A Special Love For Words

Prior to his death, Roger Ebert penned a love note to poetry:

In the eighth grade Sister Rosanne required us all to learn a poem by heart. I was assigned “To a Waterfowl,” by William Cullen Bryant. For years thereafter 
I regaled listeners with as much of it as they desired:

     Whither, ’midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

      Thy solitary way?

....Is it unthinkable that today’s grade schools require the memorization of a poem or two? Sister Rosanne assured us we would thank her in later years. When I meet old classmates from those years, I find she was correct.
Another friend of a lifetime is John McHugh, who was born in Sligo, Ireland — Yeats Country. When we met in the late sixties he was a reporter at the Chicago Daily News (where Carl Sandburg had once been the film critic), and I was at the Chicago Sun-Times. John had apparently ingested Yeats in volume, and often on late beery nights he would recite him at O’Rourke’s Pub in Chicago.

I remembered more of  it than I realized.

I've never been much of a lover of poetry, but in the manner of his mention of Sister Rosanne above, our teacher was Tom Brown.  He was our seventh grade English teacher, and he had us memorize and recite numerous poems.  Ones I remember a little bit of include, "When the Frost is on the Punkin'" by James Whitcomb Riley, "Casey at the Bat," and "In Flanders Fields."  The funny part is that a friend of mine who's 8 years younger than I has mentioned two of those at various times on her Facebook page, and people that much older than I have commented on remembering having to learn them, too.  It amazed me how much one teacher could shape the collective conscience of a community.  Apparently, Roger Ebert experienced something of the same thing through poetry.

Samuel Adams and Catholics

In a story about how Samuel Adams beer is catching flak for leaving "by their Creator" out of  an ad which quotes the Declaration of Independence, we get this little fact:

Sam Adams himself wrote a lot about God. His dad even wanted him to go into the clergy. Instead, Adams became a lawyer and one of the firebrands of the American Revolution. In 1772, he penned a report called The Rights of the Colonists that was presented at a Boston town meeting.
In it he argued for religious tolerance. Except for Catholics. Because, he explained, Catholic dogma and doctrine leads “directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war, and bloodshed.”
So ol’ Sam wasn’t perfect. None of our Founding Fathers were. But he probably wouldn’t have been happy about the beer named for him eliding the creator from its ad.

The founders of the nation couldn't have guessed that Catholics would be the largest single denomination in the country, and they'd have been horrified by the prospect.  That's one thing I keep in mind when conservative Catholics join in with evangelical Protestants and insist that the United States is a Christian nation.  Until the past sixty years or so, when somebody said that, they meant Protestant.  I won't be making the Christian nation claim.

A Second a Day from Birth

A Second a Day from Birth. from Sam Christopher Cornwell on Vimeo.

The music is very good, but it is dad's giggles that make it for me. (wiping away tears).

Physicists as Economists

They're almost certainly going to be better than regular economists (h/t Ritholtz):

Mark Buchanan in his new book, Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach us About Economics, describes the central plank of the theory as being a belief in the universe’s dynamic tendency toward disequilibrium and instability. It’s a direct challenge to the prevailing economic theory that markets are inherently self-correcting and always reverting to equilibrium.
Take events such as the 1987 stock market crash, the dot.com bubble, and the flash crash of 2011. The econophysicists will tell you that the market at those times displayed patterns akin to the interaction of water molecules before boiling point or like the tectonic plate activity before an earthquake. They see positive feedback loops, where new market participants are repeatedly influenced by the actions of those before them, moving prices within the entire system inexorably toward an eventual breaking point: a financial bubble leading to a bust.
Even outside of the most newsworthy bubble events, markets constantly go through this dynamic process, says Mr. Buchanan. Using a metaphor from the physical world, he describes it as “avalanche” of common behavior that “sweeps through the system and, as it goes on, fosters a large, coherent change. Then, suddenly, that idea falls out of favor, and there is correction in the other direction.”

Markets are based on human sentiment, once in a while tempered by fundamentals.  Of course they are going to be irrational.  Have you ever talked to anybody who is madly in love?  Investors are like lovers.  Everyday is either the greatest in the world or the worst day ever, it seems.  Then you mix in the herd mentality, and you have some serious trouble.  I remember hearing about the efficient market hypothesis and thinking that this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  I don't know that you can boil down economics to physical laws, but markets are definitely irrational.

In Corn After Corn, Insecticides are Back

Morning Edition:

Companies like or that sell soil insecticides for use in corn fields are reporting huge increases in sales: 50 or even 100 percent over the past two years.
This is a return to the old days, before biotech seeds came along, when farmers relied heavily on pesticides. For Dan Steiner, an independent crop consultant in northeastern Nebraska, it brings back bad memories. "We used to get sick [from the chemicals]," he says. "Because we'd always dig [in the soil] to see how the corn's coming along. We didn't wear the gloves and everything, and we'd kind of puke in the middle of the day. Well, I think we were low-dosing poison on ourselves!"
For a while, biotechnology came to his rescue. Biotech companies such as Monsanto spent many millions of dollars creating and inserting genes that would make corn plants poisonous to the corn rootworm but harmless to other creatures.
The first corn hybrids containing such a gene went on sale in 2003. They were hugely popular, especially in places like northeastern Nebraska, where the rootworm has been a major problem. Sales of soil insecticides fell. "Ever since then, I'm like, hey, we feel good every spring!" says Steiner.
But all along, scientists wondered how long the good times would last. Some argued that these genes — a gift of nature — were being misused. (For a longer explanation, read my from two years ago.)...
In parts of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, though, farmers are running into increasing problems with corn rootworms.
"You never really know for sure, until that big rain event with the strong wind, and then the next morning the phone starts ringing [and people ask]: 'What's going on out there?' " says Steiner.
Entire hillsides of corn, with no support from their eaten-away roots, may be blown flat.

Yep, farmers fucked up again.  We just can't seem to understand that whole resistance thing.  However, farmers weren't the only ones to fuck up.  Monsanto convinced the regulators to allow 20% refuge areas when those pesky scientists were recommending 50%.  Well, it is what it is.

How an American Manufacturer Succeeds

Fast Company features Marlin Steel:

Speed is part of the moat, the willingness to do a job as quickly as a customer needs it. Quality is part of the moat too. Scattered around the factory floor are "check fixtures"--simple wooden boards with the outline of a wire part etched into the surface. To see if the part is made correctly, a worker slots it into the outline on the board. If it's made right, it fits.
Often three nearly identical images of a part are etched into the same check fixture. The one on the right is the customer's requirement--say, a tolerance of 0.12 inches. The one in the center is Marlin's "okay to ship" standard, always better than the customer request--say, a tolerance of 0.06 inches. The one on the left is the "Drew" standard--perhaps a tolerance of 0.03 inches--four times the precision of the customer's spec. "If we send them that left one, they will never leave," Greenblatt says. Toyota--legendary for its obsession with quality--was so impressed with Marlin's exactitude that in addition to baskets, it also buys check fixtures from Marlin.
But for Greenblatt, the most important element of the moat is what Marlin didn't have before Boeing called: engineering and design. No one at Marlin designs baskets on slips of notepaper today. Five of 28 employees are degreed mechanical engineers. "We give people slick, elegant designs that make it worthwhile to use us rather than a commodity-part supplier from China," says Greenblatt. More to the point, says designer Alur, "people come to us with a problem and we try to solve it." Marlin has taken something utterly pedestrian and turned it into a tool of innovation--for its customers.

I highly recommend anybody in manufacturing reads this article.  It is fascinating.  The dude did good with his company, but he also got really lucky.

It's Not Just The U.S. Anymore

America's hat has a conservative party with a war on science, too (h/t nc links):

The appointment of National Research Council president John MacDougall in Canada — effectively the country’s top scientist — is being received by scientists the way James Watt was received by environmentalists in the Reagan Administration as head of the national park system. Like Watt, MacDougall seems antagonistic to the field that is supposed to be fostering with federal funds. Recently, MacDougall announced that “Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value.” It turns out that all of that stuff by Galileo was just academic crap.
Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science and technology, announced that the NRC will shift its focus away from basic research to “large-scale research projects that are directed by and for Canadian business.” That will mean little or no funding for basic research under the $900 million annual budget. It is part of the conservative governments shift toward industry despite protests from leading scientists that the approach is simplistic and shortsighted. Those commercial applications are built on a foundation of basic research.
McDougall’s bio says that he began his career as a petroleum engineer and ultimately became the owner of an international engineering consulting firm.

I'm sure that when the government started funding the internet they knew it would have commercial value.  Or maybe GPS.  Or Tang.  Oh, wait, the only government research that will ever have commercial value is the research the corporations have the government give them funding for.  Why don't they call it what it is, which is cronyism.  Here in Ohio, that is our JobsOhio program, where the government runs a "private" corporation which hands out money to create "economic development" for campaign contributors, but the program can't be publicly audited.  Yeah, no corruption there.

Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla

I can't add anything to what Ritholtz posted, except, "thanks for the alternating current, it kicks ass."

The Real Meaning of the Zimmerman Trial

Jelani Cobb:

The answers to these questions have bearing that is more social than legal, but they’re inescapable in understanding how we got here in the first place and what this trial ultimately means. George Zimmerman got out of his car that night as an amateur deputy and protector of the Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community. Trayvon Martin was a visitor to that community. Nowhere in Zimmerman’s initial emergency call does he broach the idea that Martin might belong there, that he might actually be someone who warranted protection, too. Instead, there is the snap judgment that the teen-ager is one of the “fucking punks” who “always get away”—a judgment that Zimmerman’s supporters and the Sanford Police Department either co-signed or deemed reasonable enough to absolve him of responsibility for what ensued.
What remains frustratingly marginal in this discussion is the point Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel raised in her testimony—that Martin himself was afraid, that a black person might assess a man following him in a car and on foot as a threat, never mind that he might have seen Zimmerman’s weapon and suspected his life was in danger. The defense paid a great deal of attention to the implications of Martin referring to Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” but, to the extent that we think about the epithet, we’re concerned with the wrong C-word. Imagine George Zimmerman being followed at night, in the rain, by an armed, unknown black man and you have an encounter that far exceeds the minimal definition of “creepy.” Indeed, you have a circumstance in which anyone would reasonably fear for his life. Add a twist in which that black man fires a shot that ends a person’s life, and it’s hard to imagine him going home after a brief police interview, as Zimmerman did.

He may get acquitted, but George Zimmerman is a jackass and an idiot.  And Florida's Stand Your Ground law is absolutely idiotic clearance for murder as justified homicide.  It could be also known as the Make Sure He's Dead law. Well, if nothing else, this will probably bring my racist troll in to say that all blacks are scary racists who should be shot.

A Labor Day Weekend Spectacular

Charles Pierce has an idea for the Indians-Tigers match up on Labor Day weekend:

Instead of Throwback Day, when they make those poor players suit up in the old baggy uniforms so they all sweat more than Victor Mature did in Demetrius and the Gladiators, I reckoned they should make every team play a series in which they adopt one of those nicknames from out of the dim times before modern marketing made commodities out of everything from the right-field wall to the right fielder. Why, just with these two teams this weekend, we could have had the Detroit Tigers, who have always been the Detroit Tigers, playing the Cleveland Molly Maguires, or the Cleveland Forest Citys, or the Cleveland Blues, who merged with the St. Louis Maroons in 1885 and made purple, I guess. Someone explain to me how this isn't a marketing masterstroke here. There are about 50 years' worth of obscure MLB team swag on which nobody has made a buck yet. Whatever happened to my America, anyway?
My idea gets even better when you realize the Indians franchise was once named after a group that the oligarchy of another age called a terrorist organization. They did three years in the early 1900s as the Cleveland Molly Maguires. And considering that I once saw a notice on the center-field message board at old Tiger Stadium that bid welcome to something called The Eugene V. Debs Memorial Marching Kazoo Band, I think a Labor Day series between these two would be something to see. Imagine the sports anchors having to explain what the Molly Maguires were. Imagine the tsunami of terrible punditry that would ensue.
"And now, will you please rise and join Ronan Tynan in the singing of The Internationale ... "
And do I have to mention that these two teams will play what is likely to be another crucial series in Detroit on the weekend before Labor Day?

I don't think too many average baseball fans have any what he's talking about.