Archive for All Posts

Another Push for "Master Resource"

I mentioned this new website when it first launched, but for those interested in energy issues, “Master Resource” is definitely worth checking out. Now that people are back from vacations etc., there are a bunch of new posts going up. In particular, check out Chip Knappenberger, who is a co-author with Pat Michaels. I loved […]

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Does God Want You to Slaughter Your Enemies?

For this week’s post involving the finer things, I want to discuss this news story (HT2LRC): All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam attacks on Sderot, former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has written in a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against […]

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Potpourri

* NASA scientist James Hansen has declared that Obama has four years in which to save the planet (from manmade climate change). I don’t see what the rush is. As Dr. Hans Zarkhov (formerly at NASA) can attest, the last time the fate of the planet was at stake, the hero waited until there were […]

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Becker Cribs From Murphy?

Von Pepe suggests so, pointing out this passage: [W]ith unemployment at 7% to 8% of the labor force, it is impossible to target effective spending programs that primarily utilize unemployed workers, or underemployed capital. Spending on infrastructure, and especially on health, energy, and education, will mainly attract employed persons from other activities to the activities […]

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3-D Simulation of US Airways Crash Landing

This actually turns out to be pretty cool.

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Old Statistics for Data Geeks and History Buffs

It took me a while to track it down, but here (pdf) is an online version of the US statistical information from colonial times. The link I have given takes you to the federal government’s stats, but you can use the left-hand navigation to get at all of the information. In particular, check out page […]

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DeLong Draws a Line in the Sand

Commenting on Fama’s critique of fiscal stimulus, Brad DeLong writes: What is extraordinary is that these mistakes are being rederived today, at the end of the 2000s–without any consciousness of their past or of the refutations of them made by past theory and history. I think it is time to draw a line in the […]

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Fama vs. DeLong

Von Pepe has been peppering me to address the skirmishes generated by Eugene Fama’s critique of fiscal stimulus. Fama wrote: There is an identity in macroeconomics. It says that in any given year private investment must equal the sum of private savings, corporate savings (retained earnings), and government savings (the government surplus, which is more […]

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