The Chicago Tribune and The Columbus Dispatch are reporting a Washington Post story on the federal push to make the polar bear the first mammal to be listed as in-risk of extinction due to global warming. According to the reports, “The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S.
Gerard Jackson takes on Alan Wood and Robert Shiller on the cause of speculative asset price bubbles in Medieval booms and historical and economic amnesia. Wood, citing Shiller, identifies media hype as the cause of speculative manias. Jackson responds that boom and bust cycles have been evident in times and places without news media. The only constant is the presence of fractional reserve banking:
Jeff Tucker’s cold medicine post got me thinking. As the government’s creeping power to regulate all sorts of things continues to expand, for each new regulation you always hear the same argument: “But it’s really not a big deal!” There are always people ready to argue that it is not really a big inconvenience or a great restriction on your freedom for the government to restrict the amount of cold medicine you can buy, prevent a restaurant from serving you trans fats, require you to wear a seatbelt, etc. These things are simple. You hardly miss them.
by Larry Sechrest (Sul Ross University)
I pointed out in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent that “The conventional defense of the patent system is that it is essential in order to stimulate creativity.” And here, on the widely-read Patently-O Patent Law blog, we have patent attorney Dennis Crouch casually admitting:
Scrooge speaks: To hell with writers. They’re all the same. They carry a simple formula in their empty minds; mix one small fact with a headful of dreams and Eureka! A best seller. Give a writer a drop of truth and he’ll make a Thames; thereby providing him a monthly royalty check, good roast beef and pudding. Not to mention a long, beaver fur coat with a deep pocket for a fat wallet. And his pals say, “Hey, Charley Dickens, what a beyuuuutiful coat. Hear your book’s outselling 5-penny mulled cider!”
I’ve never been a privacy freak. A tax freak, yes. I take a realistic view of the world so I’m willing to contribute an annual sawbuck for smooth and unpotholed highways. And maybe another 20-30 dollars a year so the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard and Alabama National Guard can protect me from those who would kill me with glee.
Some of the responses to my post on General Pinochet have reminded me that along with the fable of Santa Claus and his reindeer, which is so prominent right now because it is the Christmas Season, there is another fable that is still going around. And while the Santa Claus fable is innocent, serving merely to entertain small children, this one is definitely not innocent, but positively vicious.
