequences of Protectionism. “Mr. Obama may not intend to start a trade war, but then Hoover didn’t set out to pick one either. His political abdication is what made it possible, however, and trade passions once unleashed can be impossible to control. On his present course, President Obama is giving the world every reason to conclude he is a protectionist.”