No Country For Old Men

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When shotgun silencers are outlawed, only Anton Chigurh will have shotgun silencers

Thursday, October 1st, 2009 | A&E, Guns | Permalink | 4 Comments |

SayUncle links to some real-life shotgun silencers.

No Country for Old Men’s Houses: Cormac McCarthy’s childhood home burns

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 | East Tennessee | Permalink | No Comments |

Pulitzer Prize-winning Knoxville author Cormac McCarthy’s childhood home in South Knox County was destroyed by fire today. The fire was reported just before 5 p.m. at the house at 5501 Martin Mill Pike.

It appears the house was vacant, and there didn’t appear to be power connected to the home, Williams said. Williams said there had been reports of homeless people squatting on the property but there are no indications anyone was there today, and no cause has been determined.

No one appeared to be inside at the time of the blaze. The fire continues to burn, and only an exterior wall remained by just before 8 p.m.

The home was the most-endangered structure on Knox Heritage’s Fragile 15 list and was second overall only to the natural ridge lines around the area.

James Agee’s house in Fort Sanders was torn down years ago, so the childhood homes of both of Knoxville’s Pulitzer Prize winners are gone.

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Ed Tom Bell

Thursday, March 6th, 2008 | Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were. And if you done something wrong just stand up and say you done it and say you’re sorry and get on with it. Dont haul stuff around with you. I guess all that sounds pretty simple today. Even to me. All the more reason to think about it. He didnt say a lot so I tend to remember what he did say. And I dont remember that he had a lot of patience with havin to say things twice so I learned to listen the first time. I might of strayed from all of that some as a younger man but when I got back on that road I pretty much decided not to quit it again and I didnt. I think the truth is always simple. It has pretty much got to be. It needs to be simple enough for a child to understand. Otherwise it’d be too late. By the time you figured it out it would be too late.”
– Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men

I’m on the last few chapters of the book, and I’m going to see the movie again tonight. Can’t recommend it enough.

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Llewellyn Moss

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 | Quotes | Permalink | No Comments |

“Things happen to you they happen. They dont require your permission.”
– Llewellyn Moss, No Country for Old Men

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Interviews with “No Country for Old Men” Cast Javier Berdam, Tommy Lee Jones and Kelly MacDonald

Thursday, January 24th, 2008 | A&E | Permalink | 1 Comment |

I am not turning into an obsessive fan boy. Shut up.

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“No Country for Old Men” - the actual movie

Monday, January 21st, 2008 | A&E | Permalink | 3 Comments |

After playing with puns on the name, I finally saw the movie tonight with my wife. (Possible only because my mother in law was nice enough to keep the kids tonight even after keeping them all day today. Thanks, Ginny!)

Loved it. There were plenty of memorable characters and dialog, and great direction and cinematography by the Coen brothers. The acting is mostly good to great. Josh Brolin made me believe he was just some hard luck Charlie the casting director found in a Texas trailer park. No Country for Old Men also has one of the best villains in movie history.

I should probably mention that it’s a movie that invites bitching and questions, but also serious consideration. Without giving anything away, you’ll wonder why the Coen brothers showed some events which seem inconsequential, while leaving to your imagination events which would be pivotal scenes in other movies. I don’t think for a minute that those decisions were unintentional, and I look forward to pondering their reasons the next time i watch the movie.

P.S. - Now that I’ve seen the movie I no longer have to dodge spoilerific discussions of same. I love this comment on that post:

Folks who truly enjoy Mozart and Dostoevsky don’t love them just for a crossword-puzzle workout, aren’t concerned with social climbing, and are not bothered that other people might be enjoying entirely different works. But as rule, the need to look down on others is more powerful in more hearts than the love for music. People are shitty that way.

I don’t think that’s completely true, because I don’t think there are that many snobs in the world, but, yeah, there are snobs like that in the world.

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“No Country for Young Men” - the Boomers Retire

Sunday, January 20th, 2008 | Population | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Megan McArdle looks at likely effects of baby boomer retirement that officially began last week:

At one point or another, you’ve probably heard the speculation that once the Boomers start selling their stocks and mutual funds to support their retirement, the flood of sales will cause the market to crash. That’s plain wrong: the Boomers were born over a period of 18 years, and they will retire over a similar span; moreover, most of them will not start cashing in their stocks immediately. Most people, evidence shows, wait to break into their 401(k)s until they have to. David Wise, the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s aging program, has, along with his colleagues, run multiple models looking at what will happen as the Boomers sell out, and he believes the effect will likely be modest.

But the outlook for equity markets is cloudy nonetheless. The problem is more basic: stock prices reflect both a company’s current earnings and its expected growth in earnings. A high price-to-earnings ratio means investors expect fast growth in future earnings. If you think economic growth is going to slow, the stock market looks overvalued today. Historically, stocks in aggregate have tended to trade at P/E ratios between 12 and 20. Right now, the P/Es of the three major indexes are on the high end of that range, implying the expectation of faster-than-usual economic growth. That sort of growth will be awfully difficult to achieve as the Boomers retire—and the problem could persist for decades. It is possible that, as the Yale economist Irving Fisher infamously said in 1929, “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

And on the difficulties and expense of transitioning parts of the economy from catering to the young to catering to the aged:

My grandmother, who is blind and physically frail, was able to live at home much longer than she otherwise could have because she had Meals on Wheels, a home health aide, and a Life Alert-type necklace to call for help in case she fell.

But these services require a lot of labor. According to an analysis by McKinsey Global Institute, the number of hours required to produce an automobile in North America fell by 1.7 percent annually from 1987 to 2002, to an average of about 100 hours. Meanwhile, it still takes about the same amount of time as it always did to drive a senior to a doctor’s appointment, or to help an older patient bathe and dress. Productivity growth is faster in the things that kids consume than in the things that the elderly need.

This is is yet another example of the problems described under the heading of Baumol’s cost disease:

Baumol’s cost disease (also known as the Baumol Effect) is a phenomenon described by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s. The original study was conducted for the performing arts sector. Baumol and Bowen pointed out that the same number of musicians are needed to play a Beethoven string quartet today as were needed in the 1800’s; that is, the productivity of Classical music performance has not increased.

In a range of businesses, such as the car manufacturing sector and the retail sector, workers are continually getting more productive due to technological innovations to their tools and equipment. In contrast, in some labor-intensive sectors that rely heavily on human interaction or activities, such as nursing, education, or the performing arts there is little or no growth in productivity over time. As with the string quartet example, it takes nurses the same amount of time to change a bandage, or college professors the same amount of time to mark an essay, in 2006 as it did in 1966.

Baumol’s cost disease is a fascinating topic that touches on many areas of economics and public policy. For instance, it’s a a likely influence on the fact that college tuition and health care costs tend to rise much faster than the general rate of inflation.

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