Long Game

Three developments from Europe brought a degree of optimism to the economically beleaguered Continent on Wednesday

Europe’s recent history does not point to an optimistic answer. The euro — itself a product of European integration — arose from the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War’s end. Unified Germany needed to be restrained and committed to the EU, so its fellow member states decided to hand it the keys to European monetary policy while giving up their ability to undercut Germany’s exports with currency depreciation.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited some interesting spots over the July 4 weekend. Her itinerary included Poland and Ukraine, both intriguing choices in light of the recent Obama-Medvedev talks in Washington. But she also traveled to a region that has not been on the American radar screen much in the last two years — namely, the Caucasus — visiting Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The Caucasus is the point where Russia, Iran and Turkey meet. For most of the 19th century, the three powers dueled for dominance of the region. This dispute froze during the Soviet period but is certainly in motion again. With none of these primary powers directly controlling the region, there are secondary competitions involving Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, both among these secondary powers and between the secondary powers and the major powers. And given that the region involves the Russians, Iranians and Turks, it is inevitable that the global power would have an interest as well — hence, Hillary Clinton’s visit.

Members of the military’s new Cyber Command insist that they’ve got no interest in taking over civilian Internet security – or even in becoming the Pentagon’s primary information protectors. But the push to intertwine military and civilian network defenses is gaining momentum, nevertheless. At a gathering this week of top cybersecurity officials and defense contractors, the Pentagon’s number two floated the idea that the Defense Department might start a protective program for civilian networks, based on a deeply controversial effort to keep hackers out of the government’s pipes.

according to Rand, it is better to be consistent in a bad cause than inconsistent in a good one. This has it's basis in one of Rand's oddest prejudices—namely, that human beings are the mere pawns of the logical deductions of their most basic premises.

The first virtue is curiosity.

The second virtue is relinquishment.

The third virtue is lightness.

Those arguing that the Tea Partiers aren't really anything new tend to point out that the vast majority of them are Republicans. But by itself, that isn't really surprising or conclusive. This new chart from Gallup, on the other hand, documents that the political concerns and priorities of Tea Party supporters are virtually identical to those of Republicans:

The Daily Show is many things: progressive darling, alleged news source for America's youth, righteous media critique. And it's also a boys' club where women's contributions are often ignored and dismissed.

Just how do we get from the quantum world of empty space and invisible energy to the concrete, orderly world that we perceive with our senses? We might now have an answer, and it would make Charles Darwin proud.

The Afghan War is the longest war in U.S. history. It began in 1980 and continues to rage. It began under Democrats but has been fought under both Republican and Democratic administrations, making it truly a bipartisan war. The conflict is an odd obsession of U.S. foreign policy, one that never goes away and never seems to end. As the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal reminds us, the Afghan War is now in its fourth phase.

Status Quo bias is a general human tendency to prefer the default state, regardless of whether the default is actually good or not.

Reporting on a study of 700 mutual funds during 1998-2001, finanical reporter Jason Zweig noted that "to a remarkable degree, investors underperformed their funds' reported returns - sometimes by as much as 75 percentage points per year."

But when group A had 100 children, each with an 80 percent chance of surviving when transplanted, and group B had 100 children, each with a 20 percent chance of surviving when transplanted, people still chose the equal allocation method even if this caused the unnecessary deaths of 30 children.

First, the Bayesian formalisms in their full form are computationally intractable on most real-world problems.  No one can actually calculate and obey the math, any more than you can predict the stock market by calculating the movements of quarks.