You’ve probably noticed that imports are labeled by national origin. This is usually required. The most obvious effect of such regulation is to slightly disadvantage foreign producers by raising their cost of production. But the only slightly less obvious effect is to reduce consumers’ cost of discrimination. If you have to do your own homework to discover products’ national origin, you’ll probably accept your ignorance and decide based on price and apparent quality. If regulation imposes national origin labels, you might play favorites instead.
Once you start throwing around the charge of "discrimination," however, it’s easy to see that there are two distinct kinds of national origin discrimination that consumers might commit.
One is standard taste-based discrimination - tipping your personal scales against products from countries you don’t like. When I was a kid, crusty American war veterans kept the fire of World War II glowing by refusing to buy goods from wicked Japan.
The other, however, is statistical discrimination - rationally using national origin as a signal of product quality. Plenty of people still aren’t fond of the Germans, but still eagerly buy products with the "Made in Germany" label because they correctly identify German manufacturing with quality.
Given Americans’ near-religious objections to both taste-based and statistical discrimination, it’s puzzling that the law doesn’t merely allow, but actively facilitates them. Most Americans, I suspect, would defend these laws with arguments that would make them cringe in other contexts. E.g. "Consumers have a right not to support countries of which they don’t approve," or "Knowing what country a product comes from helps consumers make a wise choice."
Ernest Gellner thought that Islam of all monotheisms was the closest to modernity:
I like to imagine what would have happened had the Arabs won at Potiers and gone on to conquer and Islamise Europe. No doubt we should all be admiring Ibn Weber’s The Kharejite Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism which would conclusively demonstrate how the modern rational spirit and its expression in business and bureaucratic organization could only have arisen in consequence of the sixteenth-century neo-Kharejite puritanism in northern Europe. In particular, the work would demonstrate how modern economic and organizational rationality could never have arisen had Europe stayed Christian, given the inveterate proclivity of that faith to a baroque, manipulative, patronage-ridden, quasi-animistic and disorderly vision of the world. A faith so given to seeing the cosmic order as bribable by pious works and donations could never have taught its adherents to rely on faith alone and to produce and accumulate in an orderly, systematic and unwavering manner. Would they not always have blown their profits on purchasing tickets to eternal bliss, rather than going on to accumulate profits and more? … Altogether, from the viewpoint of an elegant philosophy of history, which sees the story of mankind as a sustained build-up to our condition, it would have been far more satisfactory if the Arabs had won. By various obvious criteria—universalism, scripturalism, spiritual egalitarianism, the extension of full participation in the sacred community not to one, or some, but to all, and the rational systematisation of social life—Islam is, of the three great Western Monotheisms, the one closest to modernity.
The labour theory of value has usually been advocated from hostility to some class regarded as predatory. The Schoolmen, in so far as they held it, did so from opposition to usurers, who were mostly Jews. Ricardo held it in opposition to landowners, Marx to capitalists. (But) Locke seems to have held it in a vacuum, without hostility to any class.
(Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy.)
Krugman says that markets are not worried about inflation (TIPS spread), and that the US government is financing at very low interest rates (<3% !). As a consequence he argues, there are no reasons to worry about more debt and stimulus.
Again, right now the bond market doesn’t seem worried about US solvency. And rationally, stimulus spending shouldn’t change that view: with the long-term real interest rate well below 2 percent, current borrowing has only a trivial effect on the long-run state of the budget.
And so Krugman and others argue that there are no reasons not to accept a new stimulus package.
Seems logic, but is it ?
It is only logical in the debt philosophy that has brought the advanced economy on the brink of collapse. The very tragedy the BIS is talking about in its latest annual report. The Bank of International Settlements has been probably the only central bank in 2000-2007 that has been very vocal about derivatives, debt and leverage risk in the financial system.
The picture below shows the very problem that we should keep in mind: after the outrageous rise in household debt, public debt has sharply risen to come to the rescue. However, this is not a solution, it is just prolonging and increasing the problem.
Looking at the chart above, I had difficulties in recognizing the difference between Spain, the UK and the US…
But the western debt problem is coming at a particular difficult moment: the aging of the western population will start to climb very strongly in the coming years. The impact on public spending will be huge in many countries (ia. the NL and Belgium).
This just confirms that the adding more debt will not only increase the problem, but aggravate the heritage for the next generation.
Why are the markets a bad indicator
Coming back to the other argument of Krugman to increase debt further: markets are not worrying, so why bother.
Well, that is a very weak argument. Markets are strongly manipulated !
* short rates have been put at almost zero percent, thereby exercising downward pressure on long rates
* central banks are massively buying debt that would push interest rates of some countries higher
* this “known” manipulation is completed with currency support, plunge protection teams and other softer support (peptalking, bank support, support buying by government related entities like in Japan, etc etc)
Today, financial markets are not a perfect indication of the general investor sentiment to say the least. Central banks and governments have been manipulating wide segments of the financial markets.
Therefore, the argument about the current low level of interest rates to justify further stimulus and debt spending is just bogus. We are entering the endgame of a long period of reckless monetary and budgetary policy. THe few highlights are the orthodoxy of the German central bank, the agreement of the Maastricht criteria, and the statements of the BIS.
Or put differently: the market signals are manipulated and distorted by all the measures proposed by the Krugman-school. But then claim these false signals as a green light to do even more of the budgetary and monetary derailment is just incredible.
Counter to the predictions put forward a year ago by the Administration, when it claimed that "more than 90 percent of the jobs created are likely to be in the private sector," U.S. companies employed 3.9 million fewer workers in January 2010 than they did one year earlier. Public employment bucked the trend, staying constant even as governments contended with sharply reduced tax revenues. While the jobs held by those 22 million public workers helped support many families, the "stimulus" failed to trigger private sector employment growth.
In late 2009, the Congressional Budget office pegged employment gains due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (A.R.R.A.) of 2009 at 600,000 to 1.6 million, while estimating its full cost at $862 billion.
This implies a price tag, at the median estimate, of about $800,000 per job. These forecast job gains are not permanent, but temporary. The Administration’s January 2009 forecast was that the A.R.R.A. was needed to reduce the path of unemployment for five years, when the unemployment rate - if we did nothing - would decline to the level projected with the "stimulus." Using this five-year time horizon projects annual costs of approximately $160,000 per job.
That’s a rich bonus payment. The system is borrowing heavily to finance it. Deficits last year and this are running at 10 percent of GDP, easily the largest in post-WWII U.S. history. They are projected by CBO to remain at three percent of GDP in 2020 - when over 3% of GDP will be devoted to simply paying interest on the national debt.
There are increasing concerns that a housing bubble is being created in Canada, though government officials denies that any problems exists. As I haven’t done much reasearch on the issue, I don’t know enough about the Canadian housing market to say whether or not there is a bubble (A sharp increase in the current account deficit and high money supply growth does however suggest the Canadian economy is on an unsound path), but the mere fact that government officials deny it isn’t really a convincing argument against it, given the denials by Bush administration and Fed officials in 2004-06 that any problems existed in the U.S. housing market.
It is now six weeks since I launched an investigation, with my colleague Richard North, into the affairs of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the hugely influential body which for 20 years has been the central driver of worldwide alarm about global warming. Since then the story has grown almost daily, leading to worldwide calls for Dr Pachauri’s resignation. But increasingly this has also widened out to question the authority of the IPCC itself. Contrary to the tendentious claim that its reports represent a "consensus of the world’s top 2,500 climate scientists" (most of its contributors are not climate experts at all), it has now emerged, for instance, that one of the more widely quoted scare stories from its 2007 report was drawn from the work of a British "green activist" who occasionally writes as a freelance for The Guardian and The Independent.
Last week I reported on "Glaciergate", the scandal which has forced the IPCC’s top officials, led by Dr Pachauri, to disown a claim originating from an Indian glaciologist, Dr Syed Husnain, that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035. What has made this reckless claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report even more embarrassing was the fact that Dr Husnain, as we revealed, was then employed by Dr Pachauri’s own Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (Teri). His baseless scaremongering about the Himalayas helped to win Teri a share in two lucrative research contracts, one funded by the EU.
(...)
Dr North next uncovered "Amazongate". The IPCC made a prominent claim in its 2007 report, again citing the WWF as its authority, that climate change could endanger "up to 40 per cent" of the Amazon rainforest – as iconic to warmists as those Himalayan glaciers and polar bears. This WWF report, it turned out, was co-authored by Andy Rowell, an anti-smoking and food safety campaigner who has worked for WWF and Greenpeace, and contributed pieces to Britain’s two most committed environmentalist newspapers. Rowell and his co-author claimed their findings were based on an article in Nature. But the focus of that piece, it emerges, was not global warming at all but the effects of logging.
A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC’s report which cite similarly non-peer-reviewed WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority, and other researchers have been uncovering a host of similarly dubious claims and attributions all through the report. These range from groundless allegations about the increased frequency of "extreme weather events" such as hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves, to a headline claim that global warming would put billions of people at the mercy of water shortages – when the study cited as its authority indicated exactly the opposite, that rising temperatures could increase the supply of water.
It is plausible that one of the most important symbols of Islam, the minaret, was inspired by the sight of the later representatives of the Syrian Christian holy men summoning the faithful to worship God from their pillars. The first known minaret, after all, was part of the great Ummayed mosque in Damascus, well within the cultural zone of the Stylites.
It was entertaining but I was expecting to be awed by at least one scene, as happened in Terminator, T2 and Titanic, and I was not. The plot is identical to that of Battle for Terra, right down to the "tree of life." Many scenes I felt like I had seen before. Here is the helicopter gunship scene from Apocalypse Now, here is the men in robot suits battle scene from Alien (and one of the Matrix movies), here are the sky islands from Castle in the Sky, here we have the Dances with Wolves scene(s). I am all for homage but this was pastiche.
The aliens were gorgeous, leggy, blue fashion models. Nice, but Star Trek did the green alien girl thing forty years ago. Personally, I like my aliens to be a little bit more well, alien. All the way to another planet just to find that the girls are blue and the horses have eight legs instead of four? Sad.
I insisted on seeing it in 3D but the effect was not revolutionary and there is still some eye strain. In the end I would have preferred 2D.
Jesus a swell guy? A moral compass to lead us to an idyllic civilization? Read Randian George Smith:
Considered in themselves, the moral precepts of Jesus are sometimes interesting, sometimes poetic, sometimes benevolent, sometimes confusing, sometimes pernicious, and sometimes devastatingly harmful psychologically. None, however, are especially profound. If not for heir tremendous historical impact, most would deserve little more than a philosopher’s passing glance.
In assessing the ethical significance of Jesus, it is illuminating to contrast him with the ancient Greek philosophers who preceded him by hundreds of years. The differences are so striking that few scholars care to place Jesus on the same level as such intellectual giants as Plato and Aristotle. Whether one agrees with these philosophers or not, they at least argue for their claims; Jesus, on the other hand, issues proclamations backed by the threat of force. (...)
(T)he major precept of the biblical Jesus is what contemporary theologians like to call total devotion, or commitment, to God. In this context, of course, the terms “devotion” and “commitment” are euphemisms for their less flattering counterparts: obedience and conformity. As with all theologians, when Jesus says “believe” he means “obey.” And when Jesus praises men of great “faith,” he is praising men who will obey unquestioningly any command they believe to come from God. (...)
The fundamental teaching of Jesus—the demand for conformity—(...) gives rise to a fundamental and viciously destructive teaching of Christianity: that some beliefs lie beyond the scope of criticism and that to question them is sinful, or morally wrong. By placing a moral restriction on what one is permitted to believe, Christianity declares itself an enemy of truth and of the faculty by which man arrives at truth—reason.
Whatever minor points may be offered in defense of Christianity, they cannot compensate for the monstrous doctrine that one is morally obligated to accept as true religious beliefs that cannot be comprehended or demonstrated. It must be remembered that this teaching is not incidental to Christianity: it lies at the heart of Jesus’ mission, and it has played a significant role throughout Christianity’s history. It was this belief that “justified” the slaughter of dissenters and heretics in the name of morality, and its philosophical consequence may be described as the inversion—or, more precisely, the perversion—of morality.
To be moral, according to Jesus, man must shackle his reason. He must force himself to believe that which he cannot understand. He must suppress, in the name of morality, any doubts that surface in his mind. He must regard as a mark of excellence an unwillingness to subject religious beliefs to critical examination. Less criticism leads to more faith—and faith, Jesus declares, is the hallmark of virtue. Indeed, “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Children, after all, will believe almost anything.
Another significant teaching of Jesus, closely related to the preceding, is that certain feelings and desires are in themselves sinful. Merely feeling or desiring something can bring divine condemnation upon oneself, regardless of whether one translates the feeling into action: “every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment”; “every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (...) Even today Christians are warned to “repent” of evil emotions, which often consists of feelings in the realm of sexual desire.
Morally, this doctrine is reprehensible, because it erases the crucial distinction between intent and action. Psychologically, however, it is nothing less than murder. It is a prescription, a demand, for emotional repression, for deliberately obstructing awareness of one’s inner emotional state. Psychological health, to a large extent, consists of being in touch with one’s feelings, and to believe that one is not morally permitted to experience certain feelings is to declare war on one’s emotions.
Of course, a psychologically healthy individual does not act unthinkingly on the basis of his feelings, but it is essential to self-awareness that he be able to experience what those feelings are. This general attitude toward emotions runs throughout the teaching of Jesus. His second commandment, the Bible tells us, is that we should “love” our neighbor as ourselves. Aside from the content of this pronouncement, which is rather difficult to make sense of, the entire notion of commanding feelings in and out of existence is ludicrous. Love is an emotional response to values, and if we do not perceive the necessary values in many people, how are we to force the emotion of love? Jesus does not say. He simply threatens damnation for those who disobey.
We are similarly cautioned by Jesus to be meek and humble, and—even if we overlook the fact that meekness and similar passive qualities are the antithesis of self-assertiveness and self-esteem—we must wonder how the promise of reward or the threat of force can significantly alter a man’s inner qualities. There is only one possibility: if the threat of force, of eternal damnation, succeeds in breaking a man’s spirit—if it robs him of emotional strength and intellectual independence—he will indeed become meek and humble. Perhaps this is what Jesus was aiming for. (...)
In short, there is nothing virtuous in the virtues recommended by Jesus. The only thing close to an ethical precept with merit is the Golden Rule, which is a rough approximation of a fairness ethic, but even this is issued in the form of a command. Generally, Jesus commands us to have faith in God and in himself as a messenger from God—which means the sacrifice of reason—and we are reminded that God will reward those who obey and punish those who disobey. Also, we are told that God is monitoring us at every moment, and that he has complete knowledge of our innermost thoughts and feelings. If the notion of an omnipresent voyeurist does not create a high level of nervous tension and anxiety, not to mention guilt, nothing will.
Texas offered to cede two large tracts of land to Belgium in return for a $7 million loan, but the United States government protested the arrangement would constitute an impermissible interference in American affairs, and Leopold was advised that the United States would soon annex Texas in any case.
John Reader, Africa. A Biography of the Continent. p. 527
Tobacco was quickly adopted by Europeans. Pane is usually credited with being the first man to introduce tobacco to Europe (Brooks, 1952, p. 16). At first tobacco was regarded and consumed only as a medicine. In 1560, the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot de Villemain (from whom the term ‘nicotine’ originates), proclaimed that tobacco had a panacea of medicinal properties. In 1561, Nicot sent tobacco leaves to Catherine de Medici, the Queen of France. She was so impressed with the plant that she decreed that tobacco be called (the Queen’s Herb). (...) Besides being consumed, tobacco was also used as currency by Native American tribes, Europeans explorers, and colonialists during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was used as a monetary standard for approximately two centuries, longer than the use of the gold standard in America.
Coca
During the Incan Empire, (coca leaves) were chewed during religious rituals. Early Spanish settlers adopted this practice and brought it back to Europe. Beginning in the 19th century, Europeans began to refine coca leaves. Many notable figures, such as Sigmund Freud, became regular users and active proponents of its ability to increase creativity, stamina, and decrease hunger. Freud supposedly began using it after hearing of the Belgian army’s experiments in giving coca extracts to its soldiers, who performed better on less food over longer periods of time. The most famous legal use of coca is undoubtedly the soft drink Coca-Cola, which was invented by a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia, as a substitute for alcohol during American Prohibition.
Quinine:
The standard view is that Europe’s colonization of Africa would have been virtually impossible without quinine.
Rubber:
The population of the Congo is estimated to have been about 25 million prior the rubber boom, in the 1880s. In 1911, after the peak of the boom, the population was 8.5 million, and in 1923 after the completion of the boom, it was 7.7 million. If one compares the lives lost relative to the production of rubber, an astonishing conclusion is reached: one human life was lost for every 10 kilograms of rubber exported.
Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in "exile" (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never -- poor baby -- being able to return to the U.S.). Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she’d rather not see him prosecuted because she can’t stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let’s take a moment to recall that according to the victim’s grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.
Can we do that? Can we take a moment to think about all that, and about the fact that Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, before we start talking about what a victim he is? Because that would be great, and not nearly enough people seem to be doing it.
Readers of the humorous Christian website shipoffools.com were asked to submit their ’favourite’ worst verses to compile the list, in a light-hearted project called Chapter & Worse.
Topping it was St Paul’s advice in 1 Timothy 2:12, in which the saint says: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent."
The extract is often used to justify opposition to women priests.
Next was this worrying verse endorsing genocide, from 1 Samuel 15:3: "This is what the Lord Almighty says ... ’Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ "
Third was Moses’s call to kill witches, in Exodus 22:18: "Do not allow a sorceress to live."
Another gruesome verse to make the list was Psalm 137, which celebrates this terrible revenge: "Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us / He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
A more controversial inclusion was that of St Paul’s thoughts on homosexuality, from Romans 1:27, currently an extremely divisive matter with the Anglican church: "In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error."
Others on the list included God’s test of Abraham in Genesis 22, in which Abraham is made to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice; this endorsement of female subservience in Ephesians 5:22, "Wives, submit to you husbands as to the Lord"; and similar advice for slaves in 1 Peter 2:18: "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel."
Simon Jenkins, editor of shipoffools.com, said the idea behind the web poll was to make people think about the dangers of selectively quoting from the bible.
The list was unveiled at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham on Monday evening.
This is the top 10 list in full:
No. 1:St Paul’s advice about whether women are allowed to teach men in church:
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
No. 2: In this verse, Samuel, one of the early leaders of Israel, orders genocide against a neighbouring people:
“This is what the Lord Almighty says... ‘Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Samuel 15:3)
No. 3: A command of Moses:
“Do not allow a sorceress to live.” (Exodus 22:18)
No. 4: The ending of Psalm 137, a psalm which was made into a disco calypso hit by Boney M, is often omitted from readings in church:
“Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” (Psalm 137:9)
No. 5: Another blood-curdling tale from the Book of Judges, where an Israelite man is trapped in a house by a hostile crowd, and sends out his concubine to placate them:
“So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, ‘Get up; let’s go.’ But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.” (Judges 19:25-28)
No. 6: St Paul condemns homosexuality in the opening chapter of the Book of Romans:
“In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:27)
No. 7: In this story from the Book of Judges, an Israelite leader, Jephthah, makes a rash vow to God, which has to be carried out:
“And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, ‘If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt-offering.’ Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, ‘Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.’” (Judges 11:30-1, 34-5)
No. 8: The Lord is speaking to Abraham in this story where God commands him to sacrifice his son:
‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.’ (Genesis 22:2)
No. 9: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)
No. 10: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)
Coming soon? And apparently different from both the rather childish original and the rather fantastic recent Ron Moore version. By your command:
One of the many casualties of Sept. 11, 2001 was the Tom De Santo/Bryan Singer version of "Battlestar Galactica," designed as a sequel to the ’70s show, which was less than three months from shooting when the attacks on America happened. Since the Cylon sneak attack was a big part of the $14 million backdoor pilot they were about to shoot, Sci-Fi got very nervous about the film, and everything fell apart.
In the time since, obviously, Ron Moore and David Eick and the entire amazing creative team who did bring "Battlestar Galactica" back to television managed to not only get a new show on the air, but they’ve completed their run and they’re gearing up on a spinoff series, "Caprica." Despite the amount of critical love that was displayed for the show during its run, I wouldn’t call Moore’s "Galactica" a phenomenon. It was more like a very enthusiastic and vocal cult audience. As a result, Universal seems to feel that there’s more life in the property, and that there is room for another interpretation.
That’s why they’re nearing a deal with Bryan Singer to produce and possibly direct a brand-new "Battlestar Galactica" feature film.
(...)
The question this raises, of course, is how close will this be to the plans that Singer had for the material before Ron Moore’s show aired? Right now, my sources indicate that the big decisions haven’t been made yet. Singer is the first major creative element to be approached, so once they sign him, they’ll go find a writer and they’ll figure out exactly which story they’re telling. It seems like he’d want to get back to the ideas he originally loved about the piece, but since that was developed with another studio, I’m not sure that would work.
And I’m not sure I buy that Singer’s going to come in just to direct a big-screen version of the show that just finished its run. The series wrapped up pretty conclusively, with "The Plan" and "Caprica" already in motion as extensions of that story in different directions.
So is this going to be yet another all-new take on the premise? In February of this year, the announcement was made that Glen Larson had signed a deal with Universal to develop a "Galactica" film that was not tied to any previous version. This has got to be that same project, right? So I guess that means Singer and Larson are going to be sitting down to figure out what take they want to pursue.
Tell me... does Singer’s attachment mean you’re interested? Should Larson revisit this material already? Do you think Universal’s going to be able to get lightning to strike again in the same spot?
(...)
UPDATED (8.13) - Variety has confirmed, through Universal, that Singer has come onboard the project. (...)
(T)he Arabic word for "great," akbar, has been adapted into George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise, in the form of Admiral Ackbar, a heroic character and military commander whose success in space helps Luck Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance repel Darth Vader’s Galactic Empire. Featured in Return of the Jedi, Ackbar is just one of many characters and settings in the Star Wars universe that have an Arabic background. Luke Skywalker’s home planet, Tatooine, takes its name from the Tunisian city of Tataouine (al-Tataouine in Arabic). Darth Vader’s home planet is Mustafar, a slight variation of Mustafa, an Arabic name that means "the chosen one" (and is one of 99 names for the Muslim prophet Muhammad). Attack of the Clones showcases Queen Jamilla, whose name is a slight variation of jamilla, an Arabic word for "beautiful." And Revenge of the Sith features Senator Meena Tills, whose first name means "heaven" in Arabic.
Easterly defends himself after scurrilous accusations by Sachs:
Official foreign aid agencies delivering aid to Africa are used to operating with nobody holding them accountable for aid dollars actually reaching poor people. Now that establishment is running scared with the emergence of independent African voices critical of aid, such as that of Dambisa Moyo. Jeffrey Sachs, the world’s leading apologist and fund-raiser for the aid establishment, has responded here with a ferocious personal attack on Moyo and myself, "Aid Ironies."
Allow me to defend myself (I’ll let the formidable Moyo handle herself). It’s not so much my pathetic need to correct slanders, as if anybody cared. Sachs’ desperation shows when he peddles what I will show he knew were falsehoods. Besides, the sight of two middle-aged white men mud-wrestling on African aid may entertain the audience.
Sachs accuses me of such a hard heart as to deny "$10 in aid to an African child for an anti-malaria bed net." Sachs offers: "Here are some of the most effective kinds of aid efforts: support for peasant farmers to help them grow more food, childhood vaccines... roads, .. safe drinking water...."
Sachs likes a lot more another writer whom he quoted in his book Common Wealth: "Put the focus back where it belongs: get the poorest people in the world such obvious goods as the vaccines,... the improved seeds, the fertilizer, the roads, the boreholes, the water pipes...." Wait, that was me!
Sachs was earlier quoting from my book, The White Man’s Burden, which far from wanting to deny an African child bed nets, denounces the tragedy of aid impunity, in which "The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families."
Sachs complained that "most Americans know little about the many crucially successful aid efforts, because Moyo, Easterly, and others lump all kinds of programs -- the good and the bad -- into one big undifferentiated mass." Sachs again prefers another writer whom he quoted in Common Wealth: "Foreign aid likely contributed to some notable successes on a global scale, such as dramatic improvement in health and education indicators in poor countries."
You guessed it -- that was me again, illustrating how aid COULD work if only aid agencies were accountable for their actions.
Sachs denounces my callousness when I myself benefited from a government scholarship for grad school: "Easterly mentioned his receipt of NSF support in the same book in which he denounces aid," and now I am "trying to pull up the ladder for those still left behind." Either this is an intentional falsehood or Sachs inexplicably failed to read the next paragraph in the book: "Could you give many more scholarships to poor students? ...Could you give the poor "aid vouchers" that they could spend on aid agency services of their choice?"
Sachs suffers from the same acute shortage of truthiness as did the Bush/Cheney administration, all of whom have contributed to the current climate of fear and intimidation in foreign aid. Any aid critic is immediately denounced as a heartless baby-killer, which protects the establishment from the accountability so badly needed to see aid reach the poor.
--USAID was caught red-handed by its own Inspector General mismanaging one multi-million project in Afghanistan so badly that millions disappeared without a trace, and among the few tangible outputs was a bridge, reported as "completed," that was so life-threatening that nobody could use it.
--The World Bank’s own evaluation unit criticized them for having only 2 percent of its communicable diseases projects focus on TB, despite the huge mortality from this disease and the availability of effective treatments. For good measure, the World Bank also cut nutritional projects in half, despite the huge benefits from cheap and effective nutritional supplements for children so malnourished that they will suffer permanent brain damage.
--the World Health Organization faked malaria statistics to make false claims of victories against malaria in the New York Times. The WHO later withdrew and then contradicted the numbers, but never issued a public retraction. How to know when and where to fight malaria if the numbers are faked?
None of these organizations suffered any consequences for their misbehavior. Only poor people suffer the consequences, and they are powerless.
As an alternative to the impunity of the establishment that Sachs defends, the emergence of a new wave of independent aid critics in Africa is most welcome. This new wave includes many more besides the remarkable Dambisa Moyo -- such as the Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda and two extraordinary colleagues of mine at NYU: the Ghanaian economist Yaw Nyarko and the Beninese political scientist Leonard Wantchekon. Instead of Sachs’ attempt to shout down critics with slanders and falsehoods, let’s have a climate of open debate in which we learn from past mistakes, the guilty suffer, the good are rewarded, and we can hope that aid does start to reach the poor.
Lots of chatter on the libertarian blogs about whether we’re in an Atlas moment, how sales of Atlas Shrugged are peaking, and how folks finally might be coming round to rejecting the moochers and embracing their inner Galt.
The two lines show us search trends over the last 12 months on the terms "Ayn Rand" (red) and "Karl Marx" (blue). Scales are normalized as a proportion of all searches, with 100 being the largest number of searches. Marx is by far the more popular search term.
Where are folks most interested in each? Well, Google’s Search Insight tells us that too. Maps below show search intensity on Karl Marx (in blue) and on Ayn Rand (in red).
So, in lots of the developing world, we’re seeing lots of searches on Marx and very little on Rand. Rand only registers in the Philippines. In the US, Rand beats Marx by a small margin; same in India. In Canada, Marx beats Rand; same in Norway and New Zealand and ... pretty much every country that makes the top ten in searches on Ayn Rand. The green bars show searches for "Atlas Shrugged". Only in the US and India do searches on Rand beat searches on Marx.
Search Insights is powerful enough for us to drill down onto country-specific searches. So, we find in Canada, that Rand beat Marx from mid June 08 through August 08, but Marx wins just about the rest of the time. This one shocked me: the proportion by which Marx beat Rand in Ontario matched that in Alberta. Only in British Columbia, Canada’s "loonie left coast", did Rand beat Marx. In Manitoba, ancestral home of Barbara Branden, Rand didn’t show up at all.
We can drill down even further. Marx beats Rand by a larger majority in Edmonton than in Calgary; Edmonton is the seat of government and sometimes is disparaged as Redmonton. Turns out it’s just a matter of degree.
In book sales, Atlas beats Das Kapital. The paperback edition of Atlas is currently #29 in Books at Amazon; Capital is at #5,213. I’d love to know what the rank movement is since a year ago, but I don’t know how to access historical Amazon data. Sales of both certainly seem to be up, but I can’t compare trends without a decent handle on base rate sales from a year or two ago.
So, Randians, be a bit careful about calling this a Randian moment. Economic crisis seems to intensify interest in alternatives at both poles, at least as evidenced by Google search trends. You can, of course, object that maybe all the searches on Marx are to find out just how Marxist Obama really is: it’s Objectivists doing the searches. There certainly are a lot of searches on Marx + Obama, but I can’t evaluate the searchers’ normative assessments of any such link. I’ve tried adding a few disambiguating terms like evil or bad to add to the searches; doesn’t seem to affect much. If you can think of better ways of disambiguating, I’d love to see the results!
A number of prominent right-wing Canadian authors are before my country’s various human rights tribunals and human rights commissions. One of those authors is Ezra Levant, who is charged with publishing the “Muhammad Cartoons”. The other is Mark Steyn, charged with a number of offenses amongst them quoting a European Imam on demographic predictions. What is your opinion on these Human Rights Commissions and other government restrictions on “hate speech”? Are you generally supportive of these types of measures, or do you oppose them?
Chomsky’s answer:
There should be a very heavy burden of proof on any effort to restrict freedom of speech. I strongly oppose the measures you describe. I do not think the burden of proof is even approached, let alone met. In this respect I agree with the US Supreme Court, which, in the 1960s, set what i think is a proper standard for protection of freedom of speech.
to bar entry to Geert Wilders ought to be completely baffling, but is instead indicative of the general cowardice which we have come to expect from the Home Office. Wilders is, above all, a crashing bore: someone who thought there was a need to physically connect passages from the Koran with terrorists and fundamentalists, as if the correlation were not already so obvious. Fitna was the sort of film which the average YouTuber can better and which still gets voted down, such was both its amateur production and message. You don’t like Islam, and especially not the extremists; we get it.
Wilders is in fact typical of the majority of the European far-right: despite their own contempt for free speech, or freedom of thought, they pose as martyrs being persecuted for saying the unsayable. In Wilders case he actually is being persecuted, or rather prosecuted for just that: he’s set to be tried for his anti-Islam sloganising and general bullheadedness. The irony is that Wilders himself believes that the Koran should be banned for being a "fascist" book, the man from the "Freedom" party who wants to deny religious freedom purely because of his own bigoted views.
The obvious response to those who want to hang themselves on their own personal cross is to deny them the opportunity to do so. All Wilders wanted to do was to visit the House of Lords, which was to show his film, and then take part in discussion about it. The Home Office claims that Wilders’ mere presence would be enough to "threaten community harmony and therefore public security", when such a claim is clearly abject nonsense. It’s quite apparent that it’s not Wilders whom the Home Office is scared of, but rather of the protests his presence might well attract. Whether it fears a repeat of the Dutch embassy protests or not, this is clearly an excuse rather than anything even approaching an actual reason. Wilders himself meanwhile can add a further notch of self-satisfaction to his belt.
Rather than showing any sign of "Dhimmitude", as the jihadist watchers love to throw about, it instead shows New Labour’s own authoritarian stance on where the boundary between freedom of speech and the freedom to offend and abuse lies. The government talks of challenging extremism in all its forms, but by taking such a provocative stance and banning Wilders from visiting it has only inflamed the situation far beyond what it would otherwise have been. Despite Lord Ahmed’s claims that temporarily stopping the showing of Fitna in the House of Lords was a victory for the Muslim community, it seems highly doubtful that few if any would have turned up to protest against his visit: he just simply isn’t worth bothering with. Wilders can now instead further boast of how he’s banned from another European country which in his eyes is abandoning its values in order to appease its unruly minorities. The sad reality is that New Labour never had any values to abandon in the first place.
ON USHERING visitors into his home Sir Keith Joseph, a punctilious host, would proffer a handshake by way of welcome. On this occasion, however, the senior Tory politician was shocked when his younger guest pointedly refused to take his hand. Instead, he got a volley of abuse about his role in “debauching the currency”. Such was the pedagogic style of Sir Alan Walters, who died on January 3rd, aged 82.
At the time of their meeting, in 1974, Joseph was beginning a total re-evaluation of economic policy provoked by Edward Heath’s disastrous government, in which he had served. That had ended with a Keynesian public-spending binge, the orthodoxy of the day, to stimulate the economy. But instead of helping, it had caused runaway inflation and a rash of strikes. Surely there was another way?
Joseph had sought out Sir Alan as the leading British exponent of the counter-revolution in economics, led by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. Monetarists argued that only by tackling the amount of money circulating in the economy could governments tame inflation, then the scourge of Western economies. This would force them to cut public spending—and in Britain to demolish overmighty trade unions, which extorted wage rises without any increase in productivity.
This, in short, became the essence of Thatcherism. Sir Alan and others hammered this message home to Joseph and his closest political ally, Margaret Thatcher. The politicians were converted, and Sir Alan became Mrs Thatcher’s guru on the new policies after she took over as leader of the Conservatives in 1975.
Like his political leaderene, Sir Alan was from a relatively poor background in the unfashionable east Midlands. And like her, he nurtured a lifelong disdain for middle-class intellectual socialists.
As her special adviser in Downing Street, he played a vital role in two of the most important episodes of her premiership. In 1981 he was brought back from academia to stiffen her resolve in pushing though a budget that cut public spending during a recession, the decisive break with the Keynesian past.
And in 1989, even more controversially, he returned to help her in a dispute with her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who wanted sterling to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, a prelude to the euro. Sir Alan, like the prime minister, shared an instinctive distrust of such currency systems; he famously called this a “half-baked” idea. Mr Lawson resigned over what he saw as interference in economic policymaking, and Sir Alan had to go too. But in the long run Sir Alan’s view prevailed; the British still seem to prefer their pound, even in its present debauched state, to the euro.
After having watched the Revenge of the Sith and the genesis of Darth Vader over the past weekend I think it’s appropriate to pass over the nine management secrets of the second in command of the Galactic Empire:
Use Fear. Yoda once said that “fear is the path to the Dark Side.” He couldn’t have been more right; however, his conclusions were wildly off base. Fear can be a great motivator, both for you and for those around you. Fear can help you overcome moral ambiguities by clouding them with the need for action, now. Also, fear is the way to motivate people. You may find their lack of faith disturbing, so you may need to demonstrate your superiority. If someone disagrees with you, Force-choke them until they see things your way.
Don’t Tolerate Dissent. Destroy it. Make sure everyone knows that your word is the last word. Demand unwavering faith in your abilities from your inferiors, and if they display a disturbing lack of faith, choke them.
Punish Incompetence. Many of your subordinates will be as clumsy as they are stupid. If someone has failed you for the last time, Force-choke them to death and promote someone who knows what they are doing. Keep Force-choking people until someone finally learns his or her lesson.
Deal Exclusively On Your Terms. Periodically, you will have to make deals. Alter them at your discretion, and don’t worry about any consequences. I recently had to do this with a mining entrepreneur in the Cloud City of Bespin, who expected to be treated with equanimity. Needless to say, I got what I wanted.
Use Loyalty Judiciously. Only submit to a stronger hand, and then try to destroy it once you are powerful enough. Stop at nothing to get to the top.
Always Look for Talent. Periodically, you will come across a real gem like my wayward son, Luke. Realize that they can be your key to double-crossing your superiors. If they don’t play along, kill them.
Know that Power is what matters. Your ability to assert yourself in a difficult situation depends on your power. If you have power, you can have anything you want. Stop at nothing to get it.
Get Out There and Lead. While Grand Moff Tarkin was prematurely celebrating victory over the Rebel Alliance, I was out there shooting at X-wings. Which one of us survived the Death Star attack? That’s right, me.
Finally, always remember that an elaborate, far-reaching plan, which relies on people reacting exactly how you plan for them to react, is always better than a simple plan. Nothing illustrates your genius quite like a meticulous, detailed, super-plan which will go horribly awry if people don’t react exactly the way you think they will. Just know who to blame when things don’t go the way you expect them to.
— Crime rates are still falling. Violent crime in America has been in a freefall since the early 1990s, despite a slight uptick in 2005 and 2006. Economists, criminologists, and sociologists can’t conclusively say why. Explanations range from the 1990s economic boom to changes in crime-fighting strategy to the legalization of abortion to reductions in childhood exposure to lead. Whatever the reason, long-term trends show crime is down across the board.
— Sex crimes are down, too. Many conservatives and some leftist feminists often argue that the widespread availability of pornography and the "mainstreaming" of sex may effect an epidemic of sexual violence. It hasn’t happened. Incidence of rape in America has been in swift decline for 20 years. In 2006, it hit its low point since the government started keeping statistics. Crimes against children have also been in decline. Both trends have taken place over a period in which there has been less social stigma attached to being the victim of a sex crime — meaning we’re seeing fewer rapes, even as rapes are more likely to be reported. More interestingly, they’ve also taken place alongside the rise of the Internet, the medium that has done more than any other to mainstream and provide easy access to pornography, gambling, and a host of other vices. Somehow, society has managed to stay afloat.
Our allegedly sexualized culture hasn’t had much effect in other areas, either. The divorce rate is at its lowest point in four decades. This is in part because people are waiting longer to get married. More women in the workforce means more women are waiting to get married. And they are getting married for the right reasons, not merely for financial security. It’s hard to argue that society is worse off with strong marriages, even if that means fewer marriages over all.
— Life expectancy is up. In June, the Centers for Disease Control announced that in 2006 (the latest year for which data is available), Americans once again set a record for life expectancy. Men, women, blacks, whites — all can expect to live longer today than at any point in American history. Discrepancies in the average age of death between ethnic groups are narrowing, too. All of those things we’re told need heavy regulation because they’re potentially killing us — obesity, alcohol, coffee, sodium, pollution, stress, cell phones — aren’t doing a very good job.
— We’re beating our biggest killers. The same CDC report noted that mortality rates for eight of the 10 leading causes of death in America dropped in 2006. In fact, deaths from the two biggest killers — cancer and heart disease — have been in decline for a decade. Deaths from the third leading cause of death, stroke, are also down.
A generation ago, a cancer diagnosis was a death sentence. No more. In November the National Cancer Institute announced that for six years, both incidence of and deaths from cancer have been in decline, the first time that’s happened since the organization began issuing its report. The drops were consistent among both sexes and across all ethnic groups, with the exception of American Indians, for whom incidence and deaths largely remained stable. In 1962, the 5-year survival rates for five of the 10 leading causes of childhood cancer were 10 percent or lower. Today, the survivial rates for all 10 are at least 55 percent, and six are above 80 percent.
— The kids are all right. Despite the periodic outbreak of moral panic over violent videogames, MySpace, "rainbow parties," and dirty lyrics in rap music, America’s kids are getting along just fine. Teen pregnancy was up slightly in 2006 (again, the latest year for which data is available), but that’s after a 15-year decline to historic lows — again over the very period during which critics say our culture is overly sexualized. Since 1991, fewer teens are having sex, fewer are having sex with multiple partners, and more are using condoms when they do engage in intercourse. The abortion rate is also at its lowest point in 30 years.
Beginning in 1994, juvenile crime dropped dramatically for a decade. By 2004, juvenile crime was at its lowest point in a quarter century. The numbers edged up slightly in 2005 and 2006, but juvenile violent crime is still 40 percent lower than it was in 1994. The juvenile murder rate is a whopping 73 percent below its high in 2003.
— We have more leisure time.Americans work on average eight fewer hours than we did in the 1960s. Believe it or not, lower-income Americans are actually more likely to spend time at leisure and less time on the job than their wealthier counterparts, suggesting that when we do work long hours, it’s more likely to be because we want to than because we have to. We also seem to be enjoying ourselves more. We’re spending more money per person on recreation. And the toys we do have (high-definition televisions, iPods, computers, sound systems) are immeasurably more fun than they were generations ago.
What is it about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition that leads so many of its most prominent spokespersons to make hateful, bigoted, life-diminishing and personal security-endangering statements when it comes to human sexuality? Perhaps there was something inherent in the environment and culture of the Fertile Crescent, and of the Middle East in general, that predisposed the religions it brought forth to declare anathema anything other than abstinence and heterosexual behaviour (the latter only in a setting of monogamy or polygyny, not polyandry, of course). Even so, one would have hoped that the civilising influence of Greek and Hellenistic culture would have filtered most of the sexual bigotry out of the European religious mainstream, and out of its offshoots in the former European colonies.
Apparently not. The current Pope, Benedict XVI is right at home in the abhorrent main-stream Christian tradition of sexual intolerance. In his address ‘Christmas greetings to the members of the Roman Curia and Prelature (December 22, 2008)’ (available thus far only in German and Italian from the Vatican website), the Pope makes a number of extremist, bigoted and intolerant statements about homosexuality and transsexuality.
(...)
In his address, Pope Benedict argues that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is as important as saving the rain forest from destruction. He also urged humanity to listen to the “language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. Finally, he argued that behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations between a man and woman (married - preferably to each other) was a “destruction of God’s work”.
How a man reputed to be as educated and intelligent as Benedict XVI can confuse the accumulated prejudice of centuries of dysfunctional organised religion with the message of the founder of Christianity is a mystery to me. Christ, as far as we know from the gospels, never said a word about homosexuality - let along about transgender sexuality. We don’t know whether He was single, married or divorced, monogamous or polygamous, straight, gay, or interested in transgender sexuality. We know nothing of Him between His early teens and His early thirties. When He starts His ministry He travels around with 12 male disciples and associates with a number of female camp followers. We know He liked wine - His first miracle was to change water into wine - but know nothing of His other interest, hobbies and vices.
Christ taught us to love God and to love our neighbour as ourself - the two Great Commandments from both the Old and the New Testaments. If my neighbour is gay, lesbian, transgendered or transsexual, God’s glory is revealed in his or her sexuality as much as it is in the sexuality of my heterosexual neighbour or in the voluntary abstinence of the Pope. If my neighbour is an adult and wishes to express his sexuality with another consenting adult, that sexual sharing is blessed by God regardless of whether is it homosexual, transgender or heterosexual, whenever it enhances the humanity of the other. Did God make a mistake when She allowed homosexuality to evolve in the human species, as it has in countless other animals? Or was She only joking?
Surely, whether something qualifies as right or wrong, moral or immoral, righteous or sinful depends on whether the act, the deed or the behaviour is both motivated by and expresses respect and love for all others affected by it? Homosexuality and homosexual behaviour, transgender sexualty and sexual behaviour and any form of sexuality and sexuality that does not hurt or diminish others but confirms and affirms them, cannot possibly contradict the teachings of Christ. His church, unfortunately, is another matter. When the teachings of an institutional expression of Christianity like the Roman Catholic Church are so radically at variance with the fundamental teachings of the founder of the religion, voluntary receivership and liquidation, with the proceeds distributed amongst the wretched of the earth, may be the best solution.
As I’ve written in Wall Street & Vine, capitalists don’t get viewed very favorably in films (here’s some recent examples). I’ve put this at least partly down to filmmakers’ resentment of the constraints that money and capitalists place on their art. I note that even criminals and their enterprises get treated more favorably than your average capitalists. The evil is done by people who squash creativity, not by those who just kill people and stuff like that.
Krugman’s award could bring Bush face-to-face with his antagonist. The president typically invites Nobel Prize winners to the White House in November or December.
The liquidity crisis isn’t real. Or, to restate it: Any liquidity crisis is caused by the promise of a government bailout. Ken said that his many friends in investment banking said that there is plenty of money to invest in financial services, but right now it is "sitting on the sidelines." Why? Because the financial services industry does not want to pay the terms required to get that money back in circulation (e.g., give up equity). As he put it, why do business with Warren Buffett who will negotiate a tough deal, if you believe that the government will ride in soon with cheaper cash?
Ken also talked about the need to shrink the financial services sector. He thinks it is good that the investment banking houses are failing and many people on Wall Street are losing their jobs because, in his view, we have an oversupply in that sector and our economy just can’t support it.
, right down to the "tree of life." Many scenes I felt like I had seen before. Here is the helicopter gunship scene from Apocalypse Now, here is the men in robot suits battle scene from Alien (and one of the Matrix movies), here are the sky islands from Castle in the Sky, here we have the Dances with Wolves scene(s). I am all for homage but this was pastiche.
