Retrato da política portuguesa

Musica Portuguesa 18 - Ban - Irreal Social

An Answer to Bernanke

Um grande artigo de Ron Paul: An Answer to Bernanke:

During its 96 years of existence, the Federal Reserve has played havoc with our economy and brought great suffering to millions through unemployment and price escalation. In addition, it has achieved what only a central bank can: a steady depreciation of our currency. Today's dollar is now worth four cents compared to the dollar entrusted to the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Ninety-six years should have been plenty of time for the Fed to come up with a plan for preventing economic crises. Since the Fed is the source of all economic downturns, it is impossible for any central banker to regulate in such a manner to prevent the problems that are predictable consequences of his own monetary mismanagement.

Revolta contra a Natureza (2)

The Democratic Leviathan por Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

To make a decision regarding .... incompatible interpretations, we need a theory. By theory, I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on further experience but can be established a priori.

For instance,
- a larger quantity of a good is preferred to a smaller amount of the same good;
- production must precede consumption;
- what is consumed now cannot be consumed again in the future;
- prices fixed below market-clearing prices will lead to lasting shortages;
- without private property in production factors there can be no factor prices, and without factor prices cost-accounting is impossible;
- an increase in the supply of paper money cannot increase total social wealth but can only redistribute existing wealth;
- monopoly (the absence of free entry) leads to higher prices and lower product quality than competition;
- no thing or part of a thing can be owned exclusively by more than one party at a time;
- democracy (majority rule) and private property are incompatible.

The third myth is the belief that there exists no alternative to Western welfare-democracies. Again, theory demonstrates otherwise. The modern welfare state is not a "stable" economic system. It is bound to collapse under its own parasitic weight, much like Russian-style socialism imploded a decade ago. More important, however, an economically stable alternative to democracy exists. The term I propose for this alternative is "natural order."

Revolta contra a Natureza

We must not abandon utopia because the antagonism between ideas and reality is both the major dilemma of democratic socialism and its fascinating driving force.

Olof Palme

Sobre a perturbação que poderia chamar-se yeswecannite:

The egalitarian revolt against .... reality, as significant as it is, is only a subset of a deeper revolt: against the ontological structure of reality itself, against the "very organization of nature"; against the universe as such. At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will.

Murray Rothbard, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature

Climategate - updates (3)

Climate change data dumped:

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Lord Monckton: Shut Down The UN, Arrest The Warmist Criminals:



'Cap and Trade Is Dead':

Their correspondence show a claque of scientists massaging data to make it fit their theories, squelching scientists who disagreed, punishing academic journals that didn't toe the apocalyptic line, and hiding their work from public view. "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow," glumly wrote George Monbiot, a U.K. writer who has been among the fiercest warming alarmists. The documents "could scarcely be more damaging." And that's from a believer.

Mais informação:
Climategate for Dummies

Climategate - updates (2)

Climategate: what Gore's useful idiot Ed Begley Jr doesn't get about the 'peer review' process:

.... the single most important fact to emerge from the Climategate scandal. Peer-review is dead. Meaningless. Utterly void of credibility. More irredeemably defunct than a Norwegian Blue.

What the CRU’s hacked emails convincingly demonstrate is that climate scientists in the AGW camp have corrupted the peer-review process. In true Gramscian style they marched on the institutions – capturing the magazines (Science, Scientific American, Nature, etc), the seats of learning (Climate Research Institute; Hadley Centre), the NGO’s (Greenpeace, WWF, etc), the political bases (especially the EU), the newspapers (pretty much the whole of the MSM I’m ashamed, as a print journalist, to say) – and made sure that the only point of view deemed academically and intellectually acceptable was their one.

"Climategate": Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists:

“On a global scale it’s frightening because this group of people not only control the Hadley Centre, which controls the data on global temperature through the Hadley Climate Research Unit but they also control the IPCC and they’ve manipulated that. And of course the IPCC has become the basis in all governments for the Kyoto protocol, the Copenhagen accord and so on….”

We now have clear evidence that a concerted effort has been made by the IPCC connected climate scientists to block dissenting opinion on climate change, regardless of it's scientific merit.

CRUdGate - Why this can't be swept under the carpet:

we must understand how the whole thing hangs together, because the edifice of AGW is very definitely not just pure science, boffins in white coats in labs and so forth. It spans the whole gamut from real pure science, through the applied sciences and Engineering, passing through economics and finally ending up in the dark arts of Politics and Diplomacy. That's a lot to take in, so I have created a handy diagram that explains.

Climategate - updates (1)

O escândalo do 'Climategate' e a Conferência de Copenhaga por José J. Delgado Domingos:

O caso Climategate, onde se manipularam dados para provar o aquecimento global, é um dos maiores escândalos científicos da História, pelo modo como afecta a credibilidade pública da comunidade científica e sobretudo pelas suas implicações económicas e políticas.

El Watergate climático: la farsa del calentamiento global, al descubierto:

Algunos ya lo califican como el mayor escándalo científico del siglo. Este fin de semana la red se ha convertido en un auténtico hervidero tras la publicación de toda una serie de documentos comprometedores pertenecientes a la cúpula científica del calentamiento global antropogénico (causado por el hombre).

Global Warming With the Lid Off:

even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a "unified" view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the "common cause"; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to "hide the decline" of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

It also seems Mr. Mann and his friends weren't averse to blacklisting scientists who disputed some of their contentions, or journals that published their work. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," goes one email, apparently written by Mr. Mann to several recipients in March 2003. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

The Dollar Bubble

The Dollar Bubble

Interessante: NIA's 10 Most Interesting New NIAnswers

Muira el mal govern!

Em 1640 pela Catalunha rebentavam violentas revoltas, que aliás permitiram que Portugal recuperasse a independênca. Enquanto por lá gritava-se "morte ao mau governo", por aqui clamava-se por um governo diferente.

mais Zappa sobre censuras democráticas

Frank Zappa - PMRC Senate Hearing (09-19-1985) - texto
parte 1 | parte 2 | parte 3 | parte 4

uma lição sobre problemas com modelos matemáticos

Um pouco técnico, mas a propósito da fantochada dos modelos do "global warming" e do climategate - trash in, trash out:

.... nine possible sources of error ....

- The proxy relationship with temperature is assumed constant through time
- The proxy relationship with temperature is assumed constant through space
- The proxies are measured with error
- Groups of proxies are sometimes smoothed before input to models
- The choice of the model m()
- The choice of the model m() error term
- The results are stated as estimates of β
- The computer code is complex. multi-part, and multi-authored
- Humans with a point of view release results

Applying Economics to American History

Applying Economics to American History por Tom Woods

O Estado

Design by committee

O pecado original da igualdade

Ideologias politicas ou filosoficas que nao se ajustem às premissas da realidade acabam por produzir maus resultados. "Todos os homens são criados iguais" é uma baboseira. Todo o individuo é unico e irrepetivel, e portanto diferente de todos os outros.

Que aquela frase nao seja lida literalmente, e que tenha nuances poéticas profundas, e' uma coisa. Que o sentido "verdadeiro" seja o rigoroso oposto daquilo que declara, é dissonancia cognitiva.