Photo: John Swannell
Diamond Jubilee portrait of
Queen Elizabeth II

"In this special year, as I
dedicate myself anew to your service, I hope that we will all
be reminded of the power of togetherness and the convening strength of family, friendship
and good neighbourliness."

Image: Josh Landis, NSF
Vostok Station, 2000-2001

Mindreading
New Scientist

A team at the University of California, Berkeley, has reconstructed speech from the brain activity caused by hearing speech. Because this activity is similar when hearing or thinking a sentence, the work brings mindreading a step closer.

The team presented speech to people having brain surgery and recorded neural activity from electrodes inserted in auditory cortex. They found correlations between neural activity and sound frequencies, phoneme rhythm, and fluctuations of frequencies. Then they trained an algorithm to interpret the neural activity and create a spectrogram from it. A second program converted the spectrogram back into speech.

The model can be applied to anyone, but the settings need to be tuned to individual brains. The training is easy. A trained model can read minds.

Theodore Dalrymple
on the Irish, the Greeks,
and the Germans






Color Vision
1
Stare at the red dot on the girl's nose for 30 seconds
2
Turn your eyes to a plain surface (your ceiling or blank wall)
3
Blink repeatedly and quickly
 4
See her ...

AR It works!

2012 Accession Day

The Morphogenetic Heresy
The Observer

Rupert Sheldrake was a Cambridge biochemistry don and one of the brightest Darwinians of his generation. But one morning in 1981, soon after the publication of his first book, A New Science of Life, he read a Nature editorial by Sir John Maddox announcing that it was a "book for burning" and declaring that Sheldrake be "condemned" for "heresy".

In 1968, Sheldrake travelled for some months through India and Sri Lanka: "I met people, highly intelligent people, who had a completely different world view from anything to which I had been exposed." Returning to Cambridge, he read Matter and Memory by Henri Bergson: "I realized that there might potentially be a memory principle in nature that would solve the problem I was wrestling with."

In 1974, Sheldrake returned to India and took a job near Hyderabad: "I had some exposure to psychedelics, and that opened me up to the idea that consciousness was much richer than anything my physiology lecturers had ever described. Then I came across transcendental meditation." Sheldrake began to realize that there was "a lot more in my makeup that was Christian than I cared to admit. I started praying and going to church."

Sheldrake went to live at the ashram of the exiled Christian holy man, Father Bede Griffiths. Then Sheldrake decided to write A New Science of Life, setting out the theory he called morphogenetics: "I wrote it to try to find a broader framework for biology. A more holistic one, proposing the argument that the laws of nature were also evolving in time." Maddox called it a book for burning.

AR The key idea, as far as I got it from the book, is certainly ambitious. It goes way beyond the edifice of ideas we can ground on the currently available foundation of methodically reproducible experiments. If the laws of nature are evolving in time, then deep physics and even mathematics begin to wobble and you need a generation of pioneers as radical as the quantum boys to prevent the collapse of science as we know it. Step by step, young man, is the advice I would send back to the ambitious young don. Scientists should indeed keep open minds, but they should not let their brains fall out.

2012 February 5

Antarctic Lakes
OurAmazingPlanet

At a tiny outpost in the middle of Antarctica, Russian scientists are racing against the approach of winter to drill down to Lake Vostok, the largest of the buried lakes discovered in Antarctica. Vostok Station is over the southern tip of the lake, which is about 250 km long and 80 km wide in places. Below almost 4 km of ice, the lake's water are more than 500 m deep in places and may have been isolated for 1 million years. Scientists hope to find new organisms that have evolved in isolation down there. But temperatures have already dropped below minus 40°C at Vostok Station, and the team must leave before its aircraft are grounded.

The Russians have competition. Teams from the United States and the United Kingdom are set to begin their own drilling projects into Antarctic lakes. They will use hot-water drills that can reach their targets in days and retrieve liquid samples within hours. British Antarctic Survey engineers recently hauled about 70 tons of drilling gear to the site of Lake Ellsworth, a lake under 3 km of ice in West Antarctica, and are poised to begin drilling in fall 2012. The American Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project is aimed at a subglacial lake that flushes more quickly. Drilling may begin there in January 2013.

AR Vostok Station is in high summer, we're in a deep chill, yet it's still 20 K colder there. Brrrrr!

2012 February 4

Remiss of me not to have posted earlier: Michael Dummett († 2011-12-27) deserves remembrance.

2012 February 3

Seven Pillars of Wisdom
David Miliband

1 We should be the reformers of the state and not just its defenders. The public won't vote for the prescription that central government is the cure for all ills for the good reason that it isn't.

2 We need to be the champions of local political change rather than skeptics. There is a crisis of trust in government across the democratic world, and we need to address it by changing the system.

3 We need to be clear how equality serves our notion of the good society. The levels of inequality currently being generated in countries like Britain need to be tackled. This means embracing notions of merit, reward, and responsibility in developing policy in areas such as tax and welfare.

4 We need a politics of economic growth, not just redistribution and regulation. There is an investment crisis facing many western economies. A remedy will require deep engagement with a changing economy and with the range of interventions and incentives that can stimulate it.

5 The world is more open and connected than ever before. But unless globalization is reshaped for mass benefit, stirrings of discontent will rise to become a dangerous tide.

6 We need to continue to modernize the party.

7 We need to defend Labour's record in government.

AR Good luck with the last two — you'll need it!

2012 February 2

Confront Germany
Anatole Kaletsky

The fatal flaw in the euro project is that a single currency requires a single fiscal policy and a single fiscal policy requires a single political authority. Three ways for the eurozone to become the United States of Europe:

1 Good: the euro governments agree a federal treaty incorporating not just the political federalism demanded by Germany but also jointly guaranteed eurobonds and political control of the ECB.

2 Bad: Angela Merkel succeeds in imposing her present one-sided treaty, her demands are taken literally, and the euro collapses.

3 Ugly: The other euro governments turn the tables and agree among themselves on a properly balanced federal treaty with an ultimatum: Germany can stay in the euro on terms acceptable to the other members, or pull out.

Turning Right, Not Left
Francis Fukuyama

In the United States, a lot of technological change has substituted for labor and made people lose their jobs. We forgot that the United States was spared socialism because the modern economy produced affluent societies in which most people enjoyed a good life.

The crisis was rooted in the American model of liberalized finance that hurt ordinary people and benefited the rich. Republican politicians are completely bought by Wall Street. Working class supporters only vote Republican because they distrust any government and resent rule by elites.

Germany has done a much better job of protecting its manufacturing base and its working class compared to the United States. German Social Democrats have increased flexibility in labor markets and made the welfare state friendlier to capitalism. The old socialist agenda no longer applies in Germany.

All modern democracies are dominated by well-organized groups that do not represent the general public. The entire European project was elite-driven from the beginning. Virtually every European country now has a right-wing populist party. They see that the elites in Europe fail to address their issues.

AR We need much deeper democracy using frequent online voting on small issues. See the last chapter of my book G.O.D. Is Great.

2012 February 1

Kicking Greeks When They're Down
Financial Times

Apple: 30,000 people, annual revenue $100 billion (and going up)
Greece: 11 million people, annual revenue $300 billion (and going down)

AR Even if you multiply the Apple people by 100 to include families, communities, shopkeepers, utility workers, supply chain employees and so on, Greece still looks sick. But what do we do? Fire all the useless Greeks? A cradle-to-grave national state is not a limited-liability commercial company.



India Chooses Dassault
The Times of India

The French Dassault Rafale fighter has bagged the contract for supplying 126 combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force, edging out European competitor EADS Typhoon in a deal worth over 10 billion dollars.

AR The Rafale is a fine plane with a good pedigree. The Eurofighter Typhoon is better but costs more. The UK Royal Navy could do worse than put Rafales on its new carriers (blog 2008 March 22).

AP
HMS Dauntless, the Royal Navy's second Type 45 air defense destroyer, embarks on a cruise to defend the Falkland Islands.
She is 500 feet (152 m) long, displaces 8,000 tons, has a 13,000 km range, and is armed with missiles, guns, and a helicopter:
Sea Viper missile system for all-round air defense to a radius of 100 km with missiles flying faster than Mach 4;
Kryten 4.5 in (113 mm) main gun, two 30 mm Oerlikon guns amidships, and two fast-firing Phalanx 20 mm rotary guns;
Lynx Mk 8 helicopter for launching Sea Skua missiles or Sting Ray torpedoes or carrying troops or flying on patrol.

AR Reminds me ofthe Deutschland-class Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee.

Mormonism Needs Reform
Carrie Sheffield

Mormons love families. But former Mormons know the family estrangement and bigotry that often come with questioning or leaving the church.

While studying at Brigham Young University, I struggled after realizing that Mormonism's claims about anthropology, history, and other subjects contradict reason and science. I spiritually imploded after learning these things and other facts outside official church curriculum. A Mormon leader told me to quit reading historical and scientific materials because they were "worse than pornography."

I was told to avoid books and marry. Mormons are discouraged from voicing doubts and ostracized if they do. Mormonism needs reform.

Iranian Shahab-3 missile

AFP/Getty
A vampire squid on the face of drowning humanity or a scene from Orthodox Epiphany celebrations in Greece?

Tim Maudlin says
Stephen Hawking
doesn't know what
he's talking about


Shai Agassi rolls out
electric cars in Israel


Triumph Daytona 955i 2004
singing its heart out
(YouTube, 4:35)

2012 January 31

Beware the Beasts
Christopher Dickey

The states of southern European face a thundering herd of creditors. The eurozone needs to raise nearly two trillion euros in new financing in 2012. The ECB tossed out half a trillion euros to the banks as a year-end treat. But throwing carrots to the herd only delays the stampede.

The lumbering beast that is slow growth is another untamed challenge. The real solution to the crisis is growth, but that only comes when there is enough confidence in state finances to get credit flowing. The eurozone crisis may well drag global GDP down a percent in 2012.

The IMF wants a firewall to keep the wild beasts at bay. The more money they can put up against a stampede, the more likely the danger can be averted. But the biggest creditor nations are not keen to build the trillion-dollar wall we need. So it will be too small, with gaps. And the beasts know it.

AR My solution: Strap the financial beasts into tax harnesses that force them to drag the global juggernaut in the desired direction. If we deploy half the ingenuity the money pirates used to get rich, we can design tax trappings that do the job. Drawback: it has to be global. Enter GO.

2012 January 30

Asma Assad
The Times

President Bashar Assad of Syria is knee deep in blood. To keep him in power his security forces are slaughtering and torturing thousands of unarmed citizens. What does Assad's wife Asma, 36, an intelligent, educated woman raised in liberal Britain and seemingly dedicated to good works, think of the evils being perpetrated daily across Syria and in her family's home city of Homs? Is she indifferent to the suffering being inflicted on her fellow Sunnis by Assad's Alawite henchmen? Once the most visible of Middle Eastern first ladies, she has all but vanished from view since the uprising began.

Roger Scruton reviews three new books on the brain
Robert McCrum reflects on the future of the novel

2012 January 29

Israel Versus Iran
Ronen Bergman

Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak lays out three questions:

1 Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran's nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?

2 Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?

3 Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?

When the response to all of these questions is yes, it will be time to act. After that, "it will not be possible to use any surgical means to bring about a significant delay. Not for us, not for Europe and not for the United States."

Vice prime minister and minister of strategic affairs Moshe Ya'alon: "Our policy is that in one way or another, Iran's nuclear program must be stopped. It is a matter of months before the Iranians will be able to attain military nuclear capability."

In 2004, prime minister Ariel Sharon assigned responsibility for putting an end to the program to Meir Dagan, then head of Mossad. Dagan detailed a strategy that involved political pressure, covert measures, counter-proliferation, sanctions, and regime change. In August 2007, he said "the United States, Israel and like-minded countries must push on all five fronts in a simultaneous joint effort."

Since 2005 the Iranian nuclear project has been hit by a series of mishaps and disasters, for which the Iranians hold Western intelligence services responsible. The most controversial covert operations have been the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Dagan believes that his five-fronts strategy has succeeded in delaying Iran's progress toward developing nuclear weapons.

Barak says Israel must have a military option ready and ordered preparations for an attack on Iran. According to latest intelligence, it will take the Iranians nine months to assemble their first explosive device and another six months to weaponize it for delivery to Israel. Barak:

"The moment Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the region will feel compelled to do the same. The Saudi Arabians have told the Americans as much, and one can think of both Turkey and Egypt in this context, not to mention the danger that weapons-grade materials will leak out to terror groups."

"From our point of view, a nuclear state offers an entirely different kind of protection to its proxies. Imagine if we enter another military confrontation with Hezbollah, which has over 50,000 rockets that threaten the whole area of Israel, including several thousand that can reach Tel Aviv. A nuclear Iran announces that an attack on Hezbollah is tantamount to an attack on Iran. We would not necessarily give up on it, but it would definitely restrict our range of operations."

"And if a nuclear Iran covets and occupies some gulf state, who will liberate it? The bottom line is that we must deal with the problem now."

Since Barak became minister of defense, the Israeli military has prepared intensively for a strike against Iran. The Israeli Air Force believes it can set the Iranian nuclear project back by three to five years.

I believe that Israel will strike Iran in 2012.

AR After that maybe we can resume our trajectory to the sunlit uplands.

2012 January 28

The Zero-Sum World
Gideon Rachman

Zero-sum logic ties together the crisis inside the European Union, deteriorating American-Chinese relations, and the deadlock in global governance.

The European Union is going into reverse as European nations fear they are dragging each other down. The southern countries see unity as a route to crippling debt and mass unemployment. And the northern countries are disinclined to lend billions to bail out their neighbors. Politicians interpret "more Europe" in terms of their national debates. For the southerners it means eurobonds. But for the Germans it means stricter enforcement of budgetary austerity. Expect the rise of more nationalist politics.

The global economic crisis has caused a shift in the global balance of power. Americans sense that a richer, more powerful China might mean a relatively poorer, relatively weaker America. China may be the world's largest economy by 2018. Beijing is already increasing military spending and taking a harder line in border disputes with India, Japan, and Vietnam. The United States is turning its attention from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region.

AR Whither Globorg? The three global timezones must agree to hold regular GO summits to thrash out governance issues. I volunteer to draft the agenda.

Barak on Iran
The Independent

Speaking at Davos, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak warned that soon a conventional attack will not block the Tehran regime from getting the bomb: "We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear. It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them."

A paper published by the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies holds that the fear of Iranian missile attack against Israel has been overblown and would cause only relatively minor damage.

MOP Too Small
Haaretz

The United States does not have a conventional bomb powerful enough to destroy Iran's deeply hidden nuclear facilities. U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta says Americans are "still trying" to develop a more powerful bomb. Last year the U.S. Air Force received new 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs designed to destroy deep underground bunkers. B-2 stealth bombers would deliver the bombs in an attack on Iran's nuclear plants.

AR Reminds me of the 10-ton Grand Slam bombs the RAF used in 1945 to destroy Nazi U-boat bunkers. I think we should agree that hitting the Iranian bunkers with nuclear penetrators would make more military sense. The priority is to get the job done quickly and decisively, not pussyfoot with puny ordnance that may fail and drag out the fight.

2012 January 27

Simply Baroque!
"Le ballet des saisons" by Jean-Baptiste Lully and "Le quattro stagioni" by Antonio Vivaldi
La Folia Baroque Orchestra starring Julia Schröder on violin
Luthersaal Schwetzingen

Religion for Atheists
The Guardian

Alain de Botton's father Gilbert was born in Egypt and became a multimillionaire banker: "My dad was a slightly stricter version of Richard Dawkins. The worldview was that there are idiots out there who believe in Santa Claus and fairies and magic and elves and we're not joining that nonsense."

After heading Rothschild Bank, Gilbert established Global Asset Management in 1983 with £1 million and sold it in 1999 for £420 million. Alain says he was an extreme atheist: "I think it was a generational thing." And yet Gilbert now lies beneath a Hebrew headstone in a Jewish cemetery in London.

In 2008, Alain established the School of Life in Bloomsbury with books on the ground floor and a salon where he teaches "ideas to live by". He says society can't get to where he wants it to go without plundering religion. Politicians haven't got the buttons, but religions have, and know how to use them.

Alain De Botton was born in Zurich and schooled in England. After a double first in history at Cambridge, he did a master's in philosophy at London and began a PhD but gave up: "I had a long night of the soul."

AR Alain, 42, has earned several million from his popular philosophy books.

USS Gerald R. Ford
Pentagon Cuts
Financial Times

The Pentagon will cut $485 billion from its planned spending over the next decade but will maintain all its 11 aircraft carriers and will
continue to invest in the F-35 program. JCS chairman General Martin Dempsey: "We are retaining our full spectrum capability."

Dassault Rafale
The Royal Navy may buy French fighter jets for its new aircraft carrier. The UK government is concerned about escalating costs and delays in the American JSF/
F-35 program and may invest in an interim capability such as the
F-18 Super Hornet or the French Dassault Rafale.








Harper's Bazaar
New Yorker Vera Wang, 62,
has a new home in Beverly Hills,
pictured in the U.S. edition of
Harper's Bazaar: "I am not the
sort of woman who would wear
high heels with a bathing suit.
Let's get that straight right now."

The Power of Introverts
Scientific American

Introverts prefer quiet environments, while extroverts need higher levels of stimulation to feel their best. Our schools and workplaces are designed for extroverts.

Research shows that brainstorming in groups is a terrible way to produce creative ideas. Solitude is a crucial ingredient for creativity.

Quiet by Susan Cain

The Third Jihad
The New York Times

Ominous music plays. Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets, and an Islamic flag flies over the White House. Narrator: "This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America ... This is the war you don't know about."

The Third Jihad: Radical
Islam's Vision for America

Iranium: The Movie

Both movies are financed by
The Clarion Fund

Chuck Norris











AFP
Laura Dekker, 16, returns from
a one-year solo voyage around
the world in her yacht Guppy

2012 January 26

Cameron @ Davos
Financial Times

British PM David Cameron called on Berlin to contribute significantly more resources and guarantees to help solve the eurozone crisis. He criticized eurozone leaders for being distracted by other issues, such as the introduction of a financial transaction tax, which he described as "quite simply madness".

British officials are frustrated with German leadership of the eurozone and criticize Germany for seeking to persuade other countries to "become more German" without accepting that Germany must "become less German" by importing more. Cameron called on Germany to allow its trade surplus to fall.

AR I pay transaction tax for my work deals and things I buy, so why shouldn't the financial predators? Cameron should stop preaching and start solving the problem.

Merkel @ Davos
Financial Times

German chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe can only recover the confidence of global markets if the weaker European economies boost their growth and competitiveness with structural reforms and ensure that their debts are sustainable. Responding to IMF calls for much bigger firewalls to protect European sovereign debt from speculative attacks, she questioned their credibility: "If Germany promises something that cannot be delivered if the markets attack it hard, then Europe would be left with a wide open flank." Merkel called for more European solidarity through closer integration. German businesses see beyond austerity and report growing confidence in their prospects.

Europe: The Rescue
Camilla Cavendish

Late last year, the yield on two-year Italian bonds hit 7% and it seemed that Spain might fail to refinance its debts. Then the ECB began offering banks unlimited three-year loans. Spain and Italy needed time to make structural reforms and the move has given them three years. Now Spain has raised a fifth of its needs for this year through bond auctions and the yield on Italian bonds stands at 3.5%. The ECB has allowed what is in effect quantitative easing. This week the ECB may join in a restructuring package for Greek debt. The technocrats may have rescued Europe.

World Economic Forum
Financial Times

Davos expert verdict:
1 Globorg is weakening and risks another crunch.
2 Globorg will grow only slightly with regional recessions.
3 Expect an economic crunch or another sub-par year.
4 Weak government responses will worsen any crisis.
5 Most big issues depend on solving the eurozone crisis.

Experts say the eurozone needs:
1 Austerity and structural reforms in peripheral countries
2 Fiscal integration with risk sharing, including eurobonds
3 Interim liquidity support for countries struggling to borrow
4 Deep restructuring of Greek sovereign debt
5 Eurozone-wide recapitalization of European banks

Fifth Generation Dominance
American Forces Press Service

Fifth-generation fighter aircraft are key to America maintaining domain dominance in the years ahead, say U.S. Air Force officials. The new defense strategy guidance unveiled by President Barack Obama affirms that the U.S. military must be able to defeat anti-access, area-denial threats. The strategy requires the ability to operate against adversaries across the spectrum of conflict. Fifth-generation aircraft are a key ability in in combating the growing anti-access, area-denial capabilities of other nations. The F-22 and F-35 fighters bring maneuverability, survivability, advanced avionics, and stealth technology to the fight. They are particularly relevant at the top of the spectrum and are key to the warfighting capability of the nation.

AR In other words, lawmakers, don't you dare cut the budget for these items!

2012 January 25

State of the Union
The Times

President Obama used his State of the Union address to:

1 Promise more equality: "We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules."

2 Outline a new Buffett rule ensuring that wealthy executives do not pay lower tax rates than their secretaries do. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says he and his rich friends should be taxed more heavily. Like Mitt Romney, Warren Buffett pays about half the rate of regular income tax.

3 Lay out an economic blueprint highlighting corporate tax breaks to encourage insourcing and skills training. On energy, America should increase its independence by opening up more of its oil and gas reserves and by investing in clean energy.

4 Warn Iran: "America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations."

AR All this sounds good: Romney the raider will have to fight to do better.

Watchdog for Investors
Financial Times

Martin Wheatley, new head of UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): "You have to assume that you don't have rational consumers. Faced with complex decisions or too much information, they ... hide behind credit rating agencies or behind the promises that are given to them by the salesperson."

The FCA will police markets and protect investors in an effort to head off new financial scandals. Research in behavioral economics shows investors often make decisions contrary to their own interests because of their aversion to losses or unwillingness to ditch a losing strategy.

Wheatley sees risk in the combination of predatory selling and poor consumer choices: "Those two things don't meet in a happy place ... The profitability to the firm appears to be a bigger concern than the suitability to the customer."

AR Wheatley has obviously read Daniel Kahneman's new book (blog, Jan 5).

2012 January 24

Gulf Storm Warning
Financial Times

Tensions are mounting between Iran and the west over Tehran's nuclear program. The US and its allies are pressing ahead with sanctions and are ready for naval action if the Islamic Republic tries to throttle the world's oil supply.

European Union sanctions will ban imports of Iranian crude oil. Iran has tested cruise missiles that can hit ships in the Strait of Hormuz and threatens to shut the strait. It has warned its Gulf neighbors not to replace Iranian oil in world markets. The regime is pushing ahead with plans to enrich uranium in an underground bunker that conventional bombs cannot destroy.

Iran has an ill-trained military, an obsolete air force, and a navy of speedboats. But it can interrupt the oil traffic in the strait. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, says Iran has the ability to block the strait for a few weeks. Iran would likely start by using speedboats to force tankers to make evasive maneuvers or undergo inspections. If Iran were to mine even part of the strait, U.S. forces would need weeks to clear the danger. They would first have to locate and destroy any missile and other threats to their mine-clearing vessels and helicopters.

Few western military strategists believe Iran will block the strait, as that would also block its own oil exports. Washington is trying to cool tensions. A joint Israeli-U.S. military exercise planned for the spring was canceled last week. Any random incident or miscalculation could provoke a war.

2012 January 23

Capitalism
Martin Wolf

Crises are inherent in capitalism. Periods of stability and prosperity lead to the leveraging of returns. People in the financial system profit from such leverage and underestimate its perils. The financial system is abused and then collapses. We need to protect finance and the economy from each other.

The limited liability corporation is vulnerable to looting. Incentives for top employees encourage manipulation of corporate earnings. It is vital to encourage the independence of boards and ensure that pay packages are transparent. But except in banks, governments should not intervene directly.

Taxes play a decisive role in determining how the market economy operates. We need to remove the incentives for leverage embedded in taxation. We should shift the tax burden from incomes on to consumption and wealth. We must ensure richer people pay tax.

Plutocrats like closed political and economic systems. But they undermine the open access on which democratic politics and a competitive market economy depend. Protecting democracy from plutocracy is a challenge because capitalism today is global. The answer is more global governance.

2012 January 22

My Endorsement For President
Chuck Norris

We need to appoint a commander in chief who can clearly lead America to a more solvent and secure future. We are electing a president, not a pastor or pope. We need a veteran of political war who has already fought Goliath.

My questions to find our next president:
  1 Who is most committed to follow and lead by the U.S. Constitution?
  2 Who has the greatest leadership ability to rally, unify and mobilize citizens?
  3 Who has the best working comprehension of America?
  4 Who has the best ability to influence a volatile world away from its brink of destruction?
  5 Who has clear and present moral fortitude?
  6 Who can best beat President Barack Obama?
  7 Who has the best abilities to lead Washington politics and politicians?
  8 Who has the best plan and leadership ability to restore America's economy?
  9 Who is the most fiscally prudent?
10 Who has demonstrated the highest regard for human life?

My wife Gena and I believe former Speaker Newt Gingrich is the answer to most of those questions and deserves our endorsement.

AR Oh, well, if Chuck says so ...

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Ron Rosenbaum

A new edition of William L. Shirer's 1,250-page book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich marks the 50th anniversary of its winning the National Book Award. Many baby boomers read Shirer as their parents' Book of the Month Club selection and still recall the impact it had on them.

Shirer was 30 when he took up residence in Berlin in 1934. He witnessed the rise of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler and he covered the Blitzkriegs against Poland and France before he was forced to leave in December 1940. In 1941 he published Berlin Diary, recording his response to the rise of the Reich. By 1960, Shirer had 15 years to distance himself and then to return from that distance. Rereading his magnum opus, one sees how subtly Shirer shifts between telescope and microscope. He gives us Tolstoyan vistas of battle, and yet his close-ups of the key players lay bare their minds and hearts.

Shirer maintained that Hitler and his furious drive were a distillation of centuries of German culture and philosophy. The term "Third Reich" was concocted in a 1922 book by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, who believed in the divine destiny of a German history with three momentous acts. Charlemagne's First Reich was followed by the Second Reich, resurrected by Bismarck with his Prussian "blood and iron" but betrayed in November 1918. Thereafter Germany was awaiting the savior who would lead the Third Reich to its destiny.

AR I recall reading the book as a teenager in the 1960s. It had a big impact on me too.

2012 January 21

Charity Needs Capitalism
Bill Clinton

We can and must rethink the relationship between economic and social challenges, so that benefits and opportunities are available to more people. People are demanding it. The current systems are not working. The financial crisis showed that the path we were on was unstable and unsustainable.

We see a new approach in big companies that have shifted their corporate culture to increasing shared value. When our bottom line is more about strengthening the future than maintaining the present, and when our financial interests are aligned with our social ones, we will be closer to the kind of world we want all our children to live in.

Members of the Clinton Global Initiative have made thousands of commitments that are improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe. These efforts benefit both the communities they target and the corporations and philanthropists involved. All this enhances profits, increases economic inclusion, and gives more people a stake in a shared future.

AR Good old Bill — I'd still vote for him to be president.

Hexplane
Wired

The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane. The guys at Oliver VTOL have plans for Hexplane, which combines the fuselage of a Boeing 737 with three Osprey hover rigs. Company founder Richard Oliver says the redundancy of six independent engines and propellers provides more safety.

AR I like it. Reminds me of the Fairey Rotodyne.

PHILOSOPHER

Buy @ Amazon:

USA

UK

Ralph Fiennes
directs and stars in
Coriolanus

YouTube trailer
(2:15)

Derek Parfit has spent decades building an ethical theory that
is fundamentally misguided

2012 January 20

The Chinese View Of SOPA
The New Yorker

Opponents say SOPA and PIPA would impose a censorship regime like the Great Firewall of China. Rebecca MacKinnon says they would impose a "censorship mechanism that is almost identical, technically, to the mechanism the Chinese use to censor their Internet."

Chinese reaction to American protests ranges from sympathy to snickering. A joke on micro-blogging site Weibo: "The Great Firewall turns out to be a visionary product; the American government is trying to copy us." Another joke: "At last, the planet is becoming unified: We are ahead of the whole world, and the American imperialists are racing to catch up."

Weibo has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. Opponents say American sites would also need censors to police content for copyright violations. Blogger Dr. Zhang: "I've come up with a perfect solution: You can come to China to download all your pirated media, and we'll go to America to discuss politically sensitive subjects."

2012 January 19

Diminishing Returns
Financial Times

The implosion of financial capitalism has become a crisis of political authority in the west. Behind this lies an unequal contest between a globalized economy and politicians with national electorates.

Capitalism no longer belongs to the west. The troubles faced by the advanced economies have crystalized a wrenching shift in the balance of global economic power. The financial crash inflicted huge losses on the innocent. But the Occupy movement falls short of a coherent prospectus. Globalized capitalism has outstripped the capacity of national governments to manage it.

The sense of collective interest visible at the post-crash meetings of the G20 has dissipated. What started out as a crisis of financial capitalism may give way to a backlash against globalization.

Online Piracy
Matthew Yglesias

Much of the debate about SOPA and PIPA centers on entertainment industry claims about the economic harm of copyright infringement. Large-scale, unimpeded, commercialized digital reproduction of other people's works could destroy America's creative industries. But the question to ask is whether there's a problem from the consumer side. If infringement got out of hand, we might face a bleak scenario in which bands stop recording albums and no new TV shows are released. But we're not living in that world.

2012 January 18

Civilization
Steven Pearlstein

Niall Ferguson claims that European world hegemony came not as the result of any natural advantages but because it was able to develop just the right mix of political, legal, and social institutions that made it resilient enough to prevail. Ferguson is an economic historian known for the breadth of his knowledge, the clarity and pithiness of his prose, and the originality of his analysis. But Civilization is a mishmash of disconnected and sometimes contradictory riffs held together by faulty logic, inept metaphors, and clever turns of phrase. Ferguson comes off as an intellectual showoff who couldn't be bothered to edit his own ideas. As he says, the real threat to our dominance in the world is from ourselves.

Augmented Reality
Amara D. Angelica

Imagine a future in which icons flash on your car windshield, hologram-style, as your car approaches restaurants, stores, historic landmarks, or the homes of friends. Point your hand at them, and the icons open to show online information. Wave your hand again, and you've made a restaurant reservation. Oh yeah, now there's the perfect combo: AR, booze, and driving. Here's an app I want: one that warns me when an AR car is approaching so I can swerve out of the way.

AR These are just updated HUDs from aircraft: see my 2010 book. But pilots have, like, common sense.

Cruise Ships
New Scientist

The design of giant cruise ships needs urgent rethinking after the rapid capsizing of Costa Concordia, says maritime trade union Nautilus International.

AR Easy: Make them catamarans. That way you get lots of extra deck area too. Also, the U.S. Navy could use cats for future aircraft carriers.

4
Wikipedia goes black but
Beyoncé goes white for
her new album 4

Censorship Alert

The Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States.

Wikipedia Statement

Rich Bullshit
Tom Whipple

The Institute of Economic Affairs, a right-wing free-market think tank, commissioned a report on economics and happiness. The report concluded that, to be happy, we should become more right wing and more free market.

A graph in the report appears to show that happiness increases in proportion to salary. But the income scale is logarithmic, doubling at each step. So the graph actually shows exponentially diminishing returns of happiness, the more you earn. It might take £8,000 to increase a nurse's happiness by 10%, but to increase the happiness of bank boss Bob Diamond by the same degree requires enough money to fund a hospital's worth of nurses.

If happiness is what we want, the report makes a compelling case for mass wealth redistribution.



Established science publishers
are under attack from online
upstarts

Golden Globes
Los Angeles


AP
George Clooney and his girlfriend Stacey Keibler. Clooney won the best actor prize in the drama category for his role in The Descendants.


AP
Meryl Streep won the prize for best movie actress in the drama category for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.







Photo: The Observer
Karen Gillan played Amy Pond
in Doctor Who. Now she plays
Jean Shrimpton, 18, loving photographer David Bailey in a BBC TV drama based on their historic 1962 photoshoot for Vogue.

PHOTO: MICHAEL ZILKHA
Hitchens, Voltaire, Rushdie
April 2011

Christopher Hitchens
Salman Rushdie

God saved Christopher Hitchens from the right. Nobody who detested God as viscerally, intelligently, originally, and comically as he did could stay in the pocket of god-bothered American conservatism for long. On his 62nd birthday we were photographed standing on either side of a bust of Voltaire. That photograph is now one of my most treasured possessions.

www.plusmodelmag.com
Katya Zharkova
PLUS Model Magazine
likes big fashion models



War Horse
Directed by Steven Spielberg

"The best thing Spielberg has
made in at least ten years"
The Telegraph

Margaret Thatcher
was right, says
Daniel Finkelstein


My review of One Day
by David Nicholls

"Tonight we made history. Americans know that our futures are brighter and better than these troubled times."
Mitt Romney

 The Ring Of Truth
The Times

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, IAEA inspectors are monitoring the Mordor facility concealed in a mountain near the city of Doom.

The Israeli INSS says an Iranian nuclear test would transform the Mideast:
1
The United States may invite Israel to join NATO
2
Russia would align with the United States
3
Saudi Arabia would develop
its own nuclear arms
4
If Israel joined NATO,
Turkey would leave

AR Nuke Mount Doom.

ASSC 16
Sussex, UK
2012 July 2-6

2012 January 17

Five Steps To Happiness
Matthew Syed

1 Whatever you do, don't try to be happy. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: "Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."

2 Good experiences or great memories? Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman discovered that we recall our experiences like a story and love a happy ending. When mothers measure their happiness hour by hour, they score lower than women without children. But when they give an overall happiness rating, they forget the hourly grind and score far higher.

3 Fast cars are overrated. Economics professor Richard Easterlin discovered that rich nations are no happier, on average, than poor ones, once basic needs are met. A recent study by Princeton University shows that contentment increases in line with pay until a threshold of £58,700, then levels off. The problem is that the rat race is in our genes.

4 Don't live under a flight path. Humans adapt quickly to new situations, but there are some nasty things to which we never adjust. Pain and depression are examples, but so is loud noise. Noise pollution is a catastrophe for happiness.

5 Would you live in a fantasy? Most people say no. We prefer a real life, even one less happy, provided it is authentic. In this sense, truth is more fundamental than happiness. We should decide on what we really believe before living our lives, not the other way around.

To Hell In A Shopping Basket
Robert Reich

The crisis of capitalism marks the triumph of consumers and investors over workers and citizens. Modern technologies allow us to shop in real time for the lowest prices and best returns. Yet the goods we want or the returns we seek can often be produced more efficiently elsewhere by companies offering lower pay and fewer benefits. Great deals can have devastating environmental consequences or offend common decency. But nothing trumps the lure of a bargain.

The best means of balancing the demands of consumers and investors against those of workers and citizens has been through democratic institutions that offer some protection for jobs and wages, communities, and the environment. But the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that under the First Amendment to the Constitution money is speech and corporations are people. So consumers and investors are doing increasingly well but job insecurity is on the rise, inequality is widening, communities are becoming less stable, and climate change is worsening. None of this is sustainable.

AR Money talks: I am Globorg. I cite the Supreme Court.

2012 January 16

Dreamcatcher
Slate

"Share your story," says Barack Obama's Pennsylvania website to voters. "Tell us why you want to be involved in this campaign," read the instructions. A project in Chicago codenamed Dreamcatcher is turning their input into valuable data for the next election.

Dreamcatcher is led by Rayid Ghani, who last worked as chief scientist at Accenture Technology Labs. There he mined the mountains of consumer data that collect on corporate servers to find statistical patterns for forecasting. He would help businesses find patterns in consumer behavior so they could improve their customer relations management.

In 2008, Obama's campaign saved lots of hard voter data plus an unprecedented quantity of voter interviews it regularly conducted using paid phone banks and volunteer canvassers. Analysts used the data to build sophisticated statistical models that allowed them to sort voters by their relative likelihoods of supporting Obama.

But the 2008 algorithms have trouble picking up voter positions, or the intensity around those positions, with much nuance. Before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, every Democrat's top concern seemed to be opposition to the Iraq war. When Lehman Brothers collapsed, the economy became the leading issue across demographic and ideological groups. But the surveys were unable to burrow beneath the surface.

As part of the Dreamcatcher project, Obama campaign officials are redesigning the notes field for individual records in the database of voters so that it sits at the top of the screen and is large enough to include stories submitted online. Those familiar with Dreamcatcher describe it as a bet on text analytics to make sense of a whole genre of personal information that no one has yet put to use in politics.

AR My former SAP team, now the HANA team, may be interested by this deployment scenario.

War Horse
David Gritten

Steven Spielberg, 65, is the most commercially successful director in the history of cinema and a sucker for schmaltz. His films include Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET the Extraterrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, AI Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Munich, The Adventures of Tintin, and now War Horse. Spielberg can still make movie magic.

AR Like many of us, I can mark out the stations of my adult life with his movies. The brilliance of his creative genius is splendid to behold.

Geert Wilders' new book, Marked for Death, is scheduled for release in April

Iran Oil Warning
Financial Times

Iran is warning Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members not to boost oil production: The Iranian OPEC representative said Tehran would consider a boost "unfriendly". The Saudi oil minister said the kingdom would meet customer demand for more oil. In the last 10 days, the British prime minister, the Chinese premier, a Japanese minister, and a US lawmaker have all visited Saudi Arabia for oil talks. The kingdom is already pumping around 10 million barrels a day, at prices above $110 a barrel.

Downward Spiral
Wolfgang Münchau

The eurozone is spiraling downward into recession. Greece will default and may leave the eurozone. Next in turn will be Portugal. The EFSF faces downgrade too. By downgrading France and Austria but not Germany and the Netherlands, S&P hinted at the geography of a breakup. Germany is now the only large AAA country in the eurozone. Merkel's top priority is to conclude the fiscal treaty, but this will only reinforce pro-cyclical austerity. The system is unraveling. We need a strong central fiscal authority.

Europe: Mess And Success
Nicholas D. Kristof

Europe is in an economic mess. Rigid labor laws cause high unemployment and generous welfare states create budget problems as baby boomers retire. Yet GNP per capita in France rose from 64% of the American figure in 1960 to 73% by 2010, and in France the average working week is still almost a day shorter than in America. There are 172 European corporations among the Fortune Global 500, compared with 133 from the United States.

Europe has addressed energy issues and climate change far more seriously than America has. It now has more economic mobility than the United States, and France has a higher proportion of college graduates than America. French life expectancy is longer too: back in 1960 the lead was just a few months but by 2009 it was almost three years. Europe is no failure.

AR Europeans need a more vibrant vision of a more glorious future.

2012 January 15

Goldman's Trojan Horse
The Sunday Times

In the closing months of 2001, a Goldman Sachs trader in London exploited an EU loophole to help Greece massage down its national debt. Greece paid Goldman handsomely for the help.

Greece gambled that interest rate rises would devalue its debt. Before joining the euro, Greece had to pay interest rates of about 18% to borrow money on the open markets. After joining the euro, that would fall to about 5%. The Goldman plan agreed exchange rates for currency swaps that made it look like Greece owed Goldman €2.8 billion less than it did. This cut the Greek debt-to-GDP ratio by 1.6% and made it seem that Greek debt was falling, when in fact it had risen.

Goldman expected its €2.8 billion to be repaid and agreed to excuse Greece for two years, then stagger repayments over 18 years. The pricing assumed interest rates would rise, but they fell after September 11 and increased the Greek debt. In 2005, the National Bank of Greece bought the whole package back from Goldman. By 2009 the debt for the deals was up to €5.5 billion and will not be cleared until 2037.

Goldman did not cause the Greek crisis. The sums involved in the swap deals are not even a rounding error. Yet the lack of transparency in such trades lies at the heart of the eurozone crisis.

AR And Cameron expects Merkozy to let London trade in Europe without regulation?

2012 January 14

The End Of War
John Horgan

The United States is the problem when it comes to the persistence of war in the world today. It is engaged in wars overseas, it is the largest arms dealer in the world, and it spends roughly a trillion dollars a year on military stuff.

In the 20th century, by far the most destructive ideas were fascism and communism. These were secular ideologies that shared with fundamentalist religion the fierce conviction that theirs is the right way to view reality.

Together
Mark Pagel

Richard Sennett worries that humans are tribal and explores how people can be encouraged to cooperate. Modern capitalist societies promote conditions leading to social withdrawal or hibernation, such as economic inequality, broken workplace relations, and the psychology of uncertainty.

To rescue cooperation, Sennett champions the repetitive shared experience of ritual, from religious ceremonies to workplace routine, but cautions that it requires empathy and commitment to community. Together is the second in a planned trilogy starting with The Craftsman.

AR I enjoyed The Craftsman.

Jews And Globalization
Ira Rifkin

Globalization is the flow of capital and commerce across international borders and the monoculture of personal fulfillment and material advancement as the highest values. A World Jewish Congress paper noted in 2001 that Jews "have always promoted globalization, and have served as its agents."

Jewish Renewal rabbi Michael Lerner says "if globalization is just the latest twist on the worship of materialism, then it has become idolatry, the antithesis of monotheism." Orthodox rabbi Asher Meir says globalization is a neutral phenomenon but Jews are not to surrender their identity to it.

Eurojunk
Financial Times

Standard & Poor's cut the credit rating of France and Austria from AAA to AA+ and downgraded seven other eurozone nations including Italy and Spain. Portugal was cut down to junk.

AR Credit is trust is psychology. Euroleaders have made a poor job of convincing the hard and sharp money men of this fallen world that they have the smarts and the guts to lead anything.

2012 January 13

U.S. Warns Iran
The New York Times

The Obama administration has warned Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a red line that would provoke an American response. Iran has the military capability to close the strait. For two decades Iran has been investing in mines, fleets of heavily armed speed boats, and antiship cruise missiles hidden along its Persian Gulf coastline.

Estimates by naval analysts of how long it could take for American forces to reopen the strait range from a day to several months. The consensus is that Iran’s naval forces would be destroyed. The Iranian state navy is for the most part professional and predictable, but the Revolutionary Guards navy is not. The Revolutionary Guards navy has been deploying faster missile boats and stockpiling naval mines.

American naval forces might encounter layers of simultaneous attacks. The Iranians could launch antiship missiles and surround any American ship with armed speedboats. The United States could take out the missile launchers but this could take time. The strait is less than 35 miles wide at its narrowest point. The inbound and outbound shipping lanes are two miles wide, with two miles separating them.

1000 Dollar Genome
MIT Technology Review

Connecticut-based biotech company IonTorrent has unveiled a new tabletop gene sequencer with a
DNA-reading chip that can sequence an entire human genome in a day for $1,000.

12 Atom Memory
MIT Technology Review

IBM has unveiled a magnetic memory device made of just 12 iron atoms. The atoms can hold a bit for a few hours and at temperatures close to 0 K. The team is pushing the limits set by quantum physics.

84 Qubit Computation
MIT Technology Review

How many people do you need to invite to a party to ensure that m of them will know each other and n of them will not know each other? A natural answer is the two-color Ramsey number R(m,n).

A team at D-Wave Systems used 84 qubits to calculate R(3,3) and R(m,2) where m = 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Their quantum computer uses superconducting circuits in which currents going in opposite directions code 1 and 0 superposed as a qubit. Their calculation for R(8,2) used 84 qubits, of which 28 were used in the computation and the rest for error correction. The computer took 270 ms to get the (known) result 8.

Religion for Atheists
Terry Eagleton

Alain de Botton assumes that religious beliefs are a lot of nonsense but that they remain indispensable to civilized existence. He claims that one can be an atheist while still finding religion sporadically useful and consoling. He advocates secular versions of sacred ceremonies and billboards carrying moral or spiritual messages. This enterprise is both impudent and unoriginal. Christopher Hitchens would have scorned any such project. He found religion disgusting.

PHILOSOPHER
I am working on providing a wealth of online illustrations for my new book. When you read it, be sure to admire the images. Links here

2012 January 12

Physicists Need Genesis
New Scientist

Physicists shy away from a singular cosmic genesis, but Alexander Vilenkin says we need it.

1 Inflation says that in the primordial yoctosecond the universe inflated exponentially before settling down to its present expansion. Eternal inflation says that the universe grows fast forever, by constantly creating smaller bubble universes within the multiverse, each of which then settles down. Vilenkin and Alan Guth found that inflation cannot be eternal in the past.

2 In a cyclic universe, the big bang is a bounce back from a previous collapsed universe, and the universe cycles forever. Vilenkin looked at universal entropy and found that after an infinite number of cycles, the universe would be in a state of maximum disorder.

3 Perhaps the cosmos existed eternally as a cosmic egg, which cracked to create the big bang. Vilenkin and Audrey Mithani showed that quantum instabilities would crack or collapse the egg after a finite time.

Vilenkin's bottom line: "All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning."

2012 January 11

The Market Economy
Financial Times

The business leaders of today are not capitalists in the original sense. Modern titans derive their authority and influence from their position in a hierarchy, not their ownership of capital. They have won power through their political skills, in the ways bishops and generals rise in their hierarchies.

The value of raw materials is only a small part of the value of the production of a complex modern economy, and the value of physical assets is only a small part of the value of most modern businesses. The critical resources of modern companies are not their buildings and machines but their competitive advantages. These attributes are not owned by anyone at all.

The typical reader of this article works in front of a computer at a desk in an office block. It is quite likely that each is owned by someone different. People do not know who owns their work tools because the answer does not matter. By continuing to use the term capitalism, we are liable to misunderstand the strength of the market economy.

Banking
Financial Times

Before the crisis, banks morphed from social utilities into machines for making money by taking risks. Big financial institutions managed to absorb the gains from risky trading while socializing their losses. Pay practices that grew up on Wall Street and in the City of London added insult to injury.

Unless they can find a way to demonstrate their usefulness, and to curb the practices that alienate outsiders, banks face a long struggle against new regulation. Banks made high profits for a while but did nothing useful. Banks that had been bailed out paid large bonuses to employees, causing resentment.

Central bankers are imposing higher capital and liquidity requirements. The market has also disciplined institutions with highly leveraged balance sheets and fragile funding. Banks will become less profitable. Banking will again look more like a utility industry. Banks may then earn more respect.


LP
Surfers in California yesterday

2012 January 10

Capitalism In Crisis
Financial Times

A modern economy has two tracks: a fast one for the super-rich and a stalled one for everyone else. The wealthiest citizens have collected the bulk of the income gains in the last three decades. Most of them are finance professionals and top executives. Finance is a cash cow for a global elite.

Rising income inequality has been variously attributed to globalization, changing technology, regulatory reforms in markets, changing household structures, and insufficiently redistributive taxation. The costs of inequality include the stifling of upward mobility and the rise of protectionist sentiment.

The money motive in wealth creation detracts from the legitimacy of capitalism unless there is an implicit social contract between the rich and the rest of society, whereby the wealthy temper ostentation and engage in philanthropy. In business, top executive rewards are poorly related to performance and tend to rise even when profits fall. The accountability of management is fundamentally flawed.

Finance professionals in New York and London have bought themselves protection from proper societal accountability. In the Nylon world there is a greater mistrust of big government than of business. Tackling such interest groups is a big task.

2012 January 9

Iran Is Weak
Fareed Zakaria

The Islamic Republic of Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed the economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fragmenting. The Gulf monarchies have allied against Iran.

The Iranian government's reaction to the prospects of sanctions shows its desperation. An admiral threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz. But a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards explained that Tehran has no intention of blocking the strait. Iran would suffer as its oil exports were blocked. The United States does not buy oil from Iran, but European nations, Japan and South Korea do, and new sanctions could put Iran in economic free fall.

The Obama administration seems to have given up on strategic reconciliation with the Iranian regime. Washington wants to build pressure on Iran. This strategy is risky. The price of oil is rising.

AR Act fast. End it.

Plan A is for austerity, for fiscal discipline.

Plan B means borrowing a big bazooka to punch our way to growth.

Plan C consists of contemplating, reflecting, reading, appreciating the arts,
finding the consonance we need to build a more sustainable global order.

Pray we avoid D.

PA
The Royal Navy's £1 billion destroyer HMS Daring, equipped with systems to shoot down any missile in Iran's armory, will sail for the Gulf on a mission to defend the oil lanes.

David Owen on
Thatcher's dementia

PHILOSOPHER
is now available
for purchase via
CreateSpace

Lightning Delay
Wired

The Pentagon will delay buying early-model F-35 Lightning II warplanes to slow spending and to give more time for testers to work out kinks. The military will purchase only around 30 Lightnings a year from 2013 to 2017 before the type becomes combat ready in 2018. In line with the new U.S. military strategy emphasizing air and sea deterrence in the Pacific, the Pentagon still wants nearly 2,500 of the ten-a-billion jet in three versions. Over 50 years, the program will cost $1 trillion.

Photo: Ryan Miller/Getty Images
Jane Fonda kisses
Stephen Hawking,
LA, 2011

In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women: "They are a complete mystery."

As for his greatest mistake, Hawking said: "I used to think information was destroyed in black holes. This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science."

BBC
Sherlock Holmes

The modern-London BBC TV adaptation of the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lets early evening viewers see actress Lara Pulver nude, either to bump up the ratings or to scotch rumors that Holmes was gay.

2012 January 9

Reinvent Capitalism
Larry Summers

Capitalism has led to increased unemployment combined with increased income for the top 1 percent and reduced social mobility. The roots of the problem are in the evolution of technology.

The agricultural economy gave way to the industrial one because technology let fewer people grow food for all. The same process is now under way in manufacturing and some services. The change lets a lucky few get very rich.

In purchasing power for goods where productivity growth has been rapid, wages have risen over the last generation. But they have stagnated or fallen relative to the price of housing, healthcare, food, energy, and education.

As fewer people are needed to meet basic demand for goods like appliances and clothing, more people work in areas like healthcare and education where outcomes are manifestly unsatisfactory.

The production of healthcare and education is much more involved with the public sector than that of manufactured goods. As workers move, we need to slow the growth of the public sector.

The governments of industrial market capitalist societies seem bankrupt. As markets fail, budget pressures force cuts in the public sector. The solvency of many capitalist states is in question.

The success of capitalism has raised the relative cost of teaching or nursing or administering. The new challenge is to succeed in the areas of health, education, and social protection.

AR The public sector may be the solution. Let all the unemployed become public sector workers as of right but under market discipline: their subsidized labor for private bosses bids down wage rates and shows voters the economic truth.

2012 January 8

John Brockman
John Naughton

John Brockman is a cultural impresario or an intellectual catalyst. He is a literary agent who spotted early on that there was a massive audience for writing about science. He represents a stable of high-profile scientists and communicators and can extract massive advances from publishers, but he's also passionate about big ideas.

Brockman is best known for Edge.org, a site he founded to gather the most brilliant minds in the world and have them ask one another the questions they'd been asking themselves. Edge.org is an online salon with Brockman as its editor and host.

AR Many years ago Brockman took a brief interest in representing my first novel after reading the first chapter but then declined on reading the second (rightly too in my present opinion).

Seventy Earth Years For Mr. Universe
Steve McQueen directed Shame

2012 January 7

U.S. Defense Strategy
Washington Post

President Obama says the need for fiscal austerity coincides with a global moment of transition. His plan is to build capacity in Asia by cutting not Mideast forces but deployments in Europe, benefit and retirement costs, Cold War weapon systems, and the nuclear arsenal.

His plan assumes that the United States will no longer conduct nation building. Though counterinsurgency has produced results in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army and Marines will be reduced in size to prewar levels. Officials say their expertise will be preserved and restored if needed.

One may question the scale of the defense cuts. Another half a trillion in sequestration cuts will take effect in 2013 unless Congress repeals them. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs say such a fiscal hit would be a catastrophe for U.S. defense.

Islamist Spring
John M. Owen IV

Islamism did not cause the Arab Spring. Authoritarian governments had simply failed to deliver on their promises. But the Arab Spring is bringing forth blooms of Islamists.

From 1820 to 1850, Europe experienced historic rebellions that swept from country to country as frustrated people rallied around an ideology inherited from earlier radicals. The old regimes had long been run by monarchs, aristocrats, and the church, but the revolutionaries overthrew them to create a new liberal polity extending rights and liberties to the commercial classes and small landholders. Absolutist regimes tried to suppress liberalism after 1815, but networks of liberals continued to operate underground, providing a common language for dissent that burst out in the revolutions of 1848.

Today, Arabs have a common language of dissent in Islamism. For years the Islamists have provided a coherent narrative about what ails their world. The Arab Spring is their moment.

Martin Rees congratulates Stephen Hawking on reaching 70 and recalls his achievements

2012 January 6

Ponzi Planet
Alexander Jung

A Ponzi scheme is a mechanism for paying off old debt by constantly taking on new debt. The repayment of the debt is deferred in an endless process of refinancing. It's a snowball scheme, ending in an avalanche that buries everything.

The Western world is like a giant Ponzi scheme. In the first decade of this century, governments worldwide more than doubled the level of debt, to an estimated total of $55 trillion by the end of 2011.

The United States leads the pack with its national debt of $15 trillion, followed by Japan with about $13 trillion. The United States only remains solvent because the Congress in Washington keeps raising the debt ceiling.

Banks in Europe will have to repay about €725 billion in combined debt in 2012. The European Central Bank is creating billions out of nothing to buy bonds from eurozone countries. This financial aid so far amounts to €211 billion. At €440 billion the bailout fund is still too small, so finance ministers will leverage it to make it bigger.

Even in Germany, public debt was over €2 trillion in Q3 2011. German public debt grew by about €120 million a day between July and September. This increase occurred despite high tax revenues and low unemployment. Debts rise in good times and bad.

A government borrows money from citizens in return for bonds that promise repayment with interest. The state then prints new bonds to replace the old ones. Debts are not repaid but refinanced. The bonds are regarded as safe investments. They give banks apparent security on their balance sheets.

Credit depends on belief. The system will only function as long as lenders believe in borrowers. After the belief comes the avalanche. We are living on a Ponzi planet.

Pentagon Plan
The Times

President of the United States Barack Obama unveiled a Pentagon plan to cut half a trillion dollars from projected military spending over the next ten years: "Our military will be leaner, but the United States will maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats."

POTUS said that U.S. military might would still be "larger than roughly the next ten countries combined".
But he emphasized the need to arm up in the Pacific region in face of China's growing regional power. The plan proposes scaling back the Army and the Marine Corps, reducing the nuclear arsenal, and shrinking the U.S. military footprint in Europe.

2012 January 5

Business Analytics
Dennis K. Berman

Analytics harvesting massive databases will improve everyday business decisions. New systems can chew through gigabytes of data, analyze them via self-learning algorithms, and package the insights for immediate use. Wall Street traders can now evaluate mortgage-backed securities by analyzing the ongoing creditworthiness of many millions of individual homeowners.

Company valuations in this space are rising. These technologies will move closer to us all in 2012. The goal is to push all the heavy backend work forward to front-line workers, as dashboard apps on handheld devices. Analytics will become the norm and will accelerate market evolution and business cycles.

AR If I were still at SAP, I'd be riding this wave, making money and losing my mind in action.

Romney Versus Obama
Jacob Weisberg

Self-interest lies behind media promotion of marginal Republican challengers for the nomination. Local television stations count on election-year revenue bumps from political advertising in important primary states. Rooting for the underdog, any underdog, is a matter of wanting a more dramatic story. The strait-laced frontrunner winning Iowa and New Hampshire before securing the nomination early on does not count as a compelling narrative. Hence the media hype of absurd candidates with outlandish views.

The GOP is overwhelmingly likely to nominate Mitt Romney because it is his turn and because he is the most electable candidate available. But the party he is likely to lead into battle is dominated by its activist extreme and deaf to reason about U.S. fiscal choices. To survive a Republican debate you are required to hold the incoherent view that the budget should be balanced immediately, taxes cut dramatically, and the major categories of spending (the military, pensions, healthcare for the elderly) left largely intact. There is no way to make these numbers add up and the candidates mostly do not try.

A proof that Homo sapiens is not rational — my Amazon review of
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

2012 January 4

Global Unrest
Paul Mason

All the recent protest movements center on graduates with no future. The financial crisis of 2008 created a generation whose projected life-arc switched from an upward curve to a downward one. The revolts of 2010/11 have shown what this workforce looks like when it becomes collectively disillusioned.

Members of this generation of graduates with no future form an international class, with behaviors and aspirations that easily cross borders. They reside in global cities among the slum-dwellers and the working class. The sheer size of the student population means that it transmits unrest to a much wider section of the population than before.

Social media and new technology were crucial in shaping the revolutions of 2011, just as they shaped industry, finance, and mass culture in the preceding decade. The ability to deploy a whole suite of information tools has allowed protesters across the world to beam their message into the newsrooms of global media, and above all to assert a cool new identity.

Revolution implies taking power away from its holders by making it impossible for them to keep running their machinery of domination. It is a form of collective practice that bypasses and supersedes the machinery by developing an alternative network of relations. We are in the middle of a global revolution.

Poland and Europe
Jan Cienski

Poland is now a more important trade partner for Germany than Russia. Polish central bank governor Marek Belka: "We have managed to nurture a real entrepreneurial class which is pretty resilient. Almost half of our exports to Germany come not from big multinationals like Volkswagen or Siemens with plants in Poland but from small Polish companies providing consumer and investment goods."

Germany is a strong supporter of the Weimar Triangle, involving Warsaw in a regular tripartite debate with Berlin and Paris. Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski has become the leading exponent of Warsaw's new policy toward Germany of becoming Berlin's indispensable eastern neighbor in the same way that France is in the west.

Poland has the seventh largest economy in the EU and the sixth largest population. Its success in undergoing deep economic reforms could serve as an example both to the eurozone periphery and to countries such as Ukraine and Belarus. The government's goal is to make Poland a part of Germanic northern Europe: punctual, hardworking, and fiscally sober.

Poland is experiencing a catch-up boom similar to that in western Europe after WW2. For 2012, the EU forecast is for Polish GDP to grow by 2.5%, compared with 0.6% for the EU as a whole. Under pressure from ratings agencies, the Polish government promises to drive the public deficit below 3% in 2012. With debt nearing 55% of GDP, there are calls for austerity.

2012 January 3

Downturn 2012
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

A global downturn on all fronts will abort the recovery:

China will devalue the yuan and export yet more spare capacity into a deflationary world, until the West retaliates and starts to turn its back on globalization.

America will look resilient as the payroll tax deal averts a fiscal shock, but M3 money growth has sputtered out and velocity is falling.

Europe will fall into deep recession. The ECB has let M3 money contract, and fiscal tightening will cause a credit crunch as banks shrink loan books by €1 trillion.

Germany must either immolate itself by accepting a debt union and internal inflation to save the euro, or opt for fiscal sovereignty and democracy by letting the euro die.

Economists: Bleak 2012
Financial Times

A large majority of economists polled by the FT think the economic outlook will deteriorate in 2012. There is near unanimity that the UK outlook would be much worse if the euro collapsed. Economists expect that inflation rate would fall if a solution were found in the eurozone.

Goldman Bulls
Matt Taibbi

Goldman's Asset Management department head Jim O'Neill says the United States stock market may go up "15 to 20 percent." Apparently he believes the Fed will print more money: "If QE2 doesn't work, then we'll get QE3."

Goldman is building an impressive record of bullish predictions that later look more like signals that investors should run away fast. When Goldman upgraded European bank stocks a few weeks ago, the folks at Zero Hedge said:

Goldman has started selling European bank stocks to its clients, whom it is telling to buy European bank stocks. ... Our advice, as always, do what Goldman's flow desk is doing as it begins to unload inventory of bank stocks. Translation: run from European bank exposure.

Sure enough, Euro bank stocks plummeted a few days after that ZH post.

AR More Matt on Goldman here.

Leader Of The Free World?
Foreign Policy

President Obama's willingness in 2009 to extend his campaign timeline for withdrawal from Iraq and his initial stewardship of the gains achieved by President Bush's 2007 surge created the opportunity for a victory in the war on terror. As recent events indicate, that outcome is no longer certain.

Similarly, in Afghanistan, the president initially appeared intent on achieving a military victory against the extremists that threaten Afghanistan's stability. His 2009 surge has produced gains, especially in the south. But the president now seems more focused on winning reelection than winning the war.

Compounding these two failures in 2011 was the president's inability to leverage the momentous developments of the Arab Spring. As people seeking their freedom took to the streets in country after country, President Obama stood by, letting others take the lead.

AR Mitt's my man for 2012.

Alex Rosenberg

The Atheist's Guide To Reality
Alex Rosenberg

  1 There is no God. Reality is what physics says it is.
  2 There is no purpose to anything, anywhere. Never was, never will be.
  3 There is no meaning to life. I’m here because of dumb luck.
  4 Prayer doesn't work.
  5 There is no such thing as a soul.
  6 There is no free will.
  7 When we die, everything stays the same except without us.
  8 There is no moral difference between good and bad, right and wrong.
  9 Love is a solution to a strategic coordination problem.
10 Rational choice theories are outrageously bad psychology.

Nice Nihilism
Richard Marshall

Alex Rosenberg thinks that the natural sciences are the best guide to what exists in the world and that its methods are the best ways of extending our knowledge of what exists. He argues for a reductive physicalism: everything is just bosons and fermions. The problem is how we can understand ourselves as having free will and purpose.

The hard problem is to give an account of meaning that is more than merely consistent with the laws of physics. Rosenberg argues that physics and natural selection are more than likely going to be the final word on how to understand reality. He thinks purpose is an illusion. The same illusion that makes us think there's a purpose in the universe governs our self-image as purposive and meaningful. The purpose-driven life is an illusion. In reality there are no statements of meaning. There is no propositional or sentential reality.

Nice nihilism implies that attributing meaning to our lives is an illusion. Natural selection has ensured that everyone is within two standard deviations of the mean of a fun life in the biosphere. We are naturally selected to have fun, be nice to each other, and nurse illusions of free will and purpose.

AR This is a professor's view of reality, with a surfeit of respect for the miphology of mathematics, informatics, and physics (miph), which see reality through a cognitive lens. The logical status of the posthuman miph is analogous to that of human folk illusions (God, meaning, purpose, the self). With my post-Hegelian (set-theoretic) logic, I unfold the analogy in my recent books.

Religion for Atheists
A non-believer's guide
to the uses of religion
Alain de Botton

1
The supernatural claims of religion are of course entirely false.

2
Religions still have important things to teach the secular world.

3
We should look to religions for insights on how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and more.

Europe: Tough 2012
Financial Times

European leaders warned 2012 was likely to be tough. French president Nicolas Sarkozy said the gravest crisis Europe has faced since the second world war is not over and German chancellor Angela Merkel said next year will no doubt be more difficult than 2011.

2012 January 2

Sheer Madness
The New York Times

Most European governments are sticking to austerity plans, rejecting the Keynesian approach of economic stimulus, in a bid to show investors they are serious about fiscal discipline. "Every government in Europe with the exception of Germany is bending over backwards to prove to the market that they won't hesitate to do what it takes," said Charles Wyplosz, a professor of economics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. "We're going straight into a wall with this kind of policy. It's sheer madness."

European End Times
John Gray

Twenty-odd years ago, the end of the Soviet Union was followed by massive conflicts and upheavals. Something similar seems to be happening today. The European Union has long since acquired an unmistakably utopian quality. Current efforts to renew the project are only accelerating its demise.

The Soviet Union suddenly melted down, and something similar could happen again. Many people say they could not go on without the faith that the future can be better than the past. But when we look to the future to give meaning to our lives, we lose the meaning we can make for ourselves here and now.

AR John was always a doom and gloom merchant but this may be overdoing it.

David Hockney

Queen Elizabeth II has appointed Hockney to the Order of Merit, where he joins a band of 24 including Baroness Thatcher and Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Hockney said that the magic of the landscape would always thrill him: "I'm painting landscapes in Yorkshire because you can't photograph them. The camera can't get the beauty — it just can't get the space, the thrilling space that I'm in. No, it can't replace painting at all."

Hockney in front of his painting
Bigger Trees Near Water
Photo by Sang Tan / AP

2012 January 1

PHILOSOPHER is released — Amazon will post it in a few days

The Optimism Bias
Tali Sharot

To think positively about our prospects, we must first be able to imagine ourselves in the future. But conscious foresight came with the awareness of mortality. Despair would have interfered with the activities needed for survival. Conscious mental time travel could only have arisen together with irrational optimism.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we recorded brain activity in volunteers as they imagined specific events that might occur to them in the future. The volunteers reported that their images of sought-after events were richer and more vivid than those of unwanted events. This matched enhanced activity in two critical regions of the brain: the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex. These regions show abnormal activity in depressed individuals. People with severe depression tend to be pessimistically biased.

Our brain is wired to place high value on the events we encounter and put faith in its own decisions. Once you make a decision, you will esteem and affirm it and stave off regrets. When you process good and bad stuff about the future, your neurons faithfully encode the good stuff but flub on the bad stuff.

AR I need the bias to contemplate my book!

Photo by Germaine De Capuccini
Irina Shayk recalls the joy of
saunas for those who don't
winter in the Caribbean

2011 December 31

Mindful Reading
Tim Parks

What a strange art form writing is. There is no image to contemplate. Only the sequence of signs matters. The writing is in the sequence of the signs. This is the one thing we can't change. The experience is the sequence. The experience is not in any one moment of perception, but in the movement through the sequence from beginning to end. We are locked into a journey.

Every self has a story. It exists in relation to other selves and other stories. The self exists in a web of words spun out of the mind, separate from the world of sense.

Writers telling their stories exploit this state of affairs. Using thousands upon thousands of signs, they mimic the way we are forever constructing our lives and the lives of others, in words. This is why we get interested. We refer every story that we read to ourselves, our lives, because the medium of written narrative is intimately involved with the way we make up ourselves.

Learning how to take intense pleasure in reading makes it also useful for us, really useful and really exciting. Enchantment is only part of it. The opening sentences of a novel are an invitation to enter a separate world of rhythm and sound, mental activity and social positioning.

However fast you like to read a book overall, make very sure you read the opening page or two with care. The pleasure here is of entering into enchantment slowly, consciously, with vigilance. You have every right to put a book down after a couple of pages. Life is simply too short for the wrong books, or even the right books at the wrong time.

There are two sources of pleasure that you suppose to be in competition with each other. If you learn to blend them, they intensify each other. The first is enchantment, but the second pleasure is awareness. We read with a new awareness, watching how the spell is being cast. This approach sets us up for the most wonderful and life-changing reading experience of all: when we come to a book with suspicion, only to discover that the writer has hooked us.

The excitement of reading is the precarious one of being alive now, intensely mentally silently alive, and reacting from moment to moment, in the most liquid and intimate sphere of the mind, to someone else's elusive construction of the precarious business of being alive now.

The Need To Read
Gail Rebuck

Psychologists from Washington University used brain scans to see what happens inside our heads when we read stories. They found that readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. The brain weaves these situations together with its own experiences to create a new mental synthesis in neural pathways.

The discovery that our brains are changed by the experience of reading is something many of us will understand instinctively, as we think back to the way a good book had a transformative effect on us. This transformation only takes place when we lose ourselves in a book, abandoning the chatter of the outside world.

Reading is the foundation of all education and an essential part of the knowledge economy. But more significant is its emotional role as the starting point for individual voyages of personal development and pleasure. Books can help create and reinforce our sense of self.

If reading were to decline, it would change the nature of our species. If we were no longer wired for solitary reflection and creative thought, we would be diminished. But technology throws up solutions: the ability of new devices to put an entire library in your hand is an amazing opportunity.

AR Reading is magic — hence my new book PHILOSOPHER, out next week or so.

Photo by Sam Frost
Roger Scruton in front
of his pigsty

Green Philosophy
Jonathan Rée

Roger Scruton is a champion of traditional English conservatism.
In Green Philosophy, he appeals to the idea of a moral economy.
He signs off his new book from Scrutopia.

More on Scruton

Goodbye Europe
David Aaronovitch

Judging by its newspapers and its politicians, the people of Britain don't get Europe, don't like Europe, and don't want Europe.

2012 should be the year when we start the process of applying to join the United States of America. It should be a year of homecoming, of rejoining, of putting back together what should never have been separated.

Like parents whose children have all gone to live in Australia, sometimes it's best to cut your losses and follow them.

AR Yes, the time is ripe for this.

I suggest we also bring in the former British Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, revise a few state boundaries, revamp the U.S. Constitution, clean up Washington, and call the new entity the United States of the Anglogenic World.

We can all sing The Star-Spangled Banner and wave an Old Glory with a hundred stars on it.

Higgs And Me
Lisa Randall

The excitement from Europe earlier this month was palpable. Experiments had hinted at the discovery of the Higgs boson. Named for the British physicist Peter Higgs, the particle — if it exists — would tell us that the Higgs mechanism is correct. Higgs and his colleagues theorized that space itself contains a sort of charge. Particles acquire mass through their interaction with the charge.

For me, a physicist whose work for the past quarter century has focused on the mysteries of matter, any clue about the Higgs boson would provide valuable and long-awaited insight. For a moment I even believed the Higgs boson might really have been found.

The Damage Done
Foreign Policy

In 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, Brookings Institution researchers followed the progress of the war. Ten metrics reveal the damage done and the current state of Iraq:

1
At least 4,487 U.S. soldiers died during the war and 32,226 U.S. troops were seriously wounded in action. Most of the casualties were due to IEDs.

2
More than 115,000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of war, and over 10,000 Iraqi security force personnel have died since June 2003. Bombings are still common.

3
The first free elections were held in 2005 but led to political turmoil. In 2010, the second series of national elections resulted in a government in crisis.

4
Prewar oil production was around 2.5 million barrels per day. Current production is only marginally more. Insurgents often attack oil infrastructure.

The British Civil Service
Sir Gus O'Donnell

The Civil Service is the smallest since the Second World War.
The initiative to do away with unnecessary regulations is of critical importance. I believe successive governments have been far too quick to solve problems with regulation and legislation. We must be more creative and innovative in the way we solve problems. The more we can innovate, the more we can ensure the Civil Service is an engine room for growth. I would be proud of that legacy.

AR Sir Gus is Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service
until the end of the year. He joined the Civil Service in 1979.
I joined in 1977.

2011 December 30

The Golden Future
The Times

Goldman Sachs says the relative fortunes of the UK will improve sharply in the coming decades. The investment bank's latest long-term forecasts show Britain leapfrogging Germany, France, and Japan in terms of wealth by midcentury.

Goldman says only the United States and Canada will have higher national income per head by 2050. In terms of the overall size of the economy, China will be #1, followed by the United States, India, and Euroland, with Britain as #10.

Goldman projects more investment in the UK than in countries such as Germany. Thanks in part to high immigration, Britain has a younger demographic profile and its working-age population will rise more than in Germany or Japan.

AR Watch out, all you gullible Brits! You're about to get sucked dry by the vampire squid squad!

Euroland
John Plender

Germany has emerged as the pre-eminent power in Euroland. The German solution to the sovereign debt crisis is that other eurozone members must accept fiscal orthodoxy and financial conservatism. Debt is condemned as immoral. But there is a reciprocal relation between debtors and creditors. No one can run persistent current account surpluses without someone else running up deficits. There is a double standard here.

AR Indeed. Germans must recall that Adelheit verpflichtet, or as they say on the Sceptred Isles, noblesse oblige, or as I say, if you want the job you have to act the part.


KNCA
Pyongyang: The son takes over, hopes of "foolish political leaders in the world" are dashed, and military retaliation is threatened for South Korea's "unpardonable sin" of dissing dad's funeral.

2011 December 29

Iran's Dangerous Game
Michael Adler

Both the United States and Europe are moving toward new sanctions to cut off Iran's ability to sell its oil. Iran is warning them about trying to cut off its oil exports, but closing the Strait of Hormuz would backfire, as all its export oil ships via the strait.

The Israelis view an Iranian bomb as a threat to the existence of their country, and the Americans see such a weapon as a massive regional threat to the Middle East and beyond. The Israelis seem now to be convinced that the United States is not just trying to calm them down from attacking but is serious about preventing Iran from getting the bomb. Iran says it will not bow to sanctions.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the United States will do what's needed to stop Iran from getting the bomb. President Obama and his administration have already pointed to an attack if Iran insists on developing nuclear weapons.

AR We have a fight on our hands. Let's finish it and get the oil spike behind us as soon as possible.

War With Iran
Trita Parsi

Iran warns that it will close the Straits of Hormuz if an oil embargo is imposed. It has sent oil prices soaring. Closing the Straits would choke off Iran's ability to export oil and antagonize Russia and China, but makes oil prices rise due to the increased risk premium. Higher oil prices are good for Iran but bad for the United States and the European Union.

More aggressive measures will likely be pursued by Iran in the next phase of this standoff with the West. Such is the logic of pressure politics as both sides increasingly lose sight of their original goals. As the conflict escalates, the psychological cost of restraint rises, while further provocations appear increasingly logical and justified. Soon the governments will no longer control the dynamics.

Contrary to some perceptions, diplomacy has not been exhausted. President Obama's room for diplomatic maneuver with Iran was limited, and was quickly eaten up by pressure from all sides and by the Iranian government itself in the fraudulent 2009 elections. By then, Obama's entire Iran policy had become "a gamble on a single roll of the dice." It would work either right away or not at all.

Diplomacy needs time, patience, perseverance, and a clear under-standing that the cost of abandoning diplomacy is greater than the cost of sustaining it, because of the catastrophic repercussions of the military confrontation that will follow collapsed talks. This might have escaped decision makers in Washington and Tehran earlier but there should be no doubt now.

2011 December 28

2012 Economic Outlook
Zachary Karabell

In late 2011, every major indicator of economic health in the United States showed marked improvement. American manufacturing remains highly productive, but it employs far fewer people and far more technology. The digital economy and social media will continue to thrive in 2012. In a country of 300 million people, the number doing well exceeds the number struggling by a considerable margin.

The American economy has no problem funding its needs. Government debt has ballooned, but very low interest rates mean that servicing the public debt costs less than before. The financial system is still burdened by home foreclosures and a bank credit squeeze, but that system is more stable and sober than in many years. And the financial industry is slowly contracting and becoming less profitable.

Americans are facing a competitive global environment fueled by China. We have the means to address unemployment by creating work programs and educational initiatives. We have the means to invest in the future, spend on applied and abstract research, and use the financial and natural resources we have more efficiently. We are not in desperate economic times.

The F-35 Mess
Walter Pincus

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter will be the most advanced fighter-bomber in U.S. history, and at about $385 billion so far the most costly U.S. weapons program ever. The plane has the most sophisticated stealth technology and the most complex mission software ever planned for an airplane.

Two weeks ago in the Senate, John McCain described the F-35 fighter program as "a mess." The cost of each plane has almost doubled to $133 million, testing is only one fifth complete but more than 90 planes have already been bought, the software won't be ready for another four years, and yet the Pentagon had "sold this program as a fifth-generation strike fighter that would — more so than any other major defense procurement program — be cost-effectively developed, procured, operated and supported."

The original plan was to build 3,000 F-35s to replace the fighter-bombers in each of the three services and also be sold to foreign allies. For the Air Force, the conventional takeoff and landing
F-35A would replace the F-16 and the A-10 and add to the stealth
F-22A. The Navy's version, the F-35C, was to fly from carriers and complement the F-18E/F Super Hornet. The Marines wanted the
F-35B, a short takeoff and vertical landing version, to replace the F/A-18C/D and AV-8B Harrier aircraft.

Changes from 1986 to 2006, such as the end of the cold war, cut the original F-22 Raptor plan by almost half. We should expect more changes, such as the introduction of unmanned aircraft, to affect the F-35 plans between now and 2031.

AR Don't scrap the F-35B — that's the one with Harrier technology. But do give Lockheed Martin a hard time for cost overruns.

2011 December 27

bnps.co.uk
Astronomers worldwide watched Comet Lovejoy as it passed within 140 000 km of the surface of the Sun last week. Amateur stargazer Alex Cherney used a simple digital camera with a long exposure to make this image at Cape Schanck, Victoria, Australia.

2011 Christmas Day

HR
AR Thanks, Ma!

2011 December 24

Simon Dale
The Hobbit House
Built for less than $5K, plus over a thousand hours of hard but creative work, for sustainable living in a natural environment.

AR My Christmas tradition:
      Dec 24 — watch Lord of the Rings I
      Dec 25 — watch Lord of the Rings II
      Dec 26 — watch Lord of the Rings III

2011 December 23

L to R: Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris

Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens come together for the last judgment in the Christmas [sic] issue of the New Statesman:

Richard Dawkins: Modern society requires and deserves a truly secular state, by which I do not mean state atheism, but state neutrality in all matters pertaining to religion: the recognition that faith is personal and no business of the state.

Daniel Dennett: Societies are complex in more ways than colonies of bacteria are. What does shine through is a principle of good design. Darwin showed us that the secret of life is the differential reproduction of effective designs for fending off dissolution.

Sam Harris: Free will doesn't even correspond to any subjective fact about us, for introspection soon grows as hostile to the idea as the equations of physics have. Apparent acts of volition merely arise, spontaneously (...), and cannot be traced to a point of origin in the stream of consciousness.

Christopher Hitchens: I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialize. I remember once going to an evening with Umberto Eco talking to Susan Sontag and the definition of the word "polymath" came up. ... I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.

UK Breakup
Mary Dejevsky

Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, is committed to holding a referendum on independence in the next three years. The response of all three major British parties so far has been to reaffirm their support for the Union. Maybe a majority of Scottish voters will vote No, or will prefer an economic separation within the Union.

The Scottish Nationalist Party gained an absolute majority at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood this year. Over the past 15 years, Scotland has become ever more distinct from the rest of Great Britain. On all sorts of policies it is spinning off at high speed in pursuit of something that looks like the Nordic model.

Alex Salmond was abrasively against David Cameron's veto in Brussels. Membership of the European Union has made devolution, and even independence for Scotland, less risky. An independent Scotland might even join the euro. Several recent breakups in Europe have been peaceful and left all parties satisfied.

2011 December 22

Gingrich On Shariah
The New York Times

"I believe Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it."
Newt Gingrich, July 2010

Gingrich was airing a thesis in vogue with conservative thinkers but rejected by many American Muslims. The antisharians say radical Islamists are working to impose Shariah in a stealth jihad.

Obama administration officials decline to label terrorism carried out in the name of militant Islam as Islamic or jihadist. They say such labels can imply religious justification for a distortion of doctrine that most Muslims abhor.

Gingrich: "The left's refusal to tell the truth about the Islamist threat is a natural parallel to the 70-year pattern of left-wing intellectuals refusing to tell the truth about communism and the Soviet Union."

Shariah is the law of Allah, as derived from the Koran and the example of the Prophet. It has far wider application than secular law but is subject to interpretation by religious authorities.

American University in Washington chairman of Islamic studies Akbar Ahmed says the notion of a threat from Shariah to the United States "takes your breath away, it's so absurd."

"We're not going to have Shariah law applied in U.S. courts. That's never going to happen."
Mitt Romney, June 2011

War With Iran
The Times

Iranian VP Mohammad Reza Rahimi: "If sanctions are adopted against Iranian oil, not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz."

A spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet: "The free flow of goods and services through the Strait of Hormuz is vital to regional and global prosperity. Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated."

A spokesman for EU foreign affairs chief Baroness Ashton of Upholland: "The EU is considering another set of sanctions against Iran and we continue to do that."

Higgs And Us
Martin Rees

One nanosecond after the big bang, every particle in the universe carried as much energy as can be generated by the Large Hadron Collider. But to confront the overwhelming mystery of what banged and why it banged, Einstein's theory isn't enough. A complete understanding of all the particles and forces in the universe would be the summit of an intellectual quest that began with the Greeks.

Most educated people still somehow think that humans are the culmination of the evolutionary tree. That hardly seems credible to astronomers. Post-human evolution could be far more rapid than in the past, driven by technology rather than natural selection.

5
The Iraqi electricity supply is inadequate. Power disruptions are common and complaints rampant. Iraq hopes to be self-sufficient for electricity by 2014.

6
Today, Iraq has more than 22 million phone subscribers and about 2 million people online. Satellite television has had a massive impact.

7
Over two-thirds of the population can now access drinkable water, but most still lack modern sanitation. Iraq's GDP has expanded fivefold since 2003.

8
More than 1 million U.S. troops served in Iraq. When the U.S. combat mission ended in August 2010, Iraqi forces on duty numbered 670,000.

9
Millions of Iraqis were displaced and an additional 2 million left the country. Many Iraqis who returned regret coming back.

10
A majority of Iraqis now think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

A New Europe
Gérard Errera

The recent Brussels meeting portends a new Europe. The Franco-German proposals on the debt crisis and Europe's economic governance were the result of hard negotiation. Germany now defends the right to have national interests and French elites realize that Europe can no longer be a mere extension of French ideas and interests. Franco-German cooperation will not be sufficient to lead the new Europe, but Cameron cast a veto against British influence in European affairs.

AR Gérard Errera is a former French ambassador to the UK.

British troops yomping toward
Port Stanley, Falkland Islands,
June 1982

Argie-Bargie Again 30 Years On?

Britain dusts off war plans after Argentina joins forces with Brazil and Uruguay to blockade the Falkland Islands.

Daily Mail
British war plans: How about a peace plan?

 Let The City Whinge
Vince Cable

David Cameron's veto exposes two views of the City of London:

1
It is a vital national interest, a unique network of innovators and workaholics who generate revenue for the UK.

2
It is a source of systemic instability, unfettered greed, and industrial-scale tax dodging.

Europhobes go for 1,
Europhiles for 2.

Both caricatures are true. A great deal of the European drive to tax and regulate the City is prompted by protectionism. And much of the City's flag-waving disguises special pleading on behalf of banks that have caused immense damage to Britain's productive economy.

The British financial services sector accounts for around 8% of GDP and employs around a million people. But most of this is largely untouched by the threatened EU regulation. Within the City itself there is a complex ecology, much of it uncontroversial.

(continued)

Consciousness and Complexity
Christof Koch
Scientific American
August 2009

University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist Giulio Tononi has an "integrated information" theory (IIT) of consciousness, based on two axioms:

1
Conscious states are differentiated and informationally rich. Think of all the frames from all the movies you have ever seen. Each frame, each view, is a specific conscious percept.

2
This information is highly integrated. Underlying this unity of consciousness is a multitude of causal interactions among the relevant parts of your brain. If areas of the brain start to disconnect or fragment, consciousness fades and might cease.

Britain Distrusts Germany
Spiegel Online

British distrust of the European Union goes with distrust of Germany. The Daily Mail headline "Welcome to the Fourth Reich" shows how Eurosceptics see the German-French plans to rescue the monetary union as the economic colonization of Europe by the Germans. The continuing obsession with Nazis in Britain stifles almost all interest in Germany.

For the British, the fact that the Germans still produce and export goods is a reminder of their own days as major exporters during the Victorian age. The British financial sector is not a source of national pride. There is a growing hostility toward Germany.

2011 December 21

Havel And Orwell
John Kay

Václav Havel described a greengrocer with a placard in his window saying: "Workers of the World Unite!" The shopkeeper was not expressing his enthusiasm for such unity. And the leaders of the system had no desire to unite the workers of the world. The sign was there to signal conformity and avoid trouble. Havel translates the slogan as: "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient."

George Orwell identified the corrupting influence of discourse based on the repetition of pre-packaged phrases. The vacuous rhetoric traps the leaders as well as the led. Havel: "Both are objects in a system of control, but at the same time they are its subjects." Orwell insisted that the meaning should choose the word, and not the other way about. For Havel, the issue was the rehabilitation of human values.

Havel Right, Hitch Wrong
Daniel Finkelstein

Václav Havel said communism relied on the telling of lies, one citizen to another. In the Stalin years, my grandmother worked on a collective farm in Siberia. Her story corroborates his view.

Christopher Hitchens always told you what he thought. He saw with great clarity that Islamism was a totalitarian doctrine and its demands non-negotiable. He argued that freedom, democracy and respect for human life should be universal and that those who offended against them must never be allowed to succeed when offering a cultural or historical excuse.

Hitchens was a Trotskyist for much of his life. Trotskyists advocate permanent revolution to destroy the bourgeois class and its values, upon which liberalism depends. Whereas liberal societies that respect individuals and human rights are built on property rights, the rule of law, the suburbs and the middle class, religious faith, marriage and family, the work ethic, social convention and tradition, ancient seats of learning, respect for older people.

My grandmother had a saying: "While the Queen is safe in Buckingham Palace, I'm safe in Hendon Central." I was never sure that Christopher Hitchens could see that.

RG (comment 2011-12-20-23-55) I think Hitchens clearly disavowed inflexible thinking, leader worship and totalitarianism in his later thinking and writing and became a truly independent thinker who recognized that freedom depends on stable, friendly, and predictable institutions that are subject to the rule of law.

AR Trots were and are extremists. It was and is the extremism that appeals to a certain kind of person. Hitch was in a cult named after a minister of war in a rebel regime, then late in life he rebelled against his former self and became an apologist for a war of invasion led by a born-again president (Bush 43) that ruined America. I think Finkelstein is right to have his doubts. His grandmother and our queen represent a kinder social order.

Alan Lightman laments the contingency of the anthropic multiverse

2011 December 20

Anesthesia
MIT Technology Review

General anesthesia is a drug-induced reversible coma, says Emery Brown, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). But what happens in the brain during general anesthesia is a mystery. Brown, who is also a neuroscientist and professor at MIT, aims to use anesthesia as an instrument for studying basic questions about the brain. He heads a research laboratory focused on developing signal-processing algorithms to extract information from electroencephalogram (EEG) data for anesthetized patients.

Brown is impressed by how quickly and completely drugs like propofol can alter brain activity. As patients enter an anesthetized state, the normal pattern of low-intensity but high-frequency waves shifts to one of less frequent but more intense pulses, as if the constant chatter of the brain had given way to a chant. The location of activity shifts from the back of the brain to the front. Some drugs decrease the frequency of brain waves seen in EEG readings, resulting in slow, regular oscillating waves across large areas of the brain. Other drugs cause certain areas to show fast, regular oscillations. Either way, the different parts of the brain can't communicate.

Other EEG studies suggest that anesthesia doesn't shut the brain down but interferes with its internal communication. It interrupts feedback between the front and back of the brain, disconnecting different brain networks. Both EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) show response to light and sounds, but somehow that sensory information is never processed and integrated into conscious awareness. The studies cast doubt on a theory that links consciousness to brain waves with frequencies around 40 hertz. These waves can exist even when patients are unconscious. The patterns anesthesiologists see support the theory that consciousness emerges from the integration of information across large networks in the brain.

Devalue The Euro
Martin Feldstein

The large current account deficits of Italy, Spain, and France can be reduced without lowering their incomes or requiring Germany to increase domestic demand. The key is to expand the net exports of those trade deficit countries to the world outside the eurozone.

Politicians wanted the euro as a means of accelerating political integration. They believed that the single currency would somehow cause productivity trends to converge. But productivity in Germany rose much faster than it did in Italy, Spain, and France. Germany also placed limits on wage growth. Now Germany has a current account surplus and the rest have deficits.

German officials and the ECB argue that the trade deficit countries need to cut wages and prices to make their products competitive. This could require a 30% wage cut, slower wage growth, a decade or more of high unemployment, and declining GDP.

The current account deficits of Italy, Spain, and France can shrink without austerity, internal devaluations, or German expansionary policies if the euro is devalued. To eliminate existing current account deficits, the trade-weighted value of the euro might have to fall by 20%.

AR Devaluing the euro raises German costs but increases export competitiveness, so this idea has wings.

2011 December 19

Vaclav Havel
(1936—2011)

Former Czech President Václav Havel opposed the Communist government in Czechslovakia before emerging as a leader of the Velvet Revolution that swept it aside in 1989.

The playwright turned political activist came to prominence as co-author of the Charter 77 declaration in protest at the arrest of a rock band. He remained active in anti-Communist causes from Cuba to China until his death.

Havel was unanimously elected President of Czechoslovakia by the last Communist parliament in 1989. He resigned after national politicians agreed to divide the country in two in 1992, but went on to be twice elected President of the Czech Republic.

Charter 77 co-signatory Martin Palouš: "Havel was the man who was able to stage this miracle play. The sacrifice was to cast himself in the main role."

Vaclav Havel
Havel not only opposed the Communist regime, he articulated a theory of opposition. In his essay The Power of the Powerless, he asked the inhabitants of totalitarian countries to "live in truth" by going about their daily lives as if the regime did not exist, and by founding small institutions that would prevent them from being totally controlled from above. He practiced what he preached not only before the fall of communism but also afterward. He became an establishment politician and recreated the Czech presidency.
Anne Applebaum

In October 2001, Jürgen Habermas started talking about religion

(continued)

After 2008 no sensible government (and few bankers) deny the need for regulation. EU financial market rules are necessary since the single market must apply to finances. The EU proposals cover areas in need of reform but also include more damaging ideas. All these issues could be negotiated in a calm environment.

The proposed EU transaction tax is a technically challenging proposal wrapped up on the EU side as a high ideal. But it is in reality a cynical raid on UK financial services to fund the EU budget. It is not a serious threat to the City since taxes are governed by unanimity. There is scope for taxing banks in other ways.

The issue of EU financial services regulation is a sideshow compared to averting a catastrophic outcome to the eurozone crisis and a deep European slump. And in the UK we need to ignore City whingeing and concentrate on achieving growth by rebalancing the UK economy.

AR Vince Cable is the
UK Business Secretary
and a Liberal Democrat.

AR I talked with Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi at ASSC XIII, Berlin, 2009. My photonic theory of consciousness looks at the physics of decahertz brainwaves:

1
Brainwaves form resonances, extended quantum entangle-ments, and superposed states.

2
These states stretch from classical (past) brain states to virtual (future) states and hence define "now" states whose durations of order 100 ms suggest realization in quantum states of decahertz waves (e.g. 40 Hz photons).

In Mindworlds I look at phenomenal consciousness, not complexity. The IIT is good for cognition, the waking state, and anesthesia studies, but it doesn't tackle the hard problem. My theory does.

A German In London
The Times

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on a visit to British Foreign Secretary William Hague in London: "My main message is for the British people — you can count on us and we can count on you." He recalled his childhood in postwar Germany to expound the ideals behind the EU and insist that all its members had to move forward together.

Dr Westerwelle urged Britain to act in unison with the EU, which was "not only the answer to the darkest chapter of our history but also a life insurance in times of globalization because no country is strong and big enough to face the challenges of globalization alone."

North Korea

With Kim Jong Il gone, his son Kim Jong Un will likely take over. A letter from the NK Workers' Party called him "the great successor". Pyongyang urged increased NK military capability.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak cleared his schedule and put the SK military on "emergency alert" to monitor NK troop movements and tighten security measures at sea.

Following the Korean War in 1950, NK and SK never formally signed a peace treaty and remain technically at war, separated by a tense DMZ.

DPA
North Korean missile tests, January 2009

Korean War

The Korean War between SK and NK was a result of the division of Korea by the Allies in 1945, when US troops occupied SK and Soviet troops occupied NK.

NK invaded SK in June 1950. UN and US forces were pushed back, then pushed up almost to China. The PRC went to war beside NK and pushed UN forces back south. The USSR supplied both NK and PRC forces. Hostilities ended in July 1953 with an armistice that restored the border near the 38th Parallel and created a DMZ between NK and SK.

Total killed: 3-4 million

Lockheed Martin
Raptors
Wired

On November 10, 2010, a USAF
F-22 Raptor crashed in Alaska, killing its pilot. The Raptor fleet was grounded while the problem was investigated.

The official crash report cites mid-flight failure of the on-board oxygen generating system (OBOGS). Many Raptor pilots have experienced air shortages and blamed the OBOGS.

This is only the latest in a series of problems with the Raptor. Lockheed Martin recently rolled out the 196th and final F-22 after 14 years of production. Each Raptor cost the taxpayer $377 million.

Entente Glaciale
The Times

London is the seventh-largest French city. It is also, after Paris, the city with the best-educated French population. It is time to set aside the gibes and name-calling in the search for a solution.


Clegg Fraps Fillon
The Times

The basic difference,
you should know,
Between GB and poor Sarko
Is this, that we have got
The printing press
And they have not!

UK To Observe EU Talks
Financial Times

The UK is invited to participate in negotiations on a new European treaty to govern eurozone economies. The invitation will allow London to check whether EU institutions will be used to monitor and enforce the new pact. The move is the first EU opening to the UK since the Cameron veto.

India And China
Financial Times

India: Emerging market
economies are beginning
to "falter"

Indian finance minister
Pranab Mukherjee said India
must turn its attention to
"reviving growth as quickly
as possible".

China: The global outlook is
"extremely grim and
complicated"

The Communist Party of China agreed to focus on maintaining fast growth amid the
worsening outlook.

The Eurocrash
Wolfgang Münchau

A eurocrash is all but inevitable. When the euro will collapse is hard to say, but that it will is easy. National interest takes precedence. No one wanted the first world war, but it happened anyway. We have north against south, east against west, the British against everyone.

A plausible scenario is that we take a while to work out the legal basis of a new treaty, fight for a while over the details, and next summer, if all goes well, get a new stability pact. But the IMF and the OECD forecast a collapse of the world economy in 2012. Europeans cannot just export more to the rest of the world. And if Europe cannot earn a surplus on its current account, the whole adjustment takes place within the eurozone and the south sinks into deep depression. This is the outcome of forcing austerity on a weak economy.

To avert disaster, a lot of very improbable things must happen very quickly. This is not realistic. What we need to solve the crisis is way beyond what is politically and legally possible. So the euro is in danger. We just don't know how long we have before the crash.

2011 December 18

Europolitics
Kathleen R. McNamara

Europe is suffering from a political crisis. Almost all the EU countries under attack by financial markets are basically strong and productive. Yet the fiscal orthodoxy agreed to at the Brussels summit is only likely to hasten the demise of the euro. European polities under stress need to grow their way out of debt. EU leaders need to commit to a true political and fiscal union.

Debt and deficit figures diverge widely across the European Union, yet debt levels do not scale with the amount bond markets charge sovereign borrowers in Europe. Arguing that Europeans need to live within their means is nonsense in a world where there is flexibility in how markets perceive what appropriate debt levels mean.

European countries are not too economically divergent to be in a currency union. Currencies are determined by politics, not convergent economic zones. From a purely economic standpoint, the United States should not have a single currency. It survives because it has a true fiscal and political union.

The Eurosummit agreement is a rehash of the Stability and Growth Pact, which Germany and France both violated to boost their economies. Merkel and Sarkozy must recognize the need to pool sovereignty by agreeing to a Eurobond and true fiscal union.

AR Europeans are working on it, but you can't just unite by fiat. It comes as a response to a shared sense of crisis.

War Is Going Out Of Style
Joshua S. Goldstein and Steven Pinker

The invasion of Iraq may have been the last war between two national armies. World War III was canceled and the Korean War was the last war between great powers.

Overall, the annual rate of battle deaths worldwide has fallen from almost 300 per 100,000 of world population during World War II, to almost 30 during Korea, to the low teens during Vietnam, to single digits in the late 1970s and 1980s, to fewer than 1 since 2000.

Atrocities against civilians are on a smaller scale too. During World War II, in response to enemy atrocities, Allied forces repeatedly and deliberately firebombed Axis cities, incinerating tens of thousands of civilians in a night. Now we are repelled by war.

AR The years 1815 to 1914 seemed peaceful too. Until the Mideast is sorted out, I prefer to hold back from agreeing with Pinker here.

Is Higgs The End?
John Horgan

Discovering the Higgs would be a modest achievement relative to the grand ambitions of theoretical physics. The Higgs would serve merely as the capstone of the Standard Model. But the model is incomplete anyway.

The dream of a theory of everything will never be entirely abandoned. But fewer smart young physicists will be attracted to an endeavor that has vanishingly little hope of an empirical payoff. The quest for a unified theory will come to be seen not as a branch of science but as a kind of mathematical theology.

AR This is too pessimistic. Supersymmetry is both interesting and scientific. Gravity wave detectors and other new experimental rigs will push out the envelope for as long as the money holds out.

2011 December 17

On Faith
Matthew Parris

British PM Benjamin Disraeli in his novel Endymion:
"Sensible men are all of the same religion."
"And pray what is that?"
"Sensible men never tell."

British PM David Cameron: "The knowledge that God created man in his own image was, if you like, a game changer for the cause of human dignity and equality ... When each and every individual is related to a power above all of us, and when every human being is of equal and infinite importance, created in the very image of God, we get the irrepressible foundation for equality and human rights."

MP: "Religions do not create altruism or fellow feeling, they direct these instincts. Morality born of a humanist impulse to love and care for others is a higher and purer ethic than Christianity and Islam's reliance on celestial rewards and hellish punishments. But for many, and for all practical purposes, faith can and does act to reinforce morality, both public and private."

Cameron To Archbishop: Speak Up For Christianity
Daily Mail

David Cameron last night called on the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to lead a return to the "moral code" of the Bible. Cameron accused Williams of failing to speak "to the whole nation" when he criticized Government austerity policies. Cameron declared Britain "a Christian country" and said politicians and churchmen should not be afraid to say so.

AR In my opinion, being a Christian is a political choice.

Pubic hair in America (adult content)

2011 December 16

PR
Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis

Christopher Hitchens
1949—2011

"The next morning, at Christopher's request, Alexander and I set up a desk for him under a window. We helped him and his pole with its feed-lines across the room, arranged pillows on his chair, adjusted the height of his laptop. Talking and dozing were all very well, but Christopher had only a few days to produce 3,000 words on Ian Ker's biography of Chesterton. Whenever people talk of Christopher's journalism, I will always think of this moment."
Ian McEwan

Nuke Spy Drones
Wired

Stealthy drones like the RQ-170 Sentinel that crashed in Iran are very good at loitering over a target of interest for hours on end. Unnamed military sources confirmed that the RQ-170 was conducting nuclear surveillance over Iran.

2011 December 15

PHILOSOPHER

Last read and final corrections completed
Text and cover files delivered to publisher
Estimated publication date January 2012

AR This is a historic milestone for me.

Europe Needs A Firewall
John Paulson

The European banking sector is exposed to a sovereign credit crisis. I suggest the ECB consider a sovereign debt guarantee program as a firewall. The program would immediately calm the credit markets. In return for a 1% annual guarantee fee, and compliance with the ECB and/or IMF on implementation of structural reform programs, Italy and Spain would be able to refinance all maturing debt with an ECB guarantee. The program would be open for two years for maturities of up to 10 years. The firewall is needed now.

Eurozone Fiscal Union
Financial Times

Angela Merkel says member states of the eurozone have set themselves on an "irreversible course toward a fiscal union" to underpin their common currency. "We are not just talking about a fiscal and stability union. We have begun to create one." She expressed "great regret" at the British veto but said a new treaty for "at least" the 17 eurozone members was a big step forward.

SDP leader Frank-Walter Steinmeier said "this is no breakthrough to more Europe" and the isolation of Britain is "no cause for joy". Before the summit Europe faced a debt crisis. "After the summit, we have a real constitutional crisis. This estrangement process between Britain and Europe will not end."

Top Germans Like Merkel
Spiegel Online

A new survey of 500 German leaders finds that about 70% see Angela Merkel as a strong chancellor who is managing the crisis well and successfully promoting German interests at the EU level:

78%  support an economic and fiscal union
21%  support the introduction of eurobonds
13%  want the ECB to purchase all eurozone government bonds
74%  of those in business are concerned about the euro
42%  of those in politics are concerned about the euro
90%  believe austerity is the right policy for indebted countries
95%  like the joint Merkozy leadership of in the eurozone
92%  think floating eurozone government bonds will get harder
11%  think the eurozone will break up

A clear majority of the managers would like to see the return of the grand coalition that brought together the Christian Democrats and the SDP from 2005 to 2009.

2011 December 14

Not Worth A Fig
Anatole Kaletsky

The Franco-German fiscal compact is no more comprehensive or final than all the previous failed summit deals. Problems:

1 Finance: A fiscal union of the kind required to save the euro requires strong central control over national budgets. The Germans want this but the Club Med countries resist. But a fiscal union also needs to create collective responsibility for sovereign debts and bank solvency in all the member countries. The Club Med countries need this but Germany resists.

2 Politics: The proposed treaty can only exacerbate the tensions and uncertainties threatening eurozone cohesion. The agreement will not even be worth the paper it is written on until after the French election next May.

3 Economics: A fiscal compact would aggravate the economic nightmares of unemployment and stagnation in southern Europe. It is arithmetically impossible for the entire eurozone to deflate its way out of a debt crisis.

A Disastrous Failure
Martin Wolf

The UK veto took attention away from the failure of eurozone leaders to devise a credible remedy for the ills of the currency union. Germany and France have agreed to build a "stability and growth union" with more fiscal discipline. Problems:

1 The eurozone heads of government state that budgets shall be legally required to be balanced or in surplus and that an automatic correction mechanism be triggered by a deficit. A body of unelected bureaucrats would impose sanctions on elected governments. This is a constitutional monstrosity.

2 It is also an economic monstrosity. The balance of payments between eurozone members has to add up to zero, by definition. It is hard to eliminate structural fiscal deficits without prolonged recessions or big improvements in external competitiveness.

3 The single currency will come to stand for wage falls, debt deflation, and prolonged economic slumps. The eurozone has no credible plan apart from austerity.

AR Two damning verdicts. What's the truth?

Principles of Biology
An Interactive Textbook
By Nature Education

Principles of Biology consists of 200 university-level modules collectively covering chemistry, genetics, cell biology, animal physiology, plant physiology, and ecology.

Each learning module is self-contained experience, combining textual instruction, figures, simulations, exercises, and tests. Accessible from a wide range of platforms at $49 per student.

Anglo-German Split
Financial Times

The German chancellor was determined to form a fiscal union. But treaty change was a big political problem for the UK prime minister.

Merkel found British politics "incomprehensible" but said she would look for "sweeteners" to seal a deal in Brussels. Cameron: "What about France?" Merkel: "Nicolas will agree."

A British gamble was born. Downing Street thought the German "G1 in the eurozone" would prevail.

Spoils of Iraq War
Financial Times

After almost nine years, a trillion dollars spent, and thousands of American lives lost, the United States is withdrawing from Iraq, leaving the spoils to others. Turkey, Iran, China, South Korea, and Arab states have already invested billions in Iraq, far outpacing the US and UK in every non-oil sector.

Heavyweight
The Daily Beast

Former Delaware Senate candidate and Tea Party favorite Christine O'Donnell endorsed Mitt Romney for president.

She cited his executive experience: "I trust him to
do the right thing."

On his flip-flopping:
"He's been consistent since
he changed his mind."


Jews and Jesus
Reflections on the Doctrine
of the Twelve Apostles and
the Epistle of Barnabas

Credit: Mario Sorrenti
Pirelli Calendar
2012

Saskia de Brauw
demonstrates the posture
to adopt when the euro
tsunami hits us.

Stratolaunch
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen unveils his new company Stratolaunch with plans for a commercial spaceship.
The spaceship will be launched at a height of 10 km from a carrier aircraft with six 747 engines and a wingspan of 117 m.
The spaceship is being designed by Burt Rutan and the spaceship and booster will be built by SpaceX.

Clegg Versus Cameron
Financial Times

British deputy PM Nick Clegg refused to sit alongside David Cameron in the House of Commons as the PM defended his veto. Liberal Dem leader Clegg said the veto was bad for British business and would leave the UK isolated. But Tory MPs cheered the PM and claimed he had shown "bulldog spirit".

Cameron's veto is causing anger across Europe. Britain also refuses to take part in an urgent €200 billion funding boost for the IMF to tackle the crisis.

Cameron promised an "open mind" on whether the new euro-plus group could use EU institutions like the European Court of Justice and European Commission.

2011 December 13

Hint of Higgs at 125 GeV
New Scientist

The Large Hadron Collider may have seen the Higgs boson at a mass of about 125 GeV. Both of the main detectors, ATLAS and CMS, have found hints of Higgs. The standard model firmly predicted the Higgs boson.

Today, CERN presented results from trillions of collisions in the last year. ATLAS saw a hint of the Higgs at 126 GeV with a statistical significance of 2.3 sigma. CMS saw one at 124 GeV with a significance of 1.9 sigma. A discovery is defined as a 5 sigma signal, for less than 1 in a million chance of a fluke.

Theorists are relieved. The observed masses of the W and Z bosons imply a Higgs mass between about 115 and 130 GeV. A Higgs at 125 GeV or so "is just what the doctor ordered," says Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek.

Higgs Boson Podcast
Alok Jha

Today the European particle physics laboratory CERN holds a
seminar on the latest results in the search for the Higgs boson.
Guardian science correspondents Ian Sample and Alok Jha quiz
UK ATLAS team lead Professor Jon Butterworth:

Podcast (34:19, 33 MB)

End of an Era
Marco Evers

The UK will soon have less influence and more adversaries in Europe. Since joining the European project in 1973, the British have annoyed Europeans with their constant demands for special treatment and rebates and their blocking tactics. They have backed the internal market but sabotaged a common foreign policy and recoiled from a European constitution.

Cameron's veto marks the beginning of the end of Britain's days as a member of the EU. Britain will then be proud and free. It was no surprise. Cameron had already announced what he would do if his EU partners refused to back off from taxing financial transactions.

Cameron is a eurosceptic. He was held back by his Liberal Democrat coalition partners but his own party pushed him into confrontation. The Tories are campaigning against the European project more ferociously than they did in the days of Margaret Thatcher. Many people in the UK view the EU as another USSR.

AR EUSSR was big in the Berwick manifesto.

Cameron Woos Clegg
The Times

David Cameron is preparing to give ground to Nick Clegg over Europe. Deputy PM Clegg said he and Cameron "clearly do not agree".

Cameron: "Our membership of the EU is vital to our national interest. ... I believe in an EU with the flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc."

Labour leader Ed Miliband said the outcome was "bad for business, bad for jobs, bad for Britain". It was not a veto "when the thing you wanted to stop goes ahead without you", he said. "That's called losing."

Clegg: "There are many issues in the coalition where the parties differ."

Iraq
The New York Times

Polls show Americans approve of the U.S. Army withdrawal from Iraq by a ratio of three to one.
A NATO training mission had hoped to remain longer but could not agree with authorities in Baghdad in "robust negotiations conducted over several weeks."


Iraq
Foreign Policy

<< A U.S. Army soldier from the 1st Cavalry Division, at Camp Virginia, near Kuwait City, after arriving from Camp Adder, Iraq. All U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.

AR If that's the sort of armor we need there, we're better off out.

Franglospat
The Times

Two European leaders basked in praise over the weekend. In Britain, David Cameron enjoyed accolades from some quarters for his bulldog triumph against the new fiscal regime for the eurozone. Across the Channel, Nicolas Sarkozy was admired for kicking the troublesome Perfide Albion from Europe's high table.





Catastrophic Decision
Jonathan Powell

The government has made the catastrophic decision to opt out of a treaty that will shape Europe over the next several decades. Britain will be excluded from all decision-making on the key economic policies of Europe. How long are the other 26 likely to put up with obstructionism by one member wielding the veto again and again?

Foreign Policy Down The Drain
Paddy Ashdown

Long years of anti-European prejudice from the Tory Eurosceptics, laced with insults from their supporting press, have generated a growing anti-British prejudice in many European capitals.

If the Franco-German plan doesn't work, things will not be better for Britain, they will be much, much worse as our main trading zone collapses. Yet we have rejected being in, helping prevent collapse, in favour of being out, hoping for the best.

AR The best solution is for David Cameron and his Tories to be replaced by David Miliband (not Ed) and a Lib-Lab team.

Pity Those In Euroland
Janet Daley

So we are isolated. Britain has stood alone before. We defended the idea of democracy in Europe then too. This putative treaty so triumphantly proclaimed by Merk and Sark is an agreement to work toward an idyll of anti-competitive regulation and tax harmonization. The United States of America has nothing like this. If Britain is at all culpable for the nightmare implosion to come, it is only that we did not argue hard enough for the integrity of democratic nationhood and the value of free markets.

Britain Isolated
The Guardian

David Cameron deployed the ultimate weapon in European summitry yesterday. EU leaders promptly agreed to bypass Britain and establish a new accord on the euro among themselves. The EU appeared poised to line up 26-1 against Cameron in support of the Franco-German blueprint, leaving Britain utterly isolated.

AR End of an era. No more
pussy-footing from London to
hide its contempt for the
European Union. Fortress UK fights on alone.

Cameron Played Poor Hand
John Lichfield

Britain is not leaving the European Union, just yet. But the EU may already have abandoned Britain. The fog of the Battle of Brussels, 8-9 December 2011, is still clearing. But the possibility of a UK departure from the EU is no longer unthinkable. Cameron wanted Britain to become a kind of Cayman Islands within the EU: enjoying the benefits of being part of a European single market for financial services but not subject to EU oversight or regulation.

AR The idea that Britain can
survive as the world's bankers
is an illusion.

Revised EC Statement
Edited Extract
1300 CET

The objective remains to incorporate these provisions into the treaties of the Union as soon as possible. The Heads of State or Government of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden indicated the possibility to take part in this process after consulting their Parliaments where appropriate.

AR Leaving UK and Hungary.

2011 December 12

Merkelization
Foreign Policy

Germany's one-woman show could doom the continent's beautiful project. Merkel may look like the big winner today, seemingly with Europe at Germany's feet, but this turn of events could well prove to no country's detriment more than than Germany's. The prospect is of a joyless union of penalties, punishments, disciplines, and seething resentments, with the EU elites increasingly under siege from anti-EU populists.

Merkel's audacious reaction to staunch the eurocrisis is the Germanization of European monetary and fiscal policy, foremost the codification of its obsession with tight money, fiscal purity, and budgetary orthodoxy. She's doing it with Sarkozy at her side and over the heads of European voters. This catastrophic mistake vastly expands the EU's centralized authority while robbing it of even a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy.

AR People like a strong leader who does "the right thing" — and
tight is right for my money.

Desert Sun Power
Leo Hickman

In 1986, German physicist Gerhard Knies estimated how much solar energy was required to meet our global demand for electricity: in just six hours, the world's deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year. An area of Saharan desert the size of Wales (2 Mha) could power the whole of Europe.

Dii is an initiative founded in Munich in 2009 that currently includes more than 55 companies and institutions. Dii aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050 through a vast network of solar and wind farms stretching across the MENA region and connected to Europe via highly efficient DC transmission cables. The total cost is estimated at €400 billion.

AR Bring the Desertec vision into reality: back Dii.

Has Europe Lost Its Soul?
Jonathan Sacks

When a civilisation loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. We must help Europe to recover its soul. The market economy emerged in a Judeo-Christian Europe.

Capitalism is a sustained process of creative destruction. The market undermines the values that gave rise to it. The consumer culture is antithetical to human dignity. Instead of being a means of directing self-interest to the common good, it can become a means of empowering self-interest to the detriment of the common good. Instead of the market being framed by moral principles, it comes to substitute for moral principle. The market becomes an ideology in its own right.

The current financial and economic crisis is an opportunity to pause and reflect on where we have been going and where it leads. The financial instruments at the heart of the current crisis were so complex that bankers failed to understand their vulnerability. Financial failure is the result of moral failure and a symptom of a wider failure to see the market as a means not an end.

Markets need morals. The keywords of a market economy are religious. Credit comes from the Latin for belief. Confidence comes from the Latin for shared faith. Trust is a religious and moral concept. It was a breakdown of trust that led to the banking crisis. And trust depends on an ethic of honour and responsibility. Markets were created to serve humankind.

AR Hear, hear. Fiscal duo Merkozy 1, City gent Cameron 0.

2011 December 11

Dear Prime Minister Cameron
Silke Burmester

I would like to heartily thank you! Your "No!" to the rescue plans of the EU countries to date and may well thoroughly in the future probably fly around your ears, but for me, whom I would describe myself as a great lover of your country, it's a relief. For too long you have been under the heel of the EU cucumbers and children's policies and bulbs dictation, made small, much too long you can spoon-feed from norms and treaties, that of a former world power like yours is not worthy.

You see, I had the good fortune to live at the time of the Iron Lady in your country and at that young age was very impressed with the coolness of Margaret Thatcher divided the country and forced the working class to its knees. And now, dear Mr Cameron, you also make the clear message and take the step away from European folklore and mishmash in which we all love and we act as if we also like to play with the grubby children.

The Britain of my youth you knew from the "After Eight" ads, the TV series "Upstairs, Downstairs" and music by the punk. And of course, by Monty Python, so it was ready for anything that distinguishes your kingdom like this: stubborn old ladies, strange ministries, parrots and, of course, perfectly shaped queuing. Their compatriots always spoke of the "continent" if they thought Europe apart from onions and cabbage was unknown.

All this has been lost in the last 20 years. Her beautiful, weird traditions are increasingly global standards of conduct from queue jumping, from eating a croissant instead of porridge given way, people have turned their beautiful capital to a sort of Disneyland Park. Only the money, your beautiful pounds, reminds one still working to be a guest in a country whose traditions established identity and always the latest adjustment avoided.

And now you come! Like Superman stops the train with his bare hands, threatening to take the dilapidated bridge, hold the European rescue shuttle on alone. One word from you is enough and all that what your colleagues have been working feverishly on, which will force the EU countries to more fiscal discipline is worthless. "No!" You have said a word and rarely has promised more delight. For now Great Britain is perhaps the back, from which arises is admirable that marked your country once: quirky.

We, lovers of the weird, quirky the kingdom, which had lost its identity under increasingly global whip. With joy we would sail across the English Channel and come to an island whose inhabitants are once again proud of their empire. And who are we owe it? You, Prime Minister Cameron! Even now I would like to express my thanks. I am sure one will pay homage to you. A rose for you or a street name. At least one-way street should probably be in there.

(thank Google for the translation)

Iron Man Cameron
The Times

Liberal Democrats condemned David Cameron’s decision to veto a new EU treaty. Lib Dem party leader and deputy PM Nick Clegg said he was "furious" at the way the PM handled the summit. Clegg feared Britain would now be the "lonely man of Europe", with waning influence for the City of London, less influence with the USA and reduced foreign investment.

Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable accused David Cameron of going to war with Europe over the wrong issue: "I simply don’t buy the view that the British national interest is synonymous with banking and financial services." Cable called the veto a "pyrrhic victory" for Eurosceptics "because nothing has really changed — certainly with the financial services sector".

Lib Dem peer and former Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said many in the party remained quiet on Friday because they were stunned and appalled: "It was Black Friday for every Liberal Democrat and for our future in Europe."

The Conservative party hailed Cameron as a hero and a true heir to Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. Conservative foreign secretary William Hague said Cameron had done the "right thing for Britain".
Conservative chancellor George Osborne said Cameron's veto was the "right thing for our country".

2011 December 10

German Vision Prevails
The New York Times

A new European Union is pushing Britain to the sidelines and creating a more integrated core of nations under the auspices of a resurgent Germany. Angela Merkel persuaded every current member of the union except Britain to endorse a new agreement calling for tighter regional oversight of government spending.

The agreement was a clear victory for Merkel and it prompted a sharp rally in stock markets in Europe and the United States. Obama administration officials welcomed the overhaul of the eurozone but argued that stronger measures were needed in the short run. Germany has argued that the solution to the euro crisis is an overhaul of the rules that govern European integration. Germany is using market turmoil as a cudgel to force more austerity. But critics say such steps risk a deep recession.

The big loser in Brussels was Britain. David Cameron was perceived as having made a poor gamble in opposing the push by Merkel and Sarkozy, embittering relations and possibly damaging his standing at home. Some other countries were initially skeptical but only Britain rejected the agreement.

Britain and Europe
Wolfgang Kaden

Britain and the European Union was a mismatch from the start. When the union was founded, Britain still clung to dreams of empire. Economic arguments then led British industry to urge the government to join. When the empire dreams evaporated, they were replaced by a sentimental alliance with the United States. The British held back in the Europe of Brussels, caricatured for decades in the British press as a bureaucratic monster.

The UK is an EU member but never really wanted to be. From the start, the political establishment and the media were skeptical about the single currency. Much of what they said was accurate, but it was simple monetary nationalism that kept the UK out of the euro. Now Euroland stands apart from the UK with its financial autonomy. The British need to ask why they are in the union. Without a fundamental change in British policy, they should leave.

Bye Bye Britain
Roland Nelles

The European Union on Thursday night dropped the hypocrisy. No longer is harmony the overriding goal. The United Kingdom may no longer have a place at the table. London must decide whether it wants to remain part of Europe or not.

The European Union has reformed itself. The common currency union is following the Franco-German desire to grow together. The UK stands alone. It is a new development. The British have been the fly in the European soup for a long time, having their say and wielding their influence. In past EU summits all this was glossed over. No longer. The UK has been backed into a corner.

The euro crisis has exposed a momentum that is creating a new Europe. Chancellor Angela Merkel calls it a fiscal union. In reality, Europe is on the path toward becoming a federal country. Germany and France will lead but all are included.

The preferred outcome is that Britain should become part of an integrated Europe. But Europe can work fine without the British. The UK can focus on its alliance with the United States. They don't have much time. If the Brits wait too long, history will move on. Then we say bye bye Britain.

Great Britain Saves Itself
Niall Ferguson

David Cameron's stand in Brussels was the culmination of a consistent Conservative policy to resist any steps that would lead to Britain's becoming a member of a federal Europe. The eurozone members and the states that have chosen to follow them have just agreed to create a federal fiscal union.

This is the founding charter of the United States of Europe. It is not clear how the existing European institutions can police a fiscal union that is not covered by any treaty. And the balanced-budget rule is a recipe for excessive rigidity in fiscal policy, unless there is a significant centralization of fiscal policy.

Twelve years ago, I warned that a monetary union without a fiscal component would fall apart after about ten years. Four years ago, I pointed out that German banks were in worse shape than American banks. Incompetent leadership has brought the eurozone economy to the edge of a precipice.

The only way to save the monetary union is:
1 Massive quantitative easing by the ECB
2 Restructuring to reduce absolute debt burdens
3 Creation of a mechanism to transfer resources
4 Recapitalization of ailing eurozone banks

The Brussels agreement only does these things half-heartedly.
In the absence of sufficient resources for the new federal model,
the new rules will lead to pro-cyclical policies that deepen the recession. The continent has now embarked on a course for a chronically depressed federation. Cameron did the right thing.

AR Niall left the UK, loves the USA, and hates the USE.

2011 December 9

Eurosplit
The Times

The European Union fractured today at a rancorous summit when 23 countries signed up to a new euro-plus group without Britain. Britain was left out with Hungary, Sweden, and the Czech Republic, as France and Germany led the rest to form Core Europe.

Cameron said safeguards for the City of London were the price of his support for new rules in EU treaties. Both the Swedish and the Czech governments are expected to sign up to the new pact after gaining parliamentary approval. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt joked on Twitter that Britain might form an alliance with Hungary.

AR Many Brits will think this is a victory for freedom. But Cameron has only acted to protect the selfish interests of the moneymen who made a crisis out of the Greek drama in the first place. Britain has sided against Europe and chosen irrelevance in the EU future.

No EU Treaty Change
Financial Times

Leaders of the 27 EU countries failed to agree to change the EU treaties in order to impose tighter fiscal rules on the eurozone and instead chose to create a new intergovernmental treaty.

ECB president Mario Draghi approved the deal. The ECB can now move more aggressively in eurozone bond markets.

David Versus David
The Times

David Miliband criticizes David Cameron for using the V-bomb in Europe without benefit to Britain: "David Cameron didn't actually stop anything because the other 26 are going on and the provisions of the treaty would not have weakened our rights and freedoms one iota."





Balls Attacks Walkout
Financial Times

UK shadow chancellor Ed Balls attacked a "catastrophic failure of leadership" by David Cameron and others at the EU summit. He said Cameron should have played a lead role in trying to resolve the eurozone crisis instead of "walking away" from the talks.

BMW
The Best BMW Ever
Bill Caswell, Wired

I think the 1 Series M Coupe is
the best BMW I've ever driven.
I've been racing BMWs for over
10 years in everything from
local races to the World Rally Championships, and my daily
drive is currently an E30 M3.

BMW 2011 M1: $46,135

David Confronts Europe
Robin Harris

David Cameron saved his leadership by his brave and stylish performance in Brussels. The British, and not just the Conservative Party, like a champion who smiles while he sticks a finger in a foreigner's eye. Lord Salisbury once decried a feeble foreign policy of "floating lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid collisions". In European affairs, the time for boathooks has gone, and the time for ironclads has arrived.

British Demand Unacceptable
Financial Times

David Cameron left the European Union divided. Angela Merkel said the agreement still marked a "breakthrough to a stability union" that would open the way for full fiscal union in the eurozone. Cameron demanded safeguards for UK-based financial services. Nicolas Sarkozy said the demand was unacceptable.

AR Cameron 0, Merkozy 1,
time to move on. British people say no to the EUSSR, Europeans fence off the rabid bulldog.

Europe's Blithering Idiots
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The leaders of France and Germany have more or less bulldozed Britain out of the European Union for the sake of a treaty that offers absolutely no solution to the crisis at hand, or indeed any future crisis. The EU may soon be reduced to a shell, with a new union forming among the core. Utter confusion will ensue over the legal structures of the EU. And what for? All this upheaval for a flimflam treaty?

AR Who's the blithering idiot? Ambrose seems to have
forgotten to take his
medication.

Two-Speed Europe
Spiegel Online

European leaders agreed surprisingly quickly to fiscal union. But the new pact leaves out Britain. David Cameron will not be able to prevent the UK from becoming a second-class EU member.

British riots: an analysis
by Theodore Dalrymple



The Shiites have enacted
bloody riots for centuries

NASA
The NASA Dawn spacecraft was launched in 2007 to encounter Vesta in 2011 and Ceres in 2015.
Dawn uses ion propulsion
powered by solar energy.



NASA
This NASA Dawn image of the asteroid Vesta is dominated by the Caparronia impact crater. It was obtained on October 23, 2011. The crater is about 55 km in diameter and the distance to the surface of Vesta is 700 km.

Bethlehemian Rhapsody
YouTube, 4:46

AR Jesus would love it,
but what about Freddie?




The Muppets sing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody
YouTube, 4:47

Sleeping Beauty is a movie about power and control. Lucy's lack of money requires her to relinquish control again and again. She answers a want ad and a madam employs her to enact the fairy tale of the film's title.


Freeman Dyson
on the psychology of
Daniel Kahneman

War With Iran

1
Süddeutsche Zeitung

Hopes for a comprehensive reconciliation between Iran and the West have evaporated. It is important that the issue is not reduced to a choice between the Iranian Bomb and bombing Iran.

2
Berliner Zeitung
The Israelis know that attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities would, at best, slow down development of a nuclear bomb, and not halt it. The Americans can still hope that the Israelis will hold back.

2011 December 8

Lecture by Dr. Seth Jones, RAND Corporation:
Afghanistan Beyond the Bonn Conference
Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut, Heidelberg

The Merkozy Letter
Reuters

Edited extracts from a letter to EC President Herman Van Rompuy:

We need to reinforce the architecture of Economic and Monetary Union. The current crisis has uncovered the deficiencies in the construction of EMU. Alongside the single currency, we need a renewed contract between the Eurozone states.

We need more binding and more ambitious rules and commitments for the Eurozone states. They should reflect that sharing a single currency means sharing responsibility for the Eurozone as a whole. They should pave the way for a new quality of cooperation and integration within the Eurozone. We propose that those new rules and commitments should be enshrined in the European treaties.

Eurozone governance needs to be substantially reinforced. We should provide for more integrated and more efficient institutions based on regular summits of the Eurozone heads of state and government with a permanent president.

— signed by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy

AR Core Europe is on the way. The British "divide and conquer" approach to Europe of previous centuries is obsolete. A politically united mainland Europe is natural, inevitable, and good.

2011 December 7

Yes To Treaty Change
David Cameron

Resolving the eurozone crisis requires three things:

1 Tighter fiscal discipline and closer fiscal coordination
    within the eurozone

2 A big firewall to prevent contagion along with
    properly capitalized banks

3 Improved competitiveness in the eurozone economies
    that are struggling

A change in the treaty governing all 27 members of the European Union is the most comprehensive and credible way to provide tough sanctions to ensure that eurozone countries stick to the rules on debt. Britain requires rules to keep the single market fair and open for financial services.

The eurozone has a problem of competitiveness. Countries that have large trade deficits coexist with Germany, which has a huge trade surplus. These imbalances have to be addressed.

Clarke: Resolve Crisis
Financial Times

UK Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has put himself at odds with David Cameron by saying Britain should focus on "how to maintain the financial stability of the western world" at the EU summit.

Clarke said it would be a distraction to try to open up discussions about the "wider structures of the union".

Merkozy Failed
Martin Wolf

Germany has a plan but it is something of a blunder.
Good: Eurozone opposition will block its full application.
Bad: Nothing better seems to be on offer.
Ugly: Germans believe fiscal malfeasance caused the crisis.

Truth: This is a balance of payments crisis.
It requires huge adjustments on both sides.

Hunting the Higgs
The Guardian

Rumors have hit the physics blogs that CERN may have seen the Higgs boson. CERN scientists say that if the particle exists, it was most likely to have a mass somewhere between 114 and 141 GeV. Rumors are that the Atlas and CMS teams see Higgs-like signals around 125 GeV. That fits with supersymmetry.

AR Wow! Just in time for Xmas.

2011 December 6

Merkozy Agreement
Financial Times

France and Germany agree on new fiscal rules for the eurozone:
1 Change EU treaty change, at least for eurozone members
2 Impose automatic sanctions for budget deficits over 3% of GDP
3 Set a constitutional "golden rule" requiring balanced budgets
4 Have the European Court of Justice verify the golden rule
5 Let private bondholders avoid haircuts in future restructuring
6 Bring forward the launch of the ESM from 2013 to 2012

The measures must be agreed at the EU summit on Friday.

Rating Downgrade
Financial Times

Standard & Poor's has put 15 eurozone countries on negative CreditWatch. The AAA members Germany, France, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are under review for downgrade to AA+ if their plans fail to convince S&P experts.

Politicians accuse the ratings agencies of exacerbating the crisis. But the agencies worry about who will pay for a eurozone solution.

British Decline
Aditya Chakrabortty

In the past week, the UK has received two bits of bad news:

1 The Office for Budget Responsibility believes that the British economy is around 13% smaller than the government assumed at the height of the boom.

2 The Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts that the average British family will be poorer in 2016 than they were in 2002.

In modern times, the only other rich country that has undergone the kind of decline that now awaits the UK is Japan.

2011 December 5

BIFA
British Independent Film Awards
The Guardian

Tyrannosaur won the best film award. Directed by Paddy Considine, this study of rage stars Peter Mullan as a drinking, gambling, washed-up widower who early in the film kicks his dog to death.
Considine won the Douglas Hickox award for best debut director.
Olivia Colman won best actress for her role in the film.
Michael Fassbender won best actor for his lead role in Shame, Steve McQueen's second feature film after Hunger.

2011 December 4

Iran Says It Shot Down U.S. Spy Plane
The New York Times

Iran's armed forces have shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along the country's eastern border, says the official IRNA news agency. The report quoted a military official: "An advanced RQ-170 unmanned American spy plane was shot down by Iran's armed forces. It suffered minor damage and is now in possession of Iran's armed forces."

NATO Accuses Pakistan and Iran
Spiegel Online

NATO says Pakistan and Iran support the Taliban. In a confidential report, NATO-ISAF military intelligence services raise serious allegations against the the Pakistani intelligence service ISI and Iran's secret police. The report says Pakistan and Iran provide financial and logistic support for armed resistance to the ISAF in Afghanistan, such as a training camp for insurgents in a project financed by Iran and Pakistan.

Suspicion of Pakistan and Iran is not new. For years, the ISI has had close ties to the Taliban and supported the armed struggle of the Taliban against the Afghan government and ISAF. The government of Pakistan denies the ties, but ISI still works with the Taliban and is cooperating directly with the insurgents. The Iranians are cooperating with Pakistan and support the insurgents with training, weapons, and money.

NATO officers in northern Afghanistan say the findings come from "fusion cells" of intelligence staffs from Germany, the USA, Sweden, and other nations. The German commander for northern Afghanistan, Major General Markus Kneip, has described the influence of Iran and Pakistan in his command area and warned against trained terror squads from Chechnya and Pakistan that supported the Taliban.

2011 December 3

German Calm
Spiegel Online

The endgame for the euro has begun. Fear is growing in the financial markets and in the capitals of Europe. But Germans seem calm. They are not blind to the depth of the crisis and most even think the worst is yet to come. But they are still happy to go shopping. The crisis is too complex for many of them.

European partners accuse the chancellor of shamelessly dominating the ongoing EU reform process. But Angela Merkel's approval ratings have gone up during the crisis. Most Germans are behind her and want her to take a strong leadership role in Europe. Germany should take the lead and the eurozone should follow.

War Histories
Joanna Bourke

  Peter Englund
  THE BEAUTY AND THE SORROW
  An Intimate History of the First World War

  Max Hastings
  ALL HELL LET LOOSE
  The World at War 1939-45

Englund and Hastings seek to draw readers into the intimate lives of people who suffered through the First and Second World Wars. The books both excel in depicting the horrors of war. Both solicit affect, so that readers are mesmerized by horror. But affective history fails to provide new understanding.

United States of Europe, Part 3

Britain Outside Europe
Anatole Kaletsky

The Prime Minister should encourage the 17 euro members to agree a separate treaty among themselves, outside the existing EU treaties. Such a new treaty would confirm that euro member-ship and political federation are distinct from the single market. The new treaty would turn the EU back into a primarily economic organization. Britain could lead the outer group.

German Europe
Spiegel Online

Germany is at the center of Europe. Officials in Berlin say it is important to stand side by side with France to avoid creating the impression that Germany is dominating Europe.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "France and Germany have decided to unite their fate." Earlier: "All my efforts are directed towards adapting France to a system that works: the German system."

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski: "I'm less worried about Germany's power than about its failure to act. It has become Europe's essential nation. It must not fail in its leadership. Rather than dominate, it must lead the reform process."

Kepler Finds New Earth
New Scientist

The NASA Kepler telescope had found a new Earthlike planet. Named Kepler-22b, the planet lies 600 light years away around a star like the sun. It is about 2.4 times as wide as Earth and orbits its star every 290 days, right in the middle of the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on its surface, and has a surface temperature of 22°C.

AR Let's launch a starship.

AFP/ Liberation/ Secret Defense
Unmanned U.S. spy planes of
type Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel are deployed in Afghanistan.

War With Iran

3
Financial Times Deutschland

An oil embargo will worsen the social and economic situation in Iran. But an oil embargo could also hurt the West. Higher oil prices would be poisonous for the European economy. To get the Iranian regime to give in, support from Russia and China is needed.

Vogue Italia
12/2011
Cover girl Karlie Kloss

AR Vogue is a fashion mag
but it tries to be more —

CNN
The Sovereign superyacht is the latest brainchild of Gray Design.
Bottom line: Sovereign can be yours for about €100 million.

AR I guess the fan in the tower is a wind turbine to advertise
the owner's environmental credentials.

Vogue Italia
Karlie Kloss again
in the December issue

— by working hard to distract
us from the euro crisis.

Print Money
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The eurozone economy is in imminent danger of crashing into deflation. This would wreck Europe's €31 trillion bank nexus. But the crisis can be stopped very easily by printing money. The ECB can halt the crisis immediately by reflating Club Med off the reefs. It chooses not to act because this would mean higher inflation for Germany.

AR Keep pressing until the
olive pips squeak.

Islamists
Financial Times

Qatari PM Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani says the West should embrace the rise of Islamist movements. Hamad played a role in the Libyan revolution and spoke after the first round of the Egyptian elections. Indications are that the Muslim Brotherhood party Freedom and Justice is in the lead.The puritanical Salafist party Nour also did well.

2011 December 2

PHILOSOPHER
Done. Plan:
1 Chill
2 Reread
3 Publish

Eurogeddon: Ten No-Nos
CNN

  1 Thou shalt not lack political vision and strategy
  2 Thou shalt not lead via two member states
  3 Thou shalt not neglect European foreign policy
  4 Thou shalt not let austerity be the only policy
  5 Thou shalt not fail to put people first
  6 Thou shalt not accept technocratic governments
  7 Thou shalt not run a democratic deficit
  8 Thou shalt not impose cuts that cause recession
  9 Thou shalt not cause panic in financial markets
10 Thou shalt not ignore economic differences

The Spirit of Enterprise
David Brooks

Germany and the United States are rich because many of their citizens believe that people who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity. Work and self-control should be rewarded while laziness and self-indulgence should not.

This ethos is being undermined from all directions. People see lobbyists using connections to divert money, traders making millions in devious manipulations, and governments stealing money from future generations to reward current voters.

European nations like Germany and the Netherlands have played by the rules and practiced good governance. Now they are being browbeaten for not wanting to bail out nations that did not do these things. They are being asked to paper over fundamental economic problems by printing money.

Our sympathy should be with the German people. They are not behaving selfishly by insisting on structural reforms in exchange for bailouts. They are defending the values upon which the entire prosperity of the West is based.

In a financial crisis you do what you have to do. But as soon as the crisis passes, you repair the system. After the American financial crisis of 2008, the people who caused the crisis were never held responsible, there was no strategy to pay off the debt, and structural problems were not addressed. We can do better.

Was ABB Insane?
Simon Baron-Cohen

Anders Breivik committed mass murder to draw attention to his manifesto aimed at saving Europe from the Muslims. The killings were part of a carefully planned political project. He claimed to have worked on the plan for nine years. His manifesto is the work of a man with a single vision. The question is whether a man who is so cold and calculating in executing his logical plan is insane.

Empathy is both cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is the drive to identify someone else's thoughts and feelings and imagine what is in their mind. Affective empathy is the drive to respond to someone else's thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion. Cruelty results from low affective empathy, plus other factors.

In Breivik's case, deeply held ideological convictions may have been the extra ingredient. Breivik appeared to have many parallels with the young Hitler. Hitler's Mein Kampf is a diatribe against the "Judification" of Europe that parallels Breivik's diatribe in his manifesto against the "Islamification" of Europe.

2011 December 1

War With Iran
David Miliband

A nuclear-armed Iran would mean the end of non-proliferation. But that is not an argument for military action. Diplomacy must take the lead. The regime faces challenges:

1 Sanctions, cyberwar, and covert operations have impaired Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapons capability.

2 IAEA inspectors continue to monitor key installations and operations, providing a tripwire to signal any dramatic change.

3 Iran's strategic influence in the region is waning. Among the Arab public, Iran's popularity has plummeted since 2006.

4 The Iranian people aspire to the same kinds of open government that the youth of the Arab world are reaching for.

Now is the time to put pressure on a weakened regime. A concerted diplomatic effort on Iran is needed now to prevent another war in the Mideast.

UK Pu To Burn
The Guardian

General Electric proposes to build a new nuclear reactor at the Sellafield site to convert the British stockpile of plutonium into electricity. The multibillion pound project would burn fuel from nuclear waste in a 600 MW PRISM reactor. The GE Hitachi Power Reactor Innovative Small Module reactor has been in use for more than 30 years in the US.

But the UK government has not yet decided how to deal with its plutonium. Options include long-term storage, converting it for use in a thorium reactor, or building a new mixed oxide fuel (MOX) processing plant. Some in government want the plutonium to be classed as an asset rather than a liability.

A thorium reactor is an alternative to current nuclear plants that experts say is safer, cleaner, and more environmentally friendly.

AR Iran would pay billions for our Pu.

ECB Rescue
Financial Times

ECB president Mario Draghi said a "fiscal compact" could pave the way to a eurozone rescue plan. An agreement binding governments to strong rules on public finances would be "the most important element to start restoring credibility" with financial markets. A fiscal compact would anchor confidence and boost investor trust.

AR First the new rules,
then the new money.

Vogue Paris
Kate Moss as Ziggy Stardust
(David Bowie, 1972)

FISH & CHIPS
To Go Global

Harry Ramsden's, the popular fish and chip chain, is about to close the first restaurant it opened, in Guiseley, Leeds, UK, in 1928.

CEO Joe Teixeira: "Whilst the Harry Ramsden's brand remains strong nationally, it is not immune from the challenging economic environment."

Food magnate Ranjit Boparan has acquired Harry Ramsden's chain and says he plans to expand it to a further 100 UK sites over the next five years and maybe export it to India and China.

AR Fish and chips — yum yum!

Honey Money
Catherine Hakim

"Feminist theory often erects a false dichotomy: either a woman is valued for her human capital (her brains, education, work experience and dedication to her career) or she is valued for her erotic capital (her beauty, elegant figure, dress style, grace and charm). Women are not encouraged to do both."

Export Boom
Financial Times

The German business club BGA says German exports will rise by at least 6% in 2012.








Apocalypse
Financial Times

Germany is the only country in Europe that can act to save the eurozone and the wider European Union from "a crisis of apocalyptic proportions", warned Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski in Berlin on Monday.

2011 St. Andrew's Day

Good News
CNN Money

The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Canada, and the Swiss Central Bank announced a coordinated plan to lower prices on dollar liquidity swaps. A swap takes place when the Fed provides U.S. dollars to a foreign central bank in exchange for the equivalent amount of foreign currency. The plan is meant to "ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity."

AR At last: a glimmer of sense from the financial hand of GOD.

Euro: IMF Hope
Spiegel Online

Eurozone finance ministers agreed on two levers to take the EFSF over €250 billion:

1 Raise insurance on government bond purchases to reduce
    investor risk.
2 Open the fund to investors outside the eurozone.

Leverage of 3 to 5 times is needed to finance Italy and Spain.
Ministers expect a max of 3. They hope the IMF can help out.

To drive down interest rates, eurobonds are a long-term solution.
A short-term fix is for the ECB to buy more bonds.

ABB Declared Insane
New Scientist

Forensic psychiatrists say Anders Breivik was insane when he killed 77 people in July. They say he had suffered for years from paranoid schizophrenia and was psychotic. If the verdict is confirmed, he will escape criminal charges and be committed to psychiatric care.

To meet the legal definition of insanity in most countries, the defendant would have to be proven to be psychotic to the point where they could no longer distinguish between legal definitions of right and wrong, and no longer appreciate the nature of their actions at the time of the offense.

Professor Paul Appelbaum, Columbia University, New York, says that even though Breivik carefully planned and executed the killings, he could still have lost contact with reality to the point that he was no longer in control of his own actions. If he felt he was fighting oppression, he might expect to be treated as a hero.

AR Breivik's manifesto shows he was psychotic but by everyday standards he was sane.

2011 November 29

German Europe
Richard J. Evans

Germany refuses to let the ECB print money. Quantitative easing would stimulate demand as people spend the extra currency.

Germans remember the Weimar Republic. The government printed money and in 1923 inflation spiraled out of control. The depression then destroyed the republic. Between 1943 and 1948, Germans ran a black market economy to survive under the threat of inflation. It took decades of hard work to create an economic miracle.

Germany will not let the ECB print money because of inflation. But entrenchment and austerity are deepening the recession. Fiscal discipline is all very well but we need to revive Europe.

AR The original (long) article went on about Nazis.

New Physics
New Scientist

Do neutrinos travel faster than light? Why is the universe dominated by matter not antimatter? Why is our universe so comfortable to physicists?

On neutrinos, we still await independent verification.

The CERN Large Hadron Collider reports that mesons decay differently from anti-mesons. If so, this would help explain why we have more matter than antimatter.

The existence of multiple universes solves the comfort problem by saying we just happen to live in one that's friendly to physicists.

Theorists say dents in the cosmic microwave background might show that our universe once collided with others. The ESA Planck satellite is looking for the dents.

AR At least the ESA knows how to spend our euros.

2011 November 28

Eurozone: Days to Collapse
Wolfgang Münchau

The banking sector is broken. Parts of Europe are cut off from credit. Contagion has reached the EFSF. The eurozone must:

1 Agree an ECB backstop and increase liquidity for banks to head off bankruptcy.

2 Set up a eurozone bond to end the insanity of cross-border national guarantees.

3 Form a fiscal union, with new institutions and partial loss of national sovereignty.

The European Commission produced a smart proposal last week. Angela Merkel can get her fiscal union but only with a eurobond. Then the problem is solved. Or we go down.

Europe Funding Freeze
Fubancial Times

The funding hole for European banks is deepening following a sharp fall in bond issuance. European banks have sold only two-thirds of the sum due to be returned to investors in 2011 as debts mature, leaving the banks with a $241 billion funding gap.

AR Creak, bang — OMG — I'm on the Titanic!

2011 November 27

Lecture by MIT Professor Frank Wilczek (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004, for work on the basic theory of the strong force, QCD):
Quantum Beauty
Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut, Heidelberg

Genesis
New Scientist

Three billion years ago on planet Earth, Luca (the last universal common ancestor) filled the oceans. Cells in the waters exchanged useful stuff in an open-source paradise to form a global organism.

A search in a database of proteins shows that almost one in ten protein structures are universal. Luca seems to have had enzymes to extract energy from nutrients and nanomachines to make proteins but not enzymes for making and reading DNA molecules.

Luca was made of cells with leaky isoprenoid membranes that let them share stuff. She probably also had organelles. Tiny granules in some archaea are precursors to modern acidocalcisomes, suggesting that these organelles date back to Luca.

Luca made lots of errors when she made proteins from gene templates. So early cells must have shared genes and proteins. Remnants of this gene-swapping system are seen in communities of microorganisms that can only survive in mixed communities. Any cells that dropped out of the global swap shop were doomed.

When cells learned to live independently about 2.9 billion years ago, Luca gave birth to the trinity of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. The eukaryotes evolved into plants and animals.

AR Luca = Ur-Globorg

Manuel Bauer was once a
neo-Nazi thug, heavily involved in far-right paramilitary organizations and guilty of numerous assaults against foreigners and immigrants in Germany. He has since turned his back on the scene.

Pension Strikes
The Guardian

More than 2 million public sector workers are staging a nationwide strike over cuts to public sector pensions. The TUC said it was the biggest stoppage since the mass strike in 1979.

AR The 1979 "winter of discontent" was the event that put Margaret Thatcher in power.

Export Boom
Der Spiegel

This year, for the first time, German companies will export goods worth over €1 trillion.








Firepower
Financial Times

European leaders need to provide "credible and large enough firepower" to halt the sell-off in the eurozone sovereign debt market or they will risk a severe recession, sys OECD chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan.

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