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anonymous

Things We Don't Know: The beast with a billion backs: Part 2 - 0 views

blog.thingswedontknow.com/...with-billion-backs-part-2.html

shared by anonymous on 15 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Whilst we can’t yet manipulate the microbiome with any finesse, we do influence it through our immune system, evolved over time to cope with invading pathogens and keep them in check.
  • Two different species of bacteria with disks soaked in different antibiotics. The bacteria on the left are susceptible to all the antibiotics tested, while the bacteria on the right are resistant to most of them.
  • If the immune system was a sniper, antibiotics would be a bomb, they don’t discriminate between targets.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • they broadly target bacterial cellular processes, like cell wall building, protein synthesis or metabolism.
  • But their use throws up a number of questions in the light of our growing awareness of the microbiomes importance. How does the microbiome, as a whole, weather such attacks? How does it recover? And why should we even care?
  • Well, we know that antibiotic use in early life is associated with a greater risk of developing allergic conditions like asthma1 and irritable bowel disorders2 (IBS) in later life, which is a pretty good reason to care on its own.
  • There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting we rely on the microbiome3, to some extent, to tutor our immune systems.
  • Another problem is that your microbiome’s response to antibiotics may be quite different to mine, and at the moment we can’t predict how much.
  • The microbiomes of different people vary5, there’s no standard ‘set’, so while many groups of bugs share similar biochemical functions and niches, how they respond to antibiotics may differ considerably.
  • There is a concept in ecology which is useful to illustrate this: keystone species6. Removing a keystone species can create a domino effect where other species that relied on it will disappear, allowing only a few remainder species to dominate, or new species to invade.
  • The problem is how, out of so many different species in a microbiome, do we identify a keystone species? Can we predict which ones may survive, and which will perish under a given antibiotic?
  • There’s good reason to believe antibiotics change the microbiome permanently, and consequentially impact our health.
  • anonymous on 15 Apr 13
     
    "No matter how quietly you listen, nor how closely you stare you'll not hear them, nor see them with the naked eye. They're too small, too quiet. They are our microbiome, the trillions of microorganisms that make their homes inside and out of our bodies. They - we - are an ecosystem, with different bugs filling different niches, some helpful, some quietly parasitic, and others, well, others you do end up knowing about…"
anonymous

Viewpoint: The myth of the lecturer - 0 views

www.michigandaily.com/...04viewpoint-myth-lecturer02

shared by anonymous on 15 Apr 13 - Cached
  • anonymous on 15 Apr 13
     
    "We write in response to Amrutha Sivakumar's March 19 article, "The Research Difference: How the University varies the value of faculty members." The report addresses the relative value of tenure-line and non-tenure-track faculty at the University, and Sivakumar presents several keen insights into the work of University lecturers."
anonymous

Unanswered Questions After the Boston Marathon Blasts - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...s-after-boston-marathon-blasts

shared by anonymous on 16 Apr 13 - Cached
  • In some attacks, the answers come quickly, as with the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings. In other cases, it can take years before those answers appear, as with the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta.
  • The attack venue will greatly aid the search for answers. The heavy presence of people and media that presumably drew the attacker to target the Boston Marathon may prove to be the perpetrator's undoing if someone captured a photo of them delivering the devices.
  • At first look, the devices used in the attack appear to have been rudimentary explosive devices constructed with a common homemade explosive mixture. In other words, virtually anyone could have constructed them using readily available items.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • While any number of actors could have conducted this attack based on the simplicity of the devices, it took some degree of planning to create and place multiple devices. Many different types of groups have used multiple devices in terrorist attacks, so that fact alone does not help identify the culprits. But if there were multiple unexploded devices recovered from different areas in Boston in addition to the two that did detonate, this would indicate that more than one person carried out the attacks, meaning an organized group was involved rather than a lone wolf.
  • Multiple unexploded devices could suggest some sort of tactical incompetence presented by the attackers. Long race venues such as the Boston Marathon also spread out security resources over large areas, likely allowing the attackers to more easily plant multiple devices throughout the city without being detected.
  • The identity of the perpetrator(s) will be critical to determining the U.S. reaction to the attack.
  • A domestic group, or even a grassroots group without direct external connections, would cause a different reaction than if the attacker or attackers have direct connections to a foreign terrorist group like al Qaeda or one of its regional franchises.
anonymous

Persistent Security Problems In Ivory Coast - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-security-problems-ivory-coast

problems security geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 16 Apr 13 - Cached
  • anonymous on 16 Apr 13
     
    "Analysis - Two years after taking power in Ivory Coast, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara's efforts to pacify the country continue to be undermined by persistent unrest -- some of it perpetrated by elements of the president's own support base. Several recent attacks have also been attributed to supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo, who was extradited to the International Criminal Court after contested elections in 2010. On April 12, protesters wearing army uniforms -- reportedly former members of the New Forces militia that fought to remove Gbagbo in 2011 -- disrupted traffic on the country's main north-south highway in the city of Bouake to demand payment for military service and integration into the government. Since taking office, Ouattara's regime has refashioned the New Forces as the Ivorian military -- now called the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast. Still, the government has faced frequent attacks, supposedly by Gbagbo loyalists, in Abidjan, other parts of southeastern Ivory Coast and west along the Liberian border. The attacks have targeted primarily government security patrols and outposts, such as an assault on a police station on the night of April 8 in Abidjan's Yopougon neighborhood. These incidents illustrate the breadth of discontent and the diversity of security risks in the fractured country. The president faces no immediate threat to his hold on power, but the lack of reconciliation in Ivory Coast -- especially its southern regions -- portends continued instability."
anonymous

T-Mobile, Wireless Carriers, and the Way to Fight Oligopolies - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...gopoly-business-practices.html

shared by anonymous on 16 Apr 13 - Cached
  • T-Mobile recently broke with longstanding industry norms and abandoned termination fees, sneaky overage charges, and other unfriendly practices.
  • Although T-Mobile’s decision is welcome news for consumers, it doesn’t change the fact that the old extortions remained in place for about fifteen years, and that they remain in place for the vast majority of Americans still trapped in contracts with Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint.
  • If a monopolist did what the wireless carriers did as a group, neither the public nor government would stand for it. For our scrutiny and regulation of monopolists is well established—just ask Microsoft or the old AT&T. But when three or four firms pursue identical practices, we say that the market is “competitive” and everything is fine.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • To state the obvious, when companies act in parallel, the consumer is in the same position as if he were dealing with just one big firm. There is, in short, a major blind spot in our nation’s oversight of private power, one that affects both consumers and competition.
  • Barry Lynn’s 2011 book, “Cornered,” which carefully detailed the rising concentration and consolidation of nearly every American industry since the nineteen-eighties.
  • The press confuses oligopoly and monopoly with some regularity. The Atlantic ran a recent infographic titled “The Return of the Monopoly,” describing rising concentration in airlines, grocery sales, music, and other industries.
  • With the exception of Intel in computer chips, none of the industries described, however, was actually a monopoly—all were oligopolies.
  • Back in the mid-century, the Justice Department went after oligopolistic cartels in the tobacco industry and Hollywood with the same vigor it chased Standard Oil, the quintessential monopoly trust.
  • In the late nineteen-seventies, another high point of enforcement, oligopolies were investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, and during that era Richard Posner, then a professor at Stanford Law School, went as far as to argue that when firms maintain the same prices, even without a smoke-filled-room agreement, they ought to be considered members of a price-fixing conspiracy.
  • the United States has nowadays nearly abandoned scrutiny of oligopoly behavior, leaving consumers undefended. That’s a problem, because oligopolies do an awful lot that’s troubling.
  • Consider “parallel exclusion,”
  • efforts by an entire industry to keep out would-be newcomers, a pervasive problem.
  • Over the eighties and nineties, despite “deregulation,” the established airlines like American and United managed to keep their upstart competitors out of important business routes by collectively controlling the “slots” at New York, Chicago, and Washington airports.
  • Visa and MasterCard spent the nineties trying to stop American Express from getting into the credit-card industry, by creating parallel policies (“exclusionary rules”) and blacklisting any bank that might dare deal with AmEx. It was only thanks to the happenstance that both put their exclusions in writing that the Justice Department was able to do anything about the problem
  • Here’s a simple proposal: when members of a concentrated industry act in parallel, their conduct should be treated like that of a hypothetical monopoly.
  • Meanwhile, the idea that an industry is nominally “competitive” should not provide excessive protection from regulatory oversight.
  • Consider, again, the wireless carriers. The Federal Communications Commission is supposed to insure that the carriers, who are leaseholders on public spectrum, use that resource to serve “the public interest, convenience, and necessity.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 16 Apr 13
       
      I will continue to raise my hand at this: corporations were originally 'envisioned' (for whatever little worth that is) as protectors of public trust. THAT'S WHAT THEY GOT IN EXCHANGE FOR LEVERAGE FAR OUTSIDE WHAT NON-CORPORATE STRUCTURES COULD GET. That was the price - and the point.
  • , to quote T-Mobile, “[t]his is an industry filled with ridiculously confusing contracts, limits on how much data you can use or when you can upgrade, and monthly bills that make little sense.”
  • The F.C.C. could have done something about this years ago; the fact that it took a member of the industry to call out more than a decade’s abuse of consumers amounts to a serious failure on the part of the F.C.C.
  • Exploitation of concentrated private power is not a problem that will ever go away. In the United States, it has been a concern since the framing: the original Tea Party was actually a protest against a state-sponsored tea monopoly.
  • it’s important not to become fixated on form, but to attend to the realities that face consumers and citizens.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 16 Apr 13
       
      Dumbed down: If the problem you have with a bunch of things, it's no different than if that bunch was one thing. The effect is the same.
  • anonymous on 16 Apr 13
     
    "If a monopolist did what the wireless carriers did as a group, neither the public nor government would stand for it. For our scrutiny and regulation of monopolists is well established-just ask Microsoft or the old AT&T. But when three or four firms pursue identical practices, we say that the market is "competitive" and everything is fine. To state the obvious, when companies act in parallel, the consumer is in the same position as if he were dealing with just one big firm. There is, in short, a major blind spot in our nation's oversight of private power, one that affects both consumers and competition."
anonymous

Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems. - 0 views

www.nextnewdeal.net/...and-there-are-serious-problems

criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 17 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate, in fact.
  • This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession.
  • In a new paper, "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst successfully replicate the results.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • After trying to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results and failing, they reached out to Reinhart and Rogoff and they were willing to share their data spreadhseet. This allowed Herndon et al. to see how how Reinhart and Rogoff's data was constructed.
  • They find that three main issues stand out.
  • First, Reinhart and Rogoff selectively exclude years of high debt and average growth.
  • Second, they use a debatable method to weight the countries.
  • Third, there also appears to be a coding error that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries.
  • All three bias in favor of their result, and without them you don't get their controversial result.
  • Selective Exclusions. Reinhart-Rogoff use 1946-2009 as their period, with the main difference among countries being their starting year.
  • The paper didn't disclose which years they excluded or why.
  • Unconventional Weighting. Reinhart-Rogoff divides country years into debt-to-GDP buckets. They then take the average real growth for each country within the buckets.
  • this weighting significantly reduces the average; if you weight by the number of years you find a higher growth rate above 90 percent.
  • Coding Error. As Herndon-Ash-Pollin puts it: "A coding error in the RR working spreadsheet entirely excludes five countries, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark, from the analysis.
  • Being a bit of a doubting Thomas on this coding error, I wouldn't believe unless I touched the digital Excel wound myself. One of the authors was able to show me that, and here it is. You can see the Excel blue-box for formulas missing some data:
  • If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.
  • So what do Herndon-Ash-Pollin conclude? They find "the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0.1 percent as [Reinhart-Rogoff claim]." [UPDATE: To clarify, they find 2.2 percent if they include all the years, weigh by number of years, and avoid the Excel error.] Going further into the data, they are unable to find a breakpoint where growth falls quickly and significantly.
  • This is also good evidence for why you should release your data online, so it can be properly vetted.
  • But beyond that, looking through the data and how much it can collapse because of this or that assumption, it becomes quite clear that there's no magic number out there. The debt needs to be thought of as a response to the contingent circumstances we find ourselves in, with mass unemployment, a Federal Reserve desperately trying to gain traction at the zero lower bound, and a gap between what we could be producing and what we are. The past guides us, but so far it has failed to provide evidence of an emergency threshold. In fact, it tells us that a larger deficit right now would help us greatly.
  • anonymous on 17 Apr 13
     
    "In 2010, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff released a paper, "Growth in a Time of Debt." Their "main result is that...median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower." Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate, in fact."
anonymous

Site of the Boston Marathon Bombings - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...site-boston-marathon-bombings

shared by anonymous on 17 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Law enforcement and government officials have already begun their investigation into the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured more than 170. The initial hours following any incident like the Boston attack are marked by a reaction to events: First responders treat the wounded and bring them to hospitals, explosive ordnance disposal teams hunt for additional devices -- several of which were reported in Boston soon after the attack -- and law enforcement begins to search the area for potential suspects.
  • anonymous on 17 Apr 13
     
    "Analysis: Law enforcement and government officials have already begun their investigation into the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured more than 170. The initial hours following any incident like the Boston attack are marked by a reaction to events: First responders treat the wounded and bring them to hospitals, explosive ordnance disposal teams hunt for additional devices -- several of which were reported in Boston soon after the attack -- and law enforcement begins to search the area for potential suspects."
anonymous

Anarchy and Hegemony - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...anarchy-and-hegemony

shared by anonymous on 17 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Everyone loves equality: equality of races, of ethnic groups, of sexual orientations, and so on. The problem is, however, that in geopolitics equality usually does not work very well. For centuries Europe had a rough equality between major states that is often referred to as the balance-of-power system. And that led to frequent wars
  • East Asia, by contrast, from the 14th to the early 19th centuries, had its relations ordered by a tribute system in which China was roughly dominant. The result, according to political scientist David C. Kang of the University of Southern California, was a generally more peaceful climate in Asia than in Europe.
  • The fact is that domination of one sort or another, tyrannical or not, has a better chance of preventing the outbreak of war than a system in which no one is really in charge
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Apr 13
       
      That is quite the statement. On the surface, it *feels* true. Let's see the follow-through.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • Columbia University's Kenneth Waltz, arguably America's pre-eminent realist, says that the opposite of "anarchy" is not stability, but "hierarchy."
  • Hierarchy eviscerates equality; hierarchy implies that some are frankly "more equal" than others, and it is this formal inequality -- where someone, or some state or group, has more authority and power than others -- that prevents chaos. For it is inequality itself that often creates the conditions for peace.
  • Government is the most common form of hierarchy.
  • It is a government that monopolizes the use of violence in a given geographical space, thereby preventing anarchy. To quote Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher, only where it is possible to punish the wicked can right and wrong have any practical meaning, and that requires "some coercive power."
  • The best sort of inequality is hegemony.
  • Whereas primacy, as Kang explains, is about preponderance purely through military or economic power, hegemony "involves legitimation and consensus."
  • That is to say, hegemony is some form of agreed-upon inequality, where the dominant power is expected by others to lead.
  • When a hegemon does not lead, it is acting irresponsibly.
  • hegemony has a bad reputation in media discourse.
  • But that is only because journalists are confused about the terminology, even as they sanctimoniously judge previous historical eras by the strict standards of their own. In fact, for most of human history, periods of relative peace have been the product of hegemony of one sort or another. And for many periods, the reigning hegemonic or imperial power was the most liberal, according to the standards of the age.
  • Rome, Venice and Britain were usually more liberal than the forces arranged against them.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Apr 13
       
      I call BULLSHIT on the Rome thing. There is some strong evidence that they were quite lacking in human rights relative their northern Gaulish neighbors (which they smashed to claim their gold mines).
  • There are exceptions, of course, like Hapsburg Spain, with its combination of inquisition and conquest. But the point is that hegemony does not require tyrannical or absolutist rule.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Apr 13
       
      I'll buy it. I remember how John Green noted that the Greek city states won a war against the Persians - who had abolished slavery and had greater rights of expression for the multiplicity of ethnicities within their borders.
  • there are few things messier in geopolitics than the demise of an empire.
  • The collapse of the Hapsburgs, of the Ottoman Turks, of the Soviet Empire and the British Empire in Asia and Africa led to chronic wars and upheavals. Some uncomprehending commentators remind us that all empires end badly. Of course they do, but that is only after they have provided decades and centuries of relative peace.
  • Obviously, not all empires are morally equivalent.
  • Therefore, I am saying only in a general sense is order preferable to disorder.
  • Though captivating subtleties abound: For example, Napoleon betrayed the ideals of the French Revolution by creating an empire, but he also granted rights to Jews and Protestants and created a system of merit over one of just birth and privilege.
  • In any case, such order must come from hierarchal domination.
  • Indeed, from the end of World War II until very recently, the United States has performed the role of a hegemon in world politics. America may be democratic at home, but abroad it has been hegemonic.
  • That is, by some rough measure of international consent, it is America that has the responsibility to lead. America formed NATO in Europe, even as its Navy and Air Force exercise preponderant power in the Pacific Basin. And whenever there is a humanitarian catastrophe somewhere in the developing world, it is the United States that has been expected to organize the response.
  • Periodically, America has failed. But in general, it would be a different, much more anarchic world without American hegemony.
  • But that hegemony, in some aspects, seems to be on the wane. That is what makes this juncture in history unique.
  • When it comes to the Greater Middle East, Americans seem to want protection on the cheap, and Obama is giving them that. 
  • We will kill a terrorist with a drone, but outside of limited numbers of special operations forces there will be no boots on the ground for Libya, Syria or any other place.
  • Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were noted for American leadership and an effective, sometimes ruthless foreign policy.
  • Since the Cold War ended and Bill Clinton became president, American leadership has often seemed to be either unserious, inexpertly and crudely applied or relatively absent.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Apr 13
       
      Yeah, that pussy Clinton, who couldn't get UN support for the Balkans and then proceeded to move through Nato. Sure, it was airstrikes and logistics, but it was no equivocal. Whether you like the action or not. ::raspberry:: [citation needed]
  • Nevertheless, in the case of the Middle East, do not conflate chaos with democracy. Democracy itself implies an unequal, hierarchal order, albeit one determined by voters. What we have in the Middle East cannot be democracy because almost nowhere is there a new and sufficiently formalized hierarchy. No, what we have in many places in the Middle East is the weakening of central authority with no new hierarchy to adequately replace it.
  • Unless some force can, against considerable odds, reinstitute hierarchy -- be it an American hegemon acting globally, or an international organization acting regionally or, say, an Egyptian military acting internally -- we will have more fluidity, more equality and therefore more anarchy to look forward to.
  • anonymous on 17 Apr 13
     
    "Everyone loves equality: equality of races, of ethnic groups, of sexual orientations, and so on. The problem is, however, that in geopolitics equality usually does not work very well. For centuries Europe had a rough equality between major states that is often referred to as the balance-of-power system. And that led to frequent wars. "
anonymous

Why Choosing to Make Less Money Is Easier Than Ever - 0 views

theumlaut.com/...less-money-is-easier-than-ever

shared by anonymous on 18 Apr 13 - Cached
  • If innovation has become increasingly marginal, then it’s less costly to choose to be a “threshold earner,” which Tyler Cowen defines as “someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more.”
  • If wages go up, Cowen says, a threshold earner will choose to work less or, I would add, choose work that’s so personally fulfilling that it’s indistinguishable from leisure.
  • As Andy Warhol said, What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The Internet and modern media make this truer than ever. The same music, sports, movies, and HBO miniseries are available to threshold earners that are available to their high-income counterparts. The only difference might be the size of the screen they watch it on.
  • If you choose to accept a lower income than you might otherwise be able to command in order to consume more leisure, then what you are likely going to have to give up is consuming positional goods.
  • For one thing, food trucks are “in,” and so are lots of other low-cost consumption made fashionable by threshold-earning hipsters—from no-brand plastic sunglasses and thrift store clothes, to Pabst Blue Ribbon and communal living.
  • In some ways a conspicuously anti-consumerist lifestyle has become a positional good in itself.
  • Trader Joe’s is the chief example of this trend.
  • It caters not to the average American, but to a more elite set interested in organic, gourmet, and ethnic foods. Nevertheless, it offers low prices through an ingenious mix of limited selection and price discrimination (many Trader-Joe’s-branded items are the same high-end brands you’d get at Whole Foods, just repackaged.)
  • The company seems to be directly targeting educated threshold earners. One retail consultant that studied the chain has said that Trader Joe’s typical customer is a “Volvo-driving professor who could be CEO of a Fortune 100 company if he could get over his capitalist angst.” Indeed, the chain sites stores in university-dense areas brimming with bargain-hunting elites.
  • “The retail strategy for luxury brands is to try to keep as far away from the likes of Zara. Zara’s strategy is to get as close to them as possible.” The threshold earning elite gets the high-end shopping experience and trendy clothes at low prices.
  • anonymous on 18 Apr 13
     
    "The "great stagnation" presents us with a great opportunity. It's easier than ever to opt-out of the income-maximizing rat-race and enjoy more leisure. If innovation has become increasingly marginal, then it's less costly to choose to be a "threshold earner," which Tyler Cowen defines as "someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more." If wages go up, Cowen says, a threshold earner will choose to work less or, I would add, choose work that's so personally fulfilling that it's indistinguishable from leisure."
anonymous

Why Stratfor Tracks the Locations of U.S. Navy Capital Ships - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...r-tracks-us-navy-capital-ships

shared by anonymous on 18 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Roughly 90 percent of trade worldwide happens by sea, so the global economy depends on safe maritime transport. Unimpeded access to the seas is also necessary for the defense of far-flung national interests.
  • The United States could not have fought in World War II or Afghanistan, for example, without the ability to quickly move forces, supplies and aircraft to distant corners of the globe. Thus, the movement of U.S. Navy ships can tell us a lot about America's foreign policy.
  • For example, take the U.S. execution of sanctions on Iran in recent years. In April 2012, the Navy positioned a second carrier battle group in the Strait of Hormuz, thus sending a message to Iran that the United States is ready to respond if aggressive action is taken to close the strait.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • During the Israel-Gaza conflict in November, the Navy diverted an amphibious group to the eastern Mediterranean, making it available to evacuate U.S. citizens if needed.
  • The key is looking for the unexpected.
  • Each week, we have a pretty good idea of where the ships will be, based on geopolitical patterns, strategies and developments. But surprises -- and they do happen -- allow us to challenge and re-evaluate our positions.
  • This is a fundamental part of our methodology: constantly checking our net assessments against new intelligence to maintain the high degree of accuracy on which our readers and clients depend.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Apr 13
       
      Their methodology is high-level. I'm still not satisfied that I have an accurate picture. Moreover, I'm on the lookout for tools to help me critique their work. I realize that's almost *cute* given that I'm a layman, but I'm pretty sure I can leverage the internet to at LEAST ask some interesting questions.
  • The map contains only publicly available, open-source information. We're not publishing any secrets; we're compiling available information and applying it to an easy-to-use, actionable graphic for our analysts, subscribers and clients.
  • anonymous on 18 Apr 13
     
    "In Stratfor's weekly Naval Update Map, we track the approximate locations of U.S. fleet aircraft carriers and amphibious war ships. The map helps our analysts -- and customers -- decipher Washington's strategy and even predict looming conflicts."
anonymous

StratFor's Methodology - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...methodology

shared by anonymous on 18 Apr 13 - Cached
  • The Intelligence Process
  • Love of One's Own and the Importance of Place
  • We seek to understand a country and its leaders in their own right, without bias or agenda. We maintain a fresh perspective and continually challenge preconceived notions. Because of this approach, we frequently depart from the conventional wisdom of the Western media. To reinforce this discipline, we have set up deliberate intellectual tensions to maintain a healthy level of interaction and rigorous debate among our entire team, so that no assumption or piece of information goes unchallenged.
  • ...1 more annotation...
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Apr 13
       
      In light of Wikileaks' revelation that many members of stratfor lean pretty hard right, I think it's a great opportunity for them to better describe the "intellectual tensions" and how their process diffuses inherent biases (which, even with the best of intentions, will crawl its way in). This is still something I eagerly await.
  • anonymous on 18 Apr 13
     
    "Stratfor's methodology begins with a framework for understanding the world and applies methods of gathering and analyzing information. The combination allows us to produce dispassionate, accurate and actionable insight for our clients and subscribers."
anonymous

The Strategic Implications of Immigration Reform - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...mplications-immigration-reform

geopolitics immigration reform

shared by anonymous on 18 Apr 13 - Cached
  • It would make it possible for illegal immigrants currently in the country to seek legal residency and eventually citizenship. Finally, and perhaps most important, the bill would shift the composition of the inflow of legal immigrants, increasing quotas for highly skilled individuals and constraining the number of visas available to people whose family members are U.S. citizens. 
  • The history of U.S. immigration policy is necessarily long and controversial. Not only is the United States the biggest economy in the world, it is also the largest recipient of immigrants.
  • Immigration law has been used to control the legal entry of people based on a wide range of factors.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • These include placing quotas on nationalities and forbidding the entry of polygamists and political extremists. At the same time, U.S. immigration law has been used to encourage the entry of people with specific skill sets.
  • In 1942 the United States negotiated an agreement with Mexico during an agricultural labor shortage. This agreement, known as the Bracero program, allowed millions of Mexican workers to enter the United States between the time the program was implemented and when it ended in 1964.
  • The program opened the door for significant Mexican migration based on family reunification. What appears to be a more contemporary version of that program -- a temporary worker permit specifically designed to integrate migrant agricultural workers -- was included in the bill introduced Wednesday.
  • Though each new wave of immigration brings with it political and social controversy, the United States' ability to integrate new populations gives it a distinct advantage over many other developed countries.
  • In the first place, Latin American immigrant populations tend to have higher fertility rates than the national average. This allows the United States to maintain a population large enough to drive the world’s largest economy -- in stark comparison with Europe, which is set to experience a notable aging and shrinking of its population.
  • Many students from around the world come to study in the United States, but legal restrictions prevent them from staying and working in the country. The proposed system appears designed to help keep more highly educated foreigners in the United States, a country that depends on technological innovation to create high-skilled, high-value jobs.
  • The generation and protection of intellectual property is a strategic national objective amid rising international competition, and if the proposed law successfully increases high-skilled labor immigration, it will contribute significantly to U.S. competitiveness
  • The Mexican government has long made it a priority to find a way to normalize immigrant status. It also has an interest in encouraging population flows that generate billions of dollars worth of remittances annually to Mexico.
  • The fact that immigration reform is attached to the new border security initiative will sweeten the deal for Mexico during negotiations with the United States.
  • For the United States, the big question now is about global competitiveness, and any reform to immigration will seek to address that question.
  • anonymous on 18 Apr 13
     
    "A bipartisan group of eight leading U.S. senators on Wednesday officially filed the most comprehensive immigration reform bill since 1990, opening the door for the United States to address an issue that will help to shape the country's economic and demographic future. The bill links the issue of border security with that of immigration and will require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to significantly ramp up its monitoring of the U.S. border over the next 10 years."
anonymous

We Are All Hayekians Now: The Internet Generation and Knowledge Problems - 1 views

www.petervv.com/...we-are-all-hayekians-now

shared by anonymous on 18 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Primarily in his The Use of Knowledge in Society but also in his other contributions to the socialist calculation debate, Hayek crafted a brilliant statement of a perennial problem.
  • In the world of human endeavor, we have two types of problems: economic and technological.
  • Technological problems involve effectively allocating given resources to accomplish a single valuable goal.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • The choice to build the bridge is a choice between this bridge or that skyscraper as well as any other alternative use of those resources. Each alternative use would have different benefits (and unseen costs).
  • This is not a mere question of engineering the strongest or even the most cost-effective structure to get across the Hudson, this is a question of what is the strongest or most cost-effective possible future version of New York City.
  • “We are building the world’s 20th search engine at a time when most of the others have been abandoned as being commoditized money losers. We’ll strip out all of the ad-supported news and portal features so you won’t be distracted from using the free search stuff.”
  • But, of course, Google survived, prospered, and continues towards its apparent goal of eating the entire internet (while also making cars drive themselves, putting cameras on everyone’s heads, and generally making Steve Ballmer very very angry). So, why did Google win? The answer is, perhaps surprisingly, in Hayek’s theory.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Apr 13
       
      Very embarassing videos.
  • “Our goal always has been to index all the world’s data.” Talk about anemic goals, come on Google, show some ambition!
  • So, is this one of Hayek’s technical problems or is this an economic one?
  • Our gut might first tell us that it is technical.
  • Sure, all this data is now hanging out in one place for free, but to make a useful index you need to determine how much people value different data. We need data about the data.
  • In Soviet Russia, failed attempts at arranging resources destroyed the information about the resources. The free market is the best way to figure out how individual people value individual resources. When left to trade voluntarily, people reveal their preferences with their willingness to pay. By arranging resources through coercion you’ve blinded yourself to the emergent value of the resources because you’ve forbidden voluntary arrangement in the economy.
  • This is different on the internet.
  • The data resources are not rivalrous
  • Search used to be really bad. Why? Because search companies were using either (a) content-producer willingness to pay for indexing, (b) mere keyword search or (c) some combination of editorial centralized decision-making to organize lists of sites.
  • These methods only work if you think that the best site about ducks is either (a) the site that has the most money to pay Altavista for prime “duck” listing, (b) the site that has the most “ducks” in its text, or (c) the site that was most appealing to your employees tasked with finding duck sites.
  • If 999 other websites linked to one website about ducks, you can bet that most people think that this site is better at explaining ducks than a site with only one link to it (even if that link was horse-sized).
  • So Google uses the decentralized Hayekian knowledge of the masses to function. Why does this mean we’re all Hayekians?
  • All of the questions of organizing activity on the internet are solved (when they are, in fact, solved successfully) using Hayekian decentralized knowledge.
  • Amazon customer reviews are how we find good products. Ebay feedback is how we find good individual sellers. And, moreover, whole brick and mortar services are moving to a crowd-sourced model, with sites like AirBnB for lodging and RelayRides for car rental.
  • the giant firms of tomorrow will be those that empower people to freely share their knowledge and resources in a vibrant marketplace.
  • Today, the central challenge for a firm is not to develop careful internal management but rather the non-trivial task of building marketplaces and forums to encourage decentralized knowledge production and cooperation.
  • Our generation already understands this on a gut level. We Google everything.  We defend freedom on the internet as if it was our own personal real-world liberty at stake. We mock the antiquated central planners of the early web, looking at you AOL, Prodigy, for their ineffectual obviousness and denial of crowd-sourced knowledge.
  • We all know where the best economic knowledge lies, in the many and never the few.
  • anonymous on 18 Apr 13
     
    "We are all Hayekians now. Specifically, the "we all" is not quite everyone. The "all" to which I'm referring is people of the internet-people who've grown up with the net and use it for a majority of their day-to-day activities. And, the "Hayekian" to which I'm referring is not his theories on capital, or the rule of law, but, specifically his vision of knowledge."
anonymous

Boston Bombing Suspects: Grassroots Militants from Chechnya - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-grassroots-militants-chechnya

geopolitics immigration reform

shared by anonymous on 19 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Just after 10 p.m. on April 18, the Tsarnaev brothers were identified after having robbed a convenience store in Cambridge, Mass., just three miles from Boston, hours earlier. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, who responded to the robbery, was shot and killed and found in his car by fellow responding officers. The two suspects later hijacked an SUV at gunpoint, releasing the driver unharmed. Authorities later caught up to the suspects, and a car chase ensued.
  • Just after midnight, the car chase ended with a gunfight in Watertown, Mass. The suspects reportedly threw explosive devices at police, though it is not yet confirmed what types of explosives allegedly were used. During the firefight, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was wounded, taken into custody and later reported dead. Dzhokar escaped by driving the stolen SUV through the police barricade and remains at large.
  • According to The New York Times, the two men are from Chechnya. Their family also reportedly lived briefly in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, before moving to the United States in 2002.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's profile on VKontakte, a Russian social media website, said he attended school at the School No. 1 of Makhachkala, spoke English, Russian and Chechen and listed his worldview as Islam. A school administrator from the School No. 1 said the two suspects and their family had previously lived in Kyrgyzstan before moving to Dagestan.
  • Given that they are grassroots actors, there is likely only a small chance that the authorities will discover a formal link between the suspects and a state sponsor or a professional terrorist group, such as al Qaeda or one of its franchise groups.
  • Moreover, given what we have learned about the suspects and the nature of the improvised explosive devices they constructed, it is very likely that the authorities will find that the brothers had read and studied al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire Magazine.
  • This case also highlights our analysis that the jihadist threat now predominantly stems from grassroots operatives who live in the West rrather than teams of highly trained operatives sent to the United States from overseas, like the team that executed the 9/11 attacks.
  • This demonstrates how the jihadist threat has diminished in recent years -- a trend we expect to continue.
  • There will always be plenty of soft targets in a free society, and it is incredibly easy to kill people, even by untrained operatives. In this case the brothers conducted an attack that was within their capabilities rather than attempting something more grandiose that would require outside assistance - and which could therefore have put them in jeopardy of running into a government informant as they sought help.  It is thus important for citizens to practice good situational awareness and to serve as grassroots defenders against the grassroots threat.
  • anonymous on 19 Apr 13
     
    "The identity of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing -- Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 -- confirms several of our suspicions. From this profile, the simple nature of the attack, their efforts to rob a convenience store and their lack of an escape plan, we can conclude that they were what we refer to as grassroots militants. Despite being amateurs, such militants clearly still pose a significant threat."
anonymous

Where criminals get their guns - 0 views

dailycaller.com/...where-criminals-get-their-guns

shared by anonymous on 19 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Believe it or not I actually heard her say, “A lot of criminals get their guns from gun stores.” Really? Let’s look at the facts.
  • A 1997 Justice Department survey of more than 18,000 state and federal convicts revealed the truth: • 39.6% of criminals obtained a gun from a friend or family member • 39.2% of criminals obtained a gun on the street or from an illegal source • 0.7% of criminals purchased a gun at a gun show • 1% of criminals purchased a gun at a flea market • 3.8% of criminals purchased a gun from a pawn shop • 8.3% of criminals actually bought their guns from retail outlets
  • Note that less than 9 percent of all guns obtained by criminals in this survey came from retail outlets, hardly “a lot” compared to the almost 40 percent of convicts who obtained guns from friends or family or the almost 40 percent who obtained them illegally on the street.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The gun-show loophole? Less than 1 percent of criminal guns came from gun shows. Nothing there, either.
  • The survey data were analyzed and released in 2001 then revised in 2002, but while the eye-opening details are more than 10 years old it’s hard to believe criminal responses have changed much over the last decade.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 19 Apr 13
       
      On the contrary, this is worth investigating with fresher data. The perception of a culture war against gun owners has caused sales to surge in *spite* of an overall decrease on the proportion of citizens who own guns. In other words: Gun owners are buying more guns while fewer people want to own then. My gut says that may have moved some statistical indicators. Still, the author's point stands. Even without fresh data, you can get a good snapshot of the rough picture.
  • “Universal” background checks won’t work. The fact is we have them now. Anytime a law-abiding citizen purchases a gun from a brick-and-mortar or online retailer, pawn shop owner or private dealer—essentially any licensed dealer who sells more than a handful of firearms per month—he or she must submit to a background examination via the National Instant Check System.
  • anonymous on 19 Apr 13
     
    "Across all media these days the information is far from accurate when it comes to the culture war waged against gun owners. The topic the other day on a Fox News program was Chicago's "gun problem." Of course everyone knows Chicago's problem is crime committed by thugs who disobey the law, but that didn't stop one woman from insisting "universal" background checks would cut down the number of guns on the city's streets."
anonymous

Scientists create biggest family tree of human cells - 0 views

phys.org/...biggest-family-tree-human.html

immunesystem immunology cells biology human

shared by anonymous on 21 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Cells are the basic unit of a living organism. The human body consists of a vast array of highly specialized cells, such as blood cells, skin cells and neurons. In total more than 250 different cell types exist.
  • How are the different types related to each other? Which factors are unique for each cell type? And what in the end determines the development of a certain cell?
  • These factors, or master regulators, determine the development and distinguish different cell types from each other. With this information they could map the relationship between the cell types in a family tree.
  • anonymous on 21 Apr 13
     
    "In a paper published today by the prestigious journal, Nature Methods, biologists at the University of Luxembourg, Tampere University of Technology and the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, USA, have created the biggest family tree of human cell types."
anonymous

How Basecamp Next got to be so damn fast without using much client-side UI by David of ... - 0 views

37signals.com/...hout-using-much-client-side-ui

shared by anonymous on 22 Apr 13 - Cached
  • #1: Stacker – an advanced pushState-based engine for sheets
  • The Stacker engine reduces HTTP requests on a per-page basis to a minimum by keeping the layout the same between requests.
  • This means that only the very first request spends time downloading CSS, JavaScript, and image sprites. Every subsequent request will only trigger a single HTTP request to get the HTML that changed and whatever additional images needed.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Now Stacker is purposely built for the sheet-based UI that we have. It knows about sheet nesting, how to break out of a sheet chain, and more.
  • #2: Caching TO THE MAX
  • Stacker can only make things appear so fast. If actions still take 500ms to render, it’s not going to have that ultra snappy feel that Basecamp Next does. To get that sensation, your requests need to take less than 100ms. Once our caches are warm, many of our requests take less than 50ms and some even less than 20ms.
  • The only way we can get complex pages to take less than 50ms is to make liberal use of caching.
  • Every stand-alone piece of content is cached in Basecamp Next.
  • This is illustrated in the picture above. If I change todo #45, I’ll have to bust the cache for the todo, the cache for the list, the cache for all todolists, and the cache for the page itself. That sounds terrible on the surface until you realize that everything else is cached as well and can be reused.
  • Thou shall share a cache between pages
  • To improve the likelihood that you’re always going to hit a warm cache, we’re reusing the cached pieces all over the place. There’s one canonical template for each piece of data and we reuse that template in every spot that piece of data could appear.
  • Now this is often quite easy. A todo looks the same regardless of where it appears. Here’s the same todo appearing in three different pages all being pulled from the same cache:
  • Thou shall share a cache between people
  • This is where a sprinkle of JavaScript comes handy. Instead of embedding the logic in the generation of the template, you decorate it after the fact with JavaScript. The block below shows how that happens.
  • It’s a cached list of possible recipients of a new message on a given project, but my name is not in it, even though it’s in the cache. That’s because each checkbox is decorated with a data-subscriber-id HTML attribute that corresponds to their user id. The JavaScript reads a cookie that contains the current user’s id, finds the element with a matching data-subscriber-id, and removes it from the DOM. Now all users can share the same user list for notification without seeing their own name on the list.
  • Combining it all and sprinkling HTTP caching and infinite pages on top
  • None of these techniques in isolation are enough to produce the super snappy page loads we’ve achieved with Basecamp Next, but in combination they get there.
  • anonymous on 22 Apr 13
     
    "Speed is one of those core competitive advantages that have long-term staying power. As Jeff Bezos would say, nobody is going to wake up 10 years from now and wish their application was slower. Investments in speed are going to pay dividends forever. Now for the secret sauce. Basecamp is so blazingly fast for two reasons:"
anonymous

Why Office 365 and Office 2013 may not be right for you - 1 views

www.pcworld.com/...-may-not-be-right-for-you.html

shared by anonymous on 24 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Unlike Office 2010, Office 2013 does not work with Windows XP or Windows Vista. Yet the latest data from NetApplications shows that roughly 45 percent of all Internet users still rock those two aging operating systems.
  • One of the big draws of an Office 365 subscription is Office on Demand, a full-fledged, Internet-streamed version of the productivity suite that Microsoft calls "Your Office away from home."
  • And it really, truly is—if the host computer meets the suite's fairly stringent requirements.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Sync is Google's implementation of Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync protocol. Without it, you can't natively sync your Google Calendar or Contacts to the Outlook 2013 mail client
  • Office 365 Home Premium sounds like a killer deal for SMBs.
  • The licenses for Office 365 Home Premium and Office 2013 Home & Student prohibit using the software for commercial purposes.
  • Don't despair, though: Microsoft plans to launch Office 365 Small Business Premium on February 27, at a cost of $150 per user per year.
  • between Skype, Office on Demand, and SkyDrive storage enabled by default, Office 365 definitely has its head in the cloud—but its feet are firmly planted on the desktop.
  • anonymous on 24 Apr 13
     
    "The next generation of Office is here, and while it's not necessarily an essential upgrade for Office 2010 users, it's easily the best Office suite to date. Editing complicated financial spreadsheets has never been so semi-seamless! That said, with this particular $100-plus investment, you'll want to look before you leap. Whether you're opting for a straightforward Office 2013 installation or the multi-PC, cloud-connected ubiquity of an Office 365 subscription, there are four potentially crippling gotchas to consider before you plunk down your hard-earned cash. I've also identified a supposed gotcha that you can actually ignore entirely."
anonymous

The Nord Stream Pipeline's Possible Expansions - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-pipelines-possible-expansions

geopolitics energy

shared by anonymous on 24 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Analysis
  • The Nord Stream pipeline project was initially designed by Russia to bypass transit states to supply Russian natural gas directly to Germany, its largest European market. In the mid-to-late 2000s, Russia had a series of energy and political spats with states that its oil and natural gas transited to reach greater Europe, leading to energy cutoffs and intentional pipeline breaks. So Gazprom, in consortium with the Netherlands' Gasunie, Germany's E.ON and Wintershall and France's GDF, built two lines from the Russian coast at Vyborg under the Baltic Sea to the German coast at Greifswald. Once on German soil, Nord Stream's natural gas supplies split into two systems. The first goes through the Opal pipeline system that supplies eastern Germany and connects to Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The other spur goes through the NEL pipeline system to enter northern and eastern Germany.
  • Currently, the first two legs of Nord Stream have a shared capacity of 55 billion cubic meters, though the pipeline carried only 28 billion cubic meters in 2012, since the second leg was unfinished. The 2012 exports also were intended mostly for German consumption. Though the primary purpose of Nord Stream was to link Russia directly to Germany, Moscow has long had further plans for the pipeline system. Since Nord Stream 1 and 2 were conceived, two more legs -- Nord Stream 3 and 4 -- have been considered. Nord Stream 3 would expand Nord Stream 1 and 2 under the Baltic Sea to Germany, while Nord Stream 4 would connect Russian supplies through the Dutch export networks to the United Kingdom. The Netherlands exports natural gas to the United Kingdom via the Balgzand-Bacton underwater interconnector pipeline (with a capacity of 16 billion cubic meters) and via Belgium along the Belgium-U.K. underwater interconnector (with a capacity of 25.5 billion cubic meters). Gazprom has said that preliminarily it would like to export an additional 40 billion cubic meters along Nord Stream 3 and 4 to the United Kingdom -- something BP said it is interested in discussing. If completed, these expansions would bring large amounts of Russian natural gas to Western Europe at a time when regional supplies are in decline and some of Russia's Central and Eastern European customers are diversifying their options.
  • anonymous on 24 Apr 13
     
    "The Nord Stream pipeline project was initially designed by Russia to bypass transit states to supply Russian natural gas directly to Germany, its largest European market."
anonymous

The Great Mulligan - Esquire - 0 views

www.esquire.com/...the-great-mulligan-042413

politics bush

shared by anonymous on 24 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • However, the opening of the library roughly coincided with the bloody events surrounding the Boston Marathon, and that has prompted yet another revival of the brutally dishonest notion that the presidency of George W. Bush began on September 12, 2001, that he arose, full-grown, from the rubble of lower Manhattan.
  • The best example came from the inexplicably employed Jennifer Rubin, who took to her space in the inexplicably still publishing Washington Post op-ed pre-school to argue the following, as our old friend, Clio, Muse Of History, started guzzling Popov and huffing airplane glue: Unlike Obama's tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11.
  • Thus do we confront what we can call The Great Mulligan
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Sorry we lied you into a war, but we kept you safe. Sorry we demolished American values, and just about every shred of American moral credibility in the world, but we kept you safe. Sorry we let New Orleans drown, but we kept you safe. Sorry we allowed the national economy to blow up, but we kept you safe. In fact, if you sent C-Plus Augustus into his own museum, and had him take that interactive quiz, and provided he didn't break a thumb trying to get a Diet Coke out of the exhibit, his answer to everything would be I kept you safe.
  • The historical record is quite clear. Upon taking office, the Bush administration de-emphasized the Clinton team's almost-obsessive search for Osama bin Laden. That's why Richard Clarke got shoved aside. That's why John Ashcroft changed the FBI's focus from the pursuit of international terrorists to the pursuit of Tommy Chong. That's why presidential daily press briefings didn't get read while the president was clearing brush the month before the attacks.
  • as the members of the administration tried to prevaricate their way out of their abject failure to keep anyone safe. It was nine months of misfeasance in office, and inexcusable neglect of duty, that ended in the deaths of more than 3000 Americans.
  • And I am sorry. But you don't get a free one on these.
  • You cannot argue that you kept us safe after your obvious negligence played a role in getting 3000 of us killed.
  • The very fact that anyone, even Jennifer Rubin, would make this argument publicly illustrates that we have not entirely integrated the facts of the 9/11 attacks into their proper place in our history and our memory.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Apr 13
       
      This is MOST KEY.
  • Then, they responded by lying the country into a war of aggression that failed to keep thousands of American soldiers safe, that failed to keep hundreds of thousands of Iraqis safe, failed to keep the rule of law safe, and failed to keep the national economy, and the people who depend on it, which is pretty much all of us, safe.
  • All of the worst parts of that presidency flowed from that simple fact — that we did not really confront what happened on September 11, 2001 but, rather, allowed ourselves and our memory to be seduced by simpleton narratives of collective innocence, which necessarily included the simpleton narrative that our leaders were innocent victims of diabolical agencies the true nature of which — "Nobody could have conceived of using a airliner as a missile."
  • Except, of course, that people had been talking about it for years.
  • Thanks again, Condi. — they could not be expected to understand. Everything that came afterwards, everything that makes the new library a monument to everything libraries are not supposed to be about, proceeds from our granting to these people The Great Mulligan.
  • anonymous on 24 Apr 13
     
    "There has been some low hilarity, and one high crime against history and memory, attending the sudden reappearence on the scene of C-Plus Augustus, the previous president of these United States." I will admit that I'm a sucker for well-crafted gut punches.
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