To politicians, endless horror is much preferable to a horrible end.
– Samizdata commenter “Plamus”, discussing the future of the Euro here.
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Beijing is full of empty shopping malls and empty apartment buildings. There are at least 60 million empty housing units in China, and probably a great many more than that. The absurd construction boom that continues to go on here is many times bigger than the rest of the world combined, and the Chinese banks are many times more bankrupt than those anywhere else – Michael Jennings (currently in Beijing) November 6th, 2011 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 In my youth, we libbos used to go to P.J. O’Rourke for American libbo laughs. Now that mantle – of American, deceptively profound, politically right on the money laughs – has passed on to IMAO man Frank J. Fleming, whose book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything is coming out quite soon now. Good recent Frank Jism:
You see? It’s funny (I think), but it also gets you thinking. Where did the word “overwhelm” come from, from which the word “underwhelm” has recently been derived (because as soon as you say “underwhelm” everyone immediately understands)? “Overwhelm” means that “whelm” must once upon a time have meant something too. But what? Is it an upper class mispwonouncing of “realm”? Does “whelm” have a future, as a word? I’m not trying to be funny (although that is one of the standard methods of actually being funny). I’d really like to know. This is good too:
And this:
I need something to end this with, now. I know. Here’s my funny yet deceptively profound and right on the money tax plan: The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut To Zero. If FJ’s tax plan is too fair for you, that might be just right. November 4th, 2011 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. – Richard Feynman, quoted by Matt Ridley in his Angus Millar lecture at the RSA in Edinburgh, the entire text of which you an read at Bishop Hill. Do read the whole thing. Following on from the above quote comes one of the best summaries of why climate skeptics are climate skeptics that I have ever encountered. Does anybody know if Ridley’s brilliant lecture is, or will be, available on video? November 2nd, 2011 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Cradle-to-grave employment (at least outside the public sector) has been dead since at least the end of the Cold War. Undergraduate degrees in English and Film and Sociology and Philosophy (and a thousand other subjects) have had debatable workplace utility for as long as I’ve been alive.” – Matt Welch. November 1st, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Well thank you IPCC authors for letting us know what is really behind that “very likely” assessment of attribution [of] 20th century warming. A lot of overbloated over confidence that cannot survive a few years of cooling. The light bulbs seem to be just turning on in your heads over the last two years. Think about all the wasted energy fighting the “deniers” when [you] could have been listening, trying to understand their arguments, and making progress to increase our understanding of the causes of climate variability and change. – Judith Curry, the climate-change non-alarmists’ favourite climate scientist, commenting on an article by Paul Voosen on Greenwire: “Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global warming”. October 31st, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The notion *anyone* can be “in charge of a major European economy” is itself comical, a statist fantasy. Indeed that is very much at the root of the problems currently playing themselves out. October 29th, 2011 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
It bears repeating that banks are not creators of wealth. They are places where you store the surplus value generated by productive enterprise. In very narrow circumstances that surplus value can be loaned out at a profit, but a financial sector is the icing, not the cake. This should be common sense, but apparently it is wisdom so rare it can only be learned in countries small and remote enough to avoid the deadly medicine of the global financial markets. October 28th, 2011 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
First, you unilaterally declare that there is some huge looming disaster a long ways in the future. Using a variety of methods fair and foul, you obtain the full cooperation of other scientists, governments, educational institutions, and the media the world around. With all of you, the whole chorus, baying for skeptic’s blood in full voice, you spend a quarter century trying to convince the people of the oncoming Thermageddon. Second, after said quarter century you notice that despite having the entire resources of the educational and media institutions of the planet and the blind agreement of other scientists and billions of dollars poured into trying … you have not been able to establish your case. Heck, you haven’t even been able to falsify the null hypothesis. In fact, after a long string of predictions of doom, none of which came to pass, and at the tail end of a 15-year hiatus in the warming, the US public doesn’t believe a word you say. Oops. Over two-thirds of them think climate scientists sometimes falsify their research. Oops. In response, you say that the problem is that scientists have been too retice … too re … sorry, it’s hard to type and laugh at the same time … you say that scientists have been to reticent, that they haven’t been alarmist enough or aggressive enough in promoting their views. That’s the problem? After 25 years of unbridled alarm from scientists and everyone else from Presidents to my kid’s teachers, the problem is that scientists are not alarmist enough, they’re too reticent to state their true opinion? Really? That’s the reason the public doesn’t believe you? Is that your final answer? – Willis Eschenbach takes a sledgehammer to the nut that is James Hansen, a nut who, alas, continues to be employed in a prominent and influential position by NASA. The word Thermageddon has been around for quite a while, but it’s new to me. I like it. October 24th, 2011 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
[G]reen thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That’s a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. It’s the new conservatism, its aim being to conserve nature at the expense of further developing and transforming society. October 22nd, 2011 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
This isn’t so much a political movement as a form of historical reenactment. That’s why the OWS protesters are so vague about what they want – because what they want is to be camping out at a mass 1968-style protest. There’s little difference between them and Civil War reenactors, except that the Civil War guys understand that it’s not real and the outcome of their mock battles won’t have any effect. The 1968 reenactors down on Wall Street have the quaint belief that what they’re doing is real. – “Trimegistus” comments here. Like I said a week ago, farce repeating itself as farce. October 20th, 2011 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
The conventional word that it employed to describe tyranny is ‘systematic’. The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but the unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure they have followed the rules correctly or not. Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong. – Hitch-22: A memoir. By Christopher Hitchens, page 51. This is probably the best autobiography I have ever read. In the passage above, he’s referring to his life in an English public (ie, private) school. October 17th, 2011 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
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