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Herber Hoover and a Locker Room Expression

Belgium is one of the smallest and most densely populated nations in Europe.   It is snugged between France, the Netherlands and Germany with the North Sea forming its northern border. Belgium’s population is educated, intelligent, refined and ostensibly neutral. But, in 1914 its children were starving to death.   During World War I Belgium fell to Germany, which refused to feed Belgian’s civilians.   You don’t have to carry a gun to die in war, and children are the easiest and most quickly dismissed victims of all.   In London an American businessman had already launched and administered a successful effort to bring relief to Americans trapped in England at the beginning of the war.   He was respected and liked, though his social skills were sometimes thin or absent entirely (when he grew weary of the chatter at a dinner party he would simply find a quiet room, pick up a book and start reading).   He was well known as a good judge of character, a creativ...
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Basketball and the K-shaped Economy

  Both of my children were involved in sports, starting in kindergarten.   I never missed a game.   By the time both girls had graduated from high school I felt like I had to call the athletic director and ask him where I was supposed to be on Tuesday.             I was particularly fond of basketball.   When you watch a high school basketball game you are going to see every player leave their heart on the court.   And it is free.   That is why I was aghast to hear that the NBA finals were going for $7000 per seat!               While I am a free-market economist I know a problem when I see it.               Capitalism has a fatal flaw, and that flaw can be illustrated in what has come to be called the K-shaped economy.   Most economic models show themselves as waves, undula...
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Traveling America: Hot Springs, Arkansas

A friend recently sent a message from Hot Springs, Arkansas and I immediately found myself thinking of the time Tom and I spent several days in this happy town.   To visit Hot Springs is to travel back to 1912.   To get a picture of life in 1912 think of the movie Titanic .   It was in April of that year that the doomed ship sailed and the movie offers a good look at the lives, dress and manners of both the well-heeled in a pre-income tax world and the working class who put together enough money for the voyage if not the luxury.   These were the days leading up to the Roaring Twenties when disposable income was available, people were optimistic and the banks had not yet failed.   The suffragette movement was in full gear, though women did not get the right to vote until 1920.             This was also the time before antibiotics when warm, natural springs were considered curative.    The hot sp...
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Just When You Though Ebola Was Behind Us

  Ebola, Mutation and a Lack of Preparation Under a microscope an Ebola virus reminds me of a sailor’s double half hitch.   It is a virus of African origin, a hemorrhagic fever, meaning it causes intense bleeding, frequently from every orifice of the body, in the later stages of the disease.   Ebola virus disease (EVD) typically emerges periodically in small villages of Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.    Ebola’s natural host is probably the fruit bats of the tropics.   When the disease moves to larger animals, principally primates (humans are primates) it becomes fatal.   When the people of these remote villages find the ill or dead primates and use them for food, Ebola enters the human population where is kills and spreads—always through contact with infected bodily fluids.   The disease first appeared in 1976 simultaneously in two countries, the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   At that time, it had a...
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Ballmaxxing, What Could Go Wrong?

The person standing in front of the mirror was certain that added size would also add confidence, enhanced self-respect, even allure.   They would suddenly be stronger, more assertive, less likely to be overlooked in the workplace and the mating market.   Never mind that the body is simply not made for what was being contemplated. To add that kind of size required the injection of foreign substances into sensitive areas that contain delicate structures, blood vessels and nerves, none of which were designed for rapid and extreme distention.     Doctors spoke of the risk of infections, abscesses, sepsis and cellulitis.   It is not a woman, but a man, standing in front of the mirror.   The current slaves to plastic fashion are men.   And they are considering a procedure called “ballmaxxing.”   Before I go any further let me say, as clearly as I can, that you must not do this.   It is dangerous, painful and laughably insecure.   Having...
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