Point of Inquiry (UPDATED)

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

Fiduciary history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OBL

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

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...

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.