Quicksilber

Drive Angry

2012-01-27T14:11:00.004-05:00

I recommend this movie, at least to certain readers of this blog whose cinematic tastes I know: Drive Angry. It was a commercial and critical flop, but there's no denying its entertainment value, and unlike some films I've reported on, its makers seem to have had some self-awareness and humor about what they were doing.

The moon is not enough

2012-01-26T10:19:00.000-05:00

If this election were largely about space exploration, I would vote for Newt Gingrich hands down. It would be wonderful to have a president who knows about space, cares about space, and is attuned to innovative ideas such as cash prizes for exploration milestones. But I also recall (from Robert Zubrin's Mars book) that Newt was talking about space prize legislation back in the '90s; and I don't recall any follow-through. More importantly, this is the same Newt who demagogued the "Ground Zero Mosque," and who flits among faddish ideas and management theories even while his own management style degenerates routinely into pure chaos. He's also the same Newt who flip-flopped on global warming out of political expediency. Plus, his personal life and character are not exactly confidence-inspiring. So, much as I'd love a moon base, still no thanks, Newt.

Warren predictions

2012-01-25T16:13:00.003-05:00

My Research magazine "Political Monitor" column for February is now online, and looks at the political prospects of Elizabeth Warren: "The Warren Effect." Excerpt:

Will Warren win? More likely than not; the race is volatile and could go either way, but Warren should be considered the favorite. Massachusetts is a predominantly Democratic state, and her campaign can be expected to generate a degree of supporter enthusiasm that Brown would be hard-pressed to match. Brown’s chances depend on a high turnout by independents.

What impact would a Sen. Warren have? She surely would have some effect in pressing financial regulators to implement the rules of Dodd-Frank and other existing laws more aggressively. However, her ability to do this, or moreover to create any major new legislative initiative on finance, would be limited by a close balance of power between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

The Senate’s current partisan breakdown is 51 Democrats and 47 Republicans. The 2012 elections put into contention 21 Democratic seats and just 10 Republican ones, and the 2014 elections involve another 20 Democratic seats and just 13 Republican ones. A Sen. Warren probably would be part of either a slim majority or a minority during her first term.

There is also a noteworthy potential for tension between a Sen. Warren and other Democratic legislators, particularly ones with heavy backing from the financial industry. In castigating Scott as a recipient of Wall Street cash, candidate Warren did not mention that topping the Forbes list she cited were New York’s Democratic senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Will Warren get elected president in 2016? This is improbable, as it would require not only beating a Republican, possibly an incumbent, but also first gaining the Democratic nomination against a field that may include far more experienced rivals such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. It would require a Sen. Warren to win over swing voters while keeping her base enthused, and to thrive on public dislike for Big Finance while keeping sufficient Wall Street support for the Democratic Party. Could she do all that? Not likely, though a few more financial crises and scandals would help.

Whole thing here.

SOTU ennui

2012-01-25T09:43:00.002-05:00

For someone who's something of a political junkie, I've long been oddly indifferent to the State of the Union speeches. I've watched them only sporadically since probably sometime in the Clinton years, and rarely have I felt either that I saw something of great import or that I missed something big by not watching. This year I didn't watch, so of course won't comment, though I recommend this piece by Mickey Kaus, who at least read the speech.

Man of the moment

2012-01-23T10:32:00.000-05:00

"In Newt Gingrich's World Rules Do not Apply to Him..." Could this be the secret sauce of his appeal? Certainly it gives him a basis to bond with quite a few New Jersey drivers, people who cut ski lines and other key suburban constituencies.

UPDATE: While contemplating the awfulness of a possible GOP nominee, it's worth remembering why it's so important to have a (reasonably) good one. See "Obama's Critics Are Right," by David Frum.

UPDATE 2: Speaking of criticisms of Obama, reasonable and otherwise, Conor Friedersdorf gives an astute assessment of what's behind the Gingrich phenomenon.

President Newt

2012-01-20T16:15:00.001-05:00

I'm on the record as not being all that supportive of Newt Gingrich. Even when I defend him, it's probably not in a way he'd appreciate. But as he surges in South Carolina polls, I must admit I'm not all that exercised by the prospect of a Gingrich presidency. One reason is that I highly doubt it will ever happen. If he is nominated, Obama will wipe the floor with him in November, I expect. But even if somehow he's nominated and wins, a President Gingrich likely would be remarkably ineffective, shifting from one dubious idea to another and generating impassioned opposition for his style and substance both. Still, perhaps I'd apply to be a speechwriter in that administration. I'd send Newt this post to show I understand the tone he wants to set.

UPDATE: Unbelievable.

UPDATE 1/21, as S.C. polls close: This sounds about right.

UPDATE, a little later: On the bright side, there is lunar mining.

Multicellular yeast and aliens

2012-01-19T09:44:00.001-05:00

Tyler Cowen sees bad news in an experiment that showed it's not that hard for yeast to develop from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones. Cowen:

It suggests that “the filter” lies ahead of us rather than behind us. The difficulties of producing multi-cellular organisms have been one of the main responses to the Fermi Paradox (“where are they?”). If it’s not so hard after all, there must be some other obstacle to lots of self-reproducing von Neumann probes.

Maybe, but among the many possible answers to the "where are they" question are ones that put "the filter behind us": that single-cell life is extremely hard to get started in the first place, or that intelligence might not necessarily follow multicellularity. Of course, there's also the possibility that civilizations blow themselves up -- or let their government-funded health plans run amok.

UPDATE: The Atlantic has a fascinating interview with philosopher-of-physics Tim Maudlin that happens to veer into this topic, and Maudlin says something along the lines of what I said, albeit in a considerably smarter way:

I will make one comment about these kinds of arguments which seems to me to somehow have eluded everyone. When people make these probabilistic equations, like the Drake Equation, which you're familiar with -- they introduce variables for the frequency of earth-like planets, for the evolution of life on those planets, and so on. The question remains as to how often, after life evolves, you'll have intelligent life capable of making technology. What people haven't seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It's not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that's not true. Obviously it doesn't matter that much if you're a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there's a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence. There is just too much we don't know.

Evolving free will

2012-01-18T10:14:00.001-05:00

Here's some interesting back-and-forth on the age-old question of free will. Biologist Jerry Coyne argues we don't have it. Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci responds that Coyne's dismissiveness is premature and unscientific. Coyne then defends his view on various points, but more or less shrugs off a key point of Pigliucci's. Here's Pigliucci:

[W]hy do we have such a pervasive “illusion” to begin with? Apparently, he [Coyne] knew this was coming, and answered thus in the USA Today article: “where do these illusions of both will and ‘free’ will come from? We’re not sure. I suspect that they’re the products of natural selection, perhaps because our ancestors wouldn’t thrive in small, harmonious groups — the conditions under which we evolved — if they didn’t feel responsible for their actions.”

As far as I can tell there is no empirical evidence whatsoever to support such speculation. To the contrary, we know of plenty of social animal species that seem to thrive very well indeed without requiring the illusion of free will to keep them in line. Certainly social insects don’t need to be fooled that way, and it is hard to imagine even species of social mammals, including most primates, needing to engage in deliberate reasoning before deciding how to behave toward fellow group members.

Coyne's response:

Note that I said, “We’re not sure.” I really have no idea why we have the illusion of agency, and was just speculating that it may be an adaptation. But it might not be—it could be an epiphenomenon of having complex brains. By the way, our brains are far more complex than those of social insects, and we process many more inputs than those of, say, ants. A big ant could not function as a human being. And we have no idea whether animals engage in deliberate reasoning, though this morning’s kitteh post suggest that cats can, and I certainly think that primates can.

But it doesn’t matter. I have no idea about why we have the illusion of free agency, nor am I deeply invested in an evolutionary, much less an adaptive, answer.

Me: Given that Coyne's blog is titled "Why Evolution Is True" (and I believe it is true), it is notable to me that he can't mount more of a defense of his natural-selection-did-it speculation about the supposed illusion of free will. It's not just that "we're not sure," it's really that the logic of evolution seems to point in a very different direction. Wouldn't natural selection weed out those creatures that devote so much brainpower to maintaining an illusion? Wouldn't it give preference to the hominids that don't think they have free will and don't care? I'm not the first to ask such questions (philosopher John Searle has asked them for years), nor am I the first to suspect that maybe some kind of free will involving genuine indeterminism arose because it carries a survival advantage (such as by allowing an organism to act in ways that predators can't predict). Of course, lest anyone point out I'm speculating, I have to admit: we're not sure.

Scrubbing carbon

2012-01-17T12:08:00.001-05:00

Recommended reading: "Why not scrub CO2 from the sky?" by John Rennie, whom I know from freelancing at Scientific American when he was editor in chief there. Taking proactive measures to engineer the planet, such as getting rid of some of the carbon that's been emitted, is an issue that is on a distant horizon today but is going to cause massive political turmoil and realignments in time. The fear of moral hazard -- that people will see such potential solutions as a license to emit -- constrains advocacy of such engineering at present, as do concerns about the unanticipated consequences (and recognition of the limits of what engineering can do, eg, how do you de-acidify the ocean?). Left-leaning science advocates such as Rennie are careful to bracket ideas about planetary engineering with cautions that it can't be a substitute for reducing emissions. I can imagine various environmentalists never warming up to such engineering, and various conservatives now in denial about the problem coming around to the idea that we have to do something as long as it's not about cutting emissions.

UPDATE: Also of interest: "Climate Proposal Puts Practicality Ahead of Sacrifice."

Creatively therapeutic

2012-01-13T12:39:00.002-05:00

Dan Summer, periodic and eclectic co-blogger on this blog (see here and here, for instance), is a creative arts therapist with wide-ranging expertise in helping children and adults. His new website The Art of Playing explains his involvement in this innovative field.

Huntsman's point

2012-01-12T14:56:00.001-05:00

Over at the Fiscal Times, Edward Morrissey expresses some puzzlement as to the point of Jon Huntsman's campaign. Morrissey correctly notes that Huntsman has a pretty conservative record and set of positions, notwithstanding his centrist image. However, Morrissey writes:

Huntsman never connected to the Republican base, for a number of reasons. Conservatives, especially in the Tea Party, didn’t extend much trust to a man who showered praise on President Obama as a “remarkable leader” with “brilliant analysis of world events,” and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as having “even more charisma than her husband!” Nor did the manner of his leaving impress Republicans, having made it known that he wanted to challenge his boss for the White House before officially resigning from his post in the administration.

If Tea Party conservatives didn’t warm to Huntsman, the feeling was undeniably mutual. Earlier this week, Huntsman told Politico that he hoped that the cycles of political thought “ultimately takes us to a sane Republican Party based on real ideas,” after supposedly “losing its equilibrium” in the Obama era....

I'll grant that Huntsman's praise of his onetime boss could've been less fulsome, and also that (as Morrissey elsewhere complains) Huntsman's jokes sometimes fall flat. Plus, Morrissey may be right to second-guess Huntsman's strategy of bypassing Iowa and placing so much political capital on New Hampshire instead.

But what I find manifestly true, and extremely important, is that the Republican Party did lose its equilibrium in the Obama era, and became a vehicle for various ideas and impulses that don't pass a sanity test. These range from birtherism to worries about "Kenyan anti-colonialism" to science denialism on climate change. (Note: there's room for debate as to what policies to adopt in light of climate change, but not for obstinately denying well-established facts that global warming is occurring and anthropogenic.)

A key attraction of Huntsman is that he won't succumb to that Obama-era fever. And if -- unlikely though not impossible -- he wins the nomination, he's far and away the candidate most likely to win the election. Steering the Republican Party away from its worst impulses, while maintaining a broadly conservative stance, and actually winning in the event that he is the nominee: that's the point of the Huntsman campaign.

UPDATE 1/16: Huntsman's out. Which means centrist types who won't vote for Obama can now choose between Romney and Kotlikoff.

Downsize Wall Street

2012-01-12T09:55:00.001-05:00

New York Times: "Could Huntsman and the Democrats Ally on Bank Reform?" Explains how the idea of downsizing the biggest banks could win support on right and left, and could gain traction whether or not Huntsman himself is the nominee.

None of which would be a surprise to readers of my January "Political Monitor" column in Research magazine.

Ron Paul speaks

2012-01-11T15:06:00.005-05:00

“People who really hold the wealth, it’s mal-distribution because it shifts over due to the regulations that control the government.” Gibberish.

Frum on

2012-01-10T12:21:00.005-05:00

David Frum has started blogging at The Daily Beast just in time for the New Hampshire primary. While I was sorry to see FrumForum go into storage, that loss is a big gain for Tina Brown & Co., and unsurprisingly David's off to an interesting and high-frequency start.

Table Mountain

2012-01-09T18:45:00.000-05:00

One more Cape Town picture, Table Mountain with its "tablecloth" of clouds.

Cape Town townships

2012-01-08T17:12:00.000-05:00

One high point of our trip to South Africa was a tour of black townships. We visited Khayelitsha and, more briefly, Gugulethu, met some friendly people and saw some interesting places. From the highway it may look like chaos, and there is vast hardship and poverty, but there's also entrepreneurship and improvement.

Playing the xylophone.

Visiting a church/school.

At a house that serves as a small church.

Meeting the kids.

Vicky's Bed and Breakfast.

A well-appointed room at Vicky's.

Drinking homemade beer.

I highly recommend our tour guide, Thabang Titotti, who can be reached here.

Candidate Kotlikoff

2012-01-07T14:52:00.000-05:00

Laurence Kotlikoff is a distinguished economist whom I met at a conference in Boston in late 2009, when I presented him with an award for retirement income research. There's a photo somewhere of him and me standing arm in arm. I later reviewed his book Jimmy Stewart Is Dead for the (soon-to-be-archived) FrumForum.

Larry now has decided to run for president, as a third-party candidate emphasizing "purple" ideas that appeal across red and blue ideological lines. He's never held public office, but he's a knowledgeable, innovative thinker who's advised institutions all over the world and deserves to be given a serious hearing. In fact, he's far more deserving of that than some of the people who have been taken seriously this year (I'm looking at you, Herman). I'll be watching with interest and likely will have more about the Kotlikoff campaign down the road.

UPDATE 1/10: See Kotlikoff's campaign site and a write-up by my colleague Gil Weinreich.

Save the Rhinos (and RINOs)

2012-01-06T15:00:00.001-05:00

Note: I wrote the following for FrumForum this morning — just before learning that FF is closing down.

My wife and I attended a cousin’s wedding in Cape Town,South Africa at year-end and added some time to be tourists in a country we’dnever visited. The sites we saw ranged from the black township of Khayelitsha(on a van tour led by a local), where brick houses are slowly replacing tinshacks, to the well-manicured grounds of an elite high school (where ourcousin-by-marriage was one of the first two colored, or mixed-race, studentsupon desegregation in the early 1990s; he studied particularly hard to showacademic standards were not slipping on his account, and became valedictorian).

We spent the trip’s closing days at the Aquila Private Game Reserve, a sprawling site two hours’ drive from Cape Town. There, amid manyother animals, we saw the southern white rhinoceros in its native habitat. Thefive rhinos on the reserve were all females, the site’s two males having beenkilled gruesomely by poachers in August. Rhino horn, valued for putativemedicinal properties, makes a lucrative illegal trade in China, Vietnam andelsewhere.

Now, as a FrumForum contributor, I have been called a RINO(Republican in Name Only) and even taken a liking to that term (while scorningthe RINO-baiters’ presumption of defining who’s a Republican). The magnificenceof real-life rhinos gives the RINO label a cachet that defeats its derisivepurpose.

The rhinos’ plight, unfortunately, is a severe one. Africa’swestern black rhino has been declared extinct in the wild, and East Asia’sJavan rhino is close to meeting the same fate. As formidable as rhinos look,they have little defense against poachers carrying weapons and chainsaws (tocut off the horns, often leaving the animals alive and in agony).

At night, from our cabin at the Aquila reserve, we sawdistant headlights of the security patrols that follow rhinos to protectagainst poachers. It’s a dangerous business, in which the armed “anti-poachers”easily can be targeted themselves.

Private reserves such as Aquila have been a valuablesupplement to Africa’s national parks; the latter have military protection butare vulnerable to budget pressures and corruption. The private reserves,though, need stepped-up security. In response to the August attack, Aquila launchedan initiative called “Saving Private Rhino,” to develop funding and support formeasures including high-tech surveillance systems; rewards for informants; GPStracking of microchips in rhino horns; educational centers and more.

Defending rhinos through private property rights andinnovative technologies is a cause that should appeal to the conservativeimagination, and it’s one that resonates with the longstanding conservationisttradition of Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt. Let RINOs help protectrhinos and ensure their survival through the 21st century.

Political monitoring

2012-01-05T10:20:00.001-05:00

My new column at Research magazine, "Political Monitor," aims to track political developments through the election year with an eye toward issues particularly relevant to the magazine's financial-advisor readership. The January column, "Target: Wall Street," is now online.

Back from South Africa

2012-01-04T12:34:00.002-05:00

Rhinos photographed at Aquila Private Game Reserve, 2 hours drive from Cape Town. UPDATE: Also see Aquila's Saving Private Rhino initiative.

UPDATE: Much more.

Off the grid

2011-12-23T21:10:00.002-05:00

That's it for me for this year. Thanks for coming by, and see you in 2012.

Green Front

2011-12-20T21:56:00.000-05:00

I'm slated to be on "The Green Front" (www.thegreenfront.com) on Progressive Radio Network Wed., Dec. 21 sometime between 2 and 3 PM, to discuss my recent climate pieces: "How the GOP Should Explain Climate Change" and "Newt, Your Ad With Pelosi Wasn't Dumb."

UPDATE 12/21: "Talking With the Left About Climate Change," my FrumForum post about the radio spot.

The overly strategic endorsement

2011-12-15T14:27:00.001-05:00

Andrew Sullivan endorsed Ron Paul in the GOP primary race. David Frum criticized that endorsement, and then Sullivan defended it thus (excerpt):

Paul's riposte would be that the current long recession was perpetuated by federal intervention, because it did not allow the market to clear more quickly (Thatcher's position in 1981, by the way). I don't buy this, because the extremity of the crisis was so great, passivity in 2008 could have galvanized a crippling global depression and ended our financial system entirely.

But Paul is not internally inconsistent; and he is radical in his libertarian absolutism. My endorsement was not of all his proposals but in part to expose the fallacy of these abstractions in our current context, by airing them openly. An electoral defeat on pure Tea Party grounds would advance the kind of reforms David and I want. We would get a real debate about limited government. And, of course, I regard steep cuts in defense as indispensable to generating the revenues necessary to cushion the socially dangerous inequality that is the singular mark of the last thirty years. A Romney presidency would muddy those waters. And David is still wedded to a neoconservaive foreign policy, which is where another deep difference resides.

Emphasis added. I find it a very odd type of endorsement that's done in the hope and expectation that the candidate will lose so that his bad ideas can be exposed. Even odder is that Sullivan at the same time is genuinely endorsing some of Paul's positions. What makes him think a Paul defeat would discredit the positions Sullivan dislikes while furthering the positions Sullivan likes? Isn't it possible Paul's defeat would do the opposite? And for that matter, isn't it also possible (though I agree, this is unlikely) that a nominee Paul would win the presidency and try to enact all of his positions?

By the way, Margaret Thatcher offered a qualified defense of the mixed economy on the grounds that "as in a cocktail, it is the mix that counts." Would Ron Paul ever say something like that?

Climate stump speech

2011-12-07T15:22:00.001-05:00

Today at FrumForum, I explain what I would like a GOP candidate to say about global warming.

UPDATE: The piece has been reprinted at Canada's National Post. Also, on 12/21 I'm slated to have a related discussion about climate policy and politics at "The Green Front" on Progressive Radio Network.

Defending Newt?

2011-12-06T11:48:00.001-05:00

At FrumForum, I weigh in on a controversial episode of Gingrich past: "Newt, Your Ad With Pelosi Wasn't Dumb."

Dusk

2011-12-01T09:04:00.001-05:00

Twilight over a nature reserve in New Jersey. This blog will remain an occasional thing for the moment.

Hiatus

2011-11-26T20:20:00.001-05:00

A combination of computer problems, looming deadlines and other matters to be resolved requires a period of reduced activity here at Quicksilber. Thanks for stopping by.

Pictured: mandala in a store in Patan, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2009.

National security debate

2011-11-22T20:01:00.001-05:00

Live-blogging at FrumForum.

Conquered into Liberty

2011-11-17T13:38:00.001-05:00

Review copy received: Conquered into Liberty: Two Centuries of Battles along the Great Warpath that Made the American Way of War, by Eliot Cohen. We now think of the U.S.-Canada boundary as the epitome of a peaceful border, but there's a long history of conflict on and around it. Looking at the index I notice that George Clinton has some mentions but James Clinton, about whom I wrote recently, is absent. There's a lot of little known or largely forgotten history involving America's early wars, and this book looks like a promising avenue into some of it.

Gen. James Clinton

2011-11-11T08:28:00.001-05:00

My latest look at the confluence of national and family history is up at FrumForum for Veterans Day: "James Clinton, Revolutionary War Hero." Excerpt:

Previously at FrumForum, I wrote about two early American political leaders: DeWitt Clinton, New York governor and mayor and key figure in the nation-building achievement of getting the Erie Canal built; and George Clinton, governor turned vice president, whose efforts to limit federal power culminated in an independent (and erroneous, in my view) decision to terminate America’s first central bank.

Now, I take quill to parchment again, this time regarding James Clinton (1736-1812), a Revolutionary War general who was DeWitt’s father and George’s brother.

Though less remembered today than the other two, James struck important blows for American independence. For me, these figures are of interest for family history as well as national history. James and DeWitt are direct ancestors of my wife, and our son is named DeWitt after his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Veterans Day, which honors veterans living and dead, would be a suitable time to remember James Clinton. Although he had some involvement in politics, he was primarily a military man. One historian described him a few decades after his death as “a plain blunt soldier, born upon the frontiers, and who spent no inconsiderable portion of a long life amid the toils and perils of border wars.”

Whole thing here.

China watch

2011-11-09T15:33:00.001-05:00

A couple of items:

"China committing climate blackmail with super-powerful greenhouse gas, say critics," by my friend Christopher Mims at Grist. As I mentioned on Twitter, if U.S. politics were less dysfunctional, a cross-party coalition would be demanding a hard line against China on this. Climate hawks and foreign policy hawks would find common ground. Something like that might happen in a world where the parties were divided to some degree on the environment, but not in one where acknowledging that a greenhouse gas even might be a matter of concern is anathema to a large swath of the political spectrum. This Chinese gambit, moreover, is an example of why cap-and-trade, especially on an international scale, is a sub-optimal approach to carbon regulation.

"The Reckoning Begins." That's a reference to a new blog and upcoming book by Michael Moran, and to the shrinking gap between U.S. share of world output and China's share. I would add some caveats to the stark view Moran presents here. Years ago, Francis Fukuyama told me (in an interview for Insight magazine about his book Trust) that he had some doubts about China becoming as important as many people expected, because it is a "low-trust" society where holding together large organizations and networks is difficult. I'd add that nobody can be sure how much trust to put in China's economic statistics, or that one's rights and investments there will be honored. Having said all that, it's clear that learning Mandarin is not a bad idea in the 21st century.

Live-blogging tonight

2011-11-09T13:24:00.001-05:00

I'll be participating in a live chat session about tonight's GOP economics (or Herman Cain scandal) debate over at FrumForum.

Political realignments

2011-11-07T10:45:00.000-05:00

Some links I find interesting:

-- Ongoing contretemps between FrumForum and James Pethokoukis. See here and here.

-- John McCain talking up a third party; makes me wonder if 2012 could be Bull Moose time a century later, with McCain on the ticket; probably not but these are turbulent times politically. As also evident in the next item.

-- Walter Russell Mead, in a post titled "Occupy Blue Wall Street?" seeing signs of fraying in the blue coalition. I disagree with his dismissal of a carbon tax (and I don't think something being an upper-middle-class good-government concern is a bad thing as such), but it's a very interesting post overall.

Bastiat Prize

2011-11-03T09:46:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Virginia Postrel on winning the Bastiat Prize, in part for her Bloomberg column that showed there is a cogent and non-hysterical argument against the light bulb efficiency standards. Also, congratulations to Tom Easton of The Economist, with whom Virginia shared the $50,000 prize.

Midcentury economic nostalgia

2011-11-02T12:28:00.004-04:00

An emerging left-wing meme:

In the 1950s & 1960s when the top tax rate was 70-92%, we laid the interstate system, built the Internet, put a man on the moon, defeated Communism, our education system was the envy of the world, our middle class thriving, our economy unparalleled. You want that back? Raise taxes on the rich.

Also during that time, the defense budget was around 10 percent of GDP (about twice today's percentage), immigration was relatively restricted, and public-sector unions were largely just beginning to be allowed. That's without mentioning many other factors the OWS people surely don't want, such as the Organization Man ethos of staying with a company your entire career. Leftists who indiscriminately praise the midcentury economy should be careful what they wish for.

Post-storm backyard, NJ

2011-10-31T17:18:00.003-04:00

The old Japanese Maple endures.

Romney getting cooler

2011-10-28T16:40:00.003-04:00

The standard position of my party, the Republicans, on global warming at the present time is a self-contradictory cocktail with the following ingredients:

1. It's not (known to be) happening.
2. If it's happening, humans aren't (known to be) causing it.
3. It's nothing to worry about anyway.
4. There's nothing much to be done about it.

Points 1 and 2 are flatly wrong. Point 3 is weak. Point 4 becomes increasingly true, as time passes and nothing much is done, which is a tragedy.

There's little point discussing Points 3 and 4 with people who wrongly persist in Points 1 and 2. In the current presidential race, there have been two presidential candidates, Romney and Huntsman, who have acknowledged that it's happening and humans are causing it; Romney had said humans are causing the warming, but later that he didn't know how much of it is caused by humans. Now he's converted to this:

“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”

The good news is, his opinion is clearly not frozen.

Madison book

2011-10-24T11:28:00.000-04:00

Current reading: James Madison, by Richard Brookhiser. I can recommend it even without having read the whole thing. I've focused mostly on the second half, with a particular eye toward the flexibility that even strict constructionists showed in putting the Constitution into practice. Madison, for instance, acceded to a Bank of the United States after it had existed for a couple of decades, partly on the grounds that this duration established it as valid. Incidentally, I'm working on some 18th-century-related writing of my own.

Yippies on Wall Street

2011-10-21T16:09:00.000-04:00

One more Occupy Wall Street-related link, this time to my Research magazine article of April 2008 on "The Go-Go Sixties." Here is a sidebar "Yippies on Wall Street":

On August 24, 1967, a group of about a dozen young men and women arrived at the New York Stock Exchange. They were Yippies, or members of the Youth International Party. They had called ahead and asked for a tour, but their real purpose was to perform some "political theater," their style of creatively obnoxious protest and confrontation.

The group included Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, radical activists who would become increasingly well-known as the decade wore on. The guards were wary of the scruffy visitors, but allowed them into the visitors' gallery with a warning that no demonstrations would be allowed.

But the Yippies, once they were overlooking the trading floor, launched into loud speechifying against capitalism and the Vietnam War. There was some applause from down below, by floor traders who were sympathetic or just amused. Then the Yippies, announcing the "death of greed," floated some dollar bills down to the floor. How much money was involved is uncertain, but there was a brief commotion until trading resumed.

According to Vincent J. Cannato in his 2001 book The Ungovernable City, the administration of liberal Republican Mayor John Lindsay was quietly providing subsidies to the Yippies around this time. So it's possible those were taxpayer dollars being dropped to the floor.

The Yippies progressed to other stunts, including "levitating the Pentagon" and rioting at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago. As it happened, though, they did not maintain their uniformly hostile approach to capitalism. By the 1980s, Rubin had become a businessman and entrepreneur, and he even worked for a while at the brokerage firm of John Muir & Company.

Whole article here.

Some OWS links

2011-10-21T11:19:00.000-04:00

Besides the Alec Baldwin-related material below, I recommend:

"Why Occupy Wall Street Will Fail." (With interesting tie-in to Nicholas Carr.)

"New Yorkers Rage Over Occupy Wall Street Protestors."

"The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuccotti Park."

Alec Baldwin is right

2011-10-21T10:53:00.002-04:00

Recommended viewing: Alec Baldwin defending capital markets, and declining to endorse "End the Fed."

Found via David Frum's "Alec Baldwin Is Not Worthless."

I would add two things:

1. The protestors' claim that the Fed is "a private bank" is phony baloney, albeit of a type that appeals to the appetites of both Occupy Wall Street and Ron Paul's followers (the latter seem to be dominant among the cluster of people talking to Baldwin).

2. How did we get to a point where Alec Baldwin makes a more convincing defense of capitalism than GOP leaders typically do?

Ron Paul vs weather satellites

2011-10-19T12:24:00.003-04:00

Over at FrumForum, I analyze "Ron Paul's Spaced Out Plan," particularly with regard to his proposal to eliminate the Commerce Dept. Excerpt:

Ron Paul has unveiled a fiscal plan that would eliminate the Commerce Department, among other departments. The Commerce Department includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and one of NOAA’s functions is operating the nation’s weather satellites.

Paul’s plan would zero out Commerce immediately, which means NOAA would also go away. (Interestingly, though, Paul’s line-item presentation of his plan is not detailed enough to include any mention of NOAA.) That raises some questions...

Whole thing here.

UPDATE 10/20: The Bourbon Democrat: "I am sure a man as educated as Silber knows that Dr Paul would not just shut down the satellites and let them fall out of orbit!"

One interesting aspect of the comments and replies to my post is that critics are about evenly divided between two schools of thought: (1) of course we should privatize weather satellites; and (2) of course no one is talking about privatizing weather satellites; NOAA would just be transferred to a new department.

Shallows thoughts

2011-10-18T15:58:00.001-04:00

Just finished The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr. This makes a very good case for cutting down on one's Web surfing. Now, given the lackadaisical pace of updating here at QuickSilber, one might suspect that any Web compulsiveness I'd developed has been solved, but I think there is considerable room for improvement in how much, and to what ends, I use the Internet. As we head deeper into election season, I could imagine more blogging here (no promises, though) and less Twitter or other social media. In any event, contrary to recent practice, tonight I will not be live-chatting the GOP debate (though some of my FrumForum colleagues will be) and have already slotted a different purpose to the time.

Anti-Wall Street watch

2011-10-14T12:58:00.002-04:00

Walter Olson notices something missing in a Time magazine poll.

The poll's apparently being read by the Obama administration, though.

Reminder: as Greg Farrell pointed out in my video interview with him months ago, terrible business decisions aren't ipso facto illegal.

Econ debate

2011-10-11T22:03:00.001-04:00

Participated in live-blogging the GOP economic debate tonight. Romney won.

Hamilton Grange update

2011-10-10T11:25:00.003-04:00

Something I missed when it ran a few weeks ago: "Hamilton's Shining House on a Hill," by my onetime City Journal editor Myron Magnet. I am curious, also, as to what Myron's next book, mentioned in his bio blurb as "The Founders at Home," will be like (and am presuming it will be literally about their homes).

Monkey Shakespeare

2011-10-08T18:15:00.002-04:00

Back in 1999, in my Reason article "Is God in the Details?" criticizing claims by conservatives and others that science had uncovered a cosmic design, I wrote this (emphasis added):

Nor is there any reason to doubt the sincerity of Bork, Will, or other conservatives who have discovered evidence of design in the laws of physics. In many cases, however, there is plenty of reason to doubt their knowledge. Bork and Will make sweeping statements about the universe based on a cursory reading of popular accounts. The Wall Street Journal's and The Washington Times' reviewers of [Patrick] Glynn's book accept at face value his misleading definition of the anthropic principle. Glynn devotes four pages to a puerile analogy about monkeys with typewriters. (Yes, if the monkeys are assumed to be unchanging beings with limited capacities, they would never type Shakespeare. It does not follow that the universe is subject to similar constraints.)

Now, the monkey/Shakespeare issue is back, based on a software exploration of it, and it seems that monkeys not only wouldn't type Shakespeare but aren't a good example of anything other than monkeys.

A 2002 experiment ran into a different problem: Real monkeys aren't random-number generators. Arts students and faculty from Plymouth University in Devon, England, set six monkeys loose on an iMac in the nearby Paignton Zoo. They learned that the primates had favorite keys, with thousands of instances of the letter 'S' but none of 'E,' 'I,' 'O' or 'T' in a selection of the monkeys' musings the research group published.

So even if chained to a computer, the monkeys might never generate words, let alone classic passages. The rules of probability don't apply in the same way they do to the theoretical or software monkeys, because these primates had their own preferences. "It questions the whole idea of animals as random generators," says Mike Phillips, professor of interdisciplinary arts at Plymouth, who led the research. "I think Shakespeare might be species-specific."

So now we can move on to other topics.

Clinton Road traffic

2011-10-07T14:48:00.002-04:00

Undoubtedly because of this Yahoo piece, "Clinton Road, New Jersey: The Most Terrifying Road in the U.S.," my blog is getting lots of Clinton Road-related traffic. My main posts on that subject are here and here, and sorry to say, folks, an actual drive on that road can be extremely uneventful.

Neutrinos vs global warming

2011-10-06T12:49:00.000-04:00

Robert Bryce's piece "Five Truths About Climate Change" states, among other things:

The science is not settled, not by a long shot. Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might—repeat, might—travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein's theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth's atmosphere.

I respond to that and more in my piece "Why We Should Still Be Sweating Global Warming":

This attempt to stuff climate science into a black hole is a non sequitur. That’s not just because the neutrino finding, even if confirmed, has nothing to do with the data or theories of climate science. It’s also because the analogy Bryce is making — if relativity could be wrong, so could global warming — presents a misleading picture of the respective scientific theories and how science works.

Whole thing here.

UPDATE: The New York Times has more, including a mention of yours truly.

UPDATE 10/7: A comic version.

UPDATE 10/10: Reihan Salam: "The Silber post is far better" (than the Times'); thanks. Also, for some further delving into the physics, I recommend Joe Romm's post.

Anti-corporate animus

2011-10-04T14:59:00.001-04:00

My latest FrumForum piece: "'Occupy Wall Street' Is Obsessed with Corporations." Excerpt:

Then there is the complaint about the doctrine of a corporation as “legal person.” That complaint is motivated partly by desire to slap restrictions on corporate political ads and donations (regardless of legal persons’ free speech rights) and more broadly by a dislike of the idea that “corporations are people,” as Mitt Romney said in a supposed gaffe recently. In fact, corporations are of course organizations of people, but the deeper point is that legal personhood enables a degree of accountability that would not be possible otherwise.

Let’s say a company dumped some toxic waste a few decades ago. The executives of that company may no longer be the same people, the shareholders may have entirely turned over; the people working there or holding stock may have had nothing to do with the waste dumping back then. It doesn’t matter — the corporation can still be held responsible, forced to do cleanup, pay damages and so on.

Whole thing here.

Falling gold piece

2011-09-27T12:10:00.000-04:00

My latest at FrumForum: "Beck Didn't Warn Me Gold Can Fall!" Excerpt:

The gold market meltdown — with prices plunging in recent weeks from over $1,900 an ounce to under $1,600 — is a reminder that the precious metal is a volatile, speculative commodity. It also signals a bear market in credibility for the many right-leaning cable-news and talk-radio hosts who have touted gold relentlessly in recent years as a hedge against economic calamity.

“If you’ve been watching for any length of time, and you still haven’t looked into buying gold, what’s wrong with you?” Glenn Beck said in a video on his website in 2009. “I think you’re nuts.” His TV show, meanwhile, featured frequent calls to buy gold, interspersed with commercials for gold retailers.

Whole thing here. It's getting comments at a brisk pace; people get emotional about gold, which is a problem.

UPDATE: A rejoinder by Brad Schaeffer: "Numbers Don't Lie, Gold Has Done Well."

Resilient greenback

2011-09-23T14:47:00.000-04:00

My latest at FrumForum: "Still Sound as a Dollar." Excerpt:

Conservatives nowadays routinely worry about the dollar’s strength and stability. The dollar, however, refuses to cooperate. Instead, it lately has been rising in foreign-exchange markets, as it typically does in times of international economic and financial stress.

The dollar serves as a safe haven. Investors tend to transfer funds into dollar-denominated assets, such as U.S. Treasuries, at moments when financial markets around the world are being buffeted. This occurs even if the U.S. economy is not in good shape. As long as the dollar and dollar-denominated assets are seen as relatively safe, the dollar will tend to strengthen in times of trouble.

Whole thing here.

Debate 9/22

2011-09-22T21:42:00.003-04:00

Over at FrumForum, live-blogging the GOP debate.

Nepal starry night

2011-09-21T16:53:00.004-04:00

Our 2009 trip to Nepal, including the Annapurna region, included many wonderful sights (see here, for instance), but I don't recall seeing much of the night sky, as it was fairly rainy and overcast on nights we were camping. Bad Astronomy and io9, though, have a remarkable photo of the Milky Way as seen from Annapurna. Take a look.

Space debate question

2011-09-20T09:00:00.002-04:00

What would I ask at the GOP debate this Thursday? A space policy question:

One subject that’s been almost entirely absent from the campaign is space policy. The Obama administration scrapped the Bush administration’s plans for a return to the moon, and the end of the Space Shuttle program has left the U.S. currently without the ability to send astronauts to Earth orbit, let alone beyond. There’s little consensus about what NASA’s next steps should be or what role the private sector might play. Do you have a vision for what the United States should do in space, how to do it and how to pay for it?

Rocket to nowhere

2011-09-16T08:46:00.002-04:00

Over at FrumForum, my latest: "NASA's New Rocket Won't Reach New Frontiers," about the just-unveiled plans for the Space Launch System. Excerpt:

The impetus for this rocket was congressional pressure. First the Obama administration scrapped the Bush administration’s Constellation project of renewed lunar exploration, and as the Space Shuttle Program began to end. In response, lawmakers pressed for a new heavy-lift rocket that, far from incidentally, would preserve some NASA and contractor jobs, particularly in states such as Texas and Florida that are heavy with space facilities.

There is tremendous uncertainty about future space funding and whether any future administration — or for that matter, the Obama administration — will take seriously the President’s stated goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars at some later time.

Thicket

2011-09-13T09:19:00.002-04:00

Posting may be light as we get through the tall grass of catching up on various projects. But you can never be too sure what's coming -- there were deer in this scene a split second before I took the picture.

A look back

2011-09-09T13:14:00.000-04:00

Myles Dannhausen Jr., journalist at the Wisconsin Peninsula Pulse, spoke to me about 9/11. Excerpt:

Ten years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks killed 2,977people and shook the nation to its core, Ground Zero is still a constructionsite, the United States is still embroiled in two wars, and our defense budgetis conservatively pegged at more than twice what it was before the attacks.

Yet, Ken Silber, an economics and politics writer and nativeNew Yorker, says that the state of the nation today is "pretty far to theoptimistic end of the spectrum."

"If you had told me then, in the days after Sept. 11,that life in America would be the way it is now, I would have said that it wasa relatively good scenario."

Whole thing here.

Debate 9/7

2011-09-07T22:02:00.000-04:00

I participated in FrumForum's liveblogging of tonight's GOP debate. The transcript is here.

Perry vs science

2011-09-06T14:11:00.000-04:00

My latest at FrumForum: "If it's Perry: Anti-Science Label Sticks." Excerpt:

If Rick Perry is the nominee, we will hear stepped-up criticism that there is a Republican “war on science,” that the GOP is anti-intellectual and antipathetic to facts and analysis. Such criticism will resonate with many voters, precisely because Perry’s nomination will be evidence that it’s true.

In August, shortly after entering the race, Perry generated controversy with comments about climate change and biological evolution. He dismissed anthropogenic global warming as an unproven assertion by scientists who have “manipulated data” to spur funding for their projects. He described evolution as a theory with “some gaps in it” and said that it’s taught alongside creationism in Texas (which if true would raise questions about the constitutionality of Texas’ science curricula).

Whole thing here.

Ten years later

2011-09-01T11:43:00.000-04:00

In the September issue of Research, I look back to 9/11 and ahead to future crises: "Wall Street at War."

Cover art by James O'Brien.

The view from 6 million miles away

2011-08-31T16:04:00.000-04:00

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. More info here.

Deadliest Warrior redux

2011-08-29T17:14:00.000-04:00

Welcome, readers of STORMBRINGER. I was quite pleased this weekend to discuss "Deadliest Warrior" with Sean Linnane, an actual warrior, and am honored that he took interest in my FrumForum piece on the subject.

Alien reading list

2011-08-19T13:31:00.004-04:00

When I have a chance, I intend to read more thoroughly this paper, which I've only skimmed so far: "Would contact with extraterrestrials benefit or harm humanity? A scenario analysis." (I wrote on a similar theme a few years ago.)

The paper has caused a bit of kerfuffle, involving sensationalism, misunderstanding and politicization. See:

"Some important points of clarification," by one of the paper's coauthors.

"Bad news from NASA: If we don’t reduce carbon emissions, the aliens might come and kill us; Update: Not a NASA report," Hot Air.

"Right Wing Blogs in Massive Anti-Science Fail Mode," Little Green Footballs.

UPDATE: "Space Aliens Are Probably Progressive Liberals," National Review.

No thanks, Perry

2011-08-18T13:37:00.003-04:00

One of my major differences with prevailing sentiment in the GOP is over climate change -- accepting the reality of it and the anthropogenic nature of it, and then developing policies (such as carbon taxes) aimed at limiting its extent and impact. Another major difference I have with today's Republicans overall is about the Fed -- partly over the particular policies it's implemented in recent years (which strike me as basically on the right track even if monetary policy alone cannot solve our economic problems) but more fundamentally that the Fed fulfills crucial functions and needs a degree of independence to do so, hence it should not be demonized (or for that matter abolished).

Rick Perry has come down powerfully on the wrong side of both issues, in substance and in tone, in his first week of campaigning. What will he do next week?

Economic Principals update

2011-08-18T10:20:00.002-04:00

Long ago, I wrote a review for Reason of Economic Principals: Masters and Mavericks of Modern Economics, by David Warsh. This was so long ago in fact (1993) that Reason's online archives don't go back that far, though my review can be found here. In the interest of examining the diversity of ways for trying to generate income through writing for the Web, I note that Warsh now runs his former newspaper column as a website that's free but that gives an early edition and a quarterly newsletter to buyers of a $50 subscription.

The Great Stagnation

2011-08-17T08:14:00.004-04:00

At FrumForum, I review The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, by Tyler Cowen. Excerpt:

For several hundred years, Cowen argues, the Western world in general and America in particular have benefitted from relatively abundant or accessible sources of economic growth — “low-hanging fruit” — such as newly opened land, expanded education, and technological breakthroughs ranging from electricity to pharmaceuticals.

The trouble is, he contends, the low-hanging fruit has been getting sparse in the past several decades. Yes, there is still much technological innovation but it’s largely focused on Internet-related sectors that don’t necessarily produce a lot of jobs or revenue. A great deal of financial innovation has been occurring but that only enriches small numbers of people without necessarily producing much social benefit.

The rest includes discussion of Ayn Rand, John Horgan and the social status of scientists. Whole thing here.

Hard money

2011-08-16T12:20:00.001-04:00

David Frum has a valuable discussion of monetary history revolving around the 40-years-ago "Nixon shock." In light of Rick Perry's remarks yesterday about Bernanke's "near treason," I add a modest proposal about applying some hard-core free-market monetary policy in Texas first. I also note with amusement that the anonymous "businessman and investor" cited by Bill Kristol the other day on Fed policy has now made his way into a comment by John Podhoretz, who touts the unnamed guy's reputation as "unimpeachable."

UPDATE: Also recommended, Bruce Bartlett on "Nixon's Biggest Gamble..." And I wrote something on it here.

Bill Kristol's anti-Fed friend

2011-08-10T14:15:00.007-04:00

Over at FrumForum, I ask: "Who Wants Higher Interest Rates?" Opening:

Over at the Weekly Standard’s blog, William Kristol reproduces an email he’s received from an unnamed “businessman and investor” for whose judgment Kristol says he has the “highest regard.” The email lambastes the policies of the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke in no uncertain terms.

Here it is with my comments appended...

Whole thing here.

UPDATE 8/11: I'll be participating in some live-blogging of the GOP debate at FrumForum at 9 ET tonight. UPDATE: Archived here.

UPDATE 8/12: Welcome to Marginal Revolution readers of "How Did Libertarians Lose Their Way?"

Monetary crankdom update

2011-08-08T13:55:00.000-04:00

A few notes involving currencies. I mention these topics in passing for the moment, lacking the time just now to give them the more in-depth treatment I'd prefer.

George Will, lately a more libertarian-leaning figure than long thought to be, writes that "events seem to be validating [Ron Paul's] message, which is that the country's financial condition is awful." But isn't Ron Paul's message that the country's financial condition can be drastically improved by getting rid of the Fed and implementing a gold standard and/or competing currencies? And given that it is, what effect would such policies have in the current troubled financial situation? Would not a gold standard, insofar as it truly is binding, render the federal government actually incapable of paying its bills and thus cause vastly worse turmoil than we have now? Or is the whole question of a gold standard not worth discussing, because such a policy would be abandoned readily in times such as the present, thus raising a profound credibility issue that gold-standard proponents have never been able to resolve? And as for competing currencies...

... It wasn't that long ago, just a few months, that a wave of libertarian enthusiasm arose over the electronic currency Bitcoin and the liberation it offered from government oversight. How's Bitcoin doing now, you ask?

Point of Inquiry (UPDATED)

2011-07-28T16:58:00.005-04:00

This afternoon, I spoke with Chris Mooney and David Frum for a "Point of Inquiry" podcast hosted by Mooney. It's a program produced by the Center for Inquiry, part of the skepticism/science/humanism complex that produces Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines. Our topic was "conservatism, science and reality," and I'm told the podcast will be available online by late Monday.

UPDATE 8/1: Here it is, with audio file.

UPDATE 8/2: I have some more at FrumForum: "Can Conservatives and Scientists Get Along?"

UPDATE 8/5: See also Mooney's later post and the writeup at ClimateCrocks, which includes a YouTube excerpt:

Save JWST art

2011-07-24T20:44:00.000-04:00

The saveJWST Art Initiative has presented some artworks aimed at promoting public support for the James Webb Space Telescope. I particularly like the tagline "For when you positively, absolutely have to understand the universe." I described the telescope's political travails and what's at stake here.

FrumForum note

2011-07-19T09:59:00.000-04:00

FrumForum has a new design, which makes it look more blog-like, one might say. I expect there will be more fine-tuning, as the only constant on the Internet is change. My posts are collected here, and there will be more to come. My latest piece, on the James Webb Space Telescope, continues to draw comments, including some pretty impressive ones. I like to think that when JWST is finally deployed, it will have been my post that tipped the balance in the delicate political situation and made it all happen. But I like to think a lot of things.

On not joining Google+ (UPDATED)

2011-07-18T13:02:00.006-04:00

The advent of Google+ is going to cause some people—it’s doing this for me—to mull over just how many social networks they should be on, and how much time and energy such media merit. For now, I’m content to let Google+ go its way without me, though I’ve never been an early adopter of these things anyway.

Currently, I am on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, besides having an oar in the blogging stream here at Quicksilber as well as another at FrumForum. All of these serve distinct purposes, albeit with some fuzzy edges. For me, Twitter is primarily for communicating with people in their capacity as readers and writers; Facebook is primarily for keeping in touch with friends and relatives; and LinkedIn is for business contacts (albeit for me, in my present use, LinkedIn is pretty much for nothing).

Most of the above has had considerable benefits for me in maintaining or forming contacts I wouldn’t have done otherwise, in getting people to read my writing, and in learning things I would otherwise have missed. But there are real downsides of social media, such as being time-consuming and occasionally causing frictions such as when someone has blocked you or unfriended you, etc. If Google+ is all it’s cracked up to be, I’ll probably be there at some point, but let it not be soon.

UPDATE 7/19: Julian Sanchez has some interesting thoughts about Google+ and other networks' uses, privacy issues and the tradeoffs involved.

UPDATE 7/21: So much for that -- I'm now on it. I got an invite from someone at my current primary employer, and came to think I'm better off having some capability to use it. So much for the plan to start just in time for the election of 2028.

Save JWST

2011-07-17T07:21:00.000-04:00

At FrumForum I come to the defense of the endangered James Webb Space Telescope. Excerpt:

JWST would operate about a million miles from Earth (Hubble is just a few hundred miles up) using advanced instruments to detect light from distant and faint objects; the far-off locale would provide excellent conditions for avoiding unwanted light and heat. The telescope would be optimized for infrared observations, enabling it to peer through dust clouds into the birthplaces of stars and the origins and early development of galaxies. No less exciting, JWST would be aimed at taking images of planets beyond our solar system and seeking signs of water and other factors relevant to possible life.

Whole thing here.

Eclectic links

2011-07-13T21:56:00.001-04:00

I wouldn't call it the "coolest war ever," but the War of 1812 gets an interesting and exuberant writeup from Jonathan Rauch, one of my favorite writers. Here's my recent piece on how the abolition of the U.S. central bank shortly before the war almost caused it to be lost.

Todd Seavey gives Gillespie and Welch's book The Declaration of Independents a glowing review. Here's my comparatively less phosphorescent one.

An extensive new blog network has opened at my sometime employer Scientific American. Among various items that caught my interest, I recommend this sci-fi story by Charles Q. Choi and this post by illustrator Kalliopi Monoyios on science art and what cameras can't capture.

UPDATE: More on 1812.

Modest telescope proposal

2011-07-07T12:54:00.000-04:00

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), flagship mission for U.S. astronomy, is in danger of cancellation. If that happens, I hope there's a plan to use the expensive hardware that's already been built as a lawn ornament somewhere, perhaps on the Washington mall as a monument to congressional shortsightedness. After all, the Saturn Vs that never flew have brightened up grassy areas in a few states and there's always a need for new public art.

For more on JWST's travails, see here, here and here. For my piece from a few years ago, on who James Webb was, see here.

Central bank history

2011-07-03T07:15:00.000-04:00

I've got a piece at FrumForum on the First Bank of the United States and the first George Clinton.

Fiduciary history

2011-06-28T21:29:00.002-04:00

In the July issue of Research, my article "Fiduciary Matters," on the history behind the current controversy over whether brokers and financial advisors should be held to a uniform fiduciary standard requiring them to put their customers' interests before their own. Excerpt:

The word “fiduciary” derives from the Latin words for “faith” (fides) and “trust” (fiducia). Roman law recognized various fiducia contracts in which a person held property in safekeeping or otherwise acted on another’s behalf. Failure to uphold such trust could result not just in monetary penalties but also a formal “infamy” (infamia), in which you lost such rights as to hold public office or be a witness in a legal case.

However, the fiduciary idea arose well before Rome. The Code of Hammurabi, carved into stone in ancient Babylon, required a merchant’s agent to keep receipts and to pay triple damages for failing to provide promised goods (though it allowed an exemption if the loss was due to enemy attack during a journey).

Whole thing here.

Hamilton exhibit

2011-06-28T10:34:00.001-04:00

Readers interested in financial history will enjoy the Museum of American Finance's exhibit "Alexander Hamilton: Lineage and Legacy." See the gallery here. On the way out, be sure to catch Lin-Manuel Miranda's performance of "The Hamilton Mixtape" (or see it here), which also closed the recent documentary Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton, which film I also recommend by the way (having a higher opinion of it than found in this review).

Physics, hippy, spacey links

2011-06-27T14:30:00.003-04:00

A bit of stream of consciousness: Here's an interesting excerpt of How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, by David Kaiser. Here's physicist/critic Peter Woit's review. Here's what The Weekly Standard thinks about hippies, as reflected in their covers over the years. Here is the opening of the one piece I ever wrote for the Standard: "Leftists in Orbit," about the Cassini space probe and its leftist opponents. Here is my piece for Reason on Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Here are my pieces for FrumForum on Reason, physics and space probes. Here's Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit dissing us "Frumites." Here, through the magic of the Internet archive, is the March 2000 piece I commissioned from Reynolds when I ran the opinion page at Space.com: "Satellite Pics Are Free Speech." (I use the term "commissioned" loosely, in that I was not allowed to pay contributors.)

My true-life libertarian story

2011-06-18T00:25:00.005-04:00

At FrumForum, I review The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America and offer some further thoughts on Reason magazine and libertarianism. Opening:

Last fall, I wrote for FrumForum about “How I Joined the Vast RINO Conspiracy,” tracing how I, a longtime self-described “libertarian conservative,” got out of step with the right as the right moved further right and as I moved toward the center. Some readers applauded my independent thinking and others invited me to drag my backside out of the Republican Party (something I’ve declined to do).

A new book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, respectively the editors of Reason.tv and Reason magazine, has given me much to contemplate, on how libertarianism fits into American politics, how Reason fits into libertarianism, and why I, a onetime fairly regular contributor to that magazine, eventually failed to fit in at Reason.

Whole thing here.

UPDATE 6/19: Nick Gillespie has some kind words about my "respectful though mixed" review.

Evolutionary psych Weinergate

2011-06-06T15:15:00.002-04:00

A few years ago, I wrote a review for Scientific American Mind of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, a not very good book touting evolutionary psychology. (The review's behind a paywall, though the start of it is here.) I still think the book is overly reductionist in its view of human nature, but one assertion strikes me now as meriting more credence than I gave it at the time. That's the assertion that male politicians get caught up in sex scandals not despite their careers, but because their careers are fundamentally aimed at maximizing their reproductive fitness, i.e., attracting lots of women. The same drive that makes them successful politicians is what makes them fall. Still seems something of an overstatement, but less so as I think about it and see scandals that would be hard to explain if this evo psych tendency weren't at least a factor. All of which is to say, soon enough I expect, goodbye Anthony Weiner.

Mexico's stocks

2011-05-26T13:24:00.006-04:00

My latest at Research magazine: "Mexico's Resilient Market." Excerpt:

Mexico’s long-ago president, José Porfirio Díaz, is credited with a memorable, though likely apocryphal, quote, which translates as: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!”

Díaz, who as a youth fought against the U.S. in the Mexican-American War, was overthrown in the 1911 Mexican Revolution, but his desire to keep some distance from the giant northern neighbor echoed through the 20th century in Mexican policies that kept a tight rein on cross-border trade and investment.

In recent decades, though, and particularly since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, Mexico’s policymakers have sought to capitalize on their country’s proximity to the U.S. Consequently, Mexico has attracted investor interest for its uncommon identity as both emerging market and member of a vast trade bloc.

UPDATE: I'm slated to talk about this article on the Gabe Wisdom Show on June 6 at 7:30 PM ET.

~~UPDATE:~~ ~~Here's the podcast~~.

Absence of blogging

2011-05-17T09:59:00.000-04:00

Current reading: Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self, by Marilynne Robinson. I ordered this book after coming across an excerpt and then reading some interesting reviews, including one by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I'm sure it will give me much to contemplate. Meanwhile, posting may continue to be light in the near term, though I expect this blog will perk up a bit in June or so.

Movie note

2011-05-09T09:41:00.000-04:00

Saw Black Swan on pay-per-view last night. I wasn't as enthused as some. It was like Fight Club in a tutu.

India brief

2011-05-04T09:32:00.001-04:00

~~A podcast of me on the radio talking about the Indian stock market.~~ My article on the subject is here.

OBL

2011-05-02T09:10:00.002-04:00

Looking at this morning's great news. Here's what I wrote on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. I expect to write again on the 10th.

India stocks

2011-04-26T14:06:00.001-04:00

I'm slated to be on the Gabe Wisdom Show at 7 pm ET tonight to discuss India's stock market history, ~~and in due course the podcast should appear here~~. Current research for Research: Mexico's market history.

Hamilton interview...

2011-04-19T13:16:00.000-04:00

My latest at FrumForum: "Debt Debate: What Would Hamilton Do? "To get some perspective on current political and economic debates, I attempted to contact the spirit of Alexander Hamilton by resetting the roaming function on my phone near his tombstone at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan." Whole Q&A here.

Varied & misc.

2011-04-18T16:03:00.001-04:00

Some items I found of interest, in no particular order:

Salon interview with Barry Eichengreen on "How to Think About Tea Party Economics," particularly regarding monetary policy.

Walter Russell Mead has some ruminations on history and Easter Week: "He Plants His Footsteps on the Sea: Faith Matters."

David Frum's "Two Cheers for the Welfare State."

My debt deal

2011-04-13T09:31:00.000-04:00

Exclusively at FrumForum, I provide the Ken Silber Plan for deficit reduction. Audience response is mixed.

Kaboom film

2011-04-10T13:38:00.005-04:00

I'm not quite sure what to say about this movie, Kaboom. On one hand, it was hilarous and, unlike say The Sky Has Fallen, is labeled as a comedy. On the other hand, it was creepy and for significant stretches seemed more a horror movie than a comedy. On the third hand, the ending was pretty inane even by the standards of what had transpired before. So, in brief, I recommend it for some readers of this blog, and they will know who they are. Here's the trailer.

Items of interest

2011-04-09T20:25:00.002-04:00

Back from France, where I celebrated my sister Denise Silber's Legion of Honor at the splendid venue of the U.S. Embassy's Marshall Center. Posting will likely continue to be light in the near future, though here are a couple more things that caught my attention:

Virginia Postrel takes issue with "The Fantasy of Survivalism," in what turns out to be her last WSJ column as she's moving to a soon-to-be-launched Bloomberg venture.

David Frum argues, correctly I think, that it was "A Great Week for the GOP," in part (and quite counterintuitively) because Donald Trump is gaining some traction, thus giving some absurd ideas an appropriate spokesman.

India's stock market history

2011-04-01T22:18:00.001-04:00

My latest at Research magazine: "India's Emergence." I'm slated to discuss it on the Gabe Wisdom Show on April 26 at 7 PM ET.

Semi-hiatus

2011-03-31T14:43:00.005-04:00

Expect some quiet times at this blog in the near term. As you can see at the post below, I've got plenty to read, among things to do. My Twitter feed may be relatively active at times, and if you know me, I can be found via Facebook.

Varied & misc.

2011-03-30T14:02:00.005-04:00

Some items I found interesting, in no particular order:

Notices and remembrances of recently deceased Reason magazine founder Lanny Friedlander by Nick Gillespie and Bob Poole. Justin Raimondo conscripts Friedlander as antiwar pioneer, doesn't mention his Navy service.

Review copy received: The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch.

Review copy received: First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, by Marc Kaufman.

Review copy not requested (though I'm tempted): Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore, by Benjamin Radford.

"Creationism Makes a Comeback," by Noah Kristula-Green at FrumForum.

Welcome, Gus

2011-03-28T11:05:00.000-04:00

On a personal note, huge congratulations to co-blogger Dan and wife Marg on the arrival of Gus!

Women's work

2011-03-28T11:04:00.000-04:00

Some notes regarding women in the workforce:

"Mommy Track Without Shame," by Virginia Postrel, on how flexible arrangements are gaining favor.

But: "CareerBuilder: More Women Perceive Pay and Career Advancement Disparity."

Financial talent drain

2011-03-25T13:53:00.002-04:00

A new study from the Kauffman Foundation argues, quite plausibly, that the financial sector's draw on talent is impeding entrepreneurship and economic growth. Drawing on this study, Time magazine columnist Rana Foroohar sketches out the problem. Why should a highly skilled graduate develop new technologies or life-saving drugs instead of making five times the income modeling the stock market?

I am not one to denigrate the value of an innovative financial sector (and if I did, it would be harder to explain why I continue to work at a financial magazine). I've long admired Alexander Hamilton's emphasis on developing a sophisticated financial system. But he also sought (with less success) to jump-start American industrial manufacturing with the Society for Useful Manufactures. He certainly recognized that the U.S. needed to be adept at more than just managing money.

What's the answer? Foroohar's is that we shouldn't curtail funding for the financial regulatory agencies. That's fair enough as far as it goes, but this is a subject I hope to think and write about more extensively.