I have two papers that I wrote for classes that I am editing down to the length required by the national conference next year. It’s painful, as there was not much fluff – if I included something, I included it for a reason. Ah well, that hard part is done. Now I need to re-read to make sure everything still makes sense, edit again, and then send off before the deadline.
Certainly, this piece is more balanced than the self-contradictory Cold War thinking we got during the Georgia War.
Much of the advice comes down to just trust Gazprom. Should we provide security for pro-European states in Europe? Not if we can trust Gazprom instead. Should we try prevent more energy cut-offs when democracies anger Putin? Not if we can trust Gazprom instead.
The take on Russia is a bit deceptive — it sounds so much more reasonable than the hysterics we got last August I want to agree with it, but ultimately cannot. The piece is to transparently the work of an employee for an energy services provider on behalf of another large energy company.
It’s hard to give up on a once promising analyst, but over the last few years the feeling of reading press releases has grown stronger and stronger.
A writer at gnxp thinks so:
Still, some of the recent ones are deserved, such as cloning a sheep and sequencing the human genome. Overall, though, the pattern is pretty clear — we haven’t invented jackshit for the past 30 years. With the two main monopolistic Ivory Towers torn down — one private and one public — it’s no surprise to see innovation at a historic low. Indeed, the last entries in the building / manufacturing and household categories date back to 1969 and 1974, respectively.
On the plus side, Microsoft and Google are pretty monopolistic, and they’ve been delivering cool new stuff at low cost (often for free — and good free, not “home brew” free). But they’re nowhere near as large as Bell Labs or the DoD was back in the good ol’ days. I’m sure that once our elected leaders reflect on the reality of invention, they’ll do the right thing and pump more funds into ballooning the state, as well as encouraging Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to merge into the next incarnation of monopoly-era AT&T.
via Gene Expression: Monopoly allows innovation to flourish.
Having recently reviewed Dr. Narain Gehani’s Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel, it certainly appears that Bell Labs research profoundly suffered after the divestature of the 1980s and “trivestature” of the 1990s. Likewise, it is hard to think of anything very new in terms of computer science — most of what we had is refined version of what we had 15 years ago.
However, monopolies (and companies too big to fight, generally) bring us horror stories like $11,000 cell phone bills, theft from the public domain, rule by MBAs, and other bad things.
So, are some monopolies good for innovation? And if they are, what sort of monopolies should be encouraged?
Here is a visualization of what Team Geithner thought what happen without a stimulus and with a stimulus, contrasted with what has actually happened.
No Officer of the United States has been so wrong, or has done so much damage, since Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld managed Phase IV operations of the Iraq War.
Rumsfeld offered to resign several times. Bush, valuing loyalty more than proven performance, refused the resignation several times.
If Geithner is half the man that Rumsfeld is, he has already submitted a resignation letter to President Obama. The President should accept Geithner’s resignation.
This post came from a chat with Brendan of I Hate Linux. It confirms the cap-and-trade bill pushed by President Obama.
We are doing it for Europe
When Europe says “global warming,” they mean “Russia.”
The transposition works almost every time.
X is a threat to civilization; X is a threat to humanity; X is a threat to small nations; X must be combated by all developed nations.
Obama’s cap-and-trade is basically a way for us to assure europe that they won’t be at a compettive disadvantage if they throttle-down on Gazprom deliveries.
That is, not much serious research on one is done through the other. But it’s fun to think about.
Zenpundit links to a piece on Whirled View about nuclear disarmament.
Cheryl’s reference to “evolutionary psychology” is a misdirection, but an accidental and understandable one. “Evolutionary Psychology” is a small, marginal, not particularly useful, if incredibly interesting take on the intersection of human evolution and human psychology.
A far more useful field is “behavioral genetics.” The current media-friendly discussion on “human nature” comes from “behavioral economics.” And of course, there is a whole lot of work on cognition that does not necessarily invoke evolution at all.
With respect to nuclear arms, international relations, and human nature is this: people predictably make irrational decisions that can only leave themselves worse off. Here is a Scientific American piece on bubbles and a post over at gnxp about neurotypicals.
Cheryl’s conclusion
Part of human nature is the ability to evaluate our situation and to change our behavior….
So we should be able to consider, and work toward, outlawing nuclear weapons.
Makes almost no sense. Of course we are able to evaluate our situation and change our behavior. Indeed, those systems that allow people to do this most often can lead to catastrophe more often, because of the lack of a governing infrastructure (such as a Military-Industrial Complex) that prohibits bad outcomes.
People rarely understand the consequences of their behavior. Feel-good liberals in the Obama administration, in an attempt to protect science, censor science (Half Sigma, Slashdot). The same thing happened under Bush and Clinton.
Similar politically correct idiocy controls every area of human endeavor that has not been automated into mindlessness.
This is a consequence of our human nature — we are irrational, prejudicial creatures with limited attention and even worse facility for logical thought. Smart people regularly say dumb and stupid things, not because they are bad, or even stupid by human standards, but because they are human.
Smart people regularly do stupid things too, as history has shown.
The real discussion on nuclear weapons should not be conducted in the optimistic tones of Cheryl’s post. Rather, the appropriate question is this: Given that the world’s military forces will be under the control of humans in the near-to-mid term, should those military forces also include nuclear weapons? And in that discussion, breazzy assurances that we can evaluation our surroundings are so can outlaw nuclear weapons have no place.
No complaints here. All are worth reading.
I especially liked Tom’s comparison of the 2009 Islamic Republic with the 1820 United States.
The combination of speed and depth afforded by blogs is one reason that is beets Twitter as a serious commentary source.
If you want a financial future, you should!
Two differences between Guaranty Financial and Goldman Sachs: Goldman Sachs has a friend in Tim Geithner. Goldman Sachs won’t be seized.
What’s the difference between Ben Bernanke and Calvin Coolidge? Hard to tell.
What’s the difference between the UAW GM and the old GM. Old GM was responsible when a defective GM product killed you. The UAW is above the law. Geithner could have forced the UAW to cover these costs as the price for the bailout he gave them. He did not do this. This is because the UAW has a friend in Tim Geithner.
Geithner’s pressure to delay foreclosures hurts honest lenders and honest borrowers.
After reading reactions at Catholicgauze, Coming Anarchy, Half Sigma, and Zenpundit, and following the news in China Daily, I am confused why the United Nations, President Obama and others are condemning the actions in Honduras.
As I understand it, the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the President. The Congress has acted to administer the country. In other words, this appears to be a the whole point of a tripartite separation of powers: any two divisions can act against a third.
If the Congress and the President of a country acted together to impeach a Supreme Court Justice, would the US be similarly angered?
I realize I am getting only a slice of the news here in China. What am I missing?
Fei and I spent the afternoon at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, attempting to resolve the green card snafu. We got close to a same-day resolution several times, but after each our hopes were dashed. As the day got later the staff got friendlier (the crowds mostly dispersed), and near the end we were able to talk to a supervising officer briefly in person.
Then there’s the whole hassle of United Airlines, an airline company that seems like the very worst in the world — except for all others. Besides a catch-22 we found in the process (copy of airline tickets is supposedly needed to get a waiver form; we need to know when we will have to waiver form to buy tickets), UAL also claims to have no flights out of Beijing before July 5th. Or, rather, every flight is overbooked, and there is no standbye.
So I’ll miss my mom’s birthday. Not to mention our little fuwa back home.
However, I need to say a word to correct some concerned tdaxp groupies on facebook — and if you didn’t know there were tdaxp groupies on facebook, then you’ve been hanging out with the wrong friends — who thought the problem was that China wasn’t letting Lady of tdaxp go out. The problem isn’t the Chinese government, it is correcting an error on Fei’s greencard that is preventing her from returning to the country. Indeed, because China granted me an extended stay visa earlier this year, at least my wife and I do not need to be separated.
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