Let Africa have a potential weapon against ebola.
The overcautiousness over the past half century as a result of thalidomide has probably killed millions.
Category Archives: Business
Millennials And Workforce Participation
Remember when Bill Clinton lied his way into office in 1992, claiming that it was the “worst economy in fifty years” when in fact it hadn’t been that bad and the recession had actually ended? Well, it really really is the worst economy in seventy years now, and it’s due to the kind of government interference in the economy and war on business that caused it the last time, in the Roosevelt administration:
It seems rather perplexing that the Los Angeles Times could try to creatively rename unemployed millennials trying to survive by working a bunch of “off-the-books jobs for cash to survive as ‘freelancing’”. But the simple facts are that businesses have adapted to the Obama Administration’s taxes, regulations, and the “Affordable Care Act.” Add the burden of Governor Brown’s tax increase to the highest level in the nation, and California millennials are rewarded, according to the Times, with “16.2% of Californians — or about 6.2 million — were either jobless, too discouraged to seek work, working less than they’d like, or in off-the-books jobs.”
It’s not actually perplexing at all, of course.
[Update a few minutes later]
Three quarters of Americans think that their childrens’ lives will be worse than theirs.
They will, if we don’t get a huge change in direction, back to the Republic and liberty.
[Update a few more minutes later]
From apathy to dependence:
Tyler went on to suggest that democracies tended to go through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
It’s ironic that it was Joe Biden who said that it was the Republicans who “wanted to put y’all back in chains.”
[Update a while later]
First link was wrong. Fixed now.
[Update a couple minutes later]
A glimmer of hope from the generation that has been the most abused by these little tyrants:
“An overwhelming majority of these Millennial-aged voters actually think government aid does more harm than good, that the government is at its max when it comes to helping the poor, and – get this – that people on the government dole have it way too easy.”
Being underemployed and underpaid while having to support people who don’t work at all will have that effect.
SpaceX’s Records
Space Kiwis
Another new smallsat launch venture, based in Auckland.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here‘s Jeff Foust’s take on it.
Leftist Wonks
How Halbig demonstrates that they’re not very good at their jobs:
For a movement that so prides itself on being the vanguard of wonky wonkery on wonkiness, Cohn’s admissions are rather stunning. It’s one thing to believe event X is more likely than event Y, but to write off event Y as unimaginable? To ignore entirely a specific provision of law that says event Y is eminently possible? That’s a special kind of wonkery right there.
“But his 2010 comments didn’t really address the subsidy issue that was central to Halbig,” you might say, “so what’s your point?” That’s a fair question, and I don’t mean to pick on Cohn, who has regularly contributed very helpful information for many years now.
His remarks are important, though, because they reveal the massive gap between what self-styled progressives wonks think they know and what they actually know. That gap becomes increasingly relevant when these same wonks claim that their unparalleled coverage of the bill in 2009 and 2010 magically grants them intimate knowledge of not just the bill’s text, but also the innermost thoughts of the bill’s authors and supporters.
It’s not the only example, but it’s more glaring than most.
New CSF President
Eric Stallmer has been hired to replace Michael Lopez-Alegria. Seems like a good pick.
Gender Disparities In Science And Tech
No, it’s probably not caused by sexism.
Highway Funds
Here’s a crazy idea: Let’s spend them on highways.
The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce
It should be renamed the U.S. Chamber of Rent Seeking.
Robert Redford And Cate Blanchett
Do you really want to make a movie in which you unwittingly depict people who are fools?
…let me put my own cards on the table: I voted for Bush in 2004. If I were a character in Mapes’s book, this would mean you should ignore me, because she repeatedly disqualifies statements that hurt her case by pointing out that the person speaking is a Republican or a Bush supporter. However, I should note that I also supported Al Gore in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008, and I do not view either liberals or conservatives as presumptive liars.
Nor do I view Mapes as a presumptive liar. That would require implausible levels of evil and stupidity: evil, because she’d be trying to alter an election result with a massive lie; stupid, because the odds of getting away with such a scheme are vanishingly small. We’re talking a supervillain-who-leaves-hero-in-a-remote-quarry-to-be-devoured-by-carnivorous-GMO-squirrels level of evil and stupid. Too evil and stupid to get as far as Mapes did in the cutthroat world of television production.
I do think she made a very bad mistake, which could have been averted had she been more skeptical about the documents she received from Bill Burkett, a disgruntled National Guard retiree who reportedly had it in for Bush. I think that she has become unable to recognize that mistake, for the same reasons that we all cling to our own self-serving narratives rather than admit that we have screwed up. After reading through all the contemporary reports, the report from CBS’s independent panel and Mapes’s book, I think Mapes fell prey to the journalist’s two worst enemies: confirmation bias and motivated cognition.
There is no way to make this flick without it being either truthful (in which case they won’t want to do it) or embarrassing:
Well, some of them (unlike you, apparently) were smart enough to call the fax number on the memo, and determine that it came from a Kinko’s in Texas. And though there was in fact analysis of what the documents actually said, which also helped torpedo them, it was in fact enough, Mary. It’s hard (perhaps impossible) to prove that a document is authentic, but it only takes one solid strike against its validity to show it to be inauthentic. And the fact that you still don’t understand that, or understand basic logic at all, is why you are now out of a job, and should never have had that job to begin with.
Ah, the best and the brightest.