H/T to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

This week, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced the seizure of Spanish oil company Repsol’s stake in Argentine oil company YPF to give the government 51% control. Spain is outraged and has recalled its ambassador. [...]

Ms Fernandez justified her move on the grounds that YPF has failed to invest sufficiently to prevent Argentina from importing ever greater quantities of fuel. The fact that Argentine oil reserves have been dwindling means the sector needs greater and increasingly sophisticated investment to reach more complex structures, just like in the North Sea. Expropriation isn’t going to attract that kind of high-risk investment.

[. . .]

The YPF seizure continues Argentina’s cavalier attitude towards other people’s money shown back in 2008 when Ms Fernandez grabbed some $24 billion of private pension funds and used central bank reserves to meet debt payments. More recently, the country has been in a spat with the IMF over the quality of its statistics. Argentina claims inflation is running at somewhere between 5% and 11% but private independent estimates put the number at somewhere around 25%. The Economist is refusing to publish official Argentine inflation data.

Update: Well, regardless of the state of the economy, President Fernandez de Kirchner has a friend in the White House! President Obama has indicated his support for the Argentinian claim to … the ¿Maldives?

President Obama erred during a speech at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, when attempting to call the disputed archipelago by its Spanish name.

Instead of saying Malvinas, however, Mr Obama referred to the islands as the Maldives, a group of 26 atolls off that lie off the South coast of India.

The Maldives were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965 and the site of a UK airbase for nearly 20 years.

Study Says The More Walmarts In The Area, The More Hate Groups There Are

This one’s sure to boil some blood over at Walmart headquarters: A new study says there’s a significant correlation between the amount of Walmart stores in an area and the number of hate groups existing in that same area. As the big-box stores proliferate, so do the groups.

LiveScience.com cites the study by professors at Penn State University, New Mexico State University and Michigan State University, which says that the amount of Wal-Mart stores in a county was more statistically significant than other factors usually associated with hate group participation. For example, the unemployment rate, high crime rates and low education.

As I’m just as lazy as the others who’ll jump on that eye-catching headline, here’s another lazy conclusion: because Walmart locates their stores in areas with growing population, so Walmart stores will also correlate with any number of other phenomena that require a minimum (but increasing) population.

For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history.

But new research shows that the numbers were far too low.

By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000.

[. . .]

The old figure dates back well over a century, the work of two Union Army veterans who were passionate amateur historians: William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore.

Fox, who had fought at Antietam, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, knew well the horrors of the Civil War. He did his research the hard way, reading every muster list, battlefield report and pension record he could find.

The sociological objection is that pornography decreased respect for long-term, monogamous relationships, and attenuates a desire for procreation. Pornography can “potentially undermine the traditional values that favor marriage, family, and children”, and that it depicts sexuality in a way which is not connected to “emotional attachment, of kindness, of caring, and especially not of continuance of the relationship, as such continuance would translate into responsibilities”

The religious/conservative objection is similar to the sociological objection. They argue that this industry undermines the family and leads to the moral breakdown of society. They say that it is amoral, weakens family values, and is contrary to the religion’s teachings and human dignity.

Some feminists argue that it is an industry which exploits women and which is complicit in violence against women, both in its production (where they charge that abuse and exploitation of women performing in pornography is rampant) and in its consumption (where they charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment). They charge that pornography contributes to the male-centered objectification of women and thus to sexism.

Other objections are that the sex industry is sometimes connected to criminal activities, such as human trafficking, illegal immigration, drug abuse, and exploitation of children (child pornography, child prostitution). However these effects are related not so much to pornography as to prostitution.

Then a small sampling of the findings (it’s a long post):

Firstly (using the General Social Survey) I found no relationship between being pro the legality of porn, or propensity to watch porn, and pro social behaviors e.g. volunteer work, blood donation, etc.

We can dismiss the feminist (and sociological) charges of porn increasing sexual violence and leading to sexism. The USA, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands (2) and Japan were just some of the countries that suddenly went from no legal pornography to quite widespread availability and consumption of it. These studies all found that greater availability of, and exposure to, pornography does not increase the rate of sexual assaults on women, and probably decreases it (3). Japanese porn is quite frequently violent and yet even there rape decreased from an already very low base. It’s interesting that an increase in porn exposure decreases sexual violence only, and has no effect on other crime. Economists would put this down to a substitution effect.

Several countries have sex offender registers — mainly of pedophiles. A wide variety of professions are represented on these registers. Members of professions that supposedly promote morality e.g. clerics or teachers, are quite common on it yet conspicuously absent from such registers are men who have worked in the porn industry.

This study (1) found no relationship between the frequency of x-rated film viewing and attitudes toward women or feminism. From the GSS (controlling for IQ, education, income, age, race and ideology) I found that those who are pro the legality of porn are less likely to support traditional female roles, more likely to be against preferential treatment of either gender, and to find woman’s rights issues more frequently salient. Although I found that women’s rights issues are less salient to male watchers, and female watchers are less likely to think women should work, I also found that watching porn is unrelated to negative attitudes toward women and feminism.

In short exposure to and tolerance of pornography does not cause anti-social behavior (and may even reduce it in relation to sex) and does not get in the way of pro social behavior either.

H/T to Tyler Cowen for the link.

A number of political commenters have compared the current Republican contestants unfavorably with Barry Goldwater. The current crop, we are told, are religious nutcases, or possibly pretending to be. Goldwater, on the other hand, was an intelligent and reasonable man, even if not on the right side of every issue.

I have been reading my parents’ autobiography, and recently got to the Goldwater campaign. Their description fits my memory. What we were being told then — by people almost none of whom could have done a competent job of explaining Goldwater’s positions or the arguments for them — was that he was a dangerous madman. There was even a piece by some large number of psychiatrists, none of whom had ever examined the candidate, explaining how crazy he was. And the TV ad with the little girl, the countdown, and the mushroom cloud.

[. . .]

I am not competent to judge the climate science behind global warming, but I am suspicious of orthodoxies pushed relentlessly in the popular media, orthodoxies that claim that everyone competent agrees on an urgent problem which requires drastic action immediately if not sooner. I remember when we were being assured that it was simply a scientific fact that overpopulation was the cause of poverty and a near term threat to our own well being, if not survival. Also when we were assured that the only way to get the poor countries of the world up to our level was central planning, if possible supported by generous foreign aid.

When I see news headlines about global warming having shrunk horses to the size of cats, along with a picture comparing a cat sized dog to a modern Morgan — you have to read down a bit to discover that the ancestral horses shrank to the size of cats from the size of dogs, from 12 pounds to 8 1/2 pounds, and spent tens of thousands of years doing it — I suspect that what I am seeing is driven at least as much by what people want other people to believe as by the evidence for believing it.

Imagine a world without statistics. Governments would fumble in the dark, investors would waste money and electorates would struggle to hold their political leaders to account. This is why The Economist publishes more than 1,000 figures each week, on matters such as output, prices and jobs, from a host of countries. We cannot be sure that all these figures are trustworthy. Statistical offices vary in their technical sophistication and ability to resist political pressure. China’s numbers, for example, can be dodgy; Greece underreported its deficit, with disastrous consequences. But on the whole government statisticians arrive at their figures in good faith.

There is one glaring exception. Since 2007 Argentina’s government has published inflation figures that almost nobody believes. These show prices as having risen by between 5% and 11% a year. Independent economists, provincial statistical offices and surveys of inflation expectations have all put the rate at more than double the official number. The government has often granted unions pay rises of that order.

What seems to have started as a desire to avoid bad headlines in a country with a history of hyperinflation has led to the debasement of INDEC, once one of Latin America’s best statistical offices. Its premises are now plastered with posters supporting the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Independent-minded staff were replaced by self-described “Cristinistas”. In an extraordinary abuse of power by a democratic government, independent economists have been forced to stop publishing their own estimates of inflation by fines and threats of prosecution. Misreported prices have cheated holders of inflation-linked bonds out of billions of dollars.

As I read the Toronto Star’s editorial about Statistics Canada’s recently released 2011 census population data, it was hard for me not to imagine a plump, aging diva reclining on a brocade-covered chaise wailing, “I’m still beautiful! Really, I am.”

Entitled, “Census shows a fading Ontario? Don’t count on it,” the editorial makes the argument that it is “too simplistic” to claim “Ontario’s day is over.”

No one is making the case that Ontario can be dismissed as an afterthought. That is a concern without a cause.

[. . .]

But before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I, an Albertan, am pleased by Ontario’s decline, I’ll add that any trend that bodes ill for Ontario, eventually bodes ill for the country as a whole.

Canada needs a strong, prosperous, confident heartland. The West may be the new engine of the national economy, but that doesn’t mean the country can afford to have the old engine — Ontario — be idle.

The Star insults the West’s ingenuity and determination when it scoffs that “it’s relatively easy to grow based on resource extraction. Ontario does not have the luxury of sitting on gas and oil fields, so the task here is much harder.” Really? Have the paper’s editorial writers ever tried to find, extract, transport and refine oil and natural gas? Do they imagine the stuff bubbles up out of the ground and we Westerners just run out with buckets to collect it?

A more accurate reflection should be taking in three factors, not just yards gained or allowed. In realistic terms, there should be two other criteria measured. Seeing as games are decided by points scored, that should be factored in. Also, there are defenses that are known as “bend, don’t break.” They allow yards, but, once in the red zone, they stiffen up and turn potential touchdowns into field goals.

While not a perfect system, the numbers bear out that this is a much more accurate reflection of the true value of an offense or a defense. According to the “official” numbers, the Eagles were a top-eight team in both offense and defense. Reality said otherwise.

What follow are VU’s reality rankings of NFL offenses and defenses. Each team is ranked in three categories – yards, points and red zone touchdown percentage. The first figure is where offenses and defenses were ranked for comparison purposes.

[. . .]

Offense

Defence

1. New England – 2-3-2 (7) 2. Green Bay – 3-1-3 (7) 3. New Orleans – 1-2-6 (9) 4. Detroit – 5-4-4 (13) 5. Carolina – 7-5½-7 (19½) 6. San Diego – 6-5½-10 (21½) 7. N.Y. Giants – 8-9-8 (25) 8. Philadelphia – 4-8-14 (26) 9. Atlanta – 10-7-13 (30) 10. N.Y. Jets – 25-13-1 (39) 11. Buffalo – 14-14-11 (39) 12. Oakland – 9-16-16 (41) 13. Tennessee – 17-21½-5 (43½) 14. Baltimore – 15-12-17 (44) 15. Dallas – 11-15-20 (46) 16. Minnesota – 19-19-9 (46) 17. Houston – 13-10-25 (48) 18. Pittsburgh – 12-21½-18 (51½) 19. Chicago – 24-17-12 (53) 20. Arizona – 19-24-15 (58) 21. Cincinnati – 20-18-26 (64) 22. Miami – 22-20-24 (66) 23. Tampa Bay – 21-27-19 (67) 24. San Francisco – 26-11-30 (67) 25. Denver – 23-25-23 (71) 26. Washington – 16-26-29 (71) 27. Seattle – 28-23-22 (73) 28. Jacksonville – 32-28½-21 (81½) 29. Indianapolis – 30- 28½-27 (85½) 30. Cleveland – 29-30-28 (87) 31. Kansas City – 27-31-32 (90) 32. St. Louis – 31-32-31 (94)

1. Baltimore – 3-3-1 (7) 2. San Francisco – 4-2-4 (10) 3. Houston – 2-4-9 (15) 4. Pittsburgh – 1-1-17 (19) 5. Cleveland – 10-5-3 (18) 6. Miami – 15-6-6 (27) 7. Seattle – 9-7-11 (27) 8. Tennessee – 18½-8-10 (36½) 9. Arizona – 18½-17-2 (37½) 10. Chicago – 17-14-7 (38) 11. Atlanta – 12-18-8 (38) 12. Washington – 13-21-5 (39) 13. Jacksonville – 6-11-23 (40) 14. N.Y. Jets – 5-20-16 (41) 15. Cincinnati – 7-9-25 (41) 16. Kansas City – 11-12-18 (41) 17. Philadelphia – 8-10-30 (48) 18. Dallas – 14-16-19 (49) 19. Detroit – 23-23-12 (58) 20. Denver – 20-24-15 (59) 21. St. Louis – 22-26-13 (61) 22. New Orleans – 24-13-28 (65) 23. Minnesota – 21-31-14 (66) 24. San Diego – 16-22-29 (67) 25. New England – 31-15-21½ (67.5) 26. Green Bay – 32-19-20 (71) 27. N.Y. Giants – 27-25-21½ (73½) 28. Carolina – 28-27-27 (82) 29. Indianapolis – 25-28-31 (84) 30. Oakland – 29-29-26 (84) 31. Tampa Bay – 30-32-24 (86) 32. Buffalo – 26-30-32 (88)

Last month, the RCMP and Statistics Canada were forced to admit that they don’t keep statistics relating to the number of violent gun crimes in Canada that are committed by licensed gun owners using registered guns.

“Please note,” Statistics Canada wrote in response to an access to information request filed by the National Firearms Association, “that the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey does not collect information on licensing of either guns or gun owners related to the incidents of violent crime reported by police.” Nor does StatsCan’s annual homicide survey “collect information on the registration status of the firearm used to commit a homicide.”

This raises the question: Why did it take so long for the government to begin ridding Canada of the horribly expensive, unjustifiably intrusive federal gun registry? If no one in Ottawa had any systematic way of tracking whether or not Canadians suspected of committing a violent gun crime were licensed to own a gun and had registered the gun being used, then they had no way of knowing whether registration and licensing were having a positive impact on crime.

There are around 340,000 violent crimes reported to police in Canada each year. Just over 2% of those (around 8,000) involve firearms. (There’s another reason to question the initial wisdom of the gun registry: Why was Ottawa expending so much time, effort and taxpayer money on such a tiny percentage of violent crimes, while doing comparatively little to prevent the 98% of murders, robberies, kidnappings, rapes and beatings not committed with a gun?)

Even if you grant the original notion that the government had an overriding need to track gun ownership (over and above the user licensing scheme that pre-dated the registry by decades), this can only count as a waste of time, money, and effort.