Our all time top ten
I thought that some of you might enjoy the nostagia of this listing of our all time top ten ALS articles based on the number of times they have been read. Although I certainly don’t think they are the ten best articles we have ever written and I’d be happy to hear of nominations for such an alternate list. Read more »
Could the US dollar collapse?
I’m something of a Ron Paul fan but sometimes he says something that really grates. In the car this morning I was listening to a Ron Paul podcast in which he said he feared the collapse of the US dollar. He went on to say that when currency collapse comes it generally comes very quickly. This grated because it seems quite counter intuitive. The USA is one of the biggest economies in the world. In spite of recession they are still a power house with nearly 25% of all global production occuring within the USA. However I decided I’d give this question some more thought. Read more »
Should we learn to speak “Australian”?
Linguists argue about the specifics, but by some counts there were hundreds of Australian aboriginal languages and there remain dozens spoken today. But these languages are dying out. The 2001 census reported that only four aboriginal languages had 2000+ speakers, and that most aboriginal languages are endangered. Badimaya was said to have three speakers, Thalanyji had six and Wagiman eleven.
A 2005 government report lamented the decline of aboriginal languages, and came up with 51 recommendations about spending money, writing reports, drawing funky flow-charts and having committees.
They totally failed to come to terms with the simple fact that languages have network qualities so that they are only functionally useful when there is a critical mass of other speakers. Unless a language is functionally useful it is unlikely to survive long-term. That is why the vast majority of languages on earth have disappeared, and that is why most aboriginal languages will die out.
I don’t believe it is possible to save most aboriginal languages, and it may not be possible to save any (except in history books). But I’d like to suggest one controversial approach…
We should pick one aboriginal language and promote is as the language “Australian”.
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Catallaxy Files- Open Forum: February 11, 2012 February 10, 2012 Sinclair Davidson
- Not all recessions are caused by the Fed February 10, 2012More middle of the night blogging. My economics is classical. The almost perfect overlay of my own book can be found in a series of notes taken by Nicholas Kaldor at the LSE in 1927-29 from lectures delivered by the great American economist, Allyn Young. These notes were only published around a decade ago but [...]Steve Kates
- Where’s Romney? February 10, 2012It is quite extraordinary to watch the American political process up close. Now, I admit I have been busy and I don’t watch much of the television and do not read a lot of the press. But before I arrived the thing I did want to do was see more of Mitt Romney since from [...]Steve Kates
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- IPA news
- Let European dogs lie February 9, 2012Australians will be surprised to learn that, apparently, the federal government now has responsibility to help the city of...
- It's time to bring back the thrift February 9, 2012Ted Baillieu plans to shave 3600 jobs from Victoria's bloated public service. The state of Wisconsin in the US, with a...
- We'll huff, we'll puff, we'll blow the budget into surplus February 8, 2012Bill Clinton famously said, "It's the economy, stupid". So it is. Unsuccessful politicians might be inclined to argue,...
- Let European dogs lie February 9, 2012
