Not PC: Friday Morning Ramble

Friday 10 July 2015

Friday Morning Ramble

A few things I wanted to yammer about earlier this week, but didn’t get the chance …

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“It would be ... interesting ... to run ROI calculations on these degrees taking into account opportunity costs of years spent in training.”
Student loans – Eric Crampton, OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR

Don’t upset Winnie’s witches.
NZ First insider – Hell hath no fury like a Martin scorned – DAILY BLOG

“Preliminary findings show Maori is not an active form of communication on the marae” - Time to face facts.
Reversing the decline in speakers of te reo Māori – SCOOP

News from Brass Monkey-Land: “New Zealand may not have warmed at all in the past 100 years, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in the international science journal, Environmental Modelling & Assessment.”
New paper suggests no warming in NZ in past 100 years – YAHOO NEWS

“The financial risk for ratepayers is huge but the economic case is weak or some might say non-existent.”
Skypath decision labelled moronic – JO HOLMES’S BLOG

“Friends don’t let friends work for Greenpeace. When one of my friends told me he was thinking of getting a job with them, I suggested he apply to a different circus.”
It's stunt season for show ponies – Paul Little, NZ HERALD
Why India’s government is targeting Greenpeace – BBC NEWS

The new New Zealand: “For example, you might have a bunch of specialists talking about whether a student needs an iPad - and once they have talked for an hour that's equal to the cost of the iPad."
Desperate parents of special needs children are paying for teacher aides – NZ HERALD
Fighting for children 'leaves me broken' – NZ HERALD

“No evidence to back Mt Eden car ban. … Authority chairman Paul Majurey did not return calls yesterday.”
No evidence to back Mt Eden car ban, says Act MP – NZ HERALD

Evidence?? “’The law changed on December 1, cutting the limit from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50mg, and from 400 micrograms of alcohol per litreof breath to 250mcg.’ … There was about a 12% increase in drink-related fatalities where non-drink fatalities was up by about 5%.”
New drink driving limit, same old stats – Eric Crampton, OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR

Evidence??? “The study was based on two surveys that asked Auckland residents what features they looked for in a house, and what features they would prioritise given budget constraints. It showed that contrary to the council’s claims that Aucklanders’ housing preferences have shifted towards higher-density living, the vast majority of people in the city prefer standalone houses with nice backyards.”
Auckland Council study busts its own spin – Stephen Berry, VOXY

Paul Krugman says fix housing. Yes, Paul Krugman. “The one policy that makes the difference [to the poor] is land use policy. Restrictive land use policies raise housing costs.”
Paul Krugman vs Steve Moore – Steve Kates, CATALLAXY FILES

And right on cue …
It usually begins with the RMA – fewer warm, dry homes as an unintended consequence of regulatory restrictions on land supply – UTOPIA …

Also … "Yes, the problem has become more acute within most individual nations, yet income inequality for the world as a whole has been falling for most of the last 20 years. It’s a fact that hasn’t been noted often enough.”
Income Inequality Is Not Rising Globally. It's Falling – Tyler Cowen, NEW YORK TIMES
Talking about NZ inequality continues to increase – NOT PC

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“The legal cannabis business is the “fastest-growing new industry around.”
Silicon Valley meets Bob Marley – THE ECONOMIST

Another day, another common-sense liberalisation: “Irish Government looks set to adopt Portuguese style decriminalisation of personal possession.”
Public to have say on legality of drugs – IRISH EXAMINER

And .. welcome, if belated, Obama promise of mass pardons for non-violent drug offenders in the US.
Obama Plans Broader Use of Clemency to Free Nonviolent Drug Offenders – N.Y. TIMES

So the Creative Commons movement is funded most by those who have most to gain from stealing content, you say? Astonishing.
The MMF’s Google Problem – MUSIC.TECHNLOGY.POLICY

They are itsy-bitsy. They are teenie-weenie. An invention of fashion design that so rocked the world that it was named for a nuclear event, that we might not have had without IP.
A history of the bikini, a beloved innovation in fashion design – IP WATCHDOG

“In the world of patents, Samsung operates in the highest sphere of innovation.”
Samsung pulls ahead in wearables, sets sights on medical innovation – IP WATCHDOG

Intellectual property lawyer Adam Mossoff was interviewed by an inventor for his University of Young Entrepreneurs podcast series. “We discuss the basics of patent law and trademark law, as well as the current patent legislation that is pending in the U.S., and why it is rightfully opposed by individual inventors, small business owners, universities and other innovators.”

A useful epistemological razor:
"New concepts are guilty
until proven innocent."
- Onkhar Ghate

“Earth to Pope: The worst environmental disasters belong to the communist systems you advocate.”
An economist to Pope Francis: Don’t blame capitalism for global warming – Manuel Hinds, QUARTZ

Not what you’ve heard about “monocultures”: “English arable land use over 600 years: Declining fallow land, increasing diversity.”
Land Use Change by Crops (UK) – OUR WORLD IN DATA

“Wind farms make rich people richer and poor people poorer; precisely why 'green energy' got so much support so quickly... “
Subsidy cut on 'virtually useless' onshore UK wind farms sparks energy price hike threat – BREITBART

“You can drug an economy for only so long — when the injections dwindle or stop, the withdrawal symptoms take over.”
The Chinese Crash Is Government's Fault, Not Capitalism's – Lawrence Reed, ANYTING PEACEFUL

“If we could take time out from the breathless journalism about the Chinese stock market, which some people may have heard of before this week, it’s crash should be seen through the lens that Anna Schwartz developed in 1987 of a pseudo financial crisis and a financial crisis.”
Real and Pseudo-Financial Crises, the Chinese share market crash and Anna Schwartz – Jim Rose, UTOPIA …

“Beijing urged people to buy stocks. Now it’s begging them to stop selling.”
Who Blew Up China’s Stock Bubble? – BLOOMBERG

So at least rebar should be cheaper.
China’s Other Crash——Massive Excess Steel Capacity Has Driven Prices Per Ton Cheaper Than Cabbage! – GUARDIAN

“It is now largely overlooked, but the 19th century had its own precursor to EMU in the shape of the Latin Monetary Union … much of the Union’s history was dogged by the narrow technical issues of how, firstly, to structure its members’ own monetary system and, thereafter, to align it more closely with those of the non-members, there were other features, too, which are still very much germane today.
Timeo Danaos (et Romanos) – Sean Corrigan, COBDEN CENTRE

The Austrian School of economics has a concept called a “crack-up boom” in which a critical mass of people conclude that their government is actively trying to devalue its currency. Consumers respond by front-running the government, spending their paychecks immediately in order to convert their soon-to-be-less-valuable money into real things … “
Greece’s Crackup Boom—–When New Fridges Become Money – John Rubino, DOLLAR COLLAPSE

“Commentators are of the view that the key factor behind the troubles in Greece is high government debt, which as a percentage of GDP stood at over 177% in 2014 against 79.6% in 1990. We suggest that it is not debt as such that is behind the current crisis in Greece but instead large government outlays and strong increases in the money supply. …
”Loose fiscal and monetary policies have been instrumental in the generation of various non-productive activities that have been squandering wealth.”
Should Greece loosen its fiscal and monetary stance – Frank Shostak, COBDEN CENTRE

“The problems caused by Keynesian theory is not that you end up with a sudden downturn, but that you squeeze the life out of the economy by a form of slow asphyxiation. If you have a job and a house, and you continue to work and live where you lived before, nothing much changes around you, other than a rise in prices and a slowdown in income after tax. You are affected but not a lot. Those in transitions, either entering the economy to work, looking for better jobs at higher pay or trying to buy a house, all these are at the pointy end. They notice, since the ability to rise up the income scale is obstructed by some invisible barrier. Things just don’t work out. Which brings me to this story: Americans Are Delaying Major Life Events Because of Money Worries. Life is getting harder so corners are being cut.”
Onwards and downwards – Steve Kates, LAW OF MARKETS

“Indeed, the expansion of capitalism and freer international trade has coincided with an era of slow economic growth, high unemployment, increased child labor, skyrocketing inequality, and grinding poverty.
Just kidding, that’s not what happened at all.”
In Praise of Capitalist Globalisation – F.E.E.

“Among all the mindless blather served up by the talking heads of bubblevision is the recurrent claim that “its all priced-in”. That is, there is no danger of a serious market correction because anything which might imply trouble ahead—-such as weak domestic growth, stalling world trade or Grexit——is already embodied in stock market prices.”
It Is NOT Priced-In, Stupid! – David Stockman, CONTRA CORNER

“Manipulating money cannot create growth, and it distorts the information economic actors need to acquire the learning that alone is wealth-creation.”
High Tech Guru George Gilder Demolishes A Critical Myth About The Gold Standard – Ralph Benko, FORBES

“Mark Faber explains that the Central Bankers have got it very badly wrong.”

“Then shut down the IMF and World Bank which helped create these debt crises in the first place. These institutions haven’t averted financial crises. They have enabled them through their lending policies that are the equivalent of giving crack cocaine hits to drug addicts. That story never ends well, and, alas, Greece is the first tragic example of that lesson."
As Greece collapses, the big loser is socialism – Stephen Moore, FOX NEWS

Never helpful; never right. “But who cares about constantly being wrong right here, right now (aside from 11 million Greeks that is) when your projections keep promising that growth is always “just around the corner” … “
Five Years Of Glorious IMF "Hockey Stick" Comedy – ZERO HEDGE

“If a posthumous Nobel Prize was awarded for crystal-clear writing and masterful storytelling in economics, no one would be more deserving of it than Frédéric Bastiat.”
Frédéric Bastiat Deserves a Posthumous Nobel – Lawrence Reed, THE FREEMAN

Some excellent stuff here:
The winners of the 2015 Carl Menger Essay Contest! – FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION

Also: Essay contests with prize money for students on Ayn Rand novels. 500 prizes totalling more than US$90,000!
Essay Contests – AYN RAND INSTITUTE

“You can't conquer a free man;
the most you can do is kill him.”
- Robert Heinlein

Probably.
Calvin Coolidge, the most underappreciated US president of the last century? – Rosslyn Smith, AMERICAN THINKER

Today the American public is “broadly” more libertarian than it was just decades ago …
America Isn't Getting More Liberal — It's Getting More Libertarian – David & Daniel Bier, ANYTHING PEACEFUL

“One is about whether the philosophy of Kant is partly responsible for World War I: ‘It is possible that the Great War was in some true sense a day of reckoning for Kantian thought.’
“How is that possible, since Kant died over a century before the great conflict between the German-led Central powers and the Allies?
”Dewey’s response begins with describing Kant as ‘the thinker who for the past seventy-five years supplied the bible of German thought.’”
John Dewey on Kant and the causes of World War I – STEPHEN HICKS

Exciting times:
5-billion-year-old signal detected from deep space as part of Australian satellite project – I.B.T.

“Uber are now delivering education. Who says individuals in the free market shouldn't profit from providing outstanding, affordable and real education.”
Uber takes on tertiary education – T.E.U.AC.NZ

You can see how folk would want to believe in an alternative universe.
The man who spared Hitler’s life in WW I – STEPHEN HICKS

“How tragic to think that someone could run through the streets of a busy town bellowing in pain, and no one would come forward to help him! How sad that everyone would turn a deaf ear…”
The Man in Despair – JALAJA BONHEIM

“"The data emerging about the mental health of our kids only confirms the harm done by asking so little of them when it comes to life skills yet so much of them when it comes to adhering to the academic plans we’ve made for them."
College-Age Depression Is Increasingly Tied to Helicopter Parenting, Studies Show – SLATE

Williamsport after dark. There’s nowhere quite like it.

It’s a start.
History Has Been Made. Female Genital Mutilation Banned In Nigeria. – NIGERIA.A PLUS

Don’t try this at home.
Flatworm uses 'hypodermic penis' to inject sperm into own head – GUARDIAN

The state shouldn’t be involved in marriage, you say? The state already is.
Some benefits of marriage – GRUNTLED & HINGED

Pssst: Refer to the graph before approaching your wife for sex. Thank me later.

Actually quite good rules.
5 Rules to designing a great home – Paul Clarke, HOME

There’s a new movement happening, and it’s good.
Michael Pearce on the re-emergence of representational art – STEPHEN HICKS

“Above all, we need to get away from this ticket-selling, click-baiting entertainment drivel. Art is difficult, not in the banal sense of being hard to understand, but in the sense that it gets to the core of our being, a difficult place for everybody.”
The Artistic Perils of Populism – BRYAN APPLEYARD.COM

Jimmy Wales:
If you want to keep sharing photos for free, read this – GEEK PRESS

Beer prices on the floor soon? “There is no shortage of liquidity at London's first stock exchange-themed bar, where beer prices fluctuate with demand and the occasional market crash can send prices tumbling.”
Drinkers raise glass to a crash in London stock-exchange bar – REUTERS

If you think Netflix costs to much, maybe just buy their shares.
Why Netflix is Just Warming Up – Sam Volkering, MONEY MORNING AUSTRALIA

Several “purely selfish” reasons to get behind Australia in the Ashes. Yes, really.
Come on Aussie, come on – SPORTREVIEW.NET.NZ

Please don’t step on the ladder. It’s unsafe.