CapitalistImperialistPig

The Prez gave our troops some well-deserved props, but the speech was otherwise pretty low on content. Yes we need to fix the economy, so how do you propose to do that? We would like to get the leaders of al Quaeda, but they don't even seem to be in the country we are taking big casualties to occupy. What's up with that? Where is the leadership? UPDATE: Kevin Drum heard more in the speech than I did and has a somewhat more positive take on it

In the comments, Wolfgang says: ...the problem is that there were also economists that predicted that the stimulus program would not work. So how do you distinguish 'not big enough' from 'would not work' ? By the way, i am of the opinion that TARP and various Fed programs had a big positive impact, but the Obama stimulus program made no significant difference (except increasing the deficit). How do you evaluate such an opinion? Good question, but how about explaining your reasoning in so concluding? Opinions, mine anyway, can be cheap, but evidence is pricier, as WB points out. One of the things that makes economics seem more like a religion than a science is the fact that economists seem unable to agree even on most of the basic kinds of evidence. In my opinion, the direct effect of the stimulus looks fairly easy to calculate: x-dollars went out the door, y people got or kept jobs as a result. Positive feedback is only slightly harder - the people hired spent mone...

They say that we get dumber faster as we get old. I watched part of Fauxsnooze Sunday today and liked it better than Christianne Amanpour's This Week . Some highlights from the latter: CA's no-brow bangs have been thinned enough to hint that she might actually have a forehead. Michelle Rhee needs a less asymmetric botox. The Sec of Ed needs to get more sleep. The leader of the AFT aparently had her head screwed on slightly sideways. And, oh yeah - we could use better schools.

Various economists are fessing up to past errors of judgement. The reader must judge the sincerity and remorse in these sentiments. Here are Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowen, and Megan McArdle. I'm a physicist, not an economist, and my eccentric ideas in physics aren't even wrong - yet, so my confession will be about my political misjudgements. I didn't think that Obama would be so easily cowed by the CIA, the DoD, and especially, Wall Street. I drastically overestimated both his ability and his will to use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to lead the country. I underestimated his timidity and overestimated his fight. I didn't think he would fiddle while the economy burned. I didn't think that Republicans would try to wreck the country in their efforts to destroy Obama. My bad.

What’s in a name? Would not a turdorch* by any other name smell as sweet? Today's question is inspired (or perhaps provoked) by this Steve Landsburg claim: "well formed statements about arithmetic are either true or false, regardless of whether they have proofs or disproofs." For example, the following: "Every even number is the sum of two primes." Steve Landsburg has a series of posts on the foundations of arithmetic. I won’t try to summarize them in any detail, so it’s not likely that you will be able to follow my argument below without reading them at least in part. There is a central point I want to dispute, that “every well-formed arithmetical statement is either true or false,” whether provable in some axiomatic description or other. This claim assumes that numbers, and their arithmetic, have an existence independent of that axiomatic description. As a philosophical point, I tend to agree, but the point is hardly self-evident. The strange thing to me is t...

If I recall correctly, Envy is reputed to be one of the seven deadly sins. Its vile reputation is well celebrated in art and literature, including this recent piece but I always like to try to comprehend the social function of common but unpopular behaviors. Envy is a pretty fundamental element of social glue, I think. People band together in cooperative groups if they think it profits them, but when the benefits go disproportionately to one or a few, it becomes hard to trust the social bargain. That's precisely the situation in most large societies, of course, so it becomes important to suppress envy as a disreputable emotion. Just sayin'.

In 1850, Glacier National Park had 150 glaciers. When I visited it the day before yesterday, they were down to 26, and shrinking.