If I could wave a magic wand and make any blogger write more it would be Andrew. Most bloggers are very replaceable. Good economists are a dime a dozen and there are too many pundits. General interest blogs are generally boring (including mine) and single subject blogs are often not much better. But good poets Click Here to continue reading.
Author Archives: ape man
Derek on Gene Patents
Derek Lowe has an interesting post up on the patenting of genes. Well worth taking a look at for a more technical description of the problems with the practice.
Best part….
How about polymers that aren’t man-made, like cotton or silk? We have no good way (at present) to produce or isolate individual single isomers of such Click Here to continue reading.
Putting a caveat to my demagoguery….
Anger hath a privilege, as Kent said in Shakespeare’s King Lear, but it does not do well to abuse it. I do not regret my demagoguery of the other day, but I do think I need to clarify one thing.
I do in fact believe that it is possible for someone of good faith to Click Here to continue reading.
Whitewashing the South and slandering Lincoln
I got a question for you. Do you believe that the Civil War was all about tariffs that the North was imposing on the South? Do you believe that Lincoln did not really care about slavery? Do you believe that slavery was dying out on its own and that the South would have ended Click Here to continue reading.
Why don't European tradesmen use pickup trucks?
Why don’t European tradesmen use pickup trucks? As best as I can tell from what I read, European tradesmen use a mixture of small vans and one ton (and up) trucks. The half ton and three quarter ton pickup trucks that are widely used in America are almost unheard of in Europe. Why is this?
This Click Here to continue reading.
Is it possible to be morally relativistic?
This is a comment I posted recently on this blog (on this post). I will probably regret it in the morning. In my opinion, if you address any philosophical issue in under 30 pages you are guaranteed to make a fool out of yourself. So read this quick, before I think better of it and Click Here to continue reading.
Why should the SEC do anything to protect shareholders from management?
Now let me say right off that I don’t really think that the government should do absolutely nothing to protect shareholders. It is one of the proper functions of the government to protect property after all. But it is not proper for the government to mow your lawn, clean your house, or supervise your employees. Click Here to continue reading.
Shall we starve Mexicans to fuel innovation?
Vinod Khosla (among many other people) wants the government to spend vast amounts of money to help along the production and adoption of ethanol. In other news, the Mexicans are having trouble buying corn to feed themselves because of existing ethanol production.
Cheap shot?
Maybe. But I have serious problems with Khosla and those like him. You Click Here to continue reading.
Meet our local Muslim militia….
If someone told you that there was a Moslem group that did military-type exercises near the reservoirs that supply much of New York City’s water you would probably think that it was some right-wing fantasy. But it happens to be true. The group calls themselves the Jamaat ul-Fuqra.
I first found out about this group Click Here to continue reading.
A trillion dollars gets my attention too….
Brad Setser has an excellent overview of the Yen carry trade in his latest post. Nouriel Roubini reminds people of how fast things can go wrong in this post.
A lot of people are responding to them by arguing that fundamentals justify the out flows and there is nothing to worry about. But that begs Click Here to continue reading.