José M. Guardia

¿SOMOS LOS HOMBRES culpables de la menopausia?

Evolutionary geneticists from Canada's McMaster University say men's tendency to choose younger mates meant fertility became pointless for older women.

In PLOS Computational Biology, they say this eventually led to the menopause.

Claro que:

But a UK expert said that was the "wrong way round" and men chose younger women because older women were less fertile.

EL PACTO DEL DIABLO: "Las soluciones mágicas no existen. Y, como todos los trucos de magia, la ilusión se convierte en decepción cuando se ven los cables que sostienen al que levita sobre el escenario. La ilusión, por ejemplo, de pensar que los tipos de interés se van a mantener bajos eternamente. O los pactos de consenso, como el coro de Nabucco, para mantener el chiringuito."

Seguid leyendo.

GRAN COLUMNA DE JONAH GOLDBERG: por qué el liberalismo es realmente la única idea política nueva en los últimos 2000 años. Me gusta esta parte, que responde a una objeción típicamente superficial:

It’s true, no ideal libertarian state has ever existed outside a table for one. And no such state will ever exist. But here’s an important caveat: No ideal state of any other kind will be created either. America’s great, but it ain’t perfect. Sweden’s social democracy is all right, but if it were perfect, I suspect fewer cars would be on fire over there.

Ideals are called ideals for a reason: They’re ideals. They’re goals, aspirations, abstract straight rules we use as measuring sticks against the crooked timber of humanity.

In the old Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and today’s North Korea, they tried to move toward the ideal Communist system. Combined, they killed about 100 million of their own people. That’s a hefty moral distinction right there: When freedom-lovers move society toward their ideal, mistakes may be made, but people tend to flourish. When the hard Left is given free rein, millions are murdered and enslaved. Which ideal would you like to move toward?

Leedlo entero. Ah, y nota para despistados: en inglés estadounidense, "libertarianism" significa "liberalismo", y "liberalism" significa "progresismo". Seguro que muchos de vosotros lo sabíais ya, pero prefiero aclararlo porque habría alguna parte del texto que no se entendería bien si no se tiene esto en cuenta.

UNAS CUANTAS PREGUNTAS INCÓMODAS sobre la credibilidad de Edward Snowden y el trabajo de Gleen Greenwald en The Guardian destapando el espionaje de la NSA. Más aquí.

El asunto sigue siendo feo y debe investigarse; ciertamente el gobierno de EEUU ha presentado respuestas que plantean nuevas preguntas. Pero conviene también cuestionar a los denunciantes; ya comenté el primer dia que Snowden sonaba assangeizado y que no podía tomarse lo que decía por su valor facial sin más.

ROSA REGÀS, CONSPIRANOICA:

Rosa Regás cree que la doble mastectomía de Angelina Jolie forma parte de una conspiración mundial de la industria del cáncer. Lo sostiene en “Desconcierto por Jolie”, artículo publicado en el blog Ellas en el que asegura que el anuncio de la actriz, de que se había sometido a cirugía por las altas probabilidades de desarrollar cáncer de pecho, no le provocó “ni lástima ni admiración”, sino “un gran desconcierto”. Esa perplejidad le llevó a buscar información por Internet y, por fin, lo entendió todo tras leer un artículo de Alfredo Embid en el boletín Armas para Defender la Salud“: el anuncio de Jolie se enmarca dentro de una conspiración liderada por una compañía biotecnológica, Myriad Genetics, para conseguir patentar unos genes.

Ups. No solo conspiranoica, también inoportuna.

THIS SOUNDS like a fun way to spend a few hours on a weekend:

A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over.

The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways.

They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.

The database is here.

JONAH GOLDBERG on why the libertarian idea is the only truly new political idea in the last couple thousand years. I like this bit, because it answers a usual — and superficial — objection:

It’s true, no ideal libertarian state has ever existed outside a table for one. And no such state will ever exist. But here’s an important caveat: No ideal state of any other kind will be created either. America’s great, but it ain’t perfect. Sweden’s social democracy is all right, but if it were perfect, I suspect fewer cars would be on fire over there.

Ideals are called ideals for a reason: They’re ideals. They’re goals, aspirations, abstract straight rules we use as measuring sticks against the crooked timber of humanity.

In the old Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and today’s North Korea, they tried to move toward the ideal Communist system. Combined, they killed about 100 million of their own people. That’s a hefty moral distinction right there: When freedom-lovers move society toward their ideal, mistakes may be made, but people tend to flourish. When the hard Left is given free rein, millions are murdered and enslaved. Which ideal would you like to move toward?

Keep reading.

LADIES, START YOUR "AWWWWWWs": video of a bunny taking a bath, and apparently enjoying it as much as we do after a long day of work:

YES, WE CAN!

Today, the Guardian newspaper confirmed what EFF (and many others) have long claimed: the NSA is conducting widespread, untargeted, domestic surveillance on millions of Americans. This revelation should end, once and for all, the government's long-discredited secrecy claims about its dragnet domestic surveillance programs. It should spur Congress and the American people to make the President finally tell the truth about the government's spying on innocent Americans.

 

TRANSPARENCY:

Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

 

SOME SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS, HUH?

Carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere recently hit the 400 parts-per-million mark. So is all that CO2 scorching the planet? No. But it does seem to be making our deserts greener.

Listening to the global warming alarmists, one would think that man-made CO2 emissions are threatening the globe. But that's speculation. Let's deal in reality. And the reality, according to Australian research, is that in this era of higher carbon concentrations, plant life in dry regions has grown lush.

The greening of the deserts is due to the "fertilization effect" — the impact carbon dioxide has on plant life.

FUKUSHIMA RADIATION DISASTER TOLL: none dead, none sick.

Heard much about Fukushima lately? You know, the disaster that spread deadly contamination across Japan and spelt the end for the nuclear industry.
You should have, because recent authoritative reports have reached a remarkable conclusion about a supposedly "deadly" disaster. No one died, nor is likely to die, according to the most comprehensive assessments since the Fukushima nuclear plant was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

The accident competed for media space with the deaths of nearly 20,000 people in the magnitude 9.0 quake – 1000 times worse than the Christchurch quake – and tsunami, which wholly or partly destroyed more than a million buildings.

The nuclear workers were the living dead, we were told; hundreds of thousands would die if the plant exploded; even if that didn't happen, affected areas would be uninhabitable and residents' health would suffer for generations.

Instead, two independent international reports conclude that radiative material released from Fukushima's four damaged reactors, three of which melted down, has had negligible health impacts.

In February, the World Health Organisation reported there would be no noticeable increases in cancer rates for the overall population. A third of emergency workers were at some increased risk.

(via)

WAY TOO EARLY to say the worst is over, but still it's good news on the labor front in Spain:

Spain's unemployment queues shrank by almost 100,000 in May in line with the positive predictions offered by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Saturday.

There were 98.265 fewer people out of work in May than a month earlier, new figures from Spain's employment ministry show.

This comprised a drop in total unemployment of 1.97 percent on April's jobless figures.

At the same time, 134.660 more people started paying more into Spain's social security system.

The numbers show that there was "a continued trend towards slowing unemployment," said the Secretary of State for Employment Engracia Hidalgo in a statement.

May was the third month in a row that Spain's unemployment figures have fallen.

May and June are traditionally the best months for new employment in Spain but the month just gone saw the highest fall in unemployment since 1997.

The average drop in unemployment in May has been around 54,000 in the last 15 years, El País reported on Tuesday.

Plus this from Bloomberg: Spain’s Crisis Fades as Exports Transform Country

IT WAS A WAR FOR OIL!!! BUSH WANTED TO STEAL IF FROM SADDAM!!!

Oh, wait: China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom.

BEST SPANISH manufacturing PMI in two years: "Much better than expected manufacturing data for Spain has just been released, offering hopes that the country's long recession could be easing."

Let's hope.

THE DARK SIDE of Silicon Valley.

(via)