The grim events of the last couple of weeks, and a note from a reader last week about a short post I’d written several years ago comparing the economic performance of Israel and New Zealand, prompted me to take another look at the data. This was the chart from the earlier (2018) post As I […]
Continuing our series on factions, Alfie Steer, historian of modern and contemporary Britain, discusses one of the more controversial party factions, the Monday Club, and reflects on the limitations our oral history archive has encountered with such topics. On Monday, 3 February 1961, the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan addressed the South African parliament. Now remembered as the ‘Winds […]
I’m afraid I’ll be posting more about the war today—but from various angles. The angle here is the failure of the New York Times in reporting the war, and especially the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital. The Times, relying entirely on information from Hamas and its agencies, published an initial headline (see here and here), “Israel […]
A little over 20 years ago, Australia plugged in to the wind and solar transition with the Federal government’s Renewable Energy Target. As they say, ‘sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind’. Australia’s once reliable and affordable power supplies are long gone, replaced by heavily subsidised, intermittent and costly wind and solar, backed up by […]
As Israel’s troops and tanks sit waiting at the border to invade Gaza, I’m starting to wonder if they really will invade. For when I remember that Israel’s avowed aim is to get rid of Hamas, and then think of the options Israel has (I’ve concluded that a ground invasion was the best tactic), I […]
Below is my column in The Hill on the imposition of a gag order on former President Donald Trump by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. Despite my long-standing criticism of Trump’s personal attacks on judges and critics, this gag order should be curtailed or struck down on appeal. While the odds tend to favor the lower…
‘The Coalition promised regime change but instead brought about state collapse.’ (Unnamed Iraqi general quoted on page 101) This is a disappointing book. Emma Sky is mentioned half a dozen time in Thomas E. Ricks’s book The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006 to 2008. Her story is extraordinary. […]
Randomistas: Fighting Poverty with Science by Esther Duflo Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth…
I’ve written a few sceptical posts here over the years about the annual (or so) Technology Investment Network’s (TIN) boosterish reports on the New Zealand tech sector. The overall story was just even close to as upbeat as the reports liked to make out. Yesterday a link to a new TIN report turned up in […]
The other day I reproduced the montage of headlines below from The Free Press, a montage showing how New York Times headlines about the Gazan hospital “explosion” changed from day to day. First it was an “Israeli strike” that killed hundreds in the hospital, then just a “strike” (there must have been some doubt then…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
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