In Social Science and Medicine (December 2017), Angus Deaton & Nancy Cartwright argue that Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) do not have any warranted special status. They are, simply, far from being the ‘gold standard’ they are usually portrayed as: Contrary to frequent claims in the applied literature, randomization does not equalize everything other than the […]
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Trees are good for the climate and human health. Plastics are bad for the environment and bird health. Where are the good governments when you need them? Forests reduce global warming … and not just by absorbing and storing carbon. Forests also have non-carbon processes that interact with the atmosphere to influence global and local Continue reading »
AUKUS has landed – well, sort of. At eye-watering cost over an extraordinary time frame, Australia is to host the rotation of US and UK submarines before it acquires three to five single-owner pre-loved Virginia class submarines as the pathway to participating in the British design and construction of an evolved Astute class submarines in Continue reading »
Anthony Albanese’s photo opportunity with president Biden and prime minister Sunak in San Diego must rank as one of the more grotesque and expensive the world has seen. The submarine deal, glowingly described as his ‘moon shot’ with its $368 billion price-tag is an act of pillage of public money. It might allow him to Continue reading »
Wellington 26 January 2035: Ten years ago this week the first nuclear-armed missile landed on Australian soil, remembered as Invasion Day. Duncan Graham recalls what happened. The surprise attack was the People’s Republic of China’s reaction to Australia’s involvement in opposing the ‘Ring of Steel’ blockade of Taiwan. Washington had earlier begun an airlift of Continue reading »
‘Avulsion’ refers to river science and how a number of little incidents can slow the river’s flow and, over time, cause the river to go in a different direction – a fallen tree, for example, that slows down the river’s flow, causing further deposits until the resistance to flow leads to change. If enough of Continue reading »
Speaking at a summit in San Diego on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a decades-long strategy to deliver the most costly defence project in Australia’s history. New details of the AUKUS defence and security pact have revealed Australia will buy three second-hand US Virginia-class submarines early next decade (and potentially two more), subject to Continue reading »
Channel 5 News came to Leicester to film Unglamorous workshops and talk with members of the bands. Here's the report:
Channel 5 News came to Leicester to film Unglamorous workshops and talk with members of the bands. Here's the report:
Sydney Morning Herald editor Bevan Shields has published an article titled “We are not above criticism but these attacks go too far” tearfully rending his garments over criticisms his paper’s three-part war-with-China propaganda series “Red Alert” has received from former Prime Minister Paul Keating and from ABC’s Media Watch. The whole article is Shields moaning Continue reading »
The Federalist Society goes wobbly on democracy A report from a Federalist Society confab: To those who have followed the Federalist Society closely since its triumphs at the Supreme Court last year, the symposium’s focus on law and democracy may hardly seem incidental. Since its founding in 1982, the Federalist Society has championed “judicial restraint,” the notion that judges should limit their roles to interpreting the law as written, leaving the actual business of lawmaking to democratically elected legislatures. That approach made sense for conservatives when they still saw the federal judiciary as a liberal force dragging the country to the left. But now that conservatives have secured a solid majority on the Supreme Court — and voters in several red states have soundly rejected hard-line positions on abortion — a spirited debate is underway within the Federalist Society about the wisdom of deferring to democratic majorities as a matter of principle.
Boom! John Stewart lowers it on Larry Summers, that is. BTW, John Stewart has been coached in MMT.
Video, no transcript, of John interviewing Larry. Short.
Lars P. Syll’s BlogOn fighting inflation
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University
. Absolutely lovely! Comedian and television host Jon Stewart turns out to know much more about real-world economics than mainstream Harvard economist Larry Summers. Don’t know why, but watching this interview/debate makes yours truly come to think about a famous H. C. Andersen tale …
What could go wrong? And what happens if this “protest” doesn’t materialize? Update:
. Norman Whitfield’s instrumental arrangement to this 1972 ‘psychedelic soul’ hit is still unparalleled.
Does anyone doubt there’ll be trouble? NBC News reports: Law enforcement agencies are prepping for a possible Trump indictment as early as next week Meaning pro-Trump violence: Local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump will be indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations. Law enforcement agencies are conducting preliminary security assessments, the officials said, and are discussing potential security plans in and around the Manhattan Criminal Court, at 100 Centre Street, in case Trump is charged in connection with an alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels and travels to New York to face any charges. The officials stress that the interagency conversations and planning are precautionary in nature because no charges have been filed. The agencies involved include the NYPD, New York State Court Officers, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the officials said.
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
By L. Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton
The banality of Tiny D and Donald News outlets broadcast the Trumpist riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 live from coast to coast. An hours-long insurrection was underway. Against the U.S. government, against our government, not some remote country in Asia, Africa, or South America. As unsettling as watching that was asking who are these people battling police with their Trump and Confederate flags, Christian nationalist, and even Nazi symbols? Unsettling answer: They walk among us. The United States of America did not end that day. But reflecting on events in HBO’s postapocalyptic “The Last of Us,” Tom Nichols ponders “Who Would You Be If the World Ended?” In his newsletter for The Atlantic, Nichols drops a lot of spoilers I’ll try to avoid here. What’s different about the series is how it differs from the Cold War versions of the genre. Mostly lone-wolf “Radioactive Rambos” would “would wander the wasteland, killing mutants and stray Communists” while shooting everything in sight and “saving a girl, or a town, or even the world” along the way. Nichols observes: But we live in more ambiguous times.
Civicus rates UK civil liberties and democracy alongside Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Hungary and Burkina Faso in annual survey, amid government’s war on civil rights – but there will be no improvement under a Starmer government The UK’s democracy and civil life have been downgraded to ‘obstructed’ in the Civicus annual survey of almost two hundred countries, […]
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Agent Elvis, Star Trek: Picard, Red Dwarf, The Mandalorian, SNL, Doctor Who, Ghosts, The Flash & lots more!
In the 1930s, Lionel Robbins laid down the basic commandments of the discipline when he said that the premises on which economics was founded followed from ‘deduction from simple assumptions reflecting very elementary facts of general experience’, and as such were ‘as universal as the laws of mathematics or mechanics, and as little capable of […]
