Remembering Our History, or Ignoring Lessons?.
The admiral does not see a lot of the type of fighting we’ve seen recently? What the heck is he expecting instead?
Remembering Our History, or Ignoring Lessons?
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Category Archives: Society / History
9 Chickweed Lane is sublime
A rarity in the comics, 9 Chickweed Lane spotlights music and dance with superb artistry that complements Brooke McEldowney’s strong-minded characters. A popular comic strip about three generations of family, 9 Chickweed Lane features strong characters, flights of fancy and an intuitive grasp of all kinds of relationships. The strip was recognized in 2006 for its brilliant artistry and intellectual humor when it was named Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society. The strip appears in 60 newspapers worldwide, including the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Calgary Sun and Columbus Dispatch. Central character Edda Burber is dancing to the beat of a different drummer these days as McEldowney focuses 9 Chickweed Lane more on the story of a young woman who moves away from home to perform with a prestigious metropolitan ballet company in New York City. Although it may seem like a completely new strip, 9 Chickweed Lane is peopled with very familiar friends, like furry feline Solange, and Edda’s childhood friend and recent love interest, Amos.
I have browsed far into the archives, I adore this comic strip!
Manufacturing in the US
US manufacturing has always been in a state of transition rather than straight decline, just like agriculture it has become brain rather than labor intensive though in both cases there is a need for a certain degree of physical toughness, or aptitude, as well. With the easy low cost labor sources ‘tapped out’ and US energy ‘issues’ reduced by the Natural Gas boom, US manufacturing is on a growth trajectory.
Amity Shlaes vs Krugman
Aside
This piece by Amity Shlaes on Bloomberg is an interesting defense of austerity as a way out of recession, depression, it shows that historically austerity can work well and there is no reason to think that it will not work today. Given our problems this strengthens my feeling that austerity (and cutting gov’t and its entitlements sharply) is the way forward.
Commercial Crew Launch funding issues cause concerns
Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | NASA decision increases risk in commercial crew program.
Congress short funded the commercial ISS crew/cargo program (by 1/2!!!!) the only good result being the continued use of cooperative agreement funding tools rather than the (potentially) more controlling fixed price contracts. Some concerns about delays and risks are very appropriate but it’s possible this not all bad. One of the comments pointed out that the senatorial launch system got funded as well and suggests a great solution, take some of the SLS money for CCL and then offer the big launcher requirement up to the eSpace competitors for solution on a commercial basis.
Some very blunt advice…
This article from the Cato Institute is very hard for me to argue with. Essentially the only parts of gov’t that matter when talking about deficits are (drum roll please) Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the Defense department. And even the DoD is relatively small beer, it’s a traditional bee in the bonnet of Libertarian/Cato types (with some reason.) Mr. Bandow points out that all of these programs have to become purely means tested, I think the age has to move up into the mid seventies and should start doing so essentially on a year every year basis ASAP and that anyone ten years or more from ‘retirement’ would be affected, ten years is a huge time horizon to deal with the change.
Anyway read the article it’s timely and prescribes the sort of major overhaul we need.
Space and entropy
A Hubble picture I think its looking into the hot hydrogen spectrum
Just some writing therapy other than Elgin, struggling a bit with Elgin in New York. I think having that deadline in front of me was effective even after I’d gotten over the base line. But that’s the way it is.
Spent too much time today reading articles and blogs on the current state of the world. Things are starting to look up in the US and yet most of the pundits are saying it’s going to be a flash in the pan, especially if the Euro resumes its crash into the toilet. And Oh, even if the Europeans pull it out, the Chinese are probably going to implode. And if the Chinese don’t implode then we need start worrying about their hegemonic intentions in the far east.
And then you have the Arab spring, all of which are now turning out to be pro Islamists of one stripe or another….well duh! Of course they are, the secular piece of the population almost has to be small be definition and they were rebelling against various levels of despotism that was supported at least partly by secular and pro-Israel US/Europe. The reaction is going to blow back. One just has to hope that the more liberal (reasonable set of rights and open economy) arms of the Islamists remain in control because the majority realize that the hardliner conservatives will keep them in at least a deep a hole as they have been for the last fifty years.
As to space and entropy…
space
1. the unlimited or incalculably great three-dimensional realm or expanse in which all material objects are located and all events occur.
2. the portion or extent of this in a given instance; extent or room in three dimensions: the space occupied by a body.
3. extent or area in two dimensions; a particular extent of surface: to fill out blank spaces in a document.
4. Fine Arts
a. the designed and structured surface of a picture: In Mondrian’s later work he organized space in highly complex rhythms.
b. the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface.
5. outer space
en·tro·py
1.Thermodynamics .
a. (on a macroscopic scale) a function of thermodynamic variables, as temperature, pressure, or composition, that is a measure of the energy that is not available for work during a thermodynamic process. A closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy.
b. (in statistical mechanics) a measure of the randomness of the microscopic constituents of a thermodynamic system.
2. (in data transmission and information theory) a measure of the loss of information in a transmitted signal or message.
3. (in cosmology) a hypothetical tendency for the universe to attain a state of maximum homogeneity in which all matter is at a uniform temperature (heat death).
4. a doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration.
NASA Space Act Agreements Face New Limits | AVIATION WEEK
NASA Space Act Agreements Face New Limits | AVIATION WEEK.
Arrrgh…not satisfied with gutting the commercial access program by funding it at ~50% they are now putting on the iron shackles.
The Lady is Not for Turning
Photo from UK Daily Telegraph original AFP
Great synopsis of the mistakes driving the collapse of the Eurozone…punditry is now betting on collapse of some form.
This is a very clear explanation of what went wrong with the US Housing market over a very long time.
Big problems rarely appear from nowhere….this piece from the American Interest jives with many other articles, puts it in a longer context.
Fannie, Freddie and the House of Cards
By Mary Martell
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (collectively the two largest “GSEs”, or government-sponsored enterprises) have engaged in a broad range of residential mortgage activities for many years.1 The economic disaster of recent times has drawn considerable attention to Freddie and Fannie, which is not surprising considering the role that the mortgage sector of the U.S. banking system played in that debacle. Together the two institutions hold or pool about $5 trillion worth of mortgages, and so sketchy were their operations that in September 2008 the U.S. government had to bail them out and place them in conservatorship to keep the entire mortgage market from imploding. While the U.S. government has by now been made whole by TARP-assisted banks, it is not clear whether the billions of dollars provided to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac afloat will ever be returned to the U.S. Treasury.”
Read the whole thing
This World and Others 