So I’m taking a day off from blogging.

If you want something fairly interesting, try this: How Greece’s Debt Crisis Affects America.

SSM tomorrow, then regular blogging on Monday.

By chance, I started cruising around Wikipedia yesterday. It has some great drinking references. There is, for instance, this post about Buckfast Tonic Wine. I’d never heard of the stuff, but I guess it’s (i) brewed by monks, and (ii) favored by the devil. “Within the above areas, Buckfast is alleged to be the drink of choice for drinkers who are prone to committing anti-social behaviour when drunk, especially drinkers under 18 years. Its high strength (15% ABV/14.8% in the Republic of Ireland), relatively low price and sweetness are characteristics that are thought to appeal to underage drinkers. The drink also has a very high caffeine content, with each 750ml bottle containing the equivalent of eight cans of cola. Many politicians and social activists single out Buckfast Tonic Wine as being particularly responsible for crime, disorder, and general social deprivation in these communities.”

Buckfast is part of group of wines, known as “Forified Wines.” This post has pretty much everything you want to know about ‘em:

In contrast to table wine, which may be enjoyed as an accompaniment to a meal, or high-end fortified wine, enjoyed as an aperitif or digestif, low-end fortified wines are generally used to cause drunkenness. These wines may be called “hooch,” “street wine,” “fortified wine,” “goon,” “bum wine,” “sterno” or “ghetto wine”. They typically have an alcohol content between 15 and 20 percent alcohol by volume. They often include added sugar, artificial color, and artificial flavor.

1. Nerds with a sense of humor. The financial mavericks at Zero Hedge slay me:

Greece has just become the biggest sovereign debt panhandler, begging its own people for a bailout. The Greek situation is now so bad that as of a few days ago there is a newly opened account titled “Solidarity Account for Repayment of Public Debt” at the Bank of Greece, which is now redirecting public donations straight for the “repayment of Greece’s public debt.” We hope these are tax deductible. This account has appeared about at the same time as California has started asking retail investors to directly invest in its critical $2 billion bond offering. In the sovereign crises of the future, will paypal donations play a critical role?

Link.

2. The frustration that is the USCCB and its left-wing politics. A punchy little piece, with lots of links. Especially enjoyed:

The bishop’s duty is to teach the faith – even the unpopular moral precepts – boldly, in and out of season. But every bishop is a citizen, and, like the layman, he has the right to his private political opinions as well. There are many issues where good Catholics (and bishops) can disagree. The problem arises when a bishop attempts to elevate his personal opinion on such an issue to the level of authoritative church teaching. That oft-condemned attitude constitutes an abuse of the prelate’s authority and confuses not only the faithful, but the public as well.

I kinda like it: “Detroit, the very symbol of American industrial might for most of the 20th century, is drawing up a radical renewal plan that calls for turning large swaths of this now-blighted, rusted-out city back into the fields and farmland that existed before the automobile.” Awhile ago, I suggested they should turn Detroit into the first anarcho-capitalist experimental laboratory. I figured, “What would it hurt?” This idea is a bit less radical, but I don’t know how they’ll prevent gang leaders from shooting the cows as a form of semi-urban vandalism/entertainment.

What’s the saying? There’s a moron born every second? “Two bottled “ghosts” have sold for more than £,1300 in an online auction in New Zealand.”

In February, I wrote a post about the high wages of federal employees. As I wrote it, I was bothered by one thing: it’s difficult to compare federal jobs to private jobs. I know with moral certainty that the government employees aren’t working harder than the private sector employees, but I couldn’t prove it, and I had an added problem: the jobs in the two sectors are often different (laid-off postmen, for instance, go postal for a reason: they get paid a lot for a skill that doesn’t translate into the private sector, so they know they’re screwed).

But now comes a MSM source that points out that, among careers that have roles in both sectors, the federal workers make more . . . a lot more:

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA Today analysis of federal data finds.

Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Link (emphasis added).

Get a Pair

Another reason to dislike the Cleveland Cavaliers: Cleveland Cavaliers fans create world record for Most Snuggies Worn.

The Tory Twister

I saw this sentence over the weekend: “Birmingham [in England] was hit by a tornado five years ago and when homes were flooded these kind of items would have been very useful.” I thought tornadoes only hit in the United States, like they were our own special disaster that no one else got to share. This is the first time I’ve heard of a tornado outside the U.S.

Music to my ears: Anger over increasing tuition and school budget cuts boiled over as students across the country staged rowdy demonstrations that led to clashes with police and the rush-hour shutdown of a major freeway in California. But all that violence and disruption isn’t going to solve the problems. Let me give you my ten-point guide to eliminating runaway higher-education costs:

10. Eliminate tenure.
9. Eliminate faculty unions.
8. Freeze capital spending: no new latte bars and other amenities.
7. In the short-term, use your own endowment money to underwrite tuition assistance.
6. Eliminate the Hope Credit
5. Eliminate the Lifetime Learning Credit
4. Eliminate Coverdells and 529 college savings plans.
3. Eliminate mandatory college education (artificially pumping-up demand).
2. Eliminate PELL grants.
1. Eliminate favorable student loan terms.

Believe it or not, numbers 1 and 2 aren’t the ones that irritate me the most. Though I think they’re the biggest reason college tuition rates are skyrocketing, it’s number 3 that really grates me. Big government and big business often require their employees to get worthless degrees in order to keep a job or get a promotion. It’s a travesty. Joseph Epstein pointed out higher education’s dirty little secret years ago: “a college education doesn’t really add much.” It is, in other words, just a piece of paper. I went to school for seven years in order to become a lawyer. Academically, I could’ve done it in three. (Maturity-wise, I probably needed ten, but that’s irrelevant: college did nothing to accelerate the maturation process; I could’ve matured just as well sitting on the dock of the bay with Otis Redding.)

But even though college classes don’t add much, people are required to take ‘em. In Michigan, you can’t even keep your accreditation to be a kindergarten teacher unless you’re actively pursuing a master’s degree in education! It’s an appalling sop to the economics of higher education: By artificially jacking up demand, colleges and universities can keep jacking up tuition. I’ve know many big businesses who tell qualified employees that they need to go back to college, yet everyone who works knows one thing: 99% of what you do at your job comes from experience, not from the classroom. Classes can enrich a little, but the vast majority of employees only need on-the-job training and maybe an annual seminar or two. They don’t need a degree, which by its cookie-cutter nature requires them to sit through many lectures on topics that will never directly apply to their job.

I had great hopes that the highly-successful college drop-out dot.com geniuses of the 1990s would show everyone that the college degree is vastly over-rated, but they haven’t. If anything, the perceived value of a college education has risen. Nearly ever person I talk with agrees that college is grossly over-rated, academically (it’s a helluva lot of fun, but academically?). Yet as a society, we keep pushing it. It’s inexplicable, unless there are monster forces at work behind the scenes . . . which there are.

If people really start to look into college education costs like they’ve been looking at health care, they’d see it’s a tangled web of a mess, just like health care. College education and health care are both messes, and they have a few things in common: They’ve both been favored with money in excess of what an unhampered free market would provide, they both have deep ties with government, they both have deep ties with big business.

Those commonalities aren’t coincidences.

Blogging time is still scarce. Fortunately, I found this excellent article: The 25 greatest cities in the world for drinking wine. Sample: “Los Olivos, California, USA. Rather than fighting the crowds in Napa Valley try this quaint Victorian town just north of Santa Barbara. The area is now famous as the setting of Sideways. Don’t let the Hollywood connection scare you away though: the region is stunningly beautiful and is one of the best Pinot Noir producing areas in the United States (alternatively, swing by Andrew Murray for some killer Syrahs). The historic downtown is home to over a dozen wine tasting rooms in a small area.”