Wednesday 30 April 2014

In Fear of Vaccines?

Since there’s been much debate and misunderstanding about an alleged link between vaccines and autism, I asked Linda from the fabulously rational Autism and Oughtisms blog to write this Guest Post for any parents worried about making a vaccination decision in the face of so many anti-vaccine stories.

Girl and doctor with injectionFear of the unknown drives people to do crazy things. They’ll cling desperately to proposed answers -- however poorly supported those answers are -- merely because they are answers; any explanation is considered better than no explanation at all. Add in the desperation of a parent trying to help their suffering child, and a sense that someone must surely be to blame for the child’s suffering, and you have a recipe for things to go very badly.

Trying to understand why so many parents (mostly mothers) of autistic children won’t let go of the “vaccines cause autism” hypothesis requires some appreciation of what these mothers have gone through. That understanding can’t and won’t excuse them pushing an anti-vaccine agenda in the face of endless scientific proof to the contrary, but I think it helps to get a grip on why these parents just won’t move on from the idea.

This is What Political Science Looks Like

image

Students of Political Science might care to look at how science is done in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose recently released “scientific report” is filled with predictions of gloom and doom put there by … whom? Read on to see how, and by whom, those all important “summaries of the scientific consensus” are written. It might surprise you:

Understanding The 97% Consensus
It turns out that 97% of IPCC scientists are actually government officials.

        Prof Stavins, Harvard’s Professor of Business and Government, was one of two ‘coordinating lead authors’ of a key report published by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month.
    Prof Stavins told
The Mail on Sunday yesterday that he had been especially concerned by what happened at a special ‘contact group’. He was one of only two scientists present, surrounded by ‘45 or 50’ government officials.
    Three quarters of the original version of the document ended up being deleted.

This certainly gives the term “PolSci” a new meaning. Because that Summary document is important:

QUOTE OF THE DAY, 2: On Redistribution

-- "The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State" -- Bertrand de Jouvenel, economist, philosopher and co-founder of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947.

"The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that
redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of income
from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution
of power from the individual to the State"

-- Bertrand de Jouvenel, economist, philosopher
and co-founder of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947
[Hat tip Lawrence Reed]

QUOTE OF THE DAY, 1: Still the most serious symptom of our times…

"Straightforwardness is a foolish old-fashioned habit, a custom we have
outgrown. 'We have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we
hid ourselves.' We repeat, this is the most serious symptom of our
times. The newspapers which have been speculating as to the disasters
which are to flow, after a thousand years, from England's future want
of coal, would do better to inquire into the far greater disasters which threaten
at our door through England's present lack of supreme reverence for truth."
- John Ruskin, from Fors clavigera: Letters to the
Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain
, 1880
[Hat tip Paul Litterick]

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: The Roger in Rogernomics

Your chance this week at Auckland Uni Econ Group to question a former politician whose economic programme of thirty years ago still casts a long shadow over the political landscape today.

Hi everyone,

Welcome back from the study break. We have some great speakers lined up for the Economics Group starting this week.
This Thursday we are delighted to have join us a very significant figure from New Zealand's economic history - Roger Douglas.
As Minister of Finance in the Labour government from 1984 to 1988 Roger Douglas implemented a series of economic reforms often referred to as ‘Rogernomics.’ These reforms are still the subject of lasting controversy.
This Thursday evening, Roger will paint us a picture of what the New Zealand economy was like before he became Minister of Finance; the motivation behind and the nature of his reforms; and briefly mention what further reforms he feels are needed to ensure future economic growth for New Zealand.
Following the presentation there will be a period for questions and discussion.
    Date: Thursday, 1 May
    Time: 6-7pm
    Location: Case Room Two, Level 0, University of Auckland Business School, Grafton Rd
                            (plenty of parking in the basement)
This is an exceptional opportunity to hear from and question a major figure in New Zealand’s economic history.
We look forward to seeing you there.

How to Get Arrested in Britain, #67

You can now get arrested in Britain and face four years in jail for quoting Churchill. True story. Paul Weston faces 2 years in jail for standing in a town square and quoting this, from Churchill’s 1899 book River War, no less:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. …  The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
    'Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. …  But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

Quite apart from Islam not being a race at all, but a religion, are the censors in the newly politically puritan UK – once the home of free speech – now going to begin burning books as well as arresting speakers?

Modern Britain is a strange place, as the strange but parallel case of Anjem Choudary also suggests.

Tuesday 29 April 2014

No Quixote!

Have I posted this before? Never mind.  If I did, I just laughed like a drain all over again.

[Hat tip The Reduced Shakespeare Company]

“What is a Photocopier?”

Come on, you’ve been in arguments like this, haven’t you.

Yes, it’s a true story. Indeed, it’s from a transcript of an Ohio Supreme Court trial …

Sort of reminds you of another famous trial…

[Hat tip Diana Hsieh]

Show Me the Monetary Policy! [updated]

“I STAND UNASHAMEDLY FOR raising people’s wages,” said Labour’s David Parker this morning, as he announced a policy to lower real wages.

Go figure.

imageLike all New Labour’s policies in this New Age Under Cunliffe (somewhat like the Age of Aquarius in that they’re all mostly dripping wet), their new “monetary policy” – i.e., giving the Reserve Bank more power to control the exchange rate by controlling people’s savings rate – seems to have been thought up on the hoof and issued in haste, without any pause for reflection along the rushed road to release.

Let’s be clear. It’s not wrong to talk about changing what the Reserve Bank does, because by their very existence they are already doing far from what would occur in an unhampered market.

“Minecraft Is Shaping A Generation, And That Is A Good Thing”

Until recently, I thought Minecraft was an updated sort of Battleships for the computer age. Until a friend’s kid showed me his Minecraft world. Showed me briefly, ‘cos he hadn’t time to waste talking to an old fart like me when had to get back to … whatever the hell it is you do on (in?) Minecraft.

Made me realise it’s too easy to dismiss “this sort of thing” out of hand. Minecraft and stuff like it might be shaping a generation, but as parent Emily Willingham writes, that’s not necessarily a bad thing:

Thanks to Minecraft, my children not only have built entire worlds but also have learned to type, read Dutch, catalogue and plan use of materials, and work with friends and strangers through intense negotiation and conflict resolution while navigating an imagined world they’ve built together. And they’re collectively experiencing and developing a key cultural influence of their generation, one with a global reach.

That’s far more than I was capable of doing at their age.

[Hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Ending Legal Highs Another Legal Low

imageThe “legal high’ regime was always bound to fail, so it’s hard to mourn its passing.

Over its short life, the regime made illegal the sale of a drug that Lancet said is safer than alcohol and tobacco, while allowing the sale of drugs of increasing harm.

This makes no sense.

Monday 28 April 2014

Thomas Piketty on Inequality and Capital

Thomas Piketty has written a popular economics book. In 1936, a difficult-to-read academic book appeared that seemed to tell politicians they could do what they wanted. This was Keynes’s General Theory. In today's Guest Post, Hunter Lewis argues Piketty’s book does the same in 2014, and serves the same short-sighted, destructive policies.

Thomas Piketty’s Sensational New Book
By Hunter Lewis

Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old economist from French academe has written a hot new book: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. If you haven't already heard of it, you will. Indeed, your 'masters' already have.
    The U.S. edition has been published by Harvard University Press and, remarkably, is leading the best seller list; the first time that a Harvard book has done so. A recent review describes Piketty as the man “who exposed capitalism’s fatal flaw.”
    So what is this flaw? Supposedly under capitalism the rich get steadily richer in relation to everyone else; inequality gets worse and worse. It is all baked into the cake, unavoidable.
    To support this, Piketty offers some dubious and unsupported financial logic, but also what he calls “a spectacular graph” of historical data. What does the graph actually show?

Thursday 24 April 2014

See, I'm far from alone

"Fifty-five percent of the people in my neighbourhood have no religion, while [only] thirty-nine percent identify as Christian." Read Surprising Irreligiiosity at Ofsetting Behaviour.

 

Wednesday 23 April 2014

“So, How Come You Keep Bashing Religion?”

image

A FEW FRIENDS, and friends-of-friends, and friends-asking-me-on-behalf-of-other-blog-readers (“it’s not for me, it’s for a friend”) have kept asking me the same question over and over for the last ten years.

The question usually goes something like this:

“How come you keep bashing religion on your blog? Especially at Easter and Christmas!”

To me, the answer’s bleeding obvious. But to these blokes (and blokesses), it’s obviously not, so here’s my effort to answer.

First answer is: because it’s absurd. And I despise absurdities.

My job as a blogger, as I see it, is to be somewhat of a provocateur; to challenge your thinking; to pull on your coat a little about the small absurdities, and to annoy the bejesus out of you on the big ones. 

And as Richard Dawkins says (and as most us probably thought to ourselves last Friday and Sunday when a mad alliance of religionists and unionists stopped us buying beer and wine if we wanted to) why should religion’s many absurdities get a free pass?

Nice

Headline this morning, from Brisbane’s Courier Mail:

SANZAR, a sporting body with too many rules in its rule book, bans national anthems on Anzac Day

I’m with Crio, writing at the Footy Almanac:

Forget the national anthem…
Anything anti-ceremonial gets a tick from me.
There are concert halls for concerts and Moomba for parades.
At footy I expect footy.
National anthems are unnecessary – especially so when the competing sides are domestic.
Ra Ra Ruggers!

And even more bizarre when the competing sides are Australian, playing in Wellington – where I’ll be on Friday night to see them at the Cake Tin.

Why not join me!

Well, that’s a vote of confidence in Labour

For once, National’s Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully has acted as the underhanded strategist he’s reputed to be, ‘poaching’ Labour’s Shane Jones for a job as fisheries bureaucrat for the Pacific just ahead of the election.

That Jones finally accepted McCully’s January overtures is both a vote of no-confidence in his party’s chances this election – with the portfolio of Economic Development he could have expected a major role in any Labour-Green win – and also of its internal culture.  Because it seems his disgust with Labour’s “identity politics” might finally have trumped his political ambition.

And he has been ambitious. Since his first appearance in what is euphemistically called “public life” he’s been a chancer, leveraging his own Maori identity early on into a plum job as chairman of the Waitangi Fisheries Commission.

He’s been feeding from the trough ever since – so, no change at all in that respect then – with increasing arrogance at every move up the greasy pole.

At least he’ll now be able to download porn on a taxpayers’ tab without journalists writing headlines about it.

RELATED POSTS:

New Zealand’s Bubble Economy Is Vulnerable [updated]

Guest post by Hugh Pavletich

The recent Forbes e-edition article by Jesse Colombo assessing the New Zealand economy, “12 Reasons Why New Zealand's Economic Bubble Will End In Disaster” (about which we blogged here yesterday) seems to have created quite a stir, creating extensive media coverage in New Zealand.

One article alone, Michael Field’s major Fairfax article ‘NZ bubble 'going to burst', stimulated a remarkable 500+ comments.

It didn’t take too long for the politicians to react, with Acting Finance Minister Steven Joyce downplaying it, unhelpfully personally attacking Mr Colombo, with Labour’s David Cunliffe and David Parker largely agreeing with Mr Colombo’s assessment.

But then, they would all say that, wouldn’t they.

Mr Colombo’s initial assessment (a comprehensive report is to follow) was from a financial expert’s perspective, and rested largely on New Zealand’s level and fragility of mortage debt, and local banks’ exposure to it.

Let’s consider, looking specifically at housing affordability, whether Mr Colombo is correct from a structural perspective.

Tuesday 22 April 2014

“12 Reasons Why New Zealand's Economic Bubble Will End In Disaster”

Forbes magazine columnist Jesse Colombo invites international investors enamoured with NZ’s “rockstar economy” to think again – offering 12 Reasons Why New Zealand's Economic Bubble Will End In Disaster, pointing out among other things the conjunction of historically ultra-low (unsustainably low) interest rates and a mortgage bubble grown by 165% in a little over a decade, with the fact that nearly half of all NZers mortgages have floating interest rates, with mortgages themselves accounting for nearly 60% of banks’ loan portfolios.

So sit tight waiting for the pop when interest rates head back towards reality.

On top of this he sees the industrialised world’s fourth-worst household debt-to-GDP ratio, and a place in which agriculture as a source of wealth is vastly outstripped by “the finance, insurance and business service sector,” a sector in which banks “dangerously exposed to the country’s property and credit bubble” comprise the lion’s share.

Naturally, National Party cheerleader Keeping Stock has a cogent dismissal.  “Bubble? What Bubble?” says the blindfolded blogger responsible for a constant election-year refrain of “more good news” delivered by his heroes. “Cherry-picking,” “old news” and basic ridicule are about all the criticism offered however of Colombo’s case– apart from Keeping Stock’s hero Steven Joyce, who offers little more analysis than the word “alarmist” and a suggestion of similarity between Colombo and Moon-Man Ken Ring.

I can’t help thinking that if Colombo’s argument could be as easily dismissed, then they’d actually try to address it.

And then there’s Infometrics managing director Gareth Kiernan, who concedes “If his predictions ever came to pass then the economy would be in trouble, but no one was really forecasting that to happen…”

Economic Inequality–the Austrian Economics Perspective

“The Austrian perspective is on in which we distinguish between inequality that’s generated by consumers and consumer demand, and inequality that’s generated by what we might call government income plundering…”
- Joseph Salerno

The Sad State of the Economics Profession

Guest post by Frank Hollenbeck

It is not an exaggeration to say the current reputation of economists is probably just below that of a used car salesman. [A reputation that is highly deserved. – Ed.]

The recent failures of economic policies to boost growth or employment have tarnished this image even more. This, however, is in sharp contrast to the past when economists were seen as the intellectual roadblock to popular misconceptions, bad ideas, or more importantly, government policies sold to the public on false assumptions. Popular slogans such as “protecting local jobs” play on nationalism, but in reality only serve special interests.

The economist of the past would never have hesitated to highlight the fallacies in such reasoning.

Most economists today, however, have sold themselves to the enemy. They work for government agencies such as the IMF, OECD, World Bank, central banks, think tanks or academic institutions where their “output” is either bought or heavily subsidised by government agencies. To succeed they have to “toe the line.” You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Today, these economists and bought-and-paid-for journalists inform us almost daily, for example, of the dangers of “deflation” and the risks of “low-flation,” and how only the printing press can protect us from this alleged catastrophe. Yet there is neither theoretical or empirical justification for this fear. On the contrary, falling prices caused by rising production are a positive boon; and a stable money supply would allow prices to better serve the critical function of allocating resources to where they are most needed.

The fact you will never hear from today’s bought-and-paid-for economic historians is that growth resulting from stable money would normally be associated with rapidly falling prices -- as was the case during most of the nineteenth century…

Friday 18 April 2014

Easter Uplift: It’s Your Revised Sermon on the Mount

Put down your symbols of torture for a moment, grab a couple of good old pagan Easter Eggs, and consider something more uplifting than the Easter story Here, courtesy of Lindsay Perigo, is his wholly revised, updated and uplifted Sermon on the Mount.

A Revised Sermon on the Mount

Blessed are the poor in spirit—when they become rich in spirit and matter, for theirs will be the kingdom of earth.

Blessed are they who mourn—when they get over it.

Blessed are the meek—when they acquire pride, for then they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after individual rights—when they rise up for their cause, for then they shall become free.

Blessed are the merciful—when they learn to discriminate, for then they shall obtain justice.

Blessed are the pure in heart, since to be pure in heart they must be using their brains.

Blessed are the peacemakers—when they learn that peace doesn't come at any price, and wipe tyrants off the map.

Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely—when those men be the High Priests of Islam, Christianity, Socialism, Postmodernism, and all other manner of unreason.

Blessed are the rational, the independent, the honest, the sincere, the productive, the just, the justly proud; the scientists and capitalists; the poets, singers and symphonists of love and thought—for theirs is the glory of man.

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward on earth—when you have earned it, and it is not the fruit of a bailout.

Ye are the salt of the earth—but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? If ye become tame as sheeple, ye shall be trodden under the feet of politicians and bureaucrats and postmodern philosophers. Be ye instead the light of the world. Do not hide that light under a bushel, but let it so shine before men that they may see your vision of reason and freedom, and glorify it, and bring it to pass on earth.

Amen.  Hope you’re all having a good one yourself.

Thursday 17 April 2014

Easter Week, 4: Surely There Are Better Stories to Tell?

Today’s reflection on the celebrations of Easter Week, and their source…

In Pagan times you see, Easter was the time in the Northern calendar when the coming of spring was celebrated -- the celebration of new life, of coming fecundity.  Hence the eggs and rabbits and celebrations of fertility. Indeed, the very word "Easter" comes from Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, and means, symbolically, the festival celebrating the rebirth of light after the darkness of winter. 

But with the coming of Christianity, the celebration was hijacked to become this veneration of torture and sacrifice I talked about yesterday.  Remember here the true nature of sacrifice:

    “ ‘Sacrifice’ [says Rand] does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. ‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. ‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.

That’s why of itself it’s barbaric. It is, to quote Nietzsche, a revolt of everything that crawls against everything that’s high.  That’s why the barbarity of the Christian sacrifice is so stark.

If it were true.  Because unfortunately, as PZ Myers points out, Jesus isn't even saving us from anything real, and even in the made-up story he makes no change in the world with his death.

And the story itself was not even original.  In the Norse myths (to quote just one of many similar myths) the head god Odin hung himself on the World Tree Yggdrasil—not to sacrifice himself to himself, but to achieve greater understanding. As the Icelandic Edda tells the story,

Quote of the Day: Your Money is Your Life

"Time is our most precious resource, and most of us invest a third or more
of it into productive work so that we can support our lives and make our
hopes and dreams a reality. Every penny we earn represents some
irreplaceable part of our life — and every penny [and every minute]
the government takes from us represents a moment stolen from our life."

- Don Watkins, “Your Money is Your Life

Wednesday 16 April 2014

“…and the intelligence of a caravan site”

Photo: There’s nothing Kiwis like more than getting on the road and going on holiday. But public holiday fun can quickly turn to frustration. 

Today Labour committed to make things easier and safer on our roads. https://labour.org.nz/EasierDriving

Yeah, it’s a strange one, for sure.

Labour leader David Cunliffe hires alleged hotshot organiser Matt McCarten as Chief of Staff, all ready for a big election year. The decision is roundly endorsed by the commentariat. Smart, they say. Linking with the base. A big move. The start of a big campaign.

imageSo what exactly was the big idea behind what was going on yesterday?  A big interview cancelled and a big parliamentary opportunity forwent in favour of a big policy announcement that turned out be something not so big at all about trucks and caravans and something confusing about regos and the fast lane. (I can’t say I’ve got my head completely around the idea, if we can call it that, and it’s so trivial it’s hardly worth bothering.)

This satire from Imperator Fish seems as accurate as the announcement, or lack thereof, and a whole truckload funnier:

“13 Arguments for Liberal Capitalism in 13 Minutes”

I was told yesterday that the facts refute capitalism.

Which was interesting. Especially since

So here, for Paul McGreal and others are Stephen Hicks’s “13 arguments for liberal capitalism in 13 minutes.”  (That takes you to the transcript; the first vid is below.)

It makes liberal use of words like freedom, incentives, smarter, individuality, creativity, productive ability, the poor, wealth, flourish, happiness, interesting, tolerance, racism (and the discouragement thereof), sexism (also to do with the discouragement thereof), peace, and profit.

I even spot the word “awesome.”  Twice!

So if you’re bored with Easter and inequality, try awesome

Here’s a flowchart for the 13 (click for a huge one) …

liberal-capitalism-flowchart-video-version-a-640

… and here’s the first video of 13:

Enjoy!

Easter Week, 3: Mythologising Sacrifice

“My favourite definition of mythology: other people’s religion. My favourite definition of
religion: misunderstanding of mythology. The misunderstanding consist in the reading of
the mythological symbols as though they were primarily references to historical events…”
- Joseph Campbell

AND MAN MADE GODS in his own image, and that of the animals he saw around him, and he saw these stories were sometimes helpful psychologically in a a pre-philosophical age. But one of these gods was a jealous god. For this god was so angry at the world he sent one-third of himself to die to expiate the sins of those with whom he was angry, for sins that (in his omniscience) he would have always known they would commit.

imageIt’s not just history the christian story challenges, is it. It’s logic. Their god, both all-knowing and all-powerful (the two key features that make him a god) not only knows all that has happened ad will happen, he is also responsible for all that has happened and does happen - that's what being both all-knowing and all-powerful really means.

Which means that he is not just at one with our sin and suffering: he caused it all, and he knew it would all happen.

Human suffering, according to this view, is not an accident, it is god-given.

On this view, in this story, this god is not just in favour of pain and suffering, he not just actively wills it,  in “saving” the world from himself by having his own son tortured and killed he is an example to parents everywhere. (Just like, you know, Abraham.)

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Easter Week, 2: Enter Hercules…

Apotheosis of Hercules c. 1539. Oil on canvas. Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Christianity didn’t start with Jesus, any more than the Easter story did. Paul, who never met Jesus, had a big hand in both.

Jesus’s death was a secular event his followers struggled to explain. He had arrived from nowhere, talking mysteriously about bringing the kingdom of god on earth – interpreted hopefully by many as the coming of a “Messiah”1 to liberate the Hebrews from Roman rule – before arriving in Jerusalem  and almost immediately being put to death.

Any followers who believed Jesus was the Messiah may well have dreamed of some form of political or military triumph in which the priestly authorities would be overthrown and Israel liberated. Instead, Jesus had been arrested, subjected to a rudimentary trial and executed as a common criminal by the most humiliating punishment of all, crucifixion.

His brutal death ended their hopes and plans, and put their leader in whom they’d placed all their hope in the pathetic and very public position of being an “unprophetic prophet.” What to do?

How the West was Lost: Ranchers and Empire in the American West

article-2603026-1D0F67D100000578-703_634x411
20 Cowboys Break Fed Blockade in Nevada, Retrieve Cattle

The recent victory of the Bundy family over invading federal agents – with a posse of armed cowboys riding herd on the agents -- has been characterised as How the West Was Was Won
Author of this Guest Post Ryan McMaken is  not so sure.

The militarised siege of a cattle ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada has drawn national attention as dozens of federal agents, armed with machine guns, sniper rifles, helicopters, and more, have descended on the ranch to seize cattle, people, and generally show everyone who’s boss.

The conservative press has framed the story in a variety of ways, casting the story both as matter of outright federal seizure of private land, and as an absurd environmental crusade to save a tortoise from extinction.

The reality looks to be a little murkier, however, as is often the case when dealing with land ownership in the American West. Back in September, the Las Vegas Sun reported on the Bundy family and noted that troubles began 20 years ago when the family’s patriarch unilaterally determined that he would no longer pay the Bureau of Land Management use fees that have long been required to graze on federal lands. The exact legal and historical details of the Bundy family’s case will emerge slowly over time, but even if the family is completely in the wrong legally (which it probably is), it’s safe to say that taxpayer dollars might be better spent on things other than a shock and awe campaign waged against a tiny ranch in the middle of a Nevada desert. Nonetheless, this is just the latest dispute in a long history of ranchers jockeying with the Federal government over land use permits and land use regulations.[1]

While those who are unfamiliar with land use in the West may see this as some sort of new dastardly deed on the part of the federal government, it is in fact the case that leasing federal land for grazing (among many other things) has been the status quo in the West for more than a century, and the federal government has owned at least 40 percent or more of the land in many Western states ever since it was annexed to the United States in the nineteenth century. In fact, the nation’s 13 Western states are home to 93 percent of federal land, with two-thirds of all land in Utah, and 81 percent of all land in Nevada owned by the feds.

Dunedin hotel project death a symbol of the RMA

This is one we know about: a project stopped dead in its very expensive tracks by council intransigence – a council exercising their absolute powers under the Resource Management Act and Local Government Act, finally frustrating a property owner beyond reason.

Dunedin $100m waterfront hotel plans scrapped
Plans for a $100 million waterfront hotel in Dunedin have been scrapped and the developers' partnership with the Dunedin City Council has descended into acrimony.
    Hotel developer Jing Song yesterday confirmed she had torn up a memorandum of understanding with the council, signed just last month, which had aimed to find ways to progress the project…
    [Mrs Song] would not be drawn on the cost of three years' work, having previously said the bill stood at more than $1 million.
    She was also not able to say yet what would happen to the company's Environment Court appeal, lodged - but later placed on hold - after resource consent for the original 27-storey hotel was rejected in June last year.
    ''I think we've probably thrown all our eggs in one basket by trusting the council so much,'' she said.

This failure and the time and expense of it can be seen.

How many other projects are similarly stillborn because of the RMA, or never contemplated, and remain completely unseen.

OMG, But They’re Breaking the Law!

They’re breaking the law! OMG! Society will break down!!

Ah, maybe not. Just look at these dangerous, anti-social rule-breakers…

Anarchists-Funny-Rebels-01

Maybe the Royals have some value after all?

I’m beginning to think the Royal Family may have some value after all.

Two recent incidents, relating to two damned big issues, have changed my mind.

It was reported yesterday by Radio NZ1 that Prince William expressed surprise when visiting Christchurch that the rebuilding in Christchurch is taking so long. 

Translated from diplomatic Royal-speak, which never ever even implies fault or wrongdoing, you might read that as asking, “What the fuck have you been doing all this time, and how come it’s taking so freaking long.”  Which is a fair question, Your Eminence – the correct answer to which, (should the rhetorical question have been directed at the Grey Ones as we suppose it must have been), must surely be, “Sorry, sir, we’ve been getting in everyone’s fucking way!” As they have been.

Score One to the Royals.

And the other incident, you ask?

That came about a few months after the arse fell out of the global economy, when William’s grandmother was visiting the London School of Economics. Having been shown all over the delightful facilities in which high-level econometrics and mainstream economics has been taught to hundreds of intelligent youngsters every year – not to mention the high-powered research pumped out by tenured professors therein – the Queen asked her hosts the obvious question (and here I paraphrase, using words and emotions that must surely been in her mind, if not yours and mine): “How come with all this fancy-arsed economic learning around you, you didn’t even see the fucking crash coming?” (That she refrained from shouting when she asked the question is a tribute indeed to the sort of Royal diplomacy used in delivering William’s question so blandly.)

To the Queen’s question, the response was muddled, mixed and frankly bollocks, a much-delayed three-page missive, finally blaming "a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people." Which, translated into common parlance, might almost be taken as an open admission that their fancy high-flown economic theories and models of central planning are a total disaster area.

And much the same response could, and should, have been made to William.

The Royal Family. Mostly, like Charles, they’re just fools.  But sometimes, they’re like the fool in Shakespeare’s play, stating the bleeding obvious while all around are drinking up large when they should really be drinking the hemlock and falling upon their bloody swords.

God Save the Queen’s.

* * * *

1. Reported in the first story 5:30pm RNZ news last night. Surprisingly, or not, the comments had changed by the 6pm report.

Monday 14 April 2014

MMP = More Marriages of Convenience?

I can’t think of a fancy-arsed acronym to describe it, but MMP obviously stands for More Marriages of Convenience. The InterMana Party sort-of agreement, should one ever be made and either party (or agreement) stay around long enough to make a difference, is exactly the sort of marriage of convenience the MMP laws, rules and environment not only makes possible, but positively encourages.

Why that should surprise media commentators says more about media commentators than it does about either Mr and Mrs Harawira or Mr DotCon.

Regardless of what the media commentators think, the rules as written do favour deals between small parties with either big policy differences,1 or going for different votes2.

A ManaNet Alliance fits both bills. The groups are different enough that they’re not competing over the same policy ground. And they have sufficiently similar aims (getting rid of National; promoting leaders’ egos) that they have something around which to coalesce.

The rule being exploited is that allowing a victory in a constituency to trigger MPs on the basis of party votes. While the arrangement being discussed by DotConAndHarawira may not have been contemplated by the rule’s writers, again, says more about the writers than it does the negotiators. 

That it would suit both Harawira and DotCon and  is obvious. For the former, he can trade his potential for electoral success in return for gobs of DotCon’s money (if by then the FBI haven’t got it) and maybe even an extra MP; for the latter, it allows him to parlay his ill-gotten money into MPs – and, thereafter, he hopes, negotiating power in a new Government that might deliver him immunity from extradition.

Both get what they want, they hope, courtesy of MMP.

It may not be what anyone ever contemplated when MMP was begun, but maybe when this jerry-built electoral system was set up, it should have been.

* * * *

1. Parties with very similar policies will obviously be fighting for the same voters, and might therefore find little  on which to agree organisationally, normally...
2. Whereas parties going for different votes, with one going for party votes and the other for electoral, may be able to accommodate each other to mutual benefit whatever their perceived differences, or similarities.

LGNZ’s Alternative Funding Mechanisms Can Get Stuffed

I note councils around the country are at it again to get someone,anyone, to pay through the nose for their borrowing and over-spending.  They call this “looking for alternative funding mechanisms.”

Basing rates on property values alone may soon no longer be sustainable as the sole taxation form for many councils, says Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ).

Why will basing rates on property values alone no longer be sustainable as the sole taxation form for many councils? The answer is as simple as its corollary conclusion is obvious: because they’re spending too damned much and don’t wish to be stopped.

Instead [of reining in council spending, LGNZ] would investigate other forms of taxation such as local consumption and local income taxes as "complementary alternatives."

Ever since Sandra Lee changed the Local Government Act to give councils the ironically named “powers of general competence” their spending has gone up and up and up – and no Local Government minister with balls has emerged since to reverse this gift, let alone emasculate altogether the congenitally incompetent.  (Someone stick a toe up Nick Smith’s arse and ask him why he won’t stir in this direction.)

So as their powers of general incompetence continue to morph wildly, so too do the many  “alternative funding mechanisms”they contemplate to keep up with them –“complementary alternatives" in addition to the rates, service charges, levies, development contributions and general overcharging done whenever ratepayers and property owners are coerced into their company. They give them many labels…

“Local consumption taxes.”

“Local income taxes.”

“Funding tools.”

“Congestion charges.”

“Visitor charges.”

“Payroll taxes.”

“Capitation payments from central government.”

Many euphemisms to describe putting-our-hand-in-someone’s-pocket-and-rummaging-around-until-we-come-up-with-some-large-notes.

I say: Watch out. There are thieves about – they take many forms, and use many euphemisms their wonders of thievery to perform.

Equality versus Liberty

Googling around to set up that Piketty post, below, I came up with good old Tibor Machan talking to John Stossel about

NB: Tibor comes on about 8 minutes in, after Bob Beckel argues against “ripping off” the poor by allowing a “large gap.”

Piketty: Egalité, Fraternité–but Let’s Have No More of that Liberté

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You may have heard of a French fellow called Thomas Piketty, called “the most important economist today,” whose book Capital (in the Twenty-First Century) has been launched across the intellectual firmament with the sort of impetus not seen since the days of Silent Spring, The Population Bomb – or The Spirit Level.  The book is

Handout695-pages of rollicking neo-Marxist agitprop against inequality and in favour of massive new taxes on the rich. The book is a sensation on the left, a nuclear target for the right, and an endless battlefield for economic theorists of all stripes.
    If you haven’t heard of him yet you are not following North America’s leading purveyors of popular ideology: The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Week, The Nation, The National Review,  The America  Prospect. Hate it or love it — all are welcome from one end of that violent spectrum to the other — Capital is the economics industry’s tomb-raider of the 21stcentury.

If you haven't heard of it yet, fear not: it will be coming soon to a blog near you – or, at least, the warmed-over neo-Marxist rhetoric about “inequality” will.

Piketty rampages through two centuries of economic data and graphs, plunders ideas and theories from hither and yon, fills pages with pop culture references and CEO compensation lore, before settling down to contemplate his “utopian” idea:  A global annual capital tax of maybe 2% on the assets of the rich and a marginal tax rate of 80% on incomes above maybe $500,000 — all necessary to ward off “the violent political conflict that inequality inevitably instigates.”

So, yes, as Terence Corcoran at Canada’s Financial Post concludes:

There’s a lot in Capital, but the book has three basic foundations. There’s the Marxist Set Up, the Capitalist Straw Dog and the Utopian Tax Plan.  All the rest is elaborate if sometimes fascinating filler.

But since you’re going to keep hearing more and more in coming months about Piketty, his book, and especially the Utopian Tax Plan, it’s important to know more.  Austrian Economics blogger Smiling Dave starts at the very beginning:

Easter Week, 1: Its beginnings

It’s Easter Week – a time, since human cultural life began up in the northern hemisphere, when men and women came together to celebrate.

To celebrate what?

Why, to celebrate spring, of course. The end of winter; the onset of new life; of fertility and rebirth; the end of winter’s cold and darkness and the start of longer days, more sun, summer harvests and a time when living is easy. Or, at least, easier.

Imagine this week thousands of years ago, long before lighting and heating and modern refrigeration and all the first world delights and problems of today, back when the ownership of one candle was a valuable thing, and the success of a harvest meant the difference between life and death.

No wonder then that this celebration, of this time, was so important it still lingers today in a different form.

This  celebration was observed in China, called a “Festival of Gratitude to Tien.” Tien, of course, was the Holy One,always spoken of as one with God, existing with him from all eternity, "before anything was made." L. Maria Child, author of The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages, recounts the litany:

"The common people sacrifice their lives to gain bread; the philosophers to gain reputation; the nobility to perpetuate their families. The Holy One (Tien) does not seek himself, but the good of others. He dies to save the world."

It was observed in Europe, Saxon pagans celebrating annually in honour of the goddess Ostri, or Eostre with a week’s indulgence in all kinds of sports, called carne-e-vale, followed by a fast of forty days.

Persians and Egyptians celebrated this time as the start of the Solar New Year with the giving of eggs as a fertility symbols, usually stained with colours from dye-woods or herbs. The Babylonian goddess of fertility, war, love, and sex was Ishtar (pronounced “Easter”). Ishtar’s Sunday commemorated the resurrection of her consort, a god called "Tammuz," believed to be the only begotten son of the moon-goddess and the sun-god. It was celebrated with rabbits and eggs, and sacred cakes with the marking of a "T" or cross on the top.

Stop me if any of this is sounding familiar.

Wednesday 9 April 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY: On the Source of Today’s Inequality

“Capital in the form of credit is normally and, certainly, properly, extended out of previously accumulated savings. In sharpest contrast, credit expansion is the creation of new and additional money out of thin air, which money is then lent to business firms and individuals as though it were a supply of new and additional saved up capital funds…
    “The truth is that credit expansion is responsible not only for the boom-bust cycle but also for another major negative phenomenon for which public opinion mistakenly blames capitalism: namely, sharply increased economic inequality, in which the wealthier strata of the population appear to increase their wealth dramatically relative to the rest of the population and for no good reason…
    “The [
counterfeit capital] created in credit expansion shows up very soon in the financial markets, where they drive up the prices of securities, above all, common stocks. The owners of common stock are preponderantly wealthy individuals, who now find themselves the beneficiaries of substantial capital gains. These gains are the greater the larger and more prolonged the credit expansion is and the higher it drives the prices of shares. In the process of new and additional money pouring into the financial markets, investment bankers and stock speculators are in a position to reap especially great gains.
    “Since it’s so important, the main point just made needs to be repeated: credit expansion creates an artificial economic inequality by showing up in the stock market and driving up stock prices…
    “The new and additional funds injected into the economic system also soon show up… in an additional demand for consumers' durable goods, such as houses and automobiles. The purchase of these latter goods, like the capital goods purchased by business firms, depends largely on credit and is encouraged by lower interest rates. It is also fed by the capital gains being reaped by wealthy individuals, which results in an especially pronounced increase in the demand for luxury housing and for luxury goods in general.”
            - George Reisman, “Credit Expansion, Economic Inequality, and Stagnant Wages

Entrepreneurship: The Driving Force of the Economy

Author of The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur, Peter Klein has published numerous books and articles on entrepreneurship from an Austrian perspective. Dr. Klein, who is executive director and Carl Menger Research fellow at the Mises Institute, was interviewed in late 2013 by eTalks' Niaz Uddin on the topic of entrepreneurship:

Niaz Uddin: Tell us about entrepreneurship. What are the different contexts of entrepreneurship?

Peter Klein: The terms “entrepreneur,” “entrepreneurship,” and “entrepreneurial” are used in many ways, not always consistently! On the one hand, entrepreneurship is often used to mean self-employment: an entrepreneur is a person who starts or operates a small business. On the other hand, we also use the term “entrepreneurial” to refer to something broader, a mindset or way of thinking that emphasizes novelty, creativity, and initiative. Obviously one can be entrepreneurial in this sense without being a small-business owner.

In the academic literature, things get even more confusing. Originally the word entrepreneur was identified with decision-making, risk-bearing, and responsibility: entrepreneurs were the business people who organized production, transforming resources into valuable products and services for consumers. That usage goes back to the eighteenth century. More recently, scholars have identified entrepreneurship with narrower activities or functions such as alertness to profit opportunities or the introduction of new goods and services or new ways to make existing products. In my academic writing I adopt the concept developed by the American economist Frank Knight and the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises which emphasizes judgmental decision-making under uncertainty.

NU: Why do you think entrepreneurship is the fundamental stand of understanding economics? And how?

‘The game is up for climate change believers’

The Herald -- the New Zealand HeraldGranny Herald --- published an astonishing piece yesterday. Head there now and read it, before you read the snippets below.  It’s called: ‘The game is up for climate change believers.’

That’s right. In the Herald.

Filched from the UK Telegraph, and presumably published while the present NZH editor was on leave, the op-ed by former Telegraph editor Charles Moore purports to be a review of a “tremendous book” by Rupert Darwell. It is that, and more – it outlines, in a way you’d never expect to see in the Royal New Zealand Herald, “what has been inflicted on us over the past 30 years or so in the name of saving the planet”—of which warmism is only one symptom.

Like most of those on both sides of the debate, Rupert Darwall is not a scientist. He is a wonderfully lucid historian of intellectual and political movements, which is just the job to explain what has been inflicted on us...
    The origins of warmism lie in a cocktail of ideas which includes anti-industrial nature worship, post-colonial guilt, a post-Enlightenment belief in scientists as a new priesthood of the truth, a hatred of population growth, a revulsion against the widespread increase in wealth and a belief in world government. It involves a fondness for predicting that energy supplies won't last much longer (as early as 1909, the US National Conservation Commission reported to Congress that America's natural gas would be gone in 25 years and its oil by the middle of the century), protest movements which involve dressing up and disappearing into woods (the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, the Mosleyite Blackshirts who believed in reafforestation) and a dislike of the human race (The Club of Rome's work Mankind at the Turning-Point said: "The world has cancer and the cancer is man.").
    These beliefs began to take organised, international, political form in the 1970s …

We are paying now for the organisation begun then.

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Quote on the Day, 1: On Income Distribution

“With regards to income distribution, Von Mises made the case that it
is a flawed concept. We do not produce something and then distribute
the income generated by it. The distribution of that income is already
decided, agreed and precedes production. And that product gets made
precisely because of and not in spite of, that agreed income distribution.”

- Martin Sibileau, from his post “What Is Economic Growth? (And Why Don't We Have Any)

Monday 7 April 2014

Quote of the Day: Ludwig Von Mises on Anarchism and Government

“Government as such is not only not an evil, but the most necessary and beneficial institution, as without it no lasting social cooperation and no civilisation would be possible…
    “Not the state is an evil, but the shortcomings of the human mind and character that imperatively require the operation of a police power. Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'être to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man's innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent...
    “The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty. The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state…
    “A shallow-minded school of social philosophers, the anarchists, chose to ignore the matter by suggesting a stateless organization of mankind. They simply passed over the fact that men are not angels. They were too dull to realize that in the short run an individual or a group of individuals can certainly further their own interests at the expense of their own and all other peoples’ long-run interests. A society that is not prepared to thwart the attacks of such asocial and short-sighted aggressors is helpless and at the mercy of its least intelligent and most brutal members.
    “While Plato founded his utopia on the hope that a small group of perfectly wise and morally impeccable philosophers will be available for the supreme conduct of affairs, anarchists implied that all men without any exception will be endowed with perfect wisdom and moral impeccability. They failed to conceive that no system of social cooperation can remove the dilemma between a man’s or a group’s interests in the short run and those in the long run.”
- Ludwig Von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 98f,
quoted by Per-Olof Samuelsson in his post “Ludwig von Mises on Anarchism” at THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

Enjoying Without Owning

Forget the negativity, forget your Monday Blues: reflect that every day above the ground is a good one, and resolve to understand what it means to say that all wealth is human wealth … as this Guest Post by Orison Swett Marden suggests.

File:A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884.png

Chapter 6: Enjoying Without Owning

A French marquis, with whom Washington Irving has made us acquainted, consoled himself for the loss of his château by remarking that he had Versailles and St. Cloud for his country resorts, and the shady alleys of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg for his town recreation.

"When I walk through these fine gardens," he said, "I have only to fancy myself the owner of them, and they are mine. All these gay crowds are my visitors, and I have not the trouble of entertaining them. My estate is a perfect Sans Souci, where everyone does as he pleases, and no one troubles the owner. All Paris is my theatre, and presents me with a continual spectacle. I have a table spread for me in every street, and thousands of waiters ready to fly at my bidding. When my servants have waited upon me, I pay them, discharge them, and there's an end. I have no fears of their wronging or pilfering me when my back is turned. Upon the whole," said the old gentleman with a smile of infinite good humour, "when I recollect all that I have suffered, and consider all I at present enjoy, I can but look upon myself as a person of singular good fortune."

The habit of feeling rich because you have developed the faculty of extracting wealth from everything you touch is riches indeed. Why should we not feel rich in all that our eyes can carry away, no matter if others happen to have the title deed? Why should I not enjoy the beautiful gardens of the wealthy and their grounds, just as if I owned them? As I pass by I can make the wealth of colour my own. The beauty of plants, and lawn, and flowers, and trees are all mine. The title deed of another does not cut off my aesthetic ownership. The best part of the farm, the landscape, the beauty of the brook and the meadow, the slope of the valley, the song of the birds, the sunset, cannot be shut up within any title deed; they belong to the eye that can carry them away, the mind that can appreciate them.

How is it that some rare characters manage to have such precious treasures, to get so much that enriches the life out of a poverty-stricken, forbidding environment, while others get little out of the most luxurious and beautiful conditions that wealth can furnish?

GUEST POST: Not Flying the Flag

From an undisclosed location overseas, expatriate NZer Suzuki Samurai muses on the embarrassment of being outed as a kiwi...

When living away from your place of birth, after being asked your name most people ask where you’re from. These days, I mumble the answer. I wish they'd guess a couple of alternatives so I can simply say “Yes.”

I'm often accused of being either English or Australian, not uncommon for a New Zealander I guess. (Oddly enough the only time someone has guessed right was when a turbaned shopkeeper in Manhattan asked me where in New Zealand I was from?!? True story. It turns out this delightful fellow's brother [which can mean cousin, neighbour or friend] owns – you guessed it – a dairy in South Auckland).

So why, I ask myself, is the very idea of proudly (or at least audibly) stating that I come from New Zealand such a struggle for me now?

Friday 4 April 2014

Friday Morning Ramble: The ‘News Drought’ Edition

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This week’s ramble is brought to you by … oh, hang on .. who’s this idiot?

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Good metaphor for every politician that.

And how about this principled fellow?

What’s been in the news this week? “We're into the second week of news drought here in NZ. Nothing continues to happen. In lieu of news, mirages are common.”
News Drought – GONZO FREAKPOWER BRAINS TRUST

So let’s debunk some mirages, and share some real news…

Personal freedom in NZ: Not as bad as we thought? “Vote with your feet,” Eric tells Americans.
Personal Freedom: NZ is choice – Eric Crampton, OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR

Fair question:
Why does the support stop short at overseas holidays? – LINDSAY MITCHELL

Message to no-longer-holidaying beneficiaries :

"Any government big enough to give you everything
you want . . . is big enough to take it away again."
 
- Anonymous

“All parents have a fundamental, inalienable right to direct the course of their own children's education and the spending of their own money. In particular, the opportunity for low-income families to get their children out of the worst government schools and into private schools—or at least charter schools—is a moral imperative of our time.”
Poverty Doesn't Cause Bad Education – PRINCIPLED PERSPECTIVE

“Although different in purpose and in magnitude of harm to its victims, public education, like slavery, is a form of involuntary servitude. The primary difference is that public schools force children to serve the interests of the state rather than those of an individual master.”
The New Abolitionism: Why Education Emancipation is the Moral Imperative of our Time 
– C. Bradley Thompson, OBJECTIVE STANDARD

“A major problem with our current one-size-fits-all education is the gaps that occur in learning.”
Filling the Swiss Cheese Holes – JERRY KIRKPATRICK’S BLOG

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Nothing like a gee-whiz graph to show up severe statistical miseducation.  Or lies.
Why barcharts must start at zero – Thomas Lumley, STATS CHAT 
How to Lie With Statistics – NOT PC, 2007

“Apparently the only U.S. government department without a military force at its disposal is the military. So when a lone shooter opens up at an army base, Fort Shock'n'Awe has to call 911 and "shelter in place" until the county sheriff arrives… Years ago, American comics used to mock the unarmed British constabulary. Was it Robin Williams who did that routine about the copper in pursuit of a ne'er-do-well? "Stop! Or I'll shout 'Stop!' again..." The United States Government has taken it to the next level: everyone's armed except the army.”
Johnny, Get Your Gun-Free Zone – Mark Steyn, STEYN ONLINE

“Fascinating essay on the informal arrangements that professional comedians use to create and enforce property rights in their jokes.”
No Joke: Law Does Not Require Legislation for Its Creation or Enforcement – Don Boudreaux, CAFE HAYEK

“"What they want is the resignation of Maduro, the liberation of all political prisoners, and a complete change of government."
Why the Struggle Continues in Venezuela: Regime Change and Nothing Less – Fergus Hodgson, PANAMPOST.COM

Europe mapped, according to the Russians, and the Germans…

“The new United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released Monday, March 31 confirms   "economic growth, including greater concentrations of people and wealth in periled areas and rising insurance penetration, is the most important driver of increasing losses... loss trends have not been conclusively attributed to anthropogenic climate change."
IPCC Sides With Roger Pielke, Jr.: New AR 5 Report Confirms Pielke's Conclusions on Disasters 
– THE BREAKTHROUGH
Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change – Roger Pielke, Jr., FIVETHIRTYEIGHTSCIENCE

“Green ideologues working for the British government helped "sex up" the latest Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) report in order to make its conclusions sound more scary than the evidence warrants, it emerged today.”
Green Ideologies from UK Govt Sexed Up IPCC Climate Report – James Delingpole, BREITBART

“Millions will die and species will die, was the claim. 2010 was going to see a million people dead from warming. Didn’t happen, now the species claim is going away too.”
Millions will die, Species will Disappear? Well, guess not – JUNK SCIENCE

“Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures.”
James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion – GUARDIAN

“There is no scientific proof of man-made global warming and a hotter earth would be ‘beneficial for humans and the majority of other species’, according to a founding member of environmental campaign group Greenpeace.
Humans are NOT to blame for global warming, says Greenpeace co-founder, as he insists there is 'no scientific proof' climate change is manmade – DAILY MAIL
Ex-Greenpeacer Patrick Moore questions climate change, challenges liberals – WASHINGTON TIMES

“The idea that climate change poses an
existential threat to humankind is laughable.”

- resigning IPCC scientist Richard Tol

Meanwhile, columnist and warmist irritant Mark Steyn is in court, sued by Michael Mann, the inventor of the IPCC’s alarmist Hockey Stick. There is commentary.
“I was reading through the latest submission in the quagmire otherwise known as 'legal proceedings' in the Mann versus Steyn case. Clearly, there is some good news and bad news with respect to Steyn's new team of lawyers. The good news is that they clearly understand that what is at stake is free speech. The bad news is that they clearly understand that what is at stake is free speech.”
Mann versus Steyn Update: Kick-Ass Lawyer Edition – Laura Rosen Cohen, END OF YOUR ARM.COM
The Steyn Route to Insanity - Mark Steyn, STEYN ONLINE
What Kind of Fool Am I?- Mark Steyn, STEYN ONLINE

Mark Steyn: “The BBC, meanwhile, put together a "debate" on the "issues" raised by the case. You can hear the show here - the main segment starts about 29-and-a-half minutes in, but there's a couple of soundbites at the top of the show and about 14 minutes in. The host's framing of the topic - should there be limits to what one is permitted to say about "climate change"? - sounds slightly nutty to those of on the free-speech side of this thing. But it's a useful reminder that, increasingly and in many of the most respectable institutions in the western world, there is no deference to freedom of expression. Oh, sure, it's somewhere in the mix, but, as a priority, it's subordinate to all kinds of things - from multiculturalism to climate change.”
Transcript: Should there be "any limits on what can be said about climate change?" 
– MYTRANSCRIPTBOX
Summary: Trial of the century? – Judith Curry, CLIMATE ETC.

“The U.S. Federal Reserve will be in a situation shortly where it has to choose
between the dollar and everything else - the economy, the stock market, the real
estate market—because if the Fed continues with the tapering as scheduled, and
then begins to raise interest rates, we will have a worse financial crisis than in 2008.”
- Peter Schiff, “The Federal Reserve Is In A Corner

“Janet Yellen has a plan. The plan is to exit the ultra-loose policy of the Federal Reserve, and to do so very slowly and very carefully. And by slowly I mean very slowly.”
Janet Yellen’s game of Jenga – Detlev Schlicter, THE SCHLICTER FILES

There’s little difference between Australian sailor humour and the pontifications of central bankers and Pau Krugman.
Government sneaks through the 'Affordable Boat Act' – SAIL WORLD.COM

Another fair question.
To YB: Would Bitcoin exist in a free market? – Yaron Brook, LEONARD PEIKOFF.COM

‘The Seen and the Unseen’: “John Stossel, along the way to making a "seen-and-unseen" type of analysis of the machinations of the FDA, reminds us of the actual nature of one of its past "successes.”
Bullying Isn't the Half of It – GUS VAN HORN

Actually, Germany is more like what a proper housing market looks like.
Governments force up housing costs – LINDSAY MITCHELL

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“Scientists have grown living muscle in the lab that not only looks and works like the real thing, but also heals by itself - a significant step in tissue engineering.”
Self-healing muscle grown in the lab – BBC NEWS

“Two cabins in Northland have taken the $15,000 prize, but some pretty hard-case locals are not convinced they're deserving winners.”

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More here:
20 Jokes That Only Intellectuals Will Understand. – TICKLD

Because you asked.
This is What Happens When You Build a Cube Out of One Way Mirrors – THE MIND UNLEASHED

“Love them or hate them, two tiny cabins in Northland have been named 2014 NZ Home of the Year.”
Home of the Year faces backlash – STUFF
”Given all the attention our Home of the Year is getting, we thought many of you might be interested in hearing some of the thinking behind the jury's decisions.”
Amanda Levete on the Home of the Year – HOME

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“Zero waste, lower transport costs and recyclable materials – is 3D-printing the future of housebuilding? Dutch architects are putting the process to the test for the first time in Amsterdam.”
Work begins on the world's first 3D-printed house – ARCHINECT

Technology transforms human lives.
How one man battled the bureaucrats to save a billion lives – Marc Sidwell, CITY A.M.

Technology transforms human lives. The most wonderful video you’ll see today: “Watch as a deaf woman, Joanne Milne, is overwhelmed by hearing for the first time after having her cochlear implants switched on.”

The Black Death may not have been caused by fleas on rats. It may have been airborne, and the result of poor mediaeval health.
Black death skeleons reveal pitiful life of 14th-century Londoners – OBSERVER

“"Witnessing the light bulb go on in someone's head when they realise, and begin to fully understand, the benefits of cannabis legalisation, is a good buzz. A really good buzz.”
No, legalizing medical marijuana doesn’t lead to crime, according to actual crime stats – WASHINGTON POST

More stuff you know that isn’t so:
Southern California not so sprawling after all – ARCHINECT

“When I think about why this is so, I reach the contradictory conclusion that it is because Israel is both safer and more dangerous.”
Why 'helicopter parenting' doesn’t work in Israel – Allison Kaplan Sommer, HAARETZ

Beer. Much better for you than cider.
Hidden levels of sugar in alcohol revealed – TELEGRAPH

Mind you, it depends on the beer.
List of legal beer additives includes fish bladder, MSG, high-fructose corn syrup and insect dyes – NATURAL NEWS
The Shocking Ingredients In Beer – FOOD BABE
Craft Beer and Your Health – CRAFT BEER


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Source: “Climate in northern Europe reconstructed for the past 2,000
years: Cooling trend calculated precisely for the first time”
Johannes Gutenberg Universitat, Mainz

New Wire, sounding strangely like old Wire!

Still reckon it’s sheer brilliance to have a harpsichord playing hot swing.

Eat your heart out Horowitz.

Oh, okay then:

And finally:

[Hat tip Russell Beaumont, Richard Goode, Andrew B.. Paul Carfoot, Screwed by State, pete602, Lenore Skenazy, Richard Tol , Richard Calhoun, Tom Nelson, Andrew Frey, Wladimir Kraus, Scott DeSalvo, Keith Weiner, Capitalism, Geek Press, Lindsay Perigo]

Thanks for reading,
Have a great weekend,
PC