Physical Scientists Are So Darned Cute When They Finally Understand Economics - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Physical Scientists Are So Darned Cute When They Finally Understand Economics - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"Remember Peak Oil?
What about Peak Everything?
The Limits to Growth myth of impending mineral resource exhaustion was running once again rampant just a decade ago.
The world didn't run out of any critical minerals or metals.
Why not?
Because as rising demand boosted the prices for minerals like tin, copper, zinc, and iron ore, geologists and entrepreneurs went in search of new sources while manufacturers and consumers economized on the amounts required to make their products.
The current issue of Geochemical Perspectives is devoted to considering "Future Global Mineral Resources."
The good news is that the group of geologists who put together the study have stumbled upon economics and now understand a bit about how demand and supply works.
...We demonstrate that global resources of copper, and probably of most other metals, are much larger than most currently available estimates, especially if increasing efficiencies and higher prices allow lower-grade ores to be mined.
These observations indicate that supplies of important mineral commodities will remain adequate for the foreseeable future.
The good news is that humanity is nowhere near peak everything; the bad news is that we are also nowhere near peak doom.
For more on physical scientists' fruitful encounters with economics, see my 2012 column where I report their astonishing discovery that property rights can save fisheries from depletion."

Yup. They're gonna run with this.-----Dormant Diseases Frozen In the Ice Are Waking Up - Slashdot

Dormant Diseases Frozen In the Ice Are Waking Up - Slashdot: 
Like a plot from a Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) movie, evil is waking up as permafrost melts due to weather or natural, man-made, local, and/or global climate change. (Take your pick of any or all -- doesn't matter -- the plot and result is roughly the same.) According the the BBC, a 12-year-old boy died and at least twenty people were hospitalized after being infected by a disease (anthrax) that lay buried in the ice for 75 years. "The theory is that, over 75 years ago, a reindeer infected with anthrax died and its frozen carcass became trapped under a layer of frozen soil, known as permafrost," reports BBC. "There it stayed until a heatwave in the summer of 2016, when the permafrost thawed." In this case, bringing back the disease was accidental, but the story goes on to give examples of scientists (no indication of whether they are mad or not) purposefully seeing what ancient bacteria and virus they can resurrect from the ice. How many more diseases are lurking in the ice? Will The Andromeda Strain be released by meddling scientists or global warming?

A nation of moronic wimps-----Colgate University Goes On Lockdown Over Hot Glue Gun | American Military News

Colgate University Goes On Lockdown Over Hot Glue Gun
Hamilton, New York’s Colgate University went on lock-down Monday evening for four hours after police received reports of an active shooter on campus. 
A Colgate student called campus safety to alert them that they had seen a black man with what appeared to be a gun. 
While there was a black man with a gun, it was a hot glue gun and he was working on an art project.

Colgate University President Brian W. Casey is calling for an investigation into the incident he described as a “profound error” and said there was “implicit racial bias.”

“It is important that we understand the role that implicit racial bias had in the initial reporting of and responses to the events of (Monday) night. 

I want to make sure we speak with those who made and received the initial report to understand the role this played,” Casey said in a statement on Tuesday..."

You ought to know!

I'll Say it Again -- If Clinton and Her Team Had Been in the Military, They'd Be in Jail | National Review

I'll Say it Again -- If Clinton and Her Team Had Been in the Military, They'd Be in Jail | National Review:

"When it comes to the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal, I thought I was beyond surprise. I thought I’d heard it all. But then came James Comey’s revelation that Huma Abedin e-mailed classified information to Anthony Weiner — allegedly so he could print it out for her. 

This is stunning. Just stunning. "

• Chart: What Apple's Cash Pile Could Buy | Statista

• Chart: What Apple's Cash Pile Could Buy | Statista:
"As Apple reported in its latest earnings report, the company’s gigantic cash pile has grown past the quarter trillion dollar mark in the first three months of 2017.
...To illustrate how much money that is, we put together an imaginary shopping list of companies that Apple could acquire with that cash (assuming they would pay market value). 

It’s a pretty long list and the companies on it aren’t exactly small-time outfits either with Uber, Time Warner and Sony all finding their way into our made up shopping basket..."

This chart shows which companies Apple could buy with its cash reserves

AM Fruitcake

History for May 5

History for May 5 - On-This-Day.com:
Soren Kierkegaard 1813 - Philosopher, poet, theologian, Karl Marx 1818 - Socialist writer ("Das Kapital", "The Communist Manifesto"), founder of communism, Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochran Seaman) 1865 - Journalist, wrote about taboo subjects for her time period (divorce, poverty, capital punishment, insanity), women’s rights advocate
   

Christopher Morley 1890 - Writer (New York Evening Post, Saturday Review), novelist, Arthur Schawlow 1921 - American physicist, Tammy Wynette (Virginia Wynette Pugh) 1942 - Country singer


1809 - Mary Kies was awarded the first patent to go to a woman. It was for technique for weaving straw with silk and thread.


1862 - The Battle of Puebla took place. It is celebrated as Cinco de Mayo Day.


1892 - The U.S. Congress extended the Geary Chinese Exclusion Act for 10 more years. The act required Chinese in the U.S. to be registered or face deportation.


1912 - Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda began publishing.


1917 - Eugene Jacques Bullard becomes the first African-American aviator when he earned his flying certificate with the French Air Service.


1925 - John T. Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, TN, was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.


1945 - A Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon. A pregnant woman and five children were killed.


1961 - Alan Shepard became the first American in space when he made a 15 minute suborbital flight.

Iran Using U.S. Cash to Fund Unprecedented, Massive Military Buildup

Iran Using U.S. Cash to Fund Unprecedented, Massive Military Buildup:

"Iran is using the billions in cash resources provided under the landmark nuclear deal to engage in an unprecedented military buildup meant to transform the Islamic Republic's fighting force into an "offensive" juggernaut, according to a largely unreported announcement by Iranian military leaders that has sparked concern among U.S. national security insiders and sources on Capitol Hill.

Iranian officials announced late last month that Iran's defense budget had increased by 145 percent "

The way we were-----"Duck And Cover" - original TV advert

Puerto Rico Declares a Form of Bankruptcy - The New York Times

Puerto Rico Declares a Form of Bankruptcy - The New York Times: 
"With its creditors at its heels and its coffers depleted, Puerto Rico sought what is essentially bankruptcy relief in federal court on Wednesday, the first time in history that an American state or territory had taken the extraordinary measure.
The action sent Puerto Rico, whose approximately $123 billion in debt and pension obligations far exceeds the $18 billion bankruptcy filed by Detroit in 2013, to uncharted ground.
While the court proceedings could eventually make the island solvent for the first time in decades, the more immediate repercussions will likely be grim: 
Government workers will forgo pension money, public health and infrastructure projects will go wanting, and the “brain drain” the island has been suffering as professionals move to the mainland could intensify.
Puerto Rico is “unable to provide its citizens effective services” because of the crushing weight of its debt, according to a filing on Wednesday by the federal board that has supervised the island’s financial affairs since last year..."

Now We Know: It's Liberals Who Are Out-Of-Touch, Arrogant, Smug And Intolerant | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD

Now We Know: It's Liberals Who Are Out-Of-Touch, Arrogant, Smug And Intolerant | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD:

"We've been arguing for some time that if you want to find intolerance, extremism, hate and bigotry in this country, it's thriving on the left. The past week provides several bits of fresh evidence of this.

First, there's the ABC News/Washington Post poll published last week that found just 28% think the Democratic Party is "in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today." "

What The Economist Didn’t Tell You about Greenland’s Ice | Cato @ Liberty

What The Economist Didn’t Tell You about Greenland’s Ice | Cato @ Liberty
"At the contentious interface of climate science and policy, there’s one thing that people of all flavors agree upon: if Greenland were to shed all its ice in a century that would be an unmitigated catastrophe, raising sea levels an average of 22 feet simply from the sheer volume of water contained thereon.

It therefore stands to reason that a melting Greenland makes for good copy, and The Economist’s witty scribes have just published two alarming articles (here and here). Alarming, that is, because they left out a few pertinent facts.

“The most worrying changes are happening in Greenland, which lost an average of 375bn tonnes of ice per year between 2011 and 2014.”

This is a finely selected cherry that The Economist plucked. 

2012 was an exceedingly warm year averaged over the island-continent. 

Had they included all the recent data, they would have shown that the surface mass balance budget of ice on Greenland recently reached a record high compared to the previous three decades..."
Read on!

We are surrounded by high-paid morons-----Our Low Energy Media at Work | Power Line

Our Low Energy Media at Work | Power Line
"One of my favorite Milton Friedman stories concerns the time he was driving along in postwar West Germany in the late 1940s, on his way I think to the first Mont Pelerin Society meeting, when he spotted a large number of workers shoveling out a building site. 
Milton asked his German host, “Why don’t you get a tractor and some mechanized equipment for that?”

“Ah, but Prof. Friedman, you don’t understand—this provides jobs!”
Milton, quick as always, responded: “Well in that case why don’t you give them spoons.”

This came to mind when I saw the April 25 New York Times story, “Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal.” You could guess from the headline that we’re headed into “why-don’t-you-give-them-spoons” economic illiteracy, and you wouldn’t be disappointed. 

The fact that there are more people working in solar power than coal is a measure of the gross inefficiency of solar power. 
This is like saying that because McDonalds provides more jobs per calorie consumed than a high end restaurant we should want more McDonalds built.
I have Mark Perry of AEI to thank for running the numbers as I haven’t had the time. This chart tells the story succinctly:

Mark’s conclusion:

Bottom Line: The goal of America’s energy sector isn’t to create as many jobs as possible (as the NYT article would apparently have us believe) especially the politically-favored and heavily-subsidized renewable energy jobs. Rather, the economic goal is to produce as much electric power as possible at the lowest possible cost, and that means we want the fewest number of energy workers!

Lunch video-----SteynPost #4: The Politicization of Everything

Noon-toon

Judicial Watch: New Huma Abedin Emails Reveal Additional Instances of Clinton Sending and Receiving Classified Emails Through Unsecure Server - Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch: New Huma Abedin Emails Reveal Additional Instances of Clinton Sending and Receiving Classified Emails Through Unsecure Server - Judicial Watch:


"Judicial Watch today released 894 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was sent additional classified information through her unsecure clintonmail.com email account by top aide Huma Abedin. The Abedin emails also include repeated instances of Clinton’s detailed daily schedules being sent to top Clinton Foundation officials at unsecured email addresses.

The records were produced for Judicial Watch by the State Department from the non-state.gov email accounts of Abedin."

Moron alert!-----Wednesday Short Cuts — The Patriot Post

Wednesday Short Cuts — The Patriot Post:

...“If any those of you that feel like [climate change] is not a problem, I challenge you to go into your car in your garage, start your car, and see what happens there.” —Democrat House candidate Rob Quist
(If Quist had put his thinking cap on, he’d know that it’s carbon monoxide, not carbon dioxide, from tailpipes that poses serious health problems. 
Word of advice: Don’t attempt his challenge.)..."

Blog: Janet Napolitano is sorry she got caught trying to rig a state audit

Blog: Janet Napolitano is sorry she got caught trying to rig a state audit:
"In a contentious four-and-a-half-hour legislative hearing yesterday in Sacramento, Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, made a pro forma apology for conduct that should have gotten her fired.
She tried to rig an independent state audit, and she got caught, and she is sorry (I paraphrase).
Alexi Koseff explains further in the Sacramento Bee:
University of California President Janet Napolitano apologized Tuesday for creating the "wrong impression" that she had improperly interfered in a critical state audit of her office released last week.
...Auditor Elaine Howle has asserted that the UC Office of the President interfered with her work by reviewing surveys sent independently to campus leaders and requesting changes that reflected more positively on its operations before they were submitted.
"In my 17 years as state auditor, we have never had a situation like this," she said Tuesday.
...Janet Napolitano had a lot riding on the outcome of a state audit she was about to face.
So she rigged it and got caught.
Koseff even provides a chart showing the changes.
And she still has her job..."

Your tax dollars at "work"-----HS assignment: ‘Prudence … has had sex with twenty-one men and three women …’ | EAGnews.org

HS assignment: ‘Prudence … has had sex with twenty-one men and three women …’ | EAGnews.org
"MEMPHIS, Mo. – “Prudence is thirty-four. She has had sex with twenty-one men and three women,” according an assignment for high schoolers in Scotland County, Missouri.

“After being celibate for three years, she meets Larry and a romance begins to develop. Larry is thirty-seven. One night he proposes that, things going the way he thinks they’re going between them, they talk about their sexual histories.”

A concerned mother recently contacted Fox News columnist Todd Starnes about the assignment after her child received it in an English class at Scotland County R-1 Junior-Senior High School.

...The unidentified woman said she contacted the school’s principal, who provided a lame excuse for the assignment.

“He told me that the teacher was originally a college teacher and he sometimes has trouble differentiating between what is appropriate for a 15- or 16-year-old and a 19 or 20-year-old,” she said..."