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Assorted links
1. Dark flow?
4. Is shipping food really an environmental problem?
5. More good reasons not to trust former Nazis.
6. First pictures of extrasolar planets.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 13, 2008 at 12:50 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
The food article makes a kind of stupid point. Yes, it is obviously inefficient for Icelanders to grow bananas versus importing them from Costa Rica. However, a local food proponent's alternative would be that Icelanders eat fruits that actually can be grown in Iceland. (Iceland is kind of an extreme example because I don't know that much of anything can be grown there, but the article also mentions British tomatoes. Again, a local food proponent would suggest that British people not use fresh tomatoes in the winter when they are either being produced in greenhouses or distant locales.) The volume numbers are well taken, but I'm not sure that the fact that something isn't a large problem is a good reason not to go ahead and fix the problem anyway.
Posted by: derek at Nov 13, 2008 1:35:17 PM
Dark Flow -
I guess the Lord has seen enough, what with Paulson changing the bailout. He's pulling the plug.
Posted by: Rich Berger at Nov 13, 2008 1:42:39 PM
Love #1. I wonder what all is too big, too small, too far away, beyond our limits.
Posted by: burger flipper at Nov 13, 2008 1:45:25 PM
In Britain our sugar beet refineries grow tomatoes in winter, exploiting the warm and CO2-rich exhaust from their gas turbines.
Posted by: dearieme at Nov 13, 2008 1:46:27 PM
From the comment section of the number five link...
Speaking as a 20 something, I have never met anyone with communist sympathies or affiliation who was the least bit embarrassed to admit this in a crowd. And there is good reason for this; I have never been in a crowd that experienced any negative affect from hearing such a confession. In fact, any of the times I've seen such a statement met with opprobrium (always by some token dude. Not me, I've learned when to show my cards. :)), it is the one who challenges the communist who experiences social stigma (e.g. "McCarthyite", "red baiting", etc).
Sure if someone who is a "true believer" starts yelling at everyone about their Wicked Capitalist Ways, they get shunned, but this is true for almost all belief systems; people don't like to get lectured by evangelists. But people with passive Communist beliefs are seen as interesting, intellectual, or fashionable. This is certainly not true for fascism, or even mainstream conservatism.
Posted by: The Owners Manual at Nov 13, 2008 2:01:09 PM
Perhaps too technical, but Ned Wright has something interesting to say about the dark flow study.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm#News
Posted by: Pedro J. at Nov 13, 2008 2:11:19 PM
"But people with passive Communist beliefs are seen as interesting, intellectual, or fashionable."
Interesting and fashionable, surely. Intellectual is not a word I'd toss in there, except perhaps to those even less intellectual. Which is not to say that intellectualism and communism cannot go hand in hand, but young communists, particularly those who wish to 'confess' their ideology, don't generally stand out as shining examples of thorough thought, any more than typical mainstream conservatives.
Posted by: MM at Nov 13, 2008 2:45:07 PM
Doesn't that Fomalhaut pic look waaaay like the Eye of Sauron? Jes' asking.
Posted by: StreetWalker at Nov 13, 2008 3:32:50 PM
The Canadian banks also survived the depression much better. Not a single one of the five Canadian banks failed.
But how much of their performance is due to the point that they are an oligopoly rather than a more competitive model?
I sometimes see libertarian using the Canadian banks as an example, but why would a oligopoly model be preferable to a more competitive model to libertarians?
Posted by: spencer at Nov 13, 2008 4:10:24 PM
Last time I looked (when this was posted earlier in the crisis, Canadian Banks charged per transaction fees (starting as low as 40 transactions), human teller fees (meaning you didn't use an ATM), and account minimum fees. I'd hope the banks could survive with fee generation that rich. I think there are still only 12 banks across in Canada.
Posted by: nelsonal at Nov 13, 2008 4:23:55 PM
Interestingly this particular argument about former Nazis really only holds water when applied to those who avowed Nazi sympathies *after* WWII, since Nazism was not unpopular in Germany itself before that time. So we couldn't really have used this argument against someone like Kurt Waldheim or say Leni Riefenstahl.
Of course, the original Nazis are more or less all dead now, and I would tend to agree that the argument applies to those who have professed to be Nazis since 1945. But I'll admit I'm a little uncomfortable with the general form - basically, the author is arguing that some views are *so unpopular* that those who espouse them must be insane. This is a little thin inasfar as it relies not one whit on the actual precepts of Nazism to make its evaluation, but only on herd wisdom, which I mistrust.
Posted by: bbartlog at Nov 13, 2008 4:27:22 PM
It would be really nice if we could have a cage match with Duke, his buddies &
Farrakhan and his. Better than that we could make the charity orphaned multiracial
children.
Posted by: Aardvark at Nov 13, 2008 5:06:00 PM
Anyone who has read Wilhelm Reich "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" already knew it was hard for fascists to change their behavior.
Posted by: mickslam at Nov 13, 2008 5:32:25 PM
Locavores: It just hit me that every couple years we have to deal with some new heinous b.s. Imagine if we had to deal with it all at once. Do we not have to deal with it all at once because the purveyors of the b.s. have only a narrow b.s. bandwidth themselves?
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 13, 2008 7:42:47 PM
One theory in the anti-aging realm is that people born when their gestation is out of season of plentiful fruits and veggies age faster because they start out with "unreliable" systems due to undernourishment. So, preggers should most definitely eat tomatoes whenever they feel like it.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 13, 2008 7:48:39 PM
I thought it said "photo of Tora Bora." I just read a book about the fight there when Bin Laden escaped. I was disappointed.
Posted by: mdsand at Nov 13, 2008 8:21:03 PM
The interesting thing in my book is if the disaster had been a few years longer in coming, there might have been much left of the Canadian banks as they would have been picked off by the much more profitable American banks. There's just no way to avoid crises that take more than a few years to manifest.
As is, the Canadian banks may well get side-swiped by the crisis anyway. As Arnold Kling has pointed out, being an ant is not a winning strategy.
Posted by: Tom West at Nov 13, 2008 9:47:56 PM
Considering what's in season and local is pretty much nothing in the northern states between October and June (I live in Michigan), and the items that can be kept reasonably edible without refrigeration are, oh, potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, and onions, it seems to me like year-round eat local admonitions are a recipe either for mass malnutrition (how well did people in the 19th century eat?) or for massive depopulation of the northern states (and Canada), with everyone moving to California, Texas, and Florida. Somehow, I don't think the latter is what the eat-local activists have in mind, so I can only assume it's the former.
Posted by: Don K at Nov 14, 2008 6:24:08 AM
Don K
I live north of the 50th parallel. My wife, despite strong enviro-sympathies, insists on a green salad with fresh hothouse tomatoes to begin dinner each day.
I am reminded of a Beverly Hillbillies' quote that, mutatis mutandis, seems apt here: "Once you've tasted turkey, you won't settle for tripe."
Let the southward exodus begin.
Posted by: BKN at Nov 14, 2008 12:49:59 PM
Thanks, I was looking for reasons not to trust former Nazis. As for trusting current Nazis, the jury is still out.
Posted by: C at Nov 14, 2008 1:39:06 PM
I still don't get what makes Communists and Anarchists less objectionable than Nazis and Fascists. Is it because they killed over 100 million people in operations other than war while supposedly pursuing a utopian agenda while the Nazis and Fascists killed 20 million while pursuing a utopian agenda?
They're both equally evil in my book.
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