Apparently, there is a nice correlation between increasing NIH funding and decreasing mortality. The researchers who found this (with an acknowledgement – not disclaimer – of funding from the NIH) conclude:
To compensate for the slower future growth of the U.S. labor force (e.g., from 1.2% per annum in 1996 to 2006 to 0.3% after 2017) on economic growth, the size of NIH expenditures relative to GDP should quadruple to about 1% ( $120 Billion) and be done sufficiently rapidly (10 years) to compensate for the slowing growth of the U.S. labor force.
That seems like a rather strong statement for a correlation, but let’s assume for a moment that this is a true causation: NIH funding did lead to decreased mortality. One must always wonder, “Instead of what?” Instead of decreased overall mortality, did we miss out on a complete cure for cancer? Did we miss a chance to develop extremely clean energy that would also be profitable? Could we have fed Africa? We will never know the answers to these questions, and if we follow the researcher’s policy recommendations, we will also never know what would have been in the future.
The video of “Feynman and the Train” is the second I’ve seen in two days explaining how to overcome the mechanical problem of turning a wheeled vehicle. The first is below, from when GM was still viable. I’m guessing the 1930s. This sort of thing is so absent in modern education; even modern engineering education is often so math based as to create a disconnect from actual hands-on engineering. I had to learn it on my own. There are a lot of interesting parallels between math-based engineering education and the Keynesian school.
I would like to buy some groceries off the Amazon website. Your widget on your homepage takes me to an Amazon book page. When I then click on groceries, the “reference” to lewrockwell.com seems to disappear in the url. How do I ensure that the purchase is credited to your organization?
As long as you go through one of the LRC widgets, or the various banners on the page, you are in LRC’s “store.” Then change the drop-down from Books to All Departments and go from there. And thank you!
The gay rights movement, like the civil rights movement, has advocated a mixture of positive and negative rights. In recent years, we have seen gay activists emphasize inclusion in state institutions like the military and state sanction of gay marriage. Now, even on the marriage question, I personally take the Stephan Kinsella position, but I recognize that questions of state enfranchisement are complicated by the mere existence of the state, which makes it difficult to come to conclusions strictly on libertarian grounds. On special privileges and anti-discrimination laws, I of course oppose them for anyone.
But forty years ago, when homosexuality was much more directly persecuted by the state, when private property owners were not allowed to cater to willing customers on account of their sexual preferences, this violation of the rights of homosexuals and others to engage in free commerce and to associate freely culminated in the Stonewall Riots in New York. Activists fought back against police brutality and efforts of the political class to attack their liberties in a most intolerable manner.
This was, in the main, a heroic uprising, as far as I’m concerned, although I could of course not condone any “collateral damage” of non-aggressors if there was indeed any. It is ironic that this great historical example of gay rights activism firmly rooted in anti-state, pro-property rights principles is now being celebrated by a White House that doesn’t seem to care too much about either.
A CNN reporter, in discussing the coup in Honduras, said that the US maintained almost 600 heavily armed occupation troops in that tiny country to “teach the the local military about respect for civil authority.” Right — civil authority in DC.
The L.A. Times’s Andrew Malcom — who, you may recall, gave Ron Paul’s campaign some of its best mainstream-media coverage — has an outstanding post up contrasting the great work of the late Billy Mays, who offered actual products that work, with the indecent, fraudulent advertising of politicians. It’s worth reading — and you’ll want to watch the video of Mays ordering food from a drive-thru, too.
Police officers killing innocent persons with impunity (and immunity) is essential to the nature of the state. Given that the state is an institution with a monopoly on the use of violence, to make functionaries of the state responsible for their wrongs is to erode that monopoly; to impose upon the state some standard higher than its own will. Such behavior is but an extension of the logic that underlies every state system, a truth the founders understood quite well when they created the Second Amendment as a partial check on that monopoly.
Samer and Husien Shehada, brothers of Palestinian Arab descent, were minding their own business en route to a convenience store at 4:30 a.m. June 14. Unfortunately, their route took them past a police station.
A police car pulled up and an officer ordered the brothers to stop. A surveillance video shows that the pedestrians stopped beneath a lamppost and made no threatening gestures of any kind. Seconds later, reports the Washington Times, 29-year-old Husien is seen falling out of the frame. He had been shot by Officer Adam Tavss. The young man was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Samer and Husien, along with their girlfriends, were vacationing at a seafront motel. After Tavss murdered Husien, his comrades in blue conducted a lengthy interrogation of the victim’s brother and their girlfriends, asking whether they spoke Arabic and otherwise rummaging around for some pretext to justify the crime after the fact.
The police eventually learned that Samer and his girlfriend had a quarrel a few hours earlier and charged him with domestic battery. It wasn’t until after this burlesque of an investigation that Samer learned that his brother had died.
Tavss was cleared by a departmental “inquiry,” and thus was able to be involved when the police murdered a second victim four days later. A cab driver named Travis McCoy took a wrong turn and drove the wrong way across a bridge, prompting a call that the cab had been carjacked. Tavss and a second officer “exchanged gunfire” with McCoy, leaving the driver dead.
After being given a brief paid vacation (a status called “administrative leave”), Tavss and the other officer were reinstated, although assigned to desk duty.
How sad to read the list of prescription drugs Michael Jackson was taking every day. One of Pliny the Elder’s favorite tomb inscriptions read: “I Was Killed by a Gang of Doctors.” Could Jackson’s say the same?
Colin Campbell, Neil Chatterjee, Tom Woods, Massad Ayoob, Jerome Taylor, Devin Powell, and Tim Case. From a trumpet call to leave Iran alone, for once, to federal lies about cocaine. Have you read the top ten?
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