I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them - Isaac Asimov

Monday, March 08, 2010

Bigelow upended the Big Dog last night, sneaking the Oscar away from Avatar for her Iraq War film The Hurt Locker. I have not seen the film yet, but let me know if you guys have with your spoiler-free thoughts.  It’s nice to see a small film get the award, for once.

I’m behind on my movie watching for 2009 and, of the nominees, have only seen Up, District 9, and Avatar.  I thought Up was good but not as good as Pixar’s other efforts.  I enjoyed Avatar immensely but wasn’t sure it was the best picture of the year.  And I thought District 9 just as good, if not better, than Avatar.

Avatar did run into some political issues of its own.  Many people—notably Gregg Easterbrook—took issue with its (apparent) positive portrayal of US marines getting slaughtered by natives.  Some lefties, like Evo Morales, praised its supposed criticism of capitalism and imperialism.

Meh.  I’m not one for reading Big Political Messages into movie about giant blue aliens.  Avatar is not a subtle movie and neither are most of its characters—especially the villains. The human soldiers are mercenaries, ex- a lot of different services and cut off from command and from home.  Their behavior wasn’t shocking to anyone vaguely familiar with the Heart of the Darkness.  And as for the Evil Corporation ... our past is littered with companies that had armies of their own and used them to destroy natives they would have been better off working with (the East India company leaps to mind).  That’s not anti-capitalism or anti-Americanism.  That’s history, unfortunately.

I’ll agree that the movie’s moral landscape is simplistic.  But I didn’t feel like it was a political film and I tire of anything and everything being seen through the lens of politics.  But maybe your mileage differed.

Update: Sandra Bullock won both an Oscar and a Razzie, collecting both in person. I do think she had a point in her Razzie speech: most of the Razzie voters are voting based on the movie’s reputation and/or the personality of the nominees.  I doubt many of them have actually watched the films.

Update: Whatever one may think of the Hurt Locker, it sounds better than this.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The usual suspects in the MSM are all aflutter about some kids on a “take-your-child-to-work-day” being allowed by their father to direct air traffic. It’s a huge scandalous thing! Have these morons been paying attention to who’s pushing for and running the government healthcare takeover? These kids doing air traffic control has a much lower probability of ending in disaster, and fewer people would be affected, when all things are considered. Yet the MSM morons are telling us we should let government take over healthcare. The great majority of the American people get it, though.

Monday, March 01, 2010

It looks like the movie “Hurt Locker”, yet another anti-military Hollyweird fantasy where the soldiers are all idiots or prone to stupid behavior, while loved by the Hollyweirdos precisely because of the portrayal, doesn’t play well with the troops that have done the real thing, and I am not surprised the troops, and especially those with the ordinance disposal units, laugh at this dumb movie.

Reporting from Baghdad, Los Angeles and Washington - Many film critics—and awards voters—have praised “The Hurt Locker’s” depiction of the U.S. military in Iraq, often singling out the bomb disposal drama for its authenticity. But as the film emerges as a favorite to win the best picture Oscar, a number of active soldiers and veterans say the film is Hollywood hokum, portraying soldiers as renegades while failing to represent details about combat accurately.

Truthfully, my first reaction was to actually wonder how the news this anti-US military movie, which I again am pointing out portrayed our troops negatively to suit the image Hollyweird has of the military, was causing a controversy and getting front page time. I admit that was not the least bit surprised about the movie’s negative portrayal, because that seems to be SOP for the left, which while it claims to have respect for the troops and to support our men and women in harms way, also seem to feel the military is an evil entity used by evil America. That this is being pointed out, and in the lefty rags of all places, is surprising.

My guess is that it is attributable to the fact that the CinC now has a (D) next to his name and his WH, despite the facts to the contrary, is now claiming Iraq as their victory. I have already pointed out that I expect much historical whitewashing and fudging to go on about the Iraqi conflict now that we have literally made all the idiots that said a military victory was impossible eat their own words. I am admitting that I didn’t expect it this soon.

I suspect that over the next decade many will rewrite the facts to create the illusion that the left wasn’t just violently opposed to us winning, but actively took measures to force us to lose in Iraq, just like was done after the fall of the USSR to hide the role the mostly pro-Soviet left played there and then. Today we have the majority of these people that were calling Reagan a warmongering nut that would start WW3, all saying that they were right there with Reagan, pushing for the military arms race and the line in the sand that finally broke the evil empire and ended the 70 plus year suffering of millions at the hand of the first collectivist paradise. That is when they don’t try to tell you Reagan’s role in the whole thing was minimal, and the lion share of the credit should go to Gorbachev, or some such other nonsense.

Anyway, I should also mention that it isn’t a coincidence that a movie that inaccurately and negatively portrays our military, like the Hurt Locker does, is up for so many movie awards. Hollyweird loves

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.

John Adams, Defense of the Constitutions, 1787

There is arguably no more dysfunctional institution in this country than the American education system.  Outside of the recent bank bailouts, I can’t think of any other constituency that’s had more money thrown at it, for so few results, than our schools.  That’s why when something like this happens, it’s rather stunning (via Mish at Global Economic Analysis):

The teachers didn’t blink.

Under threat of losing their jobs if they didn’t go along with extra work for not a lot of extra pay, the Central Falls Teachers’ Union refused Friday morning to accept a reform plan for one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.

The superintendent didn’t blink either.

After learning of the union’s position, School Supt. Frances Gallo notified the state that she was switching to an alternative she was hoping to avoid: firing the entire staff at Central Falls High School. In total, about 100 teachers, administrators and assistants will lose their jobs.

Gallo blamed the union’s “callous disregard” for the situation, saying union leaders “knew full well what would happen” if they rejected the six conditions Gallo said were crucial to improving the school. The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.

Apparently, the city’s economy resembles a lot of former manufacturing towns back east, with a crumbling infrastructure that resembles Detroit’s or Newark’s.  Central Falls has an average income level of $22,000 a year, yet the average teacher’s salary at the school, in an article that Mish linked to in the same post, was $78,000 a year--for the teachers, not the administrators, who often get paid substantially more.  Yet the graduation rate is about 48%, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the whole student body could barely read above a 3rd-grade level.

Now, there’s no question that a town with such a low average income is going to have great difficulty paying these instructors the kinds of salaries they are getting in “good” times, let alone Great Depression Part II.  But in a lot of ways, I think falls on the entire community.  The one thing that was lost in the all the fatuous praise over Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village” philosophy is that, by itself, the state is incapable of raising children--without support and involvement from the parents, grounded in an ethic of discipline and strong morals, those state institutions are going to fail no matter what kind of legislation is passed, what kind of programs are established, or how much money is shoveled into the system. 

For all of his accomplishments while he was teaching mathematics to poor Hispanics, Jaime Escalante would never have been able to get such a program off the ground if the kids’ parents hadn’t been supportive of the changes as well.  The best teacher in the world is going to have their feet cut out from under them if the kids are getting poor examples of citizenship from their parents.  If charity begins at home, so does education--and in communities where education and knowledge (among other things) are considered to be entitlements rather than the core responsibility of a moral society, there will be very little incentive to give children the foundation they need to succeed in life.

As this depression continues, don’t be surprised to see similar stories like this emerge.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Fouad Ajami published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that summed up why our President looks to have feet of clay so far:

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.

He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished.

Dennis the Peasant has noticed this too, and addressed the left’s complaints in the most caring, compassionate way possible--that is, he sarcastically and gleefully tap dances on their misery:

Anyway, my point is this: You, David Michael Green, voted for the empty vessel. That’s what you wanted. You didn’t want a candidate with a record of achievement (and failure). You didn’t want a man already measured. You wanted a blank slate. A blank slate you could project all your hopes and dreams upon without having to worry about reality.

You got what you wanted.

At the time of his election to the presidency, Barack Obama had no meaningful experience or accomplishments in the field of politics. You knew nothing of his character or his capacity to lead. You didn’t care. He looked the part and said the right things. Your imagination did the rest. Now that Obama is faced with real life, and his lack of experience and defects of character have been exposed in the most painful manner imaginable, you find yourself professing shock…

Really? What did you expect? Seriously. What did you expect?

You didn’t want the sort of politician who could draw on experience and strength of character to get things done, you wanted the sort of politician you could give yourself a big hug for supporting. It was never about Barack Obama; it was about you. And if he’s fucked it all up, it is in no small part because you fucked it all up, too. You got what you wanted. You wanted Barack Obama and you got him.

That’s not Barack Obama’s fault.

The phrase “In a democracy, we get the government we deserve” has never been so true as it has been the last 17 years or so.  We’ve now had three Presidents from the Baby Boomer generation in charge of this country, and they all have come from broken homes and/or have Daddy Issues.  Clinton was a moral reprobate that got lucky enough to preside during the dot.com bubble; Bush was a “compassionate conservative” whose party had to get its ass whomped in 2006 before he felt compelled to pull out the veto pen; and Obama is President Pretty, Pretty Princess who acts more like Veruca Salt than the leader of the most powerful country in the history of the planet.

And Dennis is right---it’s not Clinton’s fault or Bush’s fault or Obama’s fault that they were put in office and subsequently crapped all over the dignity that it’s supposed to hold.  It’s ours--at least, it’s our society’s.  In an age where two-to-two and a half generations of kids have now been raised largely in homes marked by divorce, single parenthood, and little fundamental stability in the family unit, we aren’t looking for someone to give it to us straight and be blunt with us about what our country requires to stay strong and stable.  We want a national “mommy” to kiss our boo-boos, tell us everything is going to be okay, and give us ice cream afterwards.  Obama is merely the latest step in this generational phenomenon, and barring some monumental event where Gen-X and the Echo Boomers are forced to make a fundamental, foundational change in the way they view the role of the President and society, it likely will not get better.  We have mediocre leaders because we have a mediocre citizenry, plain and simple.

Walt Kelly’s “We have met the enemy, and he is us” was never so appropriate as it is right now.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

If there is one historian who has epitomized the Marxist bent of the American university, and the humanities in particular, it’s Howard Zinn, who kicked the bucket today.

I’m certainly not going to weep over his passing.  As a historian, the man was terrible: his works are prime examples of fallacious logic, Marxist hypocrisy, and contradictory, self-centered agit-prop. 

Having read this and few of Zinn’s other works, it’s pretty clear that the only reason he became as huge as he did is because he rubbed all the sections of the id that make leftists swoon, primarily the “the United States, and white people in particular, are responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened in the history of the universe” nub.  That he’s being promoted as an intellectual rebel is particularly humorous, because there’s absolutely nothing being taught or studied in the field of history now, or over the past 40-50 years, that differentiates his work from any other--the Academic Holy Trinity of Class, Gender, and Ethnicity is so common that history as a discipline has pretty much stagnated.  There’s only so many types of subjects entitled “A ______ of Her Own” before redundancy begins to set in.  By contrast, Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People stands out precisely because it doesn’t follow this boilerplate, and as much as I like to rag on journalists, some of them are writing sharp popular histories, such as G. J. Meyer’s A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918.

Dennis the Peasant put it best:

Howard Zinn was fool and a hypocrite; yet another armchair communist preaching the evils of capitalism and democracy while living fat off of both.

Maybe someone can spray-paint that on his tombstone.

Friday, January 08, 2010

The latest employment numbers have been discussed and analyzed ad nauseum today, so I’m not going to go beyond what is obvious--we are still deep in the shit, and aren’t coming out any time soon.  I may post a collection of links that explain this over the weekend.

Instead, I want to link to an article that Jason Whitlock wrote about the Gilbert Arenas situation.  Whitlock writes:

Do you think they would paint their bodies in tattoos if they comprehended they were joining a multi-billion-dollar industry tied to presenting a wholesome image of its players?

So there is little reason to marvel at Gilbert Arenas’ stupidity. He’s in crowded company, many of the NBA’s biggest names have as little self-awareness as Agent Zero IQ.

To them, the NBA is not a business. It’s the Senior AAU Tour with bi-weekly paychecks, private planes that double as floating casinos and a potential baby mama (or two) waiting in every city.

I don’t disagree with the last statement.  While many players in the NBA take their jobs very seriously, there’s also plenty of players who haven’t matured emotionally past that AAU stage in high school.  To be somewhat fair, the “baby mama” attitude goes back decades, snaring superstars such as Julius Erving, Karl Malone, and The Sperminator himself, Shawn Kemp.

I’m not sure where Whitlock gets the idea that the NBA is promoting itself as a family-oriented business, though.  Stern’s most brilliant business manuever was taking the Faustian bargain that encouraging the hip-hop “street ball” culture of the ghettos to come to the NBA would result in increased interest and fan devotion has paid off in spades.  And while it’s made a lot of people in the NBA fabulously wealthy, and provided us with some incredible displays of talent and athleticism, the other side of that is that when you allow an environment that gives a wink and a nod to gangster culture to develop, it’s hardly surprising that many players would continue to emulate the worst aspects of the street, especially if they came into riches so soon after high school.  Why bother cleaning up your act when you’ve been coddled as a superstar your whole life for showing your ass in public?

Whitlock goes on to suggest the following:

If I were Stern, I’d use this latest player-instigated embarrassment to implement an elevation of the league’s age limit to 21 and entice NCAA schools to offer elite athletes (and other students) majors in the study of professional sports. If a musician can study music, why can’t a basketball player study sports? Sports have played as significant a role in influencing American culture as music or art.

While the idea is interesting, I think Whitlock is missing the forest for the trees here.  I have no problem if the NBA decided to set the age limit to 21--it’s a private organization, can set its own rules about hiring criteria as long as it doesn’t violate the equal protection measure clause, and players can always try to get a European or Latin American team to hire them if they want to play early professionally.  But I don’t think it’s going to solve the problem; it might help somewhat, but only a fundmental change in the sport’s culture will accomplish what Whitlock wants to see.

There’s anothe issue to consider as well.  Arenas may have shown the gun as a joke, but the other player involved, Javaris Crittenton, is now reported to have actually locked and loaded his own gun that he had brought to the arena.  Arenas was suspended indefinitely, and his guns weren’t loaded; if Crittenton actually loaded his gun, what sort of punishment should he get?

Friday, December 18, 2009

Get ready to have mandatory thresholds for how many women must be in any computer [science] department and a massive campaign to force computer geeks to change, because according to this SeeBS article, computer geeks and their style are responsible for keeping too many women out of the field.

In the geeky environment, women were significantly less interested than men in computer science, while there was no gender difference for the non-stereotypical classroom. Female students in the stereotypical environment said they felt less similar to computer-science majors than did those in the classroom that wasn’t geeked out.

Don’t expect anyone to point out that in this case it is these idiot women that have allowed stereotypes and what should be meaningless and irrational emotions affect their decision and choices, in a very negative way I should add, because the culprits are always the guys. In this case even the geeky guys. If anything, the lesson here should have been that women are just as prone, if not even more so, to real dumb decisions as guys are. I bet these yentas flock to environments where such idiotic ideas as all the reality shows crowding our TV bandwidth these days flourish though. Once reality smacks them in the face they can always opt to work for a pimp.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

This kind of conviction, especially in light of the ClimateGate revelations of fraud and manipulation of information, the destruction of data that is the basis for practically all this nonsense, and the lack of scientific rigor involved in this scam, is usually reserved and found in religious fanatics. I have to admit that I am not surprised to see it from the UN however. Nobody stands to gain as much as the clowns at the UN because of this hoax. After all, the solution for this made up crisis plays right into their hands. The solution to the world ending AGW problem was a global government with the unlimited power to control all aspects of our lives and income, which the UN definitely sees as its ultimate goal. Then again, the Un might want to rethink this seeing that the clergy seems to have other plans, even as the priesthood indulges itself to excess. And the pope of AGW? The Goracle is still mad as a hatter.

In the mean time, the donkeys are trying to force through the massively unpopular government takeover of healthcare dollars and decision making - with the approval dropping by the day as people discover more and more of the pitfalls, costs, and impacts of this horrible monster - by accusing those that do not want to go along with this travesty of being akin to slavers requiring another history lesson for these factually challenged collectivist tools, while reality sets in for the rest of us. When you are reduced to jockeying for a position as Santa at the mall to pay your bills, somehow these scams being perpetrated on us all feel even more unreal and nasty. Especially when this is going on.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Even muggers know the score:

A Milwaukee Army reservist’s military identification earned him some street cred Tuesday, when he says four men who mugged him at gunpoint returned his belongings and thanked him for his service after finding the ID.

The 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student said he was walking home from work about 1:15 a.m. Tuesday when he was pulled into an alley and told to lay face down and with a gun to his neck. Four men took his wallet, $16, keys, his cell phone and even a PowerBar wrapper from his pants pockets, he said.

But the hostile tone quickly changed when one of the robbers, whom the reservist presumed was the leader, saw an Army ID in the wallet. The robber told the others to return the items and they put most of his belongings on the ground next to him, including the wrapper, the reservist said.

“The guy continued to say throughout the situation that he respects what I do and at one point he actually thanked me and he actually apologized,” said the reservist, who asked not to be identified Tuesday because the robbers still had his keys.

There are lots of Americans out there—including many you can see on TV on a regular basis—who have less respect.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I wanted to follow up my post from yesterday on the FDIC with a couple of related links that I think are relevant as far as the big picture on the economy is concerned. 

Alex’s comment on that post led me to do a quick search of the banks that had closed when the S&L crisis finally came to a head.  The link is to an article from the New York Times that was written in 1988, and I about fell off my chair reading some of the things that ocurred and the analysis of the situation.  Really, it shows that we haven’t learned a damn thing in 20 years.  From the article (emphasis is mine):

As recently as 1980, only 10 banks, with assets totaling $232 million, collapsed in the United States. After the books are closed for 1988, Mr. Seidman estimated, as many as 220 of the nation’s 13,329 banks, with assets of almost $54 billion, will have been either shut down or given Federal assistance by his agency.

Yet the financial markets did not even blink at the report of the seventh yearly record of failures in a row. Depositors appeared to remain confident. No runs have been reported. In a country in which the banking crisis and devastating runs of the Depression days are relatively recent history, perhaps the most striking element about last week’s announcement is the calm with which the public takes such news these days....

For most banking experts, the key to the changing attitudes is the Federal safety net of deposit insurance -a system begun in the 1930’s to insure the life savings of widows and orphans and now expanded to include a Federal guarantee on almost all bank deposits. The agency by statute insures deposits of up to $100,000, but in practice amounts larger than that are covered, in a policy that grew from the near collapse of the giant Continental Illinois Bank and Trust Company in 1984. The agency concluded that it could not risk the effects of permitting uninsured depositors of large banks to lose money, and the ‘’too-big-to-fail’’ doctrine(!) was applied for equity reasons to all banks.....

‘’We have become abolutely addicted to the safety net, and we can’t live without it, yet in the long run we can’t live with it,’’ said Mr. Isaac. He believes that one reason the savings and loan industry has suffered losses estimated to range from $50 billion to $100 billion is that deposit insurance is ‘’too pervasive.’’

Analysts like Mr. Isaac point out that managers of banks on the verge of bankruptcy can offer very high interest rates, bringing in vast amounts of new funds and taking even bigger risks, in hopes of scoring big and recovering. If they win, they keep control of their banks. If they lose, the Government pays off.

And in a statement that is eerily prescient of what occurred with the housing bubble, the article concludes with this:

‘’I don’t think the deposit insurance system was designed to protect an investment banking firm that is dumping client money in problem S&L’s,’’ Mr. Isaac said. ‘’If we don’t stop this addition to the safety net, we will be on a path that leads to more and more Government involvement in the operation and control of banks - in other words, a nationalized banking system.’’

Now, the Obama administration hasn’t exactly nationalized the banks (yet), but the fact that TARP basically institutionalized 5-6 major banks/investment firms as “too big to fail” and provided them with a $23.7 trillion line of credit shows that they likely won’t let them collapse--there is too much money at this point invested by the state in their survival, and the Fed and the Treasury have been busy trying anything to keep this stock market bubble blowing up on the chance that the economy shows some sort of real recovery before it pops.  I wouldn’t bet the house on them succeeding though--the math and history, in my opinion, aren’t really on their side this time.

So what is the connection between this article and the post I wrote yesterday?  Well, they tie into the fundamental reason why I believe we are in the current state of affairs that we are economically.  More below the fold----

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

With the exception of Fox News, our mainstream press is still AWOL on this story.

Update: Added the other 3 videos below this fold for those that missed them too.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Patrick Swayze has passed away.  Man, this year is turning out to be a horrible one for celebrities.  From AP:

LOS ANGELES – Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into moviegoers’ hearts with “Dirty Dancing” and then broke them with “Ghost,” died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

“Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months,” his publicist, Annett Wolf, said in a statement Monday evening. Swayze died in Los Angeles, Wolf said, but she declined to give further details.

Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer. He kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting “The Beast,” an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot.

Swayze was always one of those 80s actors that was a lot of fun to watch, even in chick-flick goo like “Dirty Dancing” or “Ghost.” His skit with Chris Farley as Chippendale’s auditioners is classic, and I personally prefer his role in “The Outsiders,” but let’s face it--guys who came of age in the late 1980s will be forever grateful that he accepted the role that truly defined his awesomeness:

Sunday, September 13, 2009

When you make a very nice living taking advantage of the benefits offered by the very system you decry, it’s not surprising that it might not be taken too seriously:

Two prominent American pictures were shut out of the festival’s official jury awards—Michael Moore’s attack on corporate greed, Capitalism: A Love Story, and The Weinstein Company’s The Road, which John Hillcoat adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel. This will no doubt affect Harvey Weinstein’ release plans for it. Moore’s pic did receive the Leoncino d’oro Award from 26 local youths selected by the festival, but nothing from the official jury—even though he personally came to Venice to premiere his documentary

Moore’s always been the Dyson of American filmmakers--his movies never stop sucking--but at least in Italy, he got the slap to his ego he so richlly deserved.  Don’t think for a minute he’s not pissed that the only award he recieved was from a gaggle of dumb-truck kids.

2009 is really turning out to be a crummy year.  Now we’ve lost Norman Borlaug.  We try to avoid long-pull quotes here at RTFLC.  But I think it’s appropriate in this case.  Borlaug was 95 years old.  When someone that old dies, I think it’s more appropriate to celebrate their life.

In the late 1960s, most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions would perish. “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Ehrlich also said, “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.” He insisted that “India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.”

But Borlaug and his team were already engaged in the kind of crash program that Ehrlich declared wouldn’t work. Their dwarf wheat varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than the traditional varieties. In 1965, they had begun a massive campaign to ship the miracle wheat to Pakistan and India and teach local farmers how to cultivate it properly. By 1968, when Ehrlich’s book appeared, the U.S. Agency for International Development had already hailed Borlaug’s achievement as a “Green Revolution.”

In Pakistan, wheat yields rose from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 8.4 million in 1970. In India, they rose from 12.3 million tons to 20 million. And the yields continue to increase. Last year, India harvested a record 73.5 million tons of wheat, up 11.5 percent from 1998. Since Ehrlich’s dire predictions in 1968, India’s population has more than doubled, its wheat production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold. Soon after Borlaug’s success with wheat, his colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research developed high-yield rice varieties that quickly spread the Green Revolution through most of Asia.

Contrary to Ehrlich’s bold pronouncements, hundreds of millions didn’t die in massive famines. India fed far more than 200 million more people, and it was close enough to self-sufficiency in food production by 1971 that Ehrlich discreetly omitted his prediction about that from later editions of The Population Bomb. The last four decades have seen a “progress explosion” that has handily outmatched any “population explosion.”

Borlaug, who unfortunately is far less well-known than doom-sayer Ehrlich, is responsible for much of the progress humanity has made against hunger. Despite occasional local famines caused by armed conflicts or political mischief, food is more abundant and cheaper today than ever before in history, due in large part to the work of Borlaug and his colleagues.

It is estimated he saved over a billion lives.  No, that is not a mistake.  Borlaug saved ten times as many people as Hitler, Stalin and Mao managed to kill ... combined.  In his dying days, he was looking to find a solution to the rust fungus hitting Africa.  He was a truly great American, the sort of person whose face should be on our money.  And yet more Americans know the current disposition of Brittney Spears’ panties than know his name.

Update: Here’s Penn and Teller’s show on Borlaug.  It includes the quote that Lee had as his animated gif.

Also Easterbrook.