There’s plenty to discuss in yesterday’s big loss in Lansing. Google News Michael Hunt State News (MSU’s Student Paper) Badger Herald Daily Cardinal Teddy Greinstein Dave Dye
Road America at 50
Wisconsin’s excellent Road America turns 50 in 2005. Tom Schultz has written a limited edition book.
Senatorial Privilege
Alex Tabarrok asks why the SEC does not seem to have time to look into the fact that Senator’s investments substantially outperform the rest of us. The SEC does have time, of course, to chase Martha Stewart. I wrote about this in March, 2004..
Carroll Shelby @ 81
Terry Box on the legendary muscle car builder Carroll Shelby:
Sometimes late at night, 81-year-old Carroll Shelby lies awake, thinking about all the cars he still wants to build.
“I’ve got 10 different cars in my head,” said Shelby, the lanky, legendary Texan who created the fierce Shelby Cobras and Mustangs of the 1960s and was a renowned racer in the 1950s.
At a time when most men his age are settling in for the final chapter of their lives, Shelby is on the move again.
Earlier this year, he and his wife, Cleo, bought a 4,600-acre ranch outside tiny Annona in east Texas. After years of living mostly in Los Angeles, he said he expects the new ranch to become his primary home — a symbolic return of sorts to east Texas, where he was born.
He has a website, of course.
US Collegiate National Wakeboarding Championships
Check out these great photos!
Newspaper Monopolies
Tim Worstall looks at the long term economic changes facing newspapers.
Mars Express phones home – with images
The ESA’s Mars Express has sent some gorgeous images home. Via The Register.
Wal-Mart and BadgerCare
I generally agree with this Cap Times editorial on the absurdity of Wisconsin Taxpayers paying for nearly $2M in annual Wal-Mart employee health care costs (plus a federal government contribution).
Verizon’s Fiber to the Home – Yesterday’s Architecture
While SBC raises rates in Wisconsin for a long since paid for copper network, Verizon pushes forward with fiber to the home. David Isenberg notes that they are installing broadband fiber with speeds up to 60Mbps; that’s over 60X the speed of my DSL line. Isenberg also notes that Verizon may have chosen a difficult to scale architecture (that 60Mbps may be set for decades…)
Wisconsin politicians evidently continue to drink SBC’s Kool-Aid, as there’s no evidence of progress here.
Big Media & Authority
Daniel Henninger on big media’s declining authority:
Authority can be a function of raw power, but among free people it is sustained by esteem and trust. Should esteem and trust falter, the public will start to contest an institution’s authority. It happens all the time to political figures. It happened here to the American Catholic Church and to the legal profession, thanks to plaintiff-bar abuse. And now the public is beginning to contest the decades-old authority of the mainstream media.
Two months ago, Gallup reported that public belief in the media’s ability to report news accurately and fairly had fallen to 44%–what Gallup called a significant drop from 54% just a year ago.