Tyler Cowen has more info on the free course, which is the twelfth course in their great economist's section.

The Toronto Star is reporting that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is "determined to take a made-in-Ontario pension plan to the voters come the next election."

The Washington Post reports:

Nearly five years after George W. Bush left office, half the public still blames the former president for the nation’s economic woes, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week. The survey comes as Republicans have continued to keep the 43rd president at arm’s length.

Fifty percent of Americans say Bush is more responsible for the country’s current economic problems than President Obama, the Post-ABC poll shows. Just 38 percent hold Obama more responsible. Seven percent assign equal blame.

In nearly two years of of Post-ABC surveys, opinions have barely budged. Roughly half the public has consistently held Bush more responsible for economic problems since the beginning of 2012.

Of course, the underlying reasons for poor economic performance can (and often do) exist before a sitting president inhabits the White House. What is noteworthy is how consistent blaming Bush has been, and that President Barack Obama isn't blamed for failing to deliver on his promise to fix it all.

Xinhua reports:

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman arrived here Thursday on a third visit to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Rodman, accompanied by a documentary crew, is expected to help train the country's national basketball team for a Jan. 8 exhibition game in Pyongyang marking the birthday of DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un ...

The source confirmed that the ministry will also make a detailed plan on the exhibition game between the DPRK basketball team and ex-NBA players.

Foreign correspondents in Pyongyang were not allowed to go into the airport, and Rodman left the airport through a "guest channel" without giving any interview.

The New York Times store is selling model replicas of the Titanic, including a 32-inch R.M.S. Titanic for $314.99 and a 40-inch Museum-Quality R.M.S. Titanic for just $1,495, the latter which was "specially built for The New York Times."

Tyler Cowen points to Tim Kreider's New Yorker piece on the topic of science fiction and politics. Kreider considers science fiction inherently liberal although notes many "conservative practitioners" (although they are actually more libertarian). Cowen concludes:

To again use Kreider’s own words, societies where “nothing can be taken for granted” are exactly the ones I would never wish to visit, much less live in. I know the radical anarcho-capitalist strand, but is there a Burke-Oakeshott-Hayek science fiction, in the traditionalist and conservative sense of that combination? Or must we resort to the “fantasy” genre to capture such a vision? What would a science fiction account of a macro-level spontaneous order look like?

Kreider considers science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson the great political novelist (or at least in the running). Kreider says:

The major platform planks these methods lead him to in his books are:

* common stewardship—not ownership—of the land, water, and air

* an economic system based on ecological reality

* divesting central governments of most of their power and diffusing it among local communities

* the basics of existence, like health care, removed from the cruelties of the free market

* the application of democratic principles like self-determination and equality in the workplace—which, in practice, means small co-ops instead of vast, hierarchical, exploitative corporations—and,

* a reverence for the natural world codified into law.

Depending on your own politics, this may sound like millennia-overdue common sense or a bong-fuelled 3 A.M. wish list, but there’s no arguing that to implement it in the real world circa 2013 would be, literally, revolutionary. My own bet would be that either your grandchildren are going to be living by some of these precepts, or else they won’t be living at all.

You could argue that, if I didn’t fundamentally agree with his politics, Robinson’s fiction might seem contrived and didactic to me, the way Ayn Rand’s does if you’re not predisposed toward her brand of enlightened assholism.

I haven't read Robinson and probably won't, but the point is that science fiction can have useful insights into politics in a very broad way. As Kreider says: "Science fiction is an inherently political genre, in that any future or alternate history it imagines is a wish about How Things Should Be (even if it’s reflected darkly in a warning about how they might turn out). And How Things Should Be is the central question and struggle of politics."

Investor's Business Daily editorializes:

Now that the Senate is on board with a budget deal that busts the sequester spending caps, lawmakers can finally stop all that dreadful cost-cutting — before they hit vital projects like NASA's 3D Pizza Printer.

The bipartisan budget deal, which will add $63 billion in spending, came just in time. After all, "the cupboard is bare," as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., put it awhile back. "There's no more cuts to make."

We see what Pelosi means. In fact, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., just published a lengthy report this week showcasing all the vital things the government does that, thankfully, will be spared the ax.

In addition to its $125,000 3D Pizza Printer effort, for example, NASA is spending $3 million on a space-aged study into how Congress works, and another $390,000 on a YouTube cartoon about global warming.

Lant Pritchett, professor of the practice of international development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University notes, "By dwelling on inequality, the pope is promoting envy."

Nirvana and KISS are going to be inducted in the same year. Isn't KISS like 20 years older. Shouldn't they have been in long ago? Kathy Shaidle comments at Taki Magazine:

If the Jews really ran show business, then KISS would’ve been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the first year they were eligible—in 1999, 25 years after the release of their first record.

Pure snobbery has kept them out.

TMZ reports, "Justin Bieber bragged that he f**ks 'bitches' in a desperate attempt to save face" when he was being roasted by a comedian. So to fix his image problem, that is how the young entertainer responds. That's great.

American gay magazine has declared Pope Francis its person of the year, because of their belief in the "pope's capacity for persuading hearts and minds in opening to LGBT people, and not only in the U.S. but globally."

Breitbart reports:

On Monday, Variety reported that Fox News had once again dominated all comers in the annual ratings, not merely blowing out CNN, MSNBC and HLN, but drawing more viewers than the combined averages of the three other networks. Fox News averaged 1.774 million viewers in primetime; the other three averaged a combined 1.626 million viewers in primetime.

On the one hand that's sweeping the competition pretty darn impressively. On the other hand, it illustrates how few Americans (approximately 1%) watch news on TV.

The National Journal's Ron Fournier has a devastating article entitled, "Politics Trumped Policy, Truth for Obama's Reelect." Fournier mostly reiterates a Washington Post article on how Barack Obama's White House interfered politically to manipulate federal regulations for electoral gain. Fournier says:

Obama’s apologists will say that every president plays politics with policy in elections years. Two problems with that. First, Obama promised to be better than the status quo. Second, he’s worse.

ZeroHedge has a disturbing chart for anyone with a conscience that shows that seniors who turn 65 this year has received $327,500 in government benefits minus taxes paid compared to $421,600 owed by future unborn children. That fact comes from Larry Kotlikoff, "How the millennial generation will pay the price of Washington's paralysis." It also demonstrates what ZeroHedge's Tyler Durden calls "the Ponzi scheme behind America's welfare state."

Business Insider: "Why Investors Are Fleeing Muni Bonds At Record Rates." Wolf Richter of the Testerone Pit reports:

Default risks are dark clouds on the distant horizon or remain unimaginable beyond the horizon. And hopes that disaster can be averted by a miracle still rule the day. However, the Fed’s taper cacophony is here and now, and though the Fed is still printing money and buying paper at full speed, the possibility that it might not always do so hangs like a malodorous emanation in the air.

Taper talk and bankruptcies are a toxic mix for munis ...

The Fed’s easy money policies over the decades encouraged borrowing binges by municipalities and states. When the hot air hissed out of history’s greatest credit bubble in 2008, the Fed’s remedy, its ingenious QE and zero-interest-rate policies, blew an even greater credit bubble – kudos! As that credit bubble transitions from full bloom to whatever comes afterwards, the associated asset bubbles too transition. And the plight of muni bond funds is just the beginning.

Nathaniel Stein has a satirical piece in the New York Times, "Leaked: Harvard's Grading Rubric." According to Stern:

The B grade may be awarded as a joke, before being replaced with a higher grade, so long as the instructor has checked with the registrar that the student’s psychological profile permits practical jokes of a cruel nature.

Jenny Isenman of The Stir has "21 Things '80s Kids' Did That Would Horrify Us Now." Most of us survived the '80s so here's my question: why do so many of my generation parent like our children are fragile eggs.

(HT: Instapundit)

E21's Scott Winship makes the case that concern for income inequality is overblown, and notes:

Even if it is true that in the absence of rising inequality, more income would have gone to the poor and middle class than actually accrued to them, that need not mean that we should object to rising inequality. We all have our own ideas about who deserves to make what. Again, Krugman and the Inequality Patrol think it’s obvious that the top doesn’t deserve what they’re making.

Trotting out stats that show economic growth's benefits accrue disproportionately to the already wealthy doesn't prove an injustice. The Left should not promote envy, which is what progressives do when they harp about income inequality. The issue for those truly concerned about the poor is their material well-being, not how much they have compared to another group of people.

George Will says the minimum wage is a good idea if you believe in 15 propositions, including this one: "If you think government should prevent two consenting parties — an employer and a worker — from agreeing to an hourly wage that government disapproves." That is the key issue for me. There are others, such as, "If you think tweaking the minimum wage is a serious promotion of equality by an administration during which 95 percent of real income growth has accrued to the top 1 percent." Excellent column that demonstrates one must believe a lot of dubious propositions to think the minimum wage is good policy.

The Canadian Press reports that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is upset with Minister of Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney because the latter talked about the Toronto mayor and Toronto belongs to Flaherty:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is saying little about a report that he had sharp words with a cabinet colleague for criticizing Toronto's embattled mayor, but hinted it had to do with political turf.

The CBC has reported Flaherty confronted Jason Kenney in the House of Commons last month after the employment minister called for Rob Ford's resignation ...

Flaherty, who is the senior minister in the Toronto-area, suggested Kenney, who is the minister responsible for southern Alberta, should stick to his neck of the woods.

“You know, I’m the minister for the Greater Toronto Area. I don’t comment on the mayor of Calgary,” he told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with his provincial counterparts.

The Finance Minister comes across as a child. I've never seen a minister responsible for a certain area actually declare it off limits for discussion for his colleagues. Furthermore, it is hardly a principle that the Tories adhere to generally, for as Paul Wells notes on Twitter: "Non-Vancouver ministers who commented on drug policy in Vancouver: Clement, MacKay, Agglukaq, Ambrose, Harper..." I don't recall now Industry Minister James Moore whining that his Conservative cabinet colleagues were talking about a British Columbia matter.

Reason's Nick Gillespie says if you want to freak someone out, "suggest that [Detroit] unload its little-seen yet high-valued art collection hiding in plain sight at The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA)." Gillespie explains the over-the-top reaction:

Don’t get me wrong: In its attempts to deal with an estimated $18 billion in debt, Motown will absolutely be giving out buzzcuts worthy of an Army barber to everyone who has ever drawn a paycheck from City Hall or was stupid enough to lend it money. But with a collection valued at somewhere between $452 million and $866 million, the DIA’s collection—featuring pieces by Picasso, van Gogh, Matisse, and other masters—should absolutely be on the market.

Critics of the idea consider such an option not only “delusional” but reminiscent of Stalinist art sell-offs during the 1930s. “Michiganders might remember that in the 1920s and ’30s, the cash-hungry Soviet government sold off Russia’s art treasures, dispersing them to other countries,” sniffs Judith H. Dobrzynski in The Wall Street Journal. “Today, that episode is viewed as a national tragedy.” That may well be true, but if so, it’s among the least objectionable crimes against humanity perpetrated by the USSR. After all, they didn’t destroy the art—they merely sent it to places where it could be appreciated without fear of execution.

But more importantly, as Virginia Postrel has pointed out, from an art appreciation perspective, it makes sense to sell the art to art galleries in other cities that attract more visitors. Why does Detroit's art museum get the right to effectively hoard masterpieces, especially when the city is bankrupt.

The Spectator makes the case for optimism, noting that for most people, things are getting better:

As a public service – and one which is rarely provided in broadcast or print – The Spectator will below provide evidence for these assertions. We can start from crude figures: $73.5 trillion, the world’s economic output this year. Never has so much wealth been generated — but, importantly, never has growth been shared more evenly. While the rich world is wallowing a mire of debt, the developing world is making incredible progress. The global inequality gap is narrowing – and thanks not to the edicts of governments, but to the co-operation of millions of people, rich and poor, through international trade. Or, as critics call this system, ‘global capitalism’.

As a result goals that once seemed fantastical are now within reach: from the end of Aids to the end of famine. To understand the speed of this progress consider the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, drawn up in 2000. The plan then was to halve the number of people living on $1 a day by 2015. This target was reached five years early. Not that you’d know: very little was said at the time, perhaps because the progress was made by global trade with very little help from the aid industry. It was clear, then, that something was going badly right.

But wealth is not the only barometer of success. The world is getting healthier, too:

Extraordinary advances in medicine, and in the ability to produce affordable drugs for millions, is sending levels of life expectancy soaring in the poorest nations. The introduction of anti-retroviral drugs in Malawi, for example, has seen its Aids death toll fall from 92,400 ten years ago to under 46,000 now. This reflects a worldwide trend. Cambodia recently announced its hopes to eliminate deaths from malaria by 2015, having halved infections over the course of this year. Malaria is one of the world’s biggest killers – and, as the World Health Organisation recently confirmed, its death rate has almost halved since the turn of the century.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Michael J. Boskin, an economics professor at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, says:

Next year, millions must choose among unfamiliar physicians and hospitals, or paying more for preferred providers who are not part of their insurance network. Some health outcomes will deteriorate from a less familiar doctor-patient relationship.

More IT failures are likely. People looking for health plans on ObamaCare exchanges may be able to fill out their applications with more ease. But the far more complex back-office side of the website—where the information in their application is checked against government databases to determine the premium subsidies and prices they will be charged, and where the applications are forwarded to insurance companies—is still under construction. Be prepared for eligibility, coverage gap, billing, claims, insurer payment and patient information-protection debacles.

The next shock will come when the scores of millions outside the individual market—people who are covered by employers, in union plans, or on Medicare and Medicaid—experience the downsides of ObamaCare. There will be longer waits for hospital visits, doctors' appointments and specialist treatment, as more people crowd fewer providers.

Samizdata's Perry de Havilland notes that the BBC gets North Korea wrong.

Industry Minister James Moore was asked about child poverty and responded: "Is it my job to feed my neighbour’s child? I don’t think so." Moore is correct to note that programs for the poor are a provincial matter, but this is the kind of thing that makes the Conservatives look uncaring and will sink them. He is right policy-wise but tone deaf to the politics of his comment. The only way to make this a non-losing quote now is to hammer away at it and educate the public, which could backfire.

Mike Tyson is among those asked by the Wall Street Journal, and he writes: "I'm currently reading 'The Quotable Kierkegaard,' edited by Gordon Marino, a collection of awesome quotes from that great Danish philosopher." The rest of the Tyson paragraph is worth reading because the former boxer waxing poetic about philosophy is ... awesome. Among the 50 are Daniel Hannan, Charles Moore, Edmund Morris, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Samantha Power, Steven Pinker, Stanley Crouch, Lawrence Summers, and Willie and Korie Robertson. Wendy Davis and Katie Couric, too.

The WSJ also has the list of best non-fiction and fiction books of the year.

1. Jeff Fedotin of the National Football Post has an article entitled, "The Biggest Reason for Kansas City's turnaround." The biggest reason is regression to the mean (a lot of things are going to go wrong in a two-win season, so there is a lot room for improvement and reversing bad luck). Fedotin's article is actually about nose tackle Dontari Poe, who is indeed very good and makes a big difference. The bigger in the headline refers to Poe's 340 pounds. He's a space eater (although not a BBQ eater) and he certainly helps collapse the pocket and to keep running backs from finding open space. The blocking done on the line never gets the attention that linebackers who get the tackles and sacks do, so this is a good and overdue article.

2. According to Pro Football Talk, Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan says the team might be able to get a first-round pick after they showcase backup QB Kirk Cousins now that they have benched are resting starting quarterback Robert Griffin III for the rest of the season. Earlier this week, Grantland's Bill Barnwell indicated he was skeptical of the plan to let others see Cousins noting that his small body of work features two good games and a few truly terrible outings and that there is a fairly strong chance that Cousins will prove the latter as real. In a 2014 draft that many observers say feature a deep quarterback class, I doubt even Barnwell's optimistic best-case scenario of Washington convincing anyone to give them a third-round pick for their over-rated backup.

3. The Charlotte Observer reports on how a long-time Panthers fan it retiring from tail-gating.

4. Good article at ESPN on how the first year coaches in Philadelphia and Chicago have done a great job getting the most out of their backup QBs to help put their teams in the playoff hunt. I think Marc Trestman is making a giant mistake letting Jay Cutler start for the Bears as Josh McCown has been very good over the past three weeks (admittedly against weak pass defenses), including 703 yards and 9.8 yards per pass over the past two games; he has a 109.8 passer rating in seven games (five starts). Chip Kelly eventually got around to making the right choice in starting Nick Foles who has been magnificent (5-0) as the everyday starter.

1. Big Think's Strange Maps blog has "Climate Maps of Middle-Earth." This is probably too nerdy even for me.

2. Sports on Earth has "Goofy English soccer mascots."

3. Twitter feed entitled "Faces in Things." Scroll down to November 29 for the one that made me smile.

4. Cracked.com: "5 Animal Rights Campaigns That Managed to Screw Over Animals." Reading about the release of minks is worth clicking on this.

5. i09.com has a photo essay of abandoned space observatories.

6. Slate has "Absurdly expensive gifts for the super-rich."

7. Something a little longer: Eric Gibson in The New Criterion with "The overexposed museum: Camera technology and the iPhone are changing the museum experience."

8. Patrick Redford at the Classical: "Talkin' About Praxis: What Antonio Gramsci can tell us about the slippery, difficult business of building a basketball team."

9. From the animal kingdom. From Science Daily: "Chameleons Use Colorful Language to Communicate: Chameleons' Body Regions Are 'Billboards' for Different Types of Information." New Scientist's Zoologger blog reports, "Alligators use tools to lure in bird prey." Buzz Hoot Roar has the "Five Insects We Never Want to Have Sex With."

10. Mental Floss: "11 Incredible Facts About Venus Flytraps."

11. A short (less than a minute) video of extreme teeter-tottering training.

At Canadian Business, Mike Moffatt explains how the wage subsidy to Cisco Canada announced by Ontario's Liberal government won't help create jobs but will help create more income inequality:

Earlier today, the Ontario government announced that it is “partnering with Cisco Canada to launch the largest job-creating investment in the history of the province’s tech sector.” We should naturally be skeptical of any deal that sees taxpayer dollars go to a firm that made over $2 billion in profit just last quarter. However, reading through the details of this plan, skepticism turns to outrage. This is a plan that is explicitly designed to increase income inequality and transfer money from poorer regions of the province to one of Canada’s wealthiest cities and will likely not create a single new job.

The deal promises that “up to 1,700 jobs” will be added in the next six years, with the province providing “up to $190 million” in return, for a cost of $112,000 per job. Cisco estimates that 80% of the new jobs will be in Ottawa, a city with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the province at 5.7%. And if a 5.7% unemployment rate seems relatively low, it towers over the sub-3% rate in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. Because of the low unemployment levels of both the city and the sector, the number of net new jobs created here is likely to be zero. Cisco will be simply luring away workers that would have worked for other ICT companies (or who would have been hired anyway by Cisco even without the handout). This will help raise the wages of workers in that sector, but does nothing for jobs. Those jobs are already very well compensated, so this is acting as a wage subsidy to high-income workers, paid for by the general population.

This should lead to people protesting with pitchforks in the streets. But it won't. Instead of subsidizing the jobs of big business, the Ontario government should help the province attract new business by lowering taxes and reining in the power of unions.

1. The Denver Broncos lost at home to the San Diego Chargers 27-20 at home, resulting in predictable hyperbolic concerns about not hitting their stride at the right time and other nonsense. Sometimes a bad game is just a bad game. It could change the playoff scenarios, but just because New England now controls its own destiny that doesn't mean that Denver can't win the first overall seed. Nor does it mean that Peyton Manning can't win in the cold (although that narrative is predicated on the notion that he can't play in temperatures below freezing and the game started at 37F, and he does okay in those games). But if pundits think that Denver is in trouble and that Manning can't put together a good performance in the cold, then why is losing the top seed a bad thing? It's all a little ridiculous.

2. The Bolts-Broncos game lacked the offense many of us where expecting but the game was close and exciting enough to stay tuned until the end. Denver got off to a quick 7-0 lead and San Diego responded by marching down the field and settling for a field goal. The broadcast team started the finger-wagging, claiming you can't beat Denver settling for three points. Denver marched back down into San Diego territory and settled for a field goal to go up 10-3 and it was assumed the game was over. Manning then had two terrible quarters (2nd and 3rd) in which he got the ball for four drives and went a grand total of 13 yards and produced just one first down. Philip Rivers and the Chargers scored a bunch and established a 24-10 lead before Manning belatedly led a comeback attempt. Ryan Mathews had 127 yards on 29 carries (and a TD), providing balance to the SD offense and keeping the clock rolling so Manning stayed off the field. Manning's numbers were ostensibly OK: 27/41 for 289 yards, 2 TDS and one pick, and a 92.4 passer rating. Watching the game, it seemed like he struggled a lot more than that. I think the problem was that he completed one pass that went more than 20 yards and missed four of them. Another problem is that the yards after catch, which Denver has been great at all year, were practically non-existent. Neither defense was all that great and San Diego was aided by several stupid Denver penalties, including one on a punt that gave the Bolts a new set of downs. The real problem for Denver was that they were 2/9 (22%) on third downs. That won't happen often, so Denver is still in good shape going forward.

3. According to ESPN, since the Cleveland Browns rejoined the NFL in 1999, they are 77-159, tied with the Detroit Lions for the worst record during that time frame, have finished last in their division (three more than any other team), and have used 18 different starting QBs (tied for the most with the Miami Dolphins). That was before last week's losses by both teams. So now they are still tied with the worst records, 77-160.

4. There's always lots of pre-season talk about teams that go from last-to-first, but very little about first-to-last. Right now there are three 2012 division winners (Atlanta Falcons, Houston Texans, Washington Redskins) that are last. I predict at least one of these teams will be a serious contender next season, probably Houston. Houston? Yeah, Houston. This is what I blogged when Gary Kubiak was fired by the Texans last week: Houston was nearly a consensus pick to win the AFC South and if not that, at least being a wild card. Instead, they've been both bad (30th overall in the DVOA ratings of Football Outsiders) and unlucky (they are 2-8 in games decided by seven points or fewer, near the bottom of the table on turnovers, and been victimized by five pick sixes). These things tend to even out over time (season to season). With one of the five best running backs (Arian Foster, who is injured and has played hurt), one of the five best wide receivers (Andre Johnson), and one of the three best defensive players (DE J.J. Watt) in the NFL today, and the one of the top picks in the stacked 2014 draft where they can land either a potential franchise quarterback or an elite pass rusher, the Texans will likely be a 500 or better team next year and the best candidate to go from last to first. Whoever replaces Kubiak on the full-time basis for 2014 is going to have all those advantages and be a contender for the Coach of the Year Award.

Because the media ignorse suicide, America's conversation about guns is skewed. Alex Tabarrok notes that Slate has collected news stories about gun deaths and the discovered that their numbers don't align with the Centers for Disease Control, and it isn't even close. As Slate's Chris Kirk wrote: "The CDC counts about 32,000 people killed with guns each year, while Slate’s database only has one-third of that." The reason: the under-reporting of suicide in the press. The graphs at both links show how skewed our perception of gun violence might become when we base it on media reports and not actual facts.

Tabarrok has another post about guns and suicide, including to links of his other work on the topic. Before there is a moral panic about guns and suicide, however, one should read Justin Briggs and Tabarrok's Slate article carefully, where they note two important facts: "Since there are relatively few suicides, this [increased gun ownership] translates into 345 more suicides, at most," and that "Most guns are never involved in a suicide or a homicide."

From ReasonTV:

"If we are lending money that ostensibly we don't have to kids who have no hope of making it back in order to train them for jobs that clearly don't exist, I might suggest that we've gone around the bend a little bit," says TV personality Mike Rowe, best known as the longtime host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.

Reason TV interviews Rowe and its worth watching -- all 41 minutes of it. Not everyone needs to go to university or is best served by doing so.

Fat suits are the new blackface. The Winnipeg Free Press reports:

A musical about weight discrimination in show business is stirring up a debate about fat suits in a Regina high school's version of the play.

Tricia Leis is upset that two teens who shared the lead role in Campbell Collegiate's production of Hairspray had to wear special costumes to make them look bigger.

Leis says the choice only emphasizes society's obsession with thinness.

She says the role is great for plus-size girls and sends a positive message to young women who may be struggling with self-esteem.

Putting young thin students in fat suits is part of an "obsession with thinness"? That's ridiculous. Maybe it has something to do with the kids' quality of acting.

Why does everyone want to be offended?

The Smoking Gun reports, "Though Jane Fonda’s private foundation has nearly $800,000 in assets, the group has not made a charitable contribution during the last five years for which it has filed federal tax returns, an apparent violation of Internal Revenue Service rules."

(Via Fox News)

The Globe and Mail: "Wynne will run on promise to raise taxes for transit in next election." It is brave to run on raising taxes. However, it doesn't usually endear candidates to voters.

A press release out of the office of the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Peter Van Loan, notes, "With a total of 40 bills becoming law this year, the Harper Government has set a new record for itself, passing more bills than in any other calendar year since taking office." Do not judge a government by the number of its bills, but by their content. Passing a lot of laws is not necessarily good -- and usually isn't. I prefer the British approach of David Cameron, who is removing 309 offenses from the statute book this year, including "being an incorrigible rogue." The British government also repealed 201 offenses last year.

A few weeks ago Robin Hanson wondered about the density of modern cities isn't great, noting the modern metropolis hasn't become the sort of tall-building cities envisioned in science fiction and other futurists. Considering possible explanations, he blames politics:

Maybe local governments usually can’t coordinate well to build supporting infrastructure, like roads, schools, power, sewers, etc., to match taller buildings. So they veto them instead. Or maybe local non-property-owning voters believe that more tall buildings will hurt them personally. (The big city nearest me actually has a law against buildings over 40 meters tall.)

Note that most of these explanations are variations on the same theme: local governments fail to coordinate to enable tall buildings. Which is in fact my favored explanation. City density, and hence city size, is mainly limited by the abilities of the conflicting elements that influence local governments to coordinate to enable taller buildings.

Remember those futurist images of dense tall cities scraping the skies? The engineers have done their job to make it possible. It is politics that isn’t yet up to the task.

The New York Times has a long and very good article on Google's efforts to map the world. A snippet:

In 2005, A9.com, Amazon’s skunk works for search technology, unveiled an innovative feature called Block View. It was meant to be a newfangled Yellow Pages where you could find the phone number and address of a local business — as well as a photograph of its storefront. Block View was discontinued after only 20 months, but not before Microsoft introduced its own version, Streetside, that was essentially identical, except that Microsoft’s pictures of streets and storefronts were seen through a digitally created framing device. Though the photos were taken from car-roof-mounted cameras, they were presented online as if you were looking through a windshield. The result was dorky, but it was one solution to the vexing problem of coming up with a user interface. How do you move through a map made of photographs? Microsoft’s answer: In a virtual car.

Google ultimately developed a more elegant user interface. Instead of representing movement along a street as flipping through a filmstriplike series of photographs, as Block View and Streetside did, Google pursued the idea of a panoramic camera — what would become the green orb — and used it to take a panoramic photo every few feet. The effect of hopping from one photo to the next in Street View is one of walking through virtual space.

Microsoft’s Streetside debuted in 2006 with a photographic rendering of parts of Seattle and San Francisco. Google’s Street View arrived a year later, with five cities: San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver. Google eventually overwhelmed Microsoft with a more aggressive surveying program. Street View now covers 3,000 cities in 54 countries, and it has gone beyond streets and onto train tracks, hiking trails, even rivers. A section of the Amazon was the first river, appearing last year; the Thames made its debut in October; and the Colorado will be available by the end of the year. “We want to paint the world,” Vincent says. When I asked him what level of resolution we were talking about, he said, “About one pixel to the inch.”

The article concludes noting that Google is developing an autonomous car, which will use Google maps, and how Tesla's self-driving car probably won't.

Highly recommended.

Investor's Business Daily's Ed Carson writes about the real (as opposed to official) unemployment rate, noting:

The official unemployment rate has fallen to a five-year low of 7%. But put away the champagne.

That gradual decline reflects a historic drop in labor force participation. Without that drop, joblessness would be 11.3%, holding at 11% or higher in every month but one in the last 50 months.

To be considered unemployed, a person has to be out of work but actively looking. So when people give up the job hunt, they reduce unemployment — even if the number of people working hasn't risen.

At the start of the recession in December 2007, the labor force participation rate was 66%. It fell sharply, tumbling to 62.8% in October, a 35-year low. It rose slightly to 63% last month.

Carson considers a number of explanations, notably demographics, anemic economic growth, and the "lack of job churn." You could add government policies that lessen the cost of not working.

Regardless, unemployment will decrease again next month:

In the meantime, get ready for more "good" news on unemployment. Extended jobless benefits are set to expire at year-end. That means 1.3 million longtime unemployed who officially are in the labor force could drop out. That could reduce the official jobless rate by up to half a percentage point by some estimates.

Breitbart reports that "Duck the Halls: A Robertson Family Christmas sold more copies this week than both Britney Spears' latest album Britney Jean and the sinking fast disk from Lady Gaga, ARTPOP." What is incredible about that fact is it outsold Spears despite the fact that the Robertsons' album was released October 29 and Britney Jean on December 3. We shouldn't be surprised.

Emily Ekins at Reason's Hit & Run:

The latest Reason-Rupe poll finds that 54 percent of Americans think government, while necessary for certain functions, is generally burdensome and impedes them more than helps them. Conversely 41 percent view government as primarily a source of good and helping people improve their lives.

A majority of Democrats (54 percent) view government as primarily a source of helping people, while 40 percent generally view it as an obstacle. In contrast, majorities of Republicans (69 percent) and independents (57 percent) disagree, viewing government as primarily as burdensome making it more difficult for people to improve their lives. Twenty-six percent of Republicans and 39 percent of independents view government as primarily helpful ...

Although majorities of young Americans agree there is more government should be doing, 53 percent view government as primarily burdensome and 43 percent view it as helpful. These numbers are similar to older Americans who feel government impedes people by a margin of 55 to 40 percent.

Libertarians could spin these numbers as either positive or negative. Also, "generally ... burdensome" and "primarily a source of good" is hardly the right binary barometer to measure attitudes toward government. Furthermore, respondents were evenly split on "The less government the better" and "There are more things government should be doing" (48% each). The full poll results are here. Overall it is disappointing to see such high support for government in general.