Just as poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics.--Sowell
The average American spends more than ten hours a day plugged in to some form of media. If we are not watching television, we are listening to the radio, going to movies, playing video games, messing with our smartphones or spending endless hours on the Internet. And more than 90 percent of the “programming” that we are fed through these devices is produced by just six huge media corporations. So six companies provide the American 10 hours a day of information and entertainment. Goebbels never dreamed of such power.
Apparently Tsipras says that lenders have sent a message that in countries under a bailout there is no point in holding elections. Think about that. If you are not economically independent, you are not politically independent.
The average American spends more than ten hours a day plugged in to some form of media. If we are not watching television, we are listening to the radio, going to movies, playing video games, messing with our smartphones or spending endless hours on the Internet. And more than 90 percent of the “programming” that we are fed through these devices is produced by just six huge media corporations. So six companies provide the American 10 hours a day of information and entertainment. Goebbels never dreamed of such power.
Apparently Tsipras says that lenders have sent a message that in countries under a bailout there is no point in holding elections. Think about that. If you are not economically independent, you are not politically independent.
Eco Morales, the sort-of elected leader of Bolivia wearing a picture of Che Guevara on his jacket, gave Pope Francis a carved wooden cross of a hammer-and-sickle on which Christ was crucified. While this is a rather obtuse symbol to me, the Pope said he understood the work and would take it home. This Pope is going to cause some interesting conflicts. He is from that South American activist tradition, "Liberation Theology," and it is an interesting approach that should create some valuable point-counterpoint discussions and shed some light on this ongoing, endless debate. But it will not. John Paul hated the Communists, this guy hates the Capitalists. Why anyone should give these guys any more credence in economic theory than we give them in gravitational theory is beyond me. But there will be slurs and name calling, no discussion. Yet there is a simple breakdown of these debates: Capitalism does not create inequality, freedom does. Only horrific and remorseless power can homogenize peoples and cultures. You have got to go no further than the Bush effort to make Iraq's culture resemble his.
Who is...Admiral Zheng He?
Iris Murdoch was a philosophy professor at Oxford and a novelist, a brilliant woman who gradually declined into Alzheimer's. In her last years, Murdoch could startle: "Who am I?" and "How did this anguish start?" and a series of unfinished letters always beginning with "My dear, I am now going away for some time. I hope you will be well."
Officials and experts said some Middle East countries, like Turkey and Egypt, may even try to develop their own nukes. The Saudi kingdom has no nuclear infrastructure to speak of but they do have IOUs from Pakistan, because Saudi Arabia helped finance Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in the 1970's and 1980's. "The Saudis," said a former U.S. official, "might ask Pakistan for a bomb." (Pakistan has good relations with Iran and likely would say no.) Turkey and Russia signed an agreement to build a massive nuclear power facility at Akkuyu along Turkey's Mediterranean shore. The groundbreaking for the four-reactor complex took place in April. This from NBC. Now, if the nuke deal with Iran is done and everyone in Washington is thrilled, why aren't these nations reassured?
The basketball coach, John Wooden, was a very accomplished guy. One of his sayings: "Talent is God-given; be humble. Fame is man-given; be thankful. Conceit is self-given; be careful."
The period from roughly 2700 BC to 2500 BC was the age of the pyramid in Egypt, and one of these was so massive that it remained the tallest building in the world for the next thirty-eight centuries. Pyramid building required a highly organized supply system involving quarries, mines, shipyards, storehouses, workshops and a labor force of thousands.
As we are seeing in Greece, there are dangers in being a creditor. Philippe le Bel (1268-1314), king of France, was one of France's most disastrous kings. The cost of running France was six times as much as it had been under Philippe Auguste less than a century earlier, even allowing for inflation. He had an especially large debt to the Templers, who had become major bankers of the time, so the king brought trumped up legal charges against them and, in a remarkably well-orchestrated raid, all the Templars were arrested one night and their property declared forfeit. The king had them tortured--many died under torture--then had them executed.That's one solution.
"Neither a lender...."
A conundrum from a letter to the Times: Progressives believe that (1) businesses are ever-eager to grasp profit by exploiting available laborers who have few options, and yet (2) businesses are today indifferently leaving profits on the table by not exploiting available laborers who have few options.
Between 1405 and 1433, Chinese Admiral Zheng He commanded seven expeditionary voyages as far away as East Africa and the Middle East. These expeditions, known in Chinese history as the treasure voyages, consisted of hundreds of ships of enormous dimensions carrying a crew as large as 28,000 and great amounts of treasures. Seven times, from 1405 to 1433, the treasure fleets set off for the unknown. These seven great expeditions brought a vast web of trading links—from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf—under Chinese imperial control. This took place half a century before the first Europeans, rounding the tip of Africa in frail Portuguese caravels, "discovered" the Indian Ocean. When Zheng He returned, China had a new emperor who was uninterested in the continuation of such government-sponsored naval adventures. Had the Chinese emperors continued their huge investments in the treasure fleets, there is little reason why they, rather than the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British, should not have colonized the world.
Golden oldie:
According to the UN, more than 2,500 deaths of women in Mexico every year can be attributed to gender-targeted violence. The National Citizen Femicide(!) Observatory, or OCNF, says at least six women are targeted and killed every day in Mexico. Of those, less than a quarter are investigated. Of those investigations, fewer than 2 per cent lead to a sentence. No one seems to know exactly how many people are missing in the country, although Human Rights Watch says at least 27,000 have gone missing since 2006. In Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero at least 20 mass graves have been found since last September, when people began looking for 43 vanished student teachers from Ayotzinapa. 43 vanished student teachers! This is a major topic in Bolano's 2666, a novel whose purpose is as difficult to understand as is its acceptance.
In English beheadings, the victim would be expected to pay and forgive the executioner. It would be hoped that the headsman completed his job swiftly and with care, and that the "tip" would encourage his good will to that end.
According to a new study’s estimates, the total Utica Shale play could hold technically recoverable volumes of 782 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and nearly 2 billion barrels of oil.
A 2012 U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the Utica Shale and underlying Point Pleasant formation pegged the technically recoverable undiscovered resources at 38 trillion cubic feet of gas, 940 million barrels of oil and 208 million barrels of natural gas liquids such as ethane, butane and propane.
The new assessment is also higher than estimates the researchers had calculated a year ago, when they determined that 188.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 830 million barrels of oil could be extracted from the Utica play using existing technology.
The Pennsylvania Marcellus reserves surpassed the Barnett Shale play of Texas to become the largest shale gas play in the country. Total gas reserves for the formation are now at an estimated 354 trillion cubic feet with the formations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia accounting for about 70 percent of the increase.
According to "Politico," former Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner, and the infamous former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who was responsible for writing many of Obamacare’s rules and regulations for the insurance industry, only to be fired following the disastrous rollout of the HealthCare.gov enrollment website, has been hired as the new CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the "powerful K Street lobbying group." What a coincidence.
A fascinating thesis by Taleb, of Black Swan fame: In an essay, Taleb and Treverton highlight five characteristics that could help identify states that - while appearing stable on the surface - may actually be quite fragile.
“Fragility”, they write, “is aversion to disorder”. Under this criterion they view Italy as a stable state!
The five characteristics they view as major factors in instability are:
- centralized decision making,
- lack of economic diversity
- high levels of debt and leverage
- absence of political variability
- lack of track record in surviving shocks
“Italy, paradoxically, shows no signs of fragility. It is effectively decentralized and has bounced back from perennial political crises. It also experiences a great deal of harmless political variability, cycling through 14 prime ministerial terms in the past 25 years.”
According to a new study’s estimates, the total Utica Shale play could hold technically recoverable volumes of 782 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and nearly 2 billion barrels of oil.
A 2012 U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the Utica Shale and underlying Point Pleasant formation pegged the technically recoverable undiscovered resources at 38 trillion cubic feet of gas, 940 million barrels of oil and 208 million barrels of natural gas liquids such as ethane, butane and propane.
The new assessment is also higher than estimates the researchers had calculated a year ago, when they determined that 188.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 830 million barrels of oil could be extracted from the Utica play using existing technology.
The Pennsylvania Marcellus reserves surpassed the Barnett Shale play of Texas to become the largest shale gas play in the country. Total gas reserves for the formation are now at an estimated 354 trillion cubic feet with the formations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia accounting for about 70 percent of the increase.
According to "Politico," former Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner, and the infamous former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who was responsible for writing many of Obamacare’s rules and regulations for the insurance industry, only to be fired following the disastrous rollout of the HealthCare.gov enrollment website, has been hired as the new CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the "powerful K Street lobbying group." What a coincidence.
A fascinating thesis by Taleb, of Black Swan fame: In an essay, Taleb and Treverton highlight five characteristics that could help identify states that - while appearing stable on the surface - may actually be quite fragile.
“Fragility”, they write, “is aversion to disorder”. Under this criterion they view Italy as a stable state!
The five characteristics they view as major factors in instability are:
- centralized decision making,
- lack of economic diversity
- high levels of debt and leverage
- absence of political variability
- lack of track record in surviving shocks
“Italy, paradoxically, shows no signs of fragility. It is effectively decentralized and has bounced back from perennial political crises. It also experiences a great deal of harmless political variability, cycling through 14 prime ministerial terms in the past 25 years.”
One of the curiosities of current thought is how the Left characterizes Greece. Greece has powerful unions, high taxes--especially on high earners, huge benefit programs, gigantic government spending with spending 59% of GDP in 2013 and 49% now and debt 175% of GDP. That looks like a Keynesian dream, a Progressive vision made flesh. Yet the whole system is falling apart. They claim it is the result of "austerity" but those numbers do not look harsh to me. Somehow the responsibility of these unsustainable programs has fallen on the shoulders of the people dumb enough to finance them.
AAAAaaaaannnnndddddd.......a graph:
The labor force participation rate for college graduates has been on a relentless downtrend.
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