Barack Hamilton?

An interesting passage from Barack Obama's economics speech:

The great task before our Founders that day was putting into practice the ideal that government could simultaneously serve liberty and advance the common good. For Alexander Hamilton, the young Secretary of the Treasury, that task was bound to the vigor of the American economy.

Hamilton had a strong belief in the power of the market. But he balanced that belief with the conviction that human enterprise “may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government.” Government, he believed, had an important role to play in advancing our common prosperity. So he nationalized the state Revolutionary War debts, weaving together the economies of the states and creating an American system of credit and capital markets. And he encouraged manufacturing and infrastructure, so products could be moved to
market.

CaribWorldNews thinks Obama should put even more emphasis on Hamilton:

Anyone who does not know America's Greatest Immigrant was born and raised in the Caribbean, shame on you. It is unclear how much Barack Obama knows about Hamilton beyond the glowing words contained in his speech on Wednesday in which Obama had no hesitancy to proclaim that Hamilton's vision for America is his.

I am pleased that Obama is invoking Hamilton. And I agree that Hamilton's vision sometimes meant intervening in markets. But it also meant knowing when not to intervene in markets, as when Hamilton turned aside the idea, pushed by Madison and others, that original holders of Confederation bonds should be given full value, after having sold their bonds at lower prices.

My recent article on Hamilton is here. A relevant radio interview is here. For some negative takes on Hamilton, see items by William Hogeland and Brian Doherty (I have comments at both).

Earth science

Dumb question in an Economist magazine poll:

Which do you think is more likely to be the correct explanation for the origin of the earth?
--The theory of evolution
--The account of creation as told in the Bible
--“Intelligent design” – evolution has happened but by intelligent design
--Not sure

There's a reason why Darwin's book was not called On the Origin of the Earth by Means of Natural Selection.

The poll is here (PDF).

Alien mother ship?

Or chandelier at the Paris Opera House? (Taken during our trip in 2006.)

Finding stuff fast

Fareed Zakaria on Web research:

A few years ago, I was working on a column on Iraq recalled reading in Gertrude Bell’s biography a brilliant quote from a letter that the British adventurer-diplomat wrote to her father in 1922 (I think). I spent 10 minutes Googling and found that the University of Newcastle in Great Britain had put the entire Getrude Bell archive up on the Web. In 20 minutes, I had the actual letter on my screen. When I was in graduate school, getting that letter would have taken three months of inter-library loans and searching through microfiches.

I remember the pre-Internet era similarly. Of course, there's some stuff in the physical archives that's not on the Web.

Kateb's "palpable goods"

Recently, I criticized George Kateb's anti-patriotism as utopian pacifism. Now I see Kateb has responded to similar criticisms thus:

I don’t want purity; I said I’m not a pacifist. I argue for the moral permissibility of self-defense. Self-defense, however, is rarely the issue in international politics. When it is, patriotism is unnecessary: you don’t need a false incentive to fight for palpable goods.

Actually, if "palpable goods" were what's at stake, there would be an enormous incentive not to fight, or to free-ride on someone else's willingness to do it. You can't enjoy palpable goods if you're dead.

Algae road trip

Algae fuel continues to look interesting:

Solazyme of South San Francisco describes itself as a synthetic biology company, but it has also become an oil refining concern since it has been growing algae for oil and then turning it into its patented Soladiesel. The fuel meets biodiesel standard D6751 and European standard EN 14214, so any diesel car can use it without modification. In fact, members of the Solazyme team have been driving a Mercedes C320 up and down the California coast using only Soladiesel.

Beware of what may be hype, but keep an eye on this field.

UPDATE: And by the way, if there's a lot more oil in the U.S. than expected, that's all the more reason why CO2-eating algae will be needed in the coming decades.

It's something

Vote for Obama and a Venetian restaurateur will like you.

Halo world

Where your descendants might live, or have a weekend home.

Sunquakes

I don't mean to alarm anyone, but the sun is quaking:

Christoffer Karoff and Hans Kjeldsen of the University of Aarhus say that these outbursts in the Sun’s outer layers drive oscillations throughout the Sun “in the same way that the entire Earth is set ringing for several weeks after a major earthquake.”

Ready to believe

I passed by this poster yesterday. It reminds me a bit of this one.

James Bond, astrophysicist

The next James Bond movie has two things going for it. It's being filmed partly at the Very Large Telescope in Chile. And it has a cool title: Quantum of Solace.

Carbon-negative

Low-carbon may be good, but carbon-negative is better:

Solena says it can use the carbon. The company employs a high-temperature process to break up anything organic into a flammable gas. The organic material could be algae, which have an extremely high energy value per pound. And algae eat carbon dioxide.

Enceladus brew

NASA is analyzing what Cassini found in its recent flyby of Enceladus:

NASA's Cassini spacecraft tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus during a close flyby on March 12. Scientists are amazed that this tiny moon is so active, "hot" and brimming with water vapor and organic chemicals.

Apologies to anyone who googled "organic brew" looking for pesticide-free beer.

Cassini team scientists meanwhile contemplate the prospects for life on Enceladus.

Welch on McCain

Matt Welch on John McCain in today's New York Times:

In “Worth the Fighting For,” he wrote that “our greatness depends upon our patriotism, and our patriotism is hardly encouraged when we cannot take pride in the highest public institutions.” These institutions, Mr. McCain wrote, should “fortify the public’s allegiance to the national community.”

...all of his actions can be seen as an attempt to use the federal government to restore your faith in ... the federal government. Once we all put our shoulder on the same wheel, there’s nothing this country can’t do.

It can be a bracing approach when his issues line up with yours — I, for one, would welcome President McCain’s unilateral wars on pork-barrel spending and waterboarding — but it’s treacherous territory for those of us who consider “the pursuit of happiness” as something best defined by individuals, not crusading presidents-to-be.

I'm not a fan of McCain's campaign finance "reform" or push against Ultimate Fighting, so I agree with a number of Welch's points. But McCain's emphasis on making the federal government more disciplined and accountable should be a pretty big positive for libertarians. And a sense of "allegiance to the national community" is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, it's questionable how long an individualistic society would survive without any such allegiance.

Lone earmark crusader

John McCain's crusade against earmarks has not always gotten the credit I think it deserves at Reason. But today Jacob Sullum, not a McCain enthusiast, sets the record straight: among the three current candidates, "only McCain has taken a principled stand against the pet projects that legislators love to slip into spending bills."

The Black Cloud

This image is oddly reminiscent of an old novel by Fred Hoyle.

"Ethnic bomb"

This kind of makes you wonder whether Barack Obama read his church's newsletter. (Via Abe Greenwald.)

Carbon revenue choices

Sociologist Monica Prasad argues that a carbon tax won't reduce carbon emissions unless the revenues are directed back to industry for non-carbon research. I have my doubts; there's a long history of government subsidies for energy and technology not doing much good. But I could be wrong. Still, if zero percent of the carbon tax revenues are used to cut other taxes, you're going to end up with a very highly taxed economy, and that's not such a good thing either.

UPDATE: Some interesting, and mostly skeptical, responses from Charles Komanoff of the Carbon Tax Center, and economist Andrew Samwick.

Sullivan attacks

Speaking of Andrew Sullivan, he has a remarkable capacity to feel, or at least feign, intense outrage at things that upon examination are not particularly outrageous:

[Sullivan:] As the campaign goes on, the more you see who she is. The polling has not damaged Obama as she hoped, so she will now make Rove's and Hannity's strategy hers:

"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

[Sullivan:] I'm not a Democrat and I know how vile the Clintons are. But this really is a new low. I think it is becoming a national imperative to defeat the Clintons.

Me: What specifically did Clinton say there that Sullivan finds vile? Should she have said "Yes, I wish I had a pastor like that"? or "It's not like you can choose what church to attend"? Or is the whole subject absolutely off-limits?

Mortgage McCainomics

Andrew Sullivan praises McCain's "tough love" on mortgages. Here's from McCain's speech:

I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers. Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.

Not bad. And better yet, he doesn't say he'd be "Commander-in-Chief of our economy."