The Education Bubble
One test of skill for investors is the ability to spot a bubble. As I’ve had it recently described to me, a bubble exists when there is a mentality that prices in a certain area will always rise. Take housing, for example. The wisdom for many of the recent decades has been that housing prices will continue to rise - despite the fact that houses are depreciating assets much like cars.
Now think about education costs. When in our lifetime has anyone suggested that education costs will do anything but rise? “When your children graduate, annual tuition will be hundreds of thousands of dollars” we are conditioned to think.
This is a bubble.
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Beware of Latest Flash Update
Adobe’s latest version of Flash will break this site, youtube, et al. when using Firefox. If you’ve updated to flash version 9.0.115.0, the flash-stylized links of this website will not work. Youtube videos will load only the first two seconds, and play with no audio - albeit this behavior occurs intermittently.
Fortunately, you can check your version of flash, and download version 9.0.47.0 (the last version of flash that actually works). The appropriate installer can be chosen from the “fp9_archive.zip\fp9_archive\9r4\” directory.
There are plenty of sites and suggestions out there about turning off services, moving dll files, clearing cache, reinstalling Firefox, upgrading to FF Beta 3, or even “upgrading your internet connection to prevent choppy playback.” Don’t listen to them. They only think their particular solution works because the youtube playback problem comes and goes, and just happened to go at a certain point in their troubleshooting flail.
This is the only solution that works. I had particular insight into version 115’s flaws because my youtube problems were coupled with the links on this site being broken permanently after the flash upgrade. Despite how youtube was doing on any given day, the links here were always unresponsive - and now they work perfectly with revision 47.
Quite a Striking Curveball
Clayton Kershaw shows us “Public Enemy #1″
Iraqi People Being Scammed Into Becoming US Colony
On Jan. 13, 2008, I wrote about the legislative situation in Iraq and the continued occupation of US forces in violation of the Iraqi constitution in “Iraq Wants the US to Leave.” At that time, the US had circumvented the Iraqi constitution by seeking the extension of the occupation before the UN without Iraqi parliament’s approval. With the assistance of US-appointed Prime Minister al-Maliki, the Bush administration was able to silence the voice of the Parliament, which had already voted for strict timetables and was unlikely to extend the occupation. This all takes place in a political climate in which 7-in-10 Iraqis believe the “surge” has made security worse, where half of Iraqis want the US to leave immediately, and where 6-in-10 Iraqi’s believe that attacks on coalition forces are “acceptable.”
We All Scream for Sexual Predators
Nothing in this country carries the stigma of having a criminal record containing a sexual offense - if the recent move to ban them from operating ice cream trucks is any indication. Consider the following: