Friday Ramble, 16 October

Here’s your regular Friday Ramble through the best of the web.  As always, if you want links like this live as they happen, then bookmark my Twitter page.

• Whale Oil has a story about why ACC is screwed.
• Liberty Scott fisks Sue Kedgley. And again.  Yes, fisking Kedgley like shooting goldfish in a bathtub, but someone has to do it, and this is about as thoroughly as it can be done.
• And explains why a republic gifted by Keith Locke may not be the sort of republic even republicans could support.
• Wellington’s student unionists show how student politics is done – and how it’s beaten back: watch as Wellington Voluntary Student Membership supporters attempt to pass a pro-VSM motion despite desperate anti-constitutional attempts by compulsion touters to block it (sorry about the musical interludes).
  How To Lose A Vote In 40 Minutes - Part 1
  How To Lose A Vote In 40 Minutes - Part 2
  How To Lose A Vote In 40 Minutes - Part 3
• From the socialists-miss-the-point-completely file: Broadband is to become a human right in Finland.  What’s next, free pizza?
• “Steven Crowder:” has a theory; Balloonboy is now so scared of how mad his dad is, that he's hiding every belt in the house in the basement.
• Note to self: don't let a 6-year-old hop in helium "homemade flying saucer." Denver Post has the story if you missed it all:
  http://retwt.me/Y3vv
• How about we just extend the recession Indefinitely?
  http://bit.ly/2MxMLd
• Pictures in the sidebar: Romance is not dead in Wellington - http://twitpic.com/letjb (Some very grumpy Jennifers in Wellington yesterday!) [hat tip Eric Crampton]
• The Wall Street Journal looks at the reasons for the plunging US dollar:
  http://bit.ly/HQT69
• Is the current recession the worst since the Great Depression? You might be surprised... http://bit.ly/1iTGhx
• Whatever made anyone think Al Gore was a scientist? The Washington Post reminds is of old Al’s credentials: Al Gore took only 2 undergraduate science courses at Harvard, scoring a D & a C - & he flunked his science entrance exams.  How’s that for street cred?
   http://tinyurl.com/dy6c4
• "The pocket spy: Will your smartphone rat you out?"  New Scientist magazine looks at what your phone is telling people you might not like it to.
   http://tinyurl.com/ylmcq7f
• The World Health Organisation turns wowser, launching a "war on alcohol." As if there weren’t already enough wowsers in the world!
   http://tinyurl.com/yhelfme
• John Stossel wonders what fa film-maker Michael Moore is talking about? Michael Moore is “confused,” he says politely.
  http://bit.ly/316H0q
• The CATO Institute measures the effectiveness of Obama’s stimulus plan. Looks like failure to me.
  http://bit.ly/2jyKyZ
• Who guards the environmental guardians? Ontario's polluted residents want to know – and the rest of us can draw the necessary environmental lesson: bureaucracy bad, common law good.
  http://tinyurl.com/yfj7b4f
• Eric Crampton defends the political economist's Nobel.
  http://bit.ly/GB4mc
• Larry David explains Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize research with a party, some caviar and Christian Slater ...
  http://bit.ly/jrcPE
• Stephen Hicks is still bummed that Obama didn't win the Nobel for economics too. But learning a lot about Ostrom: http://tinyurl.com/yftra9d
• If you’re Californian then it’s cell phone bans for thee, but not for wife of Arnie -
  http://is.gd/4ih41
• "It's easy to be red-faced when your cause is global warming doomsterism. Warmists have had yet another bad week" Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch (and isn’t it great to see our locally-coined term ‘warmists’ make it all the way to Canada).
  http://tinyurl.com/yffhlet

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
- Ayn Rand

• A child listens to a nice Climate Change Bedtime Story. How sweet ...
  http://bit.ly/2dkDFK
• Remember last year when Nancy Pelosi's office issued a hysterical 'projection' of US unemployment WITHOUT govt stimulus to just show JUST HOW GOSH-DARNED IMPORTANT it was to flood the US with green paper. One year later however, let’s see how things panned out shall we...
  http://tinyurl.com/ycadvev

Oops!

• Ed Glaeser offers fascinating account of some of that Nobel Prize-winning work.
  http://bit.ly/bhdCD [hat tip Virginia Postrel]
• Stephen Hicks asks "Is Capitalism Bad for Art?"  Well, what do you think?
  http://bit.ly/H9Pqz
• TV Psychic is wrong on Aisling, sceptics say. "It's not sensing murder, it's sensing exploitation."
  http://tinyurl.com/yjjow63
• The NZ Herald has a former resident's video of the overflowing drain at 5 Longburn Rd – a neighbour who “moved because of the  danger to her children."
  http://bit.ly/3nPSBg
• You can't keep a good entrepreneur down - even in Malawi. But think what William Kamkwamba could do with some capital
  http://tinyurl.com/yljhv7w
• "The part of the economics profession that would hate a Nobel going to Ostrom is part I want nothing to do with," says a busy Eric Crampton.
  http://tinyurl.com/yzof833
• "Women cull their style ideas from people who are not attracted to them." Hence all their self-image problems.
  http://tinyurl.com/yjshtse
• RT @greigmcgill @Peter_Cresswell Re Zac Braff: It's a fake. Sorry. :( .2:33 PM Oct 12th from Flock in reply to greigmcgill
• Wealth is not debt. Financial assets are not “wealth,” but a claim on real wealth. Good sense and a reminder in The Economist.
  http://tinyurl.com/yg6mrjd
• Check out the Wall Street Journal’s Guide to ObamaCare – a comprehensive collection of Wall Street Journal editorials and op-eds.
  http://tinyurl.com/yef879a
• The overwhelming majority of parents abuse their children, reports The Onion.
   http://ow.ly/15Uorf
• North Korea celebrates Obama's Peace Prize in the normal way – i.e., by firing five missiles off their east coast.
  http://bit.ly/3GfFao
• Check out the Cherry-Pickers Guide to Global Temperature Trends. Everyone else does it, so why not you too?
   http://masterresource.org/?...

“Printing money is merely taxation in another form. Rather than robbing citizens of their money, government robs their money of purchasing power.”
- Peter Schiff

• Intel's "ridiculous" antitrust defence: they argue that a corporation has a right to the same due process of law as individuals.
  http://tinyurl.com/y9cf7kw
• Privatise! Crikey, if Gordon can do it, then why the hell can't John?  (And when you’ve answered that question properly, you’ve explained everything wrong about NZ politics in the past twenty-five years.)
  http://bit.ly/2qqomT
• Al Gore still doesn't debate, but he did briefly 'answer' questions recently - until the journalist's mike got cut off. Don’t want any of those “inconvenient” questions, eh.
  http://tinyurl.com/yl642fn
• The twentieth-century’s 12 largest hyperinflations were all caused by financing huge public budget deficits through money creation. And guess what, “the tipping point for hyperinflation occurs when the government's deficit exceed 40% of its expenditures. . . .” Guess where it is now . . .  http://tinyurl.com/yje8xwu
• Intellectual history with flow charts: Stephen Hicks has posted his neat flowchart summary of The Enlightenment Vision — flowchart in Excel and PDF posted at his site.  http://www.stephenhicks.org/ [Scroll down a post or two to find it. It’s worth it.]
• Friends report that Chris Knox had his first Epic (beer of champions) since his stroke.
  http://chrisknox.blogtown.co.nz/2009/10/12/epic/
• The Wall Street Journal offers another important lesson in malinvestment: Fannie's Next Big Adventure.
  http://bit.ly/pkkoB
• Reserve Bank of NZ issues its strongest warning yet on unbalanced economy. (Wonder when  they’ll realise it’s them who’s the primary cause of that?)
  http://bit.ly/185wYA
• An 8m giant Maori Bronze Statue?! It's hardly the Statue of Liberty, is it.
  http://tinyurl.com/yfrtklv
• Jim Rogers: “People are printing money, gold is going up."  These two things are not entirely unconnected.
   http://tinyurl.com/ygo2kf2
• "The Reserve Bank of New Zealand assures me that they do not own any gold. How barbaric!"
  http://bit.ly/1BejDY
• Emphatically NOT a dead parrot. [Hat tip David Slack] 
  http://tr.im/B9ba

“I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coa-uthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent.”
- Ross McKitrick, in ‘Flawed Climate Data’

• Patrick Michaels summarises the latest warmist embarrassment: "The dog ate global warming."
• Read Global Surface Temperature Data Lost for more background.
• How Ayn Rand Institute head Yaron Brook made the transition from avowed socialist to unapologetic Objectivist. (See, anyone can do it.)
  http://bit.ly/EMSab
• Have you wondered how the Ayn Rand Institute is doing in these difficult times? Answer : Better than ever, thank you very much.
  http://bit.ly/1O0lfv
• How Obama lost Israel's affection: "...there is no more dangerous combination of traits than hubris and ineptitude..."
  http://bit.ly/2sXsA
• The Largest Theft In History. And guess who’s responsible?
• Uplifting: This is what standing up for freedom looks like. [Hat tip Michelle Malkin]
  http://bit.ly/CasRf
• Let's Take Back Columbus Day: October 8, 2009 by Thomas A. Bowden .
  http://bit.ly/13Zy9v
• Jesús Huerta de Soto is one of the worlds top business cycle experts.  Hear what he has to say about the recession:
  http://bit.ly/yR7B8
• Good news or bad news, depending on your chosen career: The guy who created the FART iPhone app is making EIGHT GRAND A DAY!
  How are your career rewards looking?
• Colorado's War on Drugs a Fiscal Disaster, records Mike Krause.
  http://bit.ly/FchrI
• The Times Higher Education rankings are out. Highest-ranked university in our neck of the woods is Canberra’s ANU, ranked 17th highest in world. Auckland appears at 61=, Otago 125th, Canterbury 188th.
  http://bit.ly/DwVey

And finally, here’s two helpings of Simon’s cat [hat tip Noodle Food]

 

Enjoy!