Aliens are my brother

Fascinating stuff:

The Pope's chief astronomer says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out. Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.

Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.

Ah, now I feel better.

Africa is growing

For four consecutive years, Africa has experienced record economic growth. Overall in 2007 the continent registered 5.7 per cent GDP growth and a per capita increase of 3.7 per cent. Indications are that growth will only accelerate in 2008 and remain buoyant in 2009.

This is from the OECD's African Economic Outlook 2008, released yesterday. High oil and food prices feature prominently:

[A] reality masked by the growth figures is that net oil exporters continue to outpace oil importers by far. In 2008, the average real GDP growth rate for the former collection of countries is expected to be 6.8 per cent, but it will only be 4.9 per cent for the latter.

Natural born bigots

Stephen Landsburg, writing before the last presidential election:

If George Bush had chosen the racist David Duke as a running mate, I'd have voted against him, almost without regard to any other issue. Instead, John Kerry chose the xenophobe John Edwards as a running mate. I will therefore vote against John Kerry.

Duke thinks it's imperative to protect white jobs from black competition. Edwards thinks it's imperative to protect American jobs from foreign competition. There's not a dime's worth of moral difference there. While Duke would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of skin color, Edwards would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of birthplace. Either way, bigotry is bigotry, and appeals to base instincts should always be repudiated.

There's not a dime's worth of moral difference indeed. But then why stop at trade policy? (protectionism, at the end of the day, screws the majority of Americans as much as it screws foreigners) I would think that every policy that any government ever comes up with is geared towards benefiting its citizens, with little consideration for the interests of Johnny Foreigner.

The thing that freaks me out the most

Watch it here.

No, I don't think it is actually the most scary thing out there, but it freaks me out alright.

Friday Special 53

The best of Conan O'Brien

A selection of beautifully captures moments

An alternative approach to bank regulation

A while back I wrote:

Banks are not, and cannot, be plc's in the same way that other companies are. The social value of a steelmaker can only fall as far down as zero, while the social value of a bank can be much, much lower than that.

Avinash Persaud at Vox EU proposes a solution:

The third pillar [of financial regulation reform] is requiring banks to pay an insurance premium to tax payers against the risk that the tax payer will be required to bail them out. If such a market could be created, it would not only incentivise good banking and push the focus of regulation away from process to outcomes, but it would provide an incentive for banks to be less systemic. Today, banks have an incentive to be more systemic as a bail out is then guaranteed. The right response to Citibank’s routine failure to anticipate its credit risks is not for it to keep on getting bigger so that it can remain too big to fail, but for it to whither away under rising insurance premiums paid to tax payers.

Friday Special 52

Some of the best views of North American landscape

The Carver One presented by Top Gear