Thank you, Yves, for republishing James Galbraith’s beautiful 2009 essay “Who Are These Economists Anyway?” in which we read:
“Leading active members of today’s economics profession… have formed themselves into a kind of Politburo for correct economic thinking. As a general rule as one might generally expect from a gentleman’s club
this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. They predict disaster where none occurs. They deny the possibility of events that then happen. … They oppose the most basic, decent and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. They are always surprised when something untoward (like a recession) actually occurs. And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not reexamine their ideas. They do not consider the possibility of a flaw in logic or theory. Rather, they simply change the subject. No one loses face, in this club, for having been
>On Mars, and in Texas, Engineering is Peer-Reviewed by Reality Issues – (fk)
Our question is simpler: why are we willing to invest in putting a rover on Mars but not in the mundane responsibility of keeping the nation’s infrastructure in good shape? We are yet to resolve this conundrum.
It’s more than just a “conundrum” it’s the fundamental characteristic in mankind’s bloody history and lies at the heart of psychology and religion. E.O. Wilson comes to mind. He approaches the question in “Consilence” using his expertise in entomology with some interesting analysis of intra/inter group dynamics. But from the iron law of oligarchy to descriptions of the functioning of the limbic system and language, there is no answer (read the exchange between Einstein and Freud).
No water follows no power following freezing weather.
My home in the Dallas Area had minor problems in Texas in the 1979 freeze. One was lack of insulation, the second minor amount plumbing frozen.
Amfortas the hippie
after one experience with this, after we first moved that funky trailerhouse out here, 25 years ago…it has been my practice to just shut off the water and drain the lines whenever NWS indicates a prolonged period of below freezing(my rule of thumb trigger is 6 hours below 30).
i’ve done this ever since….and the proof of concept is i don’t have to be a plumber, or crawl around in the cold mud under the house, when it finally gets above freezing(PVC pipe dope won’t set under 45 degrees or so….and will become useless in the can if left outside in even the 40’s)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of our hair’m is a smooth as black velvet short-haired fellow (when you look him in the face-he slightly resembles a gorilla) and I had $600 burning a hole in my pocket from Big Gov, so I commissioned an artist from Tijuana to paint an image of dogs cheating @ poker on one side, and an angelic image of Elvis on the other side.
I’m considering putting him up for sale on eBay, but would Etsy be a better venue?
Susan the other
cats are so playful they’ve gotta be close cousins to minks – the wild ones I see around here are so cat-like and very acrobatic, almost the same facial expressions if you catch them up close; tempted to get one for a pet.