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cheers, Krasnodar!

Look up Julian Simon. Despite being an economist, he said: “the quantity of copper that will ever be available to us is not finite …[given] the lack of boundaries to the sources from which copper might be drawn.”

Now, you’d think he’s a kook, but the book I took that from (The Ultimate Resource) is full of such tripe — and it’s still being cited today (mostly spread through CATO, which he was a fellow at before he died). Basically, the whole idea seems to be that if you squint at the definition of ‘finite’ through rose-coloured glasses after inhaling a full clay jug of moonshine, and play with it (the definition) a bit, you can make cornucopian predictions and argue that they *must* be sound economic policy.

He also said similar things about oil, by the way: things to the effect of oil not being finite either, since clearly, the only meaningful limit on it was the sun’s energy, but even if the sun were not quite so vast, there may well be other suns elsewhere. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but that’s the gist of it — he did basically say that since there’s more than one sun, and oil comes from suns, therefore we’ll never run out of oil — forgetting ONE of the timescales involved (some of his arguments stem from the idea of “human timescales”, but he conveniently ignores natural ones). It’s sort of like saying that we’ll never run out of uranium, because uranium is made from stardust.

(The really sad part is I’ve heard people cite this claim as an argument to stick with oil instead of alternatives, i.e. funding solar cell research, despite Simon himself basically saying that the sun’s the root here, so why not cut the middleman out and save a bit under the Second Law of Thermodynamics? At that point, the guy I was arguing with called me a liberal as if it were a four-letter word and stormed off.)

And Simon was in relatively influential positions, to boot. I can think of at least one president he had the ear of.

I suspect that this man’s work — or at least the theory he’s writing on — is the origin of this problem.

anyway, real estate is a high risk investment right now because generally the value of real estate is dropping in a big way after the past several years of gains. so that house you buy now for 100K may be worth 90K next year. who cares that you got to defer some taxes through depreciation in that case?

The problem I find is that Creationists believe that the bible tells them enough about science to ignore the science, and that Evolutionists believe that science tells enough about scripture to ignore the scripture. Unfortunately, if you’re trying to understand how God created the world and why the fossil record is sometimes confusing and sometimes clear, it suggests you not ignore either one.

In th end, the best theory is the one that explains the most, not dissmisses the most.

Lately, this has me wondering about how some aspects of the past affect our present. Maybe if there wasn’t so much agreement on the existance of Jesus and the James Ossuary was the first piece, this would mean something. Though our present has largely been shaped around this fellow existing already.

I wonder if the somewhat forgotten history of american involvement in Iraq is one of the reasons the american government is so focused on that country now.

On a somewhat related note, a friend of mine once asked about my religious beliefs and I told him that I believe in something when I have proof. He chuckled and began to quote something that Jean Chrétien, the prime minister of Canada during the discussion leading up to the most recent invasion of Iraq, said about Iraq, “A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it’s because it’s proven.”

However, you are correct in stating that this is merely an historical footnote and looking to this as basis for a belief in Christianity would be a mistake. My belief in Christianity is based on faith. It is this fact that makes it meaningful to my life. My commitment to Christ would not mean much if His birth and resurrection could be proven scientifically.