This is bound to go viral...

People in North Carolina need to read the story here

Dr. Jeffrey Engel said Monday evening that officials are involuntarily isolating patients who may have the virus. He declined to specifically say how many suspected cases were in the state, noting that the number is always changing, and he declined to say where they were located.

read the story here

Great Job ASU C4L

Just wanted to congratulate you guys on a great first year for our club. I think we made a definite impact on this campus and I hope that we can continue this movement for many years to come. I'll be posting info on here throughout the summer about the YAL progress as it comes. Hope you guys have a great summer and hope to see many of you next year! :-)

Another interview

If anyone is paying attention to this blog anymore, check out this interview with Richard Dawkins that I found today. It's not all about what he says, but what the other folks say is cool, too.

Cool
I hope everyone is well. I am (except for the poison ivy! AH! when does the itching stop?!)
Take care

Looks Like Me and Matt are Internet Stars. :)

Haha.

US-China sign trade deals

Cool, now we're set to FedEx our Dells and Lenovos to China, and their company will take care of the phone calls. Sweet.
I foresee more of these types of meetings...
BTW brew day coming up soon if you want to get involved. Let me know and you can come by and learn a little something. Beer is great, and you can make it, cheap.
Check out this label I made for the APA I'm bottling soon. (cheap, I know, but I take every chance I get to pump my political views)


Hope you guys are all well, I sure am.

Edit:
Noam Chomsky interviewed by citizen radio. You might want to skip through to the interview, there is a bunch of banter in there, some good, some unnecessary. This one is shorter than the others that I've posted. Peace!

Also interview with Tariq Ali. Mucho coolo

Movie "Tickets"

Hope

There is hope yet for the Republic! H.R. 1207 now has 88 cosponsors. There is a very real chance that this bill will be heard by the Congress of the People assembled. There is a very real chance that it will be voted on and passed. Perhaps the Congress will due its Constitutional duty to legislate for We the People once again. Perhaps the Creature from Jekyll Island will at last meet the eyes of the public.

This is our chance. One of the greatest frauds in history stands on the brink of exposure. Let us hope that the people awaken and destroy it. Let us hope that they replace it with liberty and not further tyranny. Let us work to that end.

NY Gov. Paterson gives a good speech

I agree with this decision, but really I just thought it was a good speech. Starts off shaky and fake-o sounding, but gets on track.

Paz

Ah, Irony...

Sorry guys, you just don't have the correct permits to protest...

This guy is onto something...

Money and the Crisis of Civilization (Part 1)

Money: A New beginning (part 2)

You might not agree with everything there, of course, but there's a lot of food for thought and definitely some parts of a workable solution.

This concept of necessarily replacing personal savings with investment through demurrage-based money is really interesting in the way that it would reshape the fundamental ways in which we interact with one another and how society would be moved forward. Demurrage is a situation in which there is a cost associated with holding money for a period of time (as is the case with using many commodities, such as tobacco as was the case for ~200 years in the Americas. This is of course because these items tend to decline in quality, hence value, over time). It contrasts with the current system of inflationary money in that in a properly exercised demurrage-based system there is no benefactor to the decrease in value, which in the inflationary case is the initial user of the money before its value declines, often corporations or government contractors. The benefit coming out of this understanding about demurrage-based loot, though, is that money is constantly circulating and there is a disincentive to hold any for long periods of time, meaning it will always be going towards some sort of investment either in the form of direct investment in a company or in the consumption of a good or service. I have been thinking about this idea lately in the context of hoarding and how even the hoarding of commodities is very unproductive as it leaves capital that could otherwise be invested and productively used dormant, which is not advantageous to society as a whole. The redefinition of money from a store of value also used for trading towards one that is primarily for the use as a trading tool is one that would be hard for people to get used to, that's for sure.

Nonetheless, I have a hard time buying into forgetting about personal, as opposed to societal (so to speak), savings... But if I can use some demurrage-based loot to buy gold and use as a store of value in the event that I believe it's necessary, I'll be doin' that, thank-you-very-much. Buuuut.... My verdict on demurrage, which I will expand on later, is that it is an unnecessary mechanism that was created in order to counteract the interest growth caused by lending. With other fundamental changes, demurrage is just irrelevant. Later...

Discuss amongst yerselves? Anybody been looking at the silly versions of local currencies people have been throwing around? Now I know this is nothing too new, but the incidence of it has been exploding lately. I was immediately for it when I heard about the idea a while back; it promotes local economies, "disconnects the folks that use it from the Fed," and lessens the risk of fluctuation of value. Right?

Upon further study, most of the major alternative currencies I have looked at don't stack up (money: you must define this before going on. "The main uses of money are..."). Where is the guaranteed 100% reserve backing? (this distinction alone reduces all of the versions I have seen to distractions, wastes of time) Often these things are just mirrors of the dollar that just look different and are localized. And as far as the localization goes, I would argue that none of the local businesses participating are doing any better because of this. I haven't looked at the numbers, if there are any, but theoretically what would happen if say Boone, NC traded $100,000/day on average locally, then some amount close to, but probably not quite that amount would over time be changed over to the new notes and would be traded within the city to compensate for work or to trade items of value. The rest would remain traded in dollars, but the total $100,000 would remain the same. It would not necessarily have any impact on the Wal-Marts and McDonalds' in the neighborhood due to its peg to the dollar and the fact that that many dollars are still being held (or maybe not, it seems like the founders of some of these currencies have profit motives) in town as reserve for the new notes.

If however, there is a backing to the notes, like in some cases a bundle of food varieties (read the comments on this page to get some good insights, skepticism reigns supreme), these systems tend to become nothing more than "gift cards" usable only at the particular general store or farmer's market where they originate, and dollars still have to be transacted to get the notes out and get the goods bought in the first place. (On a separate note, currencies that are tied to a fixed amount of multiple goods have a strong tendency to fail. This is due to the unequal and varying valuation of the individual goods in the basket and the inevitable crushing hand of Gresham's Law. Gresham's Law states that bad money crowds out good money in a market, meaning that if two things are mandated as having equal face-values, but the market knows that one is more valuable than the other, the lower valued one will be traded while the higher valued one will be held.)

to be continued...

Pentagon Economic War Games

Interesting turnout in the economic war game the Pentagon just ran with UBS bankers and others.

Article in the Appalachian

Here's the article from the Appalachian. This is good overall, but we will definitely have to work hard to separate ourselves from the Campus Republicans...

Students throw modern day tea party on Tax Day
Tuesday, 07 April 2009

by EDWARD SZTUKOWSKI
News Reporter

State representatives may receive an unwelcome gift in the mail April 15, or tax day.

Students from the Campaign for Liberty and the College Republicans plan to participate in an event on tax day, to voice their concerns about the bailouts and the Federal Reserve System.

The tax day event includes taking a day off work, skipping school, withdrawing money from the bank for a few days, wearing a white wristband and mailing a tea bag to state representatives.

The tea bag is a throwback to the Boston Tea Party; students hope their representatives will get the idea.

“We want to instruct President Barack Obama on policies he should pursue and express outrage at people in the government,” Tim B. Reaves, senior journalism major and member of the Campaign for Liberty said. “Our group goes beyond economics to assert what we believe is the right direction we should go in.”

Participants are encouraged to wear white wristbands to increase visibility.

According to slaveuprising.com, 2,000 years ago a Roman Senator suggested all slaves wear white wristbands to better identify them.

Another Senator responded that it would cause the slaves to revolt if they saw how many of them there were.

“We want to shock the system and makes people realize that we are the true holders of power in the country,” Reaves said.

Reaves encourages students of all political spectrums to participate in the event.

“I want there to be opposing viewpoints at this assembly,” Reaves said. “Political activist organizations are welcome to show up.”

Reaves stresses the assembly is not so much about republicans or conservatives, and the Campaign for Liberty will be focusing on the Federal Reserve System.

They want to raise awareness for the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which would reform the ways the Federal Reserve is audited.
“The Federal Reserve is a private bank, Congress has no oversight. It has power over the economy, but we have no power,” Reaves said. “If they have to fully audit, we could prove without a shadow of doubt how its actions led to our problems.”

Tomorrow

Is anybody going to the Taxpayer Tea Party tomorrow? I can't get a response from anyone, so I'm wondering if anyone is planning on going.

Economic podcast series: EconTalk

If you have iTunes, you should check out the podcast series called EconTalk.
They are available at EconTalk. Put your mouse over the Recent Archives selections, whichever one you want. I would suggest going under the "By Featured Guest" and finding Mike Munger from Duke, to start with. "Giving Away Money: An Economist's Guide to Political Life" is a good'un Munger tempered the interviewer's cynicism and some irrational statements, and they had good balanced discussions on certain topics.
The one I put up there is related to government's nature of giving away "free money". In reality, there is fierce competition, otherwise called lobbying, that occurs over who receives government assistance and how much of what type they receive. The comparatively large amounts of wasted money spent in this process of lobbying for the subsidies, tax considerations, land availability, and legislative favors adds to the inherent inefficiency of government planning. In addition, this configuration often crowds out those who have little initial funding to lobby for causes or plan and coordinate public works projects.
A basic conclusion is come to which is essentially that whenever government is made to plan an economy by its selective doling out of capital, there is inherent wastefulness and misdirection created in the game itself (read: don't hate the lobbyist playas, hate the big government game), and that a viable solution might be scaling back on governments role in these regards.
Surely those aren't ideas that baffle you folks, but these guys have some other interesting insights.
"Grab Bag: Munger and Roberts on Recycling, Peak Oil and Steroids" is a good one, too.

EDIT:
Something Russ from EconTalk is involved in and that he mentions a lot is Library of Economics and Liberty
You should check it out...
Fill your braaaaaiiiiins!