From Virginia Postrel. People who think we are in a depression, or are nostalgic for one, are clueless. Also, thoughts on the inevitability of bubbles.
A Pack, Not A Herd
Some sense from across the pond, on the policy foolishness of disarming the citizenry. As Mumbai showed, it only makes people helpless victims against the enemy. And in broad terms, the enemy is anyone who worships entropy and mayhem. As Alfred said in Dark Knight, “Some men just want to see the world burn.” And they will get their wish if we don’t defend ourselves against them.
Rhetoric about standing firm against terrorists aside, in Britain we have no more legal deterrent to prevent an armed assault than did the people of Mumbai, and individually we would be just as helpless as victims. The Mumbai massacre could happen in London tomorrow; but probably it could not have happened to Londoners 100 years ago.
In January 1909 two such anarchists, lately come from an attempt to blow up the president of France, tried to commit a robbery in north London, armed with automatic pistols. Edwardian Londoners, however, shot back – and the anarchists were pursued through the streets by a spontaneous hue-and-cry. The police, who could not find the key to their own gun cupboard, borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by, while other citizens armed with revolvers and shotguns preferred to use their weapons themselves to bring the assailants down.
Today we are probably more shocked at the idea of so many ordinary Londoners carrying guns in the street than we are at the idea of an armed robbery. But the world of Conan Doyle’s Dr Watson, pocketing his revolver before he walked the London streets, was real. The arming of the populace guaranteed rather than disturbed the peace.
Nineteenth-century London (and India) was much better suited for civil defense against monsters like this than the twenty-first century version.
More Super Sizing Thoughts
From John Tierney. I’ve discussed this extensively in the past, and tied it to Shuttle costs. As I noted then, if you want to eat healthy, and not overeat (particularly the wrong kinds of foods), don’t eat out.
Dogs And Cats
Alan Boyle has an interesting article about differences between their hunting styles. Dogs are built more for endurance, cats for stealth. And it notes one other thing that’s obvious once pointed out — dogs are much more domesticated than cats are, because we’ve been coevolving for a lot longer. Dogs have been helping humans hunt for tens of thousands of years, whereas cats only got involved with us with the advent of agriculture (when they came to the granaries for rodent hunting, and decided to stick around). so that explains why the dog is “man’s best friend.” Cats haven’t been as interactive with us, and haven’t done it for as long, which is why they’re much more independent.
Remember
Sixty-seven years ago, a date that still lives in infamy. And this year, it too falls on a Sunday. Will September 11th be remembered as long? It seems that, despite the recent attacks in India, many have forgotten that we are at war with an ideology just as (if not more) dangerous than the ones we fought then.
Randy Barnett happened to be visiting Honolulu, coincidentally, and describes the memorials. I was there a couple years ago, and though not on the anniversary (it was a few weeks earlier), it was a somber and interesting experience.
First They Came For The Mormons
…but this time, even though they aren’t Mormons, they said something. That’s called pluralism, folks.
Inflation Not A Threat
…yet. I think that there’s a typo here, though:
Some experts argue that Fed chief Ben Bernanke is simply replacing money annihilated in our economy’s “Great Deleveraging” and that he should print even more. Retired securities lawyer Frederick Feldkamp, a Michigan native, says the Treasury’s nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alone erased $33 billion in bank capital. The Treasury inadvertently wiped out the two mortgage giants’ preferred stock, which hundreds of banks had held as core capital, and which was considered so safe that regulations let the banks leverage that capital by as much as 50 to 1 when making loans. Feldkamp reckons that when banks wrote off the $33 billion in preferred stock, support for about $1.65 billion in debt was erased — a significant credit contraction.
I think that’s supposed to be $1.65 trillion. $1.65 billion is seat-cushion change these days…
BCS Declares Germany Winner Of WWII
This is pretty funny.
“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work — including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule — our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”
The US came in fourth, with only two victories — Germany and Japan.
It reminds me of the old joke that college football is the only sport where the champion is determined by drunks arguing in bars. Which is why they brought in the computers, I guess.
Space Solar Power And Launch Costs
There’s a long piece in this week’s Economist on the current prospects for solar power satellites. It’s a pretty good overview, but has a few problems. First of all, it doesn’t mention lasers at all. This is particularly a large oversight when it comes to the discussion of military applications. If space-based power is used for military logistics, it’s unlikely that it will be of the microwave variety — the power density is far too low to be practical for many of the envisioned needs. Lasers are more likely (though they will still not be a cost-effective weapon, despite the paranoia of some who will oppose the concept).
Also, in the discussion on launch costs, they didn’t spend enough time discussing the suborbital route, though they mentioned it. And while there was never much prospect of Gene Myers launching ETs into orbit, the chance that it will happen now is essentially nil, so the discussion of Space Islands is (at best) anachronistic. A description of Bob Bigelow’s activities with his orbital facilities, which weren’t mentioned at all, would have been much more useful and relevant to the reader.
[Update a few minutes later]
There seems to be a push on to get the Obama administration to adopt SBSP as a new energy initiative. Given all the other energy alternatives they want to chase (wind, terrestrial solar, etc.) why not? Even if it doesn’t pan out, it could result in lower launch costs for other things, which (as the report points out) are a prerequisite.
Blogroll
I don’t know when I’ll get around to figuring out how to properly incorporate it into the new template (and it really needs weeding/updating as well), but in response to a question in comments, I’ve added a link to my old index page with it, in the upper left box.