It’s been out for over a month, but I just noticed this survey on nanotechnology at the Economist.
Strange Bedfellows
If this is the next political divide, I know which side I’m on.
Sailing, Sailing
This could revolutionize interplanetary flight.
The Missing Topic
I didn’t expect the president to mention space last night, and he met my expectations. Reflexive Bush-hating space enthusiasts (you know who you are…) will of course claim that this is indicative of his lack of enthusiasm and support for his own new initiative, but I think that’s nonsense. I think that it’s more reflective of confidence in his ability to continue to execute it without having to rally the public behind it (something that it’s not clear that it’s possible to do). If anything, parading it in a SOTU address might simply draw fire from critics in a time of massive budget deficits.
I will continue to judge the president’s support by his actions, rather than public speeches. He got the full NASA budget passed last fall, using a rare threat of a presidential veto. The program is moving forward as quickly as it’s possible for a bureaucracy like NASA to make it happen, with concept studies underway, an RFP about to be released for the CEV, and plans for a Lead System Integrator to be selected this year. Ultimately, it’s hardware, not speeches, that will get us into space.
Smarter Than The Market?
I’d love to see what Mindles and Jane, and Tyler Cowen, think about this:
A model that assumes stock market traders have zero intelligence has been found to mimic the behaviour of the London Stock Exchange very closely.
However, the surprising result does not mean traders are actually just buying and selling at random, say researchers. Instead, it suggests that the movement of markets depend less on the strategic behaviour of traders and more on the structure and constraints of the trading system itself.
The Next Cover Of Time Magazine?
Probably not, but it should be.
Objective
Cox and Forkum have a tribute to honor the centenary of the birth of Ayn Rand.
Fighting Fire With Fire
Here’s an amusing response to the fake capture of the soldier in Iraq.
[Update a few minutes later]
Osama’s been captured, too!
[Another update]
Team America to the rescue!
Second Anniversary
Two years ago, I (and much of the rest of the world) woke up to learn that Columbia had been destroyed on entry. Here were my immediate thoughts at the time (before we had much data to work with).
“Get Out The Non-Vote” Campaign Fails
January 31, 2005
Baghdad (APUPI) For the second time in less than three months, a popular media campaign designed to influence voting patterns has proven impotent, as millions of Iraqis refused to heed heart-felt calls to avoid exercising their franchise this past weekend.
Roughly modeled after the “Vote Or Die!” campaign of hip-hop empresario P. Diddy last fall, like that effort, Musab al “DeCapitan” Zarqawi’s campaign to suppress the vote in Iraq seems to have had little effect on voter turnout.
With the thrilling and enervating slogan “Vote And Die!,” “DeCapitan” hoped that he could arouse the incipient Iraqi voters, most of whom had never voted before, from their pro-democracy lethargy, and get them out to support his insurgency by continuing to not vote. He was relying on his popularity among former regime supporters and enthusiasts of Al Qaeda, the most recent fad among the young, to keep people of all ages from the polls.
“Our theory was that there was nothing being wrong with P. Diddy’s campaign, except that he didn’t explain the process, and wasn’t graphic enough in the descriptions of exactly how the dying was to be occurring,” explained Qarbom al Qarblewi, an al Zarqawi spokesman. “They weren’t learning until after the election how fatal this non-voting could be, when it was too late.”
He went on to describe the differences between the two campaigns: “In infidel America, you had ‘Rock the Vote.’ In Iraq we had a campaign called ‘Stone the Voter,’ in which we promised every infidel with a blue finger who was supporting an unIslamic democracy that they would be buried up to their necks and have stones hurled at their heads until they were dead.”
Other ads sponsored by the campaign described beheadings, car bombings, and shootings of anyone who attempted to go out to a voting location. There were even warnings about the deadly nature of blue ink.
But it was all for naught, as the voters turned out in droves, in apparent indifference to the imploring from the charismatic murderer.
Perhaps the most puzzling feature of the failure was that it occurred in the face of so much publicity. The campaign was heavily covered not just by the local media, such as Al Jazeera and the Arab press, but also by the mainstream media of the US, including CNN, Fox and the major networks. They broadcast the al Zarqawi threats on an almost nightly basis, with interviews of enthusiastic non-voters, who swore that they would not be going to the polls out of fear for their lives.
“Unlike P. Diddy, we could not get the support of Senator Clinton for our campaign, but we did get much support from other famous and popular American celebrities, like Michael Moore, as well as locals like Osama bin Laden,” explained al Qarblewi. “We’re very disappointed, and just can’t understand why we couldn’t get the message out.”