Monthly Archives: March 2015

Dr Who began as a spin off from the Canadian Howdy Doody Show

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Who knew any of this, from the Wikipedia entry for The Howdy Doody Show where it deals with the Canadian programme:

Early in the run, there was a short-lived puppet character called Mr. X (no relation to a puppet of the same name who appeared on the American show) who traveled through time and space in his “Whatsis Box” teaching children about history. However, Mr. X was removed from the show due to parental complaints that he was too scary. It has been suggested that the Mr. X sequence may have inspired the creation of the long-running British science fiction series Doctor Who. In its earliest days, the series was likewise designed to teach children about history and, throughout the series, it has featured an alien known only as the Doctor who travels through time and space in his TARDIS, which is permanently in the shape of a police box. The series’ creator, Sydney Newman, oversaw the production of the Canadian version of Howdy Doody while working as head of programming for the CBC.

As interesting is that Charles Schultz was always annoyed that the name of his comic strip was changed against his wishes from “L’il Folks” to “Peanuts”, a change he always lamented.

Might also mention that I was looking at this at all was because I was looking up the Canadian words to the “Howdy Doody Show” song which I cannot find.

MORE RANDOM FACTS: Here is a bit of history on the Peanut Gallery which did not start with Howdy Doody, which itself began as a radio show.

By the mid-20th century, the “peanut gallery” expression was commonly in use, but became even more popular when Buffalo Bob Smith of the Howdy Doody Show began referring to his (radio) studio audience of rambunctious youngsters in 1943 as the “Peanut Gallery”.

Obama’s plan for peace in the middle east is comparable to his plan for dealing with the unemployed

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us unemployment march 2015 adj for participation rate

The picture comes with the story, Here’s What The Unemployment Rate Looks Like If You Add Back Labor Force Dropouts. This is how it is described at Drudge:

92,898,000 Americans Not Working…
Labor Force Participation Rate at 37-Year-Low…
Record 56,023,000 Women Not in Labor Force…
Black unemployment rate nearly twice national average…

It is truly demoralising to watch. But the Democrat-media alliance is fully in charge so don’t expect things to improve any time soon.

Barbarism and the modern world

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Where are all those who were oh so concerned about the museum in Baghdad when George Bush took the war to the Taliban in 2003. As it happened, every one of the museum’s historic treasurers had been preserved. Now where are these same leftist scum when mankind’s dwindling stock of historic sites is set upon by Islamist vandals. See the real thing in action. From Reuters: With sledgehammer, Islamic State smashes Iraqi our history. And do please note that as they wrote the headline, it is merely Iraqi history, once again covering up both for the Islamists and for the American President who does the least possible he can get away with:

Ultra-radical Islamist militants in northern Iraq have destroyed a priceless collection of statues and sculptures from the ancient Assyrian era, inflicting what an archaeologist described as incalculable damage to a piece of shared human history.

A video published by Islamic State on Thursday showed men attacking the artifacts, some of them identified as antiquities from the 7th century BC, with sledgehammers and drills, saying they were symbols of idolatry.

“The Prophet ordered us to get rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they conquered countries after him,” an unidentified man said in the video.

The smashed articles appeared to come from an antiquities museum in Mosul, the northern city which was overrun by Islamic State last June, a former employee at the museum told Reuters.

And now there is this to add to the above: Islamic State jihadis bulldoze ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud.

THE Islamic State group began bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq on Thursday in the jihadists’ latest attack on the country’s historical heritage.

IS “assaulted the historic city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy vehicles,” the tourism and antiquities ministry said on an official Facebook page.

An Iraqi antiquities official confirmed the news, saying the destruction began after noon prayers on Thursday and that trucks that may have been used to haul away artefacts had also been spotted at the site.

It’s from an AFP story, and again the telltale diminishing the story to merely one of local Iraqi interest, nothing to do with the historic stock of our common human heritage. It is we too who are amongst the barbarians if we cannot find it within ourselves to fight these people until they are defeated and ground into the dust.

Barbarism Update: I suppose we should be grateful that these things even get a mention:

IS destroying another ancient archaeological site in Iraq

It’s a brief seven para story from an unknown news source. If you are looking for some kind of context not just for the barbarities themselves, but for the lack of any serious reaction across the entire spectrum of our media-political elites, let me draw your attention to Roger Scruton’s Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged which I have just read. Like everything of his, I have come away with a sense of conservative reality I seldom find in the world in which I am personally surrounded by.

The Australian School of Economics

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There really is a different way of looking at economic issues in Australia, which is why we are still one of the most successful economies in the world. Two items from the news today, both of which go entirely against the world consensus on economic management. First, from The Australian, Rate cuts failing to bite: RBA. The opening paras:

INTEREST rate cuts are losing the ability to stimulate the economy, with the Reserve Bank warning that it is up to the government to take measures to help revitalise growth.

In a frank admission of the limits to the influence of central banks, Reserve Bank deputy governor Philip Lowe said consumers, businesses and governments were not responding to the extraord­inarily low interest rates that would once have sparked an inflationary debt boom.

The notion that interest rates can be too low is something almost no one can follow if you start with a standard macro model. Arbitrarily lowering interest rates will, in fact, make things worse but who any longer understands even why that might be the case. And if you are looking for what is truly unique about how we go about things, think about this, from the new Secretary of the Treasury, John Fraser:

[Fraser] declared to the Senate Economics legislation committee: “I do not resile from the point that I do not think spending our way out of lower economic activity is the way to go.”

Once, such a view was uncontroversial. Today, practically every international economics organisation preaches the opposite.

How against the consensus grain is all of this. If you want to find your way out of recession, keep interest rates up and lower public spending. And if you are looking for a theoretical explanation of why this is so, there is nowhere else to go other than the second edition of my Free Market Economics. And if you would like some idea of just how unique this book is, this is from an article I am in the midst of writing on the role of the entrepreneur in economic theory:

I have examined each of the following introductory texts because they happened to be on the shelf in our library, and there is either no reference to the entrepreneur found in the index, or the text contains only a perfunctory mention, never continuing for more than a page: Abel and Bernanke (2005); Blanchard (2006); Lipsey and Chrystal (2007); Mankiw (2007); McConnell and Brue (2008); McTaggart, Findlay and Parkin (2006); Parkin (2008); Samuelson and Nordhaus (1995); Sloman and Norris (2010); Stiglitz and Walsh (2006). It is clearly possible to discuss the operation of a modern market economy without mentioning the single most important function in allowing the economic system to work. There is not the slightest doubt that even if the most recent editions had been to hand, nothing would have been in any way different.

The Australian School of Economics can explain the role of higher interest rates, balanced budgets and the entrepreneur and with these concepts in hand explain how an economy works and what needs to be done to get recovery firmly in place.

M. Stanton Evans has died at 80

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I had known he was very ill, but M. Stanton Evans has passed away. This is from the obituary posted by Steve Hayward at Powerline which were Hayward’s own comments:

We gather tonight in a “let us now praise famous men” mode, but it is a mode distinctly uncongenial to our guest of honor.

So rather than dwell on the usual things, I thought I’d share a few of the items Stan typically leaves off his CV that were crucial and formative to many of his students and protégés.

Start with his lifestyle, as liberals would call it, or, as Stan’s mother would have said, his vices. Winston Churchill once dismissed the socialist Ramsay McDonald, who was a pacifist, a vegetarian, a non-smoker, and, worst of all, a teetotaler, by saying that McDonald had all of the virtues he abhorred and none of the vices he admired.

I think Churchill would have approved of Stan; he has all the right bad habits. . .

Stan is the only person I’ve ever known who can take Socratic irony and actually make it ironic.

Stan is, for example, a fan of America’s Founding Fathers, but does them one better: he’s not so sure that taxation with representation is such a hot idea, either.

Then there was the time in 1968, when he signed on to the McCarthy for President campaign. That lasted about 48 hours, until he discovered that the candidate was Eugene McCarthy.

I have wondered exactly where Stan got the idea to found the National Journalism Center. Back in 1970, William F. Buckley told Playboy magazine that the biggest problem facing the conservative movement was a scarcity of good writers and journalists. Stan’s founding of the NJC helped address that gap, but I don’t think he got the idea from Buckley’s Playboy interview because we all know Stan only buys Playboy for the pictures. . .

The National Journalism Center should be regarded as more than just a training ground for conservative journalists. It represents an apostolic succession of sorts, and is the kind of legacy that lasts longer and goes deeper than the printed word, whose ink will fade, whose pixels will disappear when the hard drive crashes. The larger world does not appreciate the extent to which a cadre of Stan Evans-influenced journalists would be different from writers who emerge from the name-brand journalism schools—and not just ideologically different. For one thing, we can drink more, which is saying a lot in the world of ink-stained wretches.

There was no by-the-numbers didactic instruction in Stan’s method at the NJC. Instead, his method consisted of practicing Yogi Berra epistemology, which the great Yogi summarized with his aphorism that “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

You could not help but absorb Stan’s approach to good journalism and quality writing, just by being around him, and watching how he went about his craft. I like to think Stan had a good eye for talent; after all, he invited into his realm, 30 years ago, lowlifes like myself, John Fund, and Martin Morse Wooster, and many worse after us. I tried to talk them into an NJC karaoke act here tonight, but apparently this would violate several DC laws related to animal cruelty. . .

Stan may not exactly want to lay claim to all of his apostles. But we lay claim to him. In fact, if it wasn’t for Stan and the NJC, I might well have made the dreadful mistake of getting a real job out of college. . .

His Blacklisted by History was a revelation which you should read before going on to Diana West’s American Betrayal. They will change the way you read the news, if nothing else.

What’s the point of a forecast 40 years out?

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From the only economy with no deficit and no debt, this is where we are only ten years later:

The forecasts are a central feature of a new Intergenerational Report to be released tomorrow showing that federal deficits were on track to reach almost 12 per cent of the total economy by 2055 under Labor policies.

Preventing that outcome, Coa­lition policies will instead cut the deficits to 6 per cent of GDP by 2055 as a result of tax increases and spending cuts that have ­already been legislated.

But what really is the point of looking at things in 2055, about which we can know nothing. A report in 1975 about Australia today would have been just as meaningless.

Economic theory’s version of Fermat’s Last Theorem now finally explained

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I have just had an article published that has taken five years to finally see the light of day. More formally, “Steven Kates (2015). MILL’S FOURTH FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITION ON CAPITAL: A PARADOX EXPLAINED. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 37, pp 39-56.” This is the abstract:

John Stuart Mill’s Fourth Fundamental Proposition Respecting Capital, first stated in 1848, had become an enigma well before the nineteenth century had come to an end. Never challenged in Mill’s own lifetime and described in 1876 as “the best test of a sound economist,” it has become a statement that not only fails to find others in agreement, but fails even to find an internally consistent interpretation that would make clear why Mill found it of such fundamental importance. Yet the fourth proposition should be easily understood as a continuation of the general glut debate. Economists led by Malthus had argued that demand deficiency was the cause of recession and a body of unproductive consumers was needed to raise the level of demand if everyone who wished to work was to find employment. Mill’s answer was that to buy goods and services would not increase employment, or, in Mill’s own words, “demand for commodities is not demand for labour.”

That observation by Leslie Stephen in 1876 was literally the last time anyone had ever made such a positive statement about Mill’s Fourth Proposition. After that, it had been worked over by Alfred Marshall, A.C. Pigou, F.W. Taussig, Allyn Young, Friedrich Hayek, J.M. Keynes and Harry Johnson amongst many others, none of whom could make it make sense. I will write it down again, because it is the essence of Say’s Law. Understanding what Mill meant is the only means I can think of to refute Keynesian theory:

Demand for commodities is not demand for labour.

From the moment I read it in Mill, which I was just reading for fun, I was convinced by both the conclusion and the logic that had come before. I had no idea that it would change my life and give a shape to all of my economics thereafter. It simply says that buying of itself never creates economic momentum, but it is the logic of the argument that is required if you are to see the point. Everyone understood both the proposition and the logic for the entire period from the time of Adam Smith right through to the marginal revolution in the 1870s, but from that moment on has made no sense to anyone, other than me. How odd is that!

So now I have the paper in print, but I doubt anyone will get it anyway. You really do have to go back to Mill and the classics to see not just what they meant, but why it’s true. The alternative is to read my Free Market Economics which is classical economics for the twenty-first century. It is also the first book since the 1870s that has actually discussed and defended Mill’s fourth proposition, indeed all four propositions. I say this as honestly and sincerely as I can. You will never understand how an economy works unless you understand what Mill meant. There is no difficulty in seeing the point since I have been teaching it successfully as part of my course since the start of the GFC, but I also recognise how hard the point is to grasp and hold to in the midst of controversy. But if you can do it, it is worth the effort since Mill’s Fourth Proposition truly is the best test of a sound economist.

“Americans are beginning to understand that the politics of ‘hope and change’ has an enforcement arm that operates like an organized crime syndicate”

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Those Lois Lerner emails that happened to have been accidentally deleted and could not be retrieved turn out to still exist and are being brought to light. So this is where matters now stand: IRS Being Investigated For Criminal Misconduct Surrounding Lois Lerner’s ‘Missing’ Emails

“The IRS was apparently given instruction to do whatever necessary to silence those who spoke out against the Obama Administration. It became a West Wing weapon of choice. As the nation’s only pro-liberty election integrity organization, True the Vote was marked for takedown by the IRS early in 2010, along with hundreds of other organizations that spoke openly about government corruption. It took a long time, too long, for the pieces to be put together, but Americans are beginning to understand that the politics of ‘hope and change’ has an enforcement arm that operates like an organized crime syndicate. The time for choosing is now,” True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht, who was targeted by the IRS and other government agencies, said in a statement about the new revelations. “Our elected officials need to stop playing politics and use the powers we’ve entrusted to them to restore the rule of law in Washington. Stop handing out bonuses and start sending law-breaking bureaucrats to jail. If Congress doesn’t have conviction enough to get the job done, then just turn out the lights, get off the payroll, go home, and get out of the way. Enough is enough. The American people will not be silenced.”

No doubt the media blackout on these developments continues.

The Thermometer Effect

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I have discovered the reason for the apparent contradiction between falling temperatures wherever anyone lives and the well-known fact of global warming. It is what I describe as “The Thermometer Effect”.

The Thermometer Effect – the temperature in any location will be between 1-3 degrees lower than it otherwise would have been wherever a thermometer is present. The actual presence of a thermometer will cause the temperature to fall until such measuring devices are removed or stop recording.

Here is the proof. As is universally understood, because of greenhouse gases, temperatures must continuously rise and have been doing so. At the same time, there have been lower than forecast temperatures recorded across much of the world. The only conceivable explanation is due to faults in the measuring devices used.

As one example, we have the data below which are taken from the United States.

NOAA: 2185 cold records broken or tied in past week – 1913 Low Min Records Broken & 272 tied in 7 days. This even includes the following examples of an extreme thermometer effect:

Many records broken by over 30F.

These are clear examples of The Thermometer Effect. Although, on average, temperatures are getting warmer across the globe, such warming does not occur in places a thermometer is found, and therefore the measurement of air temperatures is well below the air temperature wherever temperature readings are not being taken. Had the temperature in those other locations been taken into account, the actual overall rise in temperatures would have been unmistakeable.