The Indian James Randi?
When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
Mr Edamaruku had been invited to the same [...]
Archive for March, 2010
Rationalist hero
Flags of convenience
Two photos follow, from the Guardian’s gallery of a day of violent protest in Bolton between the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism. They cast a useful light on these organisations. The EDL isn’t just English:
While UAF seems to have nothing, per se, against fascism:
419 variation
Here’s an imaginative spin on the old Nigerian 419 scam, received over the weekend:
Fraud Investigation Committee
Attention: Sir/ Madam,
We recently arrested a group of West African / Ghana, Benin and Nigerian Internet scam Artists in London and we have reasons to believe you have been one of their numerous victims. A thorough search of the computers [...]
Bikers make us proud
(picture from The Guardian website. Click to view the whole series. Really. Click.)
Around 15,000 bikers rode through Wooton Bassett today, in honour of troops killed in Afghanistan. The Telegraph adds:
The ride, believed to the biggest of its kind, has raised more than £100,000 so far for the charity Afghan Heroes.
Some wore medals [...]
Constitutional monarchy
After the dislike of fractional reserve banking and the fondness for the gold standard, this is the third area I find bizarre about some libertarian thought, though this one applies only, so far as I am aware, to U.K. libertarians. Perhaps I’m slow on the uptake, but this was the subject that first made me [...]
Flag waving
This research, reposted at the Not Exactly Rocket Science blog, seems counter-intuitive.
Israeli scientists have found that even subliminal exposure to national flags can shift a person’s political views and even who they vote for. They managed to affect the attitudes of volunteers to the Israeli-Palestine conflict by showing them the Israeli flag for just 16 [...]
Gold standard
After the abolition of fractional reserve banking, one of the things some libertarians (and others) tend to advocate is a return to the gold standard. The idea seems to be twofold: that this would remove from governments or central banks (which amounts to much the same thing) the ability to vary the amount of currency [...]
FRB and bank lending
Staying with this subject, about thirty years ago I spent an afternoon chatting with the man who started the Pitlochry Knitwear Company. He had initially used a very conservative bank that wouldn’t lend; they saw their role more as that of deposit takers. So he moved to a different bank, much to the stunned irritation [...]
Adam Smith on fractional reserve banking
When I posted before on this subject, I wrote:
While [fractional reserve banking] might be inflationary, it also fuels growth. The alternative, so far as I can see, would be both deflationary and cause economic contraction.
Adam Smith lived throught he period when this system first became widespread in Scotland. Here’s what he had to say about [...]