Just for the heck of it, I decided to play a little presidential game. We hear far too often which party or candidate is good for this issue or the other. Let’s look over the past 100 years, and see who has been “good” for the stock market. I managed to dig up the historical price data for the Dow Jones Industrials Average and figured out how the market did on each president’s watch. Here are the results:

Since the great depression, Carter and Nixon are by far the two worst presidents when it comes to guiding the market, with George W Bush and LBJ running closely behind. Reagan and Clinton were by far the best. What’s interesting to note is that Clinton and Reagan had two very different economic plans. Regan increased defense spending tremendously and tried supply side economics to spur growth. Clinton took a very laissez-faire approach to the technological boom, declining to regulate or interfere in any way. (Think sales tax on internet purchases and how many other people would have handled that issue).

These numbers should probably also be taken with a grain of salt. From the numbers alone it looks like Calvin Coolidge had the highest growth in only 6 years time (compared with 8 for Clinton and Reagan), but the over exuberant growth under his administration is what led to the massive crash in 1929.

Jim Caple makes a very good point on McGwire, who really should be in the hall of fame:

And speaking of [Gaylord] Perry, funny how writers won’t vote for Mark McGwire despite no actual proof he took steroids (which were not specifically banned by baseball at the time) but didn’t have a problem voting in Perry despite his own admittance to cheating by throwing the spitter (which was banned four decades before Perry reached the majors). Perhaps writers should make it clear just which forms of cheating warrant inclusion in the Hall of Fame and which warrant exclusion, ridicule, dishonor and sanctimonious moralizing.

I had the following email exchange with Rb. Eidlitz of kosherquest.org, which is highly regarded as having acceptable standards for which kosher symbols to accept.

Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:16:28 -0400
From: “Ari Elias-Bachrach”
To: eeidlitz@kosherquest.org
Subject: half moon k

Rb. Eidlitz -

I apologize in advance for asking a question I’m sure you get all the
time, but I couldn’t find any information regarding the half moon k on
the website. I know in the past they were unreliable, but have been
working to become more so. Last I heard they claimed that they had
completed the process of raising their standards and were now “up to
par” so to speak. I’m curious to know if you consider them to be an
acceptable symbol now, or if they have not raised their standards
sufficiently.

—————————–
From: “Rabbi Eidlitz” <eeidlitz@kosherquest.org>
To: “Ari Elias-Bachrach” <Ari@Elias-Bachrach.com>
Subject: Re: half moon k
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:43:34 -0700

What you heard is correct. All of their products are now fine. In addition, the O/U bought them last week. All of their products will soon appear with an O/U. Kol Tuv

Just remember – you heard it here first. (Seriously – why is this not mentioned on either website or anywhere else on the web?)

Now, about the only thing the half moon k certifies that I really care about it salsa. For some reason they do a whole bunch of brands and since there’s no Herr’s salsa down here in DC, it’s hard to find kosher salsa. Now, if only I could get someone (else more reliable) to make sunchips kosher, I would be happy.

Back in the summer of 2001, I wrote an article for a campus political journal about high gas prices, which were then around $2 a gallon. As can be expected, people were clamoring for government to “do something” about the problem. I argued that high gas prices were actually not a bad things at all. I pointed largely to the US government’s massive subsidies in the form of it’s foreign policy, and pointed to the SS Cole bombing as a side effect. I predicted that higher gas prices, in the long run, would force people to conserve energy, and spur development in alternative fuels, ultimately benefiting the environment and US foreign policy. I only received one serious response to the article. It was from a law student whose argument boiled down to “you kids don’t know what you’re talking about”.

A few years later, I’m happy to see that I was half right. The events of September 11th essentially altered all foreign policy discussions so fundamentally that I can’t possibly call any pre-September 11th prediction in that arena to have been correct. In the very recent past we’ve seen a huge push for smaller and more fuel efficient cars. Hybrids are sexy, people are reconsidering diesel, and people are even buying electric cars. Every industry is finding ways to cut down on fuel use. Most importantly, people are investing in alternative forms of energy. In summary: the free market works bitches.

Now what is congress doing about all of this? Too much it seems. The Republicans want to drill in ANWR. The Democrats want to force oil companies to drill in already leased federal land, and release oil from the strategic reserve. Both sides of the aisle want to blame speculators, probably because that makes it easier than doing any serious self examination. So far, there has been anough division that no serious action has happened. This is perhaps the best thing that can happen. Let the market do what it does best – reward people who find solutions to problems. Every time congress tries to prop up our failing energy policies with more intervention they just waste money by delaying the inevitable and make it more painful when we do finally need to rework the way we produce energy in this country.

I think it’s great that many Israeli and Jewish websites proudly display their shomer shabbat logos. (I say Israeli and Jewish, despite the fact that I’ve actually only seen it on commercial Israeli religious sites). Although I think it may be a bit of a silly chumra, I really don’t mind if people do it. I do have some questions about how ethical it is to try and profit by making other people afraid of silly chumras, but again, I try not to interfere in the free market, even if people sometimes do silly things. What I don’t like is when websites try to simply take their site down when it is shabbat for them. Seriously – do you not know that the Internet is a global phenomenon? Do you not know how timezones work? Has it eve occured to you that one of the millions of Jews outside of Israel might be interested in something you have to offer on a Friday afternoon? Grrrrr…..

Towards the end of a fascinating post about Edgar Allen Poe’s apparent knowledge of the cessation of the tamid sacrifice on shiva’a asar b’tammuz, seforim blog has this little tidbit:

Although I haven’t seen this in print, I was told that when R. Solovetchik came to Boston there was no mikveah in Boston (there was one outside). R. Solovetchik instructed the women to stop the torah reading until sufficient funds were pledged for a mikveah.

True or not, it’s a great story either way.

I don’t usually bother to waste time questioning the intelligence of celebrities, but sometimes they make it hard not to:

Jessica Simpson, in town with boyfriend Tony Romo, is not a stickler for detail. When I asked her, “Jessica, is today your birthday?” she replied: “Yes! No! Wait! Yesterday! No, wait, is today the 12th? Then, day before yesterday? I don’t know!”

NASA wants your pee.

NASA has a long-standing tradition of collecting samples from its workers to help design better space toilets because “you can’t make fake urine,” Lewis said.

The Connecticut-based company building the Orion toilet needs the large volume of urine (about the daily output of 30 people) to work on urine acidity problems, said spokesman Leo Makowski.

From china

Originally uploaded by bachrach44

Every so often little things happen which serve to remind me of the global society we live in, and how that has subtly changed every aspect of our lives. A few weeks ago I ordered a 5×5x5 rubik’s cube off of ebay. I looked only for the lowest price, without regard to too much else. When the cube showed up in the mail a little later, I realized I had ordered it from Taiwan, R.O.C. The box even includes a customs declaration where the sender wrote simply “puzzle”. 15 years ago this never would have happened. Today, it’s so commonplace I’ll be half of you aren’t even reading anymore.

Anyone who has talked to me about Jewish education knows that one of my favorite things to complain about is the lack of availability of serious Jewish texts. Part of this is simply generational – I’m used to being able to access just about any information about just about anything at any time. The fact that Jewish texts which were printed a thousand years ago (and are therefore in the public domain) are not freely available still confuses me. Although it didn’t take long for the entire tanakh to make it online, and there are several sites dedicated to the books of individual achronim and rishonim, I’m much more interested in the midrashim and other tannaic literature. I have a growing list of useful resources online, and every so often I stumble across a new one. Today was one of those days, so I’ve decided to share the wealth. (One of these days I’ll assemble my links collection into a readable format and post it for people to see. Harass me if you really care and it’ll happen quicker).

tsel harim, a site I’d never even heard of before, has a torah library with lot of interesting texts, including midrash raba, avot de rabbi natan, mesilat yisrael (English, Hebrew, and Russian), and megilat ta’anit.

I’ve been saying this for years:

The question is, would our most popular team sports be able to withstand the same scrutiny? And the answer is, of course not! If cycling’s standards were applied to Major League Baseball, Aaron Rowand wouldn’t be allowed to play this season because he signed with a team that once employed Barry Bonds. If cycling’s standards were applied to the NFL, there would be so few eligible players, teams would have to go back to the single-platoon.

So don’t tell me that cycling and the Tour de France is dirtier than other sports. At least cycling is trying to clean up its sport.