The Friday Five

1. Last week Whitney Tilson sent out a transcript of Warren Buffett speaking at Notre Dame. I had the privilege to spend some time with Mr. Buffett and fifty of my closest friends as part of a question and answer session with the University of Kansas. There is no question that Buffett is the greatest investor of all time. If you have any interest in investing, read the transcript here.

2. The New York Post has a good article today explaining one of the big ways John McCain skirts his own campaign finance reforms. McCain has made his name by pushing for campaign finance reforms that remove most Americans from the political funding process. It is interesting, if unsurprising that McCain has constructed a network of PACs and think tanks so that he can take big money from big donors.

3. The debate over how evolution should be taught in public schools is fascinating and could occupy many columns (along with a critical analysis of everyone involved in that debate).

The most recent thing I find interesting is the repeated comparison to flat Earth theory and other discredited scientific ideas, not by Intelligent Design activists, but by the "evolution" crowd. Flat earth is a striking example of the intelligentsia and the scientific community really getting it wrong. Science should be about the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of our universe, not the ridged adherence to current explanations. If there is a better explanation of why students should be taught to look at science with a critical and investigative eye that previous scientific mistakes like the flat Earth theory, I don't know what it is.

4. The internet is hot again. More precisely, internet advertising is hot again. Fortune reports that this year $5 billion will be spent on online advertising. That is only $5 billion out of total ad spending of $150 billion.

As more people in the US get access to broadband, and as US internet service offerings improve, more people are spending more time online. I never click on ads online, I have never met anyone who admits they click on Google's ads, but advertisers seem to be warming up to ads on Yahoo, Google and the like. It only seems to make sense that ad dollars will be spent where people spend their media time and more and more of that time is spend online.

5. Fire Dennis Moore continues to deconstruct Steve Rose's last column . In general the analysis is good, but I want to draw your attention to one post in particular. My good friend GJoe has a good breakdown of what Republicans need to do to win the seat. It is posted as a long comment on one of their posts. Joe has quit writing his own site for the time being, but this comment is definitely worth your time.

Timothy Burger

Performance Based Education Standards Gain Support

Both Attorney General Phill Kline and State Senator John Vratil have expressed interest in measuring school quality by student test scores, not by the amount spent on their education.

Measure school quality based on what students learn? Sounds like a pretty common sense idea to me.

Timothy Burger

...They Aren't Making Any More

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Tokyo real estate prices have increased 0.9% this year, for the first time in 13 years.

Just something for US real estate speculators to think about.

Timothy Burger