(Lund University) Advanced crafting of stone spearheads contributed to the development of new ways of human thinking and behaving. This is what new findings by archaeologists at Lund University have shown. The technology took a long time to acquire, required step by step planning and increased social interaction across the generations. This led to the human brain developing new abilities.

(University of Cincinnati) The University of Cincinnati’s most recent research in Cyprus reveals the remnants of a Late Bronze Age (1500-750 B.C.) fortress that may have functioned to protect an important urban economic center in the ancient world.

(Wiley-Blackwell) Our changing climate usually appears to be a very modern problem, yet new research from Greenland published in Boreas, suggests that the AD 1350 collapse of a centuries old colony established by Viking settlers may have been caused by declining temperatures and a rise in sea-ice. The authors suggest the collapse of the Greenland Norse presents a historical example of a society which failed to adapt to climate change.

(Emory University) When populations around the globe started turning to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, regardless of their locations and type of crops, a similar trend occurred: the height and health of the people declined. The pattern holds up across standardized studies of whole skeletons in populations, the Emory University study found in the first comprehensive, global review of the literature regarding stature and health during the agriculture transition.

(Northwestern University) Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago.

Asked on NBC’s Today show about continuing unemployment, President Obama said:

There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.

Lots of people criticized the president for not understanding the basics of economic progress and job creation. But he’s not alone.

John Maynard Keynes (right) and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Harry Dexter White, 1946. Credit: IMF

If there’s any theory underlying the Obama administration’s economic programs, it’s Keynesianism. “The Keynesian prescription is if all else fails, the government can spend the money,” says the prominent economist Alan Blinder.

But sometimes Lord Keynes made his view of job creation very simple. As Obama took office, the Wall Street Journal offered an interesting vignette on Keynes’s view of how to create jobs:

Drama was a Keynes tool. During a 1934 dinner in the U.S., after one economist carefully removed a towel from a stack to dry his hands, Mr. Keynes swept the whole pile of towels on the floor and crumpled them up, explaining that his way of using towels did more to stimulate employment among restaurant workers.

Assuming this story is true, it seems to underline the absurdity of the whole “make-work” theory. Keynes’s vandalism is just a variant of the broken-window fallacy that was exposed by Frederic Bastiat, Henry Hazlitt, and many other economists: A boy breaks a shop window. Villagers gather around and deplore the boy’s vandalism. But then one of the more sophisticated townspeople, perhaps one who has been to college and read Keynes, says, “Maybe the boy isn’t so destructive after all. Now the shopkeeper will have to buy a new window. The glassmaker will then have money to buy a table. The furniture maker will be able to hire an assistant or buy a new suit. And so on. The boy has actually benefited our town!”

But as Bastiat noted, “Your theory stops at what is seen. It does not take account of what is not seen.” If the shopkeeper has to buy a new window, then he can’t hire a delivery boy or buy a new suit. Money is shuffled around, but it isn’t created. And indeed, wealth has been destroyed. The village now has one less window than it did, and it must spend resources to get back to the position it was in before the window broke. As Bastiat said, “Society loses the value of objects unnecessarily destroyed.”

And the story of Keynes at the sink is the story of an educated, professional man intentionally acting like the village vandal. By adding to the costs of running a restaurant, he may well create additional jobs for janitors. But the restaurant owner will then have less money with which to hire another waiter, expand his business, or invest in other businesses. Before Keynes showed up in town, let us say, the town had three restaurants among its businesses, each with neatly stacked towels for guests. After Keynes’s triumphant speaking tour to all the Rotary Clubs in town, the town is exactly as it was, except the three restaurants are left to clean up the disarray. The town is very slightly less wealthy, and some people in town must spend scarce resources to restore the previous conditions.

As Jerry Jordan wrote in the Cato Journal, the real challenge for society is not creating jobs but creating wealth — that is, a higher standard of living for more people. There are many destructive ways, beyond messing up the towels in a restroom, to create jobs:

I am reminded of a story that a businessman told me a few years ago. While touring China, he came upon a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with shovels. The businessman commented to a local official that, with an earth-moving machine, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. The official’s curious response was, “Yes, but think of all the unemployment that would create.” “Oh,” said the businessman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want to create, then take away their shovels and give them spoons!”

And there’s your question for President Obama: Do you really think the United States would be better off if we didn’t have ATMs and check-in kiosks? (As it happens, ATMs have helped banks to serve customers, save money, and open more branches, but they apparently haven’t eliminated the need for tellers: “‘At the dawn of the self-service banking age in 1985, for example, the United States had 60,000 automated teller machines and 485,000 bank tellers. In 2002, the United States had 352,000 ATMs—and 527,000 bank tellers. ATMs notwithstanding, banks do a lot more than they used to and have a lot more branches than they used to.’ More recently, the  Bureau of Labour Statistics reports there were 600,500 bank tellers in 2008, and the BLS projects this number will grow to 638,000 by 2018.”) And do you think we’d be better off if we mandated that all these “shovel-ready projects” be performed with spoons?

In his 1988 book The American Job Machine, the economist Richard B. McKenzie pointed out an easy way to create 60 million jobs: “Outlaw farm machinery.” The goal of economic policy should not be job creation per se; it should be a growing economy that continually satisfies more consumer demand. And such an economy will be marked by creative destruction. Some businesses will be created, others will fail. Some jobs will no longer be needed, but in a growing economy more will be created. In 2004 Brink Lindsey noted that “total U.S. private-sector employment rose by 17.8 million during the decade from 1993 to 2002 [despite job losses in the recession years of 2001 and 2002]. To produce that healthy net increase, a breathtaking total of 327.7 million jobs were added, while 309.9 million jobs were lost.” That means that in a typical non-recession year some 32.9 million jobs were created, while 30.3 million were lost. In a world of constant creative destruction, it’s absurd to suggest that slow employment growth is a result of ATMs and check-in kiosks.

Another famous essay by Bastiat was his “Candlemakers’ Petition,” and that’s where Hillary Rodham Clinton enters the story. In that parody, the French economist and parliamentarian imagined the makers of candles and street lamps petitioning the French Chamber of Deputies for protection from a most dastardly foreign competitor:

You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and have little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.

We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity. . . .

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival . . .  is none other than the sun.

For after all, Bastiat’s petitioners noted, how can the makers of candles and lanterns compete with a light source that is free? Thank goodness we wouldn’t fall for such nonsense today. Except that in 2006 Senator Clinton and nine colleagues (ranging from Barbara Boxer to Tom Coburn) endorsed a petition from—you guessed it—the domestic candlemaking industry asking the secretary of commerce to impose a 108.3 percent tariff on Chinese candle producers. And the Commerce Department gave them what they wanted.

Misunderstandings of the process of job creation are hard to eradicate. I can recall my father urging us to shop in our own little town rather than the slightly bigger town nearby, to “keep our money here in town.” That’s a micro-example of the protectionist mistake. Economies work best when they take advantage of specialization and comparative advantage. I am no more made better off by “buying Kentucky” or “buying American” than I am by making my own clothes and growing my own food. With each economic choice I tend to make what I’m best at and buy things I can get cheaper elsewhere, whether from the neighborhood store or from China. Businesses call it the make-or-buy decision, but individuals make the same decision with each purchase.

Finding new and more efficient ways to deliver goods and services to consumers is called economic progress. We should not seek to impede that process, whether through protectionism, breaking windows, throwing towels on the floor, or fretting about automation.

As Earth rotates on its axis each day and makes its annual revolution around the Sun, the Moon appears to move gradually eastward through the sky. And about roughly every 29.531 days, the Moon completes its cycle of phases, from new to first quarter to full to last quarter and finally to new again.

The phases of the moon. Credit: © marema/Shutterstock.com

Today the Moon is in its waning crescent phase, revealing only a sliver of its edge, the majority of it blending into the dark night sky. By Friday, as it continues to pass between the Sun and Earth this week, its illuminated side will face completely away from our planet, leaving us with a dark Moon—the new Moon.

As the Moon revolves around Earth, the amount of its illuminated half seen from Earth slowly increases and decreases (waxes and wanes). The cycle takes about 29.531 days. Credit: © Merriam-Webster Inc.

At the close of the Mexican American War, a tall bear of a man named John Johnson wandered into the northern Rocky Mountains. No one is quite sure of what brought the New Jersey native there, though there is some speculation that he had deserted from the American military and fled to the northern limits of the territory then controlled by Mexico. Whatever the case, he learned to hunt and trap, and in time he married a Blackfoot Indian girl. When Crow Indians killed her, Johnson went on a twelve-year campaign of revenge, and he is supposed to have taken a bite of the livers of each of the Crow he killed—untold dozens of them, by admittedly unreliable contemporary accounts. For that reason, he bore the moniker Liver-Eating Johnson.

More reliably, we know that Johnson joined the Union Army in 1864, when he was about 40 years old, and served in a Colorado cavalry regiment in the last months of the Civil War. He then moved to Montana, where he lived until his death in 1900.

Johnson was one of the lesser-known of the frontiersmen of his time, and he would probably have been known only to historians of the fur trade had novelist Vardis Fisher not borrowed him for his 1965 novel Mountain Man. Drawing on it and a short story called “Crow Killer,” then fledgling scriptwriter John Milius prepared Johnson’s story for the screen, which made its way to director Sydney Pollack and thence to A-list actor Robert Redford, who was then just beginning his long love affair with the Rocky Mountains. The great western character actor Will Geer was cast as Redford’s high-country mentor, with a small cast of mostly unknown actors assigned to play the other roles.

Redford, who three years later would star in the definitive Nixon-era paranoiac thriller Three Days of the Condor, plays Johnson as wary, suspicious of authority, only slowly moved to violence. The few Anglos he meets along his path are mostly fools and con artists, there on that violent frontier to find their fortunes before the previous occupants had cleared out—and inclined, always, to underestimate those people in every way. Redford is not, and so he keeps his scalp—but not without paying a considerable price. Jeremiah Johnson is one of the best films of the 1970s, and a 180-degree turn from Redford’s happy-go-lucky character in the earlier, standard-issue, decidedly uncontrarian offering Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Greece‘s fiscal crisis continues to dominate world economic headlines, as this week Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou reshuffled his cabinet, notably appointing a new finance minister, and won a nail-biting vote of confidence on Tuesday 155-143 in the Greek Parliament. Next up for Papandreou’s government will be to shepherd through Parliament measures that enact stringent austerity policies—opposed by many in Greece—of €28 billion that will include spending cuts, tax increases, and other reforms to satisfy demands from the IMF and EU as part of the massive €110 billion bailout package that Greece was provided. Crises also drag on in Libya, where NATO bombing continues, and Syria, where demonstrations against the government led to a major speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in which he offered the prospect of reform (dismissed by the opposition as too little too late), while in the United States President Barack Obama pitched a withdrawal plan from Afghanistan that would reduce U.S. troop presence by about 30,000 by next year but leave another 70,000 in place until 2014 (a plan supported by but called “risky” by Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).

To catch you up on the week’s other news and to give you a chance to test yourself, here were a few other stories making headlines.

Questions

Not guilty, said a Dutch court this week for this politician. Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

1. What Dutch politician, known for the promotion of anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views, was acquitted on charges of inciting hatred toward Muslims?

2. What Middle Eastern leader deposed earlier this year was convicted in absentia?

3. What South Korean diplomat and politician was elected to a second term as secretary-general of the United Nations?

4. Who was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate this week to succeed Robert M. Gates as U.S. secretary of defense?

5. Who announced this week that it would allow nearly any top-level Internet domain name in any language?

This Chinese dissident was released on bail this week. Credit: Lennart Preiss/AP

6. What dissident was released on bail in China this week?

7. What former Republican government and ambassador to China announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination this week?

Scroll down for the answers.

Answers

1. Geert Wilders. The Dutch right-wing politician, who promotes anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views, was first elected to the Dutch Parliament in 1998 and has been the leader of the Party for Freedom since 2006. A controversial figure now, he first gained notice in the early 2000s during a wave of anti-Islamic feeling in the Netherlands. Amid the public outrage surrounding the killing of a filmmaker in 2004 who made a picture that critiqued the role of women in Muslim society, Wilders became a prominent voice on the political right, pronouncing Islam a “fascist ideology” and calling for restrictions on Muslim immigration to the Netherlands. In the aftermath of the killing of populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who had was slain in 2002 by an animal rights activist, Wilders quickly amassed a devoted following. In 2007 he proposed that the Qurʾan be banned in the Netherlands, and in 2008 he produced Fitna (“Strife”), a film that interlaces passages from the Qurʾan with graphic images of Islamist terrorist attacks. In January 2009 a Dutch court had charged him with inciting hatred toward Muslims. The subsequent trial, which stretched over more than two years, concluded this week with Wilders being acquitted on all charges.

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in happier times. Credit: Presidency of the Nation of Argentina

2. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali had served as president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011, but earlier this year he was swept aside in the Jasmine Revolution, the first of several uprisings that have comprised the Arab Spring. In January he fled Tunisia for exile in Saudi Arabia, and at the time it was suspected that he and his family had illegally amassed a fortune in the billions of dollars. This week a Tunisian court convicted Ben Ali and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, in absentia of having embezzled public funds and sentenced them to 35 years in prison. The trial, which lasted only a few hours, focused on large quantities of cash and jewels found in one of Ben Ali’s palaces. Ben Ali and members of his inner circle still faced criminal trials for a number of alleged offenses, including ordering the use of lethal force against protesters and trafficking in drugs and archaeological objects.

3. Ban Ki-moon. Ban became the eighth UN secretary-general in 2007, the first Asian to serve as UN secretary-general since Burmese statesman U Thant held the office (1962–71). Ban faced a number of challenges in his first term, including the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats, troubles in the Middle East, and the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Reform of the UN itself was also a major issue. This week he was elected by acclamation to a second term, which will run through 2016. Susan Rice, the UN ambassador to the UN, called him a “champion for peace and security,” though some advocates of human rights have been critical of his tenure.

Leon Panetta was confirmed as the U.S.'s next defense secretary. Credit: CIA

4. Leon Panetta. Panetta, a political fixture in the United States since first serving as director of the Office of Civil Rights in the administration of Richard Nixon, has also been part of the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as a member of the House of Representatives. He left government in 1997 but then served on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group assessing the political, economic, and security issues following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Obama appointed him director of the CIA in 2009, a move that surprised some, as Panetta had no direct intelligence background. The Obama team emphasized Panetta’s organizational strengths and extensive government experience, however, and he was confirmed by the Senate in February 2009. Earlier this year Obama selected Panetta to succeed Robert M. Gates as secretary of defense, and Panetta was unanimously confirmed by the Senate this week. Even Republicans gushed with praise for Panetta, with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham calling him a “home-run choice.”

5. ICANN. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is tasked with running the Internet, overseeing the top-level domains (TLDs; e.g., .com, .net, .org, .edu, .us), registering and maintaining the directory of domain names (e.g., www.britannica.com) used in the Internet protocol (IP), and resolving trademark disputes over domain names. Last year, after years of controversy, ICANN approved an .xxx top-level domain for adult entertainment, but this week it set up what might become the Wild West of domain names, as companies (or almost anyone with $185,000) can buy and register almost any top-level domain name. Critics have decried the plan; Laura Weinstein of People for Internet Responsibility and the Privacy Forum said that “we may see billions of dollars being wasted in ICANN’s new gigantic gTLD ‘domain name space’—mostly from firms falsely hoodwinked into thinking that new domain names will be their paths to Internet riches, and from firms trying to protect their names in this vastly expanded space, ripe for abuses.”

6. Ai Weiwei. The work of Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has been praised internationally, and at home he has been politically outspoken, which sometimes has landed him in controversy with Chinese authorities. In late 2010 Ai was notified that a studio complex in Shanghai that he had recently built at the invitation of the city’s mayor was scheduled to be razed. Though local authorities cited Ai’s failure to obtain a required permit as the reason for the demolition, Ai himself speculated that two documentary films he had made that suggested injustices on the part of Shanghai’s government may have been the underlying impetus. Ai was briefly placed under house arrest to prevent him from attending a party at the complex in November, and the site was demolished two months later. Also in November Ai launched another citizen investigation following a deadly fire in a Shanghai high-rise apartment building. In April of this year Ai was detained for alleged “economic crimes”—it was later revealed that he was accused of tax evasion—in what was seen as part of a widespread crackdown on dissent. He was released on bail this week (though he’s not quite out of the woods legally yet), with Chinese state media reporting that he had confessed to the charges against him. The resulting international media coverage of the incident had brought further attention to Ai’s art.

Barack's former ambassador to China, Jon Hunstman, Jr., will try to beat his former boss in 2012. Credit: U.S. Department of State.

7. Jon Huntsman, Jr. The former governor of Utah (2005&endash;09) accepted Barack Obama’s offer of serving as ambassador to China, despite his Republican leanings. A moderate Republican who supports civil unions for same-sex couples, served as ambassador to China until April, amid speculation that he would seek out the Republican presidential nomination. This week, he made it official, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. The announcement, however, didn’t come without problems, as his name was misspelled on the tickets, the traveling press corps was at first directed to a plane that was on its way to Saudi Arabia, and he later talked about the launch coming in New York while in fact Liberty State Park, where he made his announcement, is in New Jersey. Fuggettaboutit!

Our weekly news quiz is going to take a few weeks off for summer holiday, but we’ll be back in the not distant future with some more ways to catch up on the news and test your knowledge.

London’s and Toronto’s Gay Pride parades are in early July and Amsterdam’s won’t take place until August, while Rio de Janeiro’s, which may draw some 2 million revelers, isn’t until October. And, in some places, such as Moscow, attempts to hold a Gay Pride celebration continue to be met with protests or bans by city authorities. Nevertheless, for many places around the world, including Barcelona, Chicago, New York, Paris, and San Francisco, this weekend marks Gay Pride weekend, complete with festivals and the iconic parade. But, why June?

The Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village days after the Stonewall riots, which began on June 28, 1969. Credit: Larry Morris—The New York Times/Redux

Typically, particularly for larger American cities, Gay Pride celebrations take place around the nearest weekend to the Stonewall riots, which began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, after police raided the Stonewall Inn bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. Unlike previous incidents when police raided bars catering to gay customers, when patrons would scatter or retreat, on that evening in 1969 the customers began to jeer and to jostle the police and then threw bottles and debris. Police then barricaded themselves inside the bar, which was eventually set on fire, while police reinforcements arrived, extinguishing the fire and dispersing the crowd. The riots waxed and waned over the next several days, but for gays and lesbians around the United States it helped to galvanize activism and was, as Britannica discusses, “perhaps the first time lesbians, gays, and trasvestites saw the value in uniting behind a common cause.”

Stonewall became a symbol of activism, and in the early years gay pride events attracted just a handful or several hundred, mostly gay, activists. Over the years, however, Gay Pride parades have become more of a microcosm of both gay society and the broader liberal social world, as scantily dressed men without shirts and drag queens in high heels competing for attention with (particularly but not solely) Democratic Party politicians and candidates for office, antiwar activists, bands, and corporate floats. In last year’s Gay Pride event in Chicago, the following four photographs capture some of that diversity (and mainstreaming of gay rights, particularly in larger urban areas), as heterosexual families march in support of gay rights in the first photograph, while Brent Sopel (formerly) of the Chicago Blackhawks celebrates his team’s Stanley Cup victory on the Chicago Gay Hockey Association float, Alexi Giannoulias campaigns for the U.S. Senate, and Chicago Cub legend Ernie Banks enjoys the parade from the Cubs float—the first time a Chicago team had entered a float in the annual celebration.

Children marching during Chicago's 2010 Gay Pride parade

Brent Sopel of the Chicago Blackhawks carrying the Stanley Cup at Chicago's Gay Pride celebration in 2010

Then U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias campaigning for votes at Chicago's 2010 Gay Pride parade

Ernie Banks aboard the Chicago Cubs float at the 2010 Chicago Gay Pride parade