AdamSmith

He did also turn heads by saying the faithful should nonetheless not "breed like rabbits." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/20/catholics-dont-have-to-breed-like-rabbits-says-pope-francis

The inadvertent hilarity of the Heartland Institute vs. Pope Francis Each e-mail from their press office offers a mix of comedy and tragedy. by John Timmer - Apr 30, 2015 12:44pm EDT Ars Technica A little while back, word filtered out that Pope Francis was going to devote an encyclical to climate change. It's not much of a surprise; his tenure has featured a strong emphasis on caring for the poor, and the poor are in no position to air-condition, flood-proof, and bioengineer their way out of the worst impacts of climate change. As part of the preparation for the encyclical, there's a meeting going on at the Vatican Science Academy that's focused on climate change. Guests include everyone from Ban Ki-moon to Nobel Prize winning scientists. Not on the guest list was the Heartland Institute, most notable for putting up a billboard suggesting that people who cared about climate change might be just as deranged as Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. When in Rome...But Heartland decided to go to Rome anyway. I know this because someone has signed me up to its press mailing list, which offers up quotes from expertise-free "experts" that make you wonder whether some of them might need an intervention—or simply a trip back to Earth from whatever planet they seem to be inhabiting. In the case of the meeting at the Vatican, Heartland starts off relatively restrained. "The Heartland Institute," its release says, "has brought real scientists to Rome this week to dissuade Pope Francis from lending his moral authority to the politicized and unscientific climate agenda of the United Nations." While there are two people with scientific training among the people Heartland has brought, the group is also taking someone with a PhD in Scottish history and the former general counsel for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Virginia, along with Marc Morano, a former staffer for Sen. James Inhofe (the Oklahoma republican who has called climate change a hoax), who is now a full-time climate troll who publishes the contact information of scientists so they can be harassed. And Christopher Monckton, who is, well... a bit bonkers. The group's president, Joseph Bast, is a bit less restrained, saying, "The Holy Father is being misled by ‘experts’ at the United Nations who have proven unworthy of his trust." And, of course, the real issue here—money—gets prominent billing, with the release warning the Pope that "there is no need for a radical reordering of global economies that will cause massive reductions in human freedom and prosperity." If the idea of the Pope changing his mind because a bunch of fringe figures used some of the Koch's money to hop a plane to Rome amuses you, you should do your best to get on the Heartland mailing list as well. But in case you can't or won't sign up, I thought I'd share some of the gems that have appeared in my inbox over the last year or so. Earth Day, Shmearth Day!Heartland Science Director Jay Lehr also railed against Earth Day: "Anti-progress zealots began to realize EPA and environmental issues could be used to stop people from improving their lives by ensuring the economy could not advance and energy would never become inexpensive," he wrote. "Today’s Earth Day is all but a symbol of evil, managed by those who care not at all for humans and in fact do no good for nature or the animal world. Most activities are vile recriminations staged by those who wish to keep the poor just where they are: poor.” On the same topic, Heartland also quotes one Alan Caruba, who is the founder of something called The National Anxiety Center: "Earth Day was declared in 1970 and for the past 45 years we have all been living in the Environmental Insane Asylum, being told over and over again to believe things that are the equivalent of Green hallucinations." Heartland also pushed out a press release when President Obama gave a speech linking climate change to impacts on human health. Folks at Heartland didn't like it. “If President Barack Obama really was ‘committed to combating the health impacts of climate change and protecting the health of future generations,’" said Tom Harris, a mechanical engineer who wound up as the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, "he would promote an expansion of coal-fired electricity generation." Which is quite certainly the form of electricity generation that causes the most health problems. Alan Caruba also made another appearance. In this case, he completely ignored any health implications in order to rant about, among other things, solar power. "Many sellers of solar panels for residents are using fraudulent claims, hyping the so-called economic benefits of these systems. If the public is made aware of the fraud, sales will cease except for the most brain-challenged people in the country," he wrote. He went on to say that "President Barack Obama is fully engaged in the huge ‘climate change’ hoax that lacks any basis in science." Facts are hardCaruba also came out with this whopper about the US plan to cut carbon emissions: "[Obama] failed to mention that such levels would be comparable to what they were in the U.S. Civil War era 150 years ago." 2005 emissions were 7.1 billion tons; Obama plans to cut that to 5.3 billion tonnes. That rate was actually last seen in the mid-1980s. When the administration announced new rules governing the release of methane during drilling, which sane people might consider wasteful, Heartland blew another gasket. "Contrary to radical environmentalists’ claims, Methane is NOT an important greenhouse gas (GHG); it has a totally negligible impact on climate," said Fred Singer. Of course, methane currently has nearly 30 percent of the impact of carbon dioxide—not exactly "totally negligible." Singer has been involved with various think tanks that oppose any action on climate change for 25 years now. Others just argued that despite the boom in fossil fuel production during Obama's term, the president was actually trying to push energy companies out of business. "Now that the United States is the world’s biggest energy producer—though suffering as a victim of its own success—President Obama is embarking on a crazed plan that will kick our nation’s oil-and-gas producers while they are down," said Marita Noon, the executive director of the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy. Meanwhile, the managing editor of Environment & Climate News, Sterling Burnett, said, "Once again, without any reason other than to please his radical environmental constituents, President Obama is making it harder for the oil and gas industry to do business." That's just this year so far. With the majority of the year still to come, I'm sure there will be many other chances to enjoy the Heartland's missives. Though they do make me worry about these people—they seem so angry... http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/04/30/the-inadvertent-hilarity-of-the-heartland-institute-vs-pope-francis/

Who’s Afraid of Pope Francis? Garry Wills An authentic pope should be a scary one. Jesus scared the dickens out of people (it cost him his life). Is Pope Francis truly scary? One might think so from the reaction of some guardians of orthodoxy, men like New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who thinks he must threaten the pope with schism to protect the sanctity of marriage, since “this pope may be preserved from error only if the church itself resists him.” But ecclesiastical nitpickers have no armies of similar thinkers to summon. This is not even medium scary. Now, however, something is looming that has billionaires shaking in their boots, and when Catholic billionaires shake, Catholic bishops get sympathetic shudders. These are the men who build their churches, hospitals, schools, and libraries. Catholic lore has made winning over such Money Men the mark of the true church leader—the Bing Crosby priest crooning dollars out of a cranky donor in Going My Way, or the J. F. Powers priest putting up with a wealthy boor to get a golf course for his retreat house. Cardinal Timothy Dolan was recently reminded of these facts of churchly life by Kenneth Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot. The cardinal is working to restore St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, at a cost of $175 million. Langone asked why he and his fellow benefactors should raise such money when the pope is denouncing “the idolatry of money.” He said the pope’s criticism will make his fellow donors “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” But this, too, was a minor threat. Langone was simply threatening to withhold money. Now, as the pope prepares a major encyclical on climate change, to be released this summer, the billionaires are spending a great deal of their money in a direct assault on him. They are calling in their chits, their kept scientists, their rigged conferences, their sycophantic beneficiaries, their bought publicists to discredit words of the pope that have not even been issued: “He would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate,” they say. They do not know exactly what the pope is going to say in his forthcoming encyclical on preserving God’s creation, but they know what he will not say. He will not deny that the poor suffer from actions that despoil the earth. Everything he has said and done so far shows that Francis always stands for the poor. Those who profit from what harms the earth have to keep the poor out of sight. They have trouble enough fighting off the scientific, economic, and political arguments against bastioned privilege. Bringing basic morality to the fore could be fatal to them. That is why they are mounting such a public pre-emptive strike against the encyclical before it even appears. They must not only discredit the pope’s words (whatever they turn out to be), they must block them, ridicule them, destroy them. The measure of their fear is demonstrated by an article in First Things, the Catholic journal that defended the donations to bishops of the pederast religious founder Marcial Maciel. The First Things writer Maureen Mullarkey calls the pope “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist,” and continues: “Francis sullies his office by using demagogic formulations to bully the populace into reflexive climate action with no more substantive guide than theologized propaganda.” The editor of First Things later apologized for the uncivil tone of this piece—but he ran the piece, which is the real act of incivility. These people are really, really scared. When they calm down enough to make some kind of argument, they fall back on their mantra of recent years, claiming nobody really knows anything for sure about the state of the earth. “I’m not a scientist,” they say. Such professed ignorance would make honest people try to learn from the scientists what they do not know. Instead, the implication is that “If I don’t know, nobody can know; it is arrogant to pretend anyone else can know what I don’t know.” They are now adapting this argument to fit the pope. He is not a scientist, we are assured, so he cannot say anything on scientific matters. Actually, this pope knows more about scientific method than people realize. He spent three years as a young man doing experiments in a chemistry laboratory under a very strict supervisor, Esther Balestrino de Careaga. But this is beside the point. The real issue here is not science vs. ignorance, or the UN vs. xenophobia, or my 97 percent of experts against your 3 percent. It is a case of the immensely rich few against the many deprived poor. The few are getting much of their wealth from interlocking interests that despoil the earth. The fact that the poor get poorer in this process is easily dismissed, denied, or derided. The poor have no voice. Till now. If the pope were not a plausible voice for the poor, his opponents would not be running so scared. Their fear is a testimony to him. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/apr/30/whos-afraid-pope-francis/

I think the problem is better characterized as bread and circuses. That gets closer to the decline-and-fall aspect, no?

Hmm... Why the penis is having a moment in men's fashion Fashion has found a new obsession: nude men, specifically men with their penises out. From Rick Owens to Fantastic Man magazine, what's all the fuss about? http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/apr/30/why-the-penis-is-having-a-moment-in-mens-fashion

McMahon famously got into trouble by being funnier than Carson when guest-hosting for him one time, and learned his lesson -- to keep the bucks coming in as sidekick, keep a lid on it.

Been nice knowing you. One in six of world's species faces extinction due to climate change – studyhttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/30/one-in-six-of-worlds-species-faces-extinction-due-to-climate-change-study

One suspects the people who write the checks to pay for the TV ad slots have done their math to an actuarial level. E.g., Conan's TBS Show Nears Leno and Letterman Pricing. http://adage.com/article/media/tv-conan-s-tbs-show-nears-leno-letterman-pricing/145553/ Shows die pretty quickly when that equation no longer balances.

David Letterman Reflects on 33 Years in Late-Night Television The New York Times In a single bound, David Letterman seemed to leap the full length of the stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater, racing from backstage as if he’d been thrust forward by the fanfare played by his longtime bandleader, Paul Shaffer, and his CBS Orchestra, and by the rumble of his announcer, Alan Kalter, bellowing his name — “Daaaaay-vid Leh-terrrr-maaaaaaaan!” It was a routine Mr. Letterman, 68, has performed countless times but will repeat no more after May 20, when he will preside over his last episode of “Late Show,” the CBS franchise he established and has hosted since 1993. Like the veteran slugger who comes to the ballpark for batting practice, he was here on this April afternoon partly to warm up his swing on a few easy pitches, but mostly to put on a show. No home viewers were watching as he twirled his microphone around like a Wild West lasso, walked it across the floor like a dog and leaned on an expensive broadcast camera. This was a pretaping ritual Mr. Letterman was doing only for the few hundred audience members in the theater. Or maybe he was doing it only for himself. David Letterman dressing for a taping of “Late Show.” Each cup to the left represents a completed show. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times “Everything O.K. at home?” he asked the crowd. “Everything O.K. at work?” Met with mostly cheers, he laughed and added: “You don’t find yourself filled with some kind of emotional longing? Are we emotionally stable?” But how could these fans not be riddled with angst, knowing that in a few weeks, Mr. Letterman would bid a heartfelt good night to all of this, after a run of more than 33 years in late-night television — even longer than the three-decade tenure of his mentor, Johnny Carson. After that last show, he will head home to his wife, Regina, and 11-year-old son, Harry, and try to figure out what comes next. Late-night television will feel the loss of Mr. Letterman, one of its most innovative and unpredictable broadcasters, who in 1982 took a sleepy NBC time slot following Carson’s “Tonight” show and transformed it into a ceaseless engine for Top 10 Lists, Stupid Pet Tricks and a decade’s worth of pioneering comedy bits. With almost no blueprint to follow, Mr. Letterman showed that late-night TV could offer more than a what’s-in-the-news monologue and witty banter with celebrity guests (though he was capable of doing all that, as well). He made his show a home for misfits and oddballs, for Andy Kaufman’s slap fights and Larry (Bud) Melman’s shrill soliloquies, where champion bird callers or his own mother were deemed as important as Hollywood ingénues or rising rock bands. Mr. Letterman proved he could reinvent himself, too: When he was passed over as Mr. Carson’s heir in favor of Jay Leno, he packed up for the uncharted territory of CBS and became a more inclusive — if still idiosyncratic — master of ceremonies. But Mr. Letterman is leaving a late-night biosphere very different from the one he helped thrive. Hosts like Jimmy Fallon (who ultimately replaced Mr. Leno at “Tonight”) and Jimmy Kimmel (at ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live”) are dominating with their own ingenious energy, their Internet savvy and their visible youth, and Mr. Letterman is about to be replaced by Stephen Colbert, the politically astute smart aleck of “The Colbert Report.” Not that any of these issues appeared to be on Mr. Letterman’s mind during his preshow set. Asked by an audience member from Newberg, Ore., if he had any advice for that city’s impending graduates, Mr. Letterman replied, “Treat a lady like a whore, and a whore like a lady.” After some laughter at this seemingly un-Letterman-like joke, the host chuckled to himself and said: “I don’t know why I would say something like that.” “What do you care?” Mr. Shaffer said. But no matter how hard he has tried to hide it over the years, Mr. Letterman does care. As he said, more sincerely, to the man who had asked for graduation advice, “If you do good things for people, it will never stop making you feel good about yourself.” Upstairs in his “Late Show” offices a few hours later, a contemplative Mr. Letterman emerged, dressed in khakis and a T-shirt that said “Genetically Engineered Trout Is Safe!” to reflect on all that he has learned along the way. In these edited excerpts from that conversation, he offered his unguarded and unsparing assessments of his heroes, his colleagues, his would-be successors and himself. Q. As your last show approaches, have there been times when you’ve thought: I’m leaving too soon? A. Yeah, I’m awash in melancholia. Over the weekend, I was talking to my son, and I said, “Harry, we’ve done like over 6,000 shows.” And he said, [high-pitched child’s voice] “That’s creepy.” And I thought, well, in a way, he’s right. It is creepy. Every big change in my life was full of trepidation. When I left Indiana and moved to California. When Regina and I decided to have a baby — enormous anxiety and trepidation. Those are the two biggest things in my life, and they worked out beyond my wildest dreams. I’m pretending the same thing will happen now. I’ll miss it, desperately. One of two things: There will be reasonable, adult acceptance of transition. Or I will turn to a life of crime. In the time since you made your announcement, the consensus is that you seem more relaxed and the show feels looser. Is that how you see it? I couldn’t make that observation, but I certainly feel it. Because I think there’s a difference between regular-season hockey and playoff hockey. And I’m not in the playoffs. Yeah, I do notice a difference. When I was watching those interim shows they did on “The Late Late Show,” and I saw John Mayer hosting one night, I thought, “Ohhhh, now I see exactly what the problem is.” Because he’s young. He’s handsome. He’s trim. He’s witty. He was comfortable. So then I realized, I got nothing to worry about. I know I can’t do what Jimmy Fallon’s doing. I know I can’t do what Jimmy Kimmel is doing. There’s nothing left to be worried about. It’s all over, Dad, you’re going to be just fine. You’re going to a new place. They’ll be very nice to you, Dad. You’ll make a lot of friends. The late-night TV landscape has changed so much in the time you’ve been on the air. Do you think you’ve left a lasting impact on it? I see that things are certainly different. A lot of what we did was dictated by Carson. A guy named Dave Tebet, who worked for NBC and was like a talent liaison — in the same that way that Al Capone was a beverage distributor — he came to us and he said: “You can’t have a band. You can have a combo. You can’t do a monologue. You can’t do, like, Aunt Blabby. You can’t do Tea Time Movie Matinee.” There were so many restrictions. So that was the framework we were handed, which was fine, because then they gave us an excuse not to think of that thing to do. You were innovating out of necessity? I never knew if the stupider things we did or the more traditional things we did would work. I didn’t know if the stupid stuff would alienate people. I didn’t know if the traditional stuff would be more appealing. And then, when I look back on it now, of course the answer is, you want to do the weird thing. Did the ascent of hosts like Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel push you out of the job? No, they didn’t push me out. I’m 68. If I was 38, I’d probably still be wanting to do the show. When Jay was on, I felt like Jay and I are contemporaries. Every time he would get a show at 11:30, he would succeed smartly. And so I thought, This is still viable — an older guy in a suit. And then he left, and I suddenly was surrounded by the Jimmys. It seems like there’s an increasing emphasis, at least with your network competitors, to create comedy bits that will go viral on the Internet. Did you make a conscious choice to stay out of that arms race? No, it just came and went without me. It sneaked up on me and went right by. People on the staff said, “You know what would be great is if you would join Twitter.” And I recognized the value of it. It’s just, I didn’t know what to say. You go back to your parents’ house, and they still have the rotary phone. It’s a little like that. Did you have any involvement in choosing Stephen Colbert as your successor? No. Not my show. When we sign off, we’re out of business with CBS. I always thought Jon Stewart would have been a good choice. And then Stephen. And then I thought, well, maybe this will be a good opportunity to put a black person on, and it would be a good opportunity to put a woman on. Because there are certainly a lot of very funny women that have television shows everywhere. So that would have made sense to me as well. But you were not consulted? [shakes head no] Mm-mmm. Did that bother you? Yeah, I guess so. Just as a courtesy, maybe somebody would say: “You know, we’re kicking around some names. Do you have any thoughts here?” But it doesn’t bother me now. At the time, I had made the decision [to leave] and I thought, O.K., this is what comes when you make this decision. Their selection of Stephen Colbert came very quickly. They didn’t have to put much thought to it, did they? I think it was the very next day. [laughs] But if you’re running the show with Jimmy Fallon, that’s a certain dynamic. Jimmy Kimmel, a completely different dynamic. And now Stephen Colbert will add a third, different dynamic to it. I think it will be very interesting to see what he will do. Have you offered him any advice on how he should run his show? No. We chatted when the announcement was made. And that was about it. I don’t think he needs — he’s not a kid. He’s not a beginner. He’s had pretty good success. You’ve often talked about Johnny Carson as a mentor and a creative hero. Do you feel you’ve lived up to his standard? Whenever I see clips from his old show, I’m reminded of what I always knew about him, which is that the highs and lows on that show are just about like that: [moves his hand in a straight line] There are funny moments, but he doesn’t lose control. If things aren’t going well, that’s fine, too. There’s a consistency about his presence that is very satisfying. I never felt that way. I always felt like [panting heavily] “We’ve got to do this, and we’ve got to do that.” Carson, whether he knew it or not, was doing exactly what TV is supposed to be. Just let it go. Because it’s 11:30, and people are just looking for a pleasant experience. And I wish I could do that. Mr. Letterman reviewing cue cards with Todd Seda. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times You don’t think you can be that relaxed? I think now, more than ever. But certainly not in the beginning. When we got a show on right after Carson, I’m thinking, Oh, God, I’m going to be compared to Carson back-to-back. And then when we went head-to-head with Jay, I never had the confidence. But now that the consequences have disappeared, yeah, what do I care? At some point, all of a sudden, people in show business that I never knew before would say to me on the show, “Oh, it’s such an honor to be here.” And I would think, What are you talking about? It’s just a goddamn TV show. And then I realized, this is what happens when you get to be older and you’ve been around for a while, people succumb to this artificial reverence. It was always kids that had only been in show business a couple of years. I just thought, Oh. I know. Your grandparents used to watch. You don’t think their praise was sincere? I’m sure it was sincere. But it was artificially generated. The same thing happened to me. I can remember sitting next to Johnny Carson for the first time, and I’m thinking, Holy God, this is like looking at Abraham Lincoln. You’ve seen him forever on the $5 bill. And now all of a sudden he’s here. And that was too much for me. I’m not saying it happened in like measurement, but I understand the dynamic. When you moved to CBS, so much was made of your rivalry with Jay Leno. In retrospect, do you feel like this was overblown? No, I don’t think so. It would have happened if I’d have gotten the “Tonight” show, and he would have come here. I think people are curious to see, well, what will happen? And we prevailed for a while, and then I lost my way a little bit. Quite a little bit. And at that point, there was not much I could do about it. People just liked watching his show more than they liked watching my show. You feel that something, philosophically, at your show, caused this viewership shift? Yeah. And it’s just my judgment. Before, I felt pretty confident in what we were up to, because there was no competition to speak of, whatsoever. In the beginning [at CBS], we came out of the chute, going a million miles an hour. And then when that was all done, we just sort of said, “Really, can we go a million miles an hour again?” And we tried, and we couldn’t. I think we had gone way down the road, maybe way down the wrong road. How did you get back on the right track? I don’t know that we ever did get back the right way. It didn’t start to settle down until it couldn’t be more clear that Jay was the more popular show. And when we all realized that there’s not much we can do here — you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube — then we started going our own way again. I think it was just inevitability. The guy in the race who spends more time looking over his shoulder, well, that’s the mistake. For two years, I made that mistake. We ran out of steam. But you came in and continued to do the job. Well, that was the other thing. I was always surprised that they didn’t let me go. Wait a minute — wouldn’t you like me to go home now? Well, no. Next thing you know, I’ve been here 23 years. Were there times in your CBS tenure when you thought you might not have control over when you’d leave? It’s a blur to me now, but when we came over from NBC, it was Howard Stringer running the show. He brought us here, and paid a lot of money to remodel this theater and really made the commitment. And then when he left, that commitment, I was worried about that leaving, too. Those were the days when CBS was really doing poorly. They lost [N.F.L.] football. And I just thought to myself, this can’t be good for us. Then [Les] Moonves came in and turned the place into Disney World. When you had your heart surgery in 2000, did you fear you might never come back to the show? I was concerned that I’ll never be able to run again — that was my big concern. Because I had so relied on running, all my life, to get myself clearheaded. And of course, I was worried that somebody would go on while I was off with my heart surgery, and be good enough that they didn’t want me back. As I’m trying to recover from quintuple bypass surgery, I’m paranoid that my life is ending. And then, six weeks after the surgery, I ran for five miles. So let’s face it, I am a hero. There’s no two ways of looking at it. What about in 2009, when you revealed that you were the target of an extortion attempt stemming from your sexual relationships with female staffers? Oh, yes. My sex scandal. That’s right. Did you think that was going to be the end of your career? Looking at it now, yes, I think they would have had good reason to fire me. But at the time, I was largely ignorant as to what, really, I had done. It just seemed like, O.K., well, here’s somebody who had an intimate relationship with somebody he shouldn’t have had an intimate relationship with. And I always said, “Well, who hasn’t?” to myself. But then, when I was able to see from the epicenter, the ripples, I thought, yeah, they could have fired me. But they didn’t. So I owe them that. Did you think people were surprised to hear you talk about these matters so candidly? I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t think of a really good lie. How do you feel about your reputation that you simply aren’t a warm person? I understand that. I think it’s genetic. I don’t want to blame it on my parents and my grandparents. But you don’t need to be all that warm when you’re born and raised in Linton, Ind., and working in a coal mine. They weren’t hiring coal miners on the basis of their personalities. Inside, I feel like everything’s firing properly. And then when I look at a videotape, I just think, What the hell is Dave [angry] about? When in fact I’m not [angry]. We used to do that with my mom. We’d say, “Mom, are you all right?” Because she’d sit there looking dour. And she’d say [shouting], “I’m fine!” It’s the Golden Rule. I try to be nice to people who are nice to me. I like doing nice things for people. It makes me feel good. But I think it’s legitimate. It’s a fair assessment? Let’s blame Jack Paar. Years and years and years ago, before the late-night shows, he said to me [whispery Jack Paar voice]: “You know what, pal? It’s O.K. to let people know you’re upset about things.” And so I thought, well, maybe there’s some wisdom to that. I might have used that to my own disadvantage, sometimes. Has doing the show taught you how much of yourself to give to an audience? Absolutely right. In the beginning, you think, I can’t wait to get on television. I’m going to straighten it out. Then people will be saying, “God bless you, Dave Letterman, we have been waiting for somebody to take care of television.” That’s how you feel. And now, I don’t feel that way. Have you decided what you’ll do in your very last show? I have decided what I will do, yes. And I know of other things that are being worked on. My only concern is mine. What will I do? And I now know exactly what I will do. Will you be taking your cues from Johnny Carson’s final “Tonight” show? That was fantastic. I can remember when he signed off that night, it just left you [with] a nagging sense of loss. This doesn’t apply here. I want it to be a little more cheery. And I want it to be upbeat, and I want it to be funny, and I want people to be happy that they spent the time to watch it. Of course, Johnny’s last show was historic. This one won’t be. [laughs] This one, people will say: “Ah, there you go. When’s the new guy starting?” Even though you won’t be on CBS at 11:35 p.m. anymore, do you think you might come back in another form fairly quickly? It just depends on the number of bridges I’ve burned. I don’t know how long this has been going on, but Jane Pauley is now on the CBS “Sunday Morning” show. Perfect fit. So I thought, by God, good for Jane. That’s a lovely thing for her to have now. So maybe one day, something of that level will happen to me. The last “Late Show” airs on a Wednesday. What will you do Thursday morning? I will be completely in the hands of my family. I will be going, later in the month, to the Indianapolis 500. And then beyond that, for the first time since Harry’s been alive, our summer schedule will not be dictated by me. It will be entirely dictated by what my son wants to do. And I think that’s pretty good. After you take a good, solid punch to the head, you’re just a little wobbly. I think in that state it would be good to have others making my decisions. That’s how he’s describing his retirement. A good solid punch to the head. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/arts/television/david-letterman-reflects-on-33-years-in-late-night-television.html?hpw&rref=television&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

N.B. The Maryann Keller quoted herein accusing Marchionne of 'panic' is a consultant whore who makes her money off his competitors. Her business: http://mkellerco.com/Home_Page.html Disclosure--My business is similar to hers. Marchionne Talk of Industry Mergers Called Sign of ‘Panic’ Bloomberg Business Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne has been talking for months about merging Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV with a giant like General Motors or Ford. Fiat Chrysler sales are growing quickly and the U.S. division has been gaining market share faster than rivals. So why does Marchionne want a partner? For starters, the company is boosting discounts on many models and selling unpopular sedans and compacts to rental-car companies and corporate fleets. That’s depressing profit margins, meaning Marchionne will generate less cash to develop the next generation of vehicles and technologies on his own. “What Sergio is panicked about is how much sales are growing while profit margins are falling,” said Maryann Keller, an independent consultant in Greenwich, Connecticut. “He should be making piles of money right now.” Marchionne floated the idea of creating a new global auto behemoth last year. He has repeatedly complained about steep development costs for new cars. In an earnings call today with analysts, he said weak profits across the industry argued for consolidation. This isn’t about putting FCA up for sale, a matter of “life and death” for the company, or Marchionne’s “final big deal,” he said. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Max Warburton wasn’t buying it. In a note after the presentation, he said: “In reality, it is all of those things.” Fiat Chrysler shares fell 4.9 percent, the steepest intraday drop this year, to $15.47 at 3:11 p.m. New York time. Cutting Costs Marchionne said he wants consolidation that helps cover development costs for costly things like engines, advanced technologies and more mundane things like parts. If companies can merge and defray those costs over more sales volume, they can boost returns, Marchionne said. Warburton said on the call that he and other analysts largely agree with Marchionne’s premise that the industry’s high capital costs make for low returns, but he added that CEOs at other car companies don’t seem to be heeding the call for a more mergers: “I don’t think your colleagues are as embarrassed as you and that’s the problem, right?” Marchionne has told Bloomberg that rival CEOs aren’t exactly beating a path to his door. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. have little interest in combining with FCA, said people familiar with the thinking at each company. If GM, Ford and other automakers don’t want to merge up with FCA, Marchionne told analysts on the earnings call today that he wouldn’t rule out an overture to tech giants Google Inc. or Apple Inc. Lagging Margins Other automakers aren’t lining up because Marchionne needs a deal more than his competitors do, Keller said. While first-quarter profit surged 22 percent, margins lagged far behind FCA’s Detroit rivals. Ford made $924 million on $31 billion in revenue in the first quarter, GM $900 million on $35.7 billion in sales. Fiat Chrysler earned $92 million on $26.4 billion. Last year, Fiat Chrysler’s margin before interest and taxes was 3.3 percent. GM reported a 4.9 percent EBIT margin. Thanks partly to sluggish economic growth, FCA lost $131 million in Europe. That’s far less than in 2013, but it still hurts the bottom line. Ferrari and Maserati are money makers, but Marchionne is spinning off Ferrari to generate cash. That leaves the U.S. business, which generated more than half of last year’s profit, to carry the load. It’s hard to see how Marchionne can take FCA US, formerly known as Chrysler, to the next level. Higher Discounts In the first quarter, the company handed out an average of $3,300 a vehicle in discounts, up 4 percent and the most of any mass-market automaker. Fiat brand discounts have almost doubled from a year ago. GM and Ford are actually pulling back on incentives. As a result, FCA US now spends an average of about $200 a vehicle more than GM and almost $500 more than Ford, according to Autodata Corp. The gap with Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. exceeds $1,400 per vehicle. FCA US is also offering bonus cash to dealers who manage to sell the company’s slow-selling cars, including the Chrysler 200 family sedan and Dodge Dart compact. “Jeeps and trucks are selling,” said Mark Snethkamp, who runs a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep store near Detroit. “I think that’s why they are pushing the 200 and Dart so much.” Telling Weakness Boosting sales to car-rental companies and corporate fleets is another telling sign of weakness because such transactions typically command lower margins than sales to regular consumers. While FCA US’s reliance on fleet sales fell last year and has been declining since 2009, more than a third of Chrysler 200 sales are going to fleets, according to a person familiar with the situation, who asked to not to be identified discussing private information. The company declined to comment on its incentive strategy or which models are ending up in fleets. After FCA announced earnings, Evercore ISI analyst George Galliers bemoaned in a research note that North American margins remain weak and that the company burned $1.1 billion in cash and ended with $9.2 billion in debt, based on exchange rates at the end of the first quarter. That’s about $1 billion more than it had three months ago. Despite some weakness in its strongest market, Fiat Chrysler isn’t in serious trouble. Against long odds, Marchionne revived Chrysler and combined it with Fiat to create a global automaker. The redesigned Jeep Grand Cherokee and Cherokee are both hot sellers and now make up about 7 percent of the U.S. market for sport utility vehicles. The Ram lineup, now a separate brand, is growing along with a strong pickup market and is a big moneymaker. But with profits coming from a relatively small number of vehicles, it’s easy to see why Marchionne may be looking for a partner to help with investment in new technology or to help get more scale in passenger cars, where the company is weak, said Richard Hilgert, a Morningstar Inc. analyst in Chicago. With no obvious partner, Marchionne took his case to shareholders in hopes they’ll pressure his rivals to cut a deal. “This state of affairs, it’s almost embarrassing,” he said. “The capital markets need to push for change.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-29/marchionne-talk-of-industry-consolidation-called-sign-of-panic-

Marchionne argues if automakers won't consolidate, the market should make themAutomotive News Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, argued today that major automakers need to stop wasting billions developing the same products and start working together. And if automakers won’t consolidate voluntarily, then the capital markets should force change upon them, the FCA boss said during a marathon conference call with analysts. “There is a fundamental problem that can’t be ignored,” Marchionne said from Brazil, where FCA just opened a plant to build the Jeep Renegade and up to two other models. He said the industry -- excluding manufacturers in China -- is burning 2 billion euros a week developing vehicles and components that are largely similar. Those costs could be shared, and the capital saved and returned to shareholders, through consolidation within the industry. “We need to find a way to abandon this path, and effectively go straight,” Marchionne argued. Marchionne singled out Toyota Motor Corp. and Volkswagen Group as being the most effective among mass market automakers at returning value to shareholders through effective use of capital. But he said even the performance of those companies pales next to other industries, which is not a long-term trend that the industry can endure. “The capital consumption rate doesn’t deliver value to the consumer, and in its purest form, is pure economic waste. It’s just bizarre,” Marchionne said. In an analysis he titled “Confessions of a Capital Junkie,” Marchionne said automakers could potentially share 40 to 50 percent of vehicle development costs, returning 2.5 billion to 4.5 billion euros of capital every year. To illustrate his point, he noted four-cylinder engine development, which cost each automaker billions with a negligible impact on buying decisions. “Consumers could not give a flying leap,” about whose four-cylinder engine is in a vehicle, he argued. Marchionne has been loudly courting potential global partners for FCA for several months, without success. But he ran into a stiff headwind from analysts on the call when he suggested that the capital markets could force automakers to change their ways or consolidate. “The capital markets are not going to be able to do anything like this,” argued analyst Max Warburton, of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., a respected industry analyst who issued a report on FCA’s low profit margins last month. “There are probably five or 10 men [in the auto industry] that are able to do this, and you probably have them all on speed dial.” The extended exchange between Marchionne and Warburton grew testy at times. Marchionne said: “Don’t shy away from your obligation. Your obligation at the end of the day is to direct the flow of capital. That’s what you do for a living. I make cars, you direct capital. Own the responsibility, Max. “I think the capital markets need to take responsibility for forcing capital in a responsible way. In the way you wrote it, you’ve relegated us to a valuation that is obscene,” Marchionne added. “How far down the food chain do we need to go to be embarrassed?” Elsewhere on the call, FCA: • Acknowledged its pricing action last month that increased the wholesale prices of its vehicles to dealers but didn’t raise the sticker prices. • Said it is working to “improve the mix” in its pickup offerings to boost profits, and is working to remove what CFO Richard Palmer called “deep bottlenecks” in its supply base that are restricting certain pickup sales. Palmer did not indicate what components he was referring to, but Ram brand head Bob Hegbloom has said the brand plans to expand its profitable light-duty diesel offerings to 20 percent of its half-ton mix. http://www.autonews.com/article/20150429/OEM01/150429763/marchionne-argues-if-automakers-wont-consolidate-the-market-should

As if I needed help. It does however make reading ordinary material feel like child's play.

So I discovered a new way of putting myself into a hypnotic trance -- namely, trying to read Dirac's barely-comprehensible-even-to-specialists The Principles of Quantum Mechanics: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/dirac/chapter_1.html

I will have to manufacture a business trip to Tampa.

Very nice profile! Yes, what city/town in Florida are you in or near?

At the upper right of this page, you will see your user name, with a drop-down arrow to the right of it. Click on your name there, then in the drop-down menu that appears, click on My Settings. That will bring up a list of settings, and Signature will be one of them. Click on Signature to open a text box and insert the URLs. BTW, welcome to the site!

Ah! Put the URL for your profile here into your "Signature" for your Forum profile here. That will show up at the bottom of your posts here. Also if you have ads anywhere else, include links to those ads in your Signature here.

Post a profile of yourself here: http://www.boytoy.com/boytoy-search

Or your nuts tightened

Disclaimer--This is a business story, nothing salacious. Unless you get off reading quarterly reports and 10-Ks. Sergio Marchionne, the unconventional CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), spent much of the company's quarterly earnings call today giving a 25-page PowerPoint presentation explaining why the auto industry spends more money developing and manufacturing its products than it can ever earn back, with its current structure. Here is that presentation: http://www.fcagroup.com/en-US/investor_relations/events_presentations/quarterly_results_presentations/SM_Fire_investor_presentation.pdf How it begins: Confessions of a Capital Junkie An insider perspective on the cure for the industry's value-destroying addiction to capital Goal is to provide clarity on two issues that have been raised publicly by FCA ●Industry has not earned its cost of capital over a cycle ●Consolidation is the key to remedying the problem  What this is not about ●An excuse for FCA’s current ranking in the automotive food chain ●Putting FCA up for sale ●A revision to our 5 year plan (which remains a firm commitment) ●A matter of life or death for FCA ●SM’s final big deal  What this is about ●Dispassionate look at the industry from the outside using insider knowledge ●It is about choosing between mediocrity or fundamentally changing the paradigm for the industry Fascinating reading. I think he is right. The global auto industry, to remain (become!) viable, must move to a business model more like the high-tech electronics industry -- design and build many differentiated products based on a core of common, very widely used components and subsystems. Unlike today, when every new platform program re-engineers every subsystem almost from scratch, but with precious little value added or differentiation created, with very few exceptions.

6 Fashion Week Looks for the Sorority Girls Pooping All Over Mississippi State's Campus http://www.styleite.com/news/6-fashion-week-looks-for-the-sorority-girls-pooping-all-over-mississippi-states-campus/