2016 September 28

Musk Mars Mission

BBC

SpaceX founder Elon Musk gave a keynote speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico on Tuesday.

His plan for colonizing Mars uses a fully reusable transportation system. The spaceship is fueled with methane and oxygen in Earth orbit and refueled on Mars after landing there.

Musk sees two possible futures:
1 Humans experience an event that drives them toward extinction.
2 Humans become a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanetary species, starting with Mars.

To steer for 2, we must:
— Make fully reusable spacecraft
— Master refueling in orbit
— Produce propellant on Mars
— Choose the right fuel

SpaceX has started testing its Raptor rocket engine for an interplanetary launch system. Traveling to Mars and building a base there is a big challenge. We have not yet solved the problem of protecting humans from radiation in deep space.

The Sky's Limit

Oil Change International

The Paris Climate goals require a managed decline of fossil fuel production.

Key findings:
● Potential carbon emissions from the oil, gas, and coal in currently operating fields and mines
    would take us beyond 2 K of warming.
● The reserves in currently operating oil and gas fields alone, even with no coal, would take the
    world beyond 1.5 K.
● With the necessary decline in production to meet climate goals, clean energy can be scaled up
    at a corresponding pace.

We recommend:
● No new fossil fuel extraction or transportation infrastructure should be built.
● Some fields and mines should be closed before fully exploiting their resources.
● Governments and companies should conduct a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry.
 

2016 September 27

Trump Blew It — So What?

Richard Wolffe

In any ordinary election year, by any rational measure, you would say that Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump in their first debate.

Trump Fails the Stamina Test

Ross Douthat

Clinton improved as Trump began to flail. So she won the debate on points and probably won it in the court of public opinion. She didn't goad Trump into a meltdown or knock him out with a devastating attack. She won the night, but he lived to fight another day.

Brexit Boost for Britain?

The Times

Britain will emerge from Brexit stronger and better off than other EU countries within five years, says BILD publisher Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner: "I very simply think that in the long run continental Europe may suffer more from Brexit than England itself. We should not take this whole Brexit decision as a way to blame the Brits. We should take it like a wake-up call for Europe to refresh its political approach."

Europa

New Scientist

The Jovian moon Europa repeatedly spews plumes of water into space. NASA says the Hubble Space Telescope has glimpsed the plumes for a second time, suggesting Europa has an active ocean underneath its ice crust.

STScI astronomer William Sparks: "We may be able to explore that ocean for organic chemicals or even signs of life without having to drill through unknown miles of ice."

In 2014, Sparks and his team watched Europa transit Jupiter and analyzed UV images of the plumes backlit by the planet. The plumes rise some 200 km before raining down again. NASA and ESA will send probes to Europa.

Evolution

Kevin Laland

Our understanding of biological evolution has taken huge strides. Advances in genetics, epigenetics, and developmental biology challenge us to rethink the relationship between genes, organisms, and the environment. There are ways other than genetic mutations to generate heritable variety.

A given set of genes has the potential to produce a variety of phenotypes, depending on the environment in which the organism develops. This developmental plasticity may play an active role in the evolutionary process. Organisms seem to have evolved the ability to respond flexibly to whatever conditions they experience.

A flexible phenotype allows organisms to survive in the short term, with genetic change following later. Experiments reveal that organisms exposed to new environments develop characteristics that resemble those of closely related species adapted to these same environments. This suggests that adaptations may commonly arise through immediate responses to the environment, with natural selection subsequently cementing them through genetic evolution.

Natural selection is currently portrayed as a process in which external agents sort between random variants according to their suitability. But organisms modify their environment and help to determine which of their characteristics are useful. Organisms play a central role in their own evolution.
 

2016 September 26

Genesis

Freeman Dyson

NASA culture is Big Space. Big corporations receive contracts from NASA to produce custom-built hardware and software following NASA procedures at enormous cost. Little Space aims to carry out space operations using hardware and software mass-produced for other purposes by companies in a competitive market at vastly lower cost.

The prospects for future manned space missions conducted within Big Space culture are generally dismal. Any serious risks to the life and health of astronauts would be unacceptable, so few missions are feasible and most of them are unattractive. Risk aversion permeates Big Space culture.

The future of space is a problem of biology rather than of engineering. Rockets solve the easy problem of space travel, to get from here to there. The hard problem is that of biology, to find ways to survive and build communities in space, to adapt the structures of living creatures so they can take root in strange environments.

Biotechnology will advance to the point where we can design and breed entire ecologies of living creatures adapted to survive in remote places away from Earth. A Noah's Ark spacecraft is a baseball-sized object containing living seeds with the genetic instructions for growing millions of species of microbes and plants and animals adapted to live together and support one another in an alien environment. Suitable places to put such arks are planets and moons, and also the more numerous cold dark objects far from the sun, where air is absent, water is frozen into ice, and gravity is weak. Each Noah's Ark will grow into a living world of creatures.

Life can survive anywhere in the universe where there is starlight as a source of energy and a solid surface with ice and minerals as a source of food. Planets and moons are the worst places for life from the point of view of mobility because their gravity is too strong. Life has been stuck here on Earth for three billion years. Our destiny is to be creators of a living universe.
 

2016 September 25

CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT

The New York Times

Hillary Clinton has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas. Donald Trump is the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history. But the best case for Hillary Clinton is not that she is not Donald Trump.

The next president will take office with bigoted, tribalist movements and their leaders on the march. In the Mideast and across Asia, in Russia and eastern Europe, even in Britain and the United States, war, terrorism, and the pressures of globalization are eroding democratic values, fraying alliances, and challenging the ideals of tolerance and charity.

Hillary Clinton has studied these forces and weighed responses to these problems. Our endorsement is rooted in respect for her intellect, experience, toughness, and courage over a career of almost continuous public service, often as the first or only woman in the arena. Her record shows a determined leader intent on creating opportunity for struggling Americans at a time of economic upheaval and on ensuring that the United States remains a force for good in the world.

Through war and recession, Americans born since 9/11 have had to grow up fast, and they deserve a grown-up president. A lifetime's commitment to solving problems in the real world qualifies Hillary Clinton for this job, and the country should put her to work.

Global Hype

Niall Ferguson

President Barack Obama's farewell address to the UN general assembly: "The global economy ... global integration ... our global economy has made life better for billions of men, women and children ... a global supply chain ... global trade ... global capital ... global marketplace ... global education ... global security."

AR Globall Hyperatlas (1991)
 

2016 September 24

Listen for ET

Stephen Hawking

Gazing at the stars I always imagined there was someone up there looking back. As I grow older I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone. After a lifetime of wondering, I am helping to lead a new global effort to find out.

The Breakthrough Listen project will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life. One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back. If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which did not turn out well for the Native Americans.

In recent years, we have found thousands of planets outside our solar system. Finding intelligent life would be the single greatest discovery in history. We would have to give up the idea that we are unique and start acting with more compassion and humility.

New Times

Vince Cable

The center left faces acute crisis. A Conservative government has just perpetrated the biggest policy disaster in generations, leading to an unplanned Brexit, but is being rewarded with large poll leads. Across Europe, center-left parties are struggling to compete with conservative parties and populist movements.

A crisis of financial capitalism has rebounded politically to the benefit of parties of the right. Labour was at the wheel when the ship hit the rocks. It and other left-wing parties in France, Germany, and Scandinavia have also seemed bereft of credible ideas for post-crisis recovery.

The electoral arithmetic is unforgiving. In 2015, the Conservatives and UKIP attracted roughly half of the vote in the UK. Unless the remaining fragments of the opposition can appeal to people who have voted Conservative, the next generation faces the prospect of one-party rule.

AR Democracy could lead to a one-party police state in Fortress UK.
 

2016 September 23

A Global Crisis

David Miliband

According to the UNHCR, in 2015 there were over 65 million people throughout the world who had been uprooted from their homes by conflict and persecution. Over 20 million of these people are refugees. On average, 34,000 people were forced to flee their homes every day of 2015.

Turkey has over 2.7 million refugees from Syria. Lebanon shelters 1 Syrian for every 5 Lebanese citizens. Jordan has nearly 660,000 Syrians known to be on its territory. Pakistan and Iran have, respectively, 1.6 million and 950,000 Afghan refugees. Kenya hosts about 500,000 refugees from Somalia.

Refugees are displaced for an average of 17 years, and those displaced within their own country for an average of 23 years. Humanitarian needs go unaddressed and cause further political disruption. The need to rethink aid policy is overwhelming.

AR Pulling up the drawbridge and raining insults on outsiders is no solution.

A National Crisis

David Miliband

Brexit creates new challenges for the left and reflects the weakness of the left in the UK. Brexit was only possible because Labour shifted from a governing party to the margins of power.

Jeremy Corbyn makes the party unelectable. His half-hearted message about Europe is a betrayal of millions of working people and his equivocation on NATO is dangerous. Domestically, nationalization and cor­porate taxation are not the answer.

Global markets are rewriting the rules. Globalization has created inequalities of income, wealth, and power that challenge the traditional left and it has challenged social norms in a way that breaks the back of the traditional right.

The left needs to ask:
1 Does it put values above doctrine?
2 Does it have policies for wealth creation as well as fair distribution?
3 Does it have an international perspective as well as a national one?

AR So the old left and right are both dead — long live the One Party!
 

2016 September 22

String Theory

K.C. Cole

String theory began as an elegant promise to solve such fundamental problems as quantum gravity. Simply replace point particles with tiny vibrating loops of string. Even more elegant was the math behind it.

The theory said the strings were too small to be probed by experiment. They lived in up to 11 spatial dimensions that were compactified into complex origami shapes, and surely some configuration would turn out to be right for our world. But the complexities refused to reduce to a single theory.

Juan Maldacena found that a 5D string theory including gravity was equivalent to a 4D quantum field theory (QFT). This anti-de Sitter / conformal field theory (AdS/CFT) duality looked like a way to get a handle on gravity by relating it to QFT.

Researchers dug deeper. QFT unified special relativity and quantum mechanics, but they found a huge number of theories. When physicists years ago struggled with the particle zoo they dug down to more fundamental building blocks, like quarks and gluons. Now they want to do the same with QFT.

The flowering of string theory has been great for mathematics and cosmology. The multiverse idea with the selection effect is a natural story of why our world is as it is.
 

2016 September 21

The Messenger of Monotheism

Andy Ross

The Prophet Muhammad brought the message of monotheism to the tribes of Arabia some fourteen centuries ago. In doing so, he raised the Arabs from primitive superstition and world-historical insignificance to become the leading agents of a force for progress that dominated the region stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the Atlantic Ocean for a thousand years. This was a colossal, awesome achievement, eclipsed only by the rise of Europe under the impetus of science and the industrial revolution.
>>>

AR My 5,000 word review of books by Kader Abdolah — see this as a promissory note for my mooted monograph on monotheism.

Hard Brexit

Martin Wolf

I believe that this UK government will not seek to reverse the result of the referendum vote. Theresa May will depart not only from the EU but also from the customs union and the single market. Both deprive the UK of legislative autonomy.

Parliament is constitutionally entitled to ignore the vote result. But the Conservatives would surely follow Labour into ruin if they tried to reverse the outcome. Their Brexiteers would go berserk.

Some Brexiteers propose that the UK should simply repeal the European Communities Act, rather than go through Article 50. Such egregious treaty breaking would hardly be a helpful precursor to the negotiation of new trade agreements. It is essential to go through the formal process of negotiating a departure.

I would like a government prepared to overturn the referendum. In my view the UK is making a huge economic and strategic blunder. The UK has chosen a largely illusory autonomy over EU membership.

AR Amen.
 

2016 September 20

Rule Britannia

Baron Hague of Richmond

Hong Kong, June 29, 1997: Prince Charles and other UK dignitaries were gathered aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia. An invitation to dine on Britannia was eagerly sought, and lucky guests poured up the gangplank. Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher told Latin American ambassadors at dinner about the achievements of Empire: "The trouble with all of you was that you were not colonised by the British."
 

2016 September 19

Europe

Quentin Peel

On September 19, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill delivered a speech in Zurich calling for the creation of a United States of Europe.

Churchill was called the father of Europe. Hugo Young: "But he was also the father of misunderstandings about Britain's part in this Europe. He encouraged Europe to misunderstand Britain, and Britain to misunderstand herself."

Churchill (earlier): "We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not comprised."

The EU referendum campaign was dominated by the debates on immigration and the economy. Foreign, security, and defense policy was discussed only in terms of the costs and benefits to the UK of being a member of the EU.

Since the referendum vote, there has been no indication from UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson or prime minister Theresa May as to how they see the future focus of foreign and security policy. Brexiteers liked the idea of reviving an Anglosphere.

AR Anglocentrism = Xenolinguaphobia

Faith

The New York Times

Reeling from terrorist attacks, an influx of refugees from Africa and the Mideast, and persistent high unemployment and low economic growth, millions of Europeans are losing faith the EU. They are turning in increasing numbers to populist movements and nationalist politicians who promise to protect their security by closing national borders.

If the EU is to survive, its leaders must restore popular faith in its ability to address its problems. EU leaders hope that plans to reinforce security through joint military headquarters, cooperation on military procurement, and expanding a readily deployable EU force will convince European voters that they will be more secure in the union.

AR Festung Europa

God

and I are entangled.

AR This slogan is the key to my goal of unpacking a new psychology that links our modern miph (mathematics—informatics—physics) with Kantian philosophy and monotheism. Roughly, the relation between God and the first-person self is analogous to that between Schrödinger and his cat. The idea came to me this morning — now I just need to write it up in a brief monograph.
 

2016 September 18

Gaia Star Map

Natalie Wolchover

The ESA Gaia space telescope has produced its first catalog of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The data logs the positions and brightness of some 1.1 billion stars, around 1% of the Milky Way total.

Gaia will eventually map the motions of all the stars in its catalog. The data will sharpen our picture of the structure of our galaxy and show how it formed and evolved, as well as how stars evolve.

Gaia data will be used to test models of dark matter. A model proposed by Lisa Randall spreads this invisible stuff through the galaxy in a thin disk, rather than suffusing it in a spherical halo.

As Gaia continues its stargazing, its data will reveal wobbles in the positions of many of the stars, indicating the tug of orbiting worlds. Exoplanet researchers are making use of the data.
 

2016 September 17

UK Will Block EU Army

The Times

UK defense secretary Sir Michael Fallon says he will veto measures to build an EU army for as long as the UK remains a member of the EU. Sir Michael: "We have always been concerned about unnecessarily duplicating what we already have in NATO."

France and Germany will present the EU as a beacon of security and defense in a vulnerable world. They have drawn up a timetable to create a common military force that would rival NATO in capability. The timetable commits Brussels to a plan for the establishment of a "single operational headquarters for all EU civilian and military missions to be more efficient and quicker to act" and a defense fund to boost investment in shared military capabilities.

Angela Merkel: "We need more cooperation, particularly in the area of defense, and a lot more needs to be done on the Franco-German plan."

A new EU defense fund will pay for an embryonic European air force and navy through the Brussels budget for drones, cyber-defense, air transport, and naval vessels. It will fund dual-use EU assets that can be deployed for border and coastguard operations as well as military missions.

Sir Michael: "We will go on being committed to the security of the European continent."

UK Forces Inadequate

Financial Times

General Sir Richard Barrons has sent a long memo to UK defense minister Sir Michael Fallon criticizing UK defense policy:

● There is no military plan to defend the UK in a conventional conflict.
● A Russian air campaign would quickly overwhelm Britain.
● Navy ships and RAF planes lack sufficient support. Systems and stocks are deficient.
● The army is outgunned by professionals elsewhere and can only fight weak opponents.
● Small numbers of expensive pieces of military kit make UK capabilities fragile.
● Manpower is squeezed, with only 40 or so pilots who can fly the new F-35 fighter jets.

Sir Richard: "There is a sense that modern conflict is ordained to be only as small and as short term as we want to afford — and that is absurd."

A senior Whitehall official: "So far there is a lot of talk about deterrence across NATO but what really matters is whether it is credible, certainly as far as Russia is concerned."

British armored warfare capabilities have been cut back over the years. The army now fields only about 168 Challenger main battle tanks, all due for an upgrade. New Russian Armata tanks have a bigger gun, in a robot turret, plus an active protection system.

British aerial surveillance assets are stretched. The RAF fleet of 6 AWACS planes is obsolete and too small to sustain 24-hour coverage over a theater of operation.

The Royal Navy surface fleet is too small. With 2 Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers, plus 6 Type 45 destroyers and a planned 8 Type 26 frigates, the Royal Navy will fly just 48 new F-35 jets.

Amphibious assault forces are being cut back. The number of Bay-class logistics ships has fallen from 4 to 3, and there are no plans to replace HMS Ocean.

The fundamental shortfall is one of strategic oversight and planning. The most recent Strategic Defence and Security Review threat analysis simply rules out a direct threat to the UK.

AR There is no direct threat. The UK is all but surrounded by EU states. Russia would only threaten us through eastern Europe, triggering a NATO response.
 

2016 September 16

Bournemouth

The Guardian

Diane James has been elected the new leader of UKIP: "From one grammar school girl to another, stop the faff, stop the fudge and the farce. Get on with it. Invoke article 50."

UKIP demands: "No to soft Brexit. No to single market controls and no to unrestricted freedom of movement into this country. If they come in, they come in on a fair basis."

AR No to UKIP.

Bratislava

Donald Tusk

Brexit challenges us. Today many people think that being part of the EU stands in the way of stability and security. It is therefore crucial to restore the balance between freedom and security, openness and protection.

The migration crisis was the tipping point. The lack of rapid action and of a uniform European strategy have weakened trust. Rebuilding this trust has become an urgent necessity.

Someone must give back to Europeans their sense of security. We should cooperate more closely when it comes to the exchange of information and operations. At external borders we must ensure that everybody is checked.

Our citizens expect the EU to better protect their interests. Free trade and global competition pose challenges. We must reassure our citizens that we are protecting their interests.

Following Brexit, business as usual is not an option. We will not change the European Union into a single state. We need strong political will and imagination.

AR Festung Europa?
 

2016 September 15

Alexa, Amazon's Ambient Assistant

Financial Times

Amazon unveils Echo, an online speaker and digital assistant for the family home.

Echo is a black or white cylinder with no screen and it blends into the background when not in use. You can ignore it until you ask it to do something, such as play music, find recipes, turn on lights, or shop for stuff. If you ask a factual question, it fetches the answer and replies.

Echo is immobile. You do not pick it up or take it out to use it. It can listen constantly to people around it and respond to them. Alexa is the AI software in the cloud to which Echo appeals when anyone within hearing calls its name. Amazon has built in privacy controls to ensure that Echo does not relay everything you say straight to Alexa. But it is easy. All you have to do is talk.

An ambient computer that converses with people has been a goal since the early days of computing. But the technology for speech recognition and language analysis behind Echo is new. It reflects a leap forward in machine learning during the last decade enabled by faster computers and cloud data.

The trick is to tame the complexity and deliver it simply. Jeff Bezos believes in making things easy. He equates difficulty of use to psychological friction, which reduces the chance of your using a device. His idea is for Amazon to become ambient, blending seamlessly into everyday life.

AR Amazon Alexa may do better than Google Glass.

Big Business Black Boxes

Tim O'Reilly

A black box is a system whose inputs and outputs are known, but the algorithm by which one is transformed to the other is unknown. Algorithms shape shape the stuff we see through Google or Facebook and thus shape the choices we make.

Google and Facebook both know their reputation depends on people finding what they want. Google made search engine optimization easy at first by helping web publishers understand what kinds of things its page rank algorithm valued. Facebook has updated its news feed algorithm to de-emphasize stories with clickbait headlines to create a better user experience.

My four rules for evaluating whether you can trust an algorithm:

1 Its intended outcome is clear to all and easy to check.
2 Success in reaching its outcome is measurable.
3 The goals of its creators and its consumers are aligned.
4 It helps people to make better long term decisions.

Government regulations are also algorithms. But too often they fail my four tests:

1 Some governments have made plain language a priority. But this clarity is rare.

2 Government regulations rarely include any provision for measuring or determining their effect.

3 The goals of regulators and of consumers may be aligned, but often regulations serve the needs of government rather than citizens, or of those with access to the regulatory process.

4 Over time, regulations get out of step with the needs of society. When regulations no longer have the intended effect, they often continue with new regulations simply piled on top of them.

The failure of government to improve its black boxes is one of the major reasons why trust in government is so low.

There is a master algorithm that rules our society: The only obligation of a business is to its shareholders.

AR Shareholders of the world unite!

Crazy, Conceited, Contemptible Crap

Anson Rabinbach

Mein Kampf originally appeared in two volumes in 1925 and in 1926. A 1930 popular edition in one volume ran to a total of 12.4 million copies by 1944. Copyright reverted to the public domain in 2015. The new critical and scholarly edition comprises nearly 2,000 pages with over 3,700 notes in two big volumes. The initial print run of 4,000 copies sold out in days, and sales have reached 14,000, to put it for a time at #2 on the Spiegel bestseller list.

The book was never the bible of National Socialist doctrine. There is little truth in the author's description of himself as an impoverished and unrecognized genius who emerged from a struggle within his soul. The book deals with four basic ideas: space, race, violence, and dictatorship. Passages on racial eugenics and Jews include abundant rhetoric on extermination and elimination. To see the book as a Nazi bible merely affirms its author's claim to have been a prophet.

AR Not for me.
 

2016 September 14

State of the Union 2016

Jean-Claude Juncker

Our European Union is in an existential crisis: high unemployment and social inequality, mountains of public debt, the huge challenge of integrating refugees, security threats, and even the prospect of a member leaving our ranks. We are not the United States of Europe. Our European Union can only work if we all work together to deliver:

1 A Europe that preserves our way of life

Above all, Europe means peace. Our values are freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. Being European also means open trading, the right to privacy, equal pay, protection of our workers and our industries in an increasingly globalized world, and (for some) the euro as a currency that brings huge economic benefits.

2 A Europe that empowers us

We need to reform our European telecommunications markets. We also have to empower our artists and creators and protect their works. Creators of content should be paid fairly for their work. More than anything, we need to invest in our young people.

3 A Europe that defends us

We must defend ourselves against terrorism. We are fighting for our European way of life and our values. We will defend our borders with strict controls. We have to take responsibility for our own defense in complementarity with NATO. The European defense industry needs to innovate.

4 A Europe that takes responsibility

We need the European Union. We can only build it with the member states, never against them. The Commission has to take responsibility by listening to the European Parliament, to all member states, and to the people. It is time we all took responsibility for building a better Europe.
 

2016 September 13

Colliding Black Holes

Natalie Wolchover

Long ago and far away, two massive black holes spiraled together and merged, making waves in spacetime detected by LIGO. The new data has shaken up astrophysics. Experts met in August to discuss the implications at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara.

The first LIGO event was the merger of a pair of black holes of roughly 30 solar mass (M°) apiece. Massive stars explode as supernovas, and their cores collapse into black holes or neutron stars. Most known massive stars live in binary systems. Binary massive stars dance and kiss and suck each other's gas like vampires, and sometimes shrink down to black holes and merge.

The LIGO detections seem to support two theories of binary black hole formation. A new chemically homogeneous model for their formation vies with the classic common envelope model.

The common envelope story starts with two massive stars in a wide orbit. As the first star runs out of fuel in its core, its outer layers puff up to form a red supergiant. Much of this gas gets sucked away by the second star, and the core of the first star eventually collapses into a black hole. The interaction draws the pair closer, so when the second star puffs up into a supergiant it engulfs the two of them in a common envelope. The companions spiral ever closer as they swim through the gas. The gas is lost to space, the core of the second star collapses too, and the two black holes merge.

This model is expected to yield pairs of black holes with mass around 10 M°. The second LIGO event, from merging black holes of 8 M° and 14 M°, fits it. Common envelopes can produce mergers of 30 M° black holes if the progenitor stars weigh around 90 M° and contain almost no metal (elements above H and He). Such systems may be rare.

The chemically homogeneous model begins with two massive stars rotating around each other very rapidly and so closely that they become tidally locked like tango dancers. This stirs the stars and heats them, triggering fusion throughout their interiors until they run out of fuel. Each star then collapses into a massive black hole. They dance on for a few billion years and then merge.

LIGO data suggests that black hole mergers are frequent events.

AR See my blog entries for 2016-06-15 and 2016-02-11.
 

2016 September 12

Hard Brexit

Ben Chu

Consequences of Hard Brexit policy choices:

1 Leaving the single market would likely end UK-based service company rights to sell into EU markets without discrimination or local regulatory barriers. Financial firms based in London would lose their passport to sell services across the EU. Many would move their European HQ out of London. The euro-denominated derivatives clearing trade would also move.

2 Quitting the EU customs union would mean costly customs checks on all British goods entering the single market. Dublin would need to impose customs checks on goods entering its territory from Northern Ireland.

3 Exiting the EU with no negotiations would leave British exporters with no idea of the potential future costs of trade with the EU. The UK would instantly cease to be covered by the 60 or so free trade agreements between the EU and the rest of the world.

4 Lifting all UK tariff barriers and exporting under WTO rules would instantly face British car exporters to Europe with a 10% import tariff on motor vehicles. UK manufacturing firms would be engulfed in a tidal wave of cheap imports from the developing world.

The consequences would be devastating.

Germany 2017

Wolfgang Münchau

German elections are due in fall 2017. If she runs, Chancellor Angela Merkel is likely to win, with the same grand coalition. A new poll puts the AfD at 15% of the vote nationwide, with the CDU coalition down to a bare majority.

The new Bundestag is unlikely to press for a soft Brexit. The SPD does not want it, nor do the Greens or the AfD. It is also unlikely to agree to a Greek debt restructuring or to push for further integration in Europe.

Global Trade

Christopher Booker

This century has seen a revolution in global trade. To improve its speed and security, the World Customs Organisation lets Authorised Economic Operators (AEOs) file all their documentation electronically in advance. Mutual recognition between customs authorities allows goods to be waved through at their destinations.

As a member of the EU, the UK is part of this global system. Negotiating separate AEO status for Britain would take far too long. Remaining in the European Economic Area (EEA) and keeping its AEO status gives the UK both continued access to the single market and a unilateral right to exercise some limited control over immigration from the rest of the EU.

Dropping out of the EEA would be devastating.
 

2016 September 11

Global Vision

Henrik Müller

Germany chairs the G20 from December 1. The G20 is supposed to govern the world. It includes democrats and autocrats, kings and communists, as well as the EU, the most important international institutions and organizations, and thousands of experts.

The EU must refashion itself after the Brexit shock into an effective federal state. Without a united Europe, an international order is hard to imagine, certainly not a free one. We must uphold a vision for the world.

New Religion

Yuval Noah Harari

God is dead. Both Christianity and Communism were created by human beings and are defined by their social functions. Religion is anything that legitimizes human norms and values by arguing that they reflect some superhuman order.

Technology often defines the scope and limits of our religious vision. Scientists today can do much better than the Old Testament God. The faithful may believe that their religion is eternal and unchanging, but religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism change.

New technologies kill old gods and give birth to new gods. Religions that lose touch with the technological realities of the day forfeit their ability even to understand the questions being asked. Hundreds of millions may go on believing in Islam, Christianity, or Hinduism, but numbers alone count for little in history.

Marx and Lenin established the first techno religion in history. Communism came with electricity, railroads, and radio. After Marx, questions of technology and economic production became far more divisive and important than questions about the soul and the afterlife.

Socialism failed to keep up with new technology. Christianity and Islam have turned into largely reactive forces. In the coming decades new techno religions are likely to take over the world.

AR Look out for mine — see my next book.
 

2016 September 10

UK Schools

Theresa May

I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit, not privilege. For far too many children in Britain, the chance they have in life is determined by where they live, or how much money their parents have. We need a school system with the capacity and capability to respond to what they need. Four proposals:

1 Universities should actively strengthen state school attainment. There are not enough students from disadvantaged backgrounds and from ordinary families fulfilling their potential with the grades to get into the best universities. I want our universities to do more to help us to improve the quality of schools so that more students of all backgrounds have the grades, the subjects, and the confidence, to apply to top universities and to be successful.

2 Faith schools and the role they play in a diverse school system should be promoted. We should also ensure that faith schools are properly inclusive and make sure their pupils mix with children of other faiths and backgrounds. I believe it is right to encourage faith communities to play their full part in building the capacity of our schools.

3 Independent schools should face a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status. Independent schools that cannot take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help. I want independent schools to to play a major role in creating more good school places for children from ordinary working families.

4 Selective schools should be reintroduced. They are hugely popular with parents and good for the pupils that attend them. They reduce the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils to almost zero. We should stretch the most academically able to the very highest standards of excellence. We already have selection in specialist disciplines like music and sport. I believe we should take the same approach to support the most academically gifted too.

Every child should have access to a good school place.

AR Good move — grab the center ground, ignite public controversy, force an election, get a bigger majority, becalm the Brexiteers.

Eurexit

Der Spiegel

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble expects Brexit to increase the financial burden on Germany. The German share of EU GDP will rise to 25% from 21% today, increasing the German share of the EU budget by around €4.5 billion for 2019 and 2020 — unless, say, the UK pays for access to the single market or the EU cuts its budget.

AR German taxpayers will be cursing Brits.
 

2016 September 9

Hard Brexit

Peter Foster

Theresa May is clear that voters want control over EU immigration. Options:

1 Requiring all EU citizens to have jobs before they come to the UK is unlikely to reduce the numbers of EU workers entering Britain. Businesses would get around it by offering work on demand.

2 A cap on EU migration in return for limited access to the single market would put a hard ceiling on the numbers. The EU shows no sign of agreeing to such a "have cake and eat it" deal.

3 Work permits for EU workers would let EU citizens come to Britain for holidays and business without a visa, but to seek work they would need to apply for a permit, with a quota for EU nationals.

The EU will reciprocate. Whitehall officials expect the City to lose its passporting rights and its euro clearing facilities. Companies based in Britain will almost certainly have to live with burdensome customs clearing and regulatory certifications.

May is much more interested in the politics of immigration than in the details of the economy. The signs point to a hard Brexit.

AR Hard as in crash and burn?
 

2016 September 8

EU Reform Push

The Times

An EU bloc known as the Visegrad Group (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia) will lobby at the Bratislava summit next week to put national governments back in control of the EU.

The summit will gather all EU-27 leaders to forge a new vision of Europe. It is expected to expose the rift between newer member states in the east and western countries committed to a European project based on open borders and markets.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán:

"Brexit is a fantastic opportunity for us. We are at a historic cultural moment. There is a possibility of a cultural counter-revolution right now ... People don't change, national and religious identities still have their place. There's no European identity that could replace them."

"Economic patriotism is a valid topic to discuss. People say that money doesn't smell but the owner of the money does. Only those nations that have their historic, religious and national identity will survive and be strong."

AR This is the kind of nativist revolt against globalism that powered the Nazis.

Aryans v Arabs

The Times

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the "cursed, evil" Saudi monarchy to be stripped of its role as guardians of Islam's holiest sites. On Monday he accused them of being "puny Satans" in thrall to the US "great Satan" and claimed that Saudi officials had "murdered" injured Iranian pilgrims caught in a stampede during the 2015 hajj.

Saudi Arabia's most senior Sunni cleric, Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh: "These are not Muslims, they are children of magi and their hostility towards Muslims is an old one,” he said in a reference to Zoroastrianism.

Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted: "Indeed; no resemblance between Islam of Iranians & most Muslims & bigoted extremism that Wahhabi top cleric & Saudi terror masters preach."

AR Brace for war in the Gulf.
 

2016 September 7

EU Referendum Rules

David Lammy

We do not know what Brexit means in reality. The country is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Whatever the forthcoming Brexit plan looks like, it should be put to the people in a referendum, or it should be debated and voted on in Parliament, or there should be a general election on the issue.

If we exit the European Union, this House is about to be consumed with legislation that will probably be with us for more than a decade. The task ahead for the nation is gargantuan. We are talking about the sort of effort involved in reconstruction after the war, or the birth or the loss of empire.

Uncertainty is bad for business and our economy. If Whitehall is focused on trying to work out Brexit and then on trying to deliver it, where will the capacity be to tackle many other urgent issues that the country faces? A decision of such significance must be debated and approved by Parliament.

When we voted on the referendum it was described as advisory and non-binding. There was no two-thirds threshold as is required in other nations to validate a major constitutional change of this nature. There was no quadruple lock to ensure that the majority in each of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom agreed with the change.

I cannot see a way out of this other than for the Government to present their plan for Brexit to Parliament so Members can approve or reject it on behalf of their constituents, or to present their plan to the people so they can have their say in either a second vote or in a general election.

AR This is the meat of an excellent speech by Lammy in a House of Commons debate on Monday on a petition questioning the rules for the referendum on June 23.

Killer Robots

Heather M. Roff, Peter W. Singer

In 2012, the Obama administration created a Department of Defense directive setting policy on how the Pentagon handles the questions of autonomous weapons systems (AWS). The directive has a 5-year limit, so Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will need to decide what the US policy on killer robots will be within the first year of their term.

Robots in combat but outside of direct human control is where the technology is headed. The US military is working on at least 21 different projects to increase the autonomous capacities of weapons systems in war. American efforts are being paralleled by research and deployments of increasingly capable systems from nations around the world.

The present US policy does not sufficiently identify what sorts of actions are permissible for various weapons systems. It limits actions with AWS but allows semi-autonomous weapons systems, yet is ambiguous regarding the difference. The directive says it is crucial for "commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force" but no more.

Learning systems are the future of AWS. They will do everything from navigation to target recognition. By learning how to deal with new kinds of targets, they will keep up with the decoys or deceptions that an adversary is likely to try to use. But by definition they might not act predictably. There should be policy guidance on these systems.

The US will gain valuable leverage if it can be the first nation with a robust policy on armed robotics. It would be a bad thing for overall global peace and stability if the US did so alone. The next president will decide US policy on all this.

AR A movie scenario: Imagine a million-strong Chinese army of AWS tanks advancing westward across Asia on a broad front, like locusts, not stopping until they reach the Atlantic Ocean. The tanks might be called massively offensive new-generation off-road (Mongor) vehicles, and the advance the Mongor invasion.
 

2016 September 6

Statement On Brexit

David Davis

Britain is leaving the European Union. There will be no attempt to stay in the EU by the back door. The people have spoken.

Brexit will mean controls on the numbers of people who come to Britain from Europe, but also a positive outcome for those who wish to trade in goods and services.

Brexit is about seizing the huge and exciting opportunities that will flow from a new place for Britain in the world. There will be new freedoms, new opportunities, new horizons.

We can get the right trade policy for the UK. We can create a more dynamic economy. We can encourage the brightest and the best to come to this country.

My new Department for Exiting the European Union will require significant expertise and a consistent approach. Negotiating with the EU will have to be got right. We are going to take the time needed to get it right.

We will be guided by some clear principles:

1 We wish to build a national consensus around our position.
2 While always putting the national interest first, we will always act in good faith towards our
    European partners.
3 Wherever possible we will try to minimise any uncertainty that change can inevitably bring.
4 We will put the sovereignty and supremacy of this Parliament beyond doubt.

We will leave the European Union, but we will not turn our back on Europe.

AR So shall I leave the UK to seek new freedoms, new opportunities, new horizons, but not turn my back on the British Isles? I think this would mean I regarded the UK establishment as beyond reform. Davis seems to think the EU is beyond reform and fit only for scrap.

Merkel and Germany

Sebastian Fischer

The state election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern gives the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a big boost and challenges Chancellor Angela Merkel. The vote was essentially a referendum on Merkel and her policies. Her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won 19% of the vote, down 4% from 2011. The AfD went from zero to almost 21% — the party didn't even exist five years ago.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is home to Merkel's own parliamentary constituency, so the AfD has staged a revolution in her backyard. The election became a single-issue vote on her refugee policies. The CDU is now the third-strongest party in the state, behind the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the AfD. For Merkel, it is a political debacle.

Emotions seem to have triumphed over reason. Merkel has always staked her political success on clear arguments based on facts and figures. Now she will have to do more explaining and take a few hints from the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), which has been sharply critical of her stance on the refugee issue.

The AfD will not disappear soon. The right-wing populists are on the rise. The problem is one for all of Germany.

AR With its population of 1.6 million, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is one of the smaller German states. It lies on the Baltic coast between Hamburg to the west and Szczecin, Poland, to the east. AfD strength there is concentrated in the eastern polling districts near the Polish border. The overall state results for the AfD was just under 21%, but local results ranged from around 12% in the west around Rostock and Schwerin to around 32% in the eastern Greifswald districts, which had been CDU strongholds. Some of the AfD voters had previously voted CDU but many had not voted before.

Reds

Gary Saul Morson

The Russian Revolution of 1917 let 10,000 Bolsheviks take control of an empire. They made up for their small numbers with outsized violence. Bolsheviks invented totalitarianism.

No form of government had ever been so brutal to those it regarded as its own people. Soviet Russia was cruel. Conservative estimates of executions under Lenin and Stalin range around 20 million from 1917 to 1953.

Scholars have documented how many people Marxist-Leninists killed. They have asked whether the deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians or the murderous deportation of all Chechens to central Asia qualify as genocide. They estimate 20 million deaths in the USSR, 65 million in China, 2 million each in Cambodia and North Korea, 1.7 million in African countries, and so on, for a total of about 100 million.

Toasting the 1937 anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Stalin declared: "We will destroy each and every enemy, even if he was an old Bolshevik; we will destroy all his kin, his family. We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts — yes, his thoughts! — threatens the unity of the socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin!"

AR I can see why Germans 80 years ago wanted robust measures to tackle the Red menace.
 

2016 September 5

US Defense

Financial Times

For decades, the synergy between the private sector and the Department of Defense made great tech. Together the Pentagon and the Valley came up with the internet and with global positioning, imaging, and sensor technology. But the relationship is ailing.

US defense secretary Ashton Carter: "I am committed to building and rebuilding the bridges between our national security endeavors at the Pentagon and innovators throughout the nation from the tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley."

DoD National Security Technology Accelerator director Adam Jay Harrison: "The Department of Defense is the world leader in funding high-risk, high-pay-off technology, but too many high-tech businesses and start-ups are turning their backs on us. We are no longer inventing the future."

DoD no longer has the deepest pockets. During the Reagan years, the US government accounted for nearly 50 cents of every research dollar globally. Today the amount is less than 5c per $.

The Pentagon invested nearly $72 billion last year in R&D, more than double Apple, Intel and Google spending on R&D combined, but only $12.5 billion of the DoD spend was in science and technology to support work in DoD labs and engineering centers.

US government work has lost its allure. Splinternet author Scott Malcomson: "For Silicon Valley, it is a disadvantage to be seen as a tool of the US government."

Umbral Moonshine

Miranda Cheng

Intro — Mathematicians dismissed as moonshine the fact that the first important coefficient of a certain j-function is 196,884, the sum of 1 and 196,883, the first two dimensions in which the monster group can be represented. But researchers traced this fact to string theory. The j-function describes string oscillations in a string theory model, and the monster group captures the symmetries of the spacetime these strings inhabit. In K3 string theory, evidence emerged of 23 new moonshine structures connecting symmetry groups with mock modular forms (which include the j-function). The Umbral Moonshine Conjecture that these 23 moonshines exist was proved last year. — Ed

String theory says there are 10 spacetime dimensions. Since we only perceive 4, the other 6 must be compactified. There are something like 10^500 possible ways to compactify them. The search for a toy model leads to a K3 compactification, which captures the key properties of Calabi-Yau manifolds and how string theory behaves on them. You can think of K3 as a flat torus you can fold. The result of smoothing a folded flat torus is a K3 surface.

I explored how black holes behave in this theory. If the K3 dimensions are Calabi-Yau manifolds, black holes can form. Trying to understand string theory in K3 and the black holes that arise in that compactification should also shed light on other problems.

A moonshine relates representations of a finite symmetry group to a function with special symmetries. Underlying this relationship in the case of monstrous moonshine is a string theory. String theory has two geometries. One is the worldsheet geometry of a string moving in time to define a cylinder. If you roll the cylinder and connect the two ends, you get a torus that gives you the symmetry of the j-function. The other geometry in string theory is spacetime, and its symmetry gives you the monster group.

To have a moonshine is to have an algebraic structure. If you look at a theory and ask what kind of particles you have at a certain energy level, this question is infinite, because you can go to higher and higher energies. In monstrous moonshine, this means that if you look at the j-function, there are infinitely many terms that basically capture the energy of the particles. Umbral moonshine says there should be a structure like this.

AR Years ago I used to relish struggling with this stuff.
 

2016 September 4

G20 Warnings

The Guardian

The G20 summit in Hangzhou started badly for UK prime minister Theresa May with warnings from the United States and Japan.

US president Barack Obama warned that the US wanted to focus on trade negotiations with the EU and a bloc of Pacific nations before considering a deal with the UK: "I've committed to Theresa that we will consult closely with her as she and her government move forward on Brexit negotiations ... But ... the first task is figuring out what Brexit means with respect to to Europe. And our first task is making sure we go forward on TTIP negotiations ..."

Japan issued a 15-page warning that concludes: "Japanese businesses with their European headquarters in the UK may decide to transfer their head-office function to continental Europe if EU laws cease to be applicable in the UK after its withdrawal ... In light of the fact that a number of Japanese businesses, invited by the government in some cases, have invested actively to the UK, which was seen to be a gateway to Europe, and have established value-chains across Europe, we strongly request that the UK will consider this fact seriously and respond in a responsible manner to minimise any harmful effects on these businesses."

May: "I won't pretend it is all going to be plain sailing. There will be some difficult times ahead."
 

2016 September 3

Brexit: A Russian View

Arkady Dvorkovich

The British decision to leave the European Union made Europe a little bit weaker. The whole process of getting away from Europe is a difficult one and creates more uncertainties.

For Russia, it is important that Europe is strong. We don't need weak partners. We need strong partners to go forward and provide a better future for Russian and European peoples.

Strong politics makes Europe a big player in the international landscape. Individual countries cannot affect international politics in the same way that a united Europe can do.

Reality

Stuart Clark

Tim Maudlin says physics is about what exists and what it does: "If you answer both of those questions, then I think you have answered the question what is reality."

Quantum theory is our best description of material reality, yet it seems to imply all possible states of a quantum object are equally real until a measurement forces a single state to exist. Why is one state real, and what determines which one? What happens to the other versions — do they simply cease to exist, or do all persist in parallel versions of reality? The mathematics of quantum theory is silent on these questions.

If the mathematical description is precise but the physical interpretation is messy, might mathematics be the only real thing? Are the most fundamental things bits of information?

Jan Westerhoff: "What we perceive as the physical world is a kind of crystallization of abstract mathematical structures."

Any true understanding of reality may require understanding consciousness.

AR I have grappled with these questions for decades. My theory: a primordial qubit buds endlessly into a quangled omnium that crystallizes in the eternal now from future flux onto my local past pile.

Asexuality

Lori Brotto

Asexuality is common. It reflects one of the normal variations in sexual attraction. In almost all cases it is not due to a choice, or a wish, or celibacy, or trauma, or psychological dysfunction or disability.

Researchers are learning more about the neural underpinnings of attractions and the diversity of attractions. We know sexual orientation extends beyond the conventional categories of same sex-attracted, opposite sex-attracted, or attracted to both. The fact that an individual can be asexual shakes up our thinking.

Asexuality by Lori A. Brotto and Morag Yule

77

years ago today, Britain declared war on Germany.

AR In that war Germans played the baddies.
      In the next war — Brits?
 

2016 September 2

UK Universities

Martin Wolf

Conservatives esteem the existence and autonomy of institutions that have stood the test of time. UK universities are such institutions. The UK comes second only to the US in higher education, with 4 of the 10 top-rated universities in the world and 10 of the top 50.

Universities generate and impart understanding from generation to generation. Yet proposed new legislation aims to turn the UK higher education system into a competitive market. A new Office for Students (OfS) will regulate and control university teaching.

The OfS will have the power to abolish the ability of universities like Oxford and Cambridge to grant degrees. This is a government takeover of the UK university sector. The government fails to understand the value of independent and enduring universities.
 

2016 September 1

Brexit Means Brexit

The Times

Curbing migration from the EU will be a red line in Brexit negotiations. The UK will not accept a deal like those between the EU and Norway or Switzerland.

Theresa May: "This must mean controls on the numbers of people who come to Britain from Europe but also a positive outcome for those who wish to trade goods and services."

AR No squaring the circle: This means strife on passports, trade terms, everything.

May Muse

Giles Wilkes

Theresa May gave the one substantial speech of her campaign for the leadership of the Conservative party in Birmingham. It is the home town of her adviser Nick Timothy and was the political base of Victorian titan Joseph Chamberlain. Timothy wrote a biography of Chamberlain.

There is much to admire in Chamberlain: "Our Joe" left a mark on Birmingham that can still be seen today. In 1884 he said: "My aim in life is to make life pleasanter for this great majority; I do not care if it becomes in the process less pleasant for the well-to-do minority."

Chamberlain's big ideas were backward looking and utterly unsuited to our age. He wanted barriers to keep out global competition and he decried mass immigration. Imperial preference was a divisive part of the dance that drew the world to war.

Metaphysics

Anil Ananthaswamy

Thomas Metzinger says each of us has a robust experience that "I exist". But given that humans might soon create virtual beings inside computers, we may never find out whether or not we are simulations ourselves.

Our brain generates the feeling of existence. It is continually hit by signals from the body and its environment, and it predicts their causes by creating internal models of the body and the environment. Metzinger: "The brain is a system that is continually trying to prove its own existence."

All of this certainty and doubting could still be part of a simulation. Metzinger: "What I'd want to know is, what the heck is the hardware that the simulation is running on? Is it God's brain or the Devil's?"

AR Both at once: All is one in the cosmos.
 

2016 August 31

Planet of the Apps

John Thornhill

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

For about 2 Gs, Homo sapiens has been the smartest algorithm on the planet. But soon that will cease as techno algorithms outstrip our old and slow biochemical models. Computers will know us better than we know ourselves. Harari: "Looking back, humanity will turn out to be just a ripple within the cosmic data flow."

Harari says we can aim for immortality, happiness and divinity: "We will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus."

We will be able to merge with robots and computers and create new forms of life: "After 4 billion years of wandering inside the kingdom of organic compounds, life will break out into the vastness of the inorganic realm, and will take shapes that we cannot envision even in our wildest dreams."

It might all go horribly wrong. Homo sapiens emerged as omnipotent because language and cooperation enabled us to process data more efficiently than all other animals, and now our technology promises spectacular breakthroughs, but our societies are totally unprepared to grapple with such big issues. Playing God is a dangerous game.

Capitalism and Democracy

Martin Wolf

Under both liberal democracy and capitalism, people make their own choices and exercise agency. Humans are viewed as ends, not as means.

Democracy is egalitarian and capitalism is inegalitarian. In a limping economy the majority might choose authoritarianism, and in a booming one the rich might exercise plutocracy. Growing inequality and slowing productivity growth endanger both democracy and capitalism.

Dani Rodrik says democracy, national sovereignty, and global economic integration are mutually incompatible. We can have any two of them but not all three. National regulations reduce freedom to buy and sell across frontiers; removing barriers and harmonizing regulations put limits on state autonomy; and free capital movement constrains national freedom on taxes and regulations.

Movement across borders is divisive. Either people are allowed to come and go as they like or citizens control citizenship as a collective property right. Migration forces choices between individual liberty and democratic sovereignty, between national democracy and global economic opportunity.

A global plutocracy might replace national democracies. Or controlled national capitalism might replace global capitalism.

AR The Kantian moral order requires that we see people as ends, not as means, and that we promote equality of opportunity in the global noosphere. National borders are an anachronism in Globorg.
 

2016 August 30

Apple Tax

Financial Times

Brussels has hit Apple with a tax penalty of up to €13 billion after finding the US tech group enjoyed a quarter of a century of illegal state support from Ireland that distorted competition in Europe. The bill sets the stage for a big fight over the taxation of US multinationals and EU reach into national tax policy. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager: "Fair taxation is a global issue."

AR This is not only a hard ruling but also a marginally legal one, since it applies retrospectively, yet it is surely a decent one. Big companies are sitting on multibillion cash piles while governments struggle to provide basic services. Global corporations must not only obey the letter of the law but also be seen to be happy to act in the manifest public interest.

The Irish model of massive tax breaks for global companies was an attempt to run rings around taxpayers across Europe and an invitation to other nations to participate in a race to the bottom. Britain after Brexit is flirting with the same business model and invites a similarly draconian EU reaction. Let us not seek to beggar our neighbors in our enthusiasm to get rich quick.
 

2016 August 29

Scruton On Wagner

Jonathan Gaisman

Sir Roger Scruton is one of the finest philosopher-musicians since Schopenhauer.

Scruton: "Wagner's works ... are revelations ... Wagner ... makes available to an age without religious belief the core religious experience."

Wagner: "It is reserved to art to salvage the kernel of religion, inasmuch as the mythical images which religion would wish to be believed as true are apprehended in art for their symbolic value, and through ideal representation of those symbols art reveals the concealed deep truth within them."

The Ring cycle presents a crepuscular hunter-gatherer world on the edge of a more organized society, in which the exercise of power rests on arrogation. Love and sacrifice emerge as the only means of opposing this power and as the sole path to redemption.

Scruton focuses attention on the two most sacred episodes in the cycle:

1 In Act 3 of Die Walküre, Wotan consigns to sleep and kisses away the godhead of his daughter Brünnhilde, who has followed the way of love forbidden to the immortals. This is a moment of incarnation, in which a god chooses humanity with the intention of saving it.

2 In Act 3 of Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde releases her father from the existential anxiety that has haunted his noble spirit, and puts him finally and definitively to rest. This is nothing less than the end of religion.

Scruton exposes how Wagner uses music to make dramatic and philosophical assertions.

AR The cult of the Ring is like the cults of Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings.
 

2016 August 28

EUSSR

Christopher Booker

The European Union faces existential problems. The euro is a slow-motion catastrophe, the flood of refugees is unending, terrorism is a deadly plague, and an energy crunch is approaching. Amid growing mistrust across Europe for all the EU stands for, it is now faced with the vote of one of its largest members to leave it altogether.

The venue chosen for last week's meeting of the leaders of Germany, France and Italy, was the little island of Ventotene off Naples. There, in 1941, a prisoner of Mussolini's had written the visionary manifesto that looked forward to building a United States of Europe. Altiero Spinelli proposed that the future government of Europe be quietly assembled over many years, and then when all its pieces were in place a convention would draw up a Constitution for Europe.

When Spinelli was elected as a Communist MEP in 1979, he became the second most influential person, after Jean Monnet, in shaping Europe as we know it today. The headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels is called the Altiero Spinelli Building. The project has always aimed to promote a supranational government for Europe.

AR Booker is in bad company: Anders Breivik too was incensed by the communist prehistory of the EU. But its problems are hardly existential. The euro can work in a federal Europe, the refugee flood and terrorism are harder issues to tackle without the EU, and our response to the energy crunch is best coordinated on a continental scale.

There is an equally plausible counter-narrative to that of widespread mistrust in the EU. It goes like this: Brexit was hatched by a gang of renegade nationalists and rapacious capitalists who aimed to profit from a captive population duped by rabid rabble rousers into voting away (1) their market rights and protections, (2) their freedom to come and go as they please, and (3) their hopes for a better world in which queen and country no longer dominate the outlook.

Workers of the world might choose to unite to put down the nationalist rebellion on the British Isles. They might see a tax haven economy in an anachronistic polity that prizes carpetbagger billionaires over the downtrodden masses as an intolerable blemish on the map of Europe. Harken to their alliterative war-cry: Blackball Brexit Britain!
 

2016 August 27

Dataism

Yuval Noah Harari

For thousands of years humans believed that authority came from the gods. Then humanists gradually shifted authority from deities to people. Our own feelings and desires became the ultimate source of meaning.

Now, a fresh shift is taking place. High-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data — Dataism.

Dataists believe in the invisible hand of the dataflow. As the global data-processing system becomes all-knowing and all-powerful, so connecting to the system becomes the source of all meaning. Dataists believe that given enough biometric data and computing power, this all-encompassing system could understand humans better than we understand ourselves.

Humanists have seen the human heart as the supreme source of authority. In politics, we believe that authority depends on the free choices of ordinary voters. Humanist education teaches us to think for ourselves and humanist ethics tells us if it feels good, do it.

Yet the idea of free will is under threat. Scientific insights into the way our brains and bodies work suggest that our feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use to make decisions by calculating probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings are evolutionary rationality made flesh.

Until now humanism made good practical sense. There was nothing magical about our feelings, but they were the best way we had to make decisions. Even if the church or the state spied on me all the time, they lacked the facts and the logic to calculate the biochemical processes shaping my will.

But Google and Facebook are gaining the edge. Biologists are deciphering the mysteries of the human body and brain and computer scientists are giving us unprecedented logic power. Once Big Data systems know me better than I know myself, authority will shift from humans to algorithms.

Devices such as Kindle can collect data on their users while they are reading books. If Kindle were upgraded with face recognition software and biometric sensors, it would know how each sentence influenced your heart rate and blood pressure. Such data should eventually enable Amazon to choose books for you with uncanny precision, to know who you are and how to press your emotional buttons.

Medical doctors increasingly base decisions about your life on the calculations of computers that know you better than you know yourself. Eventually people may give algorithms the authority to make the most important decisions in their lives, such as whom to marry. Google will likely do better on average than me.

Dataism offers a single overarching theory that unifies all the scientific disciplines. Your favorite music, a stock exchange bubble, and the flu virus are just three patterns of dataflow that can be analyzed using the same basic concepts and tools. Dataism may conquer the world.

AR The world is a nail for a man with a hammer.

Googlespeak

Paul Taylor

The challenge in machine learning is to find a rule that classifies data correctly and is likely to work for future examples. An algorithm might project two datasets into an n-dimensional feature space and find a simple separation by a process of iterative searching.

Such classification algorithms are known as support vector machines. They identify the hyperplane that optimally separates points in an n-dimensional space. SVMs have the property, not shared by neural networks, that if the computation converges on a solution, it is optimal.

Until recently, most research in machine learning was focused on such techniques. As computers became more powerful and datasets larger, it became practical to leave the computers to figure out the right feature space to use. It seemed as if the computer had learned concepts.

Google built a huge artificial neural network called Inception to analyze still images selected at random from ten million YouTube videos. The tall stack of layers in this network enabled it to recognise human or cat faces. Inception distilled the concept of a cat face out of the data by itself.

A recurrent neural network uses weighted links not just between nodes but between instances of the same node at successive steps in the computation. Recurrent networks are ideally suited to analyzing sequential data, such as speech or language. They can predict the next word in a sentence to create a point in a feature space for each word.

Google uses a recurrent neural network approach for machine translation. Their network creates mappings between the feature representations of words in different languages. The Google network may soon seem to be using language as humans do.

AR When Google speaks, we shall bow down and worship.
 

2016 August 26

Liberal Islam Is No Answer

Zaheer Kazmi

The problem of Islamist terrorism and extremism cannot be solved by reforming Islam. Four problems blight attempts at liberal reform:

1 Liberal Islam is based on a mostly imagined account of Islamic history. Rationalizing history to serve present purposes makes only a marriage of convenience.

2 Liberal Muslims see Islam through values stemming from a western heritage reaching back to antiquity for legitimation. A liberal caliphate is an oxymoron.

3 Liberal Muslims seek to define a true Islam to exclude extremists and say most Muslims are moderate. Such exclusion conflates extremism with heresy.

4 Liberal Islam lacks transcendent content and aims only for a polity consistent with sharia. Its focus on management rather than mysticism confuses sharia with spiritualism.

Muslim liberals have yet to offer a clear alternative to Islamist militancy or western secularism.

Cooperative Evolution

Ian Johnston

Not all species struggle to keep up with competitors. Two species can start working together. For years scientists thought mutualists evolved more slowly. But new research suggests that mutualists can evolve faster than separatists.

Researchers sequenced the genomes of ants evolved to protect plants that provide them with food and nesting chambers. These ants were aggressive, patrolling and attacking herbivores and invaders. The researchers compared their evolution with other ants who live in the same place but have different behavior.

Benjamin Rubin: "We originally set out to uncover the genetic basis of mutualistic behavior in ants. So we sequenced the genomes of three mutualistic species of plant-ants and four of their closely related, non-mutualistic relatives. We were surprised to learn that the mutualists actually had a higher rate of evolution across their genomes than the generalists."

Populism v Democracy

A.C. Grayling

Populism can be toxic. A state run through populist referendums on every issue would be chaotic and would crush civil liberties and minorities. Representative democracy has evolved to manage its crudities.

Instead of mass referendums we have an elected legislature. Its representatives have plenipotentiary powers. They act on behalf of their constituents rather than carrying out the will of those who voted for them.

In the June 23 referendum, less than a third of the population voted for Brexit. But 76% of MPs saw remaining in the EU as in the best interests of the UK. MPs who fail to do what they think is right for the UK are failing in their job.

AR Professor Grayling and I shared much the same Oxford education in political philosophy and taught for a while at the same Oxford college, so I naturally agree with him.
 

2016 August 25

Proxima b

Philip Ball

Nature announces that astronomers have found an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri
(see blog 2016-08-19).

On the basis of planet surveys to date, we now believe that around 1 in 5 of Sun-like stars has a planet of similar size and composition to Earth within their temperate zone, not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist.

Earlier this year, billionaire entrepreneur Yuri Milner announced a $100 million project called Starshot to develop a probe to fly to Proxima Centauri in just 20 years (see blog 2016-04-13).

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, with 12% of the Sun's mass and 0.15% of its brightness. Its temperate zone is correspondingly closer to the star. Its planet Proxima b has an estimated mass of 1.3 times that of Earth, and it orbits the star once every 11 (terrestrial) days or so.

For dwarf stars like Proxima Centauri, orbiting planets can be detected by a wobble in the parent star, seen as a Doppler shift in the wavelength of light emitted from the stellar atmosphere. Periodic red and blue shifts reveal the duration of the planet's orbit, from which we can calculate its orbital distance.

Liquid water and rocky ingredients on Proxima b make life more likely. But a magnetic field to fend off solar wind is essential too because its star is more unstable than our Sun. Powerful solar flares spray the planet with intense bursts of particles and radiation, including 400 times the dose of X-rays that the Earth receives from the Sun.

If Proxima b passes in front of its star from our perspective, we might read the composition of its atmosphere from a spectral analysis. But the chances of such a transit are very low. We are a long way from finding neighbors out there.

AR This could form the basis of a great sci-fi novel/movie about visiting the planet. I'd set it a century or so in the future and imagine a robot ship offering telepresence for Earthbound humans. The big challenge would be to set up a plausible starshot-capable society on Earth — contact with an extremely alien lifeform would be the cherry on top from an authorial point of view.

Brexit Costs

Rupert Pennant-Rea

On June 23, the day of the referendum, sterling reached a high of $1.50 and €1.31 shortly after polls closed. It then plummeted, and has since averaged at about $1.30 and €1.18. In trade-weighted terms, the pound is down more than 15% from its level a year ago.

The foreign exchanges are backed by many billions of dollars from in and outside the UK. They are saying that everything in the UK has been marked down against the rest of the world. Imports make up roughly 30% of UK GDP, and if their cost goes up because of the vote to leave the EU, in time everybody will be poorer.

The mechanism is that prices rise more than wages. A real-wage cut cements the effects of a cheaper pound. In the past, each devaluation of the pound produced a temporary fall in the real exchange rate, until domestic costs started rising faster than the costs of UK trading partners, when the advantage eroded.

A devaluation-powered improvement in UK trade will be harder to achieve if Brexit reduces access to the EU single market and too few new export markets open up. The British are poorer than they were before the votes were counted on June 23. That reality will be clear to see soon enough.

AR This cycle of greed for pay and perks followed by devaluation has been the tragic fate of Greece, Italy, and other European countries. It destroys stability and confidence. The strongest holdout against such boom-and-bust thinking has been Germany, and now EZ countries are painfully learning the lesson that budget discipline is better. The Brexit vote showed that UK voters are ready to bet on boom and bust again. I see only folly.
 

2016 August 24

EU Defense

The Times

Czech Republic prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka: "In the face of uncontrolled mass migration, even states in the center of Europe have realized that internal borders must be better controlled. Aside from better coordinated foreign and security policy, I also believe that in the long term we will be unable to do without a joint European army."

Security and defense are on the agenda as the EU prepares to relaunch itself at the 70th anniversary celebrations in Rome next March. EU leaders see a good starting point in the mutual defense clause introduced by the Lisbon treaty of 2009. Like NATO Article 5, it commits all members to come to the defense of any member under attack.

Federalists see huge cost savings from streamlining the overlapping defense plans of EU member states. A June review of EU defense and military aims envisaged multinational military headquarters, combined procurement, and deployments in times of existential crisis. America and NATO are wary of any talk of EU military integration.

AR Good plan to integrate EU defense: I just wish the UK were participating.

EZ Going

Financial Times

The latest data suggests the eurozone has shrugged off the Brexit vote. Purchasing manager indexes for the single currency area, a reasonably reliable indicator of future growth, showed a composite measure of confidence holding up well in August, consistent with the economy turning in another solid performance in the third quarter.

Big Banks Blockchain

Financial Times

Four big banks — UBS, Deutsche Bank, Santander, and BNY Mellon — will develop a new form of digital cash as an industry standard to clear and settle financial trades over blockchain technology. Their utility settlement coin will let financial institutions pay for securities without waiting for traditional money transfers to clear. The digital coins are directly convertible into cash at central banks and stored using blockchain distributed ledger technology. Launch target is early 2018.

AR Mathematics in action, improving life as we know it.
 

2016 August 23

EU Leaders Stay Firm

Financial Times

The leaders of Germany, France, and Italy will not let Brexit reverse EU integration:

1 They pledge to reinforce European defense, solve the refugee crisis, and spur economic growth.
2 They will seek an EU agreement to improve intelligence sharing against Islamist terrorism.
3 They plan to boost industrial cooperation among European defense companies.

Angela Merkel: "Faced with terrorism and the civil war in Syria, we must do more for our internal and external security. Defense cooperation must be strengthened and the exchange of intelligence information must be intensified."

François Hollande: "If there is one wish we have to share it is to say that Europe must assure its own defense, and France will take its part."

The three leaders resolved to to prolong a €315 billion EU investment plan by two years to 2019 and discussed an enlargement of the plan.

EU-27 leaders are preparing for a summit next month in Bratislava.

UK Islamists

Melanie Phillips

A UK government review of Islamist extremism in prisons proposes segregating a small number of the most dangerous Islamist prisoners to prevent them from radicalizing other inmates.

British jails have become universities of jihad. Islamists threaten prison staff and other inmates, aggressively promote conversion to Islam, and pressure staff to leave the prayer room during periods of unsupervised collective worship.

The Deobandi sect, to which over two-thirds of prison imams belong, is hardline fundamentalist and gave rise to the Taliban. Mainstream Deobandi thinking in the UK denounces integration, demonizes Christians and Jews, and supports terrorism abroad. Deobandis control almost half of British mosques and nearly all UK-based training of Islamic scholars.

The steady penetration of Islamist extremism in Britain is a reality. Many Muslims interpret any attempt to thwart it as an attack on their whole community. Refusal to acknowledge this reality is the road to defeat.

My Math

Brilliant

Progressed from level 2 to level 3 in classical mechanics.
 

2016 August 22

UK Infrastructure Spending Spree Needed

Financial Times

The value of UK infrastructure contracts for July dropped to £1.5 billion. This is a fall of 20% against the previous month and 23% lower than a year ago. It seems investors are putting projects on hold as the result of uncertainty surrounding UK withdrawal from the EU.

UK prime minister Theresa May has put infrastructure at the heart of plans to rebuild the economy. Net public sector investment, which includes infrastructure investment, fell from £51.5 billion in 2009 (3.4% of GDP) to £33.2 billion (1.8% of GDP) in 2015-16. The WEF ranks the UK 24th in the world for the quality of its infrastructure.

AR Fix UK roads!

The Silk Roads

Peter Frankopan

AR I have started reading this book at bedtime and am already gaining new insights. Frankopan goes against the Eurocentric tradition of beginning his history of the world with the ancient Greeks and begins instead with the Persians in a history turning on the heartlands of central Asia.

Starting in about the second century of the Common Era, Persia suffered an epidemic of Christian and Buddhist missionary activity. The authorities reacted by deliberately encouraging the old Zoroastrian beliefs (focused on purity and fire) to maintain the martial vigor of the population. The religion of Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) first appeared in about the sixth century BCE.

It occurs to me that Friedrich Nietzsche saw his Also sprach Zarathustra as attempt to do the same thing for Germans, whom he diagnosed as having gone soft through centuries of Christianity. His Zarathustra preached racial purity and the incendiary virtues of strife. As a professor of classical philology, Nietzsche would have been well aware of the precedent.
 

2016 August 21

Bournemouth Air Festival 2016

Day 4

AR Better weather today, so the show was better. The start was much the same, but continued into aerobatics by Gerald Cooper in his Xtreme Air XA41, fly-pasts of WW2 American B-25 Mitchell and
B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, wing-walking on a pair of AeroSuperBatics biplanes, a parachute team jumping from an Antonov An-2, a BAC Strikemaster jet, a WW2 Spitfire Mk 2 — an original Battle of Britain veteran, with a patched hole in the wing from a Messerschmitt cannon shell (but the wounded Polish pilot nursed his hit Spit back to base), flying in the colours of an ace who scored 26 kills, accompanied by music from the Battle of Britain movie blared out over the festival PA speakers — followed by the Red Arrows and at last the mighty Typhoon, making a thunderous noise from its twin ten-ton-thrust turbojets as it climbed vertically into the clouds on full reheat. The Great War biplane dogfight and the Lancaster bomber flyby were canceled because the wind was too gusty. The crowd contained a large proportion of people with visibly Muslim or subtropical heritage, for whom all this was rather strange. British culture is shrinking into a museum format, and its remains are morphing into awkwardly curated parts of a new global culture.

Olympic Cheer

Bryan Appleyard

Britain is taking the ideal of the Olympics seriously. In Sydney in 2000, we won 28 medals; in London in 2012, 65; and so far in Rio in 2016, 66, including 27 gold, second only to the United States. Suddenly we are Team GB.

Our boys and girls wrap themselves in union jacks and the nation feels a warm patriotic glow. Football remains overwhelmingly our national sport. But for the brief quadrennial convulsion of the Olympics, it is, in terms of money, audiences, and emotion, the only game that matters.

National pride can be a reason for sport. Sports and the arts are performed by specialists for specialists and yet we think they are of wider importance. Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Games, called the Olympics a quadrennial celebration of the springtime of humanity.

Team GB
The Sunday Times

Team GB have done it again. A grateful nation cannot but rejoice in our incredible tally of gold, silver and bronze — enough for us to vie for second place with China, behind only America. Not for a century has Britain finished second in the gold medals table. Team GB has as many gold medals as Germany and France put together.

AR The breathessly patriotic BBC coverage gave us no coherent idea of which competitors other than Team GB won which medals for which sports.
 

2016 August 20

Bournemouth Air Festival 2016

Day 3

AR Saturday was not much of a day for flying — fierce westerly wind, high waves, low billowing clouds — but there was still some flying over the pier this afternoon. I watched three helicopters (a Merlin and two Wildcats) and two Hawk jets fly around as a big navy frigate pushed through the waves to support a simulated marines landing on the beach. Then the Red Arrows did their customary choreographed routine with red, white and blue smoke over the bay. All this action was good for the armed forces recruiting stands along the seafront, who were encouraging boys to get involved. I guess there will be no shortage of eager recruits to ensure that Britain punches above its weight when the EU army invasion barges come crashing onto our shores.

Brexonomics

Paul Johnson

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond will make his autumn statement in a fog of uncertainty. After six years of austerity, spending on public services has been squeezed more than at any time since WW2. Keeping to current plans will involve cuts of 30% from 2010 levels for many items.

Forecasts have to be made without knowing how Britain will settle with the rest of the EU. The UK economy will be much smaller by 2030 if we end up trading with the EU on standard WTO terms than if we retain full membership of the single market. The forecasts will be worse than before the vote.

Brexit worsens our economic prospects. If we leave the single market and lose much of the financial services industry of if we restrict immigration of citizens from the EU, the rest of us will have to pay more taxes or suffer worse public services. An end to austerity will merely postpone the bad news.

AR The math is clear: Brexit is a bust.

My Math

Brilliant

Progressed from level 3 to level 4 in geometry.
 

2016 August 19

Proxima Centauri

Der Spiegel

European astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, just 40 Pm away.

Because the star is dim and sometimes produces apocalyptic eruptions of plasma, any plants on the planet would be black to use all the light for photosynthesis. Any animals would have to be tough enough to survive hellish conditions.

European Southern Observatory (ESO) astrophysicist: "It was hard work finding the tiny celestial body. We were at the limits of what is technologically possible when it comes to measurements."

The ESO team used a specialized reflector telescope on la Silla, a mountain in the Atacama Desert in Chile. They looked at Proxima Centauri for months and detected a tiny regular wobble in its position caused by an unseen companion tugging at it. The planet has an Earth-like mass and moves so close to its sun that liquid water could exist on its surface.

New propulsion concepts would allow a nanotech probe to fly to the new planet within half a century by accelerating to 0.1c.

AR I worked on an ESO stellar atlas at Springer in 1987. I have the book in front of me now.
 

2016 August 18

EU Question

Richard Thaler

The Brexit vote has created an environment of great uncertainty. No one can predict with any confidence what will happen for at least the next three years, but economists are in unusual agreement that if Brexit occurs it will be bad for the UK and bad for the EU.

The more complicated the decision, the less desirable a referendum. It is hard to think of a more complex choice than Europe to put to voters. Given the ambiguity of Article 50, voters had no way of knowing what outcomes would come from a vote to Remain or Leave.

A majority of 4% in a referendum should not be considered a mandate to hastily invoke Article 50. The vote was a straw poll of voter sentiments. Voters should be given the opportunity to change their mind, either via a vote in parliament or in a second referendum.

EZ Answer

Joseph Stiglitz

The euro was supposed to bring prosperity and enhance European solidarity. It has done just the opposite. Without adjustable interest or exchange rates and with a central bank focused on inflation, the EZ raised unemployment and reduced GDP. Changes are needed:

• A common banking union and deposit insurance, trade surplus rules, and eurobonds
• Monetary policy to focus more on employment, growth and stability, not just inflation
• Industrial and other policies aimed at helping laggard countries catch up to the leaders
• A move away from austerity toward growth-oriented fiscal policies

A single currency is neither necessary nor sufficient for close economic and political cooperation. A smooth transition might move to a flexible euro system: strong neuro in the NEZ, softer seuro in the SEZ. To deal with legacy debt, redenominate euro debts as seuro debts.

My Math

Brilliant

Progressed from level 3 to level 4 in algebra.
 

2016 August 17

Conflict in Ukraine

Institute for the Study of War

Preparations for conventional conflict between Russia and Ukraine are accelerating. Russia has positioned military units with thousands of troops in Bryansk, near Rostov, in Crimea, and in Transnistria. Russia has also deployed an air defence regiment in Donbass.

AR Russia can beat us in Ukraine.

UK in Europe

Rafael Behr

Theresa May needs a broader agenda to discuss what the UK has to offer as a strategic partner to the European project. Her pitch must include promises to engage with the big continental challenges. The question is not whether we can cobble together a thin facsimile of EU membership but how the UK can be an upstanding friend and neighbor to the EU.

Leaving the EU will involve diplomacy as pro-European as that required for joining in the first place. In the intervening years we have spent a lot of energy arguing about what Europe means to Britain. It is time to consider what the rest of Europe might see in us.

AR The UK has scored an own goal with the Brexit vote.

My Math

Brilliant

Progressed from level 3 to level 4 in number theory.
 

2016 August 16

Vita Activa

Stephanie DeGooyer

Ada Ushpiz's documentary Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt (2016) seeks to convey the complexity and idiosyncrasy of the philosopher's thinking. Arendt used the phrase Vita Activa to denote the fundamental categories — labor, work, action — of an active life.

A problem with making a film about Arendt is that philosophers are not supposed to have lives. Martin Heidegger once was asked: "What was the life of Aristotle?" His answer was that Aristotle was a philosopher: "He was born, he thought, and he died." All the rest is pure anecdote. Arendt would have agreed with him.

Documentaries about Heidegger avoid his relationship to Arendt and other women. In Vita Activa, Heidegger's granddaughter Gertrud Heidegger suggests that Heidegger took "spiritual comfort" in many young academic women, Arendt among them. But films about Arendt place her association with him at the heart of her life.

During an interview with Arendt's former assistant about Heidegger's ties to the Nazi party, Ushpiz asks whether Heidegger, like Adolf Eichmann, failed to think what he was doing. The assistant laughs nervously in response. Arendt did not openly engage with Heidegger's Nazism, but an assessment of his failure to think is unavoidable.
 

2016 August 15

A German Life

Brunhilde Pomsel

Joseph Goebbels would walk up the steps from his little palace near the Brandenburg Gate, on to which his huge propaganda ministry was attached. He'd trip up the steps like a little duke, through his library into his beautiful office on Unter den Linden.

I worked as a shorthand typist in his office. We always knew once he had arrived, but we didn't normally see him until he left his office, coming through a door that led directly into our room. He was short but well groomed and had a gentlemanly air. He wore suits of the best cloth and always had a light tan. He had well-groomed hands — there was really nothing to criticize about him. I felt sorry for him because of his limp, which he made up for by being a bit arrogant.

I was terrified to see him on stage at the Berliner Sportpalast delivering his "total war" speech in February 1943. I had a seat behind Magda Goebbels. In the office he had a kind of noble elegance, and then to see him there like a raging midget — you just can't imagine a greater contrast.

In the Führerbunker during the last days of the war, it felt as if something inside me had died. We tried to make sure we didn't run out of alcohol. That was urgently needed to stay numb.

When the Holocaust memorial was unveiled in 2005, I took a trip to see it for myself. I went into the information center and told them I myself was missing someone, an Eva Löwenthal. The list of names on the machine we used just kept on rolling nonstop down the screen.
 

2016 August 14

Brexit Update

The Sunday Times

UK PM Theresa May may be forced to delay enactment of article 50 to late 2017 because her new Brexit and international trade departments will not be ready. French and German elections are also being cited as a cause for delay. Britain might not invoke article 50 until France has voted next May or even until after the German poll in September. The new departments are being set up from scratch and the situation is chaotic, say sources.

Fox—Johnson Feud
The Telegraph

UK international trade secretary Liam Fox and foreign secretary Boris Johnson are feuding over who controls key parts of UK foreign policy. Fox wrote to Johnson suggesting British trade with other countries would not flourish if responsibility for policy remained with the Foreign Office. He cited economic statistics in support and suggested the FO should focus on diplomacy and security.

Hard Brexit
Anatole Kaletsky

The prospect of a Hard Brexit has a bonus. The economic damage will soon become so obvious that the UK government will face a backlash. As the economy sinks deeper into recession and difficulties proliferate, plans for Brexit may start to crumble.

EU leaders should insist on a binary choice. The UK must either disengage completely from the EU remain an EU member. At the same time, they should begin to reform the EU.

After Hard Brexit, UK trade with Europe would be subject to WTO rules. These require all members to be treated equally unless they are parties to a specific FTA. The UK and the EU would have to impose the same tariffs and restrictions on each other as they do to other WTO members.

British financial and service businesses would also face WTO rules. But EU regulations could easily be altered to ensure that most European financial activity was conducted on EU territory under EU law. The idea that London would remain the financial center of the EU is totally implausible.

Hard Brexit presents the entire EU project with an existential threat. Mainstream politicians across Europe would have to admit that disintegration of the EU or the EZ is possible. Already they face 34 separate demands for exit referendums in 18 other EU member states.

The EU will break up if it continues to resist change. An EU offer to start serious talks on reform would be hugely popular in Europe. If EU leaders listen to voters and learn to respond, British voters might be happy to remain in the union.

Mathematics Update

Brilliant

With a few days of work I raised my scores to level 3 in:

Algebra
Geometry
Number theory
Logic

Next — level 4.
 

2016 August 13

Is God Transgender?

Mark Sameth

I'm a rabbi, and so I'm particularly saddened whenever religious arguments are brought in to defend social prejudices — as they often are in the discussion about transgender rights.

The Israelite tetragrammaton YHWH was probably not pronounced Jehovah or Yahweh but in reverse as Hu/Hi — in other words, the hidden name of God was Hebrew for "He/She". The God of Israel was understood by its earliest worshipers to be a dual-gendered deity.

AR A useful corrective to a sexist tradition.
 

2016 August 11

UK Government: New Policy

Financial Times

Theresa May has made big changes to the cabinet in the wake of the EU referendum. She has also outlined a new direction for policy, adopting a more confrontational stance on Chinese investment and executive pay and signaling an enthusiasm for industrial policy.

May is building on the achievements of the coalition, which bore down on high executive pay and focused on building capacity in sectors where the UK has a competitive advantage. She seems to want to stick to the center ground. This is wise, given her slim majority in the Commons.

May needs to rebalance a now-fragile economy and recalibrate the UK relationship with Europe. She may be tempted to seek an explicit mandate from the British people, but now is not the time. She should govern in the interests of the whole nation.

UK Science: New Uncertainty

New Scientist

Following the Brexit vote, Theresa May must decide what she wants from the divorce settlement with the EU. The Royal Society and other UK national academies have issued science priorities. They want the government to commit to filling any gap in research funding left by Brexit and to keep EU regulations in areas such as clinical trials and data protection.

Researchers also need to remain free to cross borders to work and to collaborate as freely as they do now. The best research requires collaboration and free movement. In July, May wrote to the Royal Society: "I would like to reassure you about the government's commitment to ensuring a positive outcome for UK science as we exit the European Union."
 

2016 August 10

Mathematics Test

Brilliant

Several hours of clicking thru some fun online tests bagged the following:

Algebra (3)
Classical mechanics (2)
Discrete mathematics (2)
Electricity and magnetism (2)
Geometry (2)
Logic (2)
Number theory (2)

Levels in parentheses: Must raise them.
 

2016 August 9

A Brexit Chance: Diversify Europe

Leonhard Fischer

I suspect that the euro, rather than Brexit, poses the biggest risk to the EU. There is no real confidence in the future of the euro but the EU is in denial. The Brexit vote merely reflects this.

For the EZ to survive, a banking union and EZ guarantees are required at least. Germany will agree to this if EZ members relinquish aspects of their fiscal autonomy. The EZ must integrate further.

The EU needs to offer diverse models for its members. The single market can link these models. It is wrong to use the single market to enforce uniformity when the EU is about peace and prosperity.

The EZ must offer growth so that EU nations want to join it. EU nations that stay out of the EZ would adopt a minimum of EU standards and retain maximum national sovereignty.

Pound Worst Currency

CNN Money

Down about 12% since the start of the year and trading at its lowest level since 1985, the pound is doing worse so far this year than any other major currency. It has plunged 14% against the US dollar since the Brexit vote on June 23. Analysts expect it will drop further from current levels around $1.29.

AR Join the EZ and help reform the euro.
 

2016 August 8

Europe

Der Spiegel

At first glance, the European mood looks good: 80% of citizens in the 28 member states and 89% of Germans are satisfied with their lives. Personally too, most Europeans are satisfied: an EU average of two-thirds say their financial situation is good (Germans 82%) and 58% are satisfied with their job (Germans 68%). Many hope to do better next year.

Europeans seem happy but many are pessimistic about the big picture. Most say things in their home country and in the EU are going in the wrong direction. They are unhappy with the state of the economy and the labor market, and expect things to get worse.

In Britain a majority voted for Brexit. Individually the British are among the most satisfied Europeans. But overall they are so pessimistic that they want to move on — anywhere — just out.

In France the satisfaction level is near the EU average. But 90% are unhappy with the labor market, 85% say the economy in poor shape, and 76% think France is going in the wrong direction. The Front National might win the spring 2017 presidential elections.

In Germany most people are happy both personally and with the national economy. But most expect the labor market to get worse in future: 46% see Germany and 60% the EU as on the wrong course. This is bad news for the fall 2017 general election.

Altogether the European economy is stagnant, with the euro crisis far from over and Britain sinking into recession. In many countries, immigration and terrorism are the main reasons for pessimism about the economy. Populist politicians paint a gloomy picture and tell a persuasive story, whether it reflects reality or not.

Moving On Out

Charles Grant

Brexit will require at least six interlocking sets of negotiations:

1 Announcement: The EU-27 will want UK exit from the EU, as prescribed by Article 50, before the June 2019 European elections and will not extend the 2-year deadline.

2 An FTA on future economic ties with the EU along the lines of the CETA deal is likely. Britain would gain only limited access to the single market for services and London financial firms would lose their EU passport.

3 Interim cover for the UK before then: To repeal EU laws and shun European Court of Justice rulings, to limit free movement only to those with job offers, or to stop paying into the EU budget, the UK needs agreement from the EU-27.

4 Accession to the WTO: Britain is currently only a member of the WTO via the EU. The UK must agree with the EU-27 on the schedules, and then all 162 WTO members must agree. Any member could block UK membership.

5 Deals to replace the 53 FTAs that bind the EU and other countries. Those countries will not want to negotiate an FTA with the UK until they know what the EU-UK relationship looks like or until it is an WTO member.

6 Agreement: UK-EU ties in foreign and defense policy, police and judicial cooperation, and counter-terrorism will be easier as here the UK has more bargaining power.

The longer British ministers take to complete these negotiations, the worse the uncertainty for the British economy.

AR A series of fudges and failures awaits a UK poorly equipped and quite unprepared to go it alone. The British establishment has shot its bolt on this one. I say go back to square one and reconsider.
 

2016 August 7

Wealth

Stephen Hawking

British people must learn to live outside the EU. We need to understand why they made the choice that they did. I believe that wealth, the way we understand it and the way we share it, played a crucial role in their decision.

Money can set individuals free, just as poverty can trap them. But a shift in behaviour is inspiring some groundbreaking new enterprises and ideas. Cathedral projects are being started by one generation with the hope that a future generation will take up the challenges.

We live in perilous times. Our planet and the human race face multiple challenges. These challenges are global and serious — climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.

If we fail, then the forces that led to Brexit will strengthen. If that were to happen, I would not be optimistic about the outlook for our species. We must broaden our definition of wealth and learn to share it more fairly.

Free Will Revisited

Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett
(podcast, 1 h 45 m)

AR Good review of what started years back as an ill-tempered exchange. Sam yearns for absolute truth in the jungle of neuroscientific causation whereas Dan appreciates the pragmatic value of robust solutions for life as we know it. Since neuroscience deconstructs me but I exist, Dan is right for me. Sam wants a more purist explanation of the first person — he just lacks a way to get it.
 

2016 August 6

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Roger Scruton

Richard Wagner situates the Viking gods in a German landscape, along with Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied. The Ring Cycle is a story of the gods for people who have no gods to believe in.

Its theme is the death of the gods. The gods let us know and long for the sacred. Wagner implies that we must recognise sacred moments to live as free beings and to endow human life with significance.

Wagner came to believe that there could be no political salvation from the ills of civilization. Like Nietzsche, he saw resentment as the default position of human communities, and believed that each of us must achieve redemption for himself, through our capacity for love. The Ring cycle attempts to show that real love involves freedom, personality and sacrifice, with only momentary beauty and often a tragic end.

The power of the gods comes from our belief in them, and this belief must be naive, unquestioning and strong. Wagner distinguishes the consensual order, ruled by law, from the coercive order, ruled by treachery and violence. And caught between these two orders lies the narrow sphere of personal love.

Wagner says stop looking to politics for salvation. And stop expecting from love anything more than it demands, which is sacrifice. It is a harsh moral, but a true one.
 

2016 August 5

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Sue Prideaux

Richard Wagner understood that loss of faith in the divine demanded another route to meaning. He found it in ancient Germanic texts and used them to shape a new post-Christian cosmology. He chopped his epic poem The Ring of the Nibelung into four operas (16 hours of music) to tell the story of civilization from the beginning to modern times through his hero Siegfried, who fights for freedom and redemption.

The Ring took 26 years to complete, during which Wagner changed from Schopenhauer-driven atheist to mystically besotted husband of the hyper-religious Cosima, from anti-capitalist utopian to artist-prince financed by mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. Three kings and the Kaiser attended the premiere.

Wagner hammered his blockbuster allegory of the downfall of civilization brought about by the evils of capitalism and industrialization poisoning and polluting the natural world. Like Nietzsche, Wagner saw in the death of the old gods both unparalleled catastrophe and unparalleled opportunity to build a better society. Wagner believed that only art could redeem modern life.

The Ring of Truth
Roger Scruton

AR Amazon delivered my copy of Sir Roger's new book yesterday, along with the Solti recording of the Ring (16 CDs, Decca).
 

2016 August 4

Weak Gravity

New Scientist

To explain why the known particle masses are low enough to account for the weakness of gravity, Nima Arkani-Hamed and team suggest a new particle, the reheaton. After its birth, the universe inflated until it was cold and flat, and all the energy was locked up in reheatons. These decayed into the particles we know.

In the Standard Model, the Higgs has the lowest possible nonzero mass. Take N copies of this model, each with a slightly different mass for its Higgs boson. Varying the Higgs mass leads to big differences in the effects of gravity. In a universe with very massive or massless Higgs bosons, gravity is too strong or too weak for atoms to form. Only one Higgs mass is right for us.

For families with a Higgs mass just above zero, the reheatons decay into one Higgs boson and another particle for the remaining energy. For families with high Higgs boson masses, the reheatons decay into two smaller entities (instead of a Higgs) plus the remainder particle. Particles prefer to decay into fewer entities, so most energy goes into light-Higgs families, and very little to the others.

To account for weak gravity, fine-tune the equation for gravity by adjusting the number N. It seems N ~ 10^16 does the trick.

N-naturalness
Nima Arkani-Hamed et al.

We present a new mechanism to stabilize the electroweak hierarchy. We introduce N copies of the Standard Model with varying values of the Higgs mass parameter. Ensuring that reheating deposits most of its energy into the lightest copy requires a modified cosmology.

AR Intriguing, but work in progress, I'd say.
 

2016 August 3

The Messenger

Kader Abdolah

AR Reading it today — to the end. The best account of the life of the Prophet I've read — highly recommended. Now I'm reading the author's translation of the Qur'an.
 

2016 August 2

May Error

Melanie Phillips

While she was home secretary, Theresa May set up an independent inquiry into the operation of Islamic law in the UK as administered by Sharia councils. May: "Some Sharia councils may be working in a discriminatory and unacceptable way ... contrary to the teachings of Islam."

The error is to think such harm is caused by anything other than Islamic law itself. Sharia holds that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man; condones marital rape, forced marriage, and honour-based violence; and puts women into burqas. Sharia rulings on marriage, divorce, children, property, and inheritance violate fundamental human rights and equality for women. Sharia orders the harshest possible punishments for apostates, blasphemers, and homosexuals.

May suggested Sharia was one of various religious codes and practices that she said benefited British people of different faiths. In fact, Sharia entraps and enslaves many British people. Many British Muslims are anxious to live under the legal protection of human rights.

May Troika

Financial Times

Theresa May has deferred a decision on the £18 billion Hinkley Point power station to reconsider whether the French-Chinese financed project is in British national interests. May works on problems with her co-chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who worked with her at the Home Office. A minister said it was just the prime minister and two other people running the country.

May Staffer

Henry Mance

Theresa May's new joint chief of staff Nick Timothy criticized Chinese involvement in the Hinkley Point nuclear power station. In his recent writings, he

— supported Brexit: "If the country votes to leave, it would almost certainly be the British Government's policy to seek access to the Single Market ..."

— criticized China: "We do not have to accept dumping by the Chinese steel industry, in which state subsidies finance overcapacity and lead to prices lower than the real cost of production."

— criticized social liberalism and green taxes that are "far removed from — and sometimes run directly against — the interests of ordinary families"

— says recipients of tax credits "are not feckless benefits cheats, but millions of low-paid, hard-working people who are trying to do the right thing"

— wants an end to regime-changing military interventions. In Syria, he would come "to terms with unsavoury leaders including Assad, or at least members of his regime"

— likes stability instead of radical institutional shake-ups, and prefers improving management by rooting out incompetence in the police and poor governance in faith schools.

May Conservatism

Paul Goodman

One Nation Conservatism, attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, holds that Conservatives should govern the UK in the interests of the whole country, rich and poor.

Theresa May's new government will
— be more serious about One Nation
— seek to align foreign aid with the national interest
— tackle social justice issues
— seek to boost social mobility
— push for serious social reform
— build more homes
— promote apprenticeships and vocational training
— oppose more quantitative easing
 

2016 August 1

Asteroid Mission

NASA

OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission is scheduled to launch September 8, 2016. As planned, the spacecraft will reach its asteroid target in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

Economic Growth

William D. Nordhaus

For most of human history, economic progress moved at a crawl. From the stone age, to the earliest cities ten thousand years ago, through the Middle Ages, to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1800, living standards doubled. Another doubling took place over the subsequent period to 1870. Then the world economy took off.

Conventional measures of economic growth omit some of the largest gains in living standards and underestimate economic progress. The standard measures do not include gains in health and life expectancy. Nor do they include the impact of technological revolutions such as the introduction of electricity or telephones or automobiles.

The century of progress in the United States after 1870 was economic. A rapid growth of output in the century to 1970 was followed by decades of slower growth. Productivity growth slowed sharply due to rising energy prices, growing regulatory burdens, a structural shift to lower productivity sectors, and a decline in major inventions.

Economists understate improvements in living standards. The growth of real income is understated because of flawed price indexes, and GDP omits aspects of economic activity not captured in market transactions. Also, including health status increases sharply the improvement in living standards over the last century.

AR We see a big global step change, from pre-industrial to post-digital lifestyles, still replacing traditional social forms worldwide. Some call it capitalism in action — I call it the arithmetization of value. I see this as part of a wider evolution of DNA life on Earth into MIR life. This evolution of a Lifeball is in turn part of a cosmic process by which mathematically determinate form crystalizes out of the primal flux.
 
 

2016 July 31

Modern Slavery

Theresa May

As prime minister, I am setting up the first ever government task force on modern slavery. There has been good progress in the first year of the Modern Slavery Act that I brought forward as Home Secretary. But there is still further to go on raising awareness of these despicable crimes, improving training for those in our criminal justice system, and strengthening support for victims.

We need a new approach to defeating this vile and systematic international business model. We have played the leading role in getting the eradication of modern slavery into the Sustainable Development Goals. We will be using over £33 million from our aid budget to create an International Modern Slavery Fund focused on countries where victims are regularly trafficked to the UK.

The victims of modern slavery must go free. This is the great human rights issue of our time. I am determined to make it a national and international mission to rid our world of this barbaric evil.
 

2016 July 30

Nietzsche

Gavin Jacobson

Friedrich Nietzsche had a systematic political theory. He saw the state originating from a conqueror with an iron hand, who seizes power violently and forces a hierarchy on the people. He favored a healthy culture in which philosophy and great art could be produced, and favored slavery to release a small number of Olympian men from the drudgery of daily existence to focus on high culture. His thinking on eugenics and democracy was based on theories of racial classification.

Nietzsche foresaw the privatisation of the state and how democracies give birth to aristocracies, herd morality, majoritarianism, and resistance to domination. He described how statesmen revive such pathologies as nationalism, racism, intellectual parochialism, and political insularity. He imagined the unification of Europe led by a cultural elite, the good Europeans, bred from Prussian military officers and Jewish financiers, who would create a new world culture.
 

2016 July 29

Prime Minister May

Raffy Marshall

Theresa May is Britain's first post-Thatcherite Conservative leader. Her conservatism will likely combine undisguised contempt for the cultural left's sacred cows with a neo-statist economic policy. Her 2015 party conference speech and her record at the Home Office suggest genuine concern about the economic and cultural impacts of high immigration. She shares the electorate's contempt for the self-congratulatory elite cosmopolitanism of the city and magic-circle law firms.

May has called for an industrial policy and worker representation on boards. A deficit reduction program that was quietly reducing the state share of the economy is likely to be largely abandoned. May will be attentive to the forgotten northern working class at whose expense the Thatcherite economic miracle was built. If Thatcherites sought to help Brits compete against the rest of the world, most Mayists find global competition terrifying and would prefer security.

Theresa May is not the establishment candidate and certainly not merely a safe pair of hands. She represents a challenge to ubiquitous cultural and economic elite assumptions. Aspects of her cultural and economic outlook suggest she would cheerfully sacrifice the British financial services industry in return for lower immigration. As some of their international friends depart and their bonuses diminish, the London elite may start to want their country back.

May's approach to immigration will sit uneasily with the left and right of the party. Moving toward a centrist economic position might unite left and right against the government. With a wafer thin majority, extremely difficult Brexit negotiations to conduct, and a deliberately exclusive cabinet, the government would soon be floundering. The obvious way to prevent this destabilisation is for May to restrain her advisers and moderate her break with the previous consensus.

May and Munich

Rebecca Coulson

Atrocities like the July 22 attack in Munich remind us that we spend too much time focusing on party political trivia. Our state representatives and institutions are entrusted with the difficult job of protecting us. And if the threat of this kind of attack continues to grow, all manner of new questions will arise for Britain, and for the wider European and global community.

The recent dominant Western view has been to celebrate unconditionally all forms of unification, movement and migration, and a developing plurality of values and views. We have assumed that the promotion of those ideals combines to form simply effected progressive aims that fit well with our tolerant society, and improve the lives of citizens here and elsewhere.

Theresa May will need to consider the disillusionment that feeds support for extreme politics and ideologies, failures to recognise and dilute radical influences, upcoming elections in America and Europe, and the EU responses to the refugee and EZ crises. How she deals with such threats will be as important as how she deals with the Brexit process.
 

2016 July 28

Elect Hillary Clinton

CNN

President Barack Obama called Trump a "homegrown demagogue." Michael Bloomberg dismissed him as a "con." And Vice President Joe Biden, in rejecting Trump, declared that "Americans have never, ever, ever, ever let their country down."

Obama cast the 2016 election as a choice between two visions for the country: "It's not just a choice between parties or policies, the usual debates between left and right. This is a more fundamental choice — about who we are as a people, and whether we stay true to this great American experiment in self-government."

Obama told delegates that no man or woman has ever been better qualified for the presidency than his former secretary of state: "Not me, not Bill, not nobody."

"Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me. I ask you to carry her the same way you carried me ... If you're serious about our democracy, you can't afford to stay home just because she might not align with you on every issue. You've got to get in the arena with her, because democracy isn't a spectator sport. America isn't about 'Yes he will.' It's about 'Yes we can.' "
Barack Obama
 

2016 July 27

UK and Ireland

Theresa May

Our discussions focused on Brexit:

• Economic relationship: Trade between the United Kingdom and Ireland is worth almost £1 billion each week, supporting 400,000 jobs across our islands. To maintain the closest possible economic relationship in the future, we need to address a number of complex issues. We should take time now to study the options and to strive for practical solutions.

• Common travel area: We benefitted from a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland for many years before either country was a member of the EU. Both of us want to preserve it and so we must now focus on securing a deal. We should continue our efforts to strengthen the external borders of the common travel area.

• Peace process: It is in all our interests to work together to safeguard our national security. We are both fully committed to working together in support of the Northern Ireland Executive to build a better, stronger, safer future for the people of Northern Ireland. We have reaffirmed our commitment to establishing a new Independent Reporting Commission by the end of this year.

There are many issues to resolve.
 

2016 July 26

Brexit: The Movie

Daily Echo

AR In the Swanage Conservative club meeting room, some two hundred mostly young men in second world war British battledress, including tin helmets and hobnail boots, sat under a wartime portrait of Winston Churchill for a briefing before marching off to the shooting.
 

2016 July 25

God v Multiverse

Mary-Jane Rubenstein

If the universe began with a quantum particle blipping into existence, inflating into spacetime and a zoo of stuff, then why is it so well suited for life?

Modern physics supplies an answer. In the multiverse of many universes, all with different constants, we are here because we happen to be in one of the universes that works. No miracles, no plan, no creator.

Ptolemaic cosmology put Earth at the center of a succession of celestial spheres. Nicolaus Copernicus put the sun at its center. But a hundred years before Copernicus, Nicholas of Cusa had said the universe had no center. Start from any cosmic body, Cusa suggested, and the visible area around it is what we call a world.

Giordano Bruno said the universe is infinite because its creator is. There is no bit of God left over before or beyond or outside creation. This infinite universe is the source of all things, the life in all things, and the end of all things — or what everybody means by God.
 

2016 July 24

Trump A Danger

The Washington Post

Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump is uniquely unqualified to serve as president. A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world.

It has been 64 years since a major party nominated anyone for president who did not have electoral experience. The lack of experience might be overcome if Trump saw it as a handicap worth overcoming. But he displays no curiosity, reads no books and appears to believe he needs no advice.

The Republican Party has moved the lunatic fringe onto center stage, with discourse that renders impossible the kind of substantive debate upon which any civil democracy depends. We have criticized the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, but we do not believe that she represents a threat to the Constitution. Trump is a unique and present danger.

A Banana Republic

Fareed Zakaria

The Republican convention has been consumed by a vigilante rage. Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that Hillary Clinton deserves to be in jail. The picture presented to the world has been of America as a banana republic.

Donald Trump announced that he might not honor the NATO guarantee of security to European allies, practically inviting Vladimir Putin to destabilize Eastern Europe. That is a break not just with seven decades of Republican foreign policy but also with a core US commitment that has kept the peace since 1945. It is the most reckless statement made by a presidential candidate in modern times.

The Republican Party has given itself up to a single family and its business interests. Whatever happens, the Trump brand will come out of this election with even greater global celebrity.
 

2016 July 23

The Final Frontier

CNN

A new NASA Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image gives us our latest, deepest view of the universe. The map shows 1.2 million galaxies as they were were 6 billion years (Gy) ago.

NASA Frontier Fields lead astronomer Anton Koekemoer: "We basically use a cluster of galaxies as a natural gravitational lens, using effectively a natural telescope to amplify these distant galaxies much more than we've ever been able to do before."

Frontier Fields is a joint project combining data from Hubble, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The goal is to learn more about the early universe by studying distant galaxy clusters using gravitational lensing of remote supernovas by the galaxy clusters.

Koekemoer: "Many of the key scientific results to come out of Hubble probably weren't even envisioned when it was being designed. There are always new areas that can be explored."

Researchers have used SDSS and BOSS data to measure galaxies in a spherical volume reaching back 6 Gy. They find the universe expands by 1% in each direction every 145 My. The James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, will observe light redshifted beyond anything Hubble can see, from events soon after the Big Bang 13.8 Gy ago.

Koekemoer: "The Sloan Survey gives us our most detailed picture of what we call the intermediate distance universe, so these galaxies are distant but they aren't nearly as distant or early in the universe as what we see in these deep fields of Hubble ... You're really pushing back further into the early universe. It's very much like a final frontier quest."
 

2016 July 22

America Is Back

Donald Trump

My message is that things have to change — and they have to change right now. The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored.

Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.

We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.

This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction terrorism and weakness, but Hillary Clinton's legacy doesn't have to be America's legacy.

It is time to show the whole world that America Is Back — bigger, and better and stronger than ever before.

My Father

Ivanka Trump

Donald Trump is the person to make America great again. I have seen him fight for his family, for his employees, for his company. And now I am seeing him fight for our country.

My father not only has the strength and ability necessary to be our next president, but also the kindness and compassion that will enable him to be the leader that this country needs. He is color blind and gender neutral. When Donald Trump is in charge, all that counts is ability, effort and excellence.

As president, my father will change the labor laws put in place when women were not a significant portion of the workforce. He will make childcare affordable and accessible to all. He will fight for equal pay for equal work and I will fight for this too, right alongside of him.

When my father says he will make America great again, he will deliver.
 

2016 July 21

A British Crisis

Zadie Smith

The vote for Brexit has revealed a deep fracture in British society. The gaps between north and south, the social classes, Londoners and everyone else, rich Londoners and poor Londoners, and white and brown and black are real. Extreme inequality fractures communities.

After a while the whole edifice comes tumbling down. Everybody has been losing, but no one more than the white working classes who really have nothing, not even the perceived moral elevation of trauma or victimhood. And so many of them have chosen to be flagrantly, shamelessly wrong.

There has been a money madness in London for some time. The economically and socially disenfranchised of this nation are struggling and deeply unhappy. I believe that most of those who voted Leave did so out of anger and hurt and disappointment.

Britain is now in crisis. Rather than pull another veil over the mess, we might as well start trying to build from where we are. The rights and protections provided for the British people by Europe must not now be replaced by a nonsensical vision of British sovereignty.
 

2016 July 20

UK v EU: Not Over

Anatole Kaletsky

The dogma that referendums are sacrosanct is a travesty of true democracy. In genuine democracy nothing is ever irreversible, since every decision is always open to debate. This principle of continuous challenge must be restored quickly if Britain is to avoid a catastrophe.

Politicians and others need to begin a serious debate about the right balance between direct and representative democracy. The new government will have to find a way to preserve the main benefits of EU membership and then present the plan to voters. Political leaders from the rest of Europe will then have to show greater flexibility and a stronger instinct for EU preservation.

We need to challenge the assumption that democracy requires unquestioning obedience to a referendum result. The essence of democracy is the right to challenge and reverse majority votes. After every election, the defeated party becomes the official opposition, tasked to change the will of the people before the next election.

A referendum is a message directly from the people. But the UK is a representative democracy. Parliamentary representatives are entrusted with making decisions, because the will of the people is often inconsistent or erroneous or even dangerous.

Margaret Thatcher called referendums a device for dictators and demagogues. Germany excluded referendums from its postwar constitution. Democracy represents the diversity of individuals, each with changing opinions and motivations.

Efforts to keep Britain in the EU after the vote are as democratically legitimate as any other popular political movements. We need a campaign to secure a second referendum or general election to judge any new deal proposed by the government. The claim that referendums are irreversible and permanently binding is a parody of democracy — one man, one vote, one time.

UK v EU: Facing Reality

Vernon Bogdanor

Brexiteers said the EU was aiming for a federal superstate. But the EZ and migration crises have changed things. The EU is economically and politically too diverse to push for ever closer union.

The EU faced reality during the EZ crisis. The crisis was handled largely by the European Council, made up of heads of member state governments, rather than the European Commission, made up of technocrats. The EU must recognise the council as its supreme executive and the commission as its secretariat.

The EU must now face reality on freedom of movement. That principle was first outlined by six member states at a similar stage of economic development. It is unsuitable for 28 member states at different stages of economic development.

The EU needs to prove its value to its citizens. The British contribution was always to subordinate rhetoric to reality. Europeans need to rescue the EU from its elitist and technocratic establishment.
 

2016 July 19

Quantum Collapse

New Scientist

Quantum theory is our best theory of basic reality. The Schrödinger equation describes a wave function that gives reliable odds on which of many possibilities you will see if you take many measurements of identical objects. The Copenhagen interpretation says the act of observing reality collapses the wave function into a definite object. In 2011, an informal poll of 33 physicists attending a conference on quantum physics and the nature of reality found that over 40% accepted the Copenhagen view. Sean Carroll called it perhaps the most embarrassing poll in physics.

An objective collapse theory can solve the observer problem. A human observer meddling with a quantum system is bound to get entangled with it and collapse any uncollapsed wave function in it. Such a theory was worked out decades ago by Giancarlo Ghirardi and Tulio Weber. They tweaked the Schrödinger equation to make the wave function evolve naturally from a mixed states to a unique state. To do so, they added a nonlinear term to promote one state fast and a stochastic term to make this happen at random.

Daniel Sudarsky and Elias Okon have shown how objective collapse in the early universe would give rise to an uneven distribution of matter to form stars and galaxies. They say the rate of random wave function collapse could explain the information loss rate predicted for black holes. Since spontaneous wave function collapse makes a bit of energy, this process could solve the problem of dark energy. Objective collapse might also explain why the universe started in a state of extremely low entropy. The steady increase of entropy since then appears to us as the arrow of time.

AR I read a technical account of the Ghirardi-Weber theory in 1988 and found it interesting. Although it is rather heuristic in motivation, it shares this feature with much of physics. I am tempted to go for the full Copenhagen, with a new theory of subjectivity to steer clear of anthropology — the result is the psychophysics I aired in my 2009 book Mindworlds.
 

2016 July 9

Reckless Folly

Richard Dawkins

Intricate webs of European cooperation built up over decades by British companies, institutions, universities, research establishments, galleries, employers of British skills and British labour are now wrecked. In many cases the work of patient decades is shattered beyond repair. The economic and human consequences are of incalculable magnitude.

There are stupid, ignorant people in every country. Most of them are not asked to take historically momentous and irrevocable decisions of state. It is unfair to thrust onto unqualified simpletons the responsibility to take historic decisions of great complexity and sophistication.

The prime minister recklessly gambled away the future of Britain and Europe. Lacking the courage to tell the yobs in his own party to take a running jump, he played Russian roulette with the future of Europe and the world. His decision to hold the referendum was a monstrously irresponsible gamble. His place in history is assured, but not pretty.
 

2016 July 8

America and Europe

Barack Obama

This may be the most important moment for our transatlantic alliance since the end of the cold war. Terrorist attacks, waves of migrants, Russian aggression, and the vote in the UK to leave the EU all raise questions about the future. We can meet these urgent challenges only if we stand united.

I am confident that the UK and the EU will be able to agree on an orderly transition to a new relationship. The special relationship between the US and the UK will endure. I have no doubt that the UK will continue to be a major contributor to European security.

Likewise, the US will continue to have an indispensable partner in the EU. US and EU cooperation will be essential to stimulating global growth and reducing inequality. Europe will remain a cornerstone of American engagement with the world.

While Brexit creates some uncertainty, our shared prosperity will continue to rest on the solid foundation of NATO. In Warsaw, we must reaffirm our treaty obligation to defend every NATO ally. NATO members must continue to invest more in our common defense.

Our nations are more secure when we stand together. We are united by our enduring commitment to shared values and strengthened by our rich diversity of backgrounds and faiths. We will prevail if we stay united, strong and true to our democratic values.
 

2016 July 7

Jews Reconsider UK After Brexit

The Independent

Brexit has led to a surge in the numbers of Britons seeking to become nationals of other EU states. Descendants of Jewish refugees who fled to the UK to escape from Nazi persecution are seeking German nationality.

German nationality is available to someone who has at least one German parent or who has lived for a certain period in Germany. For Jewish and political refugees from the Third Reich, the Grundgesetz says former German citizens who from 1933 to 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial, or religious grounds, and their descendants, can have their citizenship restored.

AR I shall seek a German passport.

DARPA Hack Bots

Wired

A $55 million hacking contest put on by DARPA called the Cyber Grand Challenge is set for August in a ballroom in Las Vegas. A visualization in arena view will show hack bots inside seven supercomputers, each running AI software that defends one machine and attacks the rest.

The supercomputers will stand on a clear plexiglass stage. The contestants, the seven teams that designed the bots, will watch the bots working inside the machines, analyzing and defending software and looking for security vulnerabilities, scrambling to patch those vulns and keeping their systems running. DARPA referees will watch the show too.

Finding and patching security holes was a human talent, but machines are taking over. Google is building sweeping systems that can identify vulns via fuzz testing, a technique that involves throwing random inputs at a piece of software. The system can simultaneously fuzz dozens of Android phones, and is using deep neural networks to learn what sort of fuzzing is likely to work.

DARPA wants bots that can identify and patch vulns in the moment, without human intervention. The Las Vegas audience will see when a bot finds a hole, when it patches the hole, when a bot breaks the service, and so on. The visualization can drill down and look at the streams of data in a trace view that shows the execution flow of a program on the data, like a debugger.

AR Reminds me of the good old days at SAP.
 

2016 July 6

Chilcot Inquiry Conclusions

Financial Times

Seven years and 2.6 million words later, the Chilcot report presents the UK role in the Iraq debacle as a set of collective failures. It concludes that Tony Blair's decision to go to war in 2003 was flawed.

Chilcot: "It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. They were not challenged and they should have been."

The Joint Intelligence Committee headed by Sir John Scarlett was responsible for collating the intelligence and presenting it to ministers. MI6 had a responsibility to ensure that ministers "were informed in a timely way when doubts arose".

Blair is criticised for failing to tell the Commons the full intelligence assessment on the consequences of military action when he said Saddam Hussein constituted a "real and present" danger to UK and national security.

Chilcot: "The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuits of its interests, regional instability, and al-Qaeda activity in Iraq were each explicitly identified before the invasion."

Disaster Capitalism

Howard Hotson

The referendum was manifestly won on the basis of misinformation. There are several plausible ways forward, yet all the Conservative leadership candidates are going for Brexit. An explanation can be found by extrapolating from a pattern evident in privatisations going back decades.

When the railways were privatised, the experts objected but the government pressed ahead anyway. When university finance was privatised, experts pointed out the problems but the government pressed ahead. When the government proposed to force all schools in England out of local authority control, its aim was to place the entire school system in private hands. When the near meltdown of the global financial system raised doubts about the entire system of global capitalism, the UK government simply cut back social welfare provision on a grand scale.

Advocates of leaving the European Union claimed that after a brief period of turmoil it would be fine. A vast chorus of experts disagreed, the referendum result delivered a global shock, and now UK affairs are in complete confusion.

Disaster capitalism operates by delivering massive shocks to the system and then using the ensuing period of anarchy, fear, and confusion to reassemble the pieces of what it has broken into a new configuration. UK politicians can now redraw the legal framework that will govern all aspects of our lives. They will find countless pretexts for emergency measures that benefit business and roll back the state during the current parliament.

AR Watching The Riot Club last night, I realised that the Brexit drama could have been scripted by establishment figures duped by disaster capitalists who aim to get rich at EU expense. Seriously, the key to all this is that government is the problem, not the solution. People must sort their own lives, not look to the nanny state to do it for them. Government is hobbled by its commitment to democracy. Big corporations are free to order themselves like totalitarian states, which given clear goals can be much more efficient. A parliamentary democracy should leave as much as possible to corporations and restrict itself to debating a framework of rules and goals for them. In this view, the EU is a dinosaur like the USSR, or rather a cash cow, ripe for a vampire squid.
 

2016 July 5

Juno Enters Jupiter Orbit

The New York Times

Juno is the second spacecraft to enter orbit around Jupiter. The NASA Galileo spacecraft spent eight years there surveying the planet and its moons.

Jupiter is believed to hold the keys to understanding the origins of our solar system. How much water it contains and the possible presence of a rocky core could reveal where in the solar system Jupiter was created and provide clues to the early days of other planets. Juno will measure the magnetic and gravitational fields of Jupiter and the microwave glow from within. A titanium vault will shield its crucial systems as it passes through the Jovian radiation belt.

Juno traveled within 5 Mm of Jupiter's cloud tops, passing through almost the exact spot that the navigators had aimed for after its 2.7 Tm voyage. After the engine burn, the spacecraft pivoted to turn its solar panels toward the Sun. Sunlight at Jupiter is 4% as bright as at Earth, and Juno's three 10 m long solar panels generate only 500 W to power the craft.

The spacecraft will have to make multiple flybys to start answering questions like whether there is a rocky core at the center of Jupiter. From polar orbit, the Juno cameras are likely to add to the number of known moons of Jupiter, now 67.

The cumulative radiation dose will take its toll on the electronics. As the mission progresses, the orientation of the orbits will pivot, and Juno will pass through more intense radiation.

On orbit 37, slated for 2018-02-20, Juno is to dive into Jupiter, ending the mission.

Trident

Theresa May

As UK home secretary, I have been the cabinet minister responsible for counter-terrorism for the past six years. I am a member of the National Security Council. At times of high alert, I am called upon to chair meetings of Cobra.

It is vital for our national interest that we maintain what is the most significant security and military capability in Europe. It is crucial that we maintain our independent nuclear deterrent. We need a full fleet of four submarines.

We should get on with it.

EU — UK

The Times

IMF head Christine Lagarde says the UK could lose up to 4.5% of growth by 2019 if it presses ahead with Brexit — but the EU could make the best of the vote by getting on with decisions unencumbered by British opposition. The prediction assumes Britain reverts to WTO status. If the UK remains part of the single market, the damage would be 1.5%.

Lagarde: "I have heard European commissioners, one after the other, say, this is so complicated, we can't do it because of the British ... I believe Europeans will come out of Brexit on top."

Steps to Brexit

David Allen Green

The political class in the UK has had a fright. They were not expecting to lose the EU referendum. So now there is a crisis — but only for a while.

Already the unwritten constitution may be saving the political class from their own folly and complacency. The referendum was never binding in law and was a glorified consultation exercise. The real decision had to be made afterwards, as a distinct legal act.

The prime minister was expected to make that decision on the day of the result. But he left it to his successor to make. The government may get away with this move because the Leave campaigners had no plan.

Unless a sincere Leaver becomes the next prime minister, the UK government can be expected to take three steps to slow down the Brexit process:

1 Snap the tie between the referendum result and the Article 50 notification.
2 Require some form of parliamentary vote.
3 Propose preconditions before further action.

Brexit becomes less likely as time passes. It may not happen at all.

Non to Frexit

Sylvie Kauffmann

For the French, the most visible consequence of the Brexit referendum is the return of Marine Le Pen. She is back with a vengeance and a huge grin. But France is not ready for Frexit.

France had a crucial role in creating the European Union. Postwar French leaders have constantly pushed to take Europe further as an instrument of power on the world scene. As Europe took shape, at every stage, the Franco-German tandem, the engine of Europe, was humming behind the scenes.

Europe had three pillars: France, Germany, and Britain. For France, Britain was a partner in its strategic vision of the world. With Brexit, one of the three pillars is gone, and France faces an uneasy marriage with a stronger Germany.

For the past 10 years, the European Union has failed its citizens. Over the past few days, European leaders have hastily identified three priorities to save their union: security, migration, and economic growth. Their failure can be overcome if European citizens regain a sense of the political and historical mission of the European idea.

Berlin on Brexit

Peter Altmaier

The result of the referendum was clearly in favor of withdrawal. That disappointed us, but we must respect it. But we can also see that the debate over how to handle the results is only just beginning. Wisdom demands that we wait and see the outcome of this debate.

I have always wanted Britain to be a strong member state in the EU, especially from a German perspective. The Brits must first decide if and when they want to submit a request to withdraw. No one knows what demands the new government will put forward.

British institutions should be allowed to reflect on the consequences of the referendum. The German constitution does not permit such referenda for good reasons. We will continue to be reserved at the federal level about plebiscites, especially if they have direct effects on other countries.

Globally, the EU has enormous allure and enjoys a great degree of respect. But there are different notions about how Europe should continue. Simply calling for more Europe is not enough.

eLISA

The Atlantic

The Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (eLISA) is a physics experiment. eLISA relies on a stable configuration of three satellites 1 Gm apart (3 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon) at the vertices of an enormous equilateral triangle drawn by laser beams.

Within each satellite there is a set of tiny gold cubes in zero gravity. These free falling test masses will respond to the smallest disturbance in the fabric of spacetime, looking for gravitational waves.

Gravitational waves were first detected last year by LIGO and promise to open a new type of astronomy. European Space Agency mission eLISA is LIGO in space. It should offer gravitational sensitivities beyond anything possible on Earth.

Kip Thorne: "We are opening up a window on the universe so radically different from all previous windows that we are pretty ignorant about what's going to come through. There are just bound to be big surprises."
 

2016 July 4

"Welcome to Jupiter!"

NASA

NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, California, shortly before 9 pm Pacific Daylight Time:
The NASA Juno mission completed its main engine burn and entered orbit around Jupiter.

NASA Science Mission Directorate acting administrator Geoff Yoder: "This is phenomenal."

UK to Slash Corporate Tax Rate

Financial Times

UK chancellor George Osborne plans to slash corporation tax to less than 15% to woo business to invest in Brexit Britain: "We must focus on the horizon and the journey ahead and make the most of the hand we've been dealt."

His move will anger EU finance ministers who fear a race to the bottom. The OECD tax head warned that the fallout from Brexit "may push the UK to be even more aggressive in its tax offer" but that further steps in that direction "would really turn the UK into a tax haven type of economy".

AR Bullingdon boy George gives billionaires a break at the expense of the plebs.

UKIP Plot to Install New PM?

The Times

Theresa May supporters accuse UKIP of trying to steal the Conservative crown for Andrea Leadsom. A big UKIP donor swung behind her leadership campaign after she promised to trigger formal Brexit more quickly than her rivals. This has won her huge support among hardline Brexiteers. Conservative MPs start tomorrow to cut a field of five candidates down to two for a ballot by party members.

German Cheer for Scotland

Hamish Macdonell

German economy minister and vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel says Scotland can join the EU as an independent country. He said the EU would certainly accept Scotland as a member in its own right if the country left the UK and wanted to join the EU.

SNP spokesman: "These comments highlight the goodwill there is towards Scotland in the EU. Our focus is on the negotiations that lie ahead, to protect Scotland's relationship with the EU and our place in the single market."

General Election Before Brexit

Nick Clegg

The Conservative party has caused the greatest constitutional crisis in modern times. The party of business is now the source of reckless economic turmoil. The natural party of government is now presiding over paralysis in Westminster and Whitehall. The party is now letting Britain drift.

The government has no leadership, no plan, no consensus, and no clue about what to do next. All it wants is to leave the EU. Hedge fund owners want to turn the City into a tax haven and Brexiteers witter about staying in the single market but shirking its rules. We need a general election.

Der Spiegel am Montag

René Pfister

Das Votum der Briten ist so etwas wie der inoffizielle Startschuss für den Bundestagswahlkampf. Während Martin Schulz die Kommission in Brüssel zu einer Art europäischen Superregierung ausbauen will, findet Finanzminister Wolfgang Schäuble, dass zur Not die Nationalstaaten die Sache in die Hand nehmen sollten. Und die Kanzlerin hofft darauf, dass die Briten sich besinnen und am Ende doch noch davon absehen, aus der EU auszusteigen.

Die Queen riet ihrem Volk, "ruhig und gefasst" zu bleiben. Es ist ganz und gar unüblich, dass sich die Queen ins politische Tagesgeschäft einmischt. Aber wozu braucht es eigentlich ein Staatsoberhaupt, das selbst dann zum Schweigen verdonnert ist, wenn die Regierung purzelt, die Opposition sich zerlegt und Schottland darüber nachdenkt, eigene Wege zu gehen?

Waiting for Gödel

Siobhan Roberts

In 1975, Kurt Gödel was awarded the National Medal of Science. Nicknamed Mr Why by his parents, Gödel was known to some of his admirers as God. His 1931 masterpiece was his incompleteness theorem: There is more to truth than can be caught by proof. Within any given system, there are claims which are true but which cannot be proven to be true.

This June, a group of Gödelians convened for a crash course in incompleteness in Brooklyn. The students included a computer scientist, a nutritionist, a philosopher, an ad man, and a teacher who had spent a lonely winter reading Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach.

London professor and Facebook engineer Peter O'Hearn: "Gödel's theorem has a major impact on what all computer scientists do. It puts a fundamental limit on questions we can answer with computers."

AR My second thesis (Oxford 1976) was on the implications of Gödel's theorem for mathematics. I read Hofstadter's book in Japan in 1981.

Dice With 120 Sides

Siobhan Roberts

Earlier this year, at a mathematical conference in Atlanta, two scientists from the Dice Lab débuted a die with a 120 sides. The d120 is 5 cm in diameter and 90 g in weight, and is technically a disdyakis triacontahedron. Its face numbers are distributed so that any two opposing sides sum to 121. Each of its 62 corners boasts equanimity, too. For example, a vertex at which 10 triangles meet sums to 605, which is 10 times the average of all the numbers on the die.

AR My first thesis (London 1974) was on the logic of probability, as applicable to dice throws.

ER = EPR

Anil Ananthaswamy

The slogan ER = EPR hints at a connection between two parts of physics first investigated by Albert Einstein. His general theory of relativity says gravity is the warped geometry of spacetime and implies black holes have entropy. Quantum theory he attacked in a paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, arguing that entanglement was preposterous.

Juan Martín Maldacena conjectured that string theory equations describing gravity in some volume of spacetime are dual to a set of quantum equations describing the surface of that volume. He gave an example based on a paper by Einstein and Rosen showing how two apparently separate black holes might be connected inside. He showed that an Einstein-Rosen bridge or wormhole would only form if the outsides of the black holes were entangled. This links quantum mechanics and spacetime.

Mark Van Raamsdonk explored further. If you slowly reduce the amount of entanglement between two black hole surfaces to zero, the wormhole becomes thinner until it breaks, leaving two unconnected bits of spacetime. He infers that spacetime is a geometrical manifestation of entanglement. It may also be a manifestation of quantum information.

Black holes emit Hawking radiation. If nothing new falls in, a black hole will eventually evaporate. But matter is information, and in quantum theory it can never be destroyed. If information escaped with the radiation, a Hawking particle on its way in would have to entangle with all other Hawking particles that left the black hole at all earlier times as well as its partner outside the horizon. This offends the monogamy of entanglement. But without polygamy a blazing firewall of radiation forms at the event horizon, contradicting general relativity — paradox.

Quantum monogamy says three quantum systems cannot all be entangled at the same time. But if the particles just inside the horizon and the particles far away are connected via a wormhole, one must lie to the future of the others. So they are not all entangled at the same time — paradox gone.

AR I groped at such links between spacetime and entanglement in my 2006 paper About Time (Mindworlds 13). Recently I have neglected these ideas.
 

2016 July 3

Brexit Aftershocks

Der Spiegel

David Cameron gambled away British EU membership and history has moved on. The vote for Brexit has set the stage for the next big power struggle within the EU: more Europe versus less Europe.

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Parliament President Martin Schulz want more. Schulz: "If we let the British play games with us, the entire EU will fly apart."

Most European heads of state and government, led by Angela Merkel, want less: Treat the British amicably, don't rush them and play for time. And choke off all efforts aimed at more Europe.

Schulz and Juncker have long been working toward limiting the influence of European heads of state and government in the EU. In May, the two pledged to join forces to ensure greater powers for the EU. It was a pact against Merkel.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble wants to improve EU-27 cooperation and cohesion. He wants completion of the single market and the free movement of capital, plus agreement on economic growth and external border control.

Sunday — French president François Hollande wants to get rid of the UK as quickly as possible. He says the EU must be clear about what leaving entails. Brexit increases French influence in the EU.

Monday — Merkel and Holland meet in Berlin with Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi. They say proposals for further EU development in the areas of security, employment, youth, and EZ cooperation should be presented by September. Merkel addresses the German parliament: no secret negotiations with the UK before it officially applies for withdrawal and no cherry picking by London. But give them time.

Tuesday — EU leaders meet for the last supper with Cameron.

Wednesday — EU heads of state and government will take the lead in Brexit negotiations. Junker says that is his responsibility, but they say they have been elected and he hasn't. They agree on no changes to European treaties, no convention, no fundamental modifications to the EU, and no deepening of integration.

— Merkel defeats Schulz and Juncker for the idea of Europe as a collection of nation states.

— Polish Law and Justice party head Jaroslaw Kaczynski wants more Europe in foreign and security policy. He wants a European army and a strong European president. Many governments in eastern and central Europe agree with him.

— Governments in southern Europe want to see greater public investment, such as an EZ budget under European Parliament control.

— Countries like Sweden and Germany want a joint asylum system, with a fair distribution of refugees throughout the EU. This too would lead to more Europe.

AR The UK is fundamentally out of step with all this. Long live the EU.

How to Revive European Union

The New York Times

One critique of the EU is that it is not democratic. European Council decisions are subject to political compromise and rarely reflect national preferences directly. The European Commission negotiates trade agreements, enforces antitrust rules and proposes legislation, but its president is selected by the European Parliament, which is weak. Reforms could include making the parliament more central in decision making and letting Europeans directly elect the president of the commission.

Nationalists will rail against greater European unity, but addressing the refugee crisis will require it. EU leaders made the crisis worse by leaving Italy and Greece to handle it on their own with little assistance. A long overdue European border and coast guard operation will help manage migration and security. Officials need to centralize the registration and screening of refugees.

Another big challenge is the weakened EU economy. Some countries, like Greece and Spain, have suffered such a steep decline in living standards that a full recovery could take decades. Even in countries like France and Italy, unemployment rates are still way too high. In Britain, median wages surpassed their pre-crisis level only last year. The EU could strengthen its economy by restructuring the debt of weaker countries and increasing public spending.

AR If Europe had still been a collection of separate nation states, mass immigration would have led to armed conflict by now. The national economies would be crippled by red tape at borders and citizens would suffer permanent austerity inside their police states. They would dream of European integration as paradise.

A Dutch View

Geert Wilders

European political leaders are allowing asylum seekers and migrants to come to us. They're spending billions of euros on them. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states should take care of these people.

I want to close the Dutch borders. I don't have a problem with people from Slovakia and Lithuania. But I do have a problem with immigration from Islamic countries.

We will decide who we allow into our country and who we will outlaw. Immigration from non-Western immigrants costs our state €7.2 billion annually, much more than closing the borders and visa limitations would.

We have a million Muslims in the Netherlands. As long as they obey the law and respect the constitution, nobody has anything to fear. But when somebody has dual citizenship and commits a crime, his Dutch passport should be revoked and he should be deported.

Islam is an imperialist ideology like communism or fascism. Islam wants to destroy us and I want to prevent it. I will not stop fighting against Islam until I have achieved freedom for our country.

AR Fight imperialist Islam at the European level. Close ranks and fight together.

Brexit Will Still Hurt

Niall Ferguson

Brexit probably won't happen for years yet. There is no evidence to dismiss predictions that the UK would suffer a recession if it left the EU. The vote alone has triggered an instant 10% drop in the exchange rate.

The vote was no revolt against the elites. The Tory leadership contest is like Oxford student politics. Oxford graduates David Cameron and George Osborne were defeated, then one former president of the Oxford Union debating society (Gove) knifed another (Boris Johnson), while a former Oxford Union treasurer (Nicky Morgan) decided to back Gove against a former Oxford Union returning officer (Theresa May), who is married to a former Oxford Union president. The shocking truth about British politics is this: heads, Oxford wins; tails, all other universities lose.

The big division exposed by the referendum was between the generations. Not only were the elderly much more likely than the young to back Brexit, they were also much more likely to vote.

AR At Oxford I studiously avoided student politics. Now I see there's no escape!

Ein gepflegter Ausraster britischer Schnösel

Die Welt

Selten haben sich Angehörige der britischen Elite so verzockt wie David Cameron und Boris Johnson beim Brexit. Die Erklärung dafür liefert womöglich der Club, dem beide als Studenten angehörten.

Sehr britisch, diese Nobel-Uni von Kotzford!

Die Welt

The Riot Club — der Film über Hooligans in Nobel-Uni-Uniformen. Vorbild war ein Club, dem auch David Cameron angehörte.

AR The Bullingdon boys trashed Britain — thanks, chaps!
 

2016 July 2

UK Still in Deficit in 2020

Financial Times

UK chancellor George Osborne has had to abandon his goal of reaching a budget surplus by 2020. The Brexit vote has torn up his economic plan and continues to convulse world markets.

British government bonds traded in negative territory. The FTSE 100 closed up on Friday but the FTSE 250 closed down compared to referendum day. The pound also ended the week down.

Osborne: "The government must provide fiscal credibility so we will continue to be tough on the deficit but we must be realistic about achieving a surplus by the end of this decade."

The Biggest Blunder

Andrew Marr

The decision for Brexit is its single biggest democratic act in modern times. But it is also a historic blunder, provoked for the wrong reasons and then pursued in the biggest establishment cock-up in my lifetime.

The cock-up started in 2012, when David Cameron and his closest political allies decided that the only way of scuppering UKIP and the Euro-hostile right of the Conservative party was to give the British people a referendum. Cameron decided to put party management and tactics ahead of grand strategy, grossly overrated his own negotiating skills, and has been badly bitten in the bottom accordingly.

The British political class has come close to destroying itself. My guess is that parliamentary chaos and a sense of drift will propel us into an election later this year or next. There is plenty of anger still to come.

Brexit Warns America

Anne Applebaum

The true impact of Brexit will not be visible for many years. The slow agony of the divorce proceedings will take up precious political time and energy in London and other European capitals. The UK will turn further in on itself, so British energy and talent will not be dedicated to solving bigger problems. Money will not be spent and opportunities will be lost.

Other European countries may now face political instability as well. Not just in the smaller European nations but also in France, the Netherlands, Italy, and possibly even Germany, the political scene may shift dramatically. Again, much of the damage will be invisible, taking the form of things that will not happen.

This referendum campaign was unique. Identity politics trumped economics. Arguments about independence and sovereignty defeated arguments about British influence and importance. The advice of institutions was ignored. Elected leaders were swept aside. If all that can happen in the UK, it can happen in the United States too.

Brexit Backlash

David Runciman

University towns voted overwhelmingly for Remain. But now the people whose sense of security and wellbeing has been shredded by the knowledge economy have taken their chance to answer back. The gap between the winners and losers in the new economy has been laid bare.

The economic winners find themselves on the losing side. In economic terms they still have plenty to lose, and populism will not hold much appeal. My sense is that underlying the voter demographics behind the result is the basic gap that now exists between people who can imagine a viable future for themselves in a networked world, and those who cannot.

The digital revolution reveals a future in which knowledge is the primary currency, connectivity the primary asset, and physical geography at best a secondary concern. People who are rooted in particular places, who work in industries that produce physical goods, and whose essential social interactions do not happen online are the ones who wanted Out.

The referendum result represents a rejection of the power of elites. The tragedy is that it has undermined one of the few institutions that operates on a scale that might limit the power of those elites. It shows that real people still have the power to surprise faceless networks.

Brexit Britain: Elites Run Amok

Deborah Orr

A week on from the referendum, no one knows who will be taking back democracy for us. But public money will be squandered on disentangling the UK from the EU and getting the elites the trade deals they want. When the government limits free movement, the islanders will have to buckle down.

Conservative MPs will spend the summer deciding which two candidates for leader and prime minister they will ask their membership to choose between. Then democratic accountability will be restored to sovereignty. With EU protection gone, our dysfunctional democracy will be all we have.

AR We voters broke it, we voters must fix it.
 

2016 July 1

Exit From Brexit

Markus Becker and Dietmar Hipp

A campaign to stop Brexit is gaining ground. Organised opponents are lining up their arguments:

1 The betrayal argument: The day after the vote, Leave campaign leaders disavowed central promises and the market reaction confirmed the fears of Remain campaigners. Voters felt betrayed.

2 The democracy argument: The result was too narrow. If millions of Leave voters were to change their mind in the next few weeks, it would be hard to ignore them. Leave campaigners lied to them.

3 The legal argument: The referendum is not legally binding. David Cameron was moved to call it not by the public interest but by party interests. Brexit is arguably a disproportionate response to a narrow majority.

Before the UK government enacts Brexit, experts say it must get the consent of Parliament.

Wir erwarten von London einen Fahrplan

Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Ich bin überrascht, wie wenig vorbereitet Großbritannien ist. Was mich am meisten ärgert, ist, dass die beiden Hauptkontrahenten bei den Tories aus einem zunächst nur innerparteilichen Konflikt eine ausgewachsene Staats- und Regierungskrise in Großbritannien gemacht und damit auch der ganzen EU Schaden zugefügt haben, nun aber die Verantwortung für die Folgen anderen überlassen.

Was wir von London erwarten, und zwar zügig, ist ein Fahrplan, wann die Verhandlungen über den Ausstieg mit der EU beginnen sollen und wie die Briten sich diese Verhandlungen vorstellen. Weitere Verzögerungen wären nicht wünschenswert, und sicher auch schädlich, für die Briten selbst und auch für uns in Europa. Es kommt jetzt darauf an, Europa zusammenzuhalten.

AR In short, foreign minister Steinmeier expects a plan from London as soon as possible. Delay would damage not only the UK but also EU member states.

A Nation in Peril

Tony Blair

The most important decision taken by the UK in many decades has left the country deeply divided. The question is how to unite, how to protect and advance the national interest, and what is the right future relationship with Europe.

This will not be easy. Leave elation is matched by a profound dismay in the ranks of Remain voters, and in the case of younger voters anger. To come safely through this we need adult politics.

The European Parliament has to agree any new deal for Britain. There is going to be a negotiation of extraordinary complexity where there are a thousand devils in every detail. This needs serious statesmanship.

The EU-27 could decide to deter other secessionist movements. We the British people will be face to face with our new reality.

Time

Carlo Rovelli

Art has the ability to open our eyes to a different perspective on the world. Physics does the same thing. It opens our eyes to something new, more wide and true.

Science is the best tool we have. One should distinguish the actual job of doing physics, solving problems, learning how to do equations, from the sheer beauty of what physics is actually describing. The results can be appreciated by everybody.

In trying to understand quantum gravity, we find that there is no time at the fundamental level. Instead of time, there is only the change of things with respect to one another. Our feeling of passing time is due to our imperfect knowledge of the world.

Nature is so complex. If we learn to move from thinking of the world as an ensemble of distinct things to thinking of it as a network of interconnected processes, we will grasp it better.

AR I make time.