Black Friday ramble, 13.11.15

And so it begins. Day 1, the WACA test, and…
The WACA Bingo Game – Smokie, FOOTY ALMANAC

Peter Dunne grows a spine we never knew he had, and tells Australians what the real issues are here.
Kiwis attack us over our Christmas Island "Guantanamo" – THE AGE

Yes, bike helmet laws are impervious to evidence.
The Latest Evidence That Helmet Laws Don't Help Bike Safety – CITYLAB

“Phil Twyford’s bill banning foreigners from buying existing New Zealand houses has been drawn from the ballot. I just have a hard time seeing the point.”
Ban foreign buyers? – Eric Crampton, THE SAND PIT

Auckland, City of Gold:

Pic by Gabrielle Joseph, snapped just before yesterday’s thunderstorm. (No photoshop!)

“The Danes apparently have grown weary of Sen. Bernie Sanders insulting their country. Denmark is not a socialist nation, says its prime minister. It has a "market economy."
Denmark Tells Bernie Sanders It's Had Enough Of His 'Socialist' Slurs – Kerry Jackson, I.B.D.
Do the European welfare states free ride off American entrepreneurship and innovation? – UTOPIA

Germany in mourning for Helmut Schmidt
”Helmut Schmidt, 1918 – 2015: Germany’s man of balance – George Walden, SPECTATOR
European leaders react to Schmidt's death with shock, sadness and admiration – DIE WELT

“"A powerful, politically influential person using his power to steal, essentially, somebody else's private property for his own private profit."
Donald Trump: Master of Political Pull – John Stossel, CAPITALISM MAGAZINE

“I already knew Trump was a protectionist from reading his book.”
Donald Trump is a Protectionist – Elliot Temple, CURI.US

“We can't say yet who is winning the illegal immigration debate tonight…”
Live Blog: GOP Debate (transcript) – FIVE THIRTY-EIGHT LIVE

“Mass deportation would reduce economic growth by around $250 billion per year…”
Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform – Peter Dixon & Maureen Rimmer, CENTER FOR TRADE POLICY STUDIES

“A good overview of the foreign policy differences between Rubio and Cruz.” - Robert Tracinski
Rubio vs. Cruz is the most important foreign policy battle of 2016 – Philip Klein, WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of welding, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge…”

“…instead of expecting these talks to deliver final solutions to the climate crisis…”
Climate Activists Bracing for Failure at Paris – Eric Worrall, WATTS UP WITH THAT 

“Kayak trip for ‘climate action’ to include several long-haul flights.”
Aussie Green plans to kayak to Paris, to ‘deliver a message’ – could it be “greens go by air”? – WATTS UP WITH THAT 

Reports about ‘Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past’ are now just a thing of the past.
One of the longest running climate prediction blunders has disappeared from the Internet – WATTS UP WITH THAT

“…estimating that 27% of Democrats are totalitarians.”
Global warming and free speech – Steve Kates, LAW OF MARKETS

“Remember this when alarmists try to use NASA and NOAA to "prove" their theory.”
97% Of Climate Scientists Base Their Research On Fraudulent Data From NASA And NOAA – Steven Goddard, REAL SCIENCE

Inconvenient truth: “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by 1,022 million tons, making them significantly lower than their peak in 2007. For every ton of carbon dioxide cut by solar power, fracking has cut 13 tons."
Fracking, Not Renewables, Is Responsible For Emissions Reduction – DAILY CALLER

“A short lesson in one aspect of economics evaded by the greens and unknown to their sympathisers.” ~ Bjorn Faulkner
Malthus meets the Greens – NOT PC

“What's the best health advice you can follow?
1. Don't smoke.
2. Avoid extreme obesity.
3. Don't get hit by a truck.”
~ Robert Aronowitz on Risky Medicine

Do regular mammograms and blood tests for prostate cancer promote health, or just risk reduction? “Robert Aronowitz of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Risky Medicine talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the increasing focus on risk reduction rather than health itself as a goal. Aronowitz discusses the social and political forces that push us toward more preventive testing even when those tests have not been shown to be effective. Aronowitz's perspective is a provocative look at the opportunity cost of risk-reduction.”
Robert Aronowitz on Risky Medicine – Russ Roberts & Robert Aronowitz, ECON TALK

“Monetary policy makes people excited to destroy their wealth. There is no other kind of government intrusion in the market that sets off such a feeding frenzy of self-destructive behaviour."
What’s Different about Monetary Policy? – Keith Weiner, SAVVY STREET

Capital consumption in action: “Dirt-cheap credit fuelled a massive malinvestment in oil production. How many industries also created overcapacity, because they perceived unlimited demand from the oil producers?”
"It's A Bloodbath" - Here Is The Biggest Casualty Of Canada's Recession – ZERO HEDGE
Giant Sucking Sound of Capital Destruction in US Oil & Gas Impairments – WOLF STREET

“The Fed helped fuel disparities in income & wealth by suppressing interest rates.”
Yellen’s Concern for Inequality Ignores Fed’s Role in Creating It – James Dorn, CATO

“Yes, they were good years… 1980-2015. We laughed. We cried. We got married. We raised children. We bought houses. We made money…”
How the Easy-Money Boom Ends... – ZERO HEDGE

“George Reisman’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics is perhaps the greatest treatise on economics of all time; it certainly ranks with such works as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations or Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action; and in one respect I think it surpasses them.”
A Review of George Reisman’s “Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics” by Per-Olof Samuelsson – THE VERMA POST

Q: “If I read one book and one book only to make me to be the best academic economist that I will possibly be … what book do you recommend?”
A: “The answer is easy: Armen Alchian‘s and William Allen’s University Economics.”
Comes This Query… Don Boudreaux, CAFE HAYEK

“Too often, mastery of superficial economic jargon and models can convince someone that they understand economics — when in reality they haven't yet learned the skill of actually doing economic analysis properly.”
Knowing Models vs. Knowing Economics – Don Boudreaux, ANYTHING PEACEFUL

“’Profit’ is a word that has come to mean exploitation, but it's more accurate to think of profit as a reward for creating value.”
5 Reasons Profit Is Good – Richard Turnbull, ANYTHING PEACEFUL

“Free trade is nothing more than a system of trade that treats foreign goods and services no differently than domestic goods and services.”
“Trade outperforms protectionism by bringing lower cost goods and services to consumers.” – Don Boudreaux, CATO

“What distinguishes the West, namely Britain and the U.S., from other nations are the extraordinary measures they took to abolish slavery.”
Walter Williams on The American Founding Fathers and Slavery – Walter Williams, CAPITALISM MAGAZINE

This is true.
FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate – UCLA NEWSROOM

“When you subvert the truth, you have to walk around with two “columns” in your mind. One column is labe

lled, “reality.” The other column is labelled, “reality as I’m describing it to others, contrary to facts.”
”Not only is this stressful and difficult; it makes you less effective.”
Why Honesty Matters in Business  - Dr Micheal Hurd, LIVING RESOURCES CENTER

“’Blowing the whistle was something he did for his own sake,’ he says. He’s never seen it as a self-sacrificing act.
– I simply saw something and I realized that you have to believe in something. And if you believe in something, you have to be able to stand for it. I don’t like the ideology of self-sacrifice. If a society is asking people to put themselves on fire, it’s very soon going to find itself without volunteers. I don’t believe in altruism.”
Edward Snowden interview with Dagens Nyheter – DN FOKUS

“It’s unnerving, odd, a terrifying snapshot of the new intolerance. We could see the culture of ‘You can’t say that!’ in all its swirling, borderline violent ugliness. It wasn’t a whispered or implied ‘You can’t say that!’, of the kind we see all the time in 21st-century public life, in response to people who criticise gay marriage, say, or doubt climate change. No, this was an explicitly stated ‘You can’t fucking say that, and if you do we’ll demand that you be sacked!’ That it was stated at Yale, and in response to a bloody email about Halloween, has added to the hand-wringing among liberals, who want to know what’s gone wrong with the new generation.”
The ‘Yale snowflakes’: who made these monsters? – Brendan O’Neill, SPIKED

“’There ought to be a law.’ Every time there is something you dislike or that offends you, you’re not entitled to have the police take care of it for you.”
Would You Call the Police for Mean Things Said on Facebook? - Michael J. Hurd, LIVING RESOURCES CENTER

“The universities have done this to themselves. They created the whole phenomenon of modern identity politics and Politically Correct rules to limit speech. They have fostered a totalitarian microculture in which conformity to those rules is considered natural and expected. Now that system is starting to eat them alive, from elite universities like Yale, all the way down to, er, less-than-elite ones like ‘Mizzou’ [i.e., Missouri State University].
”They created this Frankenstein monster, and it’s up to them to kill it before it kills them.”
Mizzou And Yale Show Why It’s Time To Burn Universities To The Ground – Robert Tracinski, THE FEDERALIST

As so often, The Onion nails it: “Students, Faculty Invited To Freely Express Single Viewpoint.”
College Encourages Lively Exchange Of Idea – THE ONION

“Trying to hide or protect yourself from disappointment or failure only results in limited experiences and lack of practice with resilience and EQ. Its the hard stuff in life that helps teach us strength. Something you don't learn if you're always hiding from it.” – Tarryne West

“Others, as a result of careful study, have come to the conclusion that the first two years are the most important in the whole span of human life." ~ Maria Montessori.
This course is available to all those with an interest in the natural development of young children aged birth to three.
A.M.I. Montessori Asistants Certificate Course: Birth to Three (Auckland) – MARIA MONTESSORI EDUCATION FOUNDATION

“TSA screeners' ability to detect weapons in luggage is ‘pitiful’."
TSA screeners can't detect weapons and they never could – BOING BOING

Great news for lovers of local vinyl—Hello Sailor’s eponymous classic debut album re-released on vinyl this week! [DISCLAIMER: I wore out several vinyl copies as a kid, but fortunately my current copy is still intact.)
Hello Sailor, by Hello Sailor – REAL GROOVY

“’He looked as unobtrusive as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.’ The master of the unexpected simile, in his own words…”
"Raymond Chandler Didn't Care About Plot" – LIT HUB

The benefits of a bilingual brain - Mia Nacamulli, TED

What does a swimming team do when it’s bored at an airport?

The 24 Most Terrifying Places In The World To Look Down:

Walk of Faith | China

How bad was the first test?

What do the Black Caps need to do now?

Motivation…

And, from Beethoven, a message for life (and not just for cricket)…

[Hat tip Anti Dismal, Pamela Mills, Econlib, Betsy Speicher, Robert Tracinski, Felix Mueller, Architecture & Design, Carbon Dioxide, Peter Namtvedt, Alex Epstein, Sanjay Kapoor, Carla Campbell-Redl, Matthew Sullivan, Jim Rose, Sheila Bazleh, For New Intellectuals, Anoop Verma, Stephen Hicks, Vinay Kolhatkar', TakingHayekSeriously, Alex Coleman, Libertarianism.org, Rituparna Basu, Eric Crampton]