Jim Davis over at sci.space.policy points out an article with an interesting example of how smart markets can be. They figured out which company was responsible for the Challenger disaster within minutes of the event, and long before the Rogers Commission was even convened, let alone issued its report six months later.

As the news broke, the authors write, the stock prices of all four companies fell anywhere from 2.83 percent to 6.12 percent in the 21 minutes after the crash. But trading was halted only on the stock of Morton Thiokol. “The fact that market liquidity was available to maintain a market in Lockheed, Martin Marietta, and Rockwell while the market for Morton Thiokol dried up suggests that the stock market discerned the guilty party within minutes of the announcement of the crash,” Maloney and Mulherin conclude. By the end of the day?when the cause of the accident was still a mystery?Morton Thiokol was down 11.86 percent, while the other three contractors lost 2 percent to 3 percent.

Everyone is getting into the governor’s race. Isn’t that just precious?

[Update at 12:30 PM PDT]

There’s some hilarious photoshopping in this related Free Republic thread. James Carville is involved. Also note the one about Davis’ people already starting to dig up dirt on him (the candidate, that is, not Carville–they already have all the dirt on him…)

Next Sunday will be exactly one year since Jeff Goldstein last posted on the Protein Wisdom blog. It remains an enduring mystery.

OK, I know that the Dems have gone off the deep end, and you know that the Dems have gone off the deep end, but when the Washington Post says that the Dems have gone off the deep end, you know they have to be in real trouble.

It certainly would be fair now to argue that the logic was wrong. There was a cogent case to be made against the war, and even those who supported it might now say that the absence of any uncovered weapons of mass destruction, or the continuing violence against Americans, gives them, in hindsight, a different view. There’s plenty to criticize in the administration’s postwar effort too. What isn’t persuasive, or even very smart politically, is to pretend to have been fooled by what Mr. Gore breathlessly calls the Bush “systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology.”

I’m surprised that no one else picked up on this quote from Gore, which had me scratching my head when I heard him say it (it doesn’t appear in his submitted text for the speech).

What in the world is a “totalistic ideology”? When I plug the word into dictionary.com, I get:

adj : of or relating to the principles of totalitarianism according to which the state regulates every realm of life; “totalitarian theory and practice”; “operating in a totalistic fashion” [syn: totalitarian]

Is it a verbal gaffe (in which case, a la Bush, of course we can expect the media to be all over it, right?). Or is it a way of calling Mr. Bush a totalitarian while retaining “plausible deniability,” which is either Clintonian or Nixonian, depending on your political predilections?

Either way, why hasn’t this aspect of Gore’s little rant gotten more attention?

The best take yet on Ahnuld, by (who else?) Mark Steyn.

My favorite (though it’s all great):

…Arnold’s not a Nazi. He was born in the Austrian town of Thal, but not until 1947, and thus was technically unable to join the Nazi Party no matter how much he may have wanted to. But he certainly has family ties to the Nazis. His wife’s grandfather, Joe Kennedy, was one of America’s most prominent Nazi sympathisers.

Oh, wait. That’s not the Nazi family ties the Dems had in mind?…

The best take yet on Ahnuld, by (who else?) Mark Steyn.

My favorite (though it’s all great):

…Arnold’s not a Nazi. He was born in the Austrian town of Thal, but not until 1947, and thus was technically unable to join the Nazi Party no matter how much he may have wanted to. But he certainly has family ties to the Nazis. His wife’s grandfather, Joe Kennedy, was one of America’s most prominent Nazi sympathisers.

Oh, wait. That’s not the Nazi family ties the Dems had in mind?…

The best take yet on Ahnuld, by (who else?) Mark Steyn.

My favorite (though it’s all great):

…Arnold’s not a Nazi. He was born in the Austrian town of Thal, but not until 1947, and thus was technically unable to join the Nazi Party no matter how much he may have wanted to. But he certainly has family ties to the Nazis. His wife’s grandfather, Joe Kennedy, was one of America’s most prominent Nazi sympathisers.

Oh, wait. That’s not the Nazi family ties the Dems had in mind?…

Well, well, the Dems managed to muster up more party discipline than I gave them credit for. They managed to persuade Garamendi to drop out of the race. That means that the Republican vote will be split between (at least) Arnold, Bill Simon and Tom McClintock. This might mean that the Donkeys keep control of the governorship.

I’m not necessarily unhappy about that, because if that happens, it will continue to be clearly their mess, and it will bode ill for them next year.

Here’s an interesting article from the National Post, that says the SCO lawsuit may be a blessing in disguise for the open source movement.

Here’s an interesting article from the National Post, that says the SCO lawsuit may be a blessing in disguise for the open source movement.