On Electrification

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/24657/ ETA on cost-effective electric vehicles: 6-8 years.

A $700 Million Bet on Electric Cars

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/business/energy-environment/25electric.html?em There is real money from real companies invested in this concept. This has major banks behind it, Israeli investors, the Israeli government (which has a defense-based incentive to do this), and the Danish government (whose country gets 20% of its electricity from wind power, giving it an environmental incentive to do this). Also, Renault, a $50 billion automaker, says it will have conventionally priced electric cars available by next year. The key concept here, which I think it's extremely important for the other automakers to recognize and adopt, is the interchangeability of batteries between vehicles. This will allow for quick changes of batteries at gas stations and extend the range of electric vehicles at low cost.

Interesting Numbers and a Political Opportunity

A fateful threshold crossed: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/23labor.html?em   The republicans should use this moment to turn private sector employees and taxpayers against unions: it demonstrates that unions are their natural enemies. It's amazing how they have withered without even suffering any legal setbacks--they are engines of destruction, and not only self-destruction.

Pay for Failure

A judge has decided that a test is discriminatory against blacks because they score lower on it than whites: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/nyregion/22vulcan.html?hpw And those who failed the test now get compensation payouts or unearned jobs with the fire department, including "retroactive seniority." How long will it be until black groups in this country manage to get all forms of testing outlawed as racist? I cannot think of a widely administered test on which blacks come close to matching whites. Therefore, ipso facto, all must be discriminatory. The title of this post fairly summarizes socialist political philosophy. It seems like all the liberal constituencies have policy agendas that weaken this country. They are the party of national self-destruction. Also, these are all collectivist groups, who disparage the dignity of the individual. They tolerate parasitism and encourage dependency.  To be fair, conservatives tend to be too uncritically fond of militarism and corporatism, neither of which conduce to individualism either. And they are overswayed by religionists and give disproportionate consideration to monetary priorities over others (eg, culture, environment, aesthetics, health, education, national strength, etc). In large part, the dementias afflicting both parties are set on by the corrupt procedure of gerrymandering political districts: the result of such is to segregate leftist voters in one voting district from rightists in another. Both sides then evolve "purer" forms of their underlying ideologies and place these ideologically pure types into office. First, both ideologies have serious problems, as above noted. Second, this process encourages a dogmatic, unthinking, inflexible, uncompromising, backward-thinking attitude among all politicians--which means stagnation, lack of useful innovations in the public sphere.

Exponential Relations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graph_of_largest_earthquakes_1906-2005.png The 3 largest earthquakes of the last 100 years released more energy than all the other thousands of earthquakes in that period combined. I did not know this. The earthquake energy scale explained: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale

The Importance of Kingship

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200807/men-do-everything-they-do-in-order-get-laid-iii This also gives some sense of why men sometimes achieve great things, while women rarely do. This nexus is so old and internalized as to be motivated in mostly by hormonal differences.

The Vanguard

http://www.dailytech.com/Toyota+Prius+Was+TopSelling+Vehicle+in+Japan+for+2009/article17360.htm It's interesting that each environmental advance seems to be led by a different country: Denmark leads in wind power with 20% of electricity generation, Japan leads in hybrid car adoption, China leads on building new nuclear power plants (50 in the next 10 years compared to 15 for the rest of the world), America leads on new wind turbine installations and solar thermal installations and all forms of innovation, Israel and Denmark compete for the lead on electric car adoption.

An Impressive Step

http://www.physorg.com/news180620740.html

It must be a tremendous encouragement for the patient to have this outlet. Plus which, if speech can be read from the mind, other paralytics, especially the far more common quadriplegics, will have opportunities for increased independence and interaction in the world.

On the other hand, this must also be on the military's radar. It approaches the condition of mind-reading. That would be a neat trick for intel agencies all over the globe.

The Nature of Socialism

Socialists are levelers, and levelling of people is only possible by levelling down. Hence, idiocracy.

Harry Reid the Political Philosopher, Obama the Doormat

From a New York Times article on "special provisions" in the health bill for "special constituents": White House officials have generally acquiesced in the provisions, which they see as a normal part of the legislative process, required to secure votes for a bill overwhelmingly opposed by Republicans. Republicans complained of “sweetheart deals,” payoffs and kickbacks. But the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, brushed aside the criticism. “There’s a hundred senators here, and I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them,” Mr. Reid said. “If they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them. That’s what this legislation is all about. It’s the art of compromise.” Apparently, Reid's philosophy amounts to this: if you're not corrupt like me and my friends, you're not a good representative and you're failing your country. And anybody who fails to make the government more active, through new laws, regulations, taxes, handouts, is failing in his work. I swear that the underlying political philosophy of these socialists is that man is a born slave and requires his master's (government's) help and discipline in all aspects of life, not excluding the life of the mind (see, political correctness). The best that could be said of any of them is that they are oblivious and profoundly naive as to the effects an ever-expanding nanny-state has on the thoughts, actions, and character of the people.

Two Takes on Health Care

These are the two best articles I've read on the issue. Both generate different diagnoses and plans of action, but an interpenetrating mediation of the two seems possible and beneficial. At an intellectual level, health care is a genuinely challenging policy conundrum. By the way, both articles were recommended by David Brooks.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

This offers a well-analyzed reform plan.  

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=1

This one is written by a practicing physician who set out the determine why some parts of the country spend 3 times as much on health care as other parts--and, no, the difference had nothing to do with cost of living differentials. The conclusion is encouraging in some ways (in that costs can be reduced about 30% without systemic changes and without loss of quality). What is depressing here is that those cost cuts would come from doctors studiously ignoring the costs of care (in the context of a quasi-socialist organizational structure)! The author found that current high cost parts of the system are those that attend most closely to this cost with purpose to increase it for their own profit. It seems that it may be too much to hope for a system that is cost aware with the intent of controlling costs improving quality.