The PI had a nice profile of Leonard Weaver a week or so ago.

Today's Seattle Times has a piece on Brandon Mebane.

Depending on your perspective, this is could be a good argument for or a good argument against a flat tax. But it certainly indicates that if everything were taxed equally, the impact would profound.

Meanwhile, another study has found a correlation between breast implants and suicide -- women who got the artificial enlargements were 3x more likely to commit suicide than their natural peers. I wonder if this is a case of correlation or causation or a mixture of both. Most people probably would assume that the implants are an indicator of a pre-existing psychological condition. That seems plausible, but I would love to see a study which controlled for this, perhaps identifying women who wanted the surgery but were unable to get it for financial or other reasons. If their suicide rate is lower, it might indicate that the enhancement itself played a role. This would serve as a very interesting window into our culture.

For the record, I'm not a fan of the fake. Unfortunately, I live in Las Vegas, the breast implant capitol of the world -- at least when you include the tourist population.

p.s.: Another interesting study would be to compare the suicide rates amongst women who receive the implants as part of reconstructive surgery after trauma like mastectomy compared to women who get it for purely size-related reasons.

p.p.s.: I am the master of unintentionally walking into good puns. I didn't even realize until after I wrote this post that flat tax and breast implants made a sort of odd pairing. And there I go with another pun.

I hate giving Bud free advertising, especially since I'm a Miller guy, but I love their ads.

Real Men of Genius

What do you think the true odds are that Barry Bonds would hit home run number 755 -- the one tying him with Hank Aaron -- off of a pitcher who had used steroids?

I ask because it happened.

With talk of primaries and caucuses moving into December, how about this idea?

Randomly divide the country into 15 equal groups -- 29 congressional districts each.

Once per month over the course of 4 months (January to April) have a primary election on the first weekend of the month.

The first election would be of 1 of 15 groups.

The second election would be of 2 of 15 groups.

The third election would be of 4 of 15 groups.

The final election would be of 8 of 15 groups.

This system would make the primary national while still giving lower-tier candidates a shot. It would still require that a candidate have at least some organization in order to win (good bye Mike Gravel).

In order to ensure that the party's rank and file had a voice in the nominee, you could require that the first group to vote have also on average voted for the previous party nominee in the general. (Democrats and Republicans might therefore have different regional primaries.)

The key thing is that this system would preserve what is good about our current process while discarding the hyper-focus on Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire.

• First, Las Vegas topless clubs have lost their battle to stop paying the state's live entertainment tax. They claimed it was an unconstitutional limitation on their freedom of speech. The problem for them is that they are not singled out by the tax -- it applies across the board, even to ballet companies. Their is something funny though about topless clubs complaining about taxes. The odds are nil that these establishments, which operate on a mostly cash basis, don't skim profits before calculating taxes.


• Second, Las Vegas real estate is getting whacked -- and hard. The median price fell below $300,000 for the first time since 2005 -- and that's according to realtors. I'll bet the real number is lower. Clearly, it's not reached the floor.


• Third, as I predicted would happen, the Yankees are making their case for the playoffs. They are 0.5 games behind in the wild card chase and have closed the gap with Boston to 6 games. The Mariners are beginning to fade, falling to third place in the wild card hunt and to four games behind the Angels. I'm sure I'll still be getting an invoice for postseason tickets soon, however. I'll think of it as a down payment on my 2008 bill. Hopefully, they'll keep it interesting until September 9 when the football season begins.