Scientists are planning to ignite a tiny Man-made star, according to this Daily Telegraph article. I wonder if the scientists or the journalists writing on their activities have seen the film, Sunshine, about which reviews have been mixed?
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Wired magazine has a neat item about ten species of creature that were discovered in 2008. Alas, as the comments in the article suggest, some people remain far more interested in the species varieties that have gone extinct this year. What perhaps needs to be stated is that in a constantly changing world, species are evolving and others are dying out, even without the allegedly malign influence of Man. What the deep Greens often do not seem ready to concede is that species have been wiped out before without the help of us naughty bipeds. December 26th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Here are some superb photos of those symbols of human civilisation, libraries. As ever, the British Library blows me away. (Hat tip: Stephen Hicks). I am spending Christmas in a part of the world boasting some pretty fabulous architecture of its own. In the meantime, I want to wish readers a Happy Christmas and hopefully not too stressful 2009, whatever the economic situation brings. December 24th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The One is not yet in the White House, but already, one of his most enthusiastic cheerleaders in the blogsphere, Andrew “Excitable Andy” Sullivan, has discovered that Mr Obama might not be totally signed up to the notion that consenting adults should be left alone to make arrangements to their liking, such as gay marriage. Well done, Andrew. It took Mr Sullivan just two years to swing from rather gushing praise for George W. Bush to treating him as as worse than Attila the Hun. Will Obama’s fall from Sullivan’s pantheon of political heroes be even quicker? Just to be serious – and lest folk think I am just engaging in a spot of mud-throwing at Sullivan – it is truly sad to see how this influential commentator has made a prize ass of himself over his assumption that voting for Obama was something that anyone who favoured small, limited government could be comfortable with. Oh for sure, Mr Obama may remove some of the bad things that the Bush White House encouraged, but I would not bet on it. Come to that, I am not at all sure that civil libertarians, be they concerned about issues like gay marriage, drugs, free speech, abuse of police powers, etc, can be at all confident that Mr Obama, a scion of the Chicago political machine, is good news. That’s not to say that the GOP will be any better, of course. What Sullivan, and indeed all of us, need to remember is that Bush, Obama, or for that matter Brown, Sarkozy and Merkel, are politicians. December 19th, 2008 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The forgotten man… He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.”
December 19th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is an interesting list of the worst economic notions or economy-related stories in 2008, from a mostly US perspective. My personal favourite is the one about “killer tomatoes”. (Hat tip: Andrew Ian Dodge). December 17th, 2008 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
A lot of people in the financial industry are trying to figure out the individual costs to them of the $50 billion Bernard Madoff hedge fund fraud. The allegation is that Mr Madoff operated a “Ponzi scheme” scam wherby hedge fund investors were paid money, not from the performance of the funds, but by money paid in by new clients. As soon as the inflows of new clients dried up – partly due to the credit crunch – the scam came to light. As a result of this case, no doubt those who have been calling for much tighter regulation of financial markets will have yet another stick with which to hit the system, never mind that fraud is and should be prosecuted under the normal law of the land anyway. But what interests me, however, is that systems such as Social Security in the US or public sector pensions in the UK have been funded under what is, essentially, a Ponzi system, whereby retirees depend on future generations continuing to fund a system that is rapidly becoming broke. I do not see any stories about politicians, in different countries and different parties, facing indictment for scamming the electorate. Maybe, however, the ultimate problem is that in a Welfare state, the scam artists are us. We are all in on the heist. December 15th, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
I love the Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle book, Lucifer’s Hammer, which is in my view the best “disaster book” every written. What is your favourite disaster movie/book? December 13th, 2008 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Check out this site for some superb photographs. I was going to think of something profound to say about the news headlines, but every time I read the words “Gordon Brown” these days, a small part of me dies. December 12th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Following on from my post below objecting to compulsory purchase laws – with the sole exception of where such laws are needed for things like defence or to save life – here is a great blog and resource for those interested in these issues. It is written mainly about the US but much of its insights carry weight over in the UK and other Common Law nations, or for that matter, other countries too. Recommended. December 11th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Germany’s finance minister has gone on the record as saying that Britain’s rush into ever greater debt to try to halt a recession is foolish, even “depressing”. Crikey. It makes me wonder whether Germany, mindful of what happened in the hyper-inflation of the 1920s, is worried that sooner or later, the vast amounts of money being hurled at the economies in the West, such as in Britain, will produce a sharp rise in inflation and that ever-higher borrowing will only prolong, but not halt, the current pain. Anyway, this is bound to be seized upon by the Tories. It will be interesting to see if they do so. December 11th, 2008 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
Via Tom Palmer’s blog, here is an excellent picture summing up what I think of bailouts. December 10th, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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