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POPSHole Punch Clouds Something to keep an eye out for (and maybe a camera too) if, like many people, you live near an airport; airplanes are thought to be the specific disruptor of the balance and stability of the ice crystals, spawning these formations.
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POPSGreat New York Times Scoop Arthur Sulzberger, then publisher of the Times, called me into his office and said, ‘Look, Henry, I've been letting you write these things, although I had misgivings about them, but now that 43 nations have agreed to accept the agreement, I don't see how the Times can continue to oppose it.’ I replied, ‘Mr. Sulzberger, if you feel that way, I can't continue to write any more editorials in the New York Times on the agreement; I believe it is too harmful.' Meanwhile today, they employ the ridiculous Paul Krugman.
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POPSLet's All Blow Bubbles and Make Mud Pies What the country needs is not more economic bubbles—tiny or otherwise. It needs sustained economic growth. That will come by strengthening the private sector, not by strengthening government. The best way to do this is to reduce government spending, which crowds out the private kind, and to enact long-term tax cuts.
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POPSUnsweet Reasoning Finally, while the fact that the United States is the second-largest producer of sugar would mean we are a relatively low-cost producer in a free market, it means nothing of the sort when it has been created only by erecting very high trade barriers. In fact, if the United States were a low-cost producer, we would expect the United States to be an exporter of sugar to other countries, rather than one that needs barricading against many lower-cost producers. Current restrictions force us to give up the gains from comparative advantage, making us poorer, not wealthier.
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POPSOrigin of the U.S. Business Cycle The long-run consequences of the Hamiltonian financial revolution were a crushingly large central government and a burdensome government debt. According to advocates of state capitalism, this last aspect was actually a good thing—they portray government debt as a blessing because it allowed for a strong central government. But contrary to their mercantilist interpretation, a bloated central government is not a blessing. Hamilton’s reforms merely induced a precursory period of unproductive trading in government debt instruments and credit-fueled speculation. More important, the centralized banking system created by Hamilton’s nationalist party destabilized the American economy. The new banking system immediately created a sequence of financial panic, deep-seated malinvestment, and a delayed recession. Sound familiar? It should.
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POPSIPCC Delegate On Extreme Weather Deaths These reductions are due in large part to factors that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing these emissions through efforts to make fossil fuel energy scarcer and more expensive could, therefore, be counterproductive in humanity’s efforts to limit death and disease from not only such events but also other, far more significant sources of adversity. Dr. Indur M. Goklany is a member of the GWPF Academic Advisory Council. He is an author and a researcher who has been associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception in 1988 as an author, expert reviewer, and U.S. delegate to that organization.
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POPSSocial Justice in Medicine "Social justice" claims to be what it isn't-- because true justice will never involve the violation of individual rights. The only way to assure justice and an ethical doctor-patient relationship is through the consistent, proud, principled defense of individual rights--and in economics, that means capitalism.
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POPSRoad to... Even the worst features of the statist reality, Hayek showed, "are not accidental byproducts" but phenomena which are part and parcel of statism itself. He argued with great insightfulness that "the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful" in any society in which government is seen as the answer to most problems. They are precisely the kind of people who elevate power over persuasion, force over cooperation.
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POPSCause and Effect Confusion If recessions occur, as Austrian economists believe, because the previous boom created a number of unsustainable malinvestments that must be liquidated before a recovery can begin, then government tricks to try to get people to spend more money simply won’t improve the economy. I will go one step further: If the Austrian approach is correct, the “stimulus” so heralded by economists and others actually would have a negative effect on the economy precisely because such a “stimulus” would exacerbate the present malinvestments that caused the problems in the first place. Trying to prop up the economy by showering it with new money actually makes things worse.
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POPSEthanol Activism The more ethanol there is in gasoline, the more often consumers have to fill up their tanks, the less value they get, and the more they must deal with repairs, replacements, lost earnings and productivity, and malfunctions that are inconvenient or even dangerous. Ethanol burns hotter than gasoline. It collects water and corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Older engines and systems may not be able to handle E15 or even E12, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect engine, fuel pump and sensor durability. Ethanol has only two-thirds the energy value of gasoline ‘ and it takes 70% more energy to grow and harvest corn and turn it into EtOH than what it yields as a fuel. There is a “net energy loss,” says Cornell University agriculture professor David Pimental.
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POPSThe Fermi Paradox A more complete definition could be stated thus: The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it. Perhaps one of the most important philosophical questions of all time: Are we alone?
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POPSGive Me Your "A" Only in this century has the pitch of an A been held at 440. Today's orchestra players are likely to walk onstage with instruments pretuned to a backstage oscilloscope. An electronic policeman holds the line. Only Baroque ensembles revert back to an older and gentler standard -- to an A of 415 Hertz. I have taken some liberties here in the name of simplicity. Baroque pitches varied all the way down to around A-390. There is also evidence that some Italian Baroque ensembles may have used an A as high as 460. It is common for harpsichords to tune to A-392 today. The range form 410 to 425 seems to have been typical in the 17th and 18th centuries, however. Today, many orchestras are once again pushing pitches up beyond A-440 in an attempt to create a brighter sound.
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POPSJustice Department on the Kindle Warpath It's an approach that bothers some civil rights experts. "As a blind person, I would never want to be associated with any movement that punished sighted students, particularly for nothing they had ever done," says Russell Redenbaugh, a California investor who lost his sight in a childhood accident and later served for 15 years on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "It's a gross injustice to disadvantage one group, and it's bad policy that breeds resentment, not compassion." I'm not a civil rights expert, but it bothers me too.
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POPSOblivious of a Master Musician In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?
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POPSProfits in Every Exchange By the same reasoning, every compulsory or involuntary exchange, where one person confiscates the goods or services of another or dictates the terms of the exchange under force or the threat of force, entails an economic loss for the unwilling participant. Economically as well as morally, all such transactions are the same as outright theft. It follows that a wholly voluntary economy results in the greatest general welfare to all the persons of that society.
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POPSRelative Value The value of the loaf of bread to Mrs. Jones is not determined precisely — or at all, really — by any one factor in its production or by any combination of factors. Due to the fact that Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith attach different values to the same thing, and also that they both attach different values from one time to another, it is easy to see that value has no predetermined and fixed quantities in terms of either hours or costs of labor. For, if predetermined and fixed quantities of ingredients determined its value, they would have to be the same for a person every time and the same for one person as another.
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POPSThe Essence of Economic Science - Value Theory Many attempts to fix value objectively, especially in earlier times, assumed it to rest on the hours of work measured by the clock. The error in this calculation soon became apparent to any discerning person because productive ability varies so widely from person to person and even from hour to hour for the same person. To correct the apparent error of using the time clock, attempts were made to measure value on the basis of the cost of the labor input — hours of work times the rate of pay...But, again, the thoughtful person realized that rates of pay, at best, reflect the differences in what it is expected laborers will produce rather than what they actually do produce. Furthermore, in most instances a worker is paid at a constant rate over a period of time during which his production varies widely from hour to hour.
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POPSSustainability One of the problems with the standard environmentalist view of sustainability is that it is overly static and seems to assume that our goal should be to ensure that current patterns of resource use are sustainable into the indefinite future. The only way to achieve that goal would be to limit innovation and thereby dramatically reduce or reverse economic growth, impoverishing billions. By contrast, the economist’s conception of sustainability is more dynamic and recognizes that the goal is not to sustain a specific pattern of input use, but to create an institutional environment in which human beings can respond to changes in the demand for and supply of resources in ways that ensure their wants can continue to be satisfied at progressively lower cost, leading to the enrichment of all. It is free markets that create exactly this institutional environment.
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POPSThe New Head of Medicare in His Own Words America was founded on the principle that men had the ability (and the right) to exercise their reason to peacefully pursue their lives and happiness — and that the proper function of government was to protect that right. In contrast, men like Berwick regard Americans as irrational creatures incapable of living without guidance from supposedly-wiser government masters. Do we want to live under a government where paternalistic men like Berwick rule over us? Or under a properly limited government whose sole function is to protect our individual rights? The choice is ours.
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POPSBrutal South American Winter Blast Maybe the most notable fact took place in north South America...Temperatures even fell in Roraima, where the state capital Boa Vista recorded 20C (normal lows are 25C), and the winds were blowing from the South. Boa Vista is located at 2 degrees North of latitude, so the influence of the Antarctic cold blast crossed the Equator line and reached towns in the Northern Hemisphere. It would be the same of a cold snap from the Arctic crossing the entire North American continent, the Caribbean and reaching North Brazil in cities at 2 degrees South of latitude as Santarem, a bizarre situation.
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POPS101 Reasons You Might be a Keynesian if... 66) Well, well, well, here we stand at #66 out of a promised 101, and I am plum out of ideas. Let's call the gap an unfunded mandate. What to do? What to do? Well, that's an easy problem for the Keynesians. Just turn on the printing presses and warm up the helicopters, if necessary. Let the magic of inflation do its job. *4 hours later* 101) <-- See, see. 101 promised, 101 delivered. The magic of inflation. All is well.
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POPSHome Alone - Burglars Picked the Wrong Kid Their house was broken into last month as well, likely by these same thugs. They took every tv in the house, several game systems, and a shotgun, among other things. The father showed the son how to load the gun and took him to the range. He made him show that he knew how to load it on his own, and then told him where it would be if needed, but otherwise not to mess with it. The kid is already planning to follow his father's footsteps in law enforcement. A local radio show host (Michael Berry) has initiated the drive of support from the community. A home security system, new tvs, and game systems are surely headed their way.
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POPSSecret Space Plane Up There...Shhh! Brent said he tracked the X37-B from the information on HeavensAbove.com. Spaceweather.com also has tracking info, plus other images submitted by readers. You might even be able to see it yourself.
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