Cab Thoughts 8/26/15

“Every time I update a new edition, typically every four years, I get the same results: A low-cost index outperforms two-thirds or more of active managers over time. And the one-third that outperform are never the same from one period to the next.”--Burton Malkiel, professor of economics emeritus at Princeton University and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street

It looks as if the Cuba embargo is now lifted, as is Iran's. I have never been a proponent of embargoes. They are not a blockage--which is an act of war--but they are close. They are an attack on the society and people in the society. The embargo on Cuba is instructive. It ground the country down to barely subsistence level but did it influence the political structure? Absolutely not. It sacrificed the people to no end. As always. As such, it is the perfect political act, attacking the citizen, sparing the political villain and posturing.

Science consensus: Every molecular biologist in the world stood by the “central dogma of molecular biology”, to wit, DNA makes RNA that makes protein–period. Temin came along claiming evidence that RNA could back-transcribe to make DNA and underwent about a decade of horrible treatment from his peers until all the experiments that were performed to prove him wrong, ultimately proved him right. He finally got the Nobel prize. Ah, consensus. 

Matt Welsh on Trump’s speech at FreedomFest: This is the single dumbest speech I have witnessed in 17 years of covering American politics. Not just the lies, the policy positions (such that they existed), or even the dizzying heights self-regard, but the level of basic human intelligence and decency. For a guy who complains that the media only quotes “half-sentences,” Trump’s real adversary is the full-length transcript. These aren’t speeches, they’re seizures.

There is a remarkable shift to rental building, now as high as the 1990 peak. While single-family houses can be easily secularized and are thus much more "cash equivalent", rental units will be far more difficult to convert into money-equivalent credit creation. And as this building continues, rental rates should respond by moving lower.

Who is....the Beauty of Xiaohe?

Estimates of the pension-fund deficits facing states and cities vary, depending on the assumptions used to calculate the cost of bills due over the next several decades. According to Federal Reserve figures, they have $1.4 trillion less than needed to cover promised benefits. Moody's, which in 2013 began using a lower rate than governments do to calculate future liabilities, has estimated that the 25 largest U.S. public pensions alone have $2 trillion less than they need. Cincinnati and Minneapolis are among cities Moody’s has since downgraded.

The only way that democracy can be made bearable is by developing and cherishing a class of men sufficiently honest and disinterested to challenge the prevailing quacks.  No such class has ever appeared in strength in the United States.  Thus the business of harassing the quacks devolves upon the newspapers. When they fail in their duty, which is usually, we are at the quacks’ mercy.--Mencken’s 1956 collection, Minority Report

Pluto's largest moon only about 1/10th the size of planet Earth but is 1/2 the diameter of Pluto itself.

The vain arrogance of the literati and the Bohemian artists dismisses the activities of the businessmen as unintellectual moneymaking.  The truth is that the entrepreneurs and promoters display more intellectual faculties and intuition than the average writer and painter.  The inferiority of many self-styled intellectuals manifests itself precisely in the fact that they fail to recognize what capacity and reasoning power are required to develop and to operate successfully a business enterprise.--von Mises

In twenty-five years, the Mongol army under Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people than the Romans had conquered in four hundred years. Together with his sons and grandsons, he conquered the most densely populated civilizations of the thirteenth century. Whether measured by the total number of people defeated, the sum of the countries annexed, or by the total area occupied, Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history. Most astonishing is that the entire Mongol tribe under him numbered around a million. From this million, he recruited his army, which was comprised of no more than one hundred thousand warriors. His empire stretched from the snowy tundra of Siberia to the hot plains of India, from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the wheat fields of Hungary, and from Korea to the Balkans. The majority of people today live in countries conquered by the Mongols.

Eighty percent of North Koreans who escape into China are women. Nine out of 10 of those women become victims of human trafficking, often for sex. If the women complain, they are deported back to North Korea, where they are thrown into gulags or are executed.

White-livered (also lily-livered): adjective: Cowardly. From the former belief that a lack of vigor or courage was from a deficiency of bile which showed in a light-colored liver. Earliest documented use: 1546. 

The Progressive belief: Dominated by powerful, grasping, and profit-obsessed capitalists, the market works so poorly that workers are generally underpaid for overly difficult work while consumers are generally overcharged for poor-quality products, and yet the assurance of earning even more money by exploiting the profit opportunities created by all this underpaying and overcharging remains hidden from the view of the greedy capitalists.  Such opportunities are seen only by politicians, pundits, professors, preachers, and popes – yet each of whom is best equipped only to force other people to stake funds on efforts aimed at correcting these market inefficiencies.--Bordeaux

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/11/petraeus-bernard-de-clairvaux-and-joe.html

Within a nondescript Bronze Age cemetery first discovered by Swedish archaeologists in 1934 and rediscovered by the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute in 2000, researchers have found the oldest and best-preserved mummies in the Tarim Basin area of China. The cemetery is about 4000 years old. The region borders numerous countries and was historically a part of the Silk Road trade route between the West and the East so it was expected the genetics of these people could be from anywhere. Of interest were a number of redheads, including the so-called Beauty of Xiaohe. DNA studies showed that most were from South Siberia but there was another strain from Europe. Interestingly, some of the DNA has no contemporary correlation.

And a Golden oldie on the minimum wage:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/02/minimum-objectivity.html

Capital controls imposed by the Greek government are taking a heavy toll on Greek businesses, according to a new report. With over two-thirds of respondents reporting a "significant drop in revenues," and 1 in 9 firms forced to suspend production due to shortages of raw materials (unable to buy due to capital controls), the problems created by The Greek government's action seem asymmetric as almost a quarter (23%) of firms are now "planning to transfer their headquarters abroad for security, cashflow, and stability reasons."

Over 75% of people who marry partners from an affair eventually divorce.

As early as 1853, the luxurious Mount Vernon Hotel at Cape May, New Jersey, impressed Americans and amazed travelers from Britain by equipping every room not only with running water but also with a bathtub. By 1877, one medium-priced Boston hotel offered in each of its rooms a wash basin with running hot and cold water.  But it was the early twentieth century before the private bathroom became normal for every room in better American hotels. Except for the Chalfont

In November 2009, NASA declared that it had discovered water on the moon that could allow for the development of a space station on the moon. The water is billions of years old, which could give scientists clues into the history of the solar system.

AAAAAannnnnnddddddd.....a picture:

"The Beauty of Xiaohe," female mummy, ca 1800—1500 B.C. Excavated from Xiaohe (Little River) Cemetery 5, Charqilik (Ruoqiang) County, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. Photo Credit: © Wang Da-Gang