Thoughts on the failure of multi-culturalism.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Ultrasonic Hearing
I like the first comment at this post by Tom Maguire on Andrew Sullivan’s latest derangement indicator:
You can always tell when someone’s calling to racists with a dog whistle. All the liberals bark.
Yes, they have much better hearing for these things than racists.
Congratulations To Masten
For its recognition by Popular Science. Xombie is a lot better pick than that hilariously (yet sadly) idiotic Time pick a couple years ago.
[Update a few minutes later]
Similar congratulations to SpaceX, for the Falcon 9 selection.
The Sequel To “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”
TLC presents Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco.
Heh.
Bleeding And Purging
…to balance the humors of the economy:
The Keynesian idea of stimulus has no empirical basis, but the only active tool the government has in a time of economic downturn is its ability to borrow and spend. Surprise, surprise: during the Great Depression, governments fell all over themselves to embrace Keynes’s idea of borrowing and spending to “stimulate” the economy. They did so not because it was proven to work (then or since) but because it justified the one action that would make the government larger and more powerful and the political class larger and more powerful as well.
The Fed is now doing the same thing with inflation “Quantitative Easing”. There is no particular reason to believe that inflating the money supply will produce more real economic activity, indeed the history of the 20th century proves exactly the opposite. However, it is all the Fed can do right now so it is going to grab a convenient theory to justify inflating the currency.
For centuries, doctors tortured and killed their patients because neither they nor their patients had the courage to simply admit that there was little good the doctors could do. They created elaborate and detailed theories to justify their counterproductive interventions. Worse, after a time, everyone, doctors, patients, philosophers, proto-scientists, etc. all came to regard the tool driven rationalizations as facts. Not until the discovery of the germ theory of disease, quantitative chemistry and a general science of diagnostics did the nonsense theory of humors fade away. The invention of new tools drove the development of new, scientific theories.
We are doing the same damn thing with the current economic travails. Rather than admit there is little that the government can do to correct its colossal real-estate screwup, we get to witness the economic equivalent of bleeding and induced vomiting all based on a economic theories that have no other reason for existing that to justify the government bleeding and inducing vomiting in the economy.
“… but it’s what can be done,” could well be one of the most dangerous phrases in the English language. In very many cases, not just economics, the best thing to do is nothing. For any particular bad circumstance, there are near infinite number of actions that can make the circumstance worse but only a very few that can make it better. Indeed, there is no natural law that says that every circumstance can be improved with the capabilities at hand. Sometimes a “can do spirit” backfires. Some circumstances are like earthquakes or tornadoes: you can’t stop them, you just have to ride them out.
Don’t just do something; stand there.
A Brief Stint
…in the Wilderness. An amusing piece by Emmett Tyrell:
I had hoped my years in the Wilderness would last a bit longer. Out there with the chiggers and the poison ivy, I had hoped to find the pulchritudinous Sarah Palin. I understand that she has a terrific recipe for sautéed elk. Or perhaps I could catch a member of the World Wildlife Federation torturing butterflies.
But now we have returned to civilization, and I do not know what to do with all that stuff I bought from the L.L. Bean catalogue back in that dratted year ’08. Maybe I can give the stuff to Sam Tanenhaus, the goofball editor of the New York Times Book Review. If there be justice in this world, Tanenhaus will be consigned to the Wilderness for the rest of his life after writing that exceptionally imbecilic The Death of Conservatism, first in the New Republic, which is understandable. Everything in the New Republic, at least on politics, is imbecilic. Then, as a book. That was a little over a year ago. A little over a year ago! The Death of Conservatism! If I ever write such a stupendously stupid book, burn it!
…Now President Obama has fled the country. It is too soon to say if he will return or not. Let us assume the worst. He returns. What kind of country is he returning to? Actually the same country he left. The country about which he knows very little. And Nancy Pelosi knows even less. It is a country in which American conservatism has been providing the bulk of political ideas since the 1980s. You do not run for high office in America and promise to raise taxes, not since Fritz Mondale in 1984. You do not run for office promising enormous deficits. The mainstream in this country was shaped by the Reagan Revolution. When a Liberal runs for national office he or she lies to you. When a conservative runs for office he or she has no trouble telling you honestly what he or she is going to do. It is not terribly controversial except in Massachusetts and how long that will be true is in question.
Read all.
Saving Hayek
…from people who think they’re saving Hayek.
Actually, I don’t think that even they think that’s what they’re trying to do.
Freudian Slip?
I don’t have any good way to grab the video, but I reran the segment several times on the DVR. On the “All-Star Panel” of Special Report tonight, in the second segment, A. B. Stoddard bit off the word “Teabaggers” when describing the affiliation of many incoming members of Congress. Just so you know where her head is. Color me unsurprised…
I hope someone will come up with video.
Billion-Wise, Ten-Billion Foolish
I agree with Clark Lindsey’s post title on the stunningly stupid news that the Deficit Commission has recommended axing Commercial Crew, except it will end up costing a lot more than ten billion. It’s pretty clear from the announcement that they don’t even understand the purpose, and that it would save NASA billions. In fact, they are unwittingly recommending ending NASA human spaceflight, and consigning us to continuing to be held hostage by the Russians for years. More thoughts later, here or elsewhere. All of the nonsense about this in the media over the past many months hasn’t helped, of course.
[Evening update on the Left Coast]
I have more extensive thoughts over at National Review On-Line.
Update: The Free Speech Crisis At Iowahawk Blog
During the ongoing Iowahawk suspension / unsuspension / disunsuspension / strike crisis, I suspected that I and the other corporate “suits” at Iowahawk would pull out all stops to discredit me. But I never thought that I would stoop as low as to engage in a whispering campaign accusing me of treason against the United States of America. Sadly, this now appears to be the case. As we all know by now, a mysterious rocket powered missile was spotted over California today. Just as mysteriously, a new meme is appearing on Twitter, somehow linking this event with my recent alleged trip to California and subsequent suspension of myself.
Let me be clear. Yes, I was in California recently. And yes, during my visit I did spend last Thursday at XCOR Aerospace, a manufacturer of suborbital rocket vehicles in Mojave, at the invitation of renowned controversial science space blogger Rand Simberg.
And yes, okay, I sometimes enjoy playing with and/or driving rocket-propelled items. What of it? I have never sought to hide any of this from the public. But for anyone to somehow string these completely unrelated “facts” as evidence of some sort of bizarre master plan on my part to steal a rocket from XCOR and use it in a botched hold up of a Malibu liquor store, well, I mean, come on. That’s just crazy talk. The so-called “facts” being shopped around by Iowahawk’s corporate goons are as coincidental as the unexplained weekend break in and missing equipment at XCOR. If you ask me, the so-called “mystery rocket” was almost certainly fired by UN ships, seeking to enforce war crime sanctions against California for “The Kardashians,” “The Hills,” and “Real Housewives of Orange County.”
I am shocked that myself would suggest that I would be involved in a brazen military attack on what is arguably still part of the United States. At long last, me, have I no shame?
Not that I’ve ever noticed. Neither he nor him would last two minutes if either of them had any shame. And now he’s dragging me in as an accessory. At this point, a suspension without pay is far too lenient. He should be forced to start blogging again without pay.