In September, L.A. Times columnist James Rainey wrote a column in which he uncritically quoted ACORN worker Lavelle Stewart suggesting that she had turned Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe out of her office:

[V]isits to other ACORN offices have gone almost entirely unmentioned. Lavelle Stewart, a fair-housing coordinator in the group’s Los Angeles office, told me this week that she tried to get the “prostitute,” who claimed she had been beaten by her pimp, to go to a women’s center.

“The fact she was not taking the help I offered her made me think something was not right,” Stewart said. “It raised a red flag.”

I wasn’t so sure — and I publicly declared that Rainey had likely been suckered and would end up with egg on his face.

And sure enough, Rainey’s completely innocent ACORN worker Lavelle Stewart is caught on video offering advice on setting up an international prostitution ring and hiding the profits so that the pimp can run for elected office:

Patterico is the number one factchecker for the Los Angeles Times. I told him once that I wish there was someone like him in every big city in America keeping the newspaper honest.

Dear Wen Jaibao:

We in America have noted with concern your nations’ expression of alarm at our Federal Reserve’s blatant money-printing, debt monetization, and interference in the free markets, in particular the recent commentary of China’s bank regulator cited here:

“The continuous depreciation in the dollar, and the U.S. government’s indication, that in order to resume growth and maintain public confidence, it basically won’t raise interest rates for the coming 12 to 18 months, has led to massive dollar arbitrage speculation,” he told reporters in Beijing today at the International Finance Forum.

Liu said this has “seriously affected global asset prices, fuelled speculation in stock and property markets, and created new, real and insurmountable risks to the recovery of the global economy, especially emerging-market economies.”

Mr. Liu is correct, of course.  However, yesterday afternoon Ben Bernanke gave you the finger, first in his speech and then later in the Q&A in which he said:

Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said it’s “not obvious” that asset prices in the U.S. are out of line with underlying values after a 64 percent jump in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index from its March low.

Donald Kohn, another Fed Governor, erected his middle finger in your direction as well with his comments last night and Yellen added her view this morning in which they also both said “we see no bubble.”  That’s three.

How many more times do you need to be flipped off before you get it: The Fed isn’t going to do what you want, and neither is Obama.  Get over yourself.

On the objective measures the price/earnings multiple of the S&P 500 currently stands at over 130, more than double its previous record and vastly beyond anything achieved even in China’s manipulated and overheated markets.  In short, they’re lying and they don’t care.

Bhagwati: Instead of pandering to union fear, Obama has got to engage them. You have got to help these doubting Thomases confront their fears. He’s got to say that trade with the poor countries is actually helping, not hurting, you. The unions’ main fear is that unskilled jobs are disappearing. They see these jobs being taken up elsewhere where the labor is cheap. But they can’t hold onto these jobs anyway. What they get in return from trade are cheap products that they need as consumers. So free trade moderates the downward pressure on their real wages.

Big portions of the wages of poor workers go toward low quality textiles, for instance. That is well-established. But if you look at the structure of protectionism, if you go and buy something from Anne Klein that’s going to be expensive, but it carries no tariff at all because these high-end designers compete on variety. Tariffs matter where the competition is on prices. So the low-quality items which poor people buy end up carrying higher tariffs than high-end items that rich people buy.

reason: So free trade’s harm to union workers as producers is minimal, but the harm to them as consumers would be very great if we didn’t have free trade?

Bhagwati: Yes. So what President Obama has to do is basically change the ethos in this country so that it understands that the United States has profited enormously from free trade. Free trade has rescued India and China from poverty, yes. But the U.S. working class has also profited from international trade.

Previously -  The War on Food Poor People Eat

At this point, I was cornered. I had no choice but to say what I really believe about what the Fed was doing. In spite of all the sophisticated rhetoric about “quantitative easing” and “new tools for monetary policy,” the only way that I can understand what the Fed was doing is to say that the goal was to stimulate bank profits, not the economy. If your goal were to stimulate the economy, you would inject enough reserves to do that and not pay interest on reserves. That might require buying some long-term bonds or mortgage securities, but not the hundreds of billions that the Fed actually bought.

Everything the Fed has been doing over the past fifteen months makes sense if you think of their goal as transferring wealth from taxpayers to banks. If you try to explain it as an attempt to implement an expansionary monetary policy, you won’t even get past my high school students.

Previously - Delicious free lunches for Judge Elihu Smails

Funny thing? Last night Natalie wanted to come home more than anything. Tonight when it was time to leave the hospital she didn’t want to leave any more. She liked it and was having fun. East Tennessee Children’s Hospital is a great hospital with a great staff. We’re fortunate to have it. Many thanks to everyone who works there.

Hi, I’m Nicolas Cage! I’m an Oscar winning actor (!!!) and the star of all your favorite movies! I’m here to give you all the investment advice you’ll need to become famous! Now let’s begin!

But before we can begin, let’s cover some basic definitions first:

Asset - An Asset is something you own that’s worth something, like money or hair.

Liability - A Liability is something you own that is not worth something, like your family or joy.

Income - Income is money that comes to you, like flies to a magnet, or honey to a vacuum cleaner.

Expenditure - Expenditures are when money goes away from you, like squirrels do when you try to pet them.

Now let’s begin again!

Levitating pyrolytic carbon

Diamagnetism is the property of an object which causes it to create a magnetic field in opposition of an externally applied magnetic field, thus causing a repulsive effect. Specifically, an external magnetic field alters the orbital velocity of electrons around their nuclei, thus changing the magnetic dipole moment in the direction opposing the external field. Diamagnets are materials with a magnetic permeability less than μ₀ (a relative permeability less than 1).

Consequently, diamagnetism is a form of magnetism that is only exhibited by a substance in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field. It is generally quite a weak effect in most materials, although superconductors exhibit a strong effect.

Diamagnetic materials cause lines of magnetic flux to curve away from the material, and superconductors can exclude them completely (except for a very thin layer at the surface).

In 1778 S. J. Bergman was the first individual to observe that bismuth and antimony were repelled by magnetic fields. However, the term “diamagnetism” was coined by Michael Faraday in September 1845, when he realized that all materials in nature possessed some form of diamagnetic response to an applied magnetic field.

A thin slice of pyrolytic graphite, which is an unusually strong diamagnetic material, can be stably floated in a magnetic field, such as that from rare earth permanent magnets. This can be done with all components at room temperature, making a visually effective demonstration of diamagnetism.

The Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, has conducted experiments where water and other substances were successfully levitated. Most spectacularly, a live frog (see figure) was levitated.^[3]

See also ferromagnetism and paramagnetism.

Previous WOTD - Veblen Goods and Giffen Goods (Economics)

“The inherent problems of the international economic system have not been fully addressed,” said China’s president Hu Jintao. Indeed not. China is still exporting overcapacity to the rest of us on a grand scale, with deflationary consequences.

While some fret about liquidity-driven inflation, Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist, said the greater danger is that record levels of idle plant almost everywhere will feed a downward spiral of job cuts and corporate busts. “I’m more worried about deflation,” he said.

By holding the yuan to 6.83 to the dollar to boost exports, Beijing is dumping its unemployment abroad – “stealing American jobs”, says Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. As long as China does it, other tigers must do it too.

“Oh this is all very well and good Jesse, but when I go to the grocery store or to the gas station or the convenience store to buy my instant Lotto tickets I pay in dollars and not gold or euros.”

Yes, but when your suppliers go to buy their goods that are imported, they pay in dollars that are depreciating. You know that some prices are moving higher despite slack demand overall. This is what we call ’selective inflation.’ This is how it starts.

P.S. Something related to this that I’ve noticed is the rise in Nikon lens prices over the past year. Nikon is based in Japan, so everything they make is ultimately denominated in yen. Even with a lousy economy and slack demand, Nikon lens prices in the U.S. have increased due to a dollar that’s deteriorating relative to the yen. This is the NexTag price chart for the Nikon 70-300mm VR showing rising prices (red is maximum, black is median, blue is minimum):

Previously - Inflation or deflation? Noriel Roubini says “deflation now, but maybe big inflation in a few years”

Melissa took her to the doctor this morning at 10:30 and never came home. She stayed at doctor’s offices all day and then they finally admitted Natalie to the hospital. She had a kidney infection and wouldn’t drink or eat and she hadn’t peed since 11:00 AM.

I went over there after work. While Melissa went home to get some movies and clothes and overnight things I stayed with Natalie. She got an IV, which was no fun. I promised Natalie I wouldn’t let anyone do that to her unless I knew it would help her.

She was very upset for about an hour. All she wanted to do was get the needle out of her hand and go home. Poor kiddo.

Eventually she started calming down. Finally she had to go peepee. After that she ate and drank. Melissa brought her “Ruby and Max,” which she loves to watch. Melissa’s spending the night with her and I expect they’ll both be home tomorrow.

Photo by Margaret Wood. Hard to believe Natalie looked like that just a year ago. She’s lost the baby fat and has Shirley curly hair. They grow up fast.

I have a mixed opinion of Palin. She’s on the right side of most issues I care about. As far as her personally, I think she has some failings and quirks and shortcomings.

Compensating for that, she also has a superpower. Sarah Palin can drive some of her critics to frothing insanity and unforced errors. And it turns out that they’re generally the people I’d most like to see exposed for their irrationality and bias.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

• Ambidextrous Slide Catch Lever
• Interchangeable Back Straps
• Beveled Magazine Well
• Reversible Magazine Release
• New Sights
• New Disassembly Routine (no more dryfiring to disassemble)
• New Texture
• New Recoil Spring Assembly

Things That Will Not Be Seen on Gen 4 Glocks

• magazine disconnect safety
• external safety lever
• grip safety
• ambidextrous magazine release (button on both sides rather than interchangeable)
• slide serrations forward of the ejection port
• metal frame

Hat tip to Unc.

AMC is being very, very good to me. I’m about halfway through the Matrix trilogy. Then at 8:00 it’s the premier of “The Prisoner” mini-series with Ian McKellan.

“Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990. Now that they are out of prison, German law states that they can’t be referred to by name in relation to the killings. Therefore, they have sued to get Wikipedia to remove their names from the Wikipedia article about the killings. The German edition of Wikipedia has already complied, but the English edition is citing US freedom of speech and a lack of presence in Germany as reasons why they don’t need to remove the name. In a bit of irony, their lawyer e-mailed the NY Times: ‘In the spirit of this discussion, I trust that you will not mention my clients’ names in your article.’”

* Notice what I did there?

P.S. This Metro Pulse article about the Sunsphere is incredible -Did a 14-Year-Old Kid Help Design the Sunsphere? The kid’s design used a doughnut-shaped elevator wrapped around a central support and the elevator turned as it ascended. Wicked.

Bryce Thomas is an architect of 45 who lives and works in Seattle. He sounds modest and unassuming on the phone. Son of businessman/lawyer Perry Thomas, Bryce grew up near West Hills. In 1978, when he was 14, his parents took him on an “adventure” vacation trip to Seattle. He was awed, as most teenagers still are, at his first sight of the Space Needle, the theme structure for the 1962 World’s Fair. “The Space Needle in Seattle is very slender, very graceful,” he says. He’d heard his home town had a fair coming up, thought it needed a theme structure like the Space Needle. Talking with his parents around the dinner table, he proposed what he thought might be an appropriate design for it.

He drew a picture that impressed his father. It’s labeled “Basic Sun Globe.” He still has the drawing of it he made in July, 1978. The globe is made of “gold glass,” mounted on top of a very tall stalk, accessible by an elevator. A note, in a child’s hand, specifies, “Globe contain[s] Restaurant and Observation area. If possible use as a source of solar energy [for] operation.”

His father was impressed, and mailed the diagram to the World’s Fair authorities. They heard nothing for two years.

“I was shocked the day I went to get the newspaper,” one Sunday in 1980, Bryce says. “On the front page there was a picture of this Sunsphere proposal.”

The World’s Fair had hired design firm Community Tectonics in 1979, several months after receiving the boy’s drawings, and they’re credited with the Sunsphere’s design.

In June, 1980, Bryce received a letter from George Siler, the fair’s executive vice president, who did acknowledge the kid’s plan. “As you can imagine, we receive lots of suggestions from people about the Fair,” Siler wrote. “Many of them are impractical or not in keeping with our objectives. Yours was a notable exception. In fact, you submitted one of the best ideas we have received. Your Sun Globe is innovative, well conceived and very much in accordance with what we think our World’s Fair ought to contain.