Posts by Janus

Yes. Economists do love magical, lovely human selfishness

Re: Economics is like philosophy

"In as much as it lets you construct valid proofs for things that aren't true."

I think you mean Continental philosophy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy#cite_ref-6

Govt control? Hah! It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a successful command economy

"That depends what you mean by not working."

"Millions starving to death" is a pretty good definition of "not working".

When you talk about the Soviet Union's "consistent growth", I assume you don't mean the population.

Oz Anglicans embrace Darth Vader

Re: It must be a sad life...

"No enjoyment of art," you say?

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth..." (Exodus 20:4)

So, god is supposed to *increase* your pleasure in art; which god was that, again?

Scientology threatens Wikileaks with injunction

Copyright: not for science?

According to a previous post,

"The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act states the duration as:

1. For literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works:70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies."

But scientific theories can't be copyrighted in that way, can they? Surely it only applies to works of the imagination. Einstein couldn't claim copyright infringement for anyone using E=mc^2.

So, if Scientology claims copyright infringement, its materials must be non-scientific, which is sorta contradictory, no?

New Bond movie is Quantum of Solace

Deja Vu

That title reminds me of this:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/05/26

Three Little Pigs book deemed offensive to Muslims

Simple solution:

They should replace the pigs with something that Muslims couldn't possibly be offended by, like teddy bears. Oh, wait...

Three Gorges Dam an 'environmental catastrophe'

"The Ukranians starved themselves"?

I had to smile (grimly) at the comment which includes the phrase "the ideologically sound notion of communism". Karl Popper's "The Poverty of Historicism", anyone?

There's a potted guide here :

http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/books/popper_poverty_of_historicism.html

Covered in chapter 24: "It is very hard to learn from big mistakes," and, "Centralised Power but no Centralised Knowledge."

Sound familiar?

EU mashes GM potato plan

Let them eat cake?

Snobbery and Luddism in one neat little package - you're an upper-middle-class, Independent-reading, scientifically-illiterate hypochondriac, aren't you?

As Jonathan Swift said:

“Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together”

Engineers write defence against aliens manual

Better killing through biology

If aliens did want to wipe us out, wouldn't biological warfare be much more efficient?

Any civilisation with advanced enough physics for interstellar travel would have advanced enough biochemistry/genetics to make the human genome project look like child's play. (And given that their biology would most likely be totally unlike ours, they wouldn't have to worry about catching it themselves.)

Or they could go for a more indirect approach, and target our food crops. Or both at once. Mass starvation plus pneumonic plague wouldn't leave much left to mop up.

Given a little patience, they'd have an undamaged, unoccupied planet. And, depending on how they went about it, we might not even realise we were under attack until it was too late.