(login as dailykos@dailykos.com, password: dailykos)

Reminder: a Friedman = 6 month, i.e. the time needed for thigns to get better in Iraq.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

But the very first graph they show is this :

Everybody still is swallowing the new figures of Bush his budget.
Boeing illustrates very clearly the militarisation of the economy.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

For those of you with flip-top heads, who can take out your brains and give them a good rinsing off, I present to you the esteemed Gary Becker, featured expert on the topic:

"Well, it's unfair," Becker acknowledges. "The accident of birth, the accident of the genes we have, the accident of parents we have: It is unfair."
But, Becker asks, what can the nation do about the inequalities of parents and genes? "Unless you think you're going to start switching babies around across families, as Plato recommended," he jokes. "You can't do that."

Arguing Against the Dangers of a Fairer Economy

Becker says it's dangerous for the government to force the economy to be fairer. Programs that take money away from the rich to give to the poor, Becker argues, mess with incentives. High-school kids may not be as motivated to go to college. Some college students might decide the cost of a higher degree isn't worth it. Over time, the United States could end up with a workforce that's not as highly educated, not as skilled. The country might not be as competitive. The economy might not grow as fast.

Someone recently recommended to me the Becker-Posner Blog, which I guess is supposed to be fair and balance because Posner is a lefty.  Regrettably, I have more pressing things to do than watch one rich old white man who is pro-poverty exchange words with another rich old white guy who is pro-selling kids on the free market.  Like, popping some popcorn or something...


Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

One news for Migeru - I thought you was interested in chess news, do you know that Association of Chess Professionals and possibly FIDE are starting investigation about alleged Topalov cheating. Unfortunately it is only Russian language news, but it refers to article in Suddeutche Zeitung by chess master Martin Brightigan who noticed in Viijk-en-Zee tournament suspicious activities of Mr Topalov and his trainer Silvio Danailov. Mr Danailov already filed libel suit against Brightigan.  

If Russia's so bad, I wonder what exactly I've been enjoying this side of the Atlantic these past few years.

Mais c'est un scandâââle!!

the authoritarianism of postwar Gaullist France, huh? So what was that about, you dummy? You mean the US didn't manage to take over France as a military protectorate (despite the fact that even the banknotes were printed in preparation) because De Gaulle stood in the way, is that what you mean? And the "messiness" of Italy, you mean the country that was run for many long years after the war by the CIA and their puppets, which was kinda messy?

Before I piss off American readers, believe me I don't mean to diminish one wit the contribution, the sacrifice, of Americans in the cause of freedom from Nazism. Nor even really to complain about some of the rather crude hegemonist views held in DC at the time. Just to wonder what this fuckwit ignorant wanker Friedman is still doing parading as the top op-ed writer of the US "newspaper of record". Finished. Apologies.

De plus en plus fréquemment, fruits, légumes, viandes et autres fleurs provenant des quatre coins de la planète nous sont proposés dans les commerces.

Lorsque ces produits sont acheminés en Belgique (ou en Europe) par avion, le coût énergétique est extrêmement élevé, avec des émissions de CO2 hors normes, 60 fois plus que le transport par voie maritime.

Par exemple, le seul transport aérien d'un kilo...

• de fraises d'Israël émet 2,6 kg de CO2, soit l'équivalent de 1 litre de pétrole.
  
• d'asperges du Pérou émet 8,4 kg de CO2, soit l'équivalent de 3,1 litres de pétrole.
  
• de boeuf d'Argentine émet 9 kg de CO2, soit l'équivalent de 3,4 litres de pétrole.
  
• d'agneau de Nouvelle-Zélande émet 15 kg de CO2, soit l'équivalent de 5,6 litres de pétrole.

Cette pratique n'est pas neuve mais dans le contexte actuel de réchauffement climatique, cela devient interpellant. Je ne souhaite pas interdire les importations de ces produits frais mais, en tant que consommateur, je désire pouvoir faire mon choix en connaissance de cause.

C'est la raison pour laquelle j'en appelle aux partis politiques démocratiques belges pour qu'ils légifèrent en la matière et imposent aux distributeurs l'application de logos (un avion rouge et un bateau bleu, par exemple) indiquant systématiquement et clairement le mode de transport utilisé pour le transport intercontinental de ces marchandises.

 

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

"Poor" is relative.  "Poverty" is absolute.

That there will be poor is a fact of economic life.  Poverty, however, is a result of a predatory economic system, Left or Right..

(I seem to be on a General Systems kick today.)


No one could have predicted

I'm always interested in what people believe in. I'm even more interested in what people believe in when it doesn't make sense (to me). Unlike, I suspect, many of us here, I do enjoy reading things I don't agree with, or that I profess to be uninterested in (the extraordinary rendition of syntax).

The documentary warned me of the fact that the individual eccentricities and unique world views of individuals that I so admire, can also translate into mass hysteria. But chicken or egg? Mass hysteria is dangerous. I disliked the total submission to the Beatles in the Sixties. I dislike any 'movements'. I love paradoxes.

This sentence is false

To quote wikipedia: A paradox (Gk: "aside belief") is an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition. Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably and wrongly with contradiction; but whereas a contradiction asserts its own opposite, many paradoxes do allow for resolution of some kind.

nuff said...

You can't be me, I'm taken