Best two sentences I read this morning before going out to knock on doors to raise awareness of school starting on Monday:

You might say that both sides are monied, high human capital whiners, on the whole. And if you compare them to Burmese rice farmers, the two sides seem somewhat alike. For the people caught up in these intellectual traps, it all boils down to which groups of whiners they find most objectionable. And once they choose sides, the wisdom of that choice becomes increasingly clear with time.

Thanks Tyler, over at Marginal Revolution. Oh, and this would be the U.S. "Left" vs. "Right".

Move-in mostly complete. Pictures to follow shortly.

School starts in one week. Pictures to follow shortly.

I've been holding onto this for a little while, not sure what to do with it. This quote comes from Dan Rothschild of George Mason University.

The lesson of Katrina that matters the most is that the promise of federal assistance that will likely never materialize can be as destructive as the initial disaster...

What residents need in this maw of confusion is certainty. They need to know which roads will be rebuilt, and when the power and water will come back online. They need to know that the rule of law will be enforced. In short, they need to know what economists call the "rules of the game" for rebuilding.

These rules are critical to the myriad private-sector decisions that follow and signal whether and how a community will rebuild. Decisions about insurance coverage, when and where grocery stores, banks and numerous other businesses will reopen, and where children will play are vital private-sector decisions that require clear, credible commitments from the public sector to be made efficiently...

What residents of disaster-stricken areas don't need are vague promises from officials that add to the confusion and force residents to delay the millions of decisions, small and large, they need to make to re-create a viable community. And they don't need government leaders to make promises that are unlikely to be kept.

The dirty secret of government disaster response is that what's promised immediately after a disaster seldom comes to fruition.

Emphasis is mine. I think this is very much true; the market will provide for people, but not if the government promises that they will do it. If the federal government wants to help, post hoc subsidization of particularly useful acts seems more helpful to me.

We've been dog-sitting for the last week. Here's a few pictures in lieu of a real post. Due to the lack of internet, I don't have anything else to really comment on.

Here's Jake. She wakes people up at 5 AM with remarkable accuracy.


Here's a poster for a bullying seminar found in Papago Brewing Co.'s restroom. The poster is in the restroom by the way, not the seminar.

"With REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE IN DEFEATING BULLIES???!!!"

And here's the hand drier in the bathroom, quite possibly the most powerful ever manufactured.
Ok, catch you later on down the trail. Des Moiniacs beware, Miss Bee and I are flying in on Friday. If anyone is around that actually reads this but was previously unaware....now you are.