Why the euro's not so bad

Personally I'd prefer a currency that no government or government-mandated institution could control but failing that, the euro is in fact a much better solution for countries with historically weak currencies than allowing their respective governments to devalue the local currency. John Cochrane expands on that point:

Conversely, and perhaps more centrally, I'm less trusting of the stabilizing influence of central banks. Dispassionate omniscient central banks can, in theory, wisely spot demand shocks and cleverly devalue currencies to offset them, while not responding to supply shocks, political demands, and so forth. The same technocrats could quietly redefine the meter as needed to let tailors respond to shocks without changing prices.

But the history of small-country central banks is not so reassuring. Greece and Italy's repeated devaluations and inflations did not bring great prosperity.

Joining a common currency is a pre-commitment against bad monetary policy as well as foreswearing of hypothetical good monetary policy. Political forces seldom think there's enough stimulus. When Greece and Italy they joined the euro, they basically said, defaulting and inflating now will be extremely costly. They were rewarded for the precommitment with very low interest rates. They blew the money, and are now facing the high costs they signed up for. But that just shows how real the precommitment was.

Security paper tigers

The latest news on US airport security theatre, as reported by ABC (via Zero Hedge):

An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned. The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system. According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints. In one test an undercover agent was stopped after setting off an alarm at a magnetometer, but TSA screeners failed to detect a fake explosive device that was taped to his back during a follow-on pat down.

No reason to worry however, I'm sure they have everything under control:

“Upon learning the initial findings of the Office of Inspector General's report, Secretary Johnson immediately directed TSA to implement a series of actions, several of which are now in place, to address the issues raised in the report,” the DHS said in a written statement to ABC News. Homeland security officials insist that security at the nation’s airports is strong – that there are layers of security including bomb sniffing dogs and other technologies seen and unseen. But the officials that ABC News spoke to admit these were disappointing results.

Even though the outcome of this investigation was clearly not a one-off:

This is not the first time the TSA has had trouble spotting Red Team agents. A similar episode played out in 2013, when an undercover investigator with a fake bomb hidden on his body passed through a metal detector, went through a pat-down at New Jersey's Newark Liberty Airport, and was never caught. More recently, the DHS inspector general’s office concluded a series of undercover tests targeting checked baggage screening at airports across the country. That review found “vulnerabilities” throughout the system, attributing them to human error and technological failures, according to a three-paragraph summary of the review released in September.

But they probably just need to spend some more resources on it, right? It's extremely difficult to fight terrorism when you're not adequately funded:

In addition, the review determined that despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time.

BBC's neutral maths

From the Beeb:

Huge Republic of Ireland vote for gay marriage
The Republic of Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to legalise same-sex marriage in a historic referendum.

Huge? Overwhelming? How much is that exactly?

More than 62% voted in favour of amending the country's constitution to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. 

6 out of 10 is huge and overwhelming. Had it been 5 out of 10 and there would be no clear outcome. 62% is not even enough for a qualified majority in several places around the world. If the BBC can't be trusted to report on other countries' political processes from an objective and neutral point of view, how could they ever do so on issues pertaining to the UK?

Já comprei o bilhete de regresso

O camarada Jerónimo teme que Passos Coelho transforme Portugal numa Singapura da Europa aplicando uma política de salários baixos. Eu não sei bem o que é que os assessores políticos do camarada consideram um salário baixo mas o salário médio singapurense é mais do dobro do português e a taxa de desemprego por aquelas bandas é inferior a 2% enquanto em Portugal se situa actualmente nos 13%. Claramente um resultado indesejável para algumas pessoas que rejeitam os confortos da sociedade materialista e crêem que viver a pão e água em nome do bem comum é um ideal ao qual aspirar.

Campaign for Real Beauty

Love and learn to accept your body the way it is. Unless you're very thin of course, in which case you should be ashamed and we'll make it illegal for you to find work:

Using a model who has a BMI under 18 could result in jail time

France has become the latest country to ban excessively skinny models from working in the ultra-chic country’s fashion industry, joining Israel, Spain and Italy.

According to Reuters, the French legislature voted for a bill Friday the declares: “The activity of model is banned for any person whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is lower than levels proposed by health authorities and decreed by the ministers of health and labor.”

News from the ant colony

An example of EastEnders'​ popularity is that after episodes, electricity use in the United Kingdom rises significantly as viewers who have waited for the show to end begin boiling water for tea, a phenomenon known as TV pickup. Over five minutes, power demand rises by three GW, the equivalent of 1.5 to 1.75 million teakettles. National Grid personnel watch the show to know when closing credits begin so they can prepare for the surge, asking for additional power from France if necessary. [link]

Decline and Fall

The Dying Russians

Sometime in 1993, after several trips to Russia, I noticed something bizarre and disturbing: people kept dying. I was used to losing friends to AIDS in the United States, but this was different. People in Russia were dying suddenly and violently, and their own friends and colleagues did not find these deaths shocking. Upon arriving in Moscow I called a friend with whom I had become close over the course of a year. “Vadim is no more,” said his father, who picked up the phone. “He drowned.” I showed up for a meeting with a newspaper reporter to have the receptionist say, “But he is dead, don’t you know?” I didn’t. I’d seen the man a week earlier; he was thirty and apparently healthy. The receptionist seemed to think I was being dense. “A helicopter accident,” she finally said, in a tone that seemed to indicate I had no business being surprised.

The deaths kept piling up. People—men and women—were falling, or perhaps jumping, off trains and out of windows; asphyxiating in country houses with faulty wood stoves or in apartments with jammed front-door locks; getting hit by cars that sped through quiet courtyards or plowed down groups of people on a sidewalk; drowning as a result of diving drunk into a lake or ignoring sea-storm warnings or for no apparent reason; poisoning themselves with too much alcohol, counterfeit alcohol, alcohol substitutes, or drugs; and, finally, dropping dead at absurdly early ages from heart attacks and strokes.

Back in the United States after a trip to Russia, I cried on a friend’s shoulder. I was finding all this death not simply painful but impossible to process. “It’s not like there is a war on,” I said. “But there is,” said my friend, a somewhat older and much wiser reporter than I. “This is what civil war actually looks like. “It’s not when everybody starts running around with guns. It’s when everybody starts dying.”

Menos mal que nos queda Portugal

Quando uma pessoa pensa que é difícil encontrar um país europeu mais burocrático e com uma adminstração pública menos eficiente...

Anton sai da assembleia de voto. Não saí apenas com um boletim, tem uma resma de papel nas mãos. Sim, na Grécia, não há um boletim de voto. Há 20, um por cada um dos 19 partidos concorrentes, mais um para os que queiram votar em branco. O eleitor escolhe o papel do partido preferido que contém uma lista de nomes com os candidatos a deputados. Desse conjunto faz uma cruz em quatro. O processo continua com a colocação do papel escolhido num envelope que se insere na urna. Quanto aos restantes 19 têm um final comum, vão para o lixo.