Economics

We Aren’t Doomed

David Levey and Stuart Brown have an antidote for global gloomsaying about the US economy in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

The U.S. dollar will remain dominant in global trade, payments, and capital flows, based as it is in a country with safe, well-regulated financial markets. Provided U.S. firms maintain their entrepreneurial edge — and despite much anxiety, there is little reason to expect otherwise — global asset managers will continue to want to hold portfolios rich in U.S. corporate stocks and bonds. Although foreign private demand for U.S. assets will fluctuate — witness the slowdown in purchases that precipitated the decline in the U.S. dollar in 2002 and 2003 — rapid growth of world financial wealth will allow the proportion of U.S. assets held by foreigners to increase….

…Only one development could upset this optimistic prognosis: an end to the technological dynamism, openness to trade, and flexibility that have powered the U.S. economy. The biggest threat to U.S. hegemony, accordingly, stems not from the sentiments of foreign investors, but from protectionism and isolationism at home.

Social Commentary

Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse

Professor Minehaha is just the gift that keeps on giving. Now it turns out that he’s not just a fake Indian–his “native American artwork” is plagiarized, and in violation of copyright.

Placing Churchill’s work beside that of renowned artist Thomas E. Mails and the two look like mirror images. But one is a copyrighted drawing. The other is an autographed print by Churchill…

…Compare it side-by-side to the serigraph by Churchill, created some 20 years later: the composition, the images, the placement are nearly identical.

Intellectual property attorney Jim Hubbell said it’s clearly no accident.

“It’s very obvious that the Churchill piece was taken directly from the Mails piece,” Hubbell said. “There’s just too many similarities between the two for it to have been coincidence.”

This guy surely is a piece of work. I’d love to seem him stay on as a poster child for everything that’s wrong with academia and the tenure system, but it’s hard to see how the University of Colorado can keep him on.

[Update a few minutes later]

Michelle Malkin has more, with pictures.

Social Commentary

Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse

Professor Minehaha is just the gift that keeps on giving. Now it turns out that he’s not just a fake Indian–his “native American artwork” is plagiarized, and in violation of copyright.

Placing Churchill’s work beside that of renowned artist Thomas E. Mails and the two look like mirror images. But one is a copyrighted drawing. The other is an autographed print by Churchill…

…Compare it side-by-side to the serigraph by Churchill, created some 20 years later: the composition, the images, the placement are nearly identical.

Intellectual property attorney Jim Hubbell said it’s clearly no accident.

“It’s very obvious that the Churchill piece was taken directly from the Mails piece,” Hubbell said. “There’s just too many similarities between the two for it to have been coincidence.”

This guy surely is a piece of work. I’d love to seem him stay on as a poster child for everything that’s wrong with academia and the tenure system, but it’s hard to see how the University of Colorado can keep him on.

[Update a few minutes later]

Michelle Malkin has more, with pictures.

Social Commentary

Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse

Professor Minehaha is just the gift that keeps on giving. Now it turns out that he’s not just a fake Indian–his “native American artwork” is plagiarized, and in violation of copyright.

Placing Churchill’s work beside that of renowned artist Thomas E. Mails and the two look like mirror images. But one is a copyrighted drawing. The other is an autographed print by Churchill…

…Compare it side-by-side to the serigraph by Churchill, created some 20 years later: the composition, the images, the placement are nearly identical.

Intellectual property attorney Jim Hubbell said it’s clearly no accident.

“It’s very obvious that the Churchill piece was taken directly from the Mails piece,” Hubbell said. “There’s just too many similarities between the two for it to have been coincidence.”

This guy surely is a piece of work. I’d love to seem him stay on as a poster child for everything that’s wrong with academia and the tenure system, but it’s hard to see how the University of Colorado can keep him on.

[Update a few minutes later]

Michelle Malkin has more, with pictures.

Space Science

Best.Saturn.Ever

Alan Boyle has the story.

Cassini has been delivering spectacular results, and we can continue to look forward to much more (barring technical disaster, or a collision with a ring particle). I remember when I was in college, and we were just starting to anticipate the pictures that would be coming in from Voyager in a few years. Today, I suspect that most young people take this kind of imagery for granted. It’s just part of the background tapestry of twenty-first century life, like powerful desktop computers, iPods, and affordable air fares.

Political Commentary

I Don’t Get It

Andrew Sullivan complains about a supposed double standard among conservatives and the staff at the National Review in particular:

Ponnuru argues…that he and others at National Review have indeed opposed Bush’s big government nanny-state tendencies….Fair enough – to a point. But try this counter-factual: If Al Gore, say, had, turned a surplus into years of mounting debt, if he’d added a huge new federal entitlement to Medicare, if he’d over-ridden the rights of states to set their own laws with regard, say, to education, if he’d put tariffs on steel, if he’d increased government spending faster than anyone since LBJ, if he’d said that government’s job was to heal hurt wherever it exists, if he’d ramped up agricultural subsidies, poured money into the Labour and Education Departments, thrown public dollars at corporate America, spent gobs of money on helping individuals in bad marriages, used the Constitution as an instrument of social policy, given government the right to detain people without trial and subject them to torture, and on and on, I don’t think National Review would have been content merely to nitpick. Do you? I think they would have mounted a ferocious attempt to remove the guy from office…I think that tells you a lot about where some conservative thinkers are really coming from.

I guess I fail to see the point. Obviously, they would work to remove a Democrat (and particularly Al Gore) had he followed those same policies. Because he would have no redeeming virtues.

Look, I would have loved to fire George Bush for all those things, but there was no way to do that without replacing him with someone who would almost certainly be even worse on almost all of those issues, and who was unserious about our defense as well. There were no conservatives on offer in this past election on domestic economic issues.

Does Andrew really believe that if the folks at The National Review aren’t actively trying to remove Bush from office (to be replaced with…what, exactly?) that they cannot claim to be conservatives? Sorry, but makes no sense at all. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you work with the president you have, not the one you wish you had.

Political Commentary

I Don’t Get It

Andrew Sullivan complains about a supposed double standard among conservatives and the staff at the National Review in particular:

Ponnuru argues…that he and others at National Review have indeed opposed Bush’s big government nanny-state tendencies….Fair enough – to a point. But try this counter-factual: If Al Gore, say, had, turned a surplus into years of mounting debt, if he’d added a huge new federal entitlement to Medicare, if he’d over-ridden the rights of states to set their own laws with regard, say, to education, if he’d put tariffs on steel, if he’d increased government spending faster than anyone since LBJ, if he’d said that government’s job was to heal hurt wherever it exists, if he’d ramped up agricultural subsidies, poured money into the Labour and Education Departments, thrown public dollars at corporate America, spent gobs of money on helping individuals in bad marriages, used the Constitution as an instrument of social policy, given government the right to detain people without trial and subject them to torture, and on and on, I don’t think National Review would have been content merely to nitpick. Do you? I think they would have mounted a ferocious attempt to remove the guy from office…I think that tells you a lot about where some conservative thinkers are really coming from.

I guess I fail to see the point. Obviously, they would work to remove a Democrat (and particularly Al Gore) had he followed those same policies. Because he would have no redeeming virtues.

Look, I would have loved to fire George Bush for all those things, but there was no way to do that without replacing him with someone who would almost certainly be even worse on almost all of those issues, and who was unserious about our defense as well. There were no conservatives on offer in this past election on domestic economic issues.

Does Andrew really believe that if the folks at The National Review aren’t actively trying to remove Bush from office (to be replaced with…what, exactly?) that they cannot claim to be conservatives? Sorry, but makes no sense at all. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you work with the president you have, not the one you wish you had.

Political Commentary

I Don’t Get It

Andrew Sullivan complains about a supposed double standard among conservatives and the staff at the National Review in particular:

Ponnuru argues…that he and others at National Review have indeed opposed Bush’s big government nanny-state tendencies….Fair enough – to a point. But try this counter-factual: If Al Gore, say, had, turned a surplus into years of mounting debt, if he’d added a huge new federal entitlement to Medicare, if he’d over-ridden the rights of states to set their own laws with regard, say, to education, if he’d put tariffs on steel, if he’d increased government spending faster than anyone since LBJ, if he’d said that government’s job was to heal hurt wherever it exists, if he’d ramped up agricultural subsidies, poured money into the Labour and Education Departments, thrown public dollars at corporate America, spent gobs of money on helping individuals in bad marriages, used the Constitution as an instrument of social policy, given government the right to detain people without trial and subject them to torture, and on and on, I don’t think National Review would have been content merely to nitpick. Do you? I think they would have mounted a ferocious attempt to remove the guy from office…I think that tells you a lot about where some conservative thinkers are really coming from.

I guess I fail to see the point. Obviously, they would work to remove a Democrat (and particularly Al Gore) had he followed those same policies. Because he would have no redeeming virtues.

Look, I would have loved to fire George Bush for all those things, but there was no way to do that without replacing him with someone who would almost certainly be even worse on almost all of those issues, and who was unserious about our defense as well. There were no conservatives on offer in this past election on domestic economic issues.

Does Andrew really believe that if the folks at The National Review aren’t actively trying to remove Bush from office (to be replaced with…what, exactly?) that they cannot claim to be conservatives? Sorry, but makes no sense at all. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you work with the president you have, not the one you wish you had.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!