Author: Simon

I’d say this is about the best that can be expected from combining the rap music video style and economic texts. Pretty fly for some white guys. Books mentioned in this video: F. A. Hayek – The Fatal Conceit J.M. Keynes – The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money H/T commenter simentt via e-mail…

I came across a most interesting discourse on reality. Technical reality to be exact. Our precise aim is to show that there is no such thing as a robot; that a robot is no more a machine than a statue is a living being; that is merely a product of the imagination, of man’s fictive…

Company CEOs that lobby for CO2 taxes or other measures for CO2 abatement are going to be required to tell shareholders about the possible effects of such legislation on their companies. Washington, DC – Corporate CEOs who have been actively lobbying for cap-and-trade climate legislation may soon find themselves in an embarrassing position thanks to…

It looks like Adam is endorsed by a Cold War Hero. Breaking news: Lech Walesa, Nobel Laureate and former President of Poland, has endorsed Republican candidate Adam Andrzejewski (and G F ski) for Illinois Governor. From The American Spectator: It’s not every day that a Nobel Prize winner becomes involved in a U.S. election, but…

Osama has a new trick in his bag. Global Warming. No. Really. A new message said to be from al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has blamed global warming on the US and other big industrial nations. I wonder why he had nothing to say about China? Their CO2 production exceeds that of the US and…

And that brings up an interesting bit of information. Gaming improves thinking. Ongoing research conducted by the Office of Naval Research suggests “that video games can help adults process information much faster and improve their fundamental abilities to reason and solve problems in novel contexts.” This as posted at the United States Department of of…

Geoffrey Lean is Britain’s longest-serving environmental correspondent, having pioneered reporting on the subject almost 40 years ago. (according to the mast head at Telegraph.UK) Well he has got a hold of two new super scientific reports that say that for sure glaciers are melting and it is all man’s fault. But I don’t want to…

Space Ports reports the opening of an IEC Fusion Research facility to develop fusion for spacecraft propulsion. AVRC has been awarded a contract by Wise County’s Industrial Development Authority to manage a $7 million energy research center now under construction in the Lonesome Pine Business and Technology Park [PDF] in Wise, VA focused on the…

I was reading a review of a recent US Grant biography, U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, that had this interesting description of Grant During his presidency, to be sure, the Democratic press condemned Grant as at once feeble, conniving, and imperious–attacks similar to those that the Democrats had made on Lincoln. Or George…

Here is part of a press release on OLPC’s work in Haiti We are doing what we can for the 60 schools that we have been working with in Haiti – primarily planning for the spring after the first phase of rebuilding is underway. We will be sending a group of OLPCorps volunteers to Haiti…

I have just sent this out to a group of physicists and scientists to see if it has any merit. Here is the cover letter I sent: George Miley of U Illinois, Champaign is involved. I am passing this on after a cursory review. It was published yesterday. Please give it 5 minutes before you…

The UN’s IPCC has just taken a few more torpedoes below the water line. Well it turns out that the WWF is cited all over the IPCC AR4 report, and as you know, WWF does not produce peer reviewed science, they produce opinion papers in line with their vision. Yet IPCC’s rules are such that…

It seems a lot of folks are upset by the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate free speech. Let me reprise a discussion at Talk Polywell on some aspects of health care that have a bearing on why corporate free speech is important. The discussion was about life extension and how cooling the body in…

Trilogy: a nude awakening is a sort of play/happening that has a stage full of naked dancing girls. Hundreds of different ones all together. In the all together. Trilogy is about many things: body dissatisfaction, dominant masculine hegemony, Germaine Greer. Well, well, well. If male hegemony can get hundreds of women to dance nude on…

In my post The Glaciers Are Melting I looked at an an error in the IPCC report that was taken straight out of a popular science magazine, New Scientist. New Scientist did a retraction and the head of the IPCC, railroad engineer Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, defended the “data” despite the retraction. He finally gave in…

I put up a video of Scott Brown in a short discussion with a voter about health care reform. My first personal complaint about what he said was at the beginning of the video when he says: “We’re past campaign mode” i.e. I no longer have to lie to win. I guess now that he…

You see that chart above? It was taken from an article on the missing carbon sink. The graphs in the chart show results for net CO2 emission or absorption from before and after the missing sink was found. Note the down arrows for North America? That means North America is absorbing more CO2 than it…

This is so depressing. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Obama’s poll numbers are cratering. Gallup buries the lede in its latest polling on health care, the Browning of Massachusetts, and Barack Obama’s performance in the first year. They headline the fact that 55% of Americans want Congress to suspend work on ObamaCare while only 39% want Congress to continue. That’s not exactly news; it’s…

NASA agrees with me on the nature of drug abuse. Initial low-level involvement with drugs may result from peer pressure, drug availability or other risk factors in an individual’s social or family environment. Subsequent escalation to and maintenance of higher levels of drug use is likely to result from biological, psychological or psychiatric characteristics of…