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1 year ago
in The Contradiction of Expelled on Will Wilkinson
An excellent point. According to reports, during the interview with Dawkins in Expelled, he is asked the best argument he can imagine in favor of ID. He constructs a story about space aliens seeding life onto planet earth. Stein takes this as free reign for mockery: "Hear that? Richard Dawkins believes in aaaaaaalieeeeeens!"
But the movie's mockery emphatically reinforces the contradiction explained here. If ID is really about the science of irreducible complexity, space aliens deserve as fair a shake as God. Some biologist somewhere might give them that shake, but Ben Stein and Mark Mathis don't. Neither will the vast majority of this movie's target audience.
But the movie's mockery emphatically reinforces the contradiction explained here. If ID is really about the science of irreducible complexity, space aliens deserve as fair a shake as God. Some biologist somewhere might give them that shake, but Ben Stein and Mark Mathis don't. Neither will the vast majority of this movie's target audience.
2 years ago
in Boudreaux’s Time Machine on Will Wilkinson
I regularly feel jealous of the people of future generations. They're going to be so much more wealthy, have so much neater stuff, and I'm stuck here.
3 years ago
in What’s the Point of Civil Society When the State Can Do it Worse for More? on Will Wilkinson
What I find funny is the suggestion that the world's most successful investor is now malinvesting his money. Something tells me Warren Buffet knows a little more about it than Chait. Another howler is when he suggests that business owners in the '60s were less greedy than they are now. They were civic-minded! No, they didn't accept regulations because they saw opportunities to manipulate the government to shut out competitors. Not at all.
What world does this guy live in?
I'll give him something, though. I saw a similar point made not too long ago by Alexander Cockburn: Buffet could indeed do more for impoverished Africans by giving his money to the government. How?
"At the moment it seems that the Gates couple's core focus is the war on AIDS and malaria, both ravaging Africa. How to improve the Dark Continent's overall well-being? America's senators and representatives can be bought for bargain-basement sums. A modest disbursement by the Gates Foundation--let us say $50,000 for each senator and $20,000 for each rep--would most certainly buy enough votes to end the current government subsidy, $4.5 billion for 2004, to cotton growers. The entire crop that year, the last for which figures are available, was worth $5.9 billion and the subsidy enables US growers to export three-quarters of their harvest and control about 40 percent of world trade, thus destroying the farm economies of countries like Mozambique, Benin and Mali....With overthrow of the cotton subsidy as a pilot program, Gates could launch a wider onslaught on the subsidies doled out to large wheat, rice and corn growers."
(Original post here: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07032006.html)
What world does this guy live in?
I'll give him something, though. I saw a similar point made not too long ago by Alexander Cockburn: Buffet could indeed do more for impoverished Africans by giving his money to the government. How?
"At the moment it seems that the Gates couple's core focus is the war on AIDS and malaria, both ravaging Africa. How to improve the Dark Continent's overall well-being? America's senators and representatives can be bought for bargain-basement sums. A modest disbursement by the Gates Foundation--let us say $50,000 for each senator and $20,000 for each rep--would most certainly buy enough votes to end the current government subsidy, $4.5 billion for 2004, to cotton growers. The entire crop that year, the last for which figures are available, was worth $5.9 billion and the subsidy enables US growers to export three-quarters of their harvest and control about 40 percent of world trade, thus destroying the farm economies of countries like Mozambique, Benin and Mali....With overthrow of the cotton subsidy as a pilot program, Gates could launch a wider onslaught on the subsidies doled out to large wheat, rice and corn growers."
(Original post here: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07032006.html)
