Evolving well

"Evolve: Eyes," which I watched after seeing it mentioned at Pharyngula, is very adept science reporting, managing to convey a lot of information without veering into either boredom or schlock. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

Question for Bob Barr

At Reason, Radley Balko has pointed questions for Barack Obama (I noted his McCain questions here). Asked in the comments whether he'll now direct such at Bob Barr, Balko responds:

Barr doesn't have a chance to win the election, so I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I'm also not really sure what I would ask him. He's been pretty up front about his Road to Damascus moment, and that he's done a 180 on a host of issues. Seems like it would just be the same question, over and over.

Well, I have a question for Bob Barr:

Mr. Barr, in 2002 you voted to add a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare. Such a measure -- the entitlement state's largest expansion since the 1960s -- was passed in 2003, when you were no longer in Congress. John McCain voted against it. Do you regret your 2002 vote, and do you regret obfuscating the issue recently by stating "I wasn't even in Congress" when it passed?

How retirement evolved

My article "From Bismarck to Bush: How the Idea of Retirement Evolved" is now online at Research magazine. The print version includes an old cartoon of "Bismarck struggling with a Socialist jack-in-the box." Here's how the piece opens:

On November 17, 1881, German Kaiser Wilhelm I issued an imperial decree stating that “those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state.” The driving force behind this pronouncement was Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who had unified Germany, unleashed victorious wars against Austria and France and was now intent on creating the world’s first broadly available pension system.

Throughout the 1880s, Bismarck pushed for the creation of government social programs. The German pension system, financed by mandatory contributions from employers and employees, was enacted in 1889. When critics contended that such measures were socialistic, Bismarck replied insouciantly: “Call it socialism or whatever you like. It is the same to me.”

Better than some parties

Some Objectivists are trying to form a political party. As a non-Objectivist (albeit one who thinks rationality, individualism and capitalism are all good things), I won't be offering advice, but I do note that Objectivist Diana Hsieh makes what I think is a pretty good case against it. Then again, if it does get started, at least it will drain some of the vote from the Libertarian Party.

On driving

Tom Vanderbilt has a blog How We Drive, as a companion to his book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). He also had a piece in the Post here. It's a subject that merits more serious attention (as opposed to just angry fuming) than it usually gets.

New Silber blog

My brother has become a keyword.

UPDATE: And my sister can now be found in English here.

Non-winner Obama

I now reaffirm my prediction that Obama is going to lose the election (though I'd be a bit surprised, yet not displeased, if I was correct about who the Republican running mate will be). It seems to me that a front-runner who's actually behind among likely voters in one recent poll after his much-lauded Europe-Mideast tour, and who's apparently tin-eared enough to send his Wailing Wall prayer to the press, is a candidate with marked electoral vulnerabilities. The question is whether I should start making bets.

Radio notice

I'm slated to be on the Gabe Wisdom Show tonight at 7pm ET, talking about the stock market's "Roaring Eighties."

Cosmic know-nothingism

At The Space Review, Amitai Etzioni serves up some red herrings:

NASA, and the people who live off of its grants and contracts, keep telling the media that we may find life on Mars. Many people understand this to mean some civilization with which we could ally ourselves against the bad guys. If NASA would disclose that it is looking for some organic material we would be better prepared to have an honest discussion about how much the nation should pay for such a possible discovery. The same holds for claims that we learn about the beginning of the universe and expand our humanity and other such bull.

First off, I have doubts as to how much public support for Mars exploration is based on hopes of finding "some civilization with which we could ally ourselves against the bad guys." In many years of writing and reading about space, I've never come across anybody stating such a hope. Second, I find it just sad (as Ross Perot might say) that Etzioni dismisses learning about the beginning of the universe as "bull." I can't tell if he thinks there is no prospect of learning anything about that through space technology (in which case he should take a look here) or if he thinks the subject is not worth caring about. Either way, it's a crude and ill-informed view.

Space solar "death machine"

I can understand skepticism about space solar power. No one yet knows whether progress in launch technology and solar technology will make such a system feasible in the coming decades. But ranting that it's "a military research project to make a death machine" isn't much of a counterargument. There are much better, and cheaper, death machines already available.

Edwards' excellent foppery

Shakespeare depicted the folly of King Lear, of which we saw an excellent presentation today at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey. But what playwright will put to words the stupendous blundering of John Edwards?

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit
of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star!

Anti-McCain overkill

Over at Reason, Matt Welch is now explaining that John McCain took no political risks in supporting the surge in 2007 as he headed into the Republican primaries:

Second and more interestingly, at the time of the surge, there was zero political cost to McCain supporting the surge. He was running in a Republican primary, and not particularly well, so his ironclad support for troop escalation was largely seen by many Republican stalwarts (in a season where the only anti-war candidate was being treated like a leper) as one of the best things going for the guy, given his various transgressions on other counts.

Here's a report on some polling from June 2007, as the surge troops moved in:

Thirty percent of Americans polled say they favor the war, the lowest level of support on record. Two-thirds are opposed.

Anti-war sentiment among Republican poll respondents has suddenly increased with 38 percent of Republicans now saying they oppose the war.

Moreover, 63 percent of Americans are ready to withdraw at least some troops from Iraq. Forty-two percent of Republicans agree.

Forty-two percent of Republicans were ready to withdraw some troops, which would suggest less than overwhelming support in the party for putting more troops in. And the trend at that time was toward more opposition. Not exactly zero political risk, it seems to me.

More on Reason here.

Writer, kayaker, veep

Rob Portman, who's getting noticed as a possible McCain running mate, has a rather impressive resume, including congressman, budget director and trade representative. And I particularly like that he's a published author who's delved into such distinctly non-Beltway subjects as Wisdom's Paradise: The Forgotten Shakers Of Union Village and "China by Kayak."

Cities on Venus

Weekend space reading: "Colonizing Venus with Floating Cities." (Via my alma mater, Space.com.) Excerpt:

50 km above the surface, Venus has air pressure of approximately 1 bar and temperatures in the 0°C-50°C range, a quite comfortable environment for humans. Humans wouldn't require pressurized suits when outside, but it wouldn't quite be a shirtsleeves environment. We'd need air to breathe and protection from the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.

Unless the Venusians come here first.

Battlestar cycle

Some Battlestar news:

The final set of episodes will be at least 11 hours long, and the series finale will occupy three of those hours. However, there’s a chance that the series finale could expand even more.

The “Battlestar” series finale will definitely expand on DVD. Regardless of the length of the finale that airs on Sci Fi next year, an even longer cut will be released on DVD.

I say use as much time as needed; it should be at least as epic as this.

Exploding briefcase

At The American Thinker, Dylan Gwinn has an evocative article about "The Day Hitler Should Have Died." I've long been fascinated by the story of Count von Stauffenberg and the miniscule factors (e.g., a table leg) that made the difference between failure and success in the assassination attempt. I just hope the Tom Cruise movie isn't a fiasco.

The Soloist

Current reading: The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music. So far, I like the author's honesty in acknowledging that much of his motivation in helping a homeless, mentally ill musician was getting material for a newspaper column. Looking forward to the rest of the book and the movie.

Whip inflation then

Greg Mankiw makes a derisive aside about the 1970s WIN program. But if you look at the speech Gerald Ford gave in announcing it, you'll find some pretty good ideas (such as restraining federal spending and reevaluating the need for various regulations) along with some less good ones (subsidizing mortgages). Wearing buttons might seem a silly request, but note that Ford asks it to emphasize the program's voluntarism and non-bureaucratic emphasis. As I've said in the past, the Ford administration gets less credit than it deserves.

"Pure-strain gold"

This comment, sent to the GOP by a Ron Paul supporter, makes me smile:

Says Bob in Clemons, North Carolina: "We need to abolish the Federal Reserve and go back to the gold standard. Not just any gold though, I heard about this stuff, pure-strain gold that has been around since God created the universe. That's what we should base our currency around since it is so close to God."

Sounds like a great idea. I recommend getting it directly from the source.

Space non-exploration

Rand Simberg has a thoughtful piece at The Space Review on "Are We Driven to Explore?" It includes a good overview of various reasons to go into space that aren't of the "because it's there" variety (not that there's anything wrong with those).