You’ll see a new link in the blogroll over on the right to Winthrop Quigley’s blog. Win’s a colleague at the Journal, a business writer who is very much part of my critical brain trust. His desk is the one I wander to first when I have a question about economics, but his range of …
Continue reading ‘Albuquerque Blogosphere Just Got Smarter’ »
I don’t really understand what the $700 billion being discussed as a bailout for the mortgage/credit mess means, but here’s a nice benchmark for purpose of comparison: At the start of Monday’s meeting, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world’s rich nations to spend $72 billion a year to help Africa achieve U.N. goals to fight …
Continue reading ‘An Order of Magnitude for the Poor Folk’ »
Qiang Wang of the Chinese of Academy of Sciences had a letter in the 29 August Science magazine (behind paywall) about the critical issue of energy subsidies in China. Rising global energy prices have caused a drop in consumption in the United States, but in China, not so much: You can see that higher global …
I’m intrigued to find that Inkstain is the number one hit for “does andys pawn shop have guitars in fairfield”.
I awoke before dawn this morning to the sound of the neighborhood birds waking up. It’s still warm enough to leave the windows open at night, but cool enough that we’ve started adding blankets to ward off the 5 a.m. chill. This morning there was a bird sound unusual enough to get my attention. They …
The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then. But you already knew that, right?
It was art: A police report indicates Smith said he was a “special agent with the United States Illuminati, badge number 0931.” His mission? One from “Director Womack,” to “defuse and confiscate a Soviet-made MERV6SS-22AN warhead, with 14.5 kg of enriched uranium and a plutonium trigger, capable of delivering a 40-kiloton yield.” Police say Smith …
Props to Andy Revkin, whose NYTimes work is the gold standard in climate coverage: A staff writer for The New Yorker and a science reporter from The New York Times have won the 2008 John Chancellor Awards for Excellence in Journalism, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announced today. Jane Mayer won the award for …
John Mashey had some great comments on my post last week on GM foods. Since it seems unlikely that very many readers dig through old blog comments here, I thought it worth pulling them out and posting here in full. The setup is an argument between David King and Robert Watson over whether starvation in …
David Foster argues that free water for the poor in India comes with a significant cost: Although water supply in virtually all Indian cities is heavily subsidized, very few BPL (Below Poverty Line) families have household connections. While upper income families benefit from those subsidies, the BPL families are often forced to buy water from …