Bizzy’s AM Coffee Biz-Econ-Life Links (040406)

Free Links:

• Basic Instinct 2 is a Flop, and It’s Bush’s Fault (HT S.O.B. Alliance member Large Bill). Even the most casual of TV watchers will be surprised to learn what the BI2’s director claims: “Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States.” More likely: the director lost his, er, touch after the first Basic Instinct, the best evidence of that being the 1995 alltime classic stinker Showgirls (during the apparently erotic Clinton Administration).
• A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90% of us dead. While he is the most extreme in his numbers, it’s important to note that Professor Eric Pianka is not some lone crank wishing for a radical reduction in the earth’s population. Here’s Ted Turner (father of 5) in a February 1999 speech in Washington noted by Media Research Center:
  

  Mr. Turner recalled a discussion many years ago with Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book “The Population Bomb” predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and ’80s as a result of global overpopulation.

  Mr. Turner said he asked Mr. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, what the ideal world population would be. “They told me about 2 billion,” Mr. Turner said. World population is now 5.9 billion, but the world could reduce its population to that ideal, Mr. Turner suggested. “We could do it in a very humane way,” he said, “if everybody adopted a one-child policy for 100 years.”….

  Other indicators that there are many out there who believe in radical population reduction are here (conclusion near bottom of page — the earth’s “carrying capacity” is less than 2 billion people, vs. about 6.5 billion now) and here.

• Identity Theft Supposedly Isn’t as Bad as Portrayed — The quibbling is over 3.6 million households as victims in a recent Department of Justice report vs. the 9.3 million individuals reported by the FTC. Given that the average household has two-plus people, there’s not as much controversy as the article would indicate, and there certainly isn’t any reason to think that ID theft is a less-than-serious problem.
• S.O.B. Alliance member Porkopolis e-mailed me an interesting story: “Teamsters union members will begin returning to work Wednesday after voting Sunday to approve a new contract with helicopter-maker Sikorsky Aircraft that involves terms similar to those they overwhelmingly rejected six weeks ago when they walked off the job.” Maybe the change of heart had something to do with observing the fates of thousands of Delphi workers in the Midwest.
• And speaking of the auto business Detroit had another bad month (GM and Ford down 14.6% and 4.5%, respectively, with Chrysler up 2%), while most of the foreign transplants were in positive territory.