Tim Worstall
12:30pm
A really quite exquisite example of the genre:
However, if it's OK to equate black dominance in sprinting to biological factors based on race, it also then paves the way for equating black underachievement in education, for example, to inherent racially orientated biological differences, such as smaller brains.
Eh?
Sorry my dear but the universe isn't here to confirm (or indeed deny) your prejudices.
There is evidence that those of West African descent are better at sprinting....actually, no that's not in fact true. Over just about every possible measure of performance by human beings the variations within group...
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12:51pm
I’d like to quickly scotch this myth that softening in average fixed-rate mortgage rates means it’s now easier for first-time buyers to buy houses, which I hear the Treasury is now punting in the hope that journalists start to repeat it. Moneyfacts has joined the number of dotcom setups getting great publicity by saying the average fixed rate is 6.59%, only just above 6.56% it was in August 2007. This has allowed headlines such as “Mortgage rates back at 2007 levels”. But one must treat these figures with care. First, consider the...
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Tim Worstall
2:49pm
A burst of applause and a resounding cheer for someone who is rather an intellectual hero: simply for telling it like it is.
Paul Collier:
In response to 19th-century industrialisation the British aristocracy rediscovered medieval chivalry. The romantic fashion was in part comic: jousts, castles and armour. But it had darker consequences; the privileging of honour over intelligence, which became the bedrock vision of the English gentleman, had its apotheosis in the heroic stupidities of the first world war. Now, in response to modern agriculture, the aristocracy, with Prince Charles in the vanguard, has rediscovered organic peasant farming. Again...
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Tim Worstall
2:41pm
If you're going to compare things then you've got to compare like with like: there's no point in comparing the weight of a pencil to the length of a pygmy, it just doesn't tell you anything.
When we start getting into economic statistics it can often be a bit more difficult: for people often aren't aware that they are comparing unlikes. As today:
Be not sanctimonious. Debt, both personal and public, is what the United States and the United Kingdom now share far more than a mere common language. The American government owes a little over £4 trillion. Yet...
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