Just Another Reason to Hate PETA

PETA is one of those organizations that is so counterproductive you begin to think it must be funded by the opposition. Anyway, there they go again (link from Grobble).

Of course the big problem with the ad is that it's demeaning to women, but it's also demeaning to those vegetarians who, like me, are horrible lovers.

This Is Why You're Issuing 14% Junk Bonds

So the Times published a list of questions for Timothy Geithner, Obama's nominee for Secretary of the Treasury. The questions were solicited from "experts in finance and economics." What I love is that the experts' pursuit of their own agendas hilariously undermines the exercise.

[UPDATE: I should add that Anna Schwartz seems to ask decent questions, except that I think she might be leaving out some relevant information about the Resolution Trust Corporation - namely the nationalization part. Most of the others are tendentious or ridiculously vague. Mitt Romney's first question is decent, but he remains the candidate I'd most like to get into a bar fight with, thanks to his second and third questions.]

So Mankiw asks, "President Obama supports the estate tax. Why should a person who leaves his money to his children pay more in taxes than another person with the same lifetime income who spends all his money on himself?"

And it's like, what the fuck? Is this really the information you want from the man who has been nominated to run the Treasury Department during the depression? Why not go ahead and ask him why it's safe and legal a day before the child is born, but murder a day after? Isn't it a fact that it's always murder, Mr. Geithner?

I also love this one from Roger Myerson, a Nobel-winning economist:

"Should debt securities that are held by regulated banks and pension funds be rated by multiple independent credit reports that have been commissioned by a federal agency, or should we continue to let the issuers of debts decide who will rate their risks?"

Myerson could be a law & econ superstar, because he has mastered the leading question. Give him credit, though, at least it's a live issue as we head into what will almost certainly be large-scale regulatory change.

Every Once In a While Things Work Out

So I get home at 1:30 in the morning, not having eaten dinner, and there's barely any food in the apartment. What do I do?

I heat up some butter in a frying pan, fry two eggs (over easy), then put them on a tortilla with some grated pepper jack. I fold the tortilla over and brown each side. Then I eat the whole thing with some fucking Cholula sauce.

Delicious. Not the healthiest thing I've ever made, but not horrible either. Plenty of nutrients, just a little high on fat. Wash the whole thing down with apricot-flavored beer (not sure why it has such a poor rating, it is delicious). Beer is actually quite healthy, incidentally.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, tonight everything worked out. Often I would have just gone to bed hungry, but not tonight.

It Was Only a Kiss

Ladies and gentlemen, the Killers.

Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his [rhymes with sick]

Actually, the lyric is "chest" - she's touching his chest now, he takes off her dress now, let me go.