Coming back from a work trip to Rutherglen, I was struck again how what logically should be the Northern Ring Road, as distinct from the Western Ring Road, is instead labelled the Metropolitan Ring Road. Wikipedia tells us that it is officially the Northern Ring Road, but the signage says it is the Metropolitan Ring Road. As if being not Western ( Read more... )

Came across this funny and touching short memoir of the time the LA Count Dracula Society screened the gay porn film Gayracula (nws), and the poster ended up interviewing, and becoming friends with, the star, Tim Kramer ( Read more... )

This made me laugh lots.

Power management in dear old blighty. Coping with millions of people making a cup of tea at the same time.

Sometimes, a town just has to go with what SciFi has made the name mean ...

If cats wrote poems.

Australia is, by far, one of the most successful societies on the planet. This is not hubris, the UN says so. Australia regularly ranks in the top 2 or 3 countries according to the Human Development Index. That we managed to avoid the Great Recession is just icing on the cake: we are the country which is still living in the Great ModerationThere ( Read more... )

The death rate from extreme weather has dropped dramatically since the 1920s.

New Japanese satellite finds that the developing world is generating more CO2 emissions than the developed world. The country which recorded the biggest drop in carbon emissions 2008-2010 was the US: the sixth biggest was Australia. Study finds no increase in the ( Read more... )

More on single motherhood and the market for marriage (including the dearth of reliable men).

An amusing YouTube on “saving money like Uncle Sam”.

An animation explaining nominal GDP targeting.

Graphs of economic projections for India, China and … The paper (pdf). There has been massive drops in (pdf) global poverty in recent years, mainly (but ( Read more... )

About the 1905 Lochner decision.

Polls find that Americans have seriously negative views of the US federal government: a tendency what set in during Dubya’s second term but have accelerated since.

Suggesting ways in which Canada can be a useful example to the US.

Full text of a recent Sarah Palin speech: the woman direct, so to speak ( Read more... )

Commodity price index back to 1749.

Graphs allowing the comparing the fall in US spending on goods and services in 1929-33 to that during the “Great Recession”. Showing that the fall in US spending on goods and services during the Great Recession was by far the largest since 1960.

Arguing that the Copernican analogy actually shows how economics ( Read more... )

Presentation by Israeli physicist on solar effect on climate and the evidence that climate sensitivity is low (i.e. no significant positive or negative feedbacks). A post by him explaining this further:
Last, given that the CRF/climate link is alive and kicking, it naturally explains the large solar/climate links. As a consequence, anyone trying to ( Read more... )

About Norway’s “gentle” system not coping with a mass murderer.

About the riots, poor policing and breakdown in the UK’s work and reward system. The English riots and a wider class war.

Drug use is declining in the UK among young adults.

Fear in Brussels. The likelihood of a Greek default is rising. Predicting a request for the US to bail out ( Read more... )