USA

We’re Number One! We’re Number One! We’re Number One!

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It seems that the United States has 90 guns for every 100 people, making it the most heavily armed civilian population in the world!

Yemen comes in at second place, with a pitiful 61 guns for every 100 people. Pikers!

Of course, the statistics are rather misleading. Most of the people involved in the shooting sports here in the United States have more than one gun, which skews things a bit. I think this is an indication of wealth, since people here can afford to buy more than one of these really expensive precision instruments, just as they can afford to take part in more than one firearm related sport.

The director of the Small Arms Survey said as much himself.

“Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where economic growth is giving people larger disposable income,”

Anyway, I think it is just great that the United States leads the world yet again.

(Hat tip to Dave of The Nix Guy fame for giving us a heads up to the article. I also cross posted this essay over at Hell in a Handbasket.)

A Reflection on Watching Krauthammer

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The USA sent Canada its draft dodgers. In exchange, Canada sends us physicians, successful entrepreneurs and other highly productive people. I’d say we have gotten the better of this exchange.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Video Interview

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Via David Foster, this is an excellent video of Ayaan Hirsi Ali being interviewed by a Canadian leftist:


 

UPDATE: More thoughts about independent-minded, outspoken Muslim women here.

What Do You Think?

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I have a question that some of you might like to ponder: among the people who lived in the twentieth century, who (barring political and religious figures) will people in another hundred years remember from the twentieth century?   Whose discoveries or ideas or work is sufficiently important to represent the twentieth century and affect the twenty-first?   Or, perhaps, whose work that we now consider important is not likely to stand the test of time? This may be a negative effect, as well.

This may be one of my pedagogical ideas that is not likely to work – which is, unfortunately, true of many.   However, most of us find people interesting and I would like some of my students to get a sense of the difference an idea or theory or invention can make.   The paper is supposed to be argumentative and it certainly shouldn’t be mainly biographical, let alone hagiographic. So, I’m asking you all for suggestions.   Or, perhaps, you would like to express doubts that I will be able to prevent such essays from wandering off into he’s a nice guy or he’s a rotten guy. Further description of the course is below the fold if you are interested in the context.

This was inspired by my sense that I don’t know much about Borlaug and it wouldn’t hurt   and I could learn from papers; also, some of my students might be interested in the accomplishments of someone they might conceivably see.

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Excellent Blogging on Power, Infrastructure and Financial Issues

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I highly recommend Carl from Chicago’s posts on these issues at the Life in the Great Midwest blog. Carl’s posts are easily accessible via the category list on his blog’s left sidebar (click on Economics, Electricity, Social Security or Taxes to start).

Carl’s latest post, on the economics and politics of electric-power infrastructure in Illinois, is here.