¡Thank God it’s Viernes, pendejitos !

Your correspondent has a serious and growing addiction to Twitter (hey, at least it’s not crack!) and found yester-day that several of the economically literate journalists, policy wonks, and professors he follows were sharing a link to a blog post by Tom Murphy, an associate professor of physics at the fine University of California at San Diego (which as we all know is German for “a whale’s vagina”) called Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist.

Professor Murphy recounts a four-course dinner conversation with an unnamed economics professor about whether long run economic growth is really possible given binding resource constraints like the total amount of solar energy that reaches the earth, the total amount of energy released by the sun, and so on.

It’s a worthwhile read for anyone interested in earth science, physics, or economics. Or just anyone who thinks (as I do) that humanity is a cancer on the planet. Unfortunately, Mr. Murphy’s account of the discussion is rather slanted against the economist, although Professor Murphy acknowledges this right off the bat (he is recounting this conversation from memory so it is easier for him to remember his own arguments than those of someone outside his field).

HowEVAH, the good Professor gets one of his points terribly wrong. Incorrect in theory, incorrect in evidence, and somehow the alleged economist (who must either be emeritus or a macroeconomist and therefore useless) not only fails to call him out on it but actually agrees with him, which is unforgivable.

Your quest, fellow nerds, is to find this egregious error and send an email to publius1981 (at) gmail dot com. The first correct respondent will get MAD PROPz from yours truly and a special prize: sexual favors from Magic Sam!