Aehso’s Output

From an interesting article that Eric Janszen wrote for Harpers:

Because all asset hyperinflations revert to the mean, we can expect housing prices to decline roughly 38 percent from their peak as they return to something closer to the historical rate of monetary inflation. If the rate of decline stabilizes at between 6 and 7 percent each year, the correction has about six years to go before things stabilize, leaving the FIRE economy in need of $12 trillion.

[Emphasis mine]. He was talking about the US and I can’t see why Ireland will be any different - obviously the total € amount to pull our FIRE economy will be different but ‘de fundamentals’ are just not sound any more. His suggestion that alternate energy research could be the next big(ger) bubble seems to ring through, necessity is the mother of invention and invention these days is an expensive business.

(Wired also have an interesting interview with Janszen)

I can’t describe how disturbing this is, one wonders what the bullshit justification for this will be - stupidity, stress, orders?

The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people — and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

- An excerpt from President Bush’s speech on Jan 10th, 2007. Responsibility, anyone?

Amazing statistic of the day : 35,000 people are (apparently) being held in secret prisons around the world.

To put that figure in perpective, the combined population of prisoners in Ireland (that we know of!) is around 3,199 (Irish Prison Service - 2004 figures) + 1472 (NI Prison Service) = 4,571 people (and no leprechauns) at any given time.

(via Searchblog)

Salon have obtained more documents on the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal.  I am at a loss for words at this stage.  How can anyone defend this?  What happened to the chain or command (and responsibility)?  How can these people sleep at night?  So many questions…

Remember Al Gore claiming credit for having invented the internet?  Well Al was clearly lying because apparently it was used for far greater electronic surveillance by Presidents Washington, Lincon way back in the day.

Unreal.

I mean, come on, the cartoon was published over five months ago.  When republished by other European newspapers last week it suddenly became an issue.

Could it perhaps be because there are Danish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Ah…

So the Kansas school board have decided they need to redefine science in order to change their science curriculum to encompass intelligent design.

Needless to say, Scientific American are unimpressed:

[...] the Board of Education went as far as to redefine what science is: it’s no longer just a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Now it’s a search for… well, that’s a bit hard to say. Any sort of explanation, apparently. Pixies, ghosts, telekinesis, auras, ancient astronauts, excesses of choleric humor, they all seem to be fair game in the interest of “academic freedom.” Oh, and God, of course.

Apparently one Washington Post columnist imagined God saying to the Kansas board members: “Man, I gave you a brain. Use it, okay?”

Of course, this being the Internet, one clever soul (or body?) has written to the board reminding them that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design and that the alternative theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should also be on the new curriculum.:

But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.

Some of the responses from the board members are worth reading. I think I’ll have to buy something from their store, parody as good as this doesn’t come along too often…

Slate Magazine are updating a (long) page containing some of George W. Bush’s more interesting statements (a.k.a Bushisms).

An example from an appearance on ABC’s 20/20, Washington D.C., January 14, 2005:

I’m also mindful that man should never try to put words in God’s mouth. I mean, we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else, to God. We are in no way, shape, or form should a human being, play God.

I’d be embarassed, they remind me of some of the sketches in the BBC’s Dead Ringers show (sketch excerpts in Wikipedia for those who’ve never seen the show).

According to Barbara Bush when interviewed on NPR (audio here):

What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them

Well that answers a few questions I had anyway. There I was thinking they’d miss their homes and way of life.

An interesting comment from a Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T. (Note: this transcript was taken before the storm hit - the day after the Mayor ordered the evacuation:)

If you look at the Atlantic, it’s perfectly fair to say that both the increase in ocean temperature in the last couple of decades and the upswing in hurricane activity is mostly natural. If there’s a global warming signal in that, it’s very hard to see. And that natural cycle, we don’t fully understand it, by the way, I don’t think anyone pretends that we do, but there have been in history, you know, periods of 20 or 30 years of inactivity followed by 20 or 30 years of activity. It’s nothing new, in fact.

Before the 1990s, a lot of hurricane specialists had forecasts that we were going to go back to an active period in the Atlantic, and again, this has nothing to do with global warming.

So these forecasts were not acted upon by a government that has formerly been accused ofdistorting scientific research that doesn’t fit with their political policies. At least not listening to their scientific advisors explains why the administration were caught flat footed when they realised how much damage had been done (8-balls can’t forecast things like that, can they)

Oh, check out the Union of Concerned Scientists site if you havn’t before. A right bunch of nuts the lot of them (the 12 Nobel Prize winners aside<ahem>).