I commend to you this very funny article in the satirical magazine, The Onion:
KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.
"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, ‘I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.’ Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."
Hat tip: Brad De Long
You may be interested in the transcript of an online discussion with Washington Post journalist Craig Timberg. You will recall that it was his article that set off a debate in the blogosphere about the role of markets in the famine. He comes across as a very sincere and decent journalist, doing his best to bring this crisis to the world’s attention.
Thanks to the Private Sector Development blog at the World Bank for publicising this discussion.
TalkPolitics takes a well-aimed shot at the new arrangements for establishing and operating public enquiries in the UK. Apparently, a cosy deal between Government and Opposition saw the passage of a bill, without a vote, of the Inquiries Act 2005, which
changed the process by which public and other governmental inquiries are convened, conducted and, ultimately, reported on, not a single one of which serves the public interest. It does this by taking away from the independent chair of such an enquiry and from Parliament itself, a whole series of rights which have been in place since the 1920′s, rights which the government has now, through its ministers, reserved solely and exclusive to itself.
One of New Labour’s weaknesses, in my opinion, is that they are insufficiently interested in establishing and sustaining institutions that nurture and protect the rights and values that they espouse, preferring wherever possible to grant themselves discretion to act as they choose. This is a myopia that we will come to regret in time.
I was strangely fascinated by this posting by a woman who is looking for a "travel companion and a lover".
She says:
Traveling with a partner is safer, two people together can afford nicer accommodations than if they travel alone, and I *really* don’t want to be celibate for a long period of time nor am I interested in "hooking up" with random strangers I meet along the road.
It all seems so matter-of-fact (is romance so dead?). And I would have thought that it would be enticing to weirdos. But I wish Jacqueline well in her hunt for a full service travelling companion.
There are people who think that there should not be a significant expansion of aid to developing countries; of these, some believe that all aid harms the recipient, while others believe that aid is generally effective, but that there are diminishing marginal returns which mean that expanding aid significantly beyond current levels would not be effective.
One concern about increasing aid is that there might be adverse macroeconomic effects from large aid inflows, broadly comparable to the Dutch Disease effects associated with export earnings from natural resources. These resource inflows lead to an appreciation of the exchange rate, which can make domestic industries internationally uncompetitive. Recently, some literature has focused on the negative impact that large external resource flows might have on governance and accountability. If there are small benefits from additional aid, then it is possible that these negative effects might outweigh the benefit of marginal extra aid dollars.
In a very interesting new paper, Is Aid Oil?, Paul Collier compares the impact on African countries of aid inflows with the impact of revenues from natural resources. Collier finds that the way in which aid is given makes it vastly better than resource rents as a source of finance.
Aid evidently has very different effects from resource rents. Indeed, when aid is introduced alongside resource rents in the Collier-Hoeffler growth regressions described above, the hypothesis that they have the same effect can be decisively rejected. This suggests that the superior average results of aid are not simply due to better allocation among countries: within a given county aid and resource rents have distinctive effects. In turn, this tells us that the in-country modalities of aid have made an important difference.
Aid agencies are adding value to the transfers that they administer, and indeed doing so to a very considerable degree. The evidence of oil implies that aid agencies face an intrinsic problem: the baseline effect of resource transfers is negative and the agencies have to offset this by purposive allocation and complementary inputs. Nevertheless, such an activity need not be forlorn: an analogy with the effects of hospitals might help to clarify the point. The baseline for hospital activity is also significantly negative. By bringing patients with a variety of illnesses together in a single building, a hospital transmits disease. Even in well-run hospitals, many people contract illnesses from others while there, and spread these illnesses when they leave. Nevertheless, societies rightly see hospitals as vital: the value-added of a well-run hospital far offsets this negative baseline effect. This seems to be the story with aid agencies. The radical critics of aid are correct in the sense that the effects they point to are adverse and important, as demonstrated by oil. But their overall assessment is as wrong as would be a proposal to close hospitals. Indeed, their critique would be far more usefully directed to reforming the governance of oil revenues: the task of making oil work more like aid is far more promising than thetask of making aid work better.
Full disclosure: the author is an official of the UK Department for International Development, currently on unpaid leave to work at the Center for Global Development.
Credit where it is due: President Bush made a speech about Africa yesterday. Two quick comments. First, I cannot see how the White House reckons it has trebled aid to Africa. President Bush said yesterday:
Over the last four years, the United States has stood squarely with reformers in Africa on the side of prosperity and progress. We’ve tripled our aid to Africa; we plan to double it once again.
The figures show that from FY 2000 to FY 2005 (estimated), U.S. aid to Africa will have increased by 78% in real terms or 93% in nominal dollars – not quite a doubling, much less a “tripling” of aid. Of this increase, 50% consists of emergency food aid (PL 480 Title II). You can see the full figures here. Second, it isn’t true that aid is only effective when given to good governments. President Bush said yesterday:
Over the decades, we’ve learned that without economic and social freedom, without the rule of law and effective, honest government, international aid has little impact or value. But where there’s freedom and the rule of law, every dollar of aid, trade, charitable giving, and foreign and local investment can rapidly improve people’s lives. (Applause.)
This sounds plausible; but none of the aid-growth regressions find that aid is completely ineffective in poor policy environments, and many of them find that the quality of the policy environment makes little or no difference to the effectiveness of aid. I have no objection to donors choosing to channel their aid to better governments where possible, but they should not mislead themselves or the public into thinking that this is justified by evidence that shows that aid is not effective in badly governed countries, or that it is substantially more effective where policy is good.
President Bush made this statement on the elections in Iran:
Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world. Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy. The June 17th presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record. Iran’s rulers denied more than a thousand people who put themselves forward as candidates, including popular reformers and women who have done so much for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.
I welcome this plain talking about the need for democracy. But I would like to see it applied consistently. Where are the strong denouncements about lack of democracy and human rights in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan? (And, even less likely, Israel?) This inconsistency matters because it is difficult to take these criticisms seriously as a principled stand for democracy and human rights when the US ignores similar or worse lack of democracy in countries that it find strategically useful. They just seem to want to pick a fight with Iran.
The Overseas Development Institute has set up a blog on 2005. They are independent, well-informed and always interesting.
So, Sir Gus O’Donnell is to be the new Cabinet Secretary. So much for the fiction that the civil service wants to recognise and promote civil servants who "deliver" public services. Gus is a great guy, and is no doubt a good policy adviser. But he has never delivered a public service – except advice – in his entire life. As ever, the rhetoric about what sort of skills we will value in the civil service is somewhat different from the reality.
Am I the last person to have discovered this hilarious site, set up to enable ordinary Americans to thanks Tony Blair for his steadfast support of George Bush in their adventure in Iraq? Visitors are invited to post their comments which "are printed on paper, and wire-bound into books of 250 messages. Message books are shipped to 10 Downing Street in London weekly.". Here is a sample:
Don’t let all the recent criticism get you down. There is widespread understanding among the American public that the liberation was undertaken for the noble cause of helping the Iraqis, as well as legitimate national interests of the U.S. and U.K. – Oregon, USA
P.S. On a lighter note: My wife has shifted her home decorating tastes from French Country to English Country in the aftermath of the war. – California USA
You turned one of the darkest chapters of modern history and brought light to the Middle East. Thank God for you. – Australia
I thought Thatcher was good. You’re gooder. – Arizona, USA
To truly win this war, a revolution needs to occur in the Islamic world to bring them out of the dark ages. A free and democratic Iraq is a great starting place. Your courage in doing what is right, instead of what is politically expedient, places you in the pantheon of great leaders like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Arizona, USA
This is an excellent post by Brad DeLong, explaining why free trade can only be good, and explaining why we should not worry that all our jobs and income will shift overseas. As the interesting discussion that follows the post makes clear, it is important to distinguish comparative from absolute advantage to understand why we all benefit from free trade. Paul Samuelson once said that the theory of comparative advantage is the only proposition in economics which is "both true and non-trivial".
Lovely quote from Malcolm Rifkind, today appointed as the shadow to David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who happens to be blind:
I will be looking at David Blunkett across the Despatch Box and holding him to account on behalf of the country.
The British Government’s new website on sustainable development is a commendably thoughtful contribution. WorldChanging.com has an interesting commentary:
Behavioral inertia is a tricky thing, but once overcome, large changes can happen at once. They draw an analogy to smoking–in the 1950′s, 70% of Brits smoked, but after a few decades of this four-pronged approach the figure is down to 28% and no-smoking-in-public-places laws are being considered in many locations, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
AidsMatters reports that two recent reviews of Uganda’s celebrated "ABC" (abstinence, be faithful, condoms) approach to AIDS management have questioned whether abstinence and being faithful have contributed to the decline in AIDS in Uganda. First, researchers at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health reported in February that abstinence and fidelity don’t seem to have played a significant role in declining AIDS levels in Uganda’s Rakai district compared to condom usage. Second, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reports on recent studies that suggest that much of Uganda’s success in lower AIDS rates is due to deaths because of AIDS, a factor not previously given sufficient epidemiologic weight.
The initial news from Iraq is very encouraging: media reports are talking about a turnout of more than 70 percent. This would be an excellent step towards a representative government in Iraq. I very much hope the elections in Iraq do turn out to be as successful as these reports suggest, and that the new Iraqi assembly builds on this mandate by creating a genuinely inclusive constitution which enables all the people of Iraq to be represented. But even if the elections are a success, this does not vindicate the actions of the UK and US Governments. It was no part of their case for war that the purpose was to bring free and fair elections to Iraq. Their argument was that Iraq posed a real and imminent danger and that a war was a legitimate act of self defence. (A war to bring democracy to another country without a Security Council resolution would be unambiguously illegal under the UN Charter: the only possible case for war without a Security Council resolution is self-defence.) The claim that we were acting in self-defence was false, and has been shown to be false. Article 51 of the UN Charter reads:
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
If the elections go well, we should be pleased that something has gone right, at last, for the people of Iraq; but our governments should not for a minute think that it absolves them from responsibility and accountability for their misjudgement.
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