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Showing posts from March 5, 2006

The Death of Liberty After 9/11

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright   And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can   Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.   Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Comp

If the World Were 100 People

There would be...   57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from North and South America 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 59% of the entire world's wealth would belong to only 6 people And all 6 people would be citizens of the United States 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death 1 would be near birth 1 would have a college education And 1 would have a computer

On Economic Liberalism

My own personal research on income inequality and growth shows and inverse relationship between inequality, human capital investment, and growth, but that human capital investment, for developing , countries, leads to both lowered income inequality and higher growth. Along these lines, Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize recipient in economics, writing in Development as Freedom, notes that one of the flaws in India’s development is a lopsided focus on free markets, and while not a proponent of Chinese-style government, he notes that China has raised the base of human ability, and he forecasts some positives from this aim. He also writes about democracy, and that there are no famines in democracies. Together, this points to the value of free markets, but in those countries where there are large investments in raising the quality and ability of human capability. This seems equally true when one considers democracy and voting.

Negative Action

I would find it hard to even justify the support of big-time sports in college, let alone paying the students competing in them. From The Game of Life, a review encompassing top-tier public and private school’s athletics: Athletes have lower SAT scores and attain lower grades, and their involvement in sport does not justify their lower performance. Students with extracurricular activities attain higher grades while spending more time on those activities. Most sports teams actually lose money, and although some schools earn money, many of those only seem to do so because the colleges and universities provide direct and indirect monetary support, either as funding for support activities, or by providing services directly. Athletes give very little as alumni. A review of top donors would find high academic performers, those with incomes over $150,000, and those admitted as children of alumni, as the strongest contributors. Additionally, removing support for athletics would not negative