Beleaguered space probes

I've written about the robotic space program many times in the past (eg, here and here) and hope to do so again before long. Right now, its prospects are alarmingly dim, as these posts by Alan Boyle and Lou Friedman describe. And it's a subject that barely registers on the political radar screen -- for now.

UPDATE: More here.

His first race

Tax simplification and other topics

An interesting chat with David Frum at FrumForum today. Go to time 11:08 to see my excuse for my lack of productivity (today).

Some mostly convincing optimism

At Reason, Shikha Dalmia has a nice corrective to rampant pessimism about U.S. prospects versus those of China and India (and I'm not these days in a mood of knee-jerk optimism, I might add): "Long Live the American Dream: Why India and China have nothing on America." Excerpt:

An important reason why the gloom-and-doom about America is unjustified is precisely that there is so much gloom-and-doom. Indians and Chinese, by contrast, have drunk their own Kool Aid. Their moribund economies have barely kicked into action and they are entertaining dreams of becoming the next global superpower. This bespeaks a profound megalomania—not to mention lopsided priorities. There is not a culture of hope in these countries, as Giridhardas told Jon Stewart. There is a culture of hype.

What I find least convincing in the piece is the part where she identifies seasteading as an example of what's right with America:

Pay Pal founder Peter Theil has even given close to a million dollars to the Seasteading Institute to establish new countries on the sea to experiment with new forms of government. This might be wacky but it puts an outside limit on how out-of-whack Americans will let their institutions get before they start fixing them.

As I like to point out, I wrote about seasteading before it was cool or even called seasteading. But I don't see how fantasizing about starting your own country on the sea suggests any capability or inclination to fix real institutions.

Anti-financial populism

My latest at Research magazine: "Furious at Finance," on the long history of populist hostility to the financial sector. Excerpt:

The founders of the United States were sharply divided in their attitudes toward finance. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton famously disagreed over the latter’s initiative to create a central bank. Moreover, the agrarian-minded Jefferson distrusted banks in general and disliked the “new created paper fortunes” arising in the cities as Hamilton’s reforms promoted trading of Treasuries and equities.

Such differences helped give rise to political parties, with Hamilton’s Federalists (often seen as precursors to later Republicans) being much more pro-finance than Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans (later shortened to Democrats). However, even on the Federalist side, there were skeptics of finance, such as John Adams, who disparaged those who “moved money around” rather than doing real work.

 Others discussed include William Jennings Bryan, Father Coughlin, Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul.

UPDATE: I'm slated to discuss this article on the Gabe Wisdom Show on Tues., March 1 at 7pm ET.

Weekend games reading

Chess: "What Chess Owes Bobby Fischer," by Peter Worthington at FrumForum. My far weirder chess article "Searching for Bobby Fischer's Platonic Form," which I have to admit has nothing to do with Fischer.

Jeopardy: "Paging Dr. Watson: IBM to apply Jeopardy! victor's analytic skills to medical diagnoses," by Larry Greenemeier at Scientific American. "What Watson Can Learn from the Human Brain,' by Jonah Lehrer at Wired.

Catan: Can be done with knights now.

Chupacabra sighting?

Some backyard cryptozoology.

Wild speculations

If you have more than a passing acquaintance with popular-level writing on science-related themes, you likely will have encountered some or all of the following ideas. What they have in common is that they are highly speculative extrapolations or flights of the imagination that often are presented as compelling interpretations or solidly established facts.

1. The Singularity. In the mid-21st century, exponentially advancing technology will produce a swift and all-encompassing transformation marked by superhuman intelligence and a transcendence of mortality.

2. The Multiverse. Our universe is just one tiny part of an ensemble of universes, containing innumerable other versions of our world and ourselves, such that somewhere John McCain is president, for example.

3. The Simulation. The reality we experience is a simulation run on a powerful computer by aliens or distant descendants of humanity.

4. The Fine-Tuning. The constants and laws of physics were set by a higher intelligence at precisely the right levels to enable life to exist.

These ideas tend to chafe against each other. The Multiverse and the Fine-Tuning are vastly different interpretations of the same underlying physics. The Singularity might lead to the Simulation, but if we already live in the Simulation, how confidently can we predict the Singularity or, for that matter, analyze "physics," given that any real physics would actually be in the simulators' world, about which we know nothing.

In fact, all of these scenarios charge into areas where present knowledge is sketchy at best. We have little indication of what other universes might be like, what forms life might take even in our own universe (let alone other universes), how consciousness arises in a material reality (or might arise in a simulated one), and what meta-laws might govern any multiverse or other reality beyond the universe we observe. Given all these uncertainties and perplexities, speculations such as those listed above, thought-provoking though they can be, are basically just a strange sort of entertainment.

Ski break

Back from skiing at Gore Mountain, where I was pleased to find this blog getting the recognition it deserves. More to come.

Physics collides with politics

Over at FrumForum, my latest, on Rand Paul and the Energy Dept.: "Paul Plays Politics with Physics." Excerpt:

Sen. Rand Paul has proposed eliminating the Department of Energy. Other Republicans are pressing for significant cuts to the agency’s budget. This push has included little discussion — or evident comprehension — of what it would do to American capabilities in physics, or why that matters.

Paul would transfer DOE’s nuclear weapons activities to the Pentagon (which is probably a bad idea as it would eliminate the deliberate redundancy of having two agencies safeguarding the stockpile). Moreover, he dismisses DOE in a Wall Street Journal op-ed thus: “Many of its other activities amount to nothing more than corporate handouts,” such as subsidies for companies developing cleaner energy.

But much of what DOE does has nothing to do with either weapons work or corporate handouts. The agency spends billions on basic research aimed at understanding the physical world. Such research yields vast benefits in generating new technologies and powering the economy. But its large-scale, long-term nature places it beyond the scope of any company; if the government doesn’t do it, no one will.

Whole thing here.

Himalayan view

Here are some of the mountains near Everest, taken from a Buddha Air flight in 2009. (This is not the view from my driveway in New Jersey, recent snows notwithstanding.) I was reminded of such scenes by an intriguing show we saw the other week, In Search of Myths and Heroes, looking for a historical basis to Shangri-La. There certainly is plenty of space there for hidden societies.

FinReg: a history

My latest article for Research magazine: "The Rise of the Regulators." Excerpt:

The 1913 Federal Reserve Act, creating a central bank and lender of last resort, marked a major step-up in federal involvement in the financial sector (expanding the previous role initiated by Civil War legislation that had allowed nationally chartered banks and set up the Office of the Comptroller of Currency). But Washington’s focus still was on stabilizing banks and the dollar, not on overseeing stocks and bonds.

The securities business thus remained lightly regulated overall through the Roaring Twenties. Industry touted its ability to self-regulate, as it had done since the 1790s by fixing brokers’ commissions. In 1922, the New York Stock Exchange imposed capital requirements on its member firms. Amid prosperity and rising stock prices, there was little public or political pressure for a tighter regulatory regime. Soon there would be.

Whole thing here.

In memoriam

Farewell to JR Minkel, friend, colleague and science writer whose work I long admired.

Financial book watch

Current reading: Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America, by Greg Farrell. Quite interesting. I'll likely have some discussion of this book down the road.

Recent reading: Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, by Barry Eichengreen, whose work I've touched on here and here. This book is a well-reasoned and well-informed look at a subject that often generates poorly reasoned and poorly informed commentary. One worthwhile review is at The Economist.

SOTU note

I hope to weigh in on the State of the Union address at FrumForum this evening.

UPDATE: "Frumicide"! Thanks, Rush. FrumForum couldn't buy that kind of publicity. Also, Live Chat will be here.

Omega Theory

I'm pleased to note that Mark Alpert, friend and colleague from past work at Scientific American, and author of Final Theory, has written a second science-oriented novel: The Omega Theory.

Bob Barr in Haiti

During the 2008 campaign, I had the pleasure of debating the dubious merits of Bob Barr's quixotic Libertarian candidacy in Barr's presence, as part of the now-defunct Debates at Lolita Bar. I said some fairly critical things about Barr, including a wisecrack about shaving cream that may have been a step beyond the proper decorum in speaking to and about a former congressman. I recall suggesting that his candidacy would be a springboard into future success in talk radio and the speaking circuit. What I never imagined is that Barr would resurface as a representative for the infamous Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier upon the latter's return to Haiti. How that squares with any kind of libertarianism I don't presume to guess. (Via LGF.)

A moment for contemplation

Posting can be expected to continue to be light (barring any sudden moves by my co-bloggers) as I catch up on various personal and professional matters. Thanks for visiting. This photo was taken in the excellent Patan Museum in Nepal in 2009.

A belated word on rhetoric

I watched the news about the Arizona shootings this weekend with horror, which gradually shaded into disgust upon seeing the political point-scoring back-and-forth that followed. Being too busy with personal responsibilities, I didn't have the luxury of writing any quick-response piece, which also gave me some additional time to think about what I might write. I note as background that I wrote a piece in May titled "Conservatives Aren't 'At War' With the Left," which argued against martial or violent-sounding rhetoric partly on the following basis:

It’s inflammatory. If you’re at war, the way to win is by killing the enemy. If you’re in a nonviolent political contest or conflict, the way to win is by out-debating, out-voting, out-organizing and outsmarting your opponent. It’s always possible some nut will take the “we’re at war” business too seriously and then the purveyors of that rhetoric will disavow that they had anything violent in mind. But it’s better not to blur the distinction in the first place.

Watching the Arizona political aftermath, I'm struck by (1) how eager some on the left were to place blame for this shooting onto Sarah Palin or other conservative politicians, regardless of the absence of any evidence of any connection between their rhetoric and the shooter's actions; and (2) how stalwart some conservatives, such as my friend John Guardiano, remained in asserting that the right's rhetoric has been appropriately hard-hitting, and that the only thing to worry about here is how disapproval of same can erode free speech.

And of course, a few months ago, when a hostage-taker turned out to be a fan of Al Gore-style environmentalism, the political sides arrayed themselves differently.

Here is my suggestion: Don't judge a piece of political rhetoric, or any form of speech actually, by how an insane person might misconstrue it. Judge it by whether it's reasonable and valuable in and of itself. To my mind, Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment remedy" comment was despicable precisely because you don't have to be insane to see it as an incitement to violence. Palin's target map and "reload" tweet I put in a different category as they were clearly metaphorical*; they are not incitements to violence but they do reflect her angry, resentful, base-pandering style of leadership -- which as David Frum points out she had (and blew) a tremendous opportunity to rise above following the shooting.
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* - Unlike, incidentally, the "we're at war"-type statements by various conservatives that I criticized last May.

UPDATE: John McQuaid writes "On Political Madness," and links to the above here.

UPDATE: Interested in reading McQuaid's piece in Swedish? It's here.

Denise Silber, chevalier

Heartfelt and proud congratulations to my sister, Denise Silber, who is to be awarded the Legion of Honor -- France's most prestigious civil decoration! This is for her professional work in bringing the Internet and social media to bear on improving health care in France and internationally, under such rubrics as eHealth and Health 2.0. La Légion d'honneur, in which Denise will take on the grade of chevalier, is a distinction not often bestowed on non-French citizens (Denise is a U.S. citizen living in Paris). The announcement is here.