Nobrainer’s Think Tank

The snowstorm headed for the provided little more than a light dusting (WOOHOO!).

Nothing to see here. Please move along.

Good stuff.

The snow from the last two February storms is still melting here in Northern, VA (I’ sure that some areas still have piles leftover from the big December storm). So what better time to have another winter weather event.

• Fortunately, this is one looks like it will be remarkable only its inferiority compared to other storms this winter. “ACCUMULATIONS… POTENTIAL FOR SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 OR MORE INCHES.” That is unless you live in say, New York, then you may get to bypass the uber-cool thunder-snow phenomenon and go straight into HURRICANE SNOW, snow so intense it makes me think of POWERTHIRST.
  See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

• In NASCAR news, someone has accurately captured the Danica-enomenon.
  
  Ok. That’s not entirely fair. But then again, neither is the media coverage of her which, at least up to this point, has constantly been a disservice to her driving skills because it typically only highlights how not-good she is as a driver.
• In news of the nanny-state, we learn of the roadblocks faced by Boulder, CO, in becoming some kind of green Mecca.
  

  City officials never dreamed they’d have to play nanny when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal and passionate about the great outdoors.

  Instead, as Congress considers how to encourage Americans to conserve more energy, Boulder stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of good intentions.

  “What we’ve found is that for the vast majority of people, it’s exceedingly difficult to get them to do much of anything,” says Kevin Doran, a senior research fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

  But hey, don’t worry. Despite being dedicated to spending their own money to have the Green Police invade people’s homes, they’re only getting an additional “$370,000 in federal stimulus money”. I think $370k is a fair amount for the American taxpayer to spend to bribe pay greenies to be green.

• A bit late, but here are the hot stocks for a new decade. Actually they were the hot stocks of 1999. Those include companies like AOL, TI, and MCI. In other words, the last decade was bad news for the idiots who invested too late in the hot trends of the day. Fortunately people don’t invest that stupidly nowadays.
• In legal news, the case of Jeffrey Skilling, that Enron guy, is going to the Supreme Court. There’s at least a compelling argument that the federal prosecutors who convicted Skilling were overreaching a bit.
  

  the Government’s repeated acknowledgement that Skilling’s case has no precedent in pre-McNally case law (GB17, 49) confirms that this special crime is its own new category, created for the first time in the Government’s brief in this Court.

  It is time for prosecutors to stop making up crimes under this statute. If § 1346 is not invalidated altogether, it should be limited to the single category of conduct universally recognized in the case law and hence largely immune from manipulation—quid pro quo bribes and kickbacks.

• Finally, this song has been my favorite song of the last week or two. Here’s Stevie Wonder performing Superstition live on Sesame Street.
  

I wrote to a certain organization I do business with because their FAQ says “[a] spreadsheet showing the methodology used” yada yada yada “is provided for your information.” Unfortunately they don’t link to the spreadsheet. I simply requested they update the page to link to the spreadsheet.

I just received notice of resolution.

The links… are no longer avaialble [sic].

Yup. The issue is resolved now.

Greg Mankiw is loving Obama’s proposal.

From yesterday:

You would think that all those future Nobel-prize-winning economists working for the President would explain to him the history and economics of government price controls. Imposing price controls certainly wasn’t President Nixon’s finest hour.

Today:

In other words, the new proposal would do less to bend the curve of rising healthcare costs and more to impede long-run economic growth. This change was probably made to attract more House Democrats. It will likely make the plan even less attractive to congressional Republicans.

By the way, according to CBO director Doug Elmendorf, the new administration proposal has too few details for the CBO to provide cost estimates. Perhaps more details will be available in the days to come.

The new full version of Thunderbird is a nice upgrade. That much is true. However, it’s sad that after such a long time between major revisions, it still feels like it’s much less than it can and should be.

My first gripe is that upon installation, the new version of Thunderbird took it upon itself to completely re-download all of my IMAP email. We’re talking about many gigs of information here. Fortunately I installed the new version when I was enjoying a wired connection at my office, otherwise the performance-robbing exercise may have taken a nearly an entire day.

My 2nd gripe is that the new Thunderbird seems to often download a couple of new messages and then spend minutes “indexing message 1 of 2″.

My 3rd gripe, is that the “reply” options frequently suck. Many times I receive an email from someone. I reply to it. Then I want to reply to my reply. In the old version of Thunderbird, I could “reply all” and reply to myself and the original sender. Not so in the new Thunderbird.

My 4th gripe has to do with search. Frankly, I think the search in version 3 is better than in 2. However, I had installed some extension (now I can’t even tell which one, maybe Expression Search, that let you easily search email by quickly specifying the “from:” the “to:” the “subject:” and/or the “body:”. The new search only provides a few options. So if you want to search for something in the body from a particularly sender, then you’re shit outta luck because that ain’t a predefined option so fuck you you needy thunderbird shithead asshole freeloader. And on top of all that, the search can be ridiculously slow. If users are going to have a ton of data, it’s crucial to have fast and accurate search functions.

On the upside for the new Thunderbird, it’s nice to be able to have messages opened in tabs rather than Windows. Plus I like that it asks if I intend to attach a file when I use the word “attachment” in a message.

Bottom line, though, is that Thunderbird still has a lot of growing up to do.