I Call Him, "Gyro"
Emirates Economist quotes something that seems intended to demonstrate a flaw.#
Tyler Cowen excerpts about the question "Does money make you happier?" from a book he is writing on welfare economics.#
Most generally, we must ask which institutional structures give people the greatest opportunities to structure their lives to achieve their preferred forms of happiness or well-being. Some persons may seek temporary stimulations, others may want to feel fulfilled at the end of their lives, and others may seek to maximize the quality of their modal day. Some will seek happiness through out-competing their peers for status, while others will look inward. Again, greater opportunities and freedoms will likely favor the wealthier society in these regards. Well-being is not a single variable to be maximized; rather individuals prefer to structure the kinds of well-being or happiness they can achieve.
Laurence Caromba writes Marxism in Four Steps (quoted for sheer delight)#
This is for all those readers who are entering the higher education system this year. Good luck. You are about to experience the wonderful world of binge drinking, student riots and Karl Marx.
If you don't yet know who Karl Marx is, you're about to find out in a big way. Here is a list of reasons why Marxism is cool and fun:
1. Marxism is simple. All Marxists theories sound exactly the same, so if you can memorise one, you've memorised them all. A Marxist theory on x is always "x is a mechanism that the bourgeoisie use to enrich themselves and keep the proletarian masses poor". Instead of x, write one of the following terms: democracy, international trade, banks, capitalism, political parties, the media, social stratification, social mobility, racism, the police, the military, printer cartridges, holidays to Florida, Nigerian e-mail scams, etc.
2. Marxist writing is impossible to understand. The second thing you must learn about Marxism is that Marxists write in their own language because they consider normal English beneath them. This is an example of what Marxist academic writing sounds like:
We must here return to one such "distortion", the most important one for the understanding of the interaction between the African modelity and the international arena, i. e. the "inverted" societal structures with the resulting importance of superstructural factors. "The assumption... is not that there are specific socio-economic preconditions that have to be met before democracy becomes possible", wrote the American political scientist, Marina Ottaway, "but that there are conditions that facilitate a democratic transition. If those conditions do not exist — and they do not in Africa — then democracy has to be attained purely through politics: political action by small democratic groups has to provide the leverage for change that has not been provided by social or economic transformation. Democratisation, in other words, takes a curious Leninist twist, becoming a process where political organising must make up for the unfavourable underlying socio-economic conditions".
"Help," you're thinking. "I don't know what this means." It doesn't matter, nobody else does either. Thus, any interpretation you make up is de facto the right answer. Just make sure you include lots of references to capital, the proletariat, etc. (See Point #1)
3. Marxism is immune to falsification. If you write like a Marxist, nobody can disprove what you're saying. Simply memorise the phrase "Yes, but that just shows how sneaky they are!" and use it to destroy any counter-argument. Let's say you're discussing social mobility in a capitalist system. You argue that the capitalist system does not allow class mobility. The person you're arguing with points out that some people do start out poor and become rich, and offers a few specific examples in support of this. Immediately respond with "Yes, but that just shows how sneaky [the capitalists] are! They allow a few people to get rich so that everyone else will labour under the illusion that they can get rich too instead of overthrowing the capitalist sytem!"
4. Karl Marx is an academic super-star. You will soon learn that Karl Marx is the single most important intellectual the human race has ever produced. Every department in the humanities and the social sciences claims that Karl Marx is one of their own. This is great, because it means you only have to learn one theory, and you've effectively studied for seven different subjects. Departments that prominently teach Marxism include sociology, philosophy, political science, international relations, economics, history, anthropology, English, and probably a lot of others I don't know about.
Bush isn't just like Hitler, he's worse. (Very logically and profound.)#
Halle Berry Totally Redeems Herself, reported by the Movie Blog via Reuters.#
"They can't take this away from me, it's got my name on it!" she quipped. A raucous crowd cheered her on as she gave a stirring recreation of her Academy Award acceptance speech, including tears. She thanked everyone involved in "Catwoman," a film she said took her from the top of her profession to the bottom.
"I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit," she said as she dragged her agent on stage and warned him "next time read the script first."
It is rare for a Razzie winner to show up at the spoof awards held on the night before Oscars -- but Berry did, saying her mother taught her that to be "a good winner you had to be a good loser first." She received a standing ovation.
Dave Winer discloses his secret source of Google information!#
Mummified DJ found inside club wall#
Winnipeg disc jockey Eduardo Sanchez, 21, was last seen just before 3 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2002, when he talked to friends near the Village Cabaret.
Police say they likely will never know why Eduardo Sanchez crawled behind a nightclub wall.
Some time in the early hours of a cold October day last year, a young disc jockey stumbled into a Winnipeg cabaret and disappeared.
This week, police found the mummified body of Eduardo Sanchez entombed behind a wall in the basement of the popular nightclub, 14 months after he was last seen alive.
He had a LiveJournal!
Russell Roberts reflects on K-Pax.#
Dr. Powell: How do you know right from wrong?
Prot: Every being in the universe knows right from wrong, Mark.
This planet would be a better place if we allowed things that were immoral to be merely looked down on, rather than to be against the law. The war on drugs presumes that if drugs are legal, people will take more of them because somehow, making them legal sanctions them. Drugs, rudeness and hate speech and many other activities that some people view as immoral are best curbed by private sanctions not public ones.
Tyler Cowen reports Chinese workers striking for longer hours.#