Prediction Cities

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all# One most significant omission I noted was the failure to mention the traditional role of cities as population sinks. Before 1900 or so all cities had negative internal population growth because the disease burden was high enough to kill most people before adulthood. These days the expense and space restrictions of cities tend to limit fertility rates, leading to the same result. Result: economic growth may be more sustainable than suspected since fertility rates are declining and, eventually, it may be possible to grow without increased per capita use of physical resources. The derivation of mathematical "laws" from animal metabolism and corporations is also interesting. Abstraction is leverage--but, at the cost of estrangement. Only a certain measure of immersion in the concrete details can put the abstractions in practical perspective and render them robust. Reagan appears to have understood this: did you know he read and answered 20 random letters from citizens each week to achieve this type of immersion?

Obama's Misdirections

One way to influence the political discourse is to frame the issues by not mentioning issues that are uncomfortable fits for your ideological commitments. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/01/michael-lind-v-sputnik-moment.html I do not agree that our education system is ideal. It ought to be privatized by means of vouchers and the students who are not college-bound ought to be steered into vocational training programs to suit their interests and abilities. This will not solve the black-hispanic low performance issue. That appears to be caused by a nexus of lower IQ and anti-education cultural bias, with a small contribution from poverty. The idea that we lag on innovation is a joke: America and Israel far surpass any competitors in that realm. The problem is the Chinese and others a quite adept at stealing or otherwise acquiring our inventions and robbing us of much of the benefit the patent system is intended to secure. In China IP is a joke. Even the Europeans refuse to pay the innovation premium built into the price Americans pay for new drugs. And American companies give away patents and trade secrets for the privilege of doing business in China. Our government handles these matters most weakly and lets the Chinese hold sway. The great risk of mishandling trade with China arises from our loss of strategic industries to them. There are two types of strategic industries. First, industries presently at the core of the economy or vital to military superiority need to be kept onshore by whatever means--and they're not hard to identify. Second, and of more conjectural identity, those industries with the greatest potential for future growth and innovation must be sparked and succoured. We have attended to the military needs so far as government can apply competence to anything. On present time economic vitality, we've lost a considerable portion of the infotech industry, which is large and growing. Future industries face pressure to move to nations with more strategic emphasis on their development, China in particular. Cleantech continues a rapid exodus that way and holds enormous growth potential. Perhaps the worst part of this is that if we do not have a solar industry or a microchip industry, we will ineluctably lose our capacity to innovate in those areas. Most innovation occurs incrementally, accomplished by those with the most intimate familiarity with the technology and the business paradigm. This kind of loss we cannot afford to take. In select industries, we must implement an industrial policy aimed at sustaining their presence onshore and augmenting their innovation-engendered competitiveness. That this program will slip into corruption and incompetence is foreknown, and worth suffering for the stakes involved. Perhaps it would be best to structure it as an independent, apolitical agency like the Federal Reserve.

Distaff

If you want to really cause an upset with the fems, create an inventor list. This article just shows that men do most of the work, an inventor list (including inventors of new ways of thinking) shows who invented the world. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?hpw This study seems like a good measure of spontaneous interest in knowledge for its own sake. No technical computer background is necessary to contribute. The 7-1 ratio they found does not surprise me--even considering that there are more idle adult women than men. It also jibes with studies showing men are much more prone to having systematizing temperaments, a natural impulse to organize and manage what is non-human in life.

The Dangerous Prevalence of Moral Contagion

Krugman on Europe (the article is a good summary and analysis, leading to a typical socialist course of treatment for the patient):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/magazine/16Europe-t.html?hpw

 

My comment:

Those nations that do not sustain the fiscal standards of the EU's economic leaders ought to be encouraged to leave. It's a well-established psychological reality (for which I wish I had a ready link and clearly recall reading a striking study on) that low standards are more contagious than high standards. Greece et al. set low standards for integrity, for discipline, for self-reliance, for productivity. They will not Germanize if bailed out endlessly by the Germans--but, the Germans may be sufficiently demoralized by such a parasitic dynamic to turn Greek. The cultural/psychological contagion is what must be contained. Krugmanite socialism would only spread the disease (and encouraging this contemptible proto-"Idiocracy", in the long run, does less to alleviate the human suffering he harps upon). At the very least, high standards are difficult and time-consuming to develop, low standards can spread readily and rapidly. It's a perilous asymmetry, especially in an obsessively egalitarian intellectual milieu, like the Western world. As Nietzsche insisted, in practice equality is possible only by pulling down the higher men and the higher societies.

 

Something Against the Reactionaries

A novelist arguing for the exclusion of Huck Finn from high school reading lists:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16moore.html?hp

My published comment:

On this logic, I suppose we should not read The Merchant of Venice or Oliver Twist (to avoid offending sensitive Jewish children) and should also exclude The Scarlet Letter and Madame Bovary (female sensitivity) and exclude Dead Souls (sensitive entrpreneurs and speculators). And why shouldn't we find cause to exclude even that sainted novel, To Kill a Mockingbird? First, it is thoroughly mediocre literature. Second, extremely tedious. Third, with respect to our theme of social offense, Ms. Lee renders up quite a few insulting caricatures which some might identify as directed at them and lacking in accuracy. With a little interpretive creativity offense can be found in any work of literature.

 

If Huckleberry Finn is to be removed from the high school curriculum, it ought not to be done so for the purpose of protecting the students from any view of a world before political correctness. And it ought to be replaced by a work of equal or greater aesthetic and intellectual power--not Mockingbird, not True Diary--try Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Melville, James, Faulkner, Stevens, Frost.

The Final Solution to Climate Change

The American public has no understanding of science. Our politicians cover the whole spectrum of human character from cowardice to cynicism. From this one may conclude that the human species will fail even to approach an optimal response to the threats posed by climate change. Fortunately, I have long believed that the Bio Wars will solve this problem. The witless wonders who have no capacity to conceptualize the climate science issue will mostly be wiped out, along with most of the rest of us. And, as a bonus, we'll never know for sure how great a threat global warming might have been--an unresolved mystery that no doubt provides great relief to those for whom scientific knowledge represents an affront God.

Cheek Turning on Principle

A Congressional military advisory commission just recommended that women be permitted in combat units.

Decadence develops when there is a perceived lack of serious threats.

Hence, the military comes to be seen as a playground for bureaucrats, careerists, politicians, and a free-for-all for all members of the thought police and social(ist) engineers. This is much more of a problem than the gay thing, opposition to which at this point is absurd in addition to being militarily groundless.

Another Way to Play

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_1 I think this approach comes from a culture that evolved in a country overpopulated and impoverished for millenia. These conditions create an acute form of ingrained social competitiveness. But, just as identical ingredients manifest different flavors in different climes, a social strategy normative in one place may appear a species of madness in another.

The Bad Side of an Ugly Beast

Public sector unions may be the most destructive force in America today (though uncontrolled health costs and entitlements are in the running). And the political dynamic the public sector unions have created virtually ensures the problem will worsen year by year. This is a clear and reasonably comprehensive analysis: http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 The most essential problems are: 1. They possess monopoly power by controlling schools, police, firefighters, air traffic control, etc. They are in a position to blackmail society, which is what they do and one reason why they should be illegal. 2. They largely control the left wing of politics, which means many of those with whom they negotiate for higher wages and benefits are the same people whose election they engineered--they're negotiating practically with themselves. Self-dealing is generally considered an ethical breach even before actual abuse occurs, since such abuse is considered a foregone conclusion. Even most right-wing politicians cannot afford the political price of resisting the unions. This might expain GED-bearing prison guards making $100k a year and incompetent teachers never losing their jobs and police officers in some cities who collect pensions, on average, of over $100k a year after 20 years' service--the abuse goes on and on because no one is positioned to stop it. They're almost the top predator in the American economic ecosystem--and they may yet become the top predator, since they have effectively no natural enemies. Their determination to corrupt the political process (and their power to do so) is the other reason they ought to be illegal. 3. They use their power, naturally enough, to acquire more power--by financing politicians, by forcing the expansion of the unionized workforce, by telling their members whom to vote for. 4. Unions, by controlling the government, can acquire almost unlimited funds, since the government can always raise taxes and apply force to ensure they're paid. 5. People are made better off by increases in productivity. The private sector, because it is competitive, constantly increases productivity. The unionized public sector, having no competition, does not increase productivity except incidentally. Therefore, the larger the public sector is, the less overall productivity there is and the worse off society as a whole is. The bottom line is that public sector unions are powerful, growing more powerful, disadvantageous to everyone not in these unions, and face no real resistance. They're like an invasive species that destroys everything in its path because it has no natural predators. Public sector unions ought to be outlawed. This is a case in which freedom of assembly may justifiably be limited to conserve the probity of government.

The King

This is a hell of a piece of writing: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-artists-of-all-time-19691231/elvis-presley-19691231 Another piece on Elvis, written by Zeppelin's vocalist: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-singers-of-all-time-19691231/elvis-presley-19691231 Both of these lists are interesting to read through.

Cars

Some random thoughts after reading about the Model T:

 

Given the road quality, I think the invention of the car must have turned us into a nation of mechanics. It's interesting on several levels that the Model T was so little changed for 20 years. There wasn't enough competition for Ford to sense the necessity of rapid innovation--most of the innovation that occurred in this period was directed at cost reductions rather than quality improvements. Considering this, I can see how the early communists all over the world might have come to underestimate the power of incentives and innovation. Stalin copied Ford's manufacturing methods with considerable energy and efficiency (without which efforts, Hitler would have won)--but, then the command economies stagnated as modern economies became too complex for their centralized planning to manage.

 

Reading an article about the Tata Nano (a $3,000 car made in India) I noticed that, adjusted for inflation, the Model T also cost about $3,000 in the 1920s, with similar capabilities. You might think that today we could get more for our money--but, even with labor in India being cheaper than our labor was in the 1920s, we have made little progress at the bottom of the market.

Attempting Science

http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-achieve-biological-immortality-naturally This guy overstates the case, but I look forward to reading his book to find what sort of evidence he can muster. Also, it hardly surprises me that an evolutionary biologist would notice some of the advantages of a paleo diet and lifestyle.