-These people are crazy. Period.
-Somebody is gonna get fiiiiiiiiired…
-In the “so what else is new?” department: Gov’t attempts to set aside contracts for disabled veterans, ends up handing yet more money to Boeing & GE instead.
-Ross Douthat reads an argument that loose credit has removed class distinctions from use of cosmetic surgery & says this to it:
Riffing on the data, Tyler [Cowen] writes that “cosmetic surgery is not just a zero-sum game but rather it leads to better matches, more matches, and more people who are happy with their looks or with the looks of their partner(s).” I would go halfway with him, and say that it’s certainly a rational response to a culture where airbrushed images of perfect beauty flood the airwaves and supermarket aisles, where male instincts about sex are increasingly influenced by the siliconed imagery of hard-core pornography, and where high divorce rates (which are especially high among the working class) ensure that large numbers of women find themselves re-entering the dating pool in middle age. Whether it’s something to be welcomed, though, is another question entirely.
Figures he’d gripe about shifting social norms on sexuality & completely ignore the “easy credit is an unalloyed good!” assumption underneath it all. Me, I’d rather have a culture of tight money & loose sex than the reverse.
