GOOGLE MAPS HAS THE PROOF.

I hope the Japanese movie directors can get there in time.

Scott

TAKE THE CIA QUIZ AND FIND OUT!

Really Corny. Maybe next they’ll come out with an x-box game for sooper secret spy training.

Scott

HT BoingBoing

Click here to see an artfully done map of the monstrosity that is the Federal budget. But actually as Michael Cannon of the Cato institue points out here, in one of the most amusingly titled blog posts I can recall in recent memory, it is actually only about 1/3rd of the federal budget because it only shows that portion of the budget that must be approved by congress annually. Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest on the national debt are not included and make up about about 63% of the federal budget.
Steve

. . .is my Monkey Name.

Whats yours?

The other day, Steve posted his response to what I had written on Bono and African Relief. He specifically mentioned the popular new book
The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
by William Easterly

There is a good review of the book at the New York Times Book Review.

Scott

HT - ThinkChristian

A new web service called Daily Lit will send you small a small chunk of a book in an email every day. Tha way you read good stuff in the course of weeks or months a little bit at a time.

Needless to say, all the books are public domain.

I have chosen to read - Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth
by Rene Descartes

Check it out.

Scott

The other day Steve posted on the ridiculous conspiracy that Bush and the republicans are lowering gas prices so they will benefit politically.

NPR had a great report this morning on that very topic. Steve Inskeep asked all the right questions and the economist who answered pretty much nailed the coffin shut on the stupid theory.

Curb Your Conspiracy Theories on Gas Prices

Scott

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost linked to this remarkable story of a Christian Japanese kamikaze pilot in WWII. Its intriguing and it rasies some interesting questions. I suspect Ichizo Hayashi crashed his warplan into an allied ship and went to into the bosom of Jesus. One interesting point to note is that he became a kamikaze under duress and that he did NOT become one BECAUSE OF HIS FAITH. The writer ends the article with this quote:

But the book shows us how easy it is for even a sincere and hugely-intelligent Christian like Hayashi to fall victim to poisonous nationalistic ideologies. The lesson surely is that Christians should always question the dominant political culture of the day.

I was a freshman in college 23 years ago today. I didn’t know until today that The Soviet Union almost launched a full-scale nuclear attack on the U.S.

Colonel Stanislav Petrov is a hero.

Here’s another link

Scott

from Slashdot

Its a UK Vodafone commercial.

Tracy McGrady makes 13 points in 33 seconds in a come-from-behind win.

Houston Rockets defeat the San Antonio Spurs.

I LOVE NPR. It’s hands-down my favorite news source.

They had three interesting reports this morning.

Muslim Leaders Visit Pope for Dialogue

Aga Khan Speaks Out on Understanding of Muslims

Shostokovich Fans Debate Composer’s Political Legacy

Click below for some free Shostokovich for your listening pleasure - Concerto #1
(Sergey Nakariakov trumpet, Prague Chamber Orch).

Scott

During my daily blog reading this morning, Chris Anderson at the Long Tail Blog linked to this FOXTROT comic. I laughed out loud.

I haven’t mentioned before that I am volunteering my time twice a week during my lunch break to work with a bunch of seventh graders in a web page design class. I read a lot of blogs about the newest technology and especially what is often called “Web 2.0″.

The sad thing is I understand everything Jason is talking about in this comic. I may be also guilty of trying too hard to get the coolest technology into the kids sites. I’ll be so bummed if my kids lose over hamsters and bunnies made with Front Page (I am requiring the kids in my class to use a plain text editor and not a GUI tool to build their sites).

I’ll link from here to the kids sites as soon as we start getting some decent looking pages up.

FYI, This is the book I am using. The kids love it.

Scott

I have been joking for several weeks about how the greedy oil companies must have had an outbreak of unselfishness now that gas prices have dropped 20%.  CNN finds a more sinister cause.  Incredible!

Steve

HT to CafeHayek

My previous post dealt with the issue of Global Poverty and Trade at the big picture strategic level. In this post I will give my reaction to the particular issues that were raised in Scott’s post:

• My admittedly kneejerk reaction to Bono’s concern about unfair trade was this: fair trade is usually a euphemism for protectionism and tariffs. I have a friend who works as a plant manager in the textile industry in the upstate where I live. He espouses “fair trade” not “free trade”. Looking past the jargon, what he is saying is that “the government needs to protect our industry and jobs from cheap competition”. And yet that’s the point of trade isn’t it: getting cheaper, higher quality goods into the hands of consumers.
• The data is unequivocal, worldwide agricultural subsidies (to the tune of $50,000,000,000 per month) make the goods of subsistence farmers uncompetitive on world markets, thus making them poorer. First a little Econ 101. The law of supply and demand states that if a good is subsidized, and most of these subsidies take place in the form of price supports, it leads to lower demand and higher supply creating surpluses. And indeed, we have vast surpluses of agricultural commodities in the US. Being kind hearted Americans, what do we do with all these surpluses? Much of it ends up on the market in 3rd world countries as Foreign Aid. What is not given out free as Aid to starving children, ends up on the black market. Even the most efficient African Farmer cannot compete against “free”. Food Aid tends to destroy the local agrarian economies of 3rd world countries.
• I believe so much in the power of trade to improve the lives of people that I favor the unilateral elimination of all US trade barriers: tariffs, subsidies, quotas, import duties, import and export licenses.
• I doubt that progressives such as Bono would favor such a proposal for 3rd world country, although it would, undoubtedly, improve the lives of the poor in the 3rd world. They tend to mean managed trade when they talk about fair trade, a scenario whereby these countries would be allowed to export as much as they wanted without barriers but imports would be limited through trade barrier schemes such as those listed above. But the poor benefit when goods can be produced more efficiently and then imported into the country. Goods are cheaper and that helps the poor.
• Bono has primarily focused on debt relief in much of his activism. But debt relief has trade-offs and creates perverse incentives. I recommend Easterly’s book, The Elusive Quest for Growth to research this topic. Despotic 3rd world leaders have come to expect the debt forgiveness that has been granted over and over again without ever providing the promised market reforms. So the effect of foreign aid and debt forgiveness has been to shore up the most kleptocratic tinpot despots in the 3rd world.
• So I propose the following: forgive the debt, dismantle foreign aid programs, the IMF and the World Bank. Capital will flow to credit-worthy nations whose leaders institute democratic and market reforms and the lives of its people will improve as surely as the sun sets and waves crash. Free markets work wherever they are tried.

Steve