The Stupidest Political Statement Ever

If you've been following the US midterm campaign at all, you know that 2010 is an extremely good year for stupid, ignorant, or even certifiably insane candidates. Which begs the question: who's the craziest? That's probably too hard to answer, so let's try something simpler: what's the craziest thing that was said?

Until today I would have found it preposterous that amid the frenzy of inane statements made by hopeful politicians in the last few months there could be a "winner", an argument or position so outrageously wrong that it clearly stands on "top" of the pile. Now however, I think I might have found exactly that.

Asked about immigration at a town hall meeting two weeks ago, congressional candidate Joe Miller replied:

The first thing that has to be done is secure the border. . . East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could.

Have you read that? Read it again. Ponder the implications. A guy who's running to oppose Obama's oppressive socialist government thinks the US should look towards a Soviet puppet state for inspiration. He also seems unaware that the Berlin wall and the iron curtain were built to keep East Germans in, not to prevent people in Paris and Copenhagen from taking advantage of the freedoms and opportunities offered by a life under the Warsaw Pact. Unless, that is, Mr. Miller's immigration strategy is to screw America so bad that it becomes desirable to prevent Californians from fleeing to Mexico. (Actually most of his economic program makes a lot more sense in that light.)

Bill Maher once said that Bush's stupidity made him an easier target for comedy than Obama. He should be afraid: if Joe Miller is at all representative of the next crop of politicians, comedians will soon become redundant.

Has America become Too European?

Yesterday I read Richard Feynman's Caltech 1974 commencement address, where he said that scientists had a responsibility to be more than just honest, i.e. to go beyond simply telling the truth, and make a point of mentioning everything that might make their results or argumentation wrong. While better scientific papers often have a "threats to validity" section doing exactly that, Feynman insisted that scientists should exert this strenuous form of integrity not only in academic circles, but also while addressing laypeople.

Thomas Straubhaar's latest op-ed is a perfect example of a piece with not even a hint of Feynman's "scientific integrity." Mr. Straubhaar, professor of economics at the University of Hamburg, presents an argument that goes something like this: "During the 20th century, the US favored small government, individual freedom and market forces. It rose swiftly to superpower status. Today, it has a bigger government that uses more interventionist policies, but its growth is anemic and some fear its greatness is fading. To remain powerful, it needs to shrink government and return to laissez-faire economic policies."

Sounds like a good argument, right? What kind of hesitant, unconfident chump bothers with "threats to validity?" Well, I do:

• Were the laissez-faire policies of the early 20th century really the main reason for America's success? Weren't, say, low population density and immense reserves of oil and other natural resources at least as important?


• How laissez-faire were those policies really? Isn't FDR's 1933 New Deal, widely credited with helping the economy recover from the great depression, just as interventionist as what Obama's doing now?


• Even assuming America's greatness is really due to the free market policies of the industrial revolution, is it so obvious that they still represent the best option now, a hundred years later, with the world increasingly multipolar and domestic oil pretty much gone?

I'll stop at three things, but the attentive reader will easily find more.

Just In: Tasty Food Keeps You Thin

While roaming the web for news bits on the health-care reform debate in the US (which can be hysterically funny or very sad, often simultaneously) I stumbled upon a report on various health care statistics in OECD countries.

For me the most interesting part of this report was the last graph, which charts obesity levels across countries. These seem to inverse-correlate perfectly with how good I find the food there. The thinnest countries are those with either superb meat and produce (Switzerland), awesome cuisine (France), or both (Japan). The fattest are those where good food seems rare and wicked expensive (the UK and US).

Obviously this is just my own perception, but how great would it be if there was some general law hidden in there, so that each time you had a really good meal, you could tell yourself that in all likelihood it must also have been really healthy?

Chris Jordan

From Nick Baum:

Chris Jordan quit his job as a corporate lawyer to take high resolution pictures of huge piles of garbage. In his words, we have access to the good information about our consumption (through commercials, noticeable quality of life improvements, etc.) but we can’t see the cumulative, negative effects of this consumption. Chris’ goal is to make people aware of this waste… [...] He also creates very large-scale composites that illustrate various statistics about the environment and the world.