For two thousand years, it has been claimed that democracy inherently self destructs, that democracy destroys the conditions that make democracy possible. The fact that democracy worked pretty well during the twentieth century would seem contrary evidence – but a century is not a long time for such a test.
Author: Jim
Diebold voting machines horribly wrong
xkcd gets it exactly right
The Hockey Stick Graph
Bishop Hill explains the Hockey Stick Graph. It is an exceedingly long and complicated story, even in his simplified version, but the short of it is:Â The global warmerists lied.
The success of globalization
Massive globalization — a major move towards free market capitalism — has brought over a billion people out of poverty, while sixty years of socialist chaos and violence has failed to convince most of the world that central planning is a very bad way to run any economy.“Ruble†symbolizes pretend money, unconvertible into goods, much as “Finland†symbolizes submission to a hostile power, and “Peso†symbolizes inflation. Globalism has done what socialism promised to do and failed to do: It …
Yellow bellied surrender monkeys
In the last ten years or so we have been hearing a lot of disturbing reports about Britain – reports of a society of fearful and servile subjects, of criminals acting with impunity, of the British accepting second class status to Islam. Maybe the gun lobby is exaggerating British submission to criminals, maybe racists and war hawks are exaggerating British submission to Islam, but this story of cowardice and betrayal from Basra fits with what we have been hearing about …
What has been happening in Georgia
The boundaries of all the Balkan and Caucasus states are ill defined, one blurs into the other, each contains people who feel themselves outsiders and oppressed. In some, like Estonia, “oppression†is merely that if you cannot speak the majority language, or a widely spoken international language such as English, you have poor job prospects. In others, oppression consists of robbery, rape, and murder. By and large the resentment is greater, and more likely to lead to bloody fratricidal violence, …
Explanations of the oil price rise
My explanation for high oil prices is the collapse of oil states. Arnold Kling argues that instead the problem is that investors fear the collapse of advanced states, so are reluctant to take their money. My explanation is that oil states are increasingly short of the competence to pump oil, the ability to provide security to people pumping oil, and the credibility to make deals with people who are competent to pump oil — for example it is difficult for …
US Chamber of commerce protests junk science
The second national climate assessment predicts that the United States will “very likely†experience rising sea levels and increasing droughts, heat waves, intense storms and resulting illness and premature death over the next century as climate change intensifies. But, as is the usual practice with climate “science†, the report fails to make available the evidence that supposedly leads to this conclusion, a gross and flagrant violation of normal and proper scientific practice. And so, the US Chamber of Commerce, …
Democrat energy plan
This republican advertisement is so funny and so true, that I stole it.
Global warming is not science
Science is based on experiment and evidence. The motto of the royal society was “Nullius in verbaâ€, which means “Take no one’s word for itâ€. This motto was reinterpreted to accommodate the “evidence†for global warming. Most science journals have condition of publication that authors must comply with any reasonable request by other researchers for materials, methods, or data necessary to verify the conclusion of the article, which condition has not yet been enforced against the global warmers.