Sunday, December 30, 2007
THE CREDIT CRUNCH, IN VERSE
Would you buy my CDO?
I do not like them, Broker Joe
I do not like your CDO!
Would you like it here or there?
I would not like it here or there
I would not like it anywhere
I do not like your CDO
I do not like it, Broker Joe
Read the whole thing.
4:02 PM
WORTH PONDERING
We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.
--Eric Hoffer, via Brian Micklethwait
Previous Worth Pondering
9:41 AM
Friday, December 28, 2007
SOMETIMES IT TAKES A MARXIST
...to really appreciate capitalism.
(cross-posted at Chicago Boyz)
6:22 AM
Thursday, December 27, 2007
A LETTER FROM IRAQ
...which really deserves to be read.
2:43 PM
Monday, December 24, 2007
CHRISTMAS 2007
A Christmas reading from Thomas Pynchon.
Rick Darby has some thoughts on the season.
An air traffic control version of The Night Before Christmas.
The first radio broadcast of voice and music took place on Christmas Eve, 1906. Or maybe not.
On December 25, 1944, the Battle of the Bulge was still very much in progress. Here is a contemporary radio report.
And here is a complaint that Christmas is not what it once was. From 1740.
7:48 AM
Sunday, December 23, 2007
CHRISTMAS MUSIC
Here's a nice site devoted to French Christmas carols.
1:59 PM
WORTHWHILE READING
The Anchoress gets her nails done, and talks with some immigrants about the meaning of America.
1:55 PM
Thursday, December 20, 2007
CHARLEMAGNE: NOW IN PAPERBACK
Jeff Sypeck's book Becoming Charlemagne, which I reviewed earlier this year, is now available in paperback.
Jeff's blog is here.
6:14 PM
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
MORE MEDIA DISINTERMEDIATION?
See my post at Chicago Boyz.
9:15 AM
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
BLAM! SOCK! POW! EPISODE #2
Snarky Barron's columnist Alan Abelson was once said by someone to have "predicted seven of the last four recessions." In a letter to the editor (12/12), an investment consultant writes:
In Alan Abelson's soul, it is always 6 AM in a one-room apartment with a view of nothing. I can taste the ashes and bitter coffee.
I actually think Abelson provides a useful counerpart to the manic perma-bulls who pervade the Wall Street media, although I often disagree with him on investing and almost always disagree with him on politics. But the above is truly an excellent example of the art of invective.
On a more serious note, Roger Simon devastates Lawrence O'Donnell.
8:00 AM
Monday, December 17, 2007
THOUGHTS ON HOLLYWOOD
...from Emmy-award-winning screenwriter Robert Avrech:
Say what you will about the old Hollywood moguls; they were crude, they were ruthless, they often treated talent like cattle. But they loved America. Almost every original studio head was a dirt poor Jewish immigrant fleeing pogroms, who made it in the Goldina Medina, the Golden Land. They were grateful to live in America, grateful for our freedoms, and they placed the enormous weight and prestige of their studios behind the war effort.
Jason Apuzzo develops the thought further:
There’s a culture that’s taken over Hollywood that wasn’t there during the half-century Golden Age: Hollywood Culture. It’s not a spurious correlation that once upon a time when this industry made great films that also enthralled the masses, almost everyone who worked in Hollywood came from someplace else. From foreign countries, as Robert mentioned, but also from the heartland of America – raised among their eventual audience on farms, in small towns, and in tenaments. As a general rule, this just isn’t true anymore. Maybe they weren’t raised on right on Sunset Boulevard, but most likely somewhere in Southern California, Manhattan, the theatre district of some big city, or some other place most of us don’t know of. I’m not saying one’s better than the other. Fine people come from all places. But the disconnect is very real.
You have generations here now; cliques of people comfortable working with each other, with much in common, but unfortunately, it’s the bubble they most have in common. And let’s face it, they don’t like us very much. You know how I know that? I’ve seen their films.
Several interesting comments on Jason's post.
9:20 AM
Friday, December 14, 2007
BLAM! SOCK! POW!
Ann Althouse is in fine form these days, taking on a pretentious article, in the New Republic:
Wouldn't Charles Dickens be laughing at you — with your reactionary twaddle and your meager profits?
UPDATE: Actor Ron Silver takes on NYT columnist Paul Krugman and does a great job of demolition.
7:13 AM
Thursday, December 13, 2007
70 YEARS AGO
On this day in 1937, the Chinese city of Nanking fell to the Imperial Japanese Army. This marked the beginning of the events known as the Rape of Nanking. Estimates of the number of people killed--civilians and prisoners of war--range between 100,000 and 400,000. These killings were not collateral damage from military operations: they were outright murder, often involving great sadism.
Frederic Smoler:
The massacres are rarely mentioned at any length in most modern books I read recounting the origins of the Second World War, or by my students, when they enumerate the causes of American entry into the Second World War, but rising American determination to stop Japanese aggression in Chine spiked sharply when news of the massacres reached the United States.
More here.
(via Tinkerty Tonk)
1:40 PM
FUN WITH WORDS
Apodyopsis, dyscallignia, and snoutband
7:56 AM
LAYOUT: PRINT VS ONLINE
Why are so many websites so hard to read? This designer suggests that layout conventions that work well in print are too frequently used in the on-line environment where they are not effective.
(via Gongol)
7:50 AM
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILLS
WSJ has an interesting item on William Kamkwamba, a 20-year-old in Malawi who has built his own windmills to generate electricity and is now helping others to do the same.
Related: Technology for the Poor, Continued
8:28 AM
Monday, December 10, 2007
MONOPOLY: NOW WITH CMOs
A letter to Financial Times (12/8) responds to an article on the board game Monopoly:
...Monopoly players preparing for the Christmas playing season may be interested in some additional house rules, aimed at reflecting more closely real life, namely, the introduction of a residential mortgaged-backed securities market, and then, to make it really fun, build a derivatives market around it.
A friend of mine introduced this into his game many years ago - it's actually quite simple, despite what many would have one believe - and it was astonishing how regularly the bank went bust, and how often the "contracts" were traded below par.
Much trouble, interestingly enough, derived from players over-leveraging on Mayfair and Park Lane. It was in fact a sort of inverse to the subprime, and maybe a pointer to Credit Crisis - the Sequel.
9:28 AM
Friday, December 07, 2007
METAPHORS, INTERFACES, AND THOUGHT PROCESSES
See my post at Chicago Boyz.
12:46 PM
PEARL HARBOR DAY
One woman's memories.
U.S. Navy history site.
UPDATE: Neptunus Lex remembers a visit to Pearl Harbor while serving aboard the USS Constellation.
6:13 AM
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
INTERESTING THOUGHTS ON CHINA
...from David Brooks, who suggests that the Chinese Communist Party, in its current form, is something like "the Harvard Alumni Association with an army."
via the Four-Eyed Gremlin.
2:22 PM
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
ANTIETAM
Bitter has some haunting photographs.
11:55 AM
Monday, December 03, 2007
THE TRANSISTOR IS 60
In December 1947, Bells Labs scientists unveiled the device that would become known as the transistor.
Link via Instapundit and The Speculist.
See also my post about missed opportunities in the semiconducter industry: Leaving a Trillion on the Table.
6:43 AM
Saturday, December 01, 2007
"THE SELF-DESIGNING HIGH-RELIABILITY ORGANIZATION"
An interesting article on aircraft carrier flight operations from the standpoint of organization design, linked from my post at Chicago Boyz.
12:45 PM
Friday, November 30, 2007
HEAVY OIL--A BREAKTHROUGH?
The University of Bath announced that one of its researchers has developed a greatly improved process for the extraction of heavy oil....a substance which exists in great quantities, but for which extraction has hitherto been too expensive.
The air-injection process developed by Prof Malcom Greaves is said to recover 70-80% of the oil, compared with 10-40% using other technologies. The process was first used at the Christina Lake site in the Athabasca Oil Sands, Canada. This pilot operation--currently producing 3000 barrels per day beginning June 2006--is producing from deposits of bitumen - similar to the surface coating of roads - rather than heavy oil. The first test with the heavy oil for which the process was developed will be at at Duvernay Petroleum site in Alberta.
Much more about heavy oil and its extraction in this, which I haven't yet read.
I haven't yet seen any numbers on estimated cost per barrel--also, I'm guessing that the refining process for this syrup-like substance will be more expensive than that for the lighter oils. But there's apparently a lot of this stuff...the main locations being Russia, Venezuela, and (thankfully) Canada.
Professor Greaves has been working on this technology for 17 years--it must be a real thrill for him to see it finally beginning to enter commercial production.
(via The Energy Blog)
8:31 AM
Thursday, November 29, 2007
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
Here's a math textbook which includes the following exercise:
A. If math were a color, it would be --, because --.
B. If it were a food, it would be --, because --.
C. If it were weather, it would be --, because --.
This series of textbooks has been dropped by Texas, but is mandated for use in the New York City schools.
Via Joanne Jacobs.
6:47 AM
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
THE DOWNSIDE OF A STRONG CURRENCY
Interesting--if somewhat strident--thoughts on the current state of the Euro and its impact on European economies.
10:46 AM
Monday, November 26, 2007
"SMART" VS "HARD-WORKING"
In an experiment conducted with 400 fifth-graders, half were praised for being "really smart" for doing well on a test; the others were praised for their effort. The kind of praise received had interesting effects on their future behavior.
The students were next given two tasks to choose from: one that was easy--but from which they would learn little--and one that was more challenging. The majority of the "really smart" group chose the simple task, while 90% of the "hard-working" group chose the more difficult one.
Finally, they were given another test--a difficult one--and asked to write anonymously about their experience to another school and report their scores. 37% of the "really smart group" lied about their scores, while only 13% of the other group did.
The researcher who did the above research (Carol Dweck of Stanford) also did a related study with college students. The subjects were divided into two groups: the first was assigned reading asserting that intelligence is fixed, and the second group was given reading asserting that intelligence can grow and develop if you work at it. They were then given a very difficult test on which most did badly, and after getting the results they were given the option of looking at the scores and strategies of those who did worse or those who did better. Students who had been exposed to the "fixed" propaganda tended to look at the work of those who had performed worse, whereas those exposed to the "growth" propaganda chose more frequently to look at the work of those who had performed better.
6:05 AM
Sunday, November 25, 2007
TECHNOLOGY FOR THE POOR, CTD
A couple of years ago, I posted about International Development Enterprises, a non-profit that develops and markets low-cost irrigation devices. The post also discusses Dr Amy Smith, an MIT mechanical engineer who specializes in the invention of technology for the very poor. Her work has included innovations in grain milling and water purification.
Here's another organization that operates in the same general space. Their principal creation to date is the universal nut sheller, designed to serve the half billion people who depend on peanuts as a primary source of protein. The history of the device is interesting: in 2002, a sound-and-light engineer named Jock Brandis visited a village in Mali for the purpose of repairing some local machinery. He noticed that women were spending hours shelling peanuts--which had very hard shells consequent to the sun-drying process. Some of the women had bleeding hands, and the whole process was so labor-intensive that it discouraged development of peanuts as a cash crop. It is estimated that in Africa alone, women spend 4 billion hours per year shelling peanuts by hand. If you assume 4000 working hours per person per year, this equates to one million people shelling peanuts full time.
Brandis saw that the lives of the local people could be improved if they had a machine to do the shelling, but could not locate an appropriate product. So he invented one. His machine can be made from a couple of concrete casting (created via a reusable fiberglass mold) and a small number of metal parts--assembly requires only basic hand tools and a welder. Although the device is hand-powered, it can shell 50 kg of peanuts per hour, compared with the 1.5 kg that average individual can shell by hand.
Simple and cleverly-engineered devices, designed to be assembled and supported under realistic field conditions, can make a major contribution to the economic development of impoverished countries.
12:44 PM
Friday, November 23, 2007
I HOPE THIS STORY IS APOCRYPHAL
...but I'm afraid it's not.
A factory, an employee suggestion system, and the measurement of sucess.
via Lean Blog.
6:06 AM
Thursday, November 22, 2007
THANKSGIVING AND TEMPORAL BIGOTRY
(rerun of a post from 2003. Cross-posted today at Chicago Boyz.)
Stuart Buck encountered a teacher who said "Kids learn so much these days. Did you know that today a schoolchild learns more between the freshman and senior years of high school than our grandparents learned in their entire lives?" ("She said this as if she had read it in some authoritative source", Stuart comments.)
She probably had read it in some supposedly-authoritative source, but it's an idiotic statement nevertheless. What, precisely, is this wonderful knowledge that high-school seniors have today and which the 40-year-olds of 1840 or 1900 were lacking?
The example of knowledge that people usually throw out is "computers." But the truth is, to be a casual user of computers (I'm not talking about programming and systems design), you don't need much knowledge. You need "keyboarding skills"--once called "typing." And you need to know some simple conventions as to how the operating system expects you to interact with it. That's about it. Not much informational or conceptual depth there.
Consider the knowledge possessed by by the Captain of a sailing merchant ship, circa 1840. He had to understand celestial navigation: this meant he had to understand trigonometry and logarithms. He had to possess the knowledge--mostly "tacit knowledge," rather than book-learning--of how to handle his ship in various winds and weathers. He might well be responsible for making deals concerning cargo in various ports, and hence had to have a reasonable understanding of business and of trade conditions. He had to have some knowledge of maritime law.
Outside of the strictly professional sphere, his knowedge probably depended on his family background. If he came from a family that was reasonably well-off, he probably knew several of Shakespeare's plays. He probably had a smattering of Latin and even Greek. Of how many high-school (or college) seniors can these statements be made today?
(In his post, Stuart compares knowledge levels using his grandfather--a farmer--as an example.)
Today's "progressives," particularly those in the educational field, seem to have a deep desire to put down previous generations, and to assume we have nothing to learn from them. It's a form of temporal bigotry, and is the direct opposite of the spirit of appreciation upon which we should be focusing particularly at Thanksgiving.
As C S Lewis said: If you want to destroy an infantry unit, you cut it off from its neighboring units. If you want to destroy a generation, you cut it off from previous generations. (Approximate quote.)
How better to conduct such destruction than to tell people that previous generations were ignorant and that we have nothing to learn from them?
7:13 AM
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
ELECTRONIC PAPER--FINALLY A COMMERCIAL PROPOSITION?
See my post at Chicago Boyz.
9:09 AM
Monday, November 19, 2007
A CONSERVATIVE IN HOLLYWOOD
Emmy-award-winning screenwriter Robert Avrech shares his experiences in dealing with the mental rigidity and bias that are unfortunately so common in his industry.
His excellent blog is here.
9:24 AM
Saturday, November 17, 2007
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
In the U.K., a leading children's author was told to drop a fire-breathing dragon shown in a new book - because the publishers feared they could be sued under health and safety regulations. (via Five Feet of Fury)
And in Cambridge, Massachusetts, election commission officials ordered the removal of Boy Scout donation boxes collecting amenities for troops serving overseas. Someone complained that the collection boxes were "pro-war."
7:18 AM
Friday, November 16, 2007
ACADEMICS AND ENTERTAINERS
See my post and the ensuing discussion at Chicago Boyz.
3:41 PM
SOVEREIGN WEALTH: THE LEADING EDGE
Governments are increasingly looking at improving the return on their currency reserves by investing them in corporate stocks and bonds, and in private equity partnerships, rather than limiting their investments to the traditional government bonds. The phrase "sovereign wealth funds" has been used to refer to these efforts.
Advanced Micro Devices announced today that it has received a $622 million investment from the Mubadala Development Company, which is wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi.
I expect we will be seeing much more of this kind of thing, with significant implications for the markets as well as for government policy.
More on the AMD/Mubadala deal, and its implications for AMD's competitive position vis-a-vis Intel, here.
8:32 AM
Thursday, November 15, 2007
PETERS ON THE MYTHS OF MODERN WARFARE
Ralph Peters writes about the 12 myths of 21st century war. These include:
Myth No. 1: War doesn’t change anything.
Myth No. 2: Victory is impossible today.
Myth No. 3: Insurgencies can never be defeated.
Myth No. 4: There’s no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems.
Myth No. 5: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies.
Myth No. 6: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs.
Peters is always an interesting and provocative thinker--read the whole thing.
Via Dr Sanity, who has a discussion on the article.
3:36 PM
INTERESTING ESOTERICA
Document custodians are the Nerdiest Nerds there are...They are the thin red-tape line between us and chaos...They are, personally and institutionally, the kind of people who count the teaspoons after the dinner party guests leave.
From Tanta at Calculated Risk, an amazing source of information (and humor!) concerning all things mortage-related.
12:39 PM
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
WORTHWHILE READING
Via Right on the Left Coast, some heartfelt thoughts from an Iraqi exile:
I know those who are wedded to the idea of a failed Iraq are calling me a deluded idiot and worse. But things are improving slowly. My relatives in Baghdad say there's no comparison; things are much better than they were six months ago. They can visit friends in different areas and walk about the neighbourhood in the evening.
Frankly, I don't understand why so many mock us for wanting a future for Iraq. Is your hatred for George Bush so great that you prefer to see millions of civilians suffer just to prove him wrong?
It really comes down to this: you are determined to see Iraq become a permanent hellhole because you hate Bush. And we are determined to see Iraq become a success, because we want to live.
And via Newmark's Door, Megan McArdle offers a ringing defense of school vouchers--and an attack on the hypocrisy of many vouchers opponents:
A private school doesn't need to be Groton in order to make it worthwhile sending needy kids there; it just needs to be better than the hell-hole they currently attend. And frankly, that's a really, really low bar. There are a lot of kids for whom a trip to Chuck E. Cheese would be safer and more educational than a day at their district school.
Read the whole thing.
6:35 AM
Monday, November 12, 2007
VETERANS DAY
...an appropriate occasion for making a contribution to Project Valour-IT. This effort provides voice-controlled laptops to Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who, due to the nature of their wounds, are not able to use a standard computer keyboard.
You can contribute here. Please help if you can--the results so far for this campaign are not tremendously impressive.
Here are some poetic thoughts on a nation's responsibility to its veterans.
11:58 AM
Saturday, November 10, 2007
DANGERS OF SUPERHEATED 'STEEM
A recent study shows a significant increase in narcissism among college students over the last 25 years. The authors believe that the trend is related to the simple-minded "self-esteem-building" programs that have become popular.
"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."
Dr Sanity has an extensive discussion: Ego-Stroking Madness.
See also the numerous posts in my superheated 'steem thread.
6:14 AM
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
THOUGHT CONTROL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
As most blog readers know, UD's indoctrination program was terminated by the President of that institution in the wake of pressure by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the blogosphere, and some newspapers. There is lots of information on this case at the FIRE website.
Be sure to read this document...the second part describes an indoctrination session with a woman who wasn't going along with the program, and showed a lot of courage and spirit in standing up to intrusiveness and incipient totalitarianism.
There is a related discussion at University Diaries.
6:10 AM
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
STORING LIGHTNING IN A JAR--UPDATE
I've written previously about ultracapacitors, which store electricity in a way similar to the Leyden Jars used by Benjamin Franklin in his lightning experiments. (More information here.)
Spectrum has just published a fairly long article about the state of play in the ultracapacitor field, and about how this technology might fit into the overall energy mix.
2:55 PM
Sunday, November 04, 2007
A VERY WORTHWHILE CAUSE
Please consider making a contribution to Project Valour-IT. See my post at Chicago Boyz.
8:38 PM
Saturday, November 03, 2007
APPEASEMENT, MORAL EQUIVALENCY, AND THE NYT
On June 7, 1981, Israel jets destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. The editorial reaction of The New York Times was this:
Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago.
Contrary to its official assertion, therefore, Israel was not in ‘mortal danger' of being outgunned. It faced a potential danger of losing its Middle East nuclear monopoly, of being deterred one day from the use of atomic weapons in war.
The kind of reasoning demonstrated in this editorial was also on display a few decades earlier:
When Germany moved troops into the Rhineland in 1936, many argued that there was no reason for concern. "There is no more reason why German territory should be demilitarized than French, Belgian, or British," editorialized one British newspaper. This argument is structurally identical to the one made by the NYT above.
Similarly, the British statesman Lord Lothian asserted that Germany could not be expected to accept armament limitations without first being permitted to re-arm. His thought process is summarized in the book The Appeasers: "If Germany were allowed to rearm, this would give her an 'equality' that would enable her to sit without any sense of weakness or inferiority at the Disarmament Conference."
The 1981 NYT editorial, and the comments of the appeasers from the 1930s, are obviously ridiculous today. But the same kinds of reasoning continue to be very common.
Rhineland editorial is from Hitler and His Secret Partners, by James Pool. The Appeasers is by Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott.
6:41 AM
Thursday, November 01, 2007
IMPORTANT READING
ShrinkWrapped writes about the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism, particularly in Britain.
8:17 PM
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
GOON SQUAD
See my post at Chicago Boyz.
4:39 PM
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
HALLOWEEN
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye
And the spirits that stand
By the naked man
In the Book of Moons, defend ye!
That of your five sound sense
You never be forsaken
Nor wander from
Yourself with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon
The moon's my constant mistress
And the lonely owl my marrow
The flaming drake
And the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow
I know more than Apollo
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I see the stars
At mortal wars
And the rounded welkin weeping
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander
With a burning spear
And a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world's end
Methinks it is no journey
(Not specifically a Halloween poem, but it certainly sets the mood, doesn't it? This is Tom O'Bedlam's Song, dating from sometime around 1600. There are lots more verses, and many different versions.)
8:17 PM
Monday, October 29, 2007
INTERESTING DATA
The per-pupil cost of public school education, compared with the price per barrel of oil, over the last 78 years. At Carpe Diem.
7:14 AM
Sunday, October 28, 2007
NOTEWORTHY, BUT NOT NOTED
Iraqi officers and soldiers contributed money for the wildfire victims in California.
These Iraqi troops have plenty of problems of their own, and most of them probably don't have all that much money--but still made an effort to help out American disaster victimes.
I have not been able to locate a single mention of this story in the old media.
6:56 AM
Friday, October 26, 2007
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
National Review reports that the University of Delaware asked Asaf Romirowsky to step down from an academic panel--because Romirowsky is a former member of the Israel Defense Forces who has been stationed in the West Bank, and another panelist wasn't sure he would be "comfortable" appearing on a panel with someone having that background.
Via Seraphic Secret.
6:10 AM
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
MANAGEMENT ADVICE FROM 1797
At Chicago Boyz. (Based on a Photon Courier post from a couple of years ago.)
7:27 AM
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
For years, the Paso Robles (CA) post office has displayed photos of U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. But after someone complained, the pictures were taken down.
The good news is that the pictures are now back up following outrage from local citizens and the involvement of a Congressman. It's disturbing, though, that the regional postal center made the decision to take them down in the first place.
8:39 PM
Monday, October 22, 2007
WORTHWHILE READING
Recursive Self-Doubt
Curiosity as a Competitive Advantage
("Curiosity" link via the Lean Blog)
8:27 AM
INTERESTING DATA POINT
A real-estate broker in Florida, in a letter to Barrons:
Our normal percentage of web traffic from Canadian browsers approximates 7.5%--but has been a whopping 40% since Oct 1.
As she says, it's too early to know how many of the browsers will turn into buyers. But declines in the dollar certainly do make U.S. real estate more attractive to citizens of other countries, and this phenomenon may help in putting an eventual floor under price declines--at least in those locations which are desirable for vacation and/or retirement.
6:01 AM
Thursday, October 18, 2007
PLANNING AND ACTION
A thoughtful piece by Tom Peters. Excerpt:
Years ago, in my McKinsey days, one of my bosses was bemoaning the help we were getting from an "economic genius." He said, "Tom, consider a matrix. One axis boils down to 'simplifier' vs 'complexifier.' The other is 'smart' and 'dumb.' Thus we are dealing with a 2X2 matrix. The analyst-from-heaven is the 'smart simplifier.' The analyst-from hell is 'smart complexifier.' He is, in fact, worse that the 'dumb complexifier,' who you can simply ignore, and the 'dumb simplifier' who might actually be of help."
9:00 AM
USEFUL DATA
Inflation Central is maintained by the Cleveland Fed and has extensive data on inflation in the U.S. and throughout the world. One of the data sets is this analysis of expected inflation derived by comparing yields on standard Treasuries vs yields on Treasury inflation-protected securities.
8:36 AM
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
THE LOST ART OF THE TURN SIGNAL
See my post at Chicago Boyz.
9:51 AM
Friday, October 12, 2007
GREAT BLOGGING STORY
...at Seraphic Secret.
8:26 PM
Thursday, October 11, 2007
PAGING WILLIAM OF OCKHAM
Some "anti-war" protestors have accused the U.S. government of using mechanical dragonflies to spy on them.
Didn't these people ever study Occam's Razor in college?
(via Tinkerty Tonk)
8:22 AM
Sunday, October 07, 2007
TACTICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Here's a story about an anthropologist who is working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan:
Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team’s ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations — in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe — has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results.
The Pentagon's Human Terrain Team program is assigning sociologists and anthropologists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. American officers interviewed for the article seem to feel that the program is worthwhile.
And, of course, some academics disapprove of the whole thing. Indeed, some of them are attempting to create a boycott against the teams.
Read what Neptunus Lex has to say about the work of Tracy and her fellow tactical anthropologists--and about those academics who are trying to undercut that work.
7:57 PM
Friday, October 05, 2007
COURIC ON AMERICA
Katie Couric says that she's not very comfortable with the idea of using the term "we" when referring to the United States. Jonah Goldberg responds.
I wonder if there is any grouping of people for whom Couric would feel it is appropriate to use the "we" word.
Related thoughts from Jules Crittenden.
UPDATE: See also this interesting post on patriotism at Winds of Change.
6:38 AM
Thursday, October 04, 2007
THE PAST OF THE FUTURE
Paleo-Future is a website devoted to visions of the future, as these were portrayed in the media from the 1880s through the 1930s.
Here are some sets of prints reflecting the year 2000 as seen from France in 1910 and from Germany in 1900.
12:46 PM
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
AHMADINEJAD AT COLUMBIA
Tim Rutten offers some thoughts and some history. Via Don Sensing.
And here is some unpleasant history about American universities who went out of their way to be nice to the Nazis in the mid and even the late 1930s.
8:01 AM
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
INTERESTING THOUGHTS ON CDOs
A year ago, Collateralized Debt Obligations were widely viewed as brilliant "financial engineering." Now, they are considerably less in favor. Alan Greenspan recently declared that CDOs "will never get back to the levels and structures that they were, because now everybody knows that you cannot price them."
Writing in Financial Times (9/28), Jan Krahnen of Goethe University argues ("How to revitalise the credit market in one step") that CDOs still have an important role to play, but that some structural changes are needed in order to make risks more predictable and manageable.
The basic idea of credit securitisation is to transform a pool of loans into distinct asset mixtures, some with very low risk and others with high risk. Typically, low-risk senior notes are sold to pension funds and households, while high-risk junior notes are held by banks or hedge funds.
In the literature on asset-backed securities, it is pointed out that the most junior note, the so-called first loss piece, or equity tranche, should permanently be held by the originator. The reason is moral hazard, or the risk of irresponsible lending. This can be reduced if the bank that issued the security monitors its performance and provides other support activities. The lender must remain personally involved or, in financial terms, he must remain at risk by keeping a deductible. The retention of a first loss piece in a CDO transaction achieves exactly this.
In contrast, if the equity tranche of a CDO is sold to some other investor, for example, a mono-line insurer or a hedge fund, then the tie between the originating bank and its borrower is disconnected, and the monitoring and support incentives are weakened or completely dispelled. For the holder of a senior CDO note, the expected loss of his investment will thus rise once the originator sells the equity piece.
and
Subprime mortgages are a prime example of such a zero-deductible market. The tragedy, in retrospect, is that up to now, nobody seemed to care. The information on whether the equity note is held by the originator is not conveyed to investors. Neither the rating agencies nor the regulators have any clue where the equity pieces are in fact being held. One may object that this is probably a minor problem, given that equity pieces typically are fairly small, averaging only 3 per cent of the issue size. However, absolute size is misleading here because, thanks to the construction of a typical CDO transaction, the equity piece covers the lion's share of any expected loss. More precisely, if loans are defaulting, the resulting losses are covered by the holders of the equity piece, up to its nominal value, before more senior bondholders have to sustain any losses at all.
In a response to the Krahnen article, a pension portfolio manager from Finland argues that it would be better if the CDO originator holds a portion of the second-loss tranche, rather than the equity tranche, because of the differential behavior of risk and reward across the various tranches.
The overall point here is about the alignment of incentives. A CDO originator who will have a continuing financial interest in the pool is likely to behave differently than one whose financial interest ends when the securities are sold to others. When investing--whether you are a pension fund or an individual--it is important to consider the incentives that drive other parties involved in the investment.
7:55 AM
Saturday, September 29, 2007
61 YEARS OF COMMErCIAL ELECTRONIC COMPUTING
In September 1946, IBM introducted the IBM 603 Electronic Multiplier. It was not the first machine to calculate using electronic methods, but it was the first one to be made available commercially, as a standard production product, with a list price.
The 603 didn't do much. It took two numbers from a punched card, multiplied them together, and punched the result out on the same card...this was done at the rate of slightly under 2 cards per second. To get this functionality, you paid a rental of about $500/month, which probably represents a purcase-price equivalent of about $18000. Remember, those prices are in 1946 dollars, so in today's money, the 603 costs about $7500 per month or $270,000 as a purchase. The fact that companies and other organizations were willing to pay this much money for a machine with such limited functionality indicates what a bottleneck computation must have been in the pre-computer era. (Prior to the 603, IBM did offer a machine with the ability to multiply, but it was an electromechanical device which took several seconds for each operation.)
The 603 allowed IBM to introduce its customers and its field force to electronics with a device that was much less complex and threatening than the "giant electronic brains" of the era, and hence helped paved the way for the company's later success with general-purpose computers. This was a somewhat serendipitous result, since neither Watson Sr nor Watson Jr was yet convinced that the general-purpose computer would ever be more than a rare and expensive tool for scientists. They (especially Watson Jr) did believe, however, that electronics in some form would be important to IBM's future, and the 603 was the first incarnation of that belief.
Only about 100 of the 603s were made before IBM upgraded the product to the considerably more capable IBM 604...a device that could be programmed to a limited extent using a plugboard, but was still much simpler than the stored-program computers of the day. Thousands of 604s were sold, and were used for applications ranging from garden-variety accounting to aircraft and missile design to the design of the lenses for the Todd-AO widescreen projection system for movie theaters. I expect that there are airplanes flying today that were designed with the aid of 604s.
Often, a relatively simple product can play an important transitional role in the acceptance of a new technology.
7:26 AM
Thursday, September 27, 2007
THE END OF THE TRADE DEFICIT?
The U.S. trade deficit has been around for a long time...so long that it seems like a natural feature of the international economic order This interesting Financial Times article points out that the deficit is falling (as a percent of GDP) and suggests that it will be further reduced--maybe even two zero.
U.S. exports are growing rapidly, partly as a function of the weakness of the dollar. Export growth is running about 14.8 per cent year-over-year, while import growth is only 5.1 per cent. That's a ratio of about 3:1.
Also, if the problems in the U.S. housing market spread to the broader economy, then pressures on consumer spending will act against imports, further narrowing the export-import gap.
Definitely a thought-provoking article.
6:22 PM
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
NOOR INAYAT KHAN: THE MOVIE
See my post at ChicagoBoyz.
6:24 PM
Thursday, September 20, 2007
COOL MARKETING & STRATEGY STORY
One might think that making bicycle parts (sold to bike manufacturers for assembly into finished products) would be a boring business, without much scope for innovative thinking. But then, one would be wrong.
BusinessWeek (9/17) has a story on Shimano, a leading OEM supplier to the bicycle industry. Shimano observed that--despite all the highly-visible biking enthusiasts with their expensive, high-technology bikes--ridership in the U.S. has actually gone down since 1996. Research done by the design consultancy IDEO suggested the reason why many people had stopped riding: they were intimidated by the perception that cycling had become highly technical, expensive, and really only for serious athletes in great shape and with lots of time to devote to the sport. The situation was not helped by certain bike-shop employees who took a dismissive attitude toward customers who just wanted a basic bike, preferring to spend their time with the congnoscenti. But there was hope: "Everyone we talked to, as soon as we talked about bikes, a smile came to their face," observed IDEO's David Webster.
Shimano set out to rebuild the casual-biking market...a real challenge, given their position in the supply chain. Remember, Shimano neither manufactures bikes nor sells them--it is only a component supplier.
What they did was to develop a design concept for a "fun" bike, which somewhat resembled a child's bike in that it is braked by pedaling backwards rather than by using a lever--also, there was no need to change gears. This was accomplished not by restricting the bike to a single gear ratio, but rather by an automatic transmission controlled by a microprocessor. The design also had comfort and convenience features, like a mini-trunk to store a cell phone.
Then, Shimano went out to convince bike manufacturers that they should build products based on this design concept. Most were initially dubious. "It was kind of like Audi meets Dr Seuss," said a product manager at Raleigh America. "Shimano thought this was the next big thing, and we were like, 'Is it?'" Finally, Raleigh and two other companies agreed to give the idea a try.
Shimano also undertook the improve the shopping experience with an empathy training program for bike industry execs who have direct contact with bike-shop staff. The (mostly male) execs were sent to buy cosmetics at Sephora, the idea being to give them an appreciation of the experience of shopping for something you know little or nothing about. The company also addressed the concerns of potential customers about riding safety, by lobbying for more bicycle paths and creating a website to help people find safe routes in the communities.
Results so far? The 30,000 bikes made since the spring are sold out. The marketing campaign is being expanded this fall.
I've said it before: there are no inherently boring industries, just boring people who create boring companies. Happily, it sounds like Shimano is run by the other kind of executive. Our fate, my dear Brutus, is not in our SIC codes, but in ourselves.
(SIC code = Standard Industrial Classification code)
8:00 PM
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
HISTORY TEST
Try this history and civics test. Hopefully, you will do better than the typical American college student. Based on tests administered to 14000 students, less than half of college seniors know that NATO was formed to resist Soviet expansion, or that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution. See a summary of the results here.
At most colleges, scores did not improve very much between the freshman year and the senior year. At Cornell, they actually went down.
Note the predictable excuse-making by spokesmen for the higher-education establishment
5:47 AM
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
PRESIDENT BUSH MEETS WITH BLOGGERS
The President recently invited several milbloggers to come in for a round-table interview. There's a report at The Mudville Gazette; see also the Washington Post.
8:01 AM
Sunday, September 16, 2007
WORTH PONDERING
Leaders don't create followers. They create more leaders.
--Tom Peters, quoted in IBD 6/23/04
Previous Worth Pondering
4:49 PM
LOCAL GOVERNMENTS VS INDUSTRY
As a counterpoint to the post immediately below this one, see my Chicago Boyz post about the way some municipal governments are treating manufacturers.
UPDATE: An interesting discussion on the place of manufacturing in the American psyche, at the above link.
6:28 AM
Friday, September 14, 2007
COOL MANUFACTURING STORY
In 1998, Drew Greenblatt bought a small company, Marlin Steel Wire Products, that made wire baskets and racks for retailers and the food service industry. Among other things, Marlin made the racks used by cafes to display bagels. At the time, bagel shops were opening all over the place, and Greenblatt felt that with a little modernization and cost reduction (he moved the company from Brooklyn to Baltimore) the business could do very well.
Then the Atkins diet came along, putting a damper on the bagel boom. At the same time, Chinese manufacturers began offering low-cost substitutes for Marlin's products. In an attempt to reduce his own costs, Greenblatt invested in fast and expensive production robots, but the business still lost money--$200K on total sales of about $1 million.
Read here about how Greenblatt saved his business and grew it to the $3 million level, while increasing the workforce from 16 to 22 and raising the average wage from $6/hr to more that $15/hr today. Another article here.
Via ShopFloor.org
Marlin's website is here.
7:16 AM
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
9/11 PLUS SIX YEARS
(This is a rerun, with minor updates, of my post from this day in 2006.)
I am increasingly worried about our prospects for success in the battle against those who would destroy our civilization. America and the other democracies possess great military, economic, and intellectual strengths--but severe internal divisions threaten our ability to use these resources effectively.
Within days of the collapse of the Towers, it started. "Progressive" demonstrators brought out the stilt-walkers, the Uncle Sam constumes, and the giant puppets of George Bush. They carried signs accusing America of planning "genocide" against the people of Afghanistan.
Professors and journalists preached about the sins of Western civilization, asserting that we had brought it all on ourselves. A well-known writer wrote of her unease when her daughter chose to buy and display an American flag. Some universities banned the display of American flags in dormitories, claiming that such display was "provocative."
Opinions such as these have metastacized to the point at which they are no longer irrelevant to mainstream politics. Former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, along with other leading Democrats, attended a special screening of Michael Moore's movie Farenheit 9/11. Moore is well-known for his outrageous statements about the country in which he lives--things he is credibly reported to have said include: "(Americans) are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," (in an interview with the British newspaper The Mirror) and "That's why we're smiling all the time. You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down" (to a crowd in Munich) and "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." (to a crowd in Cambridge, England.) And about the terrorists who are killing Americans and Iraqis on a daily basis in Iraq, Moore had this to say: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not `insurgents' or `terrorists' or `The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win."
This is the individual who shared Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic National Convention, and who continues to be very popular in "progressive" circles.
Imagine if a former President, in the midst of World War II, had embraced a man who spoke to foreign audiences about the stupidity of the American people and referred to our German and Japanese enemies as "heroes." Imagine also that such attitudes had been openly embraced by a large part of the Republican Party leadership and by many well-known writers and entertainers. Could Franklin Roosevelt have led the nation to victory under such circumstances?
And continuously, there has been the steady drip-drip-drip of moral equivalence. In September 2003, Howard Dean, now Democratic National Committee Chairman, stated that the US should not "take sides" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Actually, the refusal to draw a bright line against Palestinian terrorism is a major factor that enabled 9/11 and other terrorist atrocities.
Susan Turnbull, Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, referred to the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as murder. Follow this link and you can hear it for yourself. Yes, she corrected herself and changed it to the "bombing" of Zarqawi. However: As far as I can tell, Turnbull is a native speaker of the English language. And I don't think any native English speaker would use the term "murdered" unless they disapproved of what had been done. Certainly, few Americans during WWII would have referred to the "murder" of Admiral Yamamoto (whose plane was shot down after his movement plans became known via communications intercepts) or the "murder" of German war criminals who were executed after the war.
Many individuals, particularly among religious leaders, show a stunning naivete. Annika quotes from a homily at a church in her neighborhood: "What if, instead of bombing Afghanistan, we had dropped food, medicine and education?"
How could anyone with an IQ above refrigerator temperature say such a thing? Even if education could somehow be "dropped," isn't this priest aware that the Taliban specifically denied education to women, and greatly limited the kinds of education that were available to men? Does he think the Taliban's executions at the soccer stadium, or its destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, were motivated by a desire for food and medicine?
People who say such things are so caught up in the catch-phrases they have been taught that they are completely unable to understand the real motivations of the enemy.
Bryan Preston: Rather than accept the reality of an enemy that cannot and therefore will not negotiate away what he believes to be the will of God, and rather than accept that this enemy will understand nothing outside total victory or total defeat, and rather than understand that this enemy’s goals include enslaving the entire world in a global caliphate, and rather than accept that this reality necessitates the use of all tools including military might to defend ourselves, millions have embraced an alternate reality. The reality of the enemy outside the West and its motivations being too terrifying and too far beyond their own control, millions now imagine that the enemy in this war is within. The enemy, to them, isn’t the turbaned man behind the plot to hijack multiple airplanes and crash them into multiple buildings in America. The real enemy, to these millions, is the man in the Oval Office, and the man or men behind him.
and
Five years on, the illness of replacing an implacable, indeed alien enemy with one from our own civilizational family has spread and metastasized through the majority of one of our two political parties, and may yet claim a majority of the country itself. History has a way of fading out as the day’s current noise rises in volume, and to them 9-11 is either history or a historic lie. The loudest voice, though not always or even often right, is often the one that gets the last word. And the 9-11 deniers and their allies across the left are nothing if not loud.
Five years on, it’s hard to take a positive look at the war because we are failing to comprehend it. The mass denial of reality is taking half our arsenal of unity and morale away from us. Those of us who see the threat for what it is still say that we will prevail because we are right and because we are America, but that’s just letting the others off the hook. If we’re going to prevail anyway, why should they snap out of their fog? And why should we demand that they do? The truth is, we need the denial to end and we need our countrymen to understand and help, but since we’re powerless to cure it with reason we shrug or laugh at it. But it’s eating away at our ability to defend ourselves.
It has to be said: The mass denial of reality is taking half our arsenal of unity and morale away from us. We are not dealing here merely with normal differences about policy that can be debated by rational individuals. We are have in our midst a significant number of individuals who are filled with rage toward their own country, who are highly susceptible to bizarre conspiracy theories, who lack any form of historical perspective, who are increasingly eager to engage in scapegoating.
Last year, I visited an old industrial facility that has been restored to operating condition. One of the machines there, dating from around 1900, was called an attrition mill. It contains two steel discs, which rotate at high speed in opposite directions, crushing the kernels of grain between them.
I fear that our civilization is caught in a gigantic attrition mill, with one disc being the terrorist enemy, and the other being the reality-deniers within our own societies.
Links worth following:
Neo-Neocon
Fearless Dream
Roger L Simon
A post byJane Galt, written six months after 9/11, when she was volunteering at the World Trade Center site.
A worthwhile essay at The American Thinker: The Moral Emptiness of the Left. Also see Bret Stephens on some of the roots of the left's confused thinking on terrorism.
Finally, Reflecting Light has some eloquent words.
UPDATE: Lead and Gold has links, excerpts, and reflections, all of which are well worth reading.
Neptunus Lex was operations officer on an aircraft carrier when the news came in. Read the comments, too.
6:22 AM
Sunday, September 09, 2007
HIRING AND HIGHER EDUCATION
Paul Graham, who is (among other things) an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, observes that:
No one ever measures recruiters by the later performance of people they turn down.
...to which I would add: While recruiters are rarely measured by the later performance of those turned down, their companies are always measured in this way--in that the absence of good employees who could have been hired is certain to have an adverse impact on both the top and bottom lines. (Particularly, of course, if they go to work for competitors.)
Graham's seed-stage investment firm, Y Combinator, funds about 40 companies a year, out of about 900 applications representing a total of about 2000 people.
Between the volume of people we judge and the rapid, unequivocal test that's applied to our choices, Y Combinator has been an unprecedented opportunity for learning how to pick winners. One of the most surprising things we've learned is how little it matters where people went to college.I thought I'd already been cured of caring about that. There's nothing like going to grad school at Harvard to cure you of any illusions you might have about the average Harvard undergrad. And yet Y Combinator showed us we were still overestimating people who'd been to elite colleges. We'd interview people from MIT or Harvard or Stanford and sometimes find ourselves thinking: they must be smarter than they seem. It took us a few iterations to learn to trust our senses.
The whole thing is well worth reading.
Via the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.
7:25 AM
Saturday, September 08, 2007
COOL STARTUP STORY
An interesting interview with Alieu Conteh, who started the first major cell phone service in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The country has less than 2000 miles of paved roads, and in 1999, when Conteh launched his business, there were fewer than 15000 houses with wireline telephones and no more than 10000 mobile phones--out of an estimated population of 65 million. Conteh's company now has two million subscribers.
Previous Cool Startup Stories.
6:23 AM
Friday, September 07, 2007
WHAT YEAR IS THIS?
...because it increasingly seems that the first 3 digits must be one, nine, and three.
Hatred of Jews has reached new heights in Europe and many points south and east of the old continent. Last year I chaired a blue-ribbon committee of British parliamentarians, including former ministers and a party leader, that examined the problem of anti-Semitism in Britain…Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens — there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant — that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.
This above is from Denis MacShane, a British member of Parliament. See my post at Chicago Boyz.
5:54 AM
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
A NEW SCHOOL YEAR HAS BEGUN
...and Palestinian terrorists celebrated by firing rockets at a day-care center in Israel. "Islamic Jihad" claimed responsibility, saying that the attack was a "present for the new school year."
See also Shabbat in Sderot, which comes via Seraphic Secret.
Most old-media coverage of the attack refers to the rockets as "home made" and "inaccurate," in an attempt to make it seem as if these atrocities are really no big deal. I deconstruct this meme at Defining Weaponry Down.
6:02 AM
Monday, September 03, 2007
SEPTEMBER 1939
On September 1, 1939, Germany launched a massive assault on Poland, thereby igniting the Second World War. See my post at Chicago Boyz, which is based on an earlier Photon Courier post.
7:49 AM
Friday, August 31, 2007
LOOKING IRAQIS IN THE EYE
Last October, Rocco DiPippo took a new job managing renovation and new construction for 17 police stations in Iraq.
Neglected throughout most of the Saddam era, those stations, like most others in Iraq, were in derelict condition. And their condition reflected the state of the Iraqi police forces inhabiting them: broken down, corrupted, barely functional.
I’m an experienced builder, and I’ve successfully managed some very challenging renovation projects. Nevertheless, when detailed pictures of the police stations were dropped on my desk, I looked them over and thought, “How the hell will I get this job get done?”
After six months of difficult work, all 17 police stations had been completed, on time and within budget. That was accomplished in what has been called one of the most dangerous places on earth.
The main reason the police station project succeeded was that most of the Americans and Iraqis assigned to it learned to trust and respect each other, to cooperate, and to focus on a common goal, seeing it through completion. Without the mutual trust and respect, the project would have failed.
and
Iraqis watch us, and they listen to us. What they hear from some of our politicians, political activists and cultural elites has made many of them reluctant to work with the Americans in bringing security to their country. Many Iraqis are afraid of what they are hearing from the Democratic Party leadership and their media shills – that America will abandon them. And as long as they are afraid, they will be reluctant to seize the initiative in their towns and villages and chase out those who are murdering their families.
That reluctance makes sense, since if the Americans leave now, as the Democrats are urging, the murderers will rule them. And the murderers will hunt down and kill anyone who ever worked with or cooperated with Americans.
and
It should come as no surprise to anyone in the placid West that ordinary Iraqis have been slow to rise in defense of their neighborhoods and to join with the Americans in pursuing that task. They have simply been hedging their bets. And why not? The antiwar declarations of the U.S. media, the cultural elites, American academics and high profile Democratic Party politicians tell them that America will abandon them.
Why would Iraqis join with the Americans, risking their necks, if they believe the Americans will leave before the terrorists were defeated? Why should ordinary Iraqis work with American soldiers in hunting down terrorists when prominent Americans like John Kerry, Richard Durbin, Barack Obama, Edward Kennedy, John Murtha and Michael Moore tell them that those soldiers are as cold and as brutal as the terrorists destroying their families, and America’s most publicized civilian activist, Cindy Sheehan, is telling them that the man leading those soldiers, George W. Bush, is the world’s biggest terrorist?
It is a miracle that in spite of these terrible messages, that in ever-increasing numbers, ordinary Iraqis are stepping forward to work with American soldiers to take their country back. It shows that courage and initiative are still alive in ordinary Iraqis. It shows that thirty years of Saddam Hussein is being undone.
The Democratic Party leadership and the media and the U.S. left have had nothing to do with that recovery. Indeed, in the name of trying to destroy a president they hate, they have tried hard to subvert that recovery. I often wonder how many American and Iraqi lives their subversion has cost. I wonder how many mothers have lost their children in Iraq because of the war-time treachery? I know for sure that their subversion has made it harder for ordinary Iraqis to trust American soldiers.
Read the whole thing.
7:37 AM
Thursday, August 30, 2007
THE ANTI-AMANPOUR
Phyllis Chesler watched the CNN series "Warriors of God," and gives her response here.
See also Roger Simon.
5:51 AM
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
BUSINESS FICTION
See my post at Chicago Boyz.
4:11 PM
Saturday, August 25, 2007
PETTY TYRANTS
Putnam County (NY) officials proposed prohibiting free, day-old doughnuts from the county’s five senior centers, which serve about 1,000 lunches each day. Nutritionists questioned whether the doughnuts were suitable snacks for people over 65.
After 250 people signed a petition blasting the idea, the county backed down. Now, "small amounts" of doughnuts, cakes and other baked goods can be served at the centers--but they have to be eaten elsewhere.
via Bitter...and with so much stuff like this going on, no wonder she's bitter...
8:29 PM
EMPLOYEE SHORTAGE IN MONTANA
A McDonald's owner in Montana was unable to hire people for the drive-thru, even at $10/hour. So he outsourced the order-taking to a telemarketing firm in Texas.
Unemployment rates in Montana are very low right now because of the expansion of oil drilling and mining, coupled with growing tourism and retirements of older workers.
via BusinessPundit
Related: Unemployment and Employee Scarcity
7:39 AM
Thursday, August 23, 2007
KENNEDY AND THE WIND FARM
I'm not usually a fan of Greenpeace, but this is pretty funny.
One thing that does need to be pointed out, though...
Read more »
1:02 PM
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
IMPORTANT READING
The writer Anthony Andrews, formerly of the "progressive" or left-liberal persuasion, has a book out about how the events of 9/11--and the reaction thereto by others on the left--caused him to reassess his political beliefs. Excerpt here. Sister Toldjah has thoughts and a discussion. Another passage from the book is here.
Here's a long article on Iraq which is remarkably balanced--even positive--considering the source. The article is from the German magazine Der Spiegel, which has up to now been very anti-Iraq war, anti-George Bush, and sometimes even anti-American. Comments at Medienkritik.
3:16 PM
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
MARKETS, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, AND LOCALITY
John Kay, writing in Financial Times:
In an August financial crisis, Masters of the Universe must use their BlackBerries from the beach. They are constantly in touch with the data, but out of physical contact with their colleagues. The contrast with 1929 is complete. Then, investors were in contact with each other, but not the data. They crowded around in panic, commiserating with each other, as the ticker tape lagged behind the market.
The beaches and Blackberries of August not withstanding, Kay goes on to point out that trading activity still tends to be highly clustered in a few geographic locations:
While trading is on screens rather than in physical markets, the screens are grouped together in trading rooms. When hedge funds move out of Manhattan and the City, they move en masse, like lemmings, to Connecticut and Mayfair...There are practical advantages of congregating together. Clustering proved to be as characteristic of the high-technology industries of the 1990s as it was for the manufacturing businesses of potteries and textiles.
He wonders about the effect of proximity on thought processes:
Physical proximity helps create a conventional wisdom. Even among Oxford philosophers, perhaps the most argumentative people the world has ever known, day-to-day contact tends to create a common view, even a school of philosophy. Discussion may genuinely resolve differences, or else the repetition of disagreements just becomes too wearing. But the abstruseness of linguistic philosophy that resulted illustrates the problem. The self-referential world of people whose communication is mostly with each other can, and frequently does, become divorced from external reality.
So Warren Buffett, the most successful investor in history, trades from Omaha and advocates an investment style characterised as "lethargy bordering on sloth". That approach was favoured by John Maynard Keynes, who operated from Bloomsbury and Cambridge and normally traded by telephone from his bed.
7:10 PM
Monday, August 20, 2007
INTERESTING CHARACTERIZATION OF THE OLD MEDIA
Now, the MSM resembles a family out of a Tennessee Williams’ play. They are obsessed with maintaining appearances and in deep denial about their scandalous secrets. At the same time, they are always keen to heap scorn on the riff-raff who refuse to play along with their self-serving pretenses.
...from Lead and Gold.
5:52 AM
Thursday, August 16, 2007
UNEMPLOYMENT AND EMPLOYEE SCARCITY
...how is it that we have manufacturers desperately and unsuccessfully seeking new employees...and, at the same time, nearby neighborhoods with high unemployment rates? Evolving Excellence has a thought-provoking post.
Is it really asking too much to expect our schools to produce graduates with the ability to calculate the average of three numbers?
6:47 PM
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
APPEASEMENT, THEN AND NOW
August 1938. A German aristocrat named Ewald von Kleist landed in London. He was a strong anti-Nazi, and closely associated with other influential Germans holding anti-Nazi views. His mission was to warn the British government of Hitler's aggressive plans, and to plead for a strong and unambiguous warning, backed up by the credible threat of military force, to be issued by British and French leaders. If the statement was strong enough, von Kleist believed, Hitler would back down from his designs on Czechoslovakia, and would likely be overthrown by his own military.
Baron von Kleist was of course taking a great personal risk--"I have come to you with the halter around my neck," he said. He met with Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and Sir Robert Vansittart. Churchill relayed the substance of the conversation to Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, urging that a serious warning be presented to Hitler in the form of a joint communique signed by the British, the Russians, and the French, with the fullest possible support from the United States.
Neville Chamberlain, though, had other views, telling Halifax that von Kleist was a political enemy of Hitler, blinded by personal hatred. "There are certainly a great many arguments which might be brought to bear against his allegations. We have recently heard other voices from Germany claiming that Hitler's warlike intentions are to be taken seriously and, consequently, this suggests that we should respond to them with gestures of conciliation." The British ambassador to Germany, Henderson, urged the government to ignore any warnings issued by von Kleist and his associates. "Their information," he asserted, "is one-sided, partisan, and intended soley as propaganda against Hitler."
On September 29, the Munich agreement was signed. To wavering German generals, this seemed to confirm that Hitler was unstoppable, or at least that the other great powers had no realistic intention of stopping him.
August 2007. From the Financial Times:
The refusal of Britain and the European Union to engage with Hamas in the Palestinian territories has been strongly criticised by a UK parliamentary inquiry.
In a stinging indictment of the west's approach to the Middle East peace process, a committee of MPs concluded that the international community was partly responsible for the violent clashes between Fatah and Hamas militants in the Gaza strip in June.
and
Referring to the events of June, which led to the break up of the national unity government, the report says that while the actions of both sides in Gaza were "deplorable", the refusal of the international community to lift its boycott of Hamas "meant that this government [the national unity government established by the Mecca agreement] was highly likely to collapse".
Under the policy embarked on by the EU in the wake of Hamas' 2006 election victory, the bloc delivered more than €600m ($820m) in aid to the Palestinians last year but avoided giving financial support to state institutions controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
So in the view of some members of Parliament, the thuggish behavior of Palestinian terrorists in their own territory is at least partly the fault of Britain and other EU countries for not providing them with sufficient recognition and money. The spirit of appeasement lives on.
I'm sure that many liberals, "progressives," and assorted isolationists will object to my comparison of the Nazi threat with the Palestinian terrorists. After all, they will point out, the "militants" (to use their preferred term) have no Panzer divisions and no Luftwaffe.
But this objection ignores the fact that the nature of threats in one era is likely to be different from the nature of threats in another era. Terrorism is a serious menace to all advanced societies, and the threat of terrorism is already having baleful effects on individual freedoms throughout the world--as witnessed by the number of people who have been subjected to death threats, and in some cases actually killed, because of their political and religious views. The failure of the western world to speak out unambiguously against Palestinian terrorism has been a major factor in the spread of a movement which now threatens us all.
Baron von Kleist risked (and eventually lost) his life for his principles, and did not received the attention and support he should have from those then in power in Britain. Today also, there are many who are taking great risks in defense of civilization, and are too often ignored and even undercut by those that should be supporting them. See, for example, this columnist who objects to giving refuge in Britain to those Iraqi interpreters who served with British forces. Observe also the way in which the incredibly courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been severely criticized--mocked as an "Enlightenment Fundamentalist, for example--by certain intellectuals and journalists. (See Dennis Prager's fisking of a Newsweek attack on Hirsi Ali here--also, see this interview of Hirsi Ali by a Canadian TV host who denounced her pro-American views. Her response: "I lived in countries that had no democracy … You grew up in freedom and you can spit on freedom because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom."
In the west today, we have appeasers who in my view go far beyond anything Neville Chamberlain ever did.
UPDATE: The realities of Hamas, here.
UPDATE 2: A discussion of the Hirsi Ali interview, at Chicago Boyz.
2:27 PM
Monday, August 13, 2007
IRAQI-MADE CLOTHING FOR CHRISTMAS?
Iraqi and some American officials are looking to ship Iraqi-made clothing to the U.S. in time for the Christmas season. The clothing would come from state-owned factories, and initial quantities would be limited--perhaps 10,000 leather jackets and 20,000 suits. Discussions are underway with Sears and Wal-Mart about distribution, and a Memphis-based chain called Shelmar has already ordered "a few thousand units" of children's clothes.
Some American officials, however, are raising red flags. A senior United States Embassy official said last week: “You have to look on a case-by-case basis. One of the interesting trade-offs that we face in looking at these enterprises is that they all tended to be very large consumers of electricity, and this is one of the real tensions...I don’t think anybody has a problem in principle with the idea that if you can put people back to work that is a good thing. That is not in this situation an idea that people would argue with, but the question is at what cost are you going to be doing that? And if the cost is taking a lot of electricity from the grid, maybe you want to look at what the alternative uses of that might be.”
I'm not sure that sufficient creativity is being applied to this situation. If the concern is about taking too much electricity from the grid, then one option would to not take it from the grid. Portable generators, installed adjacent to each factory, might be an attractive option...after all, there were factories for a long time before there was such a thing as a grid. I'm don't know what the official's standard of comparison is when he says that these enterprises are "very large consumers of electricity," but I doubt that they even begin to approach the power demand of, say, an aluminum smelter or an electrical steel mill. My guess is that most apparel and textile facilities are well within the capacity of the large portable generators that are now available. Anyhow, someone should be looking at this option.
Also--based on my limited knowledge of the textile and apparel industries, it is the textile segment that is both capital- and energy- intensive, whereas the apparel segment is more labor-intensive. This suggests a strategy that would (in the near-term) focus Iraq on the apparel side, and import the fabrics from somewhere else. Sewing machines, even industrial ones, just don't use all that much electricity.
"Out of the box thinking" may be a hackneyed phrase, but my sense is that when it comes to Iraqi reconstruction, we need more of it.
Anyhow, if anyone really plans to get this clothing made and shipped to U.S. markets in time for Christmas, there isn't a whole lot of time for indecision.
UPDATE: More on this from the Department of Defense, here.
7:27 AM
Sunday, August 12, 2007
BEYOND UNBELIEVABLE
I frequently post under the heading Just Unbelievable. Many bloggers do something similar: for example, starting an item with "you can't make this stuff up."
But Rick goes much further. He has now identified a category of news items so strange as to make him doubt his own existence.
3:17 PM
WORTHWHILE VIEWING
Pamela now has the entire Frank Capra WWII film series Why We Fight up at her site.
5:39 AM
Friday, August 10, 2007
BOOKS BY BLOGGERS
Half a dozen families set out from Council Bluffs, Iowa in the spring of 1844, venturing into a barely known and lightly-tracked wilderness. Those fifty men, women and children walked nearly two thousand miles, across plain and desert, fording rivers and climbing mountains, depending on nothing more than their own skill and courage... and each other. They hoisted their wagons up a sheer mountain cliff, got caught in the snow and nearly starved… and when nearly at the end of their epic venture, were press-ganged into participating a small civil war. They were the first to bring wagons over the perilous wall of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and yet hardly anyone has ever heard of them. Until now.
The blogger known as Sgt Mom has published To Truckee's Trail, a fictionalized version of a real-life story. You can order it here--there's also a fairly long excerpt available in PDF form at the link.
Looks very interesting.
Previous Books by Bloggers.
2:02 PM
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
CZARIST RUSSIA, IN COLOR--NEW PICTURES
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In 2004, the Library of Congress put up an on-line exhibit of color photographs taken in Russia in the early 1900s. (See my post here.) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii took these pictures using a unique color photography process that he developed himself. Filters were used to split the image into reds, greens, and blues (three different plates were recorded.) Display was done using a slide projection system which combined the images again on a screen.
Almost two thousand of the Prokudin-Gorskii photographs are now available for on-line viewing. (The plates were available all along, but the work of combining three B&W images into one color image had to be done for each photograph.) I've only just started to look at the collection, but it looks pretty incredible.
In the original Prokudin-Gorskii process, the images were displayed by what looks like basically an assembly of three separate slide projectors fastened together. It must have been extremely different to achieve proper registration of the three separate images on the screen, and I wouldn't be surprised if the projection system had to be readjusted for each slide. Here's some information about a modern computer-based process for combining the images.
Via Jonathan at Chicago Boyz.
See also this wonderful picture of Moscow in winter at Sheila's blog. And here are some color photographs from the American depression, a period which we probably tend to subliminally assume happened in black and white.
2:45 PM
Monday, August 06, 2007
TWO VERY WORTHWHILE CAUSES
There are a lot of WWII veterans who would like to visit the WWII memorial--and other memorials in the DC area--but can't afford to make the trip. Honor Flight is an organization that provides expense-paid travel and accomodations for these veterans. The goal for 2007 is to take 5000 veterans on these trips, and contributions are needed in order to achieve this goal.
Also, Veterans Aircraft Command is a network of pilots and aircraft owners providing transportation for the wounded veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. They're looking for volunteers with the appropriate pilot qualifications (an instrument rating is required) and multiengine aircraft or high-performance singles.
2:29 PM
Sunday, August 05, 2007
THE FIRST LEAN DENTIST
...he's not called that on account of any extraordinary skininess, but rather because of his application of lean-production principles in his practice. In fact, the judges for the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing have awarded Dr Sami Bahri the title of the world's first lean dentist.
Here's a podcast with Dr Bahri, done by Mark Graban of the Lean Blog. It's worth listening to if you are concerned with improving the effectiveness of any process.
After wrestling for years with scheduling problems, delays, unhappy patients, and staff turnover, Dr Bahri educated himself in Lean principles and specifically in the Toyota Production System. Working closely with his staff, he transformed his practice. There were many specific changes, such as reorganizing the office to avoid unnecessary walking and creating a "flow manager" position to keep activities on schedule--but the real key was reconceptualization of the process, coupled with heavy staff participation in all aspects of the changes.
7:23 AM
Saturday, August 04, 2007
SHAKESPEARE: THE WESTERN
A week ago Monday (7/27), critic Terry Teachout had a rave review of a production of As You Like It by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. In fact, it was such an enthusiastic review that I went up there for Wednesday's performance.
In this staging, the action is transported to the American old west, with costumes to fit. The lines are identical with the original, or nearly so, but the Elizabethan songs in Shakespeare's original are replaced by western songs.
It sounds kind of nutty--and I'm not usually all that fond of modern adaptations of classics--but in this case, it works! In fact, it works brilliantly!
Both the audience and the cast were having a great time, and I imagine that the spirit was a bit similar to that which existed in the original Globe Theater.
The star of the show is clearly Joey Parsons as Rosalind, but all of the performances were superb. I was particularly impressed by Nance Williamson as Jaques the misanthrope--a part that's usually played by a man, as the name suggests, but once again, the nonstandard approach really works.
The venue is beautiful. The Boscobel Restoration is a 19th-century mansion with extensive grounds, perched on a bluff directly across the Hudson River from West Point--performances are in a large and airy tent. People tend to come early and bring food for picnics--serious picnics, too: lots of couple were wheeling coolers that looked sufficient for a family of five or more.
Really a fun evening, and if you're anywhere near Garrison, NY, you should think about going. Here's the festival's web site, which incudes the schedule of performances. Note that As You Like It is alternating with Richard III.
Nice picture of the Boscobel area here.
And here's Terry Teachout's blog.
2:39 PM
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