Monday 15 November 2010

MONDAY MORNING RAMBLE: Because Monday I have last Friday on my mind

Yes, I’m sure you missed my regular ramble last Friday. So here are some links to stories and shows around the world of the internet to make it harder to do your work on a wet Monday morning, but much easier to understand why you should.

  • Cartoon characters explain Ben Bernanke. [Hat tip Scott P]
     QE2 Explained by Cartoon Characters – D V O R A K    U N C E N S O R E D
  • Robert Higgs fisks Ben Bernanke.
    Notes on Bernanke’s Apologia for QE2  - Robert Higgs,  I N D E P E N D E N T   I N S T I T U T E
  • In the wake of the ongoing collapse of Bretton Woods II, World Bank president Robert Zoellick called for a “managed” gold standard last week. Richard Ebeling explains why his call should be taken seriously.
    A Return to the Gold Standard – Richard Ebeling,   N O R T H W O O D  U N I V E R S I T Y
  • But Zoellick’s “managed” gold standard would leave all the gold in the hands of government. Constitutional lawyer, historian and scholar Edwin Vieira agrees the world urgently needs the sound money of a gold standard, but insists it must be one that leaves gold coins in the pockets of workers.  It’s really all or nothing for financial freedom.
    A Cross of Gold – E dwin Vieira, G . A . T . A
  • _Fekete My thanks to economist Alntal Fekete for the above story, the man sometimes called “the Einstein of Money,” to whom I listened with rapt attention over the weekend (right), and will again this week at his Auckland Symposium on sound money.
    Auckland: Symposium on Sound Money  - Louis Boulanger
  • “We are seeing a steady erosion of fundamental legal protections in New Zealand and a parallel increase in the powers of the police and other state agencies.”  And they all claim to speak for “the public good.” Bet you didn’t know which long-dead French philosopher is ultimately to blame.
    Rousseau and the right to silence 
    –   M A N D E N O    M U S I N G S
  • Tim Black explains why the British housing industry is in ruins. There are lessons here to which our own central planners are blind, blind, blind.
    Why the housing industry is in ruins – S P IK E D
  • Measuring the Stimulunacy: Just another reason it didn’t work, and can’t: “Not all jobs are created equal. It cost more than $500,000 in economic stimulus funds to create a single highway construction job…”
    Tracking the stimulus: Some jobs cost more to create –  U S A   T O D A Y
  • The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was the best thing for fish stock since … well, ever!
    Oils spills versus fishing – O F S E T T I N G   B E H A V I O U R
  • As we approach the next financial crisis—the one the central bankers are making more necessary—it’s worth watching (again) this ‘Four Corners’ special that appeared on Australian television back in August.

This week American travellers “enjoyed” the introduction of pervert-cam and forced fisking. Here’s one liberal who got mugged by the thugs.

  • I’ve discovered the VERY best way to make yourself immune to Christopher Hitchens. It’s to read his memoirs. Spend a few days in the company of the smug git, who could name-drop for England, and you’re left unwilling to spend any more time in his company ever again.
    Hitch-22 is more interesting for what it leaves out – S P I K E D
  • Russia today is looking the same politically as it did under the Czar. After seven years in prison for the crime of being successful, the former owner of Yukos—who watched his business nationalised by Putin’s goons from his cell—finally gets his day in court before being shipped to today’s Gulag. “Says he:"Here and now the fate of every citizen of our country is being decided.”
    ‘The Fate of Every Citizen Is Being Decided’ – N E W  Y O R K   T I M E S
  • "The Day The Internet Threw A Righteous Hissyfit About Copyright And Pie" [hat tip PaulB] http://n.pr/cWHHAx
  • I’ve been telling you this for years, but if you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe these archaeologists:
    Beer Lubricated the Rise of Civilization, Study Suggests – L I V E   S C I E N C E
    [Hat tip Ian J.
  • Australia’s ABC radio’s Classical Music Station just ran a listener’s poll on their top 100 classical pieces. No Wagner, no Verdi, and they’ve voted a piece of shopping music into number four, but it’s a pretty good top three, and if you’re new to classical music and want to explore more, it might be useful to start exploring what spins other folks’ wheels.
    The Classic 100 –  A B C    C L A S S I C   F M
  • All this talk about “multiculturalism.” Does everyone really know what multiculturalism means?
     Multiculturalism Gone Wild [PODCAST] – Alex Epstein,   J E S S E   L E E  P E T E R S O N  S H O W
  • More stupid stories that become news: Irish PriceWaterhouse employees rank female employees. Story goes viral. Check out the story (and the top ten skirt-wearers).
    The 'Top 10' Office Email That's Scandalizing Ireland – G A W K E R
  • The great H. L, Mencken explains how to perpetrate a scholastic urban myth.
    Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub – C U L T U R E   J A M M I N G
  • Peikoff speaks. And so does Yaron.
    Peikoff vs an ARI Board Member  - L E N A R D   P E I K O F F
    Dear ARI supporter:... - A . R . I .
    People react all over.
  • Bye bye Dim Post. We didn’t always agree, but I almost always laughed.
    This rough magic I here abjure  - D I M   P O S T
  • 500x_hamburga Important news for Burger users.
    The Truth Behind the Everlasting Happy Meal: Burgers That Size Don't Rot 
    – G I Z M O D O
  • Good people die, while others who should have don’t…
    Polish composer Henryk Gorecki dies at the age of 76 – B B C
    Meanwhile, ”according to Stuff: Phil Collins has contemplated killing himself, and would always pick an option that "didn't hurt". I so identify with this story. I too have contemplated killing Phil Collins..”
    We Came So Close To Losing Phil Collins – I M P E R A T O R   F I S H
  • How do great artists become great? Ask Stephen Hicks.
    More on how great artists become great -  S T E P H E N   H I C K S
  • Two comedians do Michael Caine at three paces.

  • And finally pinched from Lindsay Mitchell (who I have to thank again for an excellent presentation at the Libz conference)…  this was said over one hundred years ago but people still don't get it:

“I'd rather that England should be free than
that England should be compulsorily sober.
With freedom we might in the end attain sobriety, but
in the other alternative we should eventually lose
both freedom and sobriety.”
— W.C. Magee, Archbishop of York, Sermon to Peterborough [1868]

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Britain's Horror Story: Thing is, once more than 50% of the people are employed by the state directly or indirectly, then you have a majority voting populace who have a vested interest in voting for more spending, and against government budget cuts. How do you stop such a monstrosity? It seems self-perpetuating, the only thing that can stop it is running out of money. Exactly what happened in the UK. And then people riot and protest. Morons.

- DavidJ

Mark Hubbard said...

In our next sitting of Parliament, the whole house should be strapped in their chairs and 'invited' to watch the Trillion Pounds Horror Story. It would change nothing, but at least we would know they know what harm they have wrought on us all.

I loved the bath explanation in Part I of the nonsense that are cuts in government spending in NZ.

Anonymous said...

Liberty Twat said to wish you a happy birthday. I never,well hardly ever, read your blog, much preferring The Standard and No Right Turn. But anyway happy birthday you right wing blogster you. Ian

Deepak said...

Ian, you said that you mainly read, The Standard and No Right Turn.

To be honest, I was an illiterate person (in terms of general knowledge in a variety of topics) although I am a plumber by training. Since I discovered this blog, my level of intelligence had increased dramatically. I have been exposed to new ideas on this blog that I would have never stumbled across them on my own.

I used to read The Standard and No Right Turn before I came to Not PC for my regular reading. I found them to be completely dull and dumb and there is no surprise there since those authors are themselves illiterate. I never learnt anything new or insightful from those blogs.

To sum it up, anyone who is reading The Standard and No Right Turn must be dull/dumb him/her self and that's a fact. WHY? From time to time, some regular commentators in those blogs do appear here to make a one off comment and when their opinions are being debunked, they never return or perhaps they became silent readers. They can’t withstand the intellectual arguments that readers and writers of this blog put forward to those dull and dumb The Standard & No Right Turn followers.

Richard McGrath said...

I hope the Overdose and Trillion Pound Horror Story videos are shown on TV here.

Some amazing stats in the latter - especially the degree of state domination of the economy in the UK (81% in Northern Ireland, and 77% in Wales, vs 70% in Eastern bloc countries during the communist era!! Restated, there was more of a private sector behind the Iron Curtain than there is in most of Britain today!).

Anonymous said...

Yes, would be good to see 'Horror Story' played on NZ TV. The UK sure do have a public sector/private sector partnership in place and it's killing them.

Good to see Sir John Cowperthwaite - 20th century hero - getting more recognition.

And gawd, the sweetness, heartbreak & irony of hearing the two Chinese gentlemen at the end - out of the pulsating diamond that is Hong Kong - saying that they learned it from the English and that the English need to go back to Adam Smith and start over. Ha ha ha. Sob sob sob. Ha ha ha.

Anonymous said...

re: Hitchens being smug and unpleasantish; yup. He's done some good things but his labyrinthine writings seem to me as more self-indulgent exercises in erudition than as spreaders of light and/or heat.

Marcus said...

Interesting to read people saying that Britain's Horror Story should be shown in NZ.

I thought that this documentary might be considered too UK specific.

It's no way unique to the UK though. I think even Americans would find resonance with their own rapidly shrinking manufacturing.

In NZ it would be the reduction in primary producers compared to the size of the state which would be a paralell phenomenom.