Seems a lot of people are curious about the tub the Chinese forgot to park in the garage. A commercial satellite snapped a pic of what appears to be China’s new nuclear ballistic missile submarine. The image ended up on Google Earth, so the spies didn’t have to work too hard.
A senior director of the White House Writers Group, Daniel Casse, weighs in on the book by the author interviewed in the article I blogged about here. The gist:
For [Caplan], democracy fails because it doesn’t produce the most economically efficient results. … but then again, American democracy has never been about efficiency. … The Founders cared about letting everyone put in his two cents, even if it meant for messier politics. [American] democracy disappoints Mr. Caplan because it doesn’t rise to the standards of Ludwig von Mises or other libertarian thinkers. Economists may well agree with his thesis, in part because it makes them feel better about themselves. But it should not make ordinary Americans feel any worse about their democracy. Read on…
From Facebook, an observation about critical mass and self-reinforcing network growth. Or about South African work-avoidance behaviour. Who knows. In the last couple of weeks, I noted the approximate size of the South Africa network on the following dates:
By contrast, MySpace has two significant South Africa groups, with memberships (possibly overlapping) of 3 000 and 1 600. Now which one would you join? At least 30 South Africans chose Facebook just while I was writing this post. Hectic, bru.
Environmentalism is “the religion of choice for urban atheists”, said Michael Crichton in a famous speech to the Commonwealth Club in, of all places, San Francisco. I’d give real atheists more credit than that, but if you were in any doubt that he’s right for the majority of the secular left, it’s worth quoting Al Gore’s op-ed in the New York Times:
This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue, one that affects the survival of human civilization. It is not a question of left versus right; it is a question of right versus wrong. …
[There is] something even more precious to be gained if we do the right thing. The climate crisis offers us the chance to experience what few generations in history have had the privilege of experiencing: a generational mission; a compelling moral purpose; a shared cause; and the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict of politics and to embrace a genuine moral and spiritual challenge.
Amen, brother. It’s a spiritual challenge! Thomas Sowell recently wrote: “Policies are judged by their consequences, but crusades are judged by how good they make the crusaders feel.”
But as Gore rightly says, “It is unprecedented and even laughable for us to imagine that we could actually make a conscious choice as a species.” Sadly, he spoils this profound caveat by explaining exactly what “conscious choice” we should make, viz:
To this end, we should demand that the United States join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy Earth.
Ah, I see. It’s not a “conscious choice as a species”, but the imposition of fascist measures on the unbelieving masses. If it’s such a good idea, why would you need treaties and laws and policies to enforce it on people? And what happened to separation of church and state?
Considering the grinding poverty in which such measures will likely mire the next generation - especially those living in Africa, where fossil fuel is abundant and cheap, but clean energy is inefficient and exorbitant - the term “inherit” seems an unfortunate choice. Since poor people can’t afford expensive technology to defend against natural disasters, maybe this should be termed a suicide cult.
