Category Archives: Cultural

Henry Spearman, the Sherlock Holmes of economics

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I was reminded of Milton and Rose which made me think of the Marshall Jevons crime fiction series:

Marshall Jevons is a fictitious crime writer invented and used by William L. Breit and Kenneth G. Elzinga, professors of economics at Trinity University, San Antonio and the University of Virginia, respectively.

It was Breit’s notion to write a mystery novel in which an amateur detective uses economic theory to solve crimes. Elzinga was enthusiastic about his colleague’s idea and not only encouraged him to proceed but also decided to take an active role in writing the book. Over the next twenty years, on top of their academic schedules, Breit and Elzinga co-authored three mystery books featuring Harvard economist-sleuth Henry Spearman. The first Henry Spearman Mystery, Murder at the Margin, came out in 1978, and was followed by The Fatal Equilibrium (1985), A Deadly Indifference (1995) and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand (2014).

Ken Elzinga was at Freedomfest, attesting to his fine economic credentials, and gave a presentation on how he came to write the series with his partner who has unfortunately passed away. But the one thing that I learned that has helped bring the books alive – I am reading the third one right now – is that the main character, Henry Spearman, is designed after Milton Friedman, Professor of Economics at Harvard though he may fictionally be. And the one problem they had in writing the series was that Rose Friedman did not see herself mirrored by Pidge Spearman, and for reasons I cannot see doesn’t like the way Henry’s wife is depicted. The books are fun to read, but are better if you are an economist, although it is not an essential. A large part of their sales, it turns out, are as assigned texts as part of an economics course.

The self-preservation of the West versus a nuclear Iran

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From Sultan Knish, The Myth of Iran’s Peaceful Nuclear Program. But a myth is something that people at least half believe, if not actually a literal truth, then at least as a framework in which to understand what cannot otherwise be explained. We know what Obama is up to, and probably even why. The question is why so many others are going along. Everyone, including Obama and John Kerry, understands all of this completely:

Last year Iran was selling gasoline for less than 50 cents a gallon. This year a desperate regime hiked prices up to over a dollar. Meanwhile, Iranians pay about a tenth of what Americans do for electricity.

Unlike Japan, Iran does not need nuclear power. It is already sitting on a mountain of gas and oil. Iran blew between $100 billion to $500 billion on its nuclear program.

The Bushehr reactor alone cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 billion making it one of the most expensive in the world.

This wasn’t done to cut power bills. Iran didn’t take its economy to the edge for a peaceful nuclear program. It built the Fordow fortified underground nuclear reactor that even Obama admitted was not part of a peaceful nuclear program, it built the underground Natanz enrichment facility whose construction at one point consumed all the cement in the country, because the nuclear program mattered more than anything else as a fulfillment of the Islamic Revolution’s purpose.

Iran did not do all this so that its citizens could pay 0.003 cents less for a kilowatt hour of electricity.

It built its nuclear program on the words of the Ayatollah Khomeini, “Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.”

Obama’s motives are clear enough and the dangers to every Western country, and not just Israel, are equally clear. The question is why nothing has been done by others to stop this process in its tracks. The instinct for self-preservation often seems to fall dead at the feet of ideology. But the will to power never falls dead. There are evil days ahead.

That is, of course, the point

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Here’s the link: New California: Mass Immigration Turning Virginia Blue, blue meaning Democrat. This is how the story starts:

A remarkable transformation is underway in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The birthplace and final resting place of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson—and once one of the most reliably-red of red states—is being rapidly turned into a progressive stronghold.

These changes are not the result of an inside agency, or a natural evolution in political thinking, but rather the result of one of the most impactful yet least-discussed policies of the federal government.

Each year the federal government prints millions of visas and distributes these admission tickets to the poorest and least-developed nations in the world.

A middle-aged person living in parts of Virginia today will have witnessed more demographic change in the span of her life than many societies have experienced in millennia.

This is the left’s new road to perpetual power, and you can see the same thing being tried here in Australia. Why should Labor stop the boats when they are filled with people who will vote only for the parties of the left? And why won’t they vote for the Coalition? Because only the ALP sees advantage in taking money from you and giving it to them.

We are being run by crazies

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This is a Canadian thing with perhaps some universal relevance. Ezra Levant – think Mark Steyn for comparison purposes – has been hauled up before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for calling it “crazy”. Kate McMillan, of Small Dead Animals, has written a note, Dear Alberta Human Rights Commission, which I thought might be of interest.

I’m informed that your Commission (via your proxy) considers the word “crazy” an insult.

I thought of sending a simple “fuck you”, but I’ve thought better of it. I take it back: unfuck you.

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas, you couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel. You are a canker, an open wound. I would rather kiss the Law Society of Alberta than be seen with you.

You’re a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, and a weasel. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

God created houseflies, cockroaches, maggots, mosquitos, fleas, ticks, slugs, leeches, and intestinal parasites, then he lowered his standards and made you. I take it back; God didn’t make you. You are Satan’s spawn. You are Evil beyond comprehension, half-living in the slough of despair. You are the entropy which will claim us all. You are a green-nostriled, crossed eyed, hairy-livered, goisher kopf, inbred trout-defiler. You make Ebola look good.

It is hard to believe how incredibly stupid you are. Stupid as a stone that the other stones make fun of. So stupid that you have traveled far beyond stupid as we know it and into a new dimension of stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid cubed. Trans-stupid stupid. Stupid collapsed to a singularity where even the stupons have collapsed into stuponium. Stupid so dense that no intelligence can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot midday sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one minute than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. It cannot be possible that anything in our universe can really be this stupid. This is a primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. A pure extract of stupid with absolute stupid purity. Stupid beyond the laws of nature.

I began this note with the intent of writing something original, but I changed my mind. Originality should not be sacrificed to such a worthless cause. You’re unworthy of the effort to string words together in a novel arrangement. In fact, I’m not convinced you’re worthy of this obvious plagiarism. Plagiarism is too good for you, certainly plagiarism of material of this quality is too good for you, so I’ve butchered it badly. Writing this in steaming cat piss on a hot summer sidewalk would be too good for you. Writing this in the writhing bodies of one million wingless flies glued to a barn door with cow shit is too good for you. (OK, that part was original. I’m not without generosity.)

In closing, I hope this finds you unwell.

As Ezra notes, the prosecution in the punishment, and expects it will cost him $25,000 to defend. Freedom of Speech is under assault everywhere by various Orwellian-named agencies of government. And finally, the “obvious plagiarism” in the original post directs you to this site: THE INSULT FILE VERSION 6.13 which might be kept on hand for future reference.

Theordore Bikel has passed away

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After Peter Seeger, Theordore Bikel was my favourite folksinger. The above almost hour-long video was dedicated to a celebration of his life. Here is Mark Steyn discussing some of the most important parts of his career. This is how Flower Power: Theodore Bikel, 1924-2015 begins:

Theodore Bikel died on Tuesday at the age of 91. He began his career in Mandatory Palestine in the play Tevye the Milkman and then, between 1969 and 2010, played Tevye in the musical Fiddler On The Roof in over 2,000 performances, more than any other actor. He worked steadily in theatre, TV and movies for three-quarters of a century, and was also a folk singer, and songwriter, and guitarist.

The whole thing is amazing, as is everything else that Mark writes. Vale Theodore Bikel.

More on the green revolution

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Down the right hand side of the page at Drudge today:

PAPER: ISIS set up stronghold in heart of Europe as terrorists secretly buy land near isolated village…

Killer of Marines did not trigger any red flags…

Texted friend link to Koranic verse before attack…

Navy officer 5th to die…
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EXPLODING MUSLIM IMMIGRATION OVERWHELMS FBI…

GOVERNORS ORDER NATIONAL GUARDSMEN TO BE ARMED…

empire state building in muslim green

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Empire State Building turns green for Muslim holiday…
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Saudi Arabia says stopped ISIS attacks; 400 held…
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IRAN LEADER VOWS ANTI-USA POLICIES…

SCUTTLING NUKE DEAL MIGHT NOT BE EASY FOR NEXT PRESIDENT…

The Zaki Chronicles

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These are the six posts I have put up since Monday when Zaki Mullah appeared on Q&A. It follows my own reaction to the ABC using a jihadist against a government minister, basically siding with the jihadists against a government that is trying to deal with a terrorist threat to this country. But it also follows a second trail, which is the refusal of some elements within the government, who do not wish to see the ABC made to live up to its charter of evenhandedness. If you cannot even get Liberal Members of Parliament angry with the ABC siding with the terrorists against the elected government of this country, then we are at a strange place indeed. It’s one thing to be on the left. It is quite another to have one’s views so distorted that they prefer to take the side of a convicted terrorist against a government that is trying to deal with the terrorists who are already in our midst.

Q&A has made Abbott’s anti-terrorist laws a certainty

The question really is just how depraved is the ABC?

“Heads should roll”

What an insufferable hypocrite

The only issue is the indelible green-left bias of the ABC

Where’s the outrage?

And what is particularly disturbing, as the last of these posts show, is that there are members of the right-side party that see personal advantage in maintaining the status quo at the ABC.

Finding the straight and narrow

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Finding the straight and narrow has never been more difficult. The only time I ever seriously shocked and angered my mother with anything I ever said was when I quoted a friend of mine:

“Better a sexual revolution than no revolution at all,” he said.

I didn’t understand her attitude then but I do now. The values of the adult world allowed restraint because there were genuine moral restraints that were felt and understood. There is almost nothing there now. For a reminder of how things once were, read Stacy McCain’s Let’s Bring Back Guilt and Shame. It’s a thought, but for the moment that’s all it is. But if you read it, you will also see why the video’s been posted.

The only issue is the indelible green-left biases of the ABC

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Let me come back to this Zaki business one last time because it does worry me that either the government doesn’t get the point, or doesn’t want to. I don’t care that they gave Zaki air time. In fact, the more they let him talk, the more he demonstrates what a danger he and others like him are. That was not the problem. The problem was that he was brought onto Q&A by the ABC specifically to ambush a government minister. It was the ABC’s intent that is so vile, not the particular means they chose on this occasion. What the program demonstrated, far better than anything else in recent times, is that the ABC is out to harm the government because the ABC, contrary to its charter, is pursuing a green-left agenda of its own. The entire organisation is now a billion dollar version of the Green-Left Review. That is the problem. That is what you must deal with.

My worry is that no one seems to get it. All the quotes that follow are from The Australia today. Each is one more example of missing the point. Here first is Julie Bishop:

The ABC’s action in allowing a former terror suspect to air his views runs counter to the government’s work in attempting to protect Australians from terrorism, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says.

This is from Christopher Pyne discussing Mark Scott:

“He’s trying to pretend the government is trying to close free speech at the ABC. This is typical of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; rather than ’fessing up to their mistake, which was to bring a convicted terrorist on to the audience of Q&A and give them a platform … (and) put at risk the people in the audience,” Mr Pyne told the Nine Network.

Then Peter Reith:

Peter Reith, a former Liberal cabinet minister, accused Mr Scott of reducing the ABC’s blunder to a question of audience security and not the “shocking and offensive” decision to give Mallah a platform.

“The ABC head was basically saying the real problem is that ‘we didn’t manage the security side of it’ as if, you know, if they’d got that right then having this guy on would be OK,” Mr Reith told Sky News.

Even Malcolm got into the act:

“This guy on social media not so long ago nominated two female journalists and said that they should be publicly raped,” Mr Turnbull said. “What if he had said that again in the Q&A live audience? Why would you ever put a person (like that) in a live audience? It’s incredible.”

The issue is neither terrorism nor free speech. The issue is the ABC. Nothing else. The issue is whether the government is going to take on the the fanatical leftist bias of the ABC, or is instead going to leave it alone until it conspires with the Greens and ALP to see it defeated at the polls. I would have thought that an instinct for self-preservation would have driven the government towards some such conclusion already.

I am in no doubt how difficult this task is. But I am also in no doubt that unless you identify the problem for what it is and then deal with the problem itself, you and we will never be rid of this deformed monstrosity of the far left. This is what you must do if you are to survive. You must set down a strategy for dealing with the indelible green-left political biases of the ABC and then do what you can to counter this malignant publicly-funded cancer in our social midst.