As a framework for predicting the future, macroeconomics is an abysmal failure. The forecasts of macroeconomists are about as reliable as those of a Magic 8-Ball, and even there they're falling behind.
It's time to try something more scientific, such as astrology.
Writes Michael Muchmore:
Despite some pundits claiming that Windows 7 is no more than a Vista service pack, there's a lot more to it than that. Microsoft has certainly addressed many of the complaints surrounding Vista, such as the lack of backward compatibility, the lengthy start-up and install times, the broad disk and memory footprint, and the inability to remove IE. But the company has also added a number of new interface helpers that will make the new OS more pleasurable and efficient to use. Figure in improved performance and networking, a smaller disk and memory footprint, and slick handling of devices, and it's hard to call this anything other than a full-fledged new OS.I haven't received my upgrade package yet, but hopefully I'll be as happy.
Windows 7's reduced footprint and improved performance on lower-powered machines would be enough to make it a better OS than its predecessor, and there's plenty more to like about the newest OS. I do wish Windows 7 had dropped the System Registry, which can slow down PCs over time. But it looks like Microsoft has made the right moves to turn around the Windows ship following its ill-fated Vista voyage. Now that it's here, I can say with confidence that Windows 7 lives up to its hype in the way that Windows Vista didn't. I recommend it highly: It's far and away the best OS we've ever seen from Microsoft.
Today, I stumbled upon this passage by G.K. Chesterton:
When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now, when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. [G.K. Chesterton, Heretics 14–15 (1905)]Charming.
Toby Harnden has the scoop on yet another instance of sloppy journalism. This episode calls to mind the infamous (and hilarious) Bathtub Hoax.
To be wise is to be a skeptic—not in doctrine, but in temperament. Of what passes for fact, much is false, and even more is exaggerated.
Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. (Not a joke.)
I'm reminded of the marvelous George Bernard Shaw quotation: "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite. But only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."
Update: Greg Mankiw has a charming parody.
I haven't read it yet, but this paper by Kurt Lash looks promising:
Historical accounts of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment generally assume that John Bingham based the text on Article IV of the original Constitution and that Bingham, like other Reconstruction Republicans, viewed Justice Washington's opinion in Corfield v. Coryell as the definitive statement of the meaning of Article IV. According to this view, Justice Miller in the Slaughterhouse Cases failed to follow both framers' intent and obvious textual meaning when he distinguished Section One's privileges or immunities from Article IV's privileges and immunities.Kurt Lash, The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part I: 'Privileges and Immunities' as an Antebellum Term of Art (lasted revised September 17, 2009).
A close analysis of antebellum law, however, suggests that Justice Miller's approach was faithful to long-standing legal doctrines regarding the meaning of Article IV and a distinct category of rights known as the "privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States." As of Reconstruction, Article IV's protection of "privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states" was broadly understood as providing sojourning citizens equal access to a limited set of state-conferred rights. The "privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States," on the other hand, was an accepted term of art which referred to those rights conferred upon United States citizens by the Constitution itself. Even as the country came apart over the issue of slavery, slave-state advocates and the proponents of abolition both expressly maintained the distinction between Article IV and national privileges and immunities. In the Thirty-Ninth Congress, John Bingham, the drafter of Section One, insisted that this distinction informed the meaning of the final draft of the Fourteenth Amendment. According to Bingham, the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected "other and different privileges and immunities" than those protected by Article IV. Understanding the roots of this distinction in antebellum law helps illuminate Bingham's explanation of Section One, and the likely reception of the Privileges or Immunities Clause by the public at large.
Juan Cole has the list. Among them:
Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."For the full piece, click here.
Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.
Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to "wipe Israel off the map?"
Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.
The traditional Christian calendar, as we all know, divides the past into two eras: Anno Domini, which continues into the present, and Before Christ, which covers the pre-AD years. Alas, the system has an awkward wrinkle—though AD 1 is meant to mark the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, scholars generally agree that he was actually born several years earlier. Christ, in other words, was born about 5 years "Before Christ."
But if the BC/AD paradigm is to be displaced, what might we use in its stead? The popular alternative replaces the label "Anno Domini" with "Common Era," and "Before Christ" with "Before Common Era." Thus, AD 2009 becomes 2009 CE, and 5 BC becomes 5 BCE.
This removes the wrinkle, but it's an unsatisfying fix. Whereas BC and AD are instantly distinguishable, all that separates BCE from CE is (obviously) the letter B. Beyond that, I just can't get over how dreadfully bad that rhyming sequence of ee sounds "B-C-E" is.
Question: If you were to determine the standard calendar for the modern world, what system would you adopt?
