Canada's parliamentary opposition reacted with outrage after Prime Minister Stephen Harper shut down the Legislature until Jan. 26, seeking to forestall a no-confidence vote that he was sure to lose and that might have provoked a constitutional crisis.

No matter how democratic you think a country is, if its really a monarchy, there are still inherent risks in that. Imagine President Bush sending Congress home.

Canadian leader provokes anger by closing Parliament - International Herald Tribune

Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world's oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.

Oldest Marijuana Stash Found: Discovery News

Worth Less or Worthless?

Deflation is going to end before too long, so investors shouldn't get overly comfortable.

Avoiding inflation after so much stimulus will be like avoiding acceleration after having pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor in a truck that has now swapped going uphill for going downhill.

...the trick will become avoiding hyperinflation of the kind that kills currencies, as happened in the Weimar Republic.

You just need to know that we're about to do a three-step, from inflation (earlier this year), to deflation (now), and back to inflation again (a year or so from now). It's going to be neck-snapping.

Trying to protect my meager personal assets in the midst of this crisis, I feel like I'm in the middle of the pacific in a small sailboat during a massive storm, with swells reaching tens of feet above me.

Prepare for Your Money to Be Worth Less - The Daily Beast

This might be the key passage of my interview with John Ziegler on Tuesday, for it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don't win elections anymore. It is not that conservatism generally permits less nuance than liberalism (in terms of political messaging, that is probably one of conservatism's strengths). Rather, the key lies in the second passage that I highlighted. There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

I never recommended this article but I keep coming back to it in my thinking. Its a bit too partisan to the point of being unfair, but its interesting nonetheless. I've certainly been confronted with many conservatives who seem to take the position that if you don't agree with their views that there must be something wrong with you. Serious factual objections are just laughed off rather than engaged. Political positions are to be agreed with, not seriously discussed. Its not about the ideas. Its personal.

There are also Liberals who act this way, but the medium is the message, and there may be a connection between this perspective and the conservative preference for radio.

Perhaps in some respects this is what makes living in Atlanta more tolerable than living in San Francisco. Partisans generally conclude that I am the opposite of whatever they are because I'm always critical of their ideas.

Conservatives who assume I'm a liberal don't feel the need to change my views. They think I'm an idiot, and they don't bother talking to me about politics because they are looking for confirmation and are not interested in having a persuasive discussion, particularly with an idiot like me. I am therefore free to continue to be an idiot with only mild annoyance at the fact that I am so perceived.

Liberals who assume I'm a conservative, on the other hand, believe that I am at least complicit with and possibly personally responsible for disease, oppression, genocide, poverty, death, and the general plight of man. I am the enemy, and it is absolutely necessary to change my views so that I stop oppressing people. I am not just to be ridiculed but I am to be hated, and I cannot be left alone to my evil ideas. This tends to make living around liberals a great deal less comfortable.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: Did Talk Radio Kill Conservatism?

I compare the annual average beat variance of the songs in the US Billboard Top 100 since its inception in 1958 through 2007 to the standard deviation of returns of the S&P 500 for the same year and find that they are significantly negatively correlated. With the recent high stock volatility, people should now prefer less volatile music

SSRN-Music and the Market: Song and Stock Volatility by Philip Maymin

The news references chart is particularly useful.

Google Trends: inflation, deflation

College tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent.

"Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.”

Higher Education May Soon Be Unaffordable for Most Americans, Report Says - NYTimes.com

You could also, however, argue that we have a bimodal distribution, with one average duration for downturns unrelated to the long-term credit cycle, and another longer duration for small-sample downturns representing unwinding of said cycle. I lean toward the latter view, and thus think most of this discussion of recession durations is unhelpful and not nuanced.

I lean toward that explanation as well.

Paul Kedrosky: The Trouble with Recession Averages

The new technology is being used in conjunction with new government passports, passcards and driver's licenses embedded with computer chips that contain the holder's name, date of birth, nationality, passport or ID number and a digitized photo. The personal data can be "read" by a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) machine as the person approaches a border-crossing checkpoint.

By the time a car stops at the Customs booth, the agent will have the photos and information of everyone in the car. If a name is on a watch list or database, the person will be taken in for questioning. The system will be "more efficient," says Thomas Winkowski of Customs and Border Protection.

The border crossing ID requirement takes effect in June. So far, 600,000 State Department passcards and 40,000 embedded licenses from Washington state and New York have been issued.

The government WAS planning on using long range scanning to read RFID passports, and apparently is STILL doing that with state ID cards!

New machines scan IDs at border crossings - USATODAY.com

It was found that the jihadis had used the anonymous "remailer" service - which is the most secure and least traceable way to send an email - instead of the normal Internet service availed on earlier occasions.

Jihadis used 'anonymous' service to send email-India-The Times of India