Monthly Archives: November 2015

And also in the news today – terrorists have blown up another plane mid-flight

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You cannot say that it has not been reported, but on the other hand, it is hardly in the news. Pan Am Flight 103 and Lockerbie remain bywords to this day of an indifference to human life and a terrorist atrocity that can never be forgiven. Why then is Kogalymavia’s flight 9268 not front-page news? Why is this not controversial enough for it to be carried by every newspaper in every country: BRITISH extremists were behind the bombing of a Russian jet over Egypt, intelligence experts believe. Oh yes, Islamic terrorists blew up the plane coming out of Egypt. Is this really now just so ho hum?

They were overheard celebrating moments after the explosion that blew the plane apart, killing all 224 on board.

The jihadis were heard talking in Birmingham and London accents by spies at GCHQ in Cheltenham.

Trained in Syria and with an electronics background, it is believed they may have had a hand in building the bomb.

The success of the attack could inspire them to target British airports next, a former Special Branch officer warned last night.

GCHQ, the Government’s secret listening centre, picked up “chatter” from extremist groups in Egypt immediately after the Russian plane came down.

The regional accents suggest “a definite and strong link” between British extremists and the attack, according to intelligence sources.

Is it because the international economy would collapse if too many people stopped flying? Is it because those who write the papers don’t want to suggest there are certain ideological dangers that are stalking us ever more closely? I am getting used to the idea that newspapers no longer actually carry news that are contrary to the media narrative, this bombing being in every way identical to the invasion of Europe about which there is hardly a story to be found. But with these I at least know certain things that cannot be totally suppressed although they are downplayed to an extreme extent. What I don’t know is what is not reported at all. Does anyone know the term “memory hole” or has that gone down the memory hole as well?

One thing you do not learn in economics school

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This is from 101 Things I Learned in Engineering School dealing with “equilibrium is a dynamic, not static, state”.

When two chemicals come in contact and react, the reaction often appears to stop after a period of time as an equilibrium is reached. Some portions of the chemicals will have combined into a new chemical product, while other portions appear unaffected. But even in equilibrium, the mixture often remains active, as portions of the product “uncombine” into the reactants and reactants continue combining into new product. However, the overall crossover rates balance and there is not net change in the system.

A structural equilibrium is similarly dynamic. A structural element, even though at rest, works quietly and unceasingly to resolve the various forces acting on it into an overall force of zero. Without the zeroing of forces, an object will accelerate, decelerate, or change direction.

This is how economists ought to teach equilibrium, as an ongoing market tension with forces of all kinds continuing to attempt to reshape everything you see. Equilibrium should not be taught as stability. It should not be taught as a position of rest, whatever might be the appearance at some superficial level.

Economists teach equilibrium as a state of rest. We do it in micro with supply and demand. We do it in macro with aggregate supply and aggregate demand. The following video – which perfectly states the economist’s view – shows how equilibrium is taught in discussing a single market for a single product.

We say, of course, that all other things must be equal for the equilibrium to be maintained, but we do not go on to say that in no market are other things ever actually equal, that the entire notion of equilibrium is a fiction, perhaps a useful fiction, but a fiction all the same. In economics we stress stability when the actual world is anything but.

Male and female action figures

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From an article titled, Feminization of America Is Bad for the World:

“Mattel’s research showed some differences in what girls and boys wanted in their action figures, Ms. Missad said. ‘For boys it’s very much about telling a story of the good guy killing the villain. . . .’ [Girls] would tell us: ‘Why does the good girl have to kill the villain? Can’t they be friends in the end?’”

And in related real life news:

Why are women so poorly represented on the front lines? Because most women can’t do the job, don’t want to do the job, and in cases where they can do it, can’t do it as well as men… A recent study has demonstrated a big disparity in women’s and men’s battlefield ability. The US Marine Corps examined over a year the impact of female integration on combat readiness and found conclusively that women cannot match male performance. Male units were faster, more effective and able to evacuate casualties in less time. Overall, the study concluded, all-male squads performed better than mixed groups in 69% of the tasks evaluated. Women performed notably less well in their use of every individual weapons system, and in addition women had higher injury rates than men. So in terms of women’s own well-being as well as the overall effectiveness of the fighting force, its ability to kill enemies and save wounded comrades, the study showed that the presence of women in combat units has a negative impact.

Experimental economics – a case study

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I’ve often thought about an experiment by asking students if they feel that incomes should be shared, and then asking after that whether the students with the highest marks would like to give some of their marks to students with the lowest marks. Not really practical, never mind the problems with an ethics committee. But this, on the other hand, did the same thing in a much more effective way.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an ‘A’”… (substituting grades for dollars — something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a ‘B’. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a ‘D’!

No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the new average was an ‘F’.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into Prosperity by legislating the Wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, anotherperson must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Whether it is a true story I cannot say, but no one would doubt that things would work out more or less just like it says.

[My thanks to Peter S. for passing this along.]

The latest news from 1984

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hitler store

Is this photo not news of some kind? Where in the world would one name a store after Adolf Hitler and expect to do a land office trade, that is, where else but in Gaza? And the clothing merchandise is advertised with a knife in hand to go along with the latest attacks on Jews in Israel. At least it shows up on the net, but in the news, not a chance. We are used to it but is there any particular reason that this doesn’t hold some kind of general interest?

But the bit of news that I was hoping to catch up on are the latest developments in relation to the Russian airliner that may have been blown up by ISIS. Not a word on Drudge, as there was earlier today, and not a word about it in Friday’s Oz, at least not obviously evident online. It was mentioned by Andrew Bolt which comes with a link to an earlier story from CNN, Russian plane crash: U.S. intel suggests ISIS bomb brought down jet. But now there’s nothing. Isn’t this a story worth following up? We do live in a 1984-world and there really is a memory hole.

But there is this small story at Drudge which might interest a small few, although probably not really.

‘ISLAMIFIED’ EUROPE ROAD TO RUIN…
3 MILLION MORE REFUGEES ON THE WAY… [by the end of 2016]

Now back to Game of Thrones.

A few scraps

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A few things I have come across I find worth noting, each of which puts a different complexion on things. First this, with the strangest imaginable headline from the SMH, What Martin Parkinson can offer Malcolm Turnbull wherein I read:

Parkinson is the treasury secretary Abbott unfairly sacked against the wishes of his treasurer.

Who knew there was such a debate at the time? Joe’s idea of a fresh start was to keep Wayne’s Secretary of the Treasury, the one who had previously run the Department of Climate Change.

And then this, from Andrew Bolt re the 12,000 Christian refugees we are bringing to Australia:

Of the four families in the first wave of approvals, two were Sunni Muslim and two were Christian: Assyrian Christians from Mosul in Iraq, and Chaldean Catholics from Baghdad.

The people most endangered ought to be the ones we offer refuge to. Why not continue the policy that had already been put in place?

And finally, as we head to Paris, this is the latest news:

In Asia alone this year power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with at least a thousand more on planning boards.

You could shut down the whole Australian economy and it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I should become like my Canadian friends who are visiting and who I met up with yesterday. They both carefully read the press, Canada’s national daily even, The Globe and Mail, and conscientiously watch the news, specially the CBC. Therefore, they did not know that global temperatures had not risen for nineteen years, had never heard the phrase “hide the decline” and thought the most damning thing they could tell me about Stephen Harper was that he forbade public servants from speaking at conferences without prior approval of their Department Head.

It’s different when it’s someone else’s mother

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It’s not merely hypocritical, which would be bad enough. It is the essence of the socialist mindset, where you are happy to arrange matters one way for the masses and another way for yourself. This is about Peter Singer, the ethicist as he is called, when he had to deal with his own mother and not some anonymous person known only to their own children and not to him:

When Singer’s mother became too ill to live alone, Singer and his sister hired a team of home health-care aides to look after her. Singer’s mother has lost her ability to reason, to be a person, as he defines the term. So I asked him how a man who has written that we ought to do what is morally right without regard to proximity or family relationships could possibly spend tens of thousands of dollars a year for private care for his mother. He replied that it was “probably not the best use you could make of my money. That is true. But it does provide employment for a number of people who find something worthwhile in what they’re doing.”

…Singer has responded to his mother’s illness in the way most caring people would. The irony is that his humane actions clash so profoundly with the chords of his utilitarian ethic.

That doesn’t surprise Bernard Williams. “You can’t make these calculations and comparisons in real life. It’s bluff.” Williams told me, “One of the reasons his approach is so popular is that it reduces all moral puzzlement to a formula. You remove puzzlement and doubt and conflict of values, and it’s in the scientific spirit. People seem to think it will all add up, but it never does, because humans never do.”

Singer may be learning that. We were sitting in his living room one day, and the trolley traffic was noisy on the street outside his window. Singer has spent his career trying to lay down rules for human behavior which are divorced from emotion and intuition. His is a world that makes no provision for private aides to look after addled, dying old women. Yet he can’t help himself. “I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult,” he said quietly. “Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it’s your mother.”

These people are disgusting and depraved. They can reason but they have no understanding of the human side of issues. His own action are inexplicable even to himself. We should never take advice from such people, which is easier said than done. How do we stop them from making the rules for the rest of us?

Why does the supposed right always try to fix the revenue problems created by the left?

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An absolute disgrace if this is how the Government is thinking: GST: ‘Higher taxes’ to flow from reform plan.

“We still seem to be in denial about the structural budget ­deficit,” said Tony Shepherd, the former Business Council of Australia president who chaired the audit commission for the federal government. “I’d return the GST increase to those who are ­seriously in need, such as the ­bottom quartile. The top three-quarters (of people by income) are going to pay more tax — that’s the bottom line.”

Another member of the commission, Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone, said a higher consumption tax would have to happen sooner or later. “The states need more money,” she said. “And if the states need more money but we don’t want extra federal expenditure, the GST is the way to do it.”

If Labor loves all this public spending, let them get elected on the promise of more taxes. In the meantime, Mr Eloquent and his Treasurer, Mr Fixanything, should be making the case for lower spending and why it is so important.

It’s the same thing now in the US with Paul Ryan, the Republican House Speaker, working to get the revenue to pay at least some of the bills.

How can we have a conversation without the left shutting down debate?

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This is what began the post, a Facebook comment from one of Jim Goad’s friends on how to keep out of being called a racist:

How does one have a legitimate, thoughtful discussion on the real dangers of religious extremism, whatever their stripe, without being charged with bigotry?…How does one avoid charges of “Islamophobia” yet address the very real anti-pluralism of radical Islam?

Of course you can’t, which is what Goad has written to point out.

It’s clear what’s going on here: Kevin is afraid of being called xenophobic and Islamophobic. By his own admission he doesn’t fear Muslims; he fears being accused of fearing them. And this is perhaps the most pervasive and justified fear these days—the fear of being called bad names that can destroy your social and professional life. We occupy a world where sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will get you fired. It’s a fear so thick, you even hesitate to whisper in closed quarters that you’re afraid. . . .

The best thing to do—at least if you want a career and a social life—is to stick your head in a hole and shut the fuck up.

There are ways but there are dangers as well. But unless you are very rich, the problems you create by being on the left will come back to haunt you. There’s no satisfaction for me, but the cure is on the way, but it is a cure that will be even worse than the disease.