The philosophy of design

One of the interesting things about the reaction to the press release posted on various tech sites yesterday was the way in which it revealed the massive gap between those who are focused on technological style and those who are focused on technological substance.  Now, I am in awe of Steve Jobs's marketing abilities and very much admire his ability to sell slick, dumbed-down products to the lowest common denominator while simultaneously convincing the buyers that they are somehow savvy and superior.  I despise Windows far more than most, but I would rather use DOS than any Macintosh operating system ever released.  I haven't been willing to use any of Mr. Jobs's very pretty, very popular products since I sold my original Macintosh, bought a 386/25, stuck what was then a very high-end 1024x768, 256-color board in it and never looked back.  As a libertarian, I despise technological fascism as much, possibly more, than the political variant.  After all, as has been pointed out many times before, the Apple "1984" ad is probably one of the most ironic in history.

What few people know is that about twenty years ago, in between my sophmore and junior year of college, I designed a piece of hardware that was even more outrageous.  It was a PC sound board that put out two 16-bit, 44 KHz stereo channels and supported 16 simultaneous sounds... back when AdLib still ruled the PC sound waves about six months after the original mono 8-bit Soundblaster was released.  We actually got it working, but I couldn't convince the company for which I was interning that there was a market for such outrageously high-end sound.  I should have dropped out of college and started selling my sound card, but back then I was still prone to doing things the way everyone was supposed to, like finishing college instead of dropping out to sell sound cards for games.

Anyhow, since introducing the Macintosh, the Apple method has always relied upon limiting your options and controlling your behavior while loudly declaring that they are doing precisely the opposite.  The reason Apples have been inferior game machines since 1983 despite the one-time popularity of the Apple II as a gaming computer - I still have my //e - is that the game industry is full of people who like to be at the forefront of technological development and aren't willing to put up with someone telling them that you will be stuck with X video card and Y amount of memory whether you like it or not.

People often get so caught up in the hype of Apple that they fail to see the inferior utility behind the sleek, sophisticated, and superficial design.  For example, I think the iPhone would make for a lovely ebook reader, except that it turns out to be far more of a pain to sweep a finger to turn every electronic page than it is  to simply click a button on a Treo.   And, of course, the inability to insert an SD card is the reason I turned down a free iPhone when my service provider tried to give me one last year.  The truth is that Apple products have usually been tailored for technological retards.  That's not a bad sales strategy since there will always be more techno-retards than performance junkies and strictly limiting your users' options is a great way to reduce your technical support problems.  But I wholeheartedly disagree with the concept of intentionally limiting user flexibility; perhaps many people don't mind not being able to simply transfer data from their computer to their phone without going through the submissive electronic ritual required by Apple, but it was a deal-breaker for me.

As for the mice, well, I quite look forward to seeing someone set up two neophytes with two examples of opposing design philosophies, one multi-touch and one multi-button.  It doesn't matter if it's Calc, Photoshop, or Call of Duty, but I would bet that whoever is using multi-button will absolutely smoke the person using multi-touch.  Ultimately, I wouldn't be surprised if some combination of the two approaches won out; a flexible multi-touch approach that lets you dynamically determine the "size" of your buttons, although there's still the tactile problem to address.  Now, speed isn't everything for everyone, and certainly there will be those who prefer the look of multi-touch to the power and flexibility of multi-button.

But for those who think speed is everything - and you know who you are - the idea of using a buttonless touch mouse looks as ridiculous as an 18-button mouse apparently looks to those who don't believe they need more than one or two buttons.

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Double-digits

Unemployment sails over the predicted high for 2010. The ever-reliable mainstream economists were forecasting an increase to 9.9 percent... and I'd encourage you to stop and think about why they might have assumed that. Remember, Keynesian economics is all based on psychology.

Unemployment Rate Rises to 10.2 Percent
The nation's unemployment rate rose above 10% for the first time since 1983 in October, a much worse jump than expected as employers continued to trim jobs from payrolls.... According to a survey of top forecasters by the National Association of Business Economics last month, the consensus estimate among economists was that unemployment would hit a high of 10% in the final three months of this year and the first quarter of 2010.

Expect a lot of happy talk about how unemployment is a "lagging indicator". Anyhow, the employment-population ratio is down to 58.5 percent and U-6 is now 17.5 percent. I will be very surprised if U-3 does not exceed 12 percent in 2010.

Karl Denninger reminds us that the consensus forecast for 2009 was 8.4% and breaks it down at the Market Ticker with the help of this graph.  He's looking primiarly at loan losses while I'm looking at declining bank credit, but the perspective is the same.

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In case you're interested

Some of you may recall that I've been working on something that is not a book for some time. And here is the result of that effort, which was announced this week. As with the books, it's been somewhat of an Ilk-related project, as the firmware and software were written by none other than the infamous Finn, Markku, who as we know had no choice in the matter. DC and Baktrice, meanwhile, put together the web site and the forthcoming online store.

I'll be interested in your comments. All I can say is that it really works, and very well at that.

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Is the Rumsfeldian Rubik solved?

Perhaps the Fort Hood murders are unrelated to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism and it's just another disgruntled postal worker or three run amok, but it would appear that after only eight years, the terrorists have finally figured out the flaw in the clever Rumsfeldian strategy of fighting them there so we don't have to fight them there.

A mass shooting at Ft. Hood military post in Texas has left at least 7 dead and 20 wounded [MSNBC is reporting 12 and 31 now -VD] and one suspected gunman is on the loose, officials told Fox News. A massive manhunt was under way for the suspect at large, Fox News confirmed. One person was in custody. The New York Post said that there were two shooters at the Army post massacre; other reports said there were three.

I wouldn't bet on the postal workers, though.

UPDATE - the attempted PC spin never fails to amuse: "The official said the shootings could have been a criminal matter rather than a terrorism-related attack and that there was no intelligence to suggest a plot against Fort Hood."

Or, it could have been an attack by aliens who have secretly infiltrated the U.S. military disguised as humans as part of their master plan to steal Earth's water. Or perhaps highly evolved land sharks. But surely not Islamic terrorism, since we're, you know, fighting them over there.

UPDATE II - I'm sure we are all shocked: "The suspected gunman was identified as Major Malik Nadal Hasan." More of the joys of multiculturalism.

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Errata

In any book full of statistical minutia, it's highly probable that the author will make the occasional dumb mistake. Sometimes it's a typo, sometimes it's a failure of research, sometimes it's a misstatement, and sometimes it's just an inexplicable error. This doesn't make you feel any better when you catch your own dumb mistakes, or worse, have to rely upon other people catching them for you. But this historical howler, I have to confess, makes me feel rather better about my own 1931-related error. It also may help explain my low opinion of certain mainstream economists for those who think I show insufficient lack of respect for fame and professional credentials. And while I'm inclined to give authors the benefit of the doubt when it comes to statistical citations, I'm not sure this one can be considered an excusable error, especially since it was made by an economist who has often written about the Great Depression as if he knows a great deal about it.

"Back to bank runs: in 1931, about half the banks in the United States failed. These banks were not all alike. Some were very badly run; some took excessive risks, even given what they knew before 1929; others were reasonably well, even conservatively managed. But when panic spread across the land, and depositors everywhere wanted their money immediately, none of this mattered: only banks that had been extremely conservative, that had kept what in normal times would be an excessively large share of their deposits in cash, survived."
- Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics, p. 100 (1999)

I found myself wondering if he'd figured out his tremendous mistake or if anyone had bothered to point it out to him at some point in the ten years between editions. Fortunately, I also happen to have his revised edition. The answer: apparently not.

"Back to bank runs: in 1931, about half the banks in the United States failed. These banks were not all alike. Some were very badly run; some took excessive risks, even given what they knew before 1929; others were reasonably well, even conservatively managed. But when panic spread across the land, and depositors everywhere wanted their money immediately, none of this mattered: only banks that had been extremely conservative, that had kept what in normal times would be an excessively large share of their deposits in cash, survived."
- Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, pp 96-97. (2009)

If you should happen to consult RGD, you'll see that 2,293 of the 20,367 banks in the United States failed. That's 11 percent, which is not even close to "about half". You can also check Banking and Monetary Statistics 1914-1941 or Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States 1857-1960 if you don't wish to take my word for it. The problem is that repeating this erroneous historical "fact" twice in ten years isn't merely an error, it tends to suggest that Krugman really doesn't know all that much about the Great Depression, and even worse, hasn't read Milton Friedman.

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Going academic

While my contempt for the present university system, such as it is, runs both deep and wide, I was nevertheless pleasantly surprised to be informed by a professor at a large university of his intention to make use of RGD in one of his upper-level economics courses. So, at least one group of economics majors won't graduate without ever having heard of the Austrian School or learning about the intrinsic unreliability of macroeconomic statistics.


UPDATE - In other book-related news, a Muslim reader has informed me of his intention to translate TIA into Arabic; apparently someone has translated the first four chapters of Dawkins's The God Delusion and he decided to see that the other side was represented. He said he'll send me a PDF when he finishes, and I'll post it here for download. I think it's great, but I have to confess that it never occurred to me that the first language any of my books would be translated into would be Arabic. Go figure.

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Letter to Common Sense Atheism V

Dear Luke,

I fear you have misunderstood the pleasure I take in demonstrating the waywardness of paths that do not lead to the truth for my purpose in seeking the correct one. A path believed to be correct is either so or it is not so. Observing the falsity of your claims to superlative theological knowledge was more than a work of my peculiar art, it was necessary for us to even begin getting at the truth of the matter because what we do not know usually impairs our ability to reason less than our belief in the truth of that which is false. Given that you are contemplating the pursuit of a philosophy PhD, I can safely assume you have read Plato's Apology. If you have, then you will surely recall the way in which Socrates paraphrased the Oracle's reference to him. “He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.” I see no need to dispute your claim to have spent hundreds of hours reading the Bible and various theological texts, because it is irrelevant.

Apes do read theology, Luke, they just don't understand it. Christianity no more concerns a Panglossian world actively managed by a magical omnibenevolent puppet-master where all things work out for the good of everyone than Aristotle was Belgian or the central message of Buddhism is every man for himself.

Before I get to the substance of this discussion, I find myself interested in learning how your belief in desirism is off-topic, given that: a) you up brought the subject and went into a fair amount of detail in describing it, b) this discussion does not only concern my beliefs, but yours as well, and, c) desirism is directly relevant to your definition of evil. You must know that the references to your FAQ don't even begin to answer the very serious philosophical and material problems with desirism that were articulated in my last letter. In addition to the fact that you “answered” by referring to two points that remain unwritten, it is not accurate to say that the references to the answers to {3.20}, {3.21}, {3.22} addressed the problems raised, much less successfully addressed them. Lest I find myself charged with more obscurantism or hand-waving, I will now explain why those three answers are insufficient. I trust the nonexistence of answers {3.23} and {5.31} will serve to demonstrate the inadequacy of your present response to my points about the totalitarian aspects of desirism as well as the way in which desirism resembles a collectivist variant of Maoist ethics.

In {3.20} you answer the desirist calculation problem by asserting that “we can estimate” desires, that “neuroscience will eventually tell us” what desires look like and how to measure them, and that “we may be able to understand” the relationship between desires. This is not an answer, this is just hope and hand-waving. {3.21} is nothing more than another failure to apply the correct definition of the word “objective” to desirism in order to claim that an intrinsically subjective concept is actually objective. This is not only absurd, but it has absolutely nothing to do with my criticism of desirism. Furthermore, I explained the specious nature of this definitional dancing in my previous letter: “While it is true that there are many different definitions of objective and subjective, the philosophers' concept of mind-independence is no more relevant to the subject at hand than the grammatical concept pertaining to the use of a form as the object of a transitive verb.” {3.22} is merely a repetition of the very Knob Metaphor I had shown to be not only flawed, but downright backwards since it led you to an incorrect conclusion. As I wrote, under the desirist moral code, the Nazi extermination program is confirmed to be good and and opposition to it, or even mitigation of it, is a definite evil.

You didn't even make the slightest attempt to address that massive flaw in your reasoning, either in your FAQ or in your letter. Now, I see no need to continue beating a deceased equine, so if at this point you wish to leave off discussing desirism, that's certainly fine with me. My recommendation would be that you abandon it altogether as an insignificant and untenable variant of utilitarianism, but that is your concern, not mine. Still, I don't regret the diversion as I find it fascinating how decent and civilized Western atheists have nevertheless managed to conceive what appears to be a more consequentially disastrous moral ethic than the one that produced the horrors of the Great Leap Forward.

Now Luke, there is a pattern of evasion that is becoming increasingly apparent in your letters, and I fail to see how it is either compatible with your personal search for the truth or can be of any utility to you in this discussion. I am perfectly willing to continue refining our terms in as pedantic a manner as you require until you eventually run out of room to dance around the most relevant dictionary definition and have no choice but to directly confront the matter at hand. I did not declare “that the truth value of a proposition does not depend on the meaning of its terms”, I merely stated that given the context of the question, which your belief in any form of evil. I already knew you didn't believe in my definition of evil because you made it very clear that you did not in your second letter, so it was simply absurd to assert that you needed to be informed a second time of what I meant by “evil” before you could answer the question of whether you believe in it or not. Of course, I could have avoided this by pinning you down more specifically regarding your belief or unbelief in any form of evil and now that I know you require a greater degree of precision on my part in order to respond in a relevant manner, I will be quite happy to provide it. Meta-ethical philosopher Stephen Finlay's belief in evil is of zero relevance here, it is only your belief that is relevant to this discussion. Please note your declaration that “the definition of evil that we are using” cannot be contained by “any form of evil” is illogical; surely you did not mean to assert that the set does not contain the subset!

You finally admitted that you believe in a subjective form of evil in your fourth letter, although your constant wrestling with the objective/subjective issue somewhat muddied the admission. This mildly complicates the discussion, but not severely since it does not affect your ability to discern which of the competing objective standards are most in line with your observations of the material world even though you happen to subscribe to none of them. Speaking of definitions, while I agree that pain, anguish and privation of joy can all be reasonably described as suffering and that suffering is a prominent feature of this fallen world, I cannot accept your suggestion of it as a substitute for evil. This is because for the Christian and the non-Christian alike, suffering can be quite reasonably deemed a distinctly positive good. For example, a Christian is told to rejoice when he suffers for the faith, because he will be rewarded in Heaven for his travails and the testimony his suffering provides will cause others to believe in the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. While we cannot confirm the former consequence, there can be no doubting the truth of the latter as it is known to have occurred in persecutions of Christians ranging from ancient Rome to modern North Korea.

And suffering can be a positive good for the non-Christian as well. The pagan mother will embrace the pain of childbirth as gladly as the strong Christian embraces martyrdom; no pain can considered evil when it is an inescapable necessity for such a powerfully desired result. Even the language of the weight room testifies to the non-intrinsically evil nature of suffering: “no pain, no gain”. The suffering is voluntarily chosen and becomes the price of the good. While suffering can certainly be the result of evil, I don't think it can serve as a reasonable substitution for it. We deem it evil for a man to kill 10 people because it amused him, but we do not consider a lethal storm that killed just as many to be evil even if an equivalent amount of suffering is created by the two incidents. Furthermore, suffering lacks the intentional aspect that is usually required to deem an act or an intention evil. So, taking that aspect into account, I suggest that we define ”taking pleasure in the involuntary and unjust suffering of another” to be evil.

I entirely agree with your statement that our arguments will not meet each other if we do not agree upon a definition of evil. This is precisely why I am trying to get you to commit to one. And I also agree that I could quite easily construct a completely circular argument on the basis of my Christian definition of evil; this is precisely why I am trying to get you to commit to an objective and observable one. So, with that in mind, would you be willing to agree to a definition of evil as “”taking pleasure in the involuntary and unjust suffering of another” as a useful metric by which we can compare the competing religious and philosophical accounts of evil? While this is merely one of the broad panoply of theoretical evils from which we could plausibly select, it would at least serve as a reasonable starting point for the proposed comparison of various religious and philosophical accounts of evil.

This was written in response to the 5th Letter to Vox Day

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It's over, go home

If your troops are being murdered by your allies, that's a good sign that you should give up the hearts and minds strategy:

Five soldiers have been shot dead by a "rogue" Afghan policeman in an attack at a police checkpoint. Three Grenadier Guards and two Royal Military Police were attacked as they rested inside a compound. The soldiers, who had removed their body armour and helmets, were shot by an Afghan national policeman who then fled. It is not known whether he was a member of the Taliban or being coerced by the insurgents.

The Afghan and Iraqi occupations are of zero national interest to the United States. They are of even less interest to Great Britain. And one wonders how long it will be before similar attacks happen to British troops and policemen in the UK itself. If you haven't managed to win over a populace after eight years of occupation, give up and go home. It's not going to happen.

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Perhaps not the best idea

It appears that a few of the less intelligent atheist ankle-biters have decided that it's a good idea to attack my writing on economics because they find my opinions on atheism and evolution to be so distasteful. Amusingly, they have decided that my criticism of Paul Krugman proves that I don't know anything. Because, you know, he has a Nobel Prize and all. As it happens, last night I was re-reading Krugman's book The Accidental Theorist, published in 1999 with absolutely no perception of the tech bubble that was about to burst. Instead, he was still worried about currency crises. I rather like the book because Krugman isn't a complete idiot, he's just willfully ignorant and inclined to cling to his defunct Keynesian models. I intend to go through the chapters and highlight various points of interest good and bad, of which this snide slam on the supply-siders, written in the summer of 1997, is a good example of the latter.

Suppose that you had managed your personal finances based on what you heard four years ago from Newt Gingrich, read in Forbes, or for that matter saw on this very page [The Wall Street Journal]. You would have sold all your stocks and probably put your money into gold. If the supply-siders were fund managers, not only would you have fired them, you would have sued them for the lack of due diligence.

This inspired me to take a look at the prices of stocks vs gold since August 1997. Needless to say, there is a very good reason that Paul Krugman admits that he is not a successful investment forecaster.

Gold: +336% From $324.10 to $1,087.45
S&P 500: +9.5% From 954.29 to 1,045.41

And this is not even taking into account the fact that the S&P 500 of today is not the S&P 500 of 12 years ago, as mergers, bankruptcies, and shrinking market caps have caused numerous stocks to vanish. 43 changes were made in 2007 alone! Suppose that you had managed your personal finances based on what you heard 12 years ago from Paul Krugman... unfortunately, a lot of Americans basically did and went heavily into stocks and real estate instead of gold and commodities. You would have done rather better to listen to a non-laureate's advice. And even for the five years from 1997 to 2002, you were better off with flat gold than with your stocks down 15 percent.

I somehow doubt this has caused Paul Krugman to revisit supply-side theory. Not that I subscribe to it either, but if the performance of the stock markets vs gold is your metric of comparison, well, it would appear a serious rethink is in order.

But it must be said that Krugman reaches some very worthwhile conclusions on occasion. Such as when, in the same book, he wrote what are arguably the most relevant words he has ever written: "I am always grateful when influential pundits make such statements, especially in prominent places, for in doing so they protect us from the ever-present temptation to take people seriously simply because they are influential, to imagine that widely-held views must actually make at least some sense."

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Mailvox: the materialist writes back

JS continues the discussion of his previous email:

Thank you for addressing my e-mail on your site. I appreciated your responses and the responses of those who commented on the post. I have to say that much of the naturalist community seems to hold on to what are obviously suppositions on their part. They believe that since their unproven explanation is the best natural one, it is the correct one. Up until very recently, I too tended to believe this, taking a similar approach. As I waxed about a bit in my last e-mail to you, what has chafed me recently about those in the secular web community is the absolute refusal to even allow a line of thinking that goes against their worldview. This growing intolerance is bothering me, as the secularist community seems to be increasingly more defensive and myopic. So, since this question will gain me only ridicule and exile in this community, I will ask you -- what are some good books on the argument against TENS that an inquiring mind such as mine should endeavor to read?

I thought that TIA was one of the best refutations of neo-Atheist arguments I've ever read (they hate you on the secular boards btw, if I didn't know any better, I would say you are made of straw). Here is to hoping that RGD finds continued success.

I've always felt that one is defined by one's enemies as well as by one's friends, so I am pleased to be hated by such a collection of contemptible intellects. Unfortunately, I really can't recommend any good books that make a case against TENS because I have never read one on the subject. This is in part because I have very seldom heard any author making what I consider to be the substantive arguments against TENS, and in part because my interest in the subject is tertiary at best, I've only read pro-evolution books by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and Gould. My skepticism of TENS is largely endogenous, with a few bits and pieces that I've picked up on the Internet such as the revised Haldane's Dilemma and the application of Chomsky to the tautology of natural selection.

But, I'd like to open this discussion up to suggestions from others, for books that people feel most effectively defend TENS as well as those that most effectively dissect it. I tend to prefer to read those books that most effectively defend their subjects, because then I can see how easy or difficult it is to pick apart that optimal defense. I'm presently in the process of reading Dawkins's latest, and if it is truly the optimal defense of Neo-Darwinism that its more enthusiastic reviewers apparently believe it to be, I am increasingly inclined to believe it will not be very difficult to demonstrate that TENS is in serious trouble.

I have even discussed writing a book on the subject myself with my publisher, but I'm not convinced that it is necessary. My suspicion is that TENS will eventually implode with or without my assistance in the matter. While there are certainly scientific and atheistic interests who will cling to the Neo-Darwinism in the face of any contrary future evidence, they are neither as powerful nor as powerfully incentivized to hold to it as is the case with political and financial authorities and Neo-Keynesianism.

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It's not what you have, but how you use it

While I disagree with the idea that IQ isn't a reasonable measure of intelligence, I very much agree with the distinction between intelligence capacity and intelligence utilization. From New Scientist:

The problem with IQ tests is that while they are effective at assessing our deliberative skills, which involve reason and the use of working memory, they are unable to assess our inclination to use them when the situation demands. This is a crucial distinction: as Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University puts it, intelligence is about brain power whereas rational thinking is about control. "Some people who are intellectually able do not bother to engage very much in analytical thinking and are inclined to rely on their intuitions," explains Evans. "Other people will check out their gut feeling and reason it through and make sure they have a justification for what they're doing."

The analogy I prefer is firepower. IQ is intellectual firepower. Some have .22 caliber popguns, some have 152mm howitzers. But a .22 to the forehead is far more lethal than a 152mm artillery shell that falls miles wide of the target. This is why I occasionally refer to "functional idiots". These are people with the intellectual capacity to function in an intelligent manner who for various reasons don't actually use that capacity and so end up with conclusions that are identical to those reached by people without any such capacity.

When people are doing the same stupid thing over and over again, when they are trusting the word of some scientist or priest rather than critically examining the reliability of that word, when they are operating on the basis of information instilled in childhood about which they have never actually thought or on pure emotion, it does not matter how intelligent they are, because they are obviously not making use of that intelligence.

One of the greatest challenges that intelligent people face is learning to distinguish between when they are using their intelligence and when they are not actually making use of it. The action of an intelligent person behaving thoughtlessly is no more likely to be intelligent than the action of an unintelligent person, and in fact, if the action of the intelligent person is not guided by the wisdom of the stored societal knowledge known as tradition, it is actually very likely to be observably less intelligent and lead to less positive results.

What Chesterton described as "the democracy of the dead" may not always be the optimal path, but it is unlikely that it is the most suboptimal one. As has been demonstrated many times throughout the past, creating a significant disaster worthy of historical note usually requires a truly intelligent person. This is why wisdom is always to be preferred to mere intellectual brilliance.

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A failure of happy talk

A third stimulus plan appears to be in the works:

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was “imprecise” when he said President Barack Obama’s advisers are considering a second stimulus measure, his spokesman said today. Locke, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, said: “If there is to be another stimulus -- and that’s being hotly discussed and very seriously considered within the administration as well as members of Congress -- it needs to be very targeted, very specific and we need to be very mindful of the deficit as well.”

It's amazing how quickly they forget the $145 billion Bush stimulus plan of 2008. And, of course, the mere fact that more stimulus is being discussed despite the loud trumpeting of the "recovery" indicates that it is employment that is the true measure of economic growth rather than GDP.

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Did Ron Paul read RGD or something?

It does sound rather like it:

Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession.

A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954.... Can anyone realistically argue that a few small upticks in a handful of economic indicators are a sign that the recession is over?

What is more likely happening is a repeat of the Great Depression. We might have up to a year or so of an economy growing just slightly above stagnation, followed by a drop in growth worse than anything we have seen in the past two years.

Or perhaps it was a book entitled The Repeat of the Great Depression. Although it really is remarkable how in sync his comments are with my conclusions in the book.

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Yeah, not so much

The stunning effectiveness of the New Atheist campaign:

The percentage of self-identified atheists according to the September/October Psychology Today

1944: 4 percent
1964: 3 percent
1994: 3 percent
2007: 4 percent

One can't but help notice that as per their stunning dedication to the truth in all its forms, atheists often try to count agnosticism or "no religion" as atheism whenever trying to inflate their numbers, while leaving the "no religion" sorts out of the accounting whenever average intelligence levels or criminal predilections are being compared.

The article also noted that there are presently five atheist or agnostic heads of state: China, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Chile, and Sweden. They appear to have somehow left out Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea. Needless to say, this doesn't bode well for the inhabitants of those countries... note that the two agnostics are the Prime Minister of Sweden and the President of Chile. Also, Nazarbayev of Khazakhstan is an ex-atheist as he has converted to Islam.

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WND column

Extend, pretend, and defend

Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who has called for an end to the Federal Reserve, said legislation he introduced to audit monetary policy has been "gutted" while moving toward a possible vote in the Democratic-controlled House.
– Bloomberg News, Oct. 30, 2009

There is always a fraudulent aspect to democratic government. There are things the electorate does not want to hear, so any candidate who hopes to win their support quickly learns to avoid subjecting the voters to uncomfortable truths. Once safely in office, it seldom serves the interests of the elected official to tell the people whose interest he nominally represents anything that will highlight the divergence between what is good for the legislator and what is good for those who will be subjected to the legislation he helps create.

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