A new old element

(From our Science Desk) Yes, it’s been around a while but a new generation has discovered the gag: A new chemical element has ben discovered…

The new element is Governmentium (Gv). It has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lefton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons or protons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.  All of the money is
consumed in the exchange, and no other by-products are produced.

FRIDAY RAMBLE: Print ‘em out for the weekend [updated]

Time for another ramble through a few sites and sounds that caught my eye this week and last, beginning with . . .

• . . . the shock news of the week for most NZers: Jobless rate rise shocks markets, puts back rate rises. 
      Of course, the revelation that the economy is still in the toilet and 276,000 NZers are out of work and looking for the start was only a shock for those who believed that GDP figures can tell you when you’re out of recession, and who thought we were. That we are. The fools.
    The big shock really should have been for the real morons who are still talking about hiking minimum wages at a time when minimum-wage laws should be abolished—abolished so that the labout market can clear. 
      Not for those morons any reflection on the news that “The increase in unemployment was particularly marked among youth, with the unemployment rate for 15 to 24 year olds rising 6.4 percentage points to reach 18.4 percent,” or that “the unemployment rate for Maori is 15.4 percent, for Pacific people it is 14 percent, while just 4.6 percent of the European ethnic group were unemployed.”  No, those same morons who refused to believe Paul Walker when he told them “minimum wages reduce employment of low-skilled workers” still refuse to believe the evidence in front of their own eyes—and continue to damn those low-skilled workers to being low-skilled non-workers instead.
      Morons, thy name is The Standard.
      Like Paul says, they need to be smacked with a textbook. Paul and Eric Crampton deliver a good first serve:
  Econ 101 and the minimum wage – ANTI DISMAL
  Posts on Minimum Wages – OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
• In fact, the high unemployment figures “are actually surprisingly low,”says Peter Osborne.
  Big Government = High Unemployment – Peter Osborne, LIBERTARIANZ
• And I’ve been disparaging about John Key’s government imposing an Emisssions Tax Scam on us all, so what then about the declaration to which he’s finally signed up: “to take on a responsibility target for greenhouse gas emissions reductions of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, if there is a comprehensive global agreement” including both developed and developing countries.  Given that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades of such an agreement being reached, does that just leave Australia “like a shag on a rock, boldly promising to slash emissions hard, regardless”? 
  In other words, have we been saved?
  Appendix I - Quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020. Annex: Parties – UNFCC
  Rudd leads world in climate stupidity – ANDREW BOLT
• Herald columnist Jim Hopkins has purloined an unauthorised excerpt from IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s raunchy work of fiction.  And I’m not talking the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report here. It’s so hot it could melt a polar icecap. Here’s several inches of the inconvenient truth:
      “’Oh, sir, is that a hockey stick graph in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
      "’Both, my angel,’ he cried, as their lips crashed together like waves on a drowning atoll's shore.”
  Scientist's racy novel turns up the heat – JIM HOPKINS
• “Waitangi weekend is a good to stop and appreciate what a deeply weird country we are,” says the Dim Post.  Best you go visit to see what he means. It’ll only take a minute.
  Jamais vu – DIM POST
• “Some sectors of American culture have not gotten the message yet: [that] Ayn Rand was more than a grumpy ignoramus with no friends who couldn't write.” Latest evidence in chief, a tawdry hit job by Theodore Dalrymple, aka Anthony Daniels, well dissected by the Fun With Gravity blog.
  Why, oh why, do so many lies have to be told about Ayn Rand simply in order to smear her?
  Ayn Rand In The New Criterion – FUN WITH GRAVITY
• When I was a kid I remember reading C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books (based on my father’s enthusiasm for them, as I recall), and had forgotten all about them until this week when a friend lent me the Hornblower mini-series on DVD.  I can unreservedly recommend it.  Heroic, courageous, tautly written and utterly uncynical—the books are faithfully transferred to the screen in as un-post-modern a production as you could hope to see.
  Hornblower on TRADEME
• ( As a bonus, can you remember which American president committed a nomination speech blunder in which he called Hubert Horatio Hornblower “a great man who should have been President, who would have been one of the greatest Presidents in history.”? Answer here.)
• The Cato Institute’s ‘Unbound’ blog has been examining Ayn Rand and her contribution this month.  “Ayn Rand has been dead for 27 years, but the influence of the iconoclastic novelist and philosopher shows no sign of flagging. . . The time would seem ripe, then, for a reappraisal of her ideas.”
  Sadly for that project however, wanting to do something is not the same as doing it. Perhaps they should have invited contributors who know a little more about their subject?
  What's Living & Dead in Ayn Rand's Moral & Political Thought – CATO UNBOUND
• Put aside 40 minutes sometime this weekend to watch George Reisman offer a pro-free market program for economic recovery: the cause of the collapse, and its cure.  Sheer brilliance that everyone affected by the economic downturn needs to understand—which is to say, all of you.
  
  
  

• Eat species to save them. You’ve heard that same thought voiced around here before a few times.  Great, then, to see NZ’s most vocal exponent of the idea, Roger Beattie, getting the media coverage he deserves.
  Farmer aims to put Weka back on menu – DOM POST
  A Wild Card – COUNTRY CALENDAR
  Eat them to keep them – OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
  Beattie on Closeup [updated] – OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
• So how important was that latest World Economic Summit at Davos?  Really important, says the Financial Times, because bankers were “fighting to fend off a wave of controls on sectors ranging from bonuses to proprietary trading and derivatives.”  Not so important at all, says Yaron Brook, because the people at Davos are not the ones who hold up the world.
  Bankers try to fight off wave of controls – FINANCIAL TIMES
  The Irrelevance of Davos – PJTV [8-minute video]

The issue is not slavery for a 'good' cause versus slavery
for a 'bad' cause; the issue is not dictatorship by  a 'good'
gang versus dictatorship by a 'bad' gang.
The issue is freedom versus dictatorship."
- AYN RAND

• If stalking MPs is your thing, then your thing is going to be the new Watching Your MP website, which invites readers to post sightings of your employees out and about around the country. Lots of low-level stuff—Simon Bridges spotted in a Gull Service Station in Mt Maunganui—lots of odd sort of stuff—Paul Bennett spotted at the AC/DC concert in Wellington—but this has the potential to at least keep the MPs’ alibis honest.
  Watching Your MP
• Bookmark this one for your Sunday reading and more: James Valliant takes on and demolishes the anti-historical notion that Christianity is what underpins civilisation; that “the history of the West is the history of Christianity”; and that “as Christianity declines, the greatness of the Western world follows."
  Bollocks, says Valliant.  But he says it masterfully.
  Gimme That Old Time Religion! – SOLO
• A British man’s castle can’t be his home, poor bastard. Sayeth the bloody bureaucrats [Hat tip Roger W.]
  UK man's castle won't be his home, court says – YAHOO
• Some more poor bastards here, on the right another example of the hard-heart of the welfare state: A German family who moved to Nelson looking for a new life, but who have lost their employment, have been told by Immigration to get the hell out, and (not being allowed to be citizens, or even residents) cant even get their tax money back, and are now reliant on donations to survive. Another example of the welfare state’s inhumanity to immigrants.  The Welfare State is a killer for open immigration, and a killer for many immigrants.
  Global crunch [and the NZ immigration department] upsets family dream – NELSON MAIL
  [PS: If you’d like to help this family out, email Janett at janett dot peter at gmx.net ]
• Some people think those “dumb Chinese” are going to keep bankrolling America for ever.  How many times have you heard, on the one hand, that it doesn't make sense for China to keep buying US government debt, but on the other that they will keep right  on buying it?   Check your premises. [Hat tip Sovereign Life Blog]

 

• Considering the many blunders that make up the rich tapestry of history, it would be a brave newspaper indeed that made up a list of history’s fifteen greatest mistakes.  Which is what the Telegraph has done.
  History's 15 great mistakes – TELEGRAPH
• “Glenn Beck can be both illuminating and infuriating,”  says Brian Phillips. His latest infuriating populism?  Suggesting that that the states of the United States have a “right” to institute universal health care, hand out free cars, etc. if enough citizens of that state want such thing.
  Conservative Populism - HOUSTON PROPERTY RIGHTS
• Here’s QI’s John Lloyd.  The write-up says “nature's mysteries meet tack-sharp wit in this hilarious, 10-minute mix of quips and fun lessons, as comedian, writer and TV man John Lloyd plucks at the substance of several things not seen.” Whatever the hell that means. There is a point, even if you can’t see it (and yes, that is a pun).
  

• I betcha George Washington’s State of the Union would look a little different to the ObaMessiah’s.
  President George Washington's First State Of the Union Address – WORDS BY WOODS
• Anybody else remember that great British TV programme Connections in which James Burke showed all sorts of exciting and frankly bizarre connections between great events, and great discoveries. John Drake remembers—including a special memory of a special episode discussing the connection between the ideas of philosopher Immanuel Kant and the career of Adolf Hitler, via a once-famous environmentalist. The story overlaps both these videos (the first of which starts, unfortunately, with a mistaken paean to mercantilism):
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Tom Utley reckons Republicans could learn a lot from Ron Paul. See:
  Republicans could learn a lot from Ron Paul – IT’S MY BLOG
• "How long before some of Cuba's laws are enacted under Obama?" wonders Sandi Trixx.
  Digging Che – SANDI TRIXX
• I love Paul Hsieh’s little philosophical quiz. Three views on building a shelter; three on choosing what food to eat; three on knowledge; and three more on happiness. Can you spot the similarities?
  A Few Parallels From Shelter, Food, Epistemology, and Happiness – NOODLE FOOD 
• Hat tip for these last few, by the way, to this week’s Objectivist Blog Roundup over at Kelly’s place.
• And a big hat tip to Jazz On The Tube for this historic Louis Armstrong performance recorded in Ghana.
  
  

Enjoy your weekend!

New Element Discovered

This is doing the rounds again. Sadly, it never gets old …

News from the Scientific World: New Element Discovered
Victoria University of Wellington researchers have discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.
A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 1 to 3 years (in NZ). It does not decay, but instead undergoes a re-organisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as a critical morass. When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.

A major scientific discovery

A major scientific discovery:

A major research institution (MRI) has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Governmentium," extracted from samples of the mineral Bureaucratite.

Governmentium has 1 neutron, 12 deputy neutrons, 75 assistant neutrons, and 224 deputy assistant neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no protons or electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every action with which it comes into contact. A reaction which would normally take less than a second to complete takes 4 days to complete after contact with just a minute amount of Governmentium -- reactions which would normally take weeks, will take months.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 3 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time since each organisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass."

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Many thanks to the UK Independence Party for this. In case you're wondering, that's the same UK Independence Party that may be shut down by the UK's campaign contribution rules -- under similar rules as are proposed here in NZ (and for similar reasons).

That's what happens when any element meets its anti-matter equivalent: annihilation.

LINKS: Political cartoons from a Eurorealist perspective - UK Independence Party, West Bournemouth Branch
UKIP faces ruin over donations - Telegraph
Bureaucratite - Wikipedia

RELATED POSTS ON: British Politics, Free Speech, Humour

We could do without a capital gains tax-- and without the morons who support it

Australia has a housing bubble and a capital-gains tax. New Zealand has a housing bubble and no capital-gains tax.

No connection there, you would have thought.

Numb-nut morons Certified geniuses however suggest that the New Zealand government should embrace a tax on capital gains, in order to avoid the housing bubble we already have.

The logic of the argument escapes me, just as the art of logic has clearly escaped long ago from these self-proclaimed genii proclaiming it.

Writing in The Australian this morning, Henry Ergas observes

there is an iron law of Australian public policy, it is that you can’t keep a bad idea down. And never was that clearer than in the [latest] ­discussion of capital gains tax.

Bad ideas being enshrined in public policy debate are evidently not confined to Australia. If only. Happily, however, neither are good arguments against them, and Ergas’s is a beauty. For not only did Australia’s capital-gains tax do precisely zero to avert their housing bubble,

those high rates of capital-gains tax are anything but costless. To begin with, the capital-gains tax can tax investment income that has been taxed several times, compounding the tax rate on savings. And as the tax rate on savings is already high, the additional economic harm is material.
    It is true that Treasury’s “Re: Think” paper on tax reform suggests otherwise. Because taxes don’t have much impact on the level of savings, it argues, taxes on savings, such as the capital-gains tax, may do little damage to efficiency, ­assuming they are imposed ­uniformly.
    However, Treasury’s argument is confused. After all, saving is merely a way of using income today to “buy” consumption tomorrow; and just as the economic harm a tax on oranges causes does not depend on how it affects spending on oranges but on whether it materially reduces the number of oranges consumed, so the economic harm from taxes on savings depends not on what ­happens to the level of savings but to the impact on how much future consumption savers buy.

Sad to say that despite his other good works here, Mr Ergas labours under the modern misconception that consumption is more important than production—ignoring the obvious-enough fact that the latter makes the former possible—production itself being the most important economy-wide consequence of saving. And take note that the impact on saving (and thence production) of a capital-gains tax is “typically large”:

For example, at an unchanged level of savings, a tax that cuts the average inflation-adjusted annual rate of return by just 5 percentage points reduces the value of savings in 30 years by over 75 per cent.

Cut production by that much over that time period, and everybody is poorer for it.

But the distortions due to the capital-gains tax are even greater than those caused by other taxes on savings. In effect, as gains are only taxed when they are realised, the higher the capital-gains tax, the greater the incentive to postpone realisation. By thus locking in investors, high rates of capital-gains tax make asset markets less ­efficient while inducing investors to carry more risk (in the form of unrealised gains) than they otherwise would.
    At the same time, because the capital-gains tax can be avoided by postponing realisation, rate increases may yield little revenue for the harm they cause.

Not that I favour government revenue-gathering, but since both the US Treasury and Congress’s bipartisan tax committee agree that revenue gained is hardly worth the harm, you’d think that our local numb-nut morons Certified Geniuses for CGT would realise that neither their goal of raising revenue nor pricking bubbles is something their tax can do.  Thank goodness then that

the New Zealand tax review … found capital gains taxes “make the tax system complex and costly”; it concluded that a capital-gains tax would not lead to a “fairer or more efficient tax system, lower avoidance or raise substantial revenue.”
    New Zealand therefore benefits from not having a CGT, as do numerous other countries.

Do you hear that Bernard Hickey, Gareth Morgan, Russel Norman, Uncle Tom Cobley and all? The evidence shows New Zealand therefore benefits from not having a CGT, as do numerous other countries.

So either those folk are certified morons immune to evidence, or they have another goal. Which is probably just soaking the rich

You choose who is which.

[Hat tip Catallaxy Files]

“I love the sound of breaking windows” [update 10]

I'm sure the thoughts of all my readers are with the people in Christchurch, and have been since they first heard of the disaster.

That it is a disaster instead of a tragedy is almost a miracle.

That no-one was killed may be attributed to the earthquake striking when everyone was abed, instead of out in the streets; that our structural engineers have the knowledge to allow structures to safely resist a 7.1 shake and 93 aftershocks (and counting); and because New Zealand is still wealthy enough to build what they recommend.

Thank goodness for NZ's structural engineers, who in the field of seismic design are recognised world leaders.

Thank goodness too for the civilised way in which most Christchurch folk pulled together to help each other through the calamity, and will no doubt continue to. With the exception of a few vandals taking the opportunity to loot other people's property, these are the sort of people whose city one would like to share—one of the few blessings of a catastrophe like this lies in discovering (if you didn't already know them) the good people who live just over your fence.

One of the alleged silver linings that is talked about, however, is very much NOT a blessing.

There is a lot of work to do now just to get the city back into the shape it once was, and this going to take an awful lot of resources and cost somebody an awful lot of money.  Around 500 damaged buildings, several damaged bridges and many damaged roads, broken sewerage and failed water reticulation systems … all up everyone in the city now faces a bill of around $2 billion in repair costs to get things back to how they were, not to mention all the time and opportunities lost while those repairs are being done.

Early Saturday morning I wondered aloud on Twitter who would be the first moron to start talking about the blessings of all that destruction.  We didn't have long to wait for that moron.  9:20 the very next morning, the Prime Minister was front and centre on TVNZ’s Q&A programme saying (with a smile) “every cloud has a silver lining, there’ll be tremendous stimulus.” [Watch the moron here, at 11:30min in.  Hat tip Paul B for spotting it.] In subsequent interviews elsewhere, Smile and Wave talk more about the “stimulus” effect of the destruction, with the government (he says) picking up most of the tab for the repairs. And he’s been joined in this chorus by other morons like the head of the Contractor’s Federation, Ollie Turner, who talked about this as “a much needed [economic] upturn”—especially for his members.

These are people who love the sound of breaking windows—or at least the fallacy thereof—and who wish to compound the unavoidable natural disaster with an entirely avoidable economic one.

Since he’s only thinking about his members, the head of the Contractor’s Federation could at least be forgiven for violating the very first rule of economics, stated so well by Henry Hazlitt:

The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy: it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Hazlitt wrote a whole book expressing the lessons embodied in that one principle.  The very first application of the lesson is, of course, our old friend the broken window fallacy. Allow me to just slightly rewrite Hazlitt’s illustration of it for today’s readers, to demonstrate how morons can turn a $2 billion disaster into one costing everyone $4 billion:

Let us begin with the most topical illustration possible: let us choose all the broken buildings and shattered panes of glass now littering Christchurch’s streets.
    A crowd gathers, both in Christchurch and on televisions around the world, staring with quiet horror at the gaping holes in the buildings and the rubble and shattered glass over the streets and businesses of the city. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the business owners that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side.
    A Smiling and Waving Man smiles and waves about the work this will give to unemployed tradesmen. And the head of the local Contractor’s Federation smiles that it will make business for many glaziers and the members of the local Contractor’s Federation.
    As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much is the whole repair bill? Two billion dollars? That’s quite a sum. After all, if earthquakes didn’t happen in a recession, what would happen to the glass business and the businesses of all those builders? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The builders will have $2 billion more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $2 billion more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The rubble and smashed windows and  will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles.
     The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that, far from being a public menace, the earthquake was a public benefactor.

    Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This major act of destruction will in the first instance mean more business for glaziers and contractors. They will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the ratepayers, taxpayers, business owners and their insurers will be out $2 billion that they were planning to spend for new suits, new factory equipment, new computers, new buildings, new investments and new business opportunities.
    Because, instead, they are first going to have to put things back the way they were, they will have to go without the suits, factory equipment, computers, buildings, investments and business opportunities (or some equivalent needs or luxuries). Instead of having a functioning city and $2 billion we now (after some time) have merely a functioning city. Or, as all these plans were already in the making before the earthquake hit, instead of having both a functioning city and new suits, new factory equipment, new computers, new buildings, new investments and new business opportunities we must be content instead with just the reconstructed city.
    The net result of the “silver lining” is that the community has lost all the new suits, new factory equipment, new computers, new buildings, new investments and new business opportunities that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer for the loss.
    The gain in business for the glaziers and contractors making repairs, in short, is merely the loss of business for the tailors, retailers and entrepreneurs, and for the builders and designers who erect new buildings. No new "employment" has been added. Smile and Wave and the people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the owners of the bent buildings and the repairers. They had forgotten all the potential third parties involved, those who missed out on their business because they had to pay for the buildings to be un-bent. They forgot about them precisely because they will not now ever enter the scene.
    They will see the new windows and repaired buildings in the next few weeks and months—along with all the strutting politicians who will say that it was they who made the repairs possible. They will never see the extra suits, computers, buildings and business opportunities precisely because they will never be made. The morons see only what is immediately visible to the eye, and nothing or no-one else beyond it.

So far as I know, Smile and Wave and the head of the Contractor’s Federation are the only morons so far to use words like “stimulus” “earthquake” and “silver lining” in the same sentence.  But please do send in any other sighting you see—I’d love to start cataloguing them here.

And feel free too to send the sightings to the US blog that catalogues sightings “Broken Window” stupidity.  Here it is: Broken Window Watch.

And here’s Nick Lowe, with what could be their theme song.

UPDATE 1: More sightings of the Broken Window Fallacy sent in by readers:

• Don Brash, on Q+A on muttered that the quake would have economic benefits because of the work required to rebuild the city. Don should know better.  (Sometime back North Shore mayor Williams said that the leaky homes saga would be good for economic growth for the same misguided reason. [Sent in by Don W.]

Keep ‘em coming.

UPDATE 2: Kudos to writer Zetetic at The Standard who correctly identifies Key’s blather as an example of the Broken Window Fallacy.  But I’ll take a point off because he/she can’t tell the difference between a Broken Window and “real stimulus.”

UPDATE 3: Stephen Toplis, head of research at Bank of New Zealand. Cameron Bagrie, chief economist at ANZ. Hamish Rutherford, Business Day journalist.  Abject fucking morons, the lot of them.

UPDATE 4: There’s nonsense, there’s damned nonsense, there’s the utterly moronic … and then there’s this. Want to know why “earthquake prone Wellington hasn't had a major earthquake for a very, long time”? Because, wait for it…

On December 8, each year, the Bishop of Wellington consecrates the city to The Blessed Ever Virgin Mary under her title of Immaculate Conception, asking her to protect us from earthquakes which have devastated this region in the past.  Consequently we are still waiting for the "Big One."

Yes, there are people who subscribe  to this sort of mystic hocus pocus, and they write for your delectation at the NZ Conservative blog.  And this just “summarises the case.” For “a fuller set of proofs from scripture,” I urge  you to read the comments on that post.  it’ll be the funniest thing you’ll read today.

UPDATE 5: Labour MP Brendon Burns and Chris  Hutching from the NZ Property Institute buy the Broken Window Fallacy [spotted by Hugh Pavletich & Owen McShane]:

But as Christchurch Central MP Brendon Burns described it, these losses may be offset by a “silver lining.” The rebuilding programme will kickstart the construction industry in the region and probably require tradespeople from other centres. Gross domestic product figures will improve in the aftermath and so will the employment rate…

UPDATE 6:  NZ Herald business editor Liam Dann confirms his credentials as a stimulunatic.

In Italy at the weekend, the world's smartest economists gathered to discuss weighty issues, such as whether governments should pump more stimulus into their ailing economies.
    At the same time in New Zealand, a massive earthquake was making that decision for us…. nature has unleashed the biggest job creation scheme this country has seen…. we are going to see billions of Government dollars injected into the southern economy.
    With any luck, that may kick-start strong economic growth for the whole nation.

Fortunately, several of Dann’s readers demonstrate in the comments below his moronic Pollyanna-ism that they’ve got more smarts than he has, one of them pointing out, correctly, “If earthquakes are a source of prosperity then there is no need to wait or them to come along - just start tearing down buildings and enjoy the prosperity.”

UPDATE 7:  ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley joins his colleagues from the other major banks in talking complete and utter bollocks:

Over a longer period, the impact on GDP is likely to be positive [said the moron in an article penned by Brian Fallow], on the grounds that $2 billion, say, of damage represents close to $2 billion of additional demand, in rebuilding, repairing and replacing what was damaged.

I swear, if you didn’t read these comments for yourself, you’d think I was just making them up.

UPDATE 8: Hallelujah!  Despite the welter of alleged economists talking up the benefits of destruction, Westpac’s Brendan O’Donovan says we’re worse off for the earthquake, not better. GDP is not a good measure, he told Radio New Zealand this morning, because it doesn’t measure the capital destruction. If natural disasters were really a boost to the economy then we should just go around smashing our windows every week. “If it is a $2 billion cost then wealth has taken a $2 billion hit.”  Listen in to this rare piece of good sense out in public.  The conversation starts about 1:30 minutes in.  Listen to it at least twice,

UPDATE 9:  I never thought I’d see the day.  Thanks to Brendan O’Donovan, my favourite economist Frédéric Bastiat, and his Broken Window Fallacy, is being quoted and discussed over at Dim Post.  Not understood completely, mind you, but it’s a start, eh.

 

Readers at that thread might like to know that all Bastiat’s out-of-copyright works can be freely downloaded at the Mises Institute.  You might like to start with the article that started it all, “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen.”

UPDATE 10:  Good sense is finally starting to outdo non-sense.  This just in from Stuff’s Business Editor Patrick Smellie:

Let’s get one thing straight. Earthquakes are not good for the economy.
    There’s been some feverish talk about the damage to Christchurch being some kind of god-send for the construction industry, especially after last week’s prediction of a collapse in activity in that sector, with 20,000 to 30,000 jobs at risk.
    But try painting the destruction as good news for someone whose house is threatened with collapse on the next big after-shock. Don’t expect a sympathetic reaction.
    Yes, it’s true that there’s suddenly a lot of work in Christchurch for anyone skilled in wielding first a sledgehammer and then a normal hammer.
    But an earthquake is only good for the economy in the same way that wars are: once everything’s been wrecked, it needs to be rebuilt.
    But what do you have once you’ve rebuilt? You have what you had before, only newer.
    Admittedly, there will be an opportunity to throw some Batts in the ceilings of elderly homes that are temporarily unroofed, and some property owners will take the opportunity to renovate earlier than they might have. Nationally, retailers of baked beans, torch batteries and big bottles of water will probably report a stronger month than usual.
    But there is still virtually no productivity gain, no new long-term economic activity generated, and no addition to the national balance sheet from reconstruction in the aftermath of a disaster.

Well said, sir. The point about renovation is worth chewing over a bit more.  The third chapter of Hazlitt’s seminal Economics in One Lesson, written immediately after the war when so many alleged economists were talking about “The Blessings of Destruction,” contains this observation on the improvements the destruction makes possible [starting on page 13]:

It is sometimes said that the Germans or the Japanese had a postwar advantage
over the Americans because their old plants, having been destroyed completely by
bombs during the war, they could replace them with the most modern plants and
equipment and thus produce more efficiently and at lower costs than the Americans
with their older and half-obsolete plants and equipment. But if this were
really a clear net advantage, Americans could easily offset it by immediately
wrecking their old plants, junking all the old equipment. In fact, all manufacturers
in all countries could scrap all their old plants and equipment every year and erect
new plants and install new equipment.
    The simple truth is that there is an optimum rate of replacement, a best time for
replacement. It would be an advantage for a manufacturer to have his factory and
equipment destroyed by bombs only if the time had arrived when, through deterioration
and obsolescence, his plant and equipment had already acquired a null or a
negative value and the bombs fell just when he should have called in a wrecking
crew or ordered new equipment anyway.
    It is true that previous depreciation and obsolescence, if not adequately reflected in
his books, may make the destruction of his property less of a disaster, on net balance,
than it seems. It is also true that the existence of new plants and equipment
speeds up the obsolescence of older plants and equipment. If the owners of the
older plant and equipment try to keep using it longer than the period for which it
would maximize their profit, then the manufacturers whose plants and equipment
were destroyed (if we assume that they had both the will and capital to replace
them with new plants and equipment) will reap a comparative advantage or, to
speak more accurately, will reduce their comparative loss.
    We are brought, in brief, to the conclusion that it is never an advantage to have
one’s plants destroyed by shells or bombs unless those plants have already become
valueless or acquired a negative value by depreciation and obsolescence.
    In all this discussion, moreover, we have so far omitted a central consideration.
Plants and equipment cannot be replaced by an individual (or a socialist government)
unless he or it has acquired or can acquire the savings, the capital accumulation,
to make the replacement….

Which is precisely Brendan O’Donovan’s point above.  If the earthquake imposes a $2 billion cost, then capital has taken a $2 billion hit.

Hollow men & women

Mulholland Drive takes against two National Party minister-morons:

First, Paula Bennett:

    Stealing from people with no kids to pay for those who choose to have kids is wrong.
    Any questions?
    Good.  STFU then.

And Nick Smith:

Nick Smith Doesn't Get It
    He sums it up in one sentence:

        "Why do we have this idea that somebody has to own a thing?"

    Yeah, property rights, what a silly notion!  You FAIL at being a National MP, Nick.  Just bugger off and join the Greens, or RAM, or something.

So what sort of CHANGE was it when these morons took over from the other morons?  And how come you all got so damned excited?

Sorry Mr Keynes, credit creation does not create credible growth

 

Keynesians and all those modern mainstream economists who still follow his meretricious macroeconomic meanderings maintain that what drives economic growth is not savings but credit growth – and the more credit growth you have, even if it’s credit created not out of real savings but totally out of thin air, the more of that freshly-minted paper you have then the more economic growth you will have.

QED. Or as the Latin scholars say, Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

And yet is never has been demonstrandum.

This is perhaps the single most important thing to understand about economics in the age of paper money: their faith-based conviction that credit growth in and of itself drives economic growth. It is held by modern macro types almost as a religious fixation, immune to criticism ever since postulated by the Master.

It’s what’s behind all the efforts ever since this Great Recession began to “kickstart” economies by lowering, lowering, ever-lowering interest rates --- lower them enough, credit growth will take off, and economic growth will be sure to follow. That’s what wil happen, they assure us.

But it hasn’t. In fact, it never has happened liked that.

In 1971, in the US, the ratio of total credit to GDP was 150%. Now it is 354%. In other words, credit has been growing much more rapidly than the economy for the past four decades.

You think, maybe, these boys may have ever read about something called diminishing returns? Because even with a measure of growth that juices up spending, which is all that GDP really measures, they still can’t get their gimmick to really achieve take-off. Not in the US. Not in China. Not in Japan. Not in Europe. Not in New Zealand (where credit is growing at a rate of between 6-10% per year, and growth by their measure by something around a quarter of that).  And the more they try to juice things up, the more fragile they make the system – and the more that rapidly growing debt bubbles up in all the places that it shouldn’t.

Like our over-heated housing market.

Here’s what a busted theory looks like:

If their creation of counterfeit capital causes anything, then it’s not growth but booms and bubbles and all their inevitable busts (with the credit-to-GDP gap rising significantly before every bust):

Do you think these boys ever read anything about malinvestment?

Frankly, friends, when real sustainable growth really does happen, it happens despite these morons, not because of them.

But as the theory is seen to be holding less and less water, instead of questioning their incantation – more counterfeit credit, more economic growth -- the modern macro types in positions of central-banking power instead have just kept right on lowering interest rates until things pop. Lower, and lower, and lower, impervious to all the damage they’ve been doing, right on down until interest rates in some parts of the world are now negative. Below zero. Past the quantum limit. Out there past the speed of light. Boldly going where not even another central banker had historically gone before.

This really is uncharted economic territory, and we’re out there without even a hard-money lifeboat to save us. Negative interest rates mean that you now pay banks to hold your paper money. Savers now pay them interest to look after it.

But as more and more central bankers take the plunge into negative interest rates, they’re discovering that it’s still not working [listen to AUDIO] and with no other tinking from their tatty textbooks to try, they’re just going to keep doubling, down, down, and ever further down.

What do you think that will do to the rate of saving – out of which comes genuine credit creation?

What do you surmise that will do to savers themselves? and to pension funds dead-set reliant on passive income?

What do you think that will do in the long run, or even the medium run when we’re all still far from dead, to the economic expansion these modern macro morons say their creation of phoney credit is trying to encourage?

Real credit creation comes not from thin air but from the pool of real saving – the saving that Grandmaster Keynes said wasn’t necessary. The saving that sets aside real resources for productive future use, instead of being consumed now.

But that’s the very saving the phony credit-creation discourages – and is ever-more discouraging as interest rates sink ever lower into negative territory.

When do you think these morons will begin questioning their faith? Because you can’t create savings or growth just by printing more money.

.

BOOK REVIEW: 'Mao: The Unknown Story'

The word politics is derived from 'poly' meaning many, and 'ticks' meaning small blood sucking objects.

Mao Tse Tung breaks that mould. Mao's blood lust was never small. If you're interested at all in the history of mass murder and in the politics of large world-destroying blood sucking bastards, then you have to read Jung Chang's and John Halliday's book 'Mao: The Unknown Story.' It will make you sick.

I've read several accounts before of Mao and his crimes, and I realised he was a complete bastard. 'Mao: The Unknown Story' reveals that he was without doubt history's biggest bastard -- a mass murder utterly without virtue or any redeeming personal qualities whatsoever. To read his story as Halliday and Chang lay it out certainly made me feel ill with revulsion.

Mao was perfectly prepared to try and wipe out his country's history and to destroy his country's culture, and perfectly happy to murder millions in the attempt. Sacrifice was endemic to him, combined with the relentless pursuit of power -- he sacrificed millions of Chinese in pursuit of power and the protection of his power -- sacrificing them sometimes as an afterthought, and sometimes to assuage his blood lust. He began the technique right from his earliest days, when he sacrificed whole armies and whole cities purely in order to position himself better in the struggle for control of the Chinese Communist Party. When his life and his career was finished, his country lay in ruins, seventy million people were dead, and those left alive were terrified, and they were starving.

The communist ideology provided the justification for the sacrifices Mao demanded; for Mao it meshed perfectly with his desire for power. The Chinese were disarmed by that ideology, and they died of it in their millions. Seventy million! Seventy million people who died of starvation, of torture, as the result of Mao's blatant power lust.

IT'S SOMETIMES THOUGHT THAT to master the profession of blood-sucking dictator, one needs to maintain a gimlet-eyed focus on reality. Mao puts paid to that idea. For him reality was something to evade, with the Chinese people paying the price for his evasion: his insistence in the pursuit of super power status for his feudally impoverished county, for example -- in utter disregard of what might be necessary to become one -- resulted only in further impoverishing China (and leaving it that way for decades) and starving more than forty million human beings -- starved for no other reason than Mao's refusal to accept that "super power status" or even any kind of prosperity was beyond a country in which freedom was so viciously expunged.

His grip on the country was complete, and remained so for a quarter-century by the simple expedient of terror within, and deception without. If he did have a talent, it was for understanding how terror could be used to pacify opposition, and how willingly western leaders would be to participate in his deception.

He really had no interest at all either in the ideology of communism or the welfare of anyone other than himself -- he never showed any interest in the peasants and "the people" in whose name the "People's Liberation Army" supposedly carried out their terror. He was interested in communism only because it gave him the perfect platform on which to seize and maintain power, and to partake of his favourite pleasure: sloth. His chosen ideology was and remains the perfect ideology for the professional thug: as long as the notion exists that individuals are sacrificial fodder for the collective, then there will always be thugs prepared to pick up that sacrifice -- the wider the acceptance of that evil notion, the power the thugs will have; and the less squeamish they are, the more heads they're be able to bust.

THIS BLOOD SUCKER WAS the perfect embodiment of evil --yet it's said that evil is impotent. How to reconcile that paradox when we see him all powerful for so long? Chang and Halliday make plain that Mao himself only survived through the complicity of others -- through good men either doing nothing, or lesser men allowing themselves to deliver a country into his evil.

Without a world full of useful idiots, Mao would have been just another lowlife power luster. Without power being handed to him on a plate by an utterly outwitted American post-war foreign policy team entirely unaware of the scum with whom they were dealing, maintained for him by a Soviet Union eager to expand their own dictatorial power, and paid for by a country which he quite literally cannibalised, he would have been nothing. Without others to deliver him what he could not, he had no power himself by which to carry out his destruction, and to protect his power. At manipulating these useful idiots he did prove himself a master. At using them to destroy a country simply to hang on to power, he proved himself history's finest.

IT'S SAID TOO THAT as long as statism exists, then war will exist. Mao's career offers further evidence. "Wars," said Ayn Rand, "are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate. The first is dictatorship, the enslavement of their own citizens." This, she points out, is the real cause of wars.

If men want to oppose war, it is statism they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some alleged "good" can justify it -- there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.

Mao's career once again provides the evidence. He proved himself perfectly prepared to plunge the world into war simply to gain some (often illusory) political advantage for himself - threatening Taiwan and invading Korea and India simply in order to gain technology from Russia -- technology China was in no position to use. He sponsored conflicts in Indochina, for no reason other than to acquire further influence and more technology he couldn't use, that left millions dead across Vietnam and Laos and the killing fields of Cambodia , and scars that still exist to this day across every country involved.

And once the Russians finally rejected Mao as a lunatic, too dangerous even for them, in order to continue the technological parasitism his survival demanded he then proposed to that grinning moron Nixon (supposedly the then defender of the free world) that the free world join China in a nuclear umbrella against the Soviets -- a proposal that would have left the west at the mercy of whatever border conflict the lunatic Mao wanted to manufacture for his own ends -- a proposal only offered so Mao could steal the west's military technology -- a proposal all too eagerly lapped up by by the braindead Kissinger and Nixon. As Chang and Halliday show, these two had rings run around them by Mao and Chou En Lai. They went to China in pursuit of peace, and left with the danger increased.

The proposal that the west risk joining hands with Mao in a mutually assured nuclear holocaust was ended only by Nixon's Watergate resignation. Thank small mercies for Deep Throat!

IT'S WORTH REFLECTING AGAIN on Ayn Rand's point on peace -- a point that was never even contemplated by the grinning moron and his mate, and the many other morons whose willingness to grant evil bastards absolution allows their evil to flourish. The nuclear danger only makes the point all the more important.

If nuclear weapons are a dreadful threat and mankind cannot afford war any longer, then mankind cannot afford statism any longer. Let no man of good will take it upon his conscience to advocate the rule of force -- outside or inside his own country. Let all those who are actually concerned with peace -- those who do love man and do care about his survival -- realise that if war is ever to be outlawed, it is the use of force that has to be outlawed.

Is that lesson so difficult to understand*?

Mao's evil was allowed to flourish by morally disarmed morons who were either ideologically prepared not to understand, or pathologically unwilling to contemplate the point; prepared and able to deliver to Mao what he wanted, and to give him and his destruction either the ideological benefit of the doubt (he might be a murdering fucking bastard, but at least he's our murdering fucking bastard) or -- worse -- to worship at his shrine, as many braindead Maoist morons did and still do. His methods of ideological intrigue can still be seen at work around the world in all those Maoists who still infest the world's parliaments and political platforms with their poison.

It's time that Mao and Maoism and the murder and poverty brought about by communism and communists was treated with the same popular revulsion as the likes of the Nazis and the KKK. Don't give any of these bastards the benefit of any doubt.

This book helps to make clear they don't deserve it.
* * * * *

*To make the lesson more topical for you: Let those in NZ who are actively concerned with peace reflect that Tame Iti received his own indoctrination in Maoism early on, including a visit to Peking in 1973, a year before Nixon and right at the start of his activist career. As all the evidence makes clear he is still following what he learned there.

Monday morning ramble [update 2]

Here’s a brief ramble through a bunch o’ links I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while.

• “Why we should fear American health care reform”: “Because medical innovation is hugely driven by what happens in the US market. . .  Thus 300 million of the richest people on the planet underwrite, through the prices they pay for new treatments, the developments that we get years later as prices drop.
      If the US does indeed bring in some form  . . . of price rationing, then medical innovation will fall....no, not cease completely, simply there will be less of it than there would otherwise have been. Thus people who could or might have been cured will not be and they will die.” 
  Read all Tim Worstall’s commentary here.
• MacDoctor reports that minor child assaults have increased from 32 to 45 a month since the inception of Sue Bradford’s/John Key’s anti-smacking law.  That’s either 156 cases of parents being persecuted for smacking, or it’s an alarming increase in children being assaulted. Read the MacDoctor for at least three reasons to be concerned: “Smacking Intimidation.”
• Plenty of people reckon that free speech isn’t supposed to protect “being an asshole whenever I feel like, saying whatever I like, being disrespectful to people and not be courteous.” Singer John Mellencamp is one of them.  Jeff Perren reckons he’s wrong.  Wrong In Every Way. And he’s an asshole.
• Are you keeping up with BERL’s wriggling in the face of severe criticisms of its work on the “social costs of alcohol”?  Anti Dismal wraps up the latest round: “The reply to the response to the criticism of the original (updated).” It’s the “updated” that really gets me.  :-)
      Baaically, BERL's nearly total lack of response on economic grounds, lack of references to any theory or evidence in the literature in response to our criticisms, combined with their continued willingness to assume all of the key elements supporting their headline costs, indicates fairly persuasively that BERL has conceded the economic argument.
• It’s not quite true to say that banks and central banks “create money out of thin air,” says Economics for Real People author Gene Callahan: In fact, today’s paper money “is created from a government’s ability to collect taxes, combined with the fact that it promises to accept the pieces of paper in payment for those taxes.”  Read “Fiat Money.” [Hat tip Anti Dismal] 
  And if you haven’t already, then check out George Reisman’s “companion  piece”: “Counterfeit Capital.”
• Here’s a new Atlanta-based arts website started by a friend of a friend -- “the well-known classical music reviewer Pierre Ruhe; he is very knowledgeable and has quite a strong reputation,” says my friend.  Check out: artscriticATL.com.
• Have you ever noticed how warmists on the internet always reach for one of two rejoinders to combat non-warmists’ evidence.  The first is to point out that everyone involved with said evidence is paid for by ExxonMobil/BP/Shell/Beelzebub.  And the second is to point to a “thorough debunking” of the evidence over at RealClimate.org – a blog featuring “real climatologists.” (Experiment: let’s see how long it takes before someone tries both ruses on this morning’s thread.)  Good to see then that someone is pointing out the mote in Real Climate’s eyes – and the man who’s bankrolling them. The Truth about RealClimate.org, says The Truth about RealClimate.org, is that “the site exists to promote global warming alarm-ism and attack anyone who does not agree with their declaration of doomsday. The Truth about RealClimate.org is to “give their fanboys ‘ammunition’ to further promote alarmist propaganda across the Internet (and of course declare victory).” The Truth about RealClimate.org is to give a job to a propagandist “to edit dissent and smear skeptical scientists on Wikipedia.” The Truth is that RealClimate.org “is an environmentalist shill site directly connected to an eco-activist group, Environmental Media Services and Al Gore but they don't want you to know that.”
• Meanwhile, Gail Heroit wants to know if “Is Al Gore the Re-incarnation of the Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse?”
• And now for something completely different.  Quote of the day, on Abortion:

      “The question of abortion involves much more than the termination of a pregnancy: it is a question of the entire life of the parents. . . . [P]arenthood is an enormous responsibility; it is an impossible responsibility for young people who are ambitious and struggling, but poor; particularly if they are intelligent and conscientious enough not to abandon their child on a doorstep nor to surrender it to adoption. For such young people, pregnancy is a death sentence: parenthood would force them to give up their future, and condemn them to a life of hopeless drudgery, of slavery to a child’s physical and financial needs. The situation of an unwed mother, abandoned by her lover, is even worse.
      “I cannot quite imagine the state of mind of a person who would wish to condemn a fellow human being to such a horror. I cannot project the degree of hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object. Judging by the degree of those women’s intensity, I would say that it is an issue of self-esteem and that their fear is metaphysical. Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today’s intellectual field, they call themselves ‘pro-life’.”

• Now this is important: a website showing the different pitch dimensions for different football codes. There is a certain kind of person fascinated by stuff like this.  I am one of those kinds of people.
• Dale Steinreich celebrates “75 Years of American Housing Fascism.”  But don’t look too smug.  It’s not much different here.
• We’ve now come to the obligatory ObaMessiah section of the Ramble.  Author Edward Cline presents “Parsing Obama” posted at The Rule of Reason, saying,
  • “To grasp the magnitude of the national debt Obama (and his Republican predecessor) has been ringing up, a comparison should help illustrate the task. Bernard Madoff’s robbery and defrauding investors of some $50 billion can be represented by the diameter of the solar system. The federal government, using the same scamming tactics, is amassing a debt about the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. Madoff’s scheme can be measured in millions of miles. The federal government's, in almost limitless parsecs. That measurement ought to suffice to dramatize the scale of the hole he is deliberately digging for the country in his role as Community-Organizer-in-Chief.”
• But the ObaMessiah worship continues.  “I don't get to the lower level of Washington's Union Station much,” says Mark Krikorian, “but today I passed through and saw "My Obama Shop" — that's the actual name of an entire store devoted to all things Obama. My phone takes lousy pictures, but a blogger at Cato’s Cultwatch has a photo. Obviously there's a market for this sort of thing (I'm assuming it's not a government-owned business, at least for now) is a way there never would be for "My Bob Dole Shop" or "My John McCain Shop," but it's still kind of creepy. In fact, the very fact that there is a market for an Obama store is creepy." [Hat tip Jeff Perren]
• And Keeping Stock has an “Obama Caption Contest” you might like to look at. So to speak.
• Time for an Israeli Strike on Iran?  John Bolton thinks so.
• You’ve heard this morning from the mainstream morons that “economists expect inflation to slow further,” and “the aggregate inflation picture is very subdued.” These are the morons who never even say the collapse coming, but they’re still around pointificating as if they know what’s going on.  Two more “companion pieces” on the money-supply sleight-of-hand used by central banks might help you better understand the moronry:
  • “Inflation: What You See and What You Don't See” by Thorstein Polleit
  • “How Much Money Inflation?” by Howard Katz
• Basically, if you don’t understand the difference between price inflation and money inflation, then you’re less than worthless at knowing what’s now going on.
• Randal O’Toole offers more evidence at the Master Resources blog against the energy hog that is public transport. Read “Do Passenger Trains Save Energy? Another Look.”
• And you think there’s an energy shortage?  Doesn’t need to be, says Alex Epstein.

      Most people have become acclimated to an extremely slow rate of energy progress. While, say, our computers and electronics will rapidly decrease in price while increasing in quality, our energy bills look to be going nowhere but up. This despite the fact that today, as in the past several decades, government “energy planners” promise us an energy paradise of solar, wind, or whatever other technology they happen to favor.
      My new essay, “Energy at the Speed of Thought,” tells the story of an entirely different sort of energy market. . .
      In the essay, I argue that the amazing speed and impact of “the original alternative energy industry” is achievable today. What will it take? Go read “Energy at the Speed of Thought” to find out.

• Oh, and while we’re talking about energy, did you hear how clean, green geothermal energy has been, could be and probably is a source of earthquakes.  Read “A green energy disaster.”
• I don’t know about you, but the braindead morons at TV3’s imbecilic infotainment show Target really get my goat. If there was a real consumer show that looked at consumer shows, they’d be giving Target the kick in the pants it deserves.  The mush that is regularly served up as nutrient is bad enough – let alone the grinning fools who present it, who clearly possess about as much expertise as next door’s cocker spaniel.  What’s disgraceful is that they can take it upon themselves to ruin small businesses with as little care as an incompetent pest-killer might give to a bit of overspray.  Latest example: the slack bastards did a perusal of the hygiene standards of eight Auckland’s cafes, and ended up falsely fingering Cafe Cezanne, whose owners Rod Williams and Jackie Wilkinson say the "unbelievable" mistake has ruined their once-thriving business.  Time to ruin the imbeciles at Target, I say, not the cafe which just got an A grade rating during a food and safety inspection by the Auckland City Council last month.
• If you haven’t seen it already, and even if you have, then this “personals chart” produced for a dating website is a pretty cool use of graphics.  Except I still can’t find the picture of her boat . . .
• Here’s a piece of news guaranteed to get some of you excited: “Vegetarians less likely to develop cancer than meat eaters, says study.”
• And speaking of food, George Light runs down the big issue of “A Semi-Definitive Guide to Food at Blues Festivals Everywhere” and leaves me asking two questions: just what the hell are grits? and how the hell can he fit so many great blues and jazz clips into one pithy post.  Check it out.
• Together with “modern art,” vapid celebrity worship must surely be the epitome of our air-head culture.  Here’s a service that sums up the culture: For 5000 bucks, you can hire yourself a stalker so YOU TOO can feel like a celeb.  Please insert obvious quips, links and references below.
• Dr Shaun Holt says the widespread use of placebos is a waste of taxpayers’ money on ineffective medication.  See here and here.  Lindsay Mitchell isn’t quite so sure: “The placebo effect exists, therefore if a drug improves someone's condition, it has 'worked'.”
  [UPDATE: Shaun tells me “The Dom got it wrong, I don’t think that they're a waste of $ at all and I posted that on Lindsays blog - but hey, the media don’t always get it right! Here's a piece on this morning’s Breakfast...
  Also, here's some comments on the folic acid issue...John Key got hammered about this by Paul Henry this morning, well worth watching on the Breakfast site. ]
• What is Objective Law?  It’s a good question, isn’t it, since that’s what governments are supposed to uphold, right?  Here’s a potted summary.  It’s called, surprise, surprise: “What is Objective Law?”
• Yesterday I finally watched a presentation I’ve been meaning to watch since July 4: John Ridpath’s outstanding lecture on Virginia’s “Son of Thunder” – the man who Jefferson called “the first man” on the American continent – more well known as Patrick Henry.  Ridpath talks with eloquence and unhidden passion “on the inspirational life of the man who did so much to guide America towards becoming a free country administered by presidents, rather than another wasteland ruled by tyrants.” 
  As Myrhaf says, “The speech is entertaining and, more important, it reminds us that the American Revolutionaries stood on the principle of individual liberty. There were timid souls back then, moderates, as there always are. It took a a man of integrity and oratorical genius to steel their resolve. Henry persuaded people that there could be no compromise. . .”  Watch it here the first chance you get: “In the Dawn’s Early Light: Patrick Henry—Beacon for America.”
• And finally, Richard Feynman. If you don’t already know the great physicist, then this video is a great introduction to his wit, his charm and his downright intelligence.  And as Bob Muphy notes, “a flurry of Richard Feynman YouTubes has been hitting the blogosphere,” so if you like this then check out YouTube for more.
  
  
  
  
• And finally, (yes, really finally this time) here’s what Lindsay Perigo reckons is YouTube’s ultra-kick-arse musical gem of the century!  Check it out here.

UPDATE 1: Added Blunt’s RealClimate.Org cartoon above.  Thanks mate.

UPDATE 2: And a late entry in the Health stakes, from Diana Hsieh, who says, “I fucking love this. Study shows that swearing mitigates pain.” I could have told you that for fucking nothing.