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Look carefully at the workplace in that picture. It’s clean, airy, uncrowded, and well-lit. And the workers there, I’m certain, earn wages that are far above the subsistence level, and also above whatever these workers earned prior to the growth of the transcontinental trade in flowers made possible by the jet engine.
The improvement in the quality of life of ordinary Kenyans made possible today by globalization is noticeable.
Ten or eleven years ago my friend Bob Higgs visited Kenya. He returned with pictures, of course. Some of these showed small mud huts that were the homes of some of the Kenyans he met. I don’t know how many Kenyans today live in such conditions, but I do know that, as long as globalization continues to spread and as long as Kenya is part of it, the day is not far off when mud huts in Kenya – like mud huts in Europe – will no longer exist.
(via cafe hayek)
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I appreciate the perception that I am a mere nihilist. Politically, I am. Yet I find myself, generally, much happier than my more politically earnest acquaintances, for whom the vast, inhuman movement of history and their own insignificance in the face of it necessitate a life-skein of endless disappointments and let-downs. Me, instead of contributing to some asshole’s brand-name political campaign, I’ll spend a hundred bucks on booze. A good Beaune-Village is worth a thousand Obamas. The smell of baking bread is better than the vote.
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I have no idea what Caplan is saying. But, this I can sink my teeth into. There are two parallel analysis. First, a grizzly bear statue is taking jobs away from real grizzly bears. So, the very breach of liberty is one thing. Secondly, the permanence of the statue robs the jobs of future generations of grizzly bears, so the degree of infringement is an additional consideration.
—Marginal Revolution: Do women today have more libertarian freedom than in 1880?
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This month I read a review in a leading US Art Magazine of a Jeff Wall survey book, praising how he had distinguished himself from previous art photography by:
“Carefully constructing his pictures as provocative often open ended vignettes, instead of just snapping his surroundings”
Anyone who cares about photography ‘s unique and astonishing qualities as a medium should be insulted by such remarks…
Now this is maybe just an unthinking review, but what it does illustrate is how there remains a sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography.
—Paul Graham Archive (via zoe strauss)
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His top speed is such a spectacle, so phenomenal, so searing that many who witness this race, who see [Usain] Bolt cross the line in 9.69 seconds, breaking his own three-month-old world record by three hundredths of a second, don’t notice, until they see the replay, what is perhaps the most salient and frightening thing about his performance: Approximately eighty meters into the race, twenty meters from the finish line, Bolt stops trying.
—Marginal Revolution: Usain Bolt should be running in the 2040 Olympics
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Historic Photography Questions: The Apollo XI Crew Wants to Take a Picture in Space
CC: Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.
LMP: Go ahead.
CC: Roger. If you’d like to take some pictures, we recommend using magazine Uniform which is loaded with high speed black and white film, interior lights off, electric Hasselblad with the 80- millimeter lens. And you’re going to have to hand-hold us, I guess. We’re recommending an f-stop of 2.8, and we’d like to get a sequence of time exposures. Over.
(via sciencefiction)
