Aspen's peak ten days of the year are Christmas to New Year's. Shopping is a a key past-time and stores selling luxury goods abound. "Sale" is not a word you frequently see in store windows this time of year.

But, this year, shopping has been all about sales. Even the wealthy are looking for bargains and if they don't see them, taking a pass.

Wealthy Americans are re-evaluating their priorities and are slashing their spending at a rate unseen in decades — a move that could have dire consequences for the economy, luxury stores and high-end brands.

In response to the increasingly subdued shopping mood that began late last year, luxury brands are cutting their inventory, changing the assortment of products they offer and tweaking their advertising message.

The article describes three "classes" of luxury shoppers, all of whom are cutting back: [More....]

I am always amazed that so many people care about the religious views of Americans. The most pernicious types on this are the Jon Meacham-types - who try to make a virtue of the "deep faith" of Americans - he's made a good living writing about it. But then there are the other types who try to prove how "broadminded" these religious types are. Charles Blow is one of those:

In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life. This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that.

That's nice and all, but who really cares? Let people believe what they want to believe. So long as these religious beliefs are not dictating to others. There is a certain danger in caring about the religious views of Americans - it makes it a part of our public political life. Me, I am more interested in what the Founding Fathers thought about the mixing of religion in public politics - "Congress shall make no Law . . ." After that, my interest wanes. I do not care what percentage of American Christians think I am going to burn in hell. So long as they do not bother me here on Earth, I am good to go.

Speaking for me only

Harold Pinter has passed away:

Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday. He was 78 and lived in London. The cause was cancer, his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said on Thursday.

. . . In more than 30 plays — written between 1957 and 2000 and including masterworks like “The Birthday Party,” “The Caretaker,” “The Homecoming” and “Betrayal” — Mr. Pinter captured the anxiety and ambiguity of life in the second half of the 20th century with terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence.

RIP, Harold Pinter.

The economic downturn has hit private college admission applications:

Admissions officers nationwide point to several possible reasons for the drop in applications. Some students have pared their college lists this year. Many more are looking at less-expensive state universities. Many institutions accepted more students under binding early-decision programs, and each such acceptance drains off an average of 8 to 10 regular-decision applications. And some experts suspect that students are delaying their college plans.

Two interesting points in the article. First, on the availability of financial aid:

It's official - Florida v. Oklahoma for the college football national championship. I am happy for the Gators but I still hate the system. There is no reason - none - that there is not a college football playoff.

Do I think Florida and Oklahoma are the best two teams? Yes, I do. But who cares what I think or you think or the polls think or the computers think? (BTW, when people tell you 5 of 6 polls preferred Texas over Florida - they are not telling you the truth - the imposed BCS computer system - that ignores margin of victory - had Texas ahead - but the true computer systems have Florida as the best team - see Jeff Sagarin on this.)

A playoff is the only way to really crown a champion. 8 teams - Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, USC, Penn State, Virginia Tech, Cincinnati and Utah. They are playing in the 4 big bowls (Alabama and Ohio State are the other 2 teams in the BCS.) All we need is 3 more games - 2 semis - then a TRUE championship game.

In any event, Go Gators!! Speaking for me only

I didn't see any news today because after work I became enmeshed in the online world of electronic gadgets. I'm still replacing the items taken during my home invasion last month, and since I wasn't insured, I have to go slowly. Make that at a snail's pace. I've spent untold hours this week learning and relearning the features of dvd -vhs recorders, blue ray players and units that do both with upscaling convertibility to 1080p so the picture matches that on your 1080p Hi-Def tv. [More...]

I'm busy, but never too busy to fret about the Gators. Let me make one thing perfectly clear (h/t Nixon), if the SEC Champion is shut out of the BCS Championship game, I personally will riot on the streets.

Do something about this Barack!

This too is an Open Thread.

The Toronto Star reports:

Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly ``cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

Batteries of tests were performed on the substance. It had a high "THC" content. Other items in the tomb indicated the deceased was of "high social standing."

The tomb also contained bridles, archery equipment and a harp, confirming the man's high social standing.

Hope everyone is having a good Thanksgiving holiday.

Today is a big day in college football. You can discuss it here

Go Gators!!

This is an Open Thread for talking college football.

John Cole (yes, we agree on occasion) and Steve Benen are. like me, Joss Whedon-philes (read my "famous" diary attacking Freddie Prinze, Jr.) On Dollhouse, I am, like Benen, a complete pessimist (Fox will destroy it):

Fox made Whedon scrap the pilot (just as the network did with "Firefly," probably my favorite show of all time). Then, after several episodes had already been shot, Whedon stopped production because the scripts were deemed inadequate. And just to ruin any hopes we had about the show's future, Fox announced earlier this month that "Dollhouse" would air on Friday nights at 9 -- the same slot it gave "Firefly," and a notorious black hole on the schedule where the network dumps shows it doesn't intend to keep.

I'm an embarrassingly big fan of Whedon's work, so months before the first episode even airs, I'm already preparing myself to be disappointed -- not with the show, but with its likely demise.

Ditto. I am anticipatorily pi**ed about it. Let's make this an Open Thread.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

President-Elect Barack Obama is still 2 months from being inaugurated and some NYTimes op ed writers can not leave him alone. At least wait till he actually does something. Geezus Christ on a cracker! Look at Bryan Curtis:

Obama’s First Fumble

BARACK OBAMA went on “60 Minutes” this week and unveiled his first policy proposal as president-elect — a college football playoff. After detailing his preferred system, in which eight teams would meet in a three-week-long tournament at the end of the season, Mr. Obama said, “I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this.” Well, here’s one. To borrow Mr. Obama’s infelicitous phrase, I cling to college football in its current form.

All joking aside, I disagree with Mr. Curtis, as I will explain on the flip.

And here I thought that the atomic bomb had definitively proven e=mc2. Turns out to be not the case, at least for mathematicians/physicists. Now, apparently, it has been proven:

It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.

. . . According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons. The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent? The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

High school readability? Take that, blog analyzer.