Just some stuff I bookmarked recently but for some reason haven’t gotten around to putting up a post on – feel free to dump any of your own in the comments:
- Palinism II – The New York Sun – thoughtful treatment of the substance of Palin’s politics.
- America’s Booming Natural Gas Production – American Enterprise Institute – how recent technological advances in natural gas exploitation and distribution may be solving energy problems and reducing carbon output (as if that matters) while no one’s been looking.
- Republican Hopes Rise in California – George Will – includes interesting scuttlebutt on why Whitman doesn’t like Fiorina and what it has to do with Campbell switching to the Senate race.
- Contractual Obligations – by Ramesh Ponnuru – one take on what a 2010 Contract with America might look like.
- Bad Rachel – Rachel Abrams’ new blog – personal blog of one of the Weekly Standard’s most bitingly satirical writers.
- Walter Russell Mead’s Blog at the American Interest – goes on a bit from time to time, but Mead’s a very smart guy.
- Andy Ross’s Review of Avatar – mostly by-passes the political and aesthetic discussion of Avatar to address its worldview and science fiction content, in a way that may help to explain its appeal to contemporary audiences.
- BTW – it’s too late, we’re all insolvent!
- UPDATE – had to add: Maverick economist Mike Hudson, whom you normally have to look for at Counterpunch (a far left-oriented site that among us only Rex has the stomach to scan regularly), on “Obama’s Junk Economics” and on the boat we missed in 2008 and a lot more. The latter piece is hard going, but in my view, and I know in Rex’s, well worth the effort. Here’s a relevant taste from the first article:
The only countervailing power is that within the Republican Party a fringe of tea partiers threatens to run against more established candidates safely sold to special interests. The Democratic Party always has been a looser coalition, which may not hold together if the Rubinomics team continues to lock out non-Corporate Democrats. So a political realignment may be in the making. Financial and fiscal restructuring issues span left and right, progressive Democrats and populist Republicans. So far, their sentiments are reactive rather than being spelled out in a policy program. But there is a widening realization that the economy has painted itself into a financial corner.
What is needed is to explain to voters how financial and tax policies are symbiotic. The tax shift off finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) onto labor and industry since 1980 has polarized the economy between a creditor class at the top of and an indebted “real” economy below. Unless this tax favoritism is reversed, more and more revenue will be diverted away from spending on consumption and investment to pay debt service and “financialize” the economy even more.
Comments 37
So you were right CK and Sully about the general fascination with Avatar, I was right about the Apocalypse Now motif, The Palinism peice is not surprisingly on point, Mead has advanced a great deal from when he was chronicling the future dystopias of Mortal Splendor back in the late 80s
February 13th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
On natural gas: Our government’s current obliviousness on this is driving a lot of otherwise liberal people crazy, especially Jim Cramer, probably the most watched person on NBC TV. Cramer constantly interviews CEO’s of natural gas rich companies, and frets that our best way of reducing dependence on foreign oil is to fully embrace gas-fired energy and transportation.
Why has Mister Peanut started to make nice noises about nuclear (GE) and even coal (WVa & Pa), and why does he remain mute or even hostile to gas?
I have a hint for ya: Most of the NG is found in or near RED states, dat’s why, my frems.
February 14th, 2010 at 6:58 am
I very much enjoyed the Ross blog. It explains how I felt seeing a photo on Drudge of young Palestinians, dressed up as blue Navi, protesting their situation. So, even some of the poorest people on earth are being moved my this masterpiece.
It also helps to explain how tens of thousands of the most creative brightest and best educated people in the world, including The Beatless, Doug Henning, and world renowned math and physics geeks all embraced Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation Movement.
Maharishi promised cosmic consciousness. He said he had a 7 year plan which would result in enlightenment, a perfect blend of joy and knowingness. This state of nirvana was lovingly described and sung about by The Beachboys. It involved a glorious state of wakefullness, even wakefulness during sleep. It was rumored that Maharishi needed little if any sleep, and that, just being in his presence (Darshan), hastened the meditator’s enlightenment.
Dozens of similar movements sprung up in the 60′s and 70′s such as the followers of Ron Hubbard, Raj Neesh, Muktananda, Krishna Murti, and Meher Baba.
The idea of transcendence, be it through Sufism, Scientology, LSD, or TM, is a very appealing idea, an idea which can set millions of young people on march.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:24 am
I’ve been talking about “Off Balance Sheet” liabilities since Orange County went Bankrupt;I clearly saw Orange County as a Microcasm. Then came Enron,the Queen of Public Companies’ crooked Accounting.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:33 am
Very timely of you to post that natural gas link. Last evening I was surprised to find that our son, who is doing research on separation of hydrogen from CO2 and CO aimed at achieving designing coal power plants so as to efficiently sequester CO2, had not heard of the fairly significant revolution going on in natural gas production.
An interesting example of just how much compartmentalization there is of information re scientific and energy matters. He attends all sorts of conferences and presentations about coal gasification, power plant design, chemical plant process design and science, etc. but yet this subject has never come up.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:05 am
Thank you for that Avatar link.
For scifi-heads like me it was spot on. In my field, quantum biology, avatars are the dream of wannabe space travelers. Think about beaming a digital personality imprint (signal encrypted with unbreakable quantum codes of course) with quantum entanglement or quantum telelportation INSTANTLY into deep-spaced avatars that have been travelling as blank substrates for many light years and are about to make planetfall.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:26 am
@ Zoltan Newberry: wahdat al wujud (Sufi Unity of Existence) IS Social Brain Hypothesis and q-biology.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:29 am
That’s more the province of the Richard Morgan, Takeshi Kovacs novels
February 14th, 2010 at 8:43 am
well, durr, the mytho-poesis of Avatar is stellar too.
Dig you guyz dig St. Augustine’s avatar Grace Augustine being converted/consumed by Ewya the transcendent bio-net/Tree Goddess?
February 14th, 2010 at 8:57 am
@ narciso: and just how do you think the envoys get needled into a new sleeve?
Altered Carbon IS quantum biology.
Jus’ what do you think quantum consciousness is?
February 14th, 2010 at 9:01 am
The irony of course, is who would really support state of the art technical innovations like hyper light travel and fusion technology,
the idol of your ire
February 14th, 2010 at 9:12 am
@ narciso: are you nuts?
Palin is a pre-trib creationist and a two-digit.
6% of scientists are “conservatives”…there is a reason for that.
Palin would burn me at the stake as a witch if she had the power.
I’m not just a scientist, I’m a Sufi.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:22 am
No, she’s not, keep misinforming your self, she’s actually pushed ahead of the nation in renewal energy development for her state,because
it is rich in all those resources. Now pushing exclusively for those resources we abandoned because of a little thing called the industrial
revolution
February 14th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Again thanks for the link to the Off Balance Sheet Debts,This plays into your post on Social Security. All the Debt the Guv owes the SS Fund is off Balance Sheet.
PS. The context of any Economic comments I might make,or have ever made, is total Liabilities,not booked Debt.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Oh please.
The first thing she’d do is outlaw eSCR fundage and put the bio-luddites back on the President’s Council.
Then she’d task our national assets to search for Noahs Ark.
Then she’d bomb Iran and mandate creationism in highschool science classes.
Fortunately you old white guys will never get a whiff of electoral power again.
The demographic timer.
lawl.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Stop showing your stupidity gleaned from Stewart and Maher, btw where have the breakthroughs in research happened, not in embryonic
but in skin cells.
February 14th, 2010 at 10:08 am
@ strangelet:
Poisonally, I don’t buy the idea that mind and brain can be separated – that whatever was extracted from the latter would be the same consciousness once injected into the new body. Can either of you tell me why I shouldn’t rest on Roger Penrose and Neural Group Selection theory when I try to imagine my imagination?
Since in Avatar we’re dealing with bodies and brains synthesized for the express purpose of receiving the original mind – and processed through the homo sapiens tech or through the Pandora planetary bio-computer – I’m happy to fill in my own back story and make adjustments to my prejudices. But, even if I couldn’t, I’d be happy to set aside my skepticism far enough to see what’s left over, as I do when I enjoy sci-fi by people like Greg Egan, Charles Stross, and others who play with similar concepts, or when I look away from some of the more nonsensical aspects of the Terminator scenarios or even less persuasive sci-fi.
The Richard Morgan stuff, however, left me cold – sorry, I know it’s like your favoritest favorite, strange – too much showy old school revolutionary progressivism and too many future noir cliches. Get a much bigger kick out of the The Golden Age trilogy and Tony Daniel’s Metaplanetary books when it comes to conjuring far future cognitive science.
February 14th, 2010 at 10:15 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
You’re quite welcome for the link – I thought you’d like it! – and I regret only that I didn’t have links to Mike Hudson at hand when I put this dump together. I’m going to add them to an update, and I’m going to keep my eye open for a chance to bring his work into our Zomboid and other discussions.
February 14th, 2010 at 11:50 am
This report by Kohlman, examining just one flight of hirabi, tafkiri, salafi whatever you want to call it
http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefagitmoreturnees0209-1.pdf
February 14th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
@ narciso:
Thank you. Now having read through the first two sagas, can you tell me if I’m supposed to understand a connection between this stiff and charges that the Obama administration is misfeasent because it doesn’t use the same rhetoric as the Bush admin?
February 14th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
You go to Cairo, and you don’t speak a word of the torture that happens there, only blocks away from the podium where you are speaking, in a country that has been under a state of emergency
for nearly thirty years, You denounce Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, but
not what they call Abu Gharib, the proximate prisons. Yet you still
reserve the right to render people to the Filistin branch of the Syrian
secret police, You make a big show of holding a sword of liabilities
over the heads of those folks that actually collected the information, you give Geneva and Miranda protections to people who flout the rules, it all catches up with you in the end
February 14th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
@ narciso:
You go to Cairo to repair relations with the Arab States, you don’t use that platform to publicly chastise your host, particularly while that autocratic host is helping to nail down Hamas in two or three different ways, interdicting weapons shipments from Iran, and supporting Fatah’s efforts at moderation.
Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have to be denounced.
There’s was not ever a sword held over the heads of the interrogators who stayed within the illegitimate guidelines that they were given. That sword was mooted for the people who crossed the lines way far.
February 14th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Why ahould that be, the people we are after would overthrow those regimes if given half a chance. Zawahiri, Seiyf al a Del, the late
Hamza Rabia, the late Abu Haf al Masri, the late Abu Ubeyda al Masri
(al Masri, means the Egyptian, like Al Shams. is the Syrian, and al Libi
is the Libyan) you see the pattern
February 14th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
@ narciso:
help me a little, will you. I’m having trouble seeing the pattern in the conversation.
why should what be?? give me a hint there and I’ll figure the rest out.
February 14th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Rex, you are right to look at the off-loaded debt numbers.
The interesting issue is this. If it gets to that point, the government could just wipe out the benefit – refuse to pay. That wipes out the liability completely.
February 15th, 2010 at 5:44 am
@ CK MacLeod: Interesting you cite Sir Roger. The Penrose/Hamerhoff Model of Orchestrated Quantum Consciousness is the current bleeding edge thought. There is no brain-body duality at the level of subatomic spin…..that is what syncing brain waves is all about.
That is the emergent theme of SBH too, the basis of “pantheism”. prana, wahdat al wujud…that we are “tuned” by our environment and that possibly “god” exists as a sort of platonic substrate and not aa old white bearded anthropomorphic skyfather.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:19 am
@ narciso: please.
eSCR and aSCR are not competitive, they are complimentary.
aSCR resolves rejection problems for organ transplant, but its useless for disease modelling and anti-scenescense research because of insufficient telomere length.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:42 am
Telomeres of too short length,
Were by God to mankind sent,
To make it sure that aged ones,
Would pass to make room for their sons.
Daughters too deserve their day,
And thus the old must pass away,
So the young can in their turn,
Seek their creator’s rules to spurn.
One day mankind may beat the odds,
And take on the powers of the gods.
Sure on that day he’ll mold an image,
And implant within his toy’s equipage,
A strictly limited telomere,
To set for it a cliff that’s sheer.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:10 am
….and Highlander, ty for the reccommends.
I’m backfilling my scifi education. I got Verner Vinge’s A Fire on the Deep from a reseller…I guess it is out of print?
But it is amazing.
Godshatter and the Blight.
But….isnt all scifi progressive in that it imagines the future?
Historical fiction would be “conservative” in that it imagines the past.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:15 am
JEM wrote: Rex, you are right to look at the off-loaded debt numbers.
The interesting issue is this. If it gets to that point, the government could just wipe out the benefit – refuse to pay. That wipes out the liability completely.
A default would not wipe out the liability on the books of the Creditors,but A default of some sort is getting possible.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:21 am
JEM,
If it’s a Default on Social Security payments to the Trust Fund,then the recipients of the default,(70 Million of them thru 2032),would surely default on any taxes owed,also,taxes are paid on Social Security payouts,so would this be the Cluster to end Clusters?
February 15th, 2010 at 7:49 am
For once a former God is whipped,
By His toy with true free will equipped,
The former toy learns something odd,
About fully knowing the mind of God.
Namely knowledge of the entire script,
Makes endless time a boring crypt.
Making mechanical beasts is not a cure,
For their every act a God knows for sure,
To entertain a toy must have free will,
But that means a chance to climb the hill,
And displace its God, a bitter pill.
February 15th, 2010 at 8:28 am
Sully,Great Poem,I loved it
And for a fuller understanding of our Federal Reserve System,
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson02022010.html
This isn’t a fun read.
February 15th, 2010 at 8:40 am
strangelet wrote:
But wouldn’t there have to be some kind of “duality” if it was possible to transplant the entirety of a mind – or even a mental gestalt – from one organism to another?
When I was researching this all back in ancient times – the 1990s – the material that was by the far the most persuasive to me was based on a kind of hyper-Darwinism, consciousness itself both arising and operating according to processes of natural selection, at whatever level you chose to examine it. It was at the same time that artificial intelligence research was moving – it seemed decisively, but I haven’t been keeping close track – from a mind as software/brain as hardware model, which would lead you to try come up with AI programs that were as complex as a mind, to an ecological model in which the mind developed in interaction with an environment, including the organic environment of the brain, that was always complex beyond prescriptive programming of any kind. Whenever you looked at the organic reality – the functioning of the brain and nervous system, the human sensory apparatus, memory and language, etc. – you found massive redundancy and naturally selective processes, survival of the fittest image, thought, word, etc., among competing alternatives, as familiarly in nature among and within organisms. In short, thought itself – any isolated thought process or thinking as an evolving ecosystem – can be understood as functioning according to hyper-accelerated natural selection among what you might call competing species of mentation. I never ran across the phrase, but you’d substitute “ecology of mind” for Minsky’s “society of mind,” since by a parallel process you would also have come to a better understanding of the ecological nature of society.
How could you transfer that ecological, immanent entity that we call a mind or a personality from the ecosystem that makes and re-makes it without transferring the entire ecosystem? Even if you could transfer a holographic snapshot of the mind into another brain, a day, or a second later wouldn’t it be something different, because it would be interacting in complex ways with a new environment (including primarily the local environment of the new brain)?
Vernor Vinge’s books helped me get reading the “new space opera.” Tons o’ fun, if sometimes closer to fantasy than sci-fi. I also try never to miss books by Alastair Reynolds, Peter Watts, Robert Charles Wilson, and Michael Flynn, though they’re not as focused on the issues we were discussing. My guess is that most of them are politically anywhere from well to very far to the left of me, but, if I can look beyond my own earlier political impulses and affinities, why should I have difficulty looking beyond a particular creative writer’s?
Not all futures represent “progress,” and not all progress is Progressive. Progressivism is locked into a 19th-20th century approach to society, government, and public administration. Progressives are very much like those earlier generations of AI researchers trying to write “programs” for processes that always inevitably exceed what’s programmable, doing violence to their subjects almost to the same extent the programs are implemented.
February 15th, 2010 at 8:42 am
@ Sully:
Both new effusions belong in the eternal archives.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:20 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
Well, if there is no payments, there can be no tax, hence no secondary default.
In reality, I think we need to get our Navy up to snuff while we can still convince the Chinese to pay for it. Because when the default comes on government bonds – which has happened before – they will be ticked. We need to make sure we can bottle them up so to speak and not come after us!!
February 15th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Well, if there is no payments, there can be no tax
JEM, Up to age 66,one can work as much as one wants while recieving SS,but there are penalties if you earn more than 14K yearly,from age 66 up,there is no limit to earnings while recieving SS. Plus,you pay taxes on SS itself. So if there’s a SS default,that would start the Dominos dropping.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:32 pm