6-14-12 Hodgepodge

Sleep Training

As I mentioned we would some time back, Mrs. Van Horn and I began sleep-training our baby last night. I prepared this post in advance for automatic publication in case we don't get much sleep Friday night or I end up having to spend my normal writing time during the wee hours tending to the baby. Although I don't anticipate having problems Sunday night, should Monday roll around without a post, that would be why.

Weekend Reading

"'I don't feel bad about being subsidized by people who are working,' Mrs. Davey told The Daily Mail." -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, in "The Dog-Eat-Dog Welfare State Is Lose-Lose" at Forbes

"The President received his PSA test. But under ObamaCare, you may not be able to." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Is President Obama's Prostate Gland More Important than Yours?" at Forbes

"'Freedom requires responsibility' might be even better stated: 'Having choices means being responsible for knowing what you want.'" -- Michael Hurd, in "How Are Your Priorities?" at DrHurd.com

"Like all free market prices, the funds could even assist investors who don't buy them by providing a real-time indicator of what quantitative factors are working" -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "New ETFs Take 'Market-Neutral' Approach" at SmartMoney

My Two Cents

Brook and Watkins have managed to find a dead horse that cannot be beaten too severely: The welfare state implies theft. As far as I can tell, most Americans are, fortunately, still selfish enough to want to own things of their own. Should enough realize that the welfare state endangers that right, the welfare state will finally see its day of reckoning.

Yeah, but will the thieves get anywhere?

I was amused to learn that "keyless" BMWs are easy to steal.

I had to rent an SUV recently, and mine was a brand, spanking new keyless model with the most poorly-conceived controls I have ever seen. (I've driven keyless cars before and I still had to ask how to start it.) The automatic transmission had a strange joystick control that returned to the same position no matter which gear was engaged, depriving me of a secondary (tactile) indication of which gear I was in (e.g., forward or reverse), which was bad news since shifting to a given gear was counterintuitive and the fat spokes on the steering wheel frequently blocked the tiny digital gear readout on the dash. (This was very unsettling when attempting to maneuver into and out of parking spots.) 

--CAV