Who Were the Sea Peoples?

I know truth is the first casualty in war yada yada yada. I can't believe they're even saying this about the "Mission Accomplished" banner. Why can't they just say, "Yeah whoops"? After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the "Mission Accomplished" phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing its 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq. Bush, in October 2003, disavowed any connection with the "Mission Accomplished" message. He said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later said the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor. "President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price f

I think Barack Obama asked Jeremiah Wright to say shocking things so that he (Obama) could then officially denounce them. Those two are extremely clever. Read this Slate analysis ; the quips from Wright are priceless. (BTW I think Wright is awesome, the way I think Michael Savage is awesome.) I'm just expanding on the Slate analysis now: Clearly the Republicans are going to use Wright against Obama. So better to get it out of the way now, so people can be sick of it during the general election. Sean Hannity interprets the latest events like this: (1) Obama agrees with Wright and so doesn't denounce him in the beginning. (2) Wright inexplicably goes on tour over the weekend, and says crazy stuff about AIDS at the National Press Club. He must be mad at Obama. (3) Obama can't believe this treachery, and has no choice but to sever their relationship to save his presidential run. I think the above interpretation is totally wrong. Wright would have to be one SERIOUSLY sel

I have to stop arguing with this guy Alex on the Mises blog, before I take a hostage. Now let's be clear everyone, I am not upset because he is challenging my theory that recessions should lead to higher price inflation (other things equal). Rather, I am going crazy because he doesn't see why CPI growth spiking during a recession should be evidence in my favor. Rather, he thinks it should count against me, because it shows that inflation rates were rising going into the recession, and then fell after the recession. I pointed out that his argument would also show that summer has a cooling effect, but he dealt with that observation by explaining how the sun and the angle of the earth's axis cause seasonal changes. If someone can mediate our dispute , I would appreciate it. In his mind I am crazy. And if I continue arguing I soon will be.

A public square in Haguenau, France. The top linguists in France gather at the Institute Phonetique du Strasbourg: Adam, Rudolph, Fabrice, and Kofi. OK, but why do you need them to do this? Rudolph, Adam, and me -- Adam is polishing off a plate of frogs' legs.

I explain by way of criticizing Fred Kagan 's halfhearted strategy.

This stuff is really getting ridiculous. (And by the way, I am aware that there was plenty of crazy cr*p going on with the FLDS sect, aided by local government.) This professor took his kid to a baseball game, ordered a "lemonade," and let his kid drink Mike's Hard Lemonade because he says he didn't know it was alcoholic. A security guard saw it, and next thing you know the kid is in foster care for two days . The dad wasn't allowed to return home for a week . HT2 LRC . As always, what's truly sickening is how many of the posters at the story above support the action. I.e. this guy had it coming, letting his kid drink Hard Lemonade! Serves him right.

Click on an image for a larger view: Yes, the Dutch ride bikes a lot. One of Amsterdam's 100 or so canals. In MaxEuwe Plein, the Dutch like their chess big. Some houseboats, including one with a lawn on the roof. Mr. Man works on a Dutch pancake. At least the Dutch admit what their parks are for. (Remember the 'v' is pronounced as our 'f'.) Adam with my friend Robert Hensgens. Yes, it's true what you've heard about Amsterdam. (Adam and I did not make any purchases.) Near the Riyks Museum.

A blog devoted to Bushwick real estate. The blogger has very cool political and economic views.

At first I thought it was just to funnel more tax dollars into the hands of the oil companies. But then it occurred to me that if you were going to start a war with Iran, it would be good to have extra stockpiles of crude oil .

No, it's not that I directly fear a woman with power. Rather, I fear what would happen if a Democratic woman were in power, and then something happened--heaven forbid, another attack on US soil. To prove how tough she was, Hillary Clinton would have to respond far more than Obama, and a million times more than McCain. That has been my view for some time. It was reinforced when I read that she said she would " totally obliterate " Iran if it attacked Israel. However, in fairness to Clinton, the reports of her statement are a bit misleading. Below is the actual answer she gave. It's no Sermon on the Mount, I grant you, but it's not nearly as crazy as what you would have thought from my paragraph above.

I need to keep this idea in mind the next time I'm doing a radio show about windfall profits taxes.

Wouldn't it be nice to hop on a plane out to sunny California...and spend two hours listening to me give advice to the state on how to tax people ?

I say no .

While Gene is on the lam, I'll give some props to Lew Rockwell's recent article, " Prison Nation ." Did you folks realize that the U.S. has a higher rate of incarceration than Cuba? Did you know the U.S. government locks up more Americans than the Chinese communists lock up Chinese? To deal with the objection that we need government prisons to keep crime down, Rockwell ends with this wonderful quote from Robert Ingersoll: The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumb-screws and racks, with hangmen and headsmen – and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities and crimes have accomplished little for the preservation of property or life. It is safe to say that governments have committed far more crimes than they have prevented. As long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails. ================ Back in grad school I embraced pacifism mos

It seems Tyler Cowen, my good friend Megan McArdle, and some others were pontificating on the drug war . I don't know if Tyler held this view, but one school of thought (or "model" in this apparently stuffy party ) argued that legalization wouldn't do much: Under one model, local gangs have a more or less fixed ability to terrorize a neighborhood....In this model, legalizing drugs doesn't do much good. The local gang either shifts its monopoly to another area (milk and sugar, if need be), or de facto the gang's local monopoly on the drug trade continues. The gang busts you if you try to get your supply of crack cocaine from Merck. I call this the Rio de Janeiro model; no, drugs are not formally legal there but I don't think it would much matter if they were. Now I've never been to Brazil, so I was giving Tyler the benefit of the doubt. Surely, I thought, if he's going to test whether the drug war affects drug gangs, and one of his data points

I don't know, but they sure are leaving their options open. And hey, that's not conspiracy talk; it's what the chair of the Joint Chiefs says . These weekly updates serve two purposes, it seems to me. First, it desensitizes Americans to the subject, so that if and when they wake up to hear, "The U.S. last night began bombing key Iranian weapons depots," they won't be shocked. Second, these little trial balloons give the government more information about the likely reaction should they start bombing. I think libertarians sometimes overrate the power of the government. For all their guns and money, let's remember that there are a at most a few hundred key people in Washington running the show, and really you could whittle that number down to under 50 if you wanted to raise the threshold on your definition of "power." Their control of millions of Americans and (less) control of billions of Earthlings rests on widespread perceptions of not only

Courtesy of MR , I learned of the intriguing Seasteading Institute . Cool stuff. One of the principals is Patri Friedman, son of David, son of Milton...son of Abraham. I haven't had time to look this over very carefully, but I think it's great that things are this far along. Once it becomes profitable to produce a platform capable of housing, say, 1000 or more people anywhere in the world, I think you'll see the average amount of human liberty (whatever that means) explode. My only objection so far is Patri's overzealous use of apostrophes. On the Institute's front page, he talks of a Twain quote from the "1800's," and then on his personal website he talks of "100's of pages" and talks of the Institute, "who's mission..." Finally, his personal website features a cycle of pictures, some of which concern my prudish sensibilities. I attach the link below, but as I say, he has rigged it so that the picture changes very oft

I explain here .

Here's Roderick Long on why recent brain studies say nothing about free will. On a similar topic: When I read some dogmatic materialist asserting, "While we donùt know how brains create consciousness, it is obvious that somehow they do," it brings to my mind the image of some primitive tribe coming upon a working radio. After studying it for some time, the tribe's shamans proclaim, "We don't know how radios compose music and write news programs, but it is obvious that somehow they do."

I need to learn more facts before I make any definitive assertions (after all, that's what I do) about this case. In the meantime, check out this ridiculous piece by Susan Filan, Esq., on the The Man Network, er, MSNBC. How could (a) someone possibly write this with a straight face and (b) an editor sign off on it? Just look at this: And I believe that even though the officers cannot yet express their remorse, they are saddened by this incident and by Sean Bell’s death. No officer ever wants to take a life, even when the shooting is justified. Clearly, even if mistakes were made, the officers did not engage in deliberate and intentional misconduct. I know they grieve. How the hell do you know that, Ms. Filan? I'm not saying they aren't grieving--though only one of them apologized according to the article I read. (If you were legitimately scared for your life, and ended up killing an unarmed guy the day before his wedding, don't you think you might, um, apologize

My son Adam and I now are relaxing in Haguenau, Alsace with my old friend Rudolph Sock , eating pizzas made with cream instead of cheese , and Alsatian sauerkraut . Alsace is lovely. The section I am in is a valley of fertile farmland set between two mountain ranges. It is so nice, in fact, that I told Rudolph that, on my next visit, I am bringing an army . By the way here's how to make sauerkrut at home -- it's supposed to be tastier and better for you than the store-bought variety.

I just found a loaf of "Le Cake Anglais" on my host's counter, a cake I never saw while living in England. And that reminded me of something I did see there: Le Cafe Anglais. Now I can see the point of naming your London cafe, if it is French-style, "Le Cafe Francais," to add an extra dash of "authenticity." But what in the world is the point of naming your English cafe, sitting in the heart of England, in French? However, that naming absurdity was topped by the "New Jersey Fried Chicken" just up the street. UPDATE: A photo, and a whole thread on weird chicken-shack names.

The INS grants citizenship to foreigners on the queue who have a clean criminal record, and for whom a US employer agrees to buy a house (for at least $150,000) as an advance on their salaries. To make US employers willing to do this, presumably these would be moderate to highly skilled immigrants. But I bet there are at least 400,000 potential immigrants in the world who qualify. So this alone would knock out about 10% of the existing housing inventory . Next problem? BTW if any reader who is also a writer finds this intriguing, feel free to run with it. I won't have time to develop this further. One final thought: You might worry and say, "Well we'd have to require also that the official owner--whether the employer or the immigrant--doesn't try to resell the house for x years." I actually don't think that's correct, since it can't hurt to allow people voluntary trades. I.e. once the immigrant is in the country and has a house, from that point on

Occassionally, one hears a pro-war voice saying something like, "Well, no one ever said Iraq would be quick or easy!" It's a lie, folks. It was supposed to be very quick and very easy, and pay for itself as the US robbed Iraqis of their oil: "And then, with the resources from Iraq, the oil, for example, will cause it to be able to transition very quickly and actually cause a big change, I think, in the Middle East." -- Gen. David Grange on CNN in 2003, quoted by Glenn Greenwald

Thoreau cites this article on the myths of evolution. Unfortunately, the article is full of the usual philosophical rubbish put out in these pop-evolution pieces. As Eric Voegelin said, Darwinism has provided a "new creed for the semi-educated." Here are a few examples: "Darwin presented compelling evidence for evolution in On the Origin and, since his time, the case has become overwhelming." Kind of like the case for Newtonian physics in 1880, heh? "Countless fossil discoveries allow us to trace the evolution of today's organisms from earlier forms. DNA sequencing has confirmed beyond any doubt that all living creatures share a common origin." Fine. Neither of those statements has any bearing on the truth of NeoDarwinian evolution as opposed to other evolutionary models. "Innumerable examples of evolution in action can be seen all around us, from the pollution-matching pepper moth to fast-changing viruses such as HIV and H5N1 bird

Details here .

I recommend you pick up this excellent book by Gene Healy of the Cato Institute, the Washington, DC based Paul-smearing, neocon sock puppet, sell-out think tank. Uhh, sorry, I was channeling Justin Raimondo for a moment there! But get the book - it's quite good.

I saw a poster in Paris for a production entitled ¨"The Decadence of the Consumption Society." I was very happy to see this, as French artists have never addressed this theme before, and it's well-nigh time they got around to it. In other nezs from French theater, there is a series appearing called "The theater of Claude Levy-Strauss" - plays based on structural anthropology, apparently.

Here's a comment (about the 40th down, from "odograph") from an MR blog post that is completely understandable in context, and yet is absurd on its face: "kevin, I agree that the government should tax carbon and get out of the way." This is reminiscent of the WSJ editorial from a few months ago, that in the same sentence lauded the Colombian president for his commitment to free trade and the war on drugs.

Now I am being put through some sort of diabolical French torture device that my host tells me is called the - there will be a pause here while i spend half an hour looking for a quote key - couldnt find one, so screz it - QUOTE azerty UNQUOTE keyboard. But I suspect that name is only for foreign consumption - locally, this is known as the QUOTE f*ck thosze filthy american bougeoise pigs UNQUOTE keyboqrd. How did I wind up in this predicqment? Well, Adam qnd I came in fro, Pqris today to Strasbourg, zhere ze were met qt the stqtion by so,e Africqn ?an who demanded we get in his car. Then he drove us out to so,e town nqmed after lamb or something, and ordered me to blog on this waterboqrding style keyboqrd. The mornings arrogant Parisian cab driver who had NO idea where I was asking to go when I asked for the Tuh-lle-rie instead of the Too-lle-rie was nothing compared to the torture this man has put me through by lending me his laptop.

An extremely provocative essay by Greg Rehmke. Incidentally, I've known his name for a few years now, but just met him at the APEE conference. I think his work warrants more attention from free market fans than it has thus far received. I didn't read this whole essay word-for-word, but I think the one major stumbling block is that densely populated cities such as New York and Hong Kong rely on imports of food etc. So it's a bit too flippant just to say, "If NYC can have that density, so can the rest of the world!" But as I say, maybe Greg deals with that objection and I just didn't see it. Generally, I am aghast when people say things like, "Our Earth can't support so many people," and when even free market types like Tyler Cowen lecture us on the number of our children being the biggest determinant of our "carbon footprint." Next time you are in a plane, just pay attention to how much empty space you fly over. Then realize that

...or just stoners? Either way, the cop's quote is interesting: "There’s no way our 12 to 15 officers are going to be able to deal with a crowd of 10,000. We just can’t do strong enforcement when we’re outnumbered 700 or 800 to one.” (HT2 DC )

Gmail sometimes puts up quotes and I couldn't help clicking on an Einstein one, which brought me to this list . He's actually cooler in his general worldview than I realized. (I already knew he was rather good on matters of physics.) Some gems: A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Force always attracts men of low morality. He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am

Did you know bail bondsmen (people?) are "unheard of" outside the US? Find out more !

My first blog on China was the thesis, namely that their performance over the past few years needn't indicate irresponsible monetary policy. Then came the antithesis : Although it was theoretically possible for a weak-yuan policy to cause domestic price inflation, even without growing the Chinese monetary base, it would require falling asset (or rather, non-CPI basket) prices, which I ruled out. Hence I thought my friend was right, and that China's rulers must indeed be guilty of running the printing press. And now the synthesis: I just read in the WSJ that China's stock market is down something like 50% since its peak in the fall. I knew it was down, but I had no idea how much! Therefore, my new back-of-the-envelope summary: China's free market reforms have indeed spurred genuine economic growth. But they grew the monetary base rapidly for a while, and that surely spurred malinvestments. (It didn't appear reckless to them perhaps, because they were tied to

Although the standard Austrian tools are capable of handling these types of issues, I have been ill-prepared in dealing with things like a falling dollar when inflation is moderate . As I said, the way I used to think about these things wasn't actually wrong, but there are a lot of subtleties I have only recently realized. I may have to suck it up and read Mundell's textbook . And I thought I was done with matrix algebra.

Bob's not the only one with an article in The Freeman .

Off to the Van Gogh Museum with Adam today. Yesterday I told my friend Robert Hensgens that I find his country frustrating -- I like being forced to speak a foreign language when I travel, as its the only way I ever really learn one well. But here, everyone speaks English better than I do. Adam remarked, "No, what about that guy in the airport?" "Adam," I replied, "that was Heathrow Airport." The worst English speaker I've encountered on my trip to the Netherlands was a BA employee in London. In other matters: Last night, Adam was asked by a friendly burgher what the most notable difference was between New Amseterdam and Amsterdam. He said, "The bicycles." Some of them are more equipped than a basic car: Multiple storage compartments, two or three child seats, headlamps, windshields, etc. The bikes even have their own traffic lights. UPDATE: Thinking of my travels -- Bad places to be forced to learn a foreign language: Montreal, Quebec, Flo

(One UPDATE below...) Below Gene questioned the typical libertarian endorsement of self-ownership: I've always thought the concept of "self-ownership," so loved by many libertarians, is a little screwy: Man is not a good he owns, he is himself. To the common comeback, "If you don't own yourself, then who does?" my answer has been, "No one, just like no one owns arithmetic or the night sky." Insofar as he goes, I agree with Gene. However, all it takes is a simple change of terminology to body -ownership, and then the standard libertarian view is fine. Is that all you're saying, Gene? If not--i.e., if you're really disputing that it makes sense to view human bodies as being objects of ownership--then what were slave auctions all about? Traders never grabbed the night sky and sold it to plantation owners. Also, the more I think about it, the less coherent I find the view that rejects the ability of someone to sell his body to another. Wha

I have long thought that child welfare issues were the biggest stumbling block for conventional libertarian theory. After all, children are the one group for whom paternalism is appropriate! A few libertarians have (understandably) been going nuts over the government raiding a community in an armored personnel carrier (see photo below), and literally kidnapping hundreds of children at gunpoint, all on the basis of a phone call that has yet to be verified and may very well have been a prank . I think a lot of people are holding back their criticism, because this polygamist compound surely had some nutjob activities occurring. If the police really did get a phone call from a woman claiming to be subject to beatings and rapes, it's reasonable that they would go in. (Obviously as an anarchist and pacifist, I don't think armed men are ever the "answer," but I realize well-meaning people differ with me on that score.) What troubles me though is that the state of Texas h

Those of youse who have been following this thread will be interested to hear that the digit analysis problem at the heart of the set membership challenge indeed has a partial (very, very partial) solution, much to my surprise. Three mathematicians recently discovered an algorithm: {digit # in expansion of pi} --> algorithm --> {value of the said digit} So you *don't* need to crank through digits 1-99 to find digit 100. The catch? the digits in question are binary. As far as anyone knows (I think) you still need to know decimal digits 1-99 before you can get to finding decimal digit 100.

This apparently has been available for a while now, but I didn't realize it because the link was below the "fold" on the Freeman's table of contents. I.e. I thought it was going to be in the next issue. Anyway, here is my critique of Tyler Cowen on whether the Fed is bailing out Wall Street.

I have a truly discovered a theorem, the margins of this blog are entirely adequate to contain, but which refers, for its expression, more type faces than email seems able to honor.

A very cogent letter to the WSJ today. But you should read the earlier letters to get the context. We were all responding to a doctor who wrote an op-ed "The Health Insurance Mafia," in which he compared health insurers to parasitic goons who muscle their way into transactions without providing benefits.

In an earlier post I suggested that it was theoretically possible that China's rapid price inflation wasn't the result of a loose monetary policy, but instead its efforts to curb the appreciation of the yuan. However, at the time I hadn't quite worked out the mechanics of how this would be possible; it was just a hunch based on the obvious fact that an appreciating currency would have a deflationary tendency. After thinking about it some more, I think I've come up with a mechanism whereby this could occur. However, in order to get it to work, I have to assume things that I'm pretty sure aren't true. Hence, when all is said and done I think my friend (the "Chinaman") was right when he thought they had sown an unsustainable boom, and we might have big trouble in big China. ============== THE THEORY OK so if China were a capitalist country, here's how it could work: We're trying to show that consumer goods prices could go up, even if the gover

Folks, once you just entertain the possibility that the State doesn't do a good job protecting you from military conquest, you start seeing evidence all over the place. My favorite paragraph from this story (HT2 LRC ): The Britons were seized because the US-led coalition designated a sea boundary for Iran’s territorial waters without telling the Iranians where it was, internal Ministry of Defence briefing papers reveal.

Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet Eating her curds and whey Along came a spider And sat down beside her He's sleeping with the fishes today *** Mary, Mary, quite contrary How does your garden grow? With silver bells and... Hey! Wait a second! Keep your friggin' nose outta my garden, OK? *** Fee! Fie! Fo! Fum! I smell da blood of a Brooklyn man Whether he's dead or whether he's alive He still gotta pay me back my five!

Checking the score of the NCAA basketball regional finals, I find that Davidson is still down by two to Kansas.

I've always thought the concept of "self-ownership," so loved by many libertarians, is a little screwy: Man is not a good he owns, he is himself. To the common comeback, "If you don't own yourself, then who does?" my answer has been, "No one, just like no one owns arithmetic or the night sky." But Voegelin is a little harsher: "The history of political thought does not offer an attack on the dignity of man comparable to [Locke's] classification of the human person as a capital good, to the undisturbed economic use of which one has a natural right. The ancient division of men into freemen and natural slaves, or the modern distinction of superior and inferior races, admits at least of the dignity of a part of mankind and justifies he disregard for the rest by the argument that it consists of an inferior breed of man. But the blunt assertion that man is an instrument of economic production... is again as unique an idea as the Lord's Lun

I'm reading the section of Eric Voegelin 's History of Political Ideas on Locke at present. Voegelin was no fan of Locke's, considering him more of a purveyor of popular ideas than a philosopher. He quotes Locke on why the State has no interest in excommunication as a civil rights violation: "For there is no civil injury done to the excommunicated person by... refusing him that bread and wine, in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, which was not bought with his but with other men's money." Voegelin comments: "This exquisite interpretation of the Lord's Supper as the Lord's Dutch Lunch , to which one may have a title because one has paid in advance for the victuals, is Locke's unique contribution to Christian doctrine..." From the same section: "The seventeenth century produced a curious assortment of Gods. For Grotius, God was a roving merchant who wants all men to keep commercial intercourse over the seven seas; for Hobbes, h

My daughter is going to be making a brief appearance on Sesame Street , in an episode being filmed Thursday. I'm bringing her to the shoot, and you know I'll just have to walk around asking everyone, "Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?" Man, this will be so much fun! Maybe even more fun than the day when I was walking through Phoenix Park and someone asked me the time! (Which was an unintentional reference to...?)

My friend has lately been a Chinaman (is that the preferred nomenclature?), in that he is fixated on China's political and economic policies. He suspects that China may have been printing money like crazy, which would explain their massive growth rates and rampant inflation. With price controls, shortages, etc., it looks like all hell could break loose. Not something you want breaking loose in a country with so many men aged 18-35 who can't find wives. Now I haven't done any formal research here--I did a quick search but everything that looked promising was in some strange language --but it is possible that China is actually in good financial shape. To repeat, I am not making predictions here, I am just saying that the stuff we are seeing from China is consistent with them making good improvements. So: * In the last ten years (say), China has allowed itself to become more and more capitalist. With a billion people who are still underdeveloped compared to the West and

Are you guys excited?! Tomorrow the CPI number for March comes out. You may recall that Gary North has been strutting because of the flat February number, so I am very anxious to see what happens. For those who can't stand the suspense, let me up the ante: The producer price index for March came out today , and was 1.1 percent higher than the previous month, i.e. it is running at over a 14% annualized rate. That certainly doesn't seem too deflationary to me. For the real thinkers out there, who might wonder whether the PPI and CPI move together: The PPI is certainly more volatile, but they tend to move together. I hope this link works, but try checking out this graph . You see how the red line jumped up at the end? Which way do you guess the blue line will go? I will be very surprised if it's flat again. Ah the joys of being a libertarian economist! You don't get the thrill of running people's lives, but it has its perks.

I dispute Henderson and Hummel's defense of the Fed.

Has anyone EVER found what he or she was looking for using a search engine on a specific site? E.g. if you want to find out a list of apple prices from 1980 onward, don't you dare search for "apple prices" at the BLS website. And just now I was trying to find the academic homepage of Robert Balling, a climate scientist at Arizona State University. I tried at first to go through the hoops of "Academics" and then different departments, but that wasn't working. In desperation I tried searching the site for "balling." Ha ha why would that work? In all honesty, has anyone EVER found the desired information using a site-specific engine? I think I'm about 0 for 50 in such searches. I usually don't even bother anymore.

These Creationists think they have a crushing complaint about Darwinism -- it's based on a tautology: "Waddington is not alone in his assessment of the serious problems facing evolution as a result of natural selection having been shown to be a circular argument. G.A. Peseley joined the ranks of those criticizing natural selection as evolution’s mechanism when he stated: "'One of the most frequent objections against the theory of natural selection is that it is a sophisticated tautology. Most evolutionary biologists seem unconcerned about the charge and make only a token effort to explain the tautology away. The remainder, such as Professors Waddington and Simpson, will simply concede the fact. For them, natural selection is a tautology which states a heretofore unrecognized relation: the fittest—defined as those who will leave the most offspring — will leave the most offspring. "'What is most unsettling is that some evolutionary biologists have no qualms ab

Blogger provides a feature where someone commenting can be notified of future comments on that thread. What baffles me is why, once I check that box, Blogger notifies me of my own comments ? They know my e-mail address when I comment, and they're sending the notice to the exact same address. Is it really so hard for them to guess that I am probably already aware that I just posted a new comment ?

I really don't want to devote too much time to this--I've already wasted an arbitrarily long amount of time on the sneezing riddle . But Gary North was such a jerk to some young gold bug, that I feel I must weigh in. * North has been patting himself on the back ever since the February CPI growth was flat, and then again when gold prices fell in early April. He takes credit for these outcomes because--unlike most other libertarian economists--North has said that we are in a deflationary environment. He said this at least as far back as April 2007 , where he explained that M1 is the best predictor of price inflation, and based on that, we should have low, possibly negative, price inflation. * First, North's argument to show the superiority of M1 is just plain goofy. His method is to look at the total percentage growth in various monetary aggregates over different time frames, and them compare this with the percentage change in CPI. All of the aggregates overshoot, if me

"Happy times together we've been spending I wish that every kiss was never-ending Wouldn't it be nice?" My daughter Emma, upon hearing those lines, asked, "But Dad, if every kiss was never-ending, wouldn't that mean there could only be one kiss?" "Hey, that's right," I responded. To which my son Eamon replied, "No, there'd be zero kisses." "Huh?" "Well, he'd never finish a kiss. And what's more, he'd never even really get any fraction of the way into a kiss." (His point here being, by the way, different than the Zeno paradox -- he wasn't saying you could never cover any finite time of kissing, but that no finite amount is ever more than 0% of an infinite kiss. Similar problem: Throwing a dart at the real number line from 0 to 1, what is the probability you'll hit 2/3? Answer: 0!) Discussing this with Wabulon, he noted that there are (theoretical) super-Turing machines that can do x amoun

This is rare: I think my earlier post about the sneeze guy was wrong, or at least didn't contain the full picture. What's even rarer, is that it took an email from Tyler Cowen to prod me to reverse myself. Although Mike in the comments of my last post had talked about the sneeze working its effects backwards through the line--much like a traffic accident can cause a delay to ripple backwards through the highway--I don't think that's the way to analyze this situation. Or at least, that's not what the sneeze guy had in mind. Suppose the security line originally has 10 people in it. After 6 seconds one person walks through the metal detector, and a new person arrives at the end of the line. So the line is a constant 10 people long, and each person has to wait a total of one minute to get through security. Now some guy at the front has a sneezing fit. He ends up taking 12 total seconds to go through; i.e. he "wastes" 6 seconds. This means that the line

I don't know much about Megan McArdle. I first heard of her when she was r ipping the gold standard . Needless to say I wasn't impressed. Now she and Glenn Greenwald have come to fisticuffs . It seems GG accused her of supporting torture, she flipped out in outrage and said he was nuts, and then GG--as is his wont--went back and dug up quotes of her supporting torture. Don't mess with Glenn.

You must have heard this argument when someone is contemplating repairs to an old auto. "It's nuts to put $400 into it when it's only worth $300." This argument seems to me to be entirely beside the point, unless one is repairing the car in order to sell it. If you intend to drive it, the relevant question is, "Will I get more satisfactory car service from my present car after $400 of repairs or from a $400 slice of another car?" If, say, $400 of repairs are likely to keep the old car running fine for a year, they are almost certainly the cheapest way to get a year of decent automobile use. Why would the book value of the car make any difference to a person in this situation?

Jeffrey Kluger writes in Time Magazine review of Ben Stein's new Documentary on Evolution, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed: The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however quickly wades into waters too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth's primordial soup. The answer is, it couldn't--and it didn't. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing. Is this brush-off really fair? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but the current theory has it that Earth's early atmosphere was conducive to the production of organic compounds, and somehow the first cell came about from this. I understand there are tentative hypotheses as to various proto-cells that could be created, or that DNA could som

OK this intriguing blog post (HT2 MR ) has taken up a good 15 minutes of my day. Summary: You're in an airport, about to go through the security line. You sneeze, which delays you by two seconds. It doesn't just delay you by two seconds, though; it also delays everyone waiting in line behind you. And everyone who will show up while the people currently in line haven't gone through yet. In fact, if you assume that the queue is never empty...we're talking about arbitrarily large quantities of wasted time. Some of the responses at MR pointed out holes in this logic. There are all sorts of ways that eventually people behind the sneezer end up at the same position, at the same time, that they would have in the absence of the sneeze. E.g. if the sneezer is behind someone else and the line stops moving for a few seconds, then obviously his sneeze does nothing. And even if his sneeze delayed himself and 30 people behind him, so long as there would have been a few seconds w

Move over Caplan and Kling, I'm here to talk oil prices .

As insomnia eats away at the thin threads of my rationality, I lay awake, picturing Emily Litella : EL: So why did this P.S. Eliot say 'April is the coolest month'? Yes, it's pretty mild, and the nights can get cold... CC: Emily. EL: But really, I think January is much cooler. And for that matter... CC: Emily! EL: February is usually much cooler too. And December... CC: Emily!! EL: Yes, Cheddar Cheese? CC: That's 'T.S. Eliot,' and he said 'April is the "cruelest" month, not the "coolest."' EL: Really? CC: Yes, really. EL: Oh, that's very different... Never mind.

From Roderick Long, I found this story about how special California plates allow government officials and their families to routinely break the law. Being from a law-enforcement family, this is no news to me. But what I "love" is the way this is justified in the article: '"It's an unwritten rule that we would extend professional courtesy," said Ron Smith, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who worked patrol for 23 years. "Nine out of 10 times I would."' Smitty, "professional courtesy" is, for example, when a dentist gives another dentist a 10% break. And he can do that, because, you see, it's his money ! But the laws you're allowing other cops to break aren't supposed to be yours to "courteously" suspend as you wish.

He blamed capitalism for his green, concrete windows: "Mein Gott, I have bought a cottage on this beautiful mountainside, but the capitalists have filled my windows with green concrete so I see nothing!"

First I read Mises's Human Action . Then I read Oakeshott's On Human Conduct . Then I read Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition . And now I'm reading Stephen Toulmin's Human Understanding . So what other books with 'Human' in the title should I read to complete this tour?

I'll actually talk econ in this one. I was a bit amused at what seemed to happen during one of the sessions. The presenter was talking about bans on smoking in "public" places, and how proponents argued that it was a myth that such prohibitions would hurt restaurants' earnings. The presenter said that statistics showing an increase in aggregate earnings weren't proof, since some restaurants could have benefited and some could have suffered. In the Q&A I asked how this could be possible. Since we were assuming Coasian arrangements (which was the whole point of the session), if the restaurants all optimized before the ban, the institution of the ban could only hurt them. So wasn't it weird that aggregate profits went up? The chair of the session jumped in to show me that my logic was wrong. He pointed out that even a pre-ban restaurant that had a no-smoking policy could have been hurt, since it would have lost its niche market. I answered by saying, &

The peepers are coming! And why do I love them so much? I think it's that I've heard several million of them in my life, and never seen one! (They are sort of "anti-children.")

OK so we're talking about liberty, free markets, blah blah at the APEE conference. Now let's talk Blackjack. So I can't resist sitting down at my hotel's (Harrah's) single deck $10 minimum table. The house pays 6-5 on Blackjack but that doesn't seem like such a big deal. They also hit soft 17s, which I assume must help the house but again doesn't seem like a big deal. (Now what the dealer tells me 10 minutes after I sit down is that you can't take even money when you have blackjack against the dealer Ace. Gee whiz, I thought Vegas was supposed to be fun.) OK so I am a little hesitant with the whole I-hold-the-cards thing. The dealer starts baby-talking me through the routine, e.g. I have to flip the cards if I want to double down and so forth. Anyway, I have an 18 (face down, mind you!) and the dealer shows an Ace. The count wasn't anything special, so I don't take insurance. The dealer checks, he doesn't have it. So I push my cards o

I don't want to give spoilers, but I don't know how to implement a "Click here to read more" in this environment. So if you're planning on seeing the movie 21, don't read the following... ====================================== OK I enjoyed the movie but only because of the subject matter. I actually thought it had several serious flaws. Among them: (1) That kid couldn't act very well. (2) All of the exposition. Give me a break. My wife pointed out (in regards to a different movie) that movies always do a dumb job of portraying geniuses. For example (back to this movie), would Kevin Spacey's character have spelled it out so sloooooowly when quizzing the kids in their secret room about what the count was? No, he was clearly just reiterating how it worked for the benefit of the audience. And when the kid first plays at a live table, and you're in his head? Give me a break, he wouldn't have been spelling out the rules like that. (3) Nea

Here at the Harrah's hotel waiting for the annual APEE conference . Yesterday I walked away from the blackjack tables when I was down about 60% of my bankroll for the trip. I sat with the most annoying guy ever. First, he was really slow in deciding what to do (like hit his 16 against the dealer face card). I'm not superstitious so I don't care if you "take" the dealer's bust card or anything like that. But if you're slow, that's just annoying. Second, he was inconsistent in his dumb plays (so I guess that's a good thing). The best (worst) was when he split his kings against the dealer 7 or something, then got another king. Mercifully he stayed on that hand. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to be able to sit at a $15 table and not be crowded. I had worried that the tables would be much pricier. (My first time in Vegas.) Anyway, I was treading water and then the shoe was about +10 and I got crushed after five or six hands. Then later the

Is this for real? It's a bit slow to actually watch, but start playing it and check back every 20 seconds. Even if it's purely memorized, it's still incredible.

Click for a larger image:

Jerry Bowyer at NRO piles on . He isn't calling for the Fed's abolition, but just the fact that we're debating its existence is amazing. I almost don't mind being stuck with my house (which we bought in the fall of 2006).

You have to check this one out .

Is there a consensus on the appropriate words to hyperlink? For example, in an article I have the sentence, "...many mainstream economists have recognized the pernicious role played by the Fed." First, put aside your objections to my use of the passive voice. Now then: I am hyperlinking to this blog post . But which words in the excerpt above do I hyperlink? I see four plausible contenders: (1) The whole thing. (2) "mainstream economists" (3) "mainstream economists have recognized" (4) "recognized" For my article I chose (2), which (incidentally) is not how I would have footnoted this in a written paper. Any thoughts?

Long reviews Greenspan . Man, it is almost embarrassing how shallow some of Greenspan's political/philosophical musings are. He would honestly get crushed at the Newbie board at anti-state. In contrast, somebody like Noam Chomsky could hold his own indefinitely, even though I would strongly disagree with many of his positions.

Proponents of Western-style economies often point to the obesity of the poor in modern nations as evidence that, obviously, these poor are not really "poor" in terms of historical standards. There is a quite fatuous way of dismissing that idea based on claiming that poverty "causes" obesity. Well, first of all, even if the claim were true, that still would be a lot better than the previous situation of poverty causing starvation. And secondly, the claim is silly in and of itself. Over in a letter at Salon.com , I found someone making a typical version of this case: "Obesity is not a measure of prosperity for the poor. It is a consequence of economic inequality. "Go down to the ghetto. Try to find fresh food. You'll find convenience stores where you can buy Cheetos and beer. But what if you want fresh chicken, whole wheat flour or broccoli? How do you buy those if you live in the inner city?" I live in Brooklyn, and there is not a single neighborho

See details here .

Gary North caused me to doubt my forecast of high price inflation when he pointed out that M1 had been virtually flat for years. In conjunction with (what was to me) a shocking flat CPI for February, it was enough to make me squirm. But as this FRED chart shows, annual % change in M1 is almost the mirror image of the same in CPI. In particular, during recessions M1 growth usually drops through the floor, while CPI growth goes through the roof. (Yes that's right, inflation goes way up during recessions, at least since the mid-1960s.) BTW, if anyone knows how I can embed these FRED graphs directly in the blog post, please let me know.