“blogging the origin†criticizes Darwin for emphasizing selection, rather than separation, as the primary cause of speciation. But we now know that Darwin was, as usual, right, and the latest fashions were, as usual, wrong again. Until recently the evidence for *any* speciation was thin, and in the absence of evidence, people liked to imagine speciation by physical separation, in large part due the rhetoric of Gould, who argued that …
British police retreat before Muslims
British police retreat before a hail of not very dangerous missiles: This retreat follows a long series of recent similar humiliations – the British submission in Basra, in Helmand province, and in the Persian Gulf. Weakness and fear is provocative. Someone is going to take Britain from the British.
All quiet in France
Small Dead Animals draws my attention to the fact that things are not all quiet in France On New Years day, more than 1000 cars were torched – but the French seem unable to mention the fact that Muslims were burning the cars of infidels. Islamic jihadism has tripled over the last year, but French government imposition of order has remained unchanged – which trend, if continued for much longer, …
affirmative action, bad loans, bailout, crisis
The New York Times explains: creditors came to believe that their loans to unsound financial institutions would be made good by the Fed — as long as the collapse of those institutions would threaten the global credit system. Bolstered by this sense of security, bad loans mushroomed. Of course any crisis is multicausal. I have been blaming affirmative action loans. But instead of pushing back against government pressure to make …
No warming trend in raw surface temperature data
You have all seen those GISS graphs of global warming. Anthony Watt checked the raw data on which they are based. The cooked data shows warming, the raw data shows cooling. Of course this does not mean the data is necessarily fraudulent – but the adjustments are largely guesswork, so when they compile these graphs, they are merely guessing that the earth has warmed.
The cause of the crisis
Capitalism and free markets are prone to bubbles, and a great deal more prone to bubbles when speculators can expect that the government will print as much money as needed to keep the bubble going, but bubbles do not in themselves lead to massive financial defaults, because normally lenders only lend to people who are in a position to repay, even if the bubble pops. If one reads what purport …
The crisis
Fred Thompson argues the solution is thrift – which exactly what the government is trying to prevent. Obviously he is right – and yet wrong, for one person’s savings have to be another person’s obligations. What we need is a financial system that mobilizes savings for sound investments – such as mortgages on reasonably priced houses secured by twenty percent down payments, mortgages on farmlands, mortgages on mines and oilfield …
Why do all large organizations skew left authoritarian?
Constant drew my attention to the fact that Fox news, originally created to provide an alternative to the Mainstream Media orthodox ideology, is joining it, which led me to reflect on the tendency of big corporations to go left authoritarian and support socialism, gun control, political censorship, government health, and so on and so forth – as for example, the failure of the owners of shipping lines to allow deadly …
Global Average temperatures to 2008-October
This is the running twelve month average world temperature, as measured by satellites, as reported by The National Space Science and Technology Center. World temperature change in centigrade degrees. It goes up, it goes down. If there is any trend, the trend is less than the decade to decade fluctuations, and is not at all apocalyptic. This differs from other graphs you may have seen because it starts at the …
Why iceland went bust – and why the US went bust
The usual answer, of course, is the evils of capitalism: this country’s banks – virtually unregulated – to borrow more than 10 times their country’s gross domestic product from the international wholesale money markets. Watch as a Graf Zeppelin of debt propels its self-styled “Viking Raiders†across the world’s financial stage, accumulating companies like gamblers hoarding chips. In fact, of course, the government regulators made lots of easy money available …