Why a dollar spent on a Toyota buys you better quality than a dollar spent on a GM – it’s actually going into the car.

h/t.

Claudia Rosett;

In Geneva today, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presiding, the UN launched yet another “high-level” development thingamabob. This time it’s not a UN Fund, or a Program, or an Initiative, or a Group, or an Alliance, but a “Forum” — the “Development Cooperation Forum,” which will hold its first biennial grand pow-wow in NY in 2008.
Well, I guess Ban had to do it, otherwise the UN system might have been stuck trying to squeak by with only the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN Development Program, the regional Development Banks, the UN Development Group, the Commission on Sustainable Development, the Commission for Social Development, the Millennium Development Project (now folded into the UNDP), the five Regional Economic Commissions, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UNCTAD, UNEP, UNIFEM, UN-Habitat, the UNFPA, the UNCDF, OCHA, or pick your own… my favorite, on the basis of verbiage alone, is (hang on for the ride): the High-Level Panel on System-Wide Coherence in Areas of Development, Humanitarian Assistance and Environment.

From a interview with National Review’s Linda Bridges on the topic of William F. Buckley Jr.;

Lopez: What’s your most fun Mrs. Buckley memory?
Bridges: Well, my favorite Pat story is not a personal memory of mine — I was told it by others who were there (including her husband). But it has to do with the time in Switzerland when the Buckleys’ dear friends (though political opponents) Ken and Kitty Galbraith came to visit them, bringing along a friend of theirs, none other than Ted Kennedy. The Galbraiths lived in Gstaad, the Buckleys in Rougemont, a few miles down the valley. They spent a pleasant afternoon together, and then the Galbraiths had to continue down the valley towards Geneva, while Kennedy stayed on. Finally it was time for him to return to Gstaad, and rather than take the train he asked if he could borrow a car. “You certainly may not,” said Pat. “There are three bridges between here and Gstaad.”

h/t

So the Premiers met what . . . four times? Their goal was to come to an agreement on Equalization (stealing from Peter to pay Paul). They couldn’t come to an agreement. The Finance Minister told them repeatedly that if they couldn’t, he would decide. So now you’ve got whiners in the Maritimes and whiners in Saskatchewan who for the first time in years are realizing that they have no choice but to get off the pogey from Alberta and Ontario.
What have we got? A lot of bickering over sharing the wealth. Excuse me?
The Maritimes and Saskatchewan have been on the dole for decades and now that there is some wealth they want to whine about how much goes to the other have-nots? I’m sorry Mr Williams and Mr. Calvert. You shouldn’t even have input. Pay your share and shut up already.
Wahh, “Promise” this, and Wahh, “Accord” that. Well deal with it you whiny, about to go into election, haves.
You didn’t hear Alberta complain about a measly 800 Million. Sure, maybe 8 BILLION.
Gods, here we are in the middle of the largest boom in Sask since early last century and these misers are afraid to share? Is there a disconnect between socialist theory and socialist policy? I thought sharing was the whole point?
Cheers,
lance

Click to enlarge. (now fixed)
Via the usual depressing bastard.

In the same way* that accuracy on the gun range can be expected to improve as distance from the target increases, or that small errors in interest charged disappear when the sums they are applied to go over the million dollar mark….

“Projecting changes in climate due to changes in greenhouse gases 50 years from now is a very different and much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now. To put it another way, long-term variations brought about by changes in the composition of the atmosphere are much more predictable than individual weather events.” [from page 105, 2007 IPCC WG1]

A climate model…

… must model more processes than in a weather model (such as biogeochemistry of vegetation on land and plants in the ocean; sea ice dynamics; aerosol processes; ocean circulation; ground freezing and thawing; snow accumulation and melt and sublimation, etc. – see). For some of these climate processes (which involve physics, biology and chemistry) they are modeled, as with a weather model, by a dynamical core and by parameterizations. These include sea ice dynamics and ocean circulation, which both have advection, pressure gradient and gravitational parts, as well as the parameterization of other effects (such as turbulence, phase changes of water). Some of the climate processes, such as biogeochemistry and biogeography have no dynamical core, and are completely parameterized models.
Thus, a climate model involves more parameterizations with their tunable components than for a weather model, as well as additional new state variables (such as salinity, ice, snow, vegetation type and its root depth etc) for which initial conditions are required for all of these variables.
The climate model also has no real world constraint such as supplied by real-world initial conditions (and for a regional model lateral boundary conditions). This real-world data constrains its predictions. Instead, the state variables required for the dynamic core of each component of the climate model (i.e. the state variables for the atmosphere, land, ocean and continental ice) must be generated from the parameterizations!
The claim by the IPCC that an imposed climate forcing (such as added atmospheric concentrations of CO2) can work through the parameterizations involved in the atmospheric, land, ocean and continental ice sheet components of the climate model to create skillful global and regional forecasts decades from now is a remarkable statement. That the IPCC states that this is a “much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now” is clearly a ridiculous scientific claim. As compared with a weather model, with a multi-decadal climate model prediction there are more state variables, more parameterizations, and a lack of constraint from real-world observed values of the state variables.

Thus concludes today’s scientific consensus moment.
Thankyou.

Last evening I watched Children of Men. It’s a bit depressing, in the way that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a bit bloody. (It’s a “bit bloody” as well.)
At the time, I was not aware that one in six couples in Britain are infertile.

According to America Alone, Mark Steyn’s self-described and penetrating rant on “demography, Islam and civilizational exhaustion,” the developed world has gone from 30 per cent to 20 per cent of global population. Greece has 1.3 births per couple — the “lowest low” from which no society has ever recovered; Russia, where 60 per cent of pregnancies are terminated, has the fastest-growing rate of HIV in the world and, by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts or uncles. In the developed world, only the United States, with a 2.1 birth rate, is replacing itself.

The rest is here.

Via Captain Capitalism;

The always thoughtful Maxed Out Mama has been on a “road trip” ;

What this looks like on the ground is that housing seems generally on a downward trend, but the real change is what is happening in stores. The contrast between parking lots filled with very nice large vehicles and customers sifting carefully through aisles is quite remarkable. Food pricing, especially, seems to be bonking around like a ping-pong ball. This is a sign of very severe inflation moving through the system. No matter what happens, in normal times you just will not see prices for frozen food items doubling in a matter of a month or two, but that is what I saw in several stores. The best run seem to be trying to keep something on sale, and I noticed a real shift in brand shelving, especially on frozen items.
One of the big surprises was in Bucks County, PA, which borders Mercer County in NJ. In the slightly outlying portions of Bucks, a whole lot of small commercial property (storefronts and land) was on sale. A lot of empty stores. Closed or closing dealerships. Big price drops on services, such as labor at auto dealerships and office visits for some medical providers.
[…]
Up and down the East Coast, restaurants seemed to be feeling the pressure. Fast food restaurants are definitely moving more towards more low-price options on menus. There is some competition emerging in gas prices at concentrations of gas stations. I talked to what looked like senior staff members when I could, and they confirmed that business wasn’t great. At banks in off hours, you get kidnapped and dragged into offices if you walk in and ask a teller about CD rates! I started wondering if some of those branches had installed a silent alarm system for sales prospects. It’s difficult to escape.
I usually try to buy a lot of the local newspapers. There’s a lot of personal stuff for sale. More houses for sale, obviously. Less jobs, relatively. Construction equipment, trucks, boats, campers.
Georgia, aside from being on fire (literally, not metaphorically), seems to be relatively prosperous. There is an awful lot of building still going on in these southern states. When it will stop I don’t know. It is possible that the relatively healthy looking Georgia might in part be due to a Florida exodus. Nonetheless, the car dealerships still look pushed. I drove around Valdosta (close to Florida border in central GA) this weekend, and wasn’t all that surprised to see a 72 month 0% APR financing sign up on a Chevrolet dealership.
Overall, I was surprised to see more rural areas areas looking healthier than I suspected and more urban/wealthier areas looking more pressured than I expected. Is this a sign of extreme overleverage among the higher income brackets? I don’t know, but I am beginning to suspect it.

And this warning from Jeremy Grantham;

“…the man Dick Cheney, plus a lot of other rich people, trusts with his money. Grantham, chairman of Boston firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, has been a voice of caution for years. But he has upped his concerns in his latest letter to shareholders. Grantham says we are now seeing the first worldwide bubble in history covering all asset classes.
Everything is in bubble territory, he says.
Everything.

Given the schemes being hatched under climate change hysteria, I was tempted to title this post “Recession To The Rescue”. A natural downturn in the economy may be the best hope we have to wrestle the fate of our long term economic fortunes from the politically motivated media whores and crazy people currently driving the news cycle. Of coiurse, that’s easy for me to say – my home is paid for.

Sydney Morning Herald;

Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.
Flocks of sheep were imported to Japan and then sold by a company called Poodles as Pets, marketed as fashionable accessories, available at $1,600 each.
That is a snip compared to a real poodle which retails for twice that much in Japan.
The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food.
She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep.

Update: Well, this is what you get for relying on the mainstream media for your news!

And a job interview with Goldman Sachs.

Eco Socialites;

She recycles and has tossed away her children’s plastic sippy cups. Concerned with carbon emissions, she is about to replace the Barnetts’ two family cars with hybrids. “I turn the water off when I’m brushing my teeth,” she said. “I’m always learning, I’m always trying to improve.”

Plus, she may consider energy saving bulbs.
For the utility rooms.
In both homes.
Via Glenn;

Laurie David, the producer of “An Inconvenient Truth” and global warming activist, told Texas A&M students to change their “individual behavior” in order to consume fewer resources and to help battle global warming. As an employee of Easterwood Airport, I would like to point out that Mrs. David flew to our campus in a luxurious private jet, which could be seen from 10 miles away due to the thick plume of smog it left in its wake.

She’s building a 26 foot long barbeque station at her summer home at Martha’s Vineyard.

Adjusted for inflation, plotted to a roller coaster.

h/t

Keith Richards is a father of four.
And now the Good News: They won’t need to add the coke.

Pharmaceutical poppies in Alberta? I’m all for rural diversification, but really – shouldn’t we be importing the stuff from Afghanistan? It’s a question others are asking;

The buds of millions of poppy flowers are swelling across Afghanistan. In the far southern provinces bordering Iran, the harvest will start later this month. By mid- May the fields around British military camps in Helmand will be ringing to the sound of scythes, rather than gunfire.
And this year’s opium harvest will almost certainly be the largest ever. In the five years since the overthrow of the Taliban regime, land under cultivation for poppy has grown from 8,000 to 165,000 hectares.
The US wants to step up eradication programmes, crop-spraying from the air. But, desperate to win “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan and protect British troops, Tony Blair is on the brink of a U-turn that will set him on a collision course with President George Bush.
The Prime Minister has ordered a review of his counter-narcotics strategy – including the possibility of legalising some poppy production – after an extraordinary meeting with a Tory MP on Wednesday, The Independent on Sunday has learnt. Tobias Ellwood, a backbencher elected less than two years ago, has apparently succeeded where ministers and officials have failed in leading Mr Blair to consider a hugely significant switch in policy.
Supporters of the measure say it would not only curb an illegal drugs trade which supplies 80 per cent of the heroin on Britain’s streets, but would hit the Taliban insurgency and help save the lives of British troops. Much of the legally produced drug could be used to alleviate a shortage of opiates for medicinal use in Britain and beyond, they say.
[…]
A spokesman for No 10 said that Mr Blair agreed to consider the idea, and would reply before Easter, adding: “The Prime Minister did note there were doubts about the capacity of the Afghan government in this regard.”
Mr Ellwood said: “It is ironic that the world, including Britain, experiences a shortage of diamorphine and codeine, but we choose to prevent the fourth poorest country in the world from producing it. Instead we are destroying the crops, alienating communities who then seek support from the Taliban. Five years since the invasion, peace remains a distant hope. Until the issue of poppy crops is solved, the fragile umbrella of security will never be strong enough for long-term reconstruction and development initiatives to take root.”

That’s right. There’s a shortage of the stuff. Meanwhile, poppy growing seems to be the one thing Afghanis are really good at and we’re trying to stop them from doing it.
With all the millions in foreign aid being poured into the country to plant the seeds for a stable economy, why wouldn’t rechanneling Afghanistan opium towards the legitimate pharmaceutical industry be the number one priority on the order paper?
Surely the problems in achieving legal commercialization of the crop can only pale against the problems created by eradicating it.
(COMMENTS NOTE: Please stay on topic. This is not an invitation for a debate on the pros and cons of legalizing recreational drug use.)