Cached
But the glorious past behind the holiday started to return in 2005. Then-Russian President Vladimir Putin was in power, and his overall objective was to return Russia to its status as a “great power.” Putin’s goals were to first consolidate Russia internally and then push the country back out to its more comfortable Soviet-era borders — whether formally or informally.
The economist manifesto - 0 views
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The 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith wasn’t the free-market fundamentalist he is thought to have been. It’s time we realised the relevance of his ideas to today’s financial crisis.
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By Amartya Sen in New Statesman on April 23, 2010.
A thousand trillion suns - 0 views
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By Phil Plait in Bad Astronomy (Discover) on May 5, 2010.
U.S.: The Ramifications of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - 0 views
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BP executives reportedly told the U.S. Congress on May 4 that while the oil is officially estimated to be gushing out at 5,000 barrels per day (bpd) the rate could be as high as 60,000 bpd. In other words, the problem could be far greater and more pressing than previously thought.
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Offshore oil production accounts for about one third of global oil production, and the demand for it will not disappear. However, the United States already strictly regulates offshore drilling, and regulations will increase as a result of the Deepwater Horizon incident.
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By StratFor on May 6, 2010.
U.K.: Electoral Uncertainty Looms - 0 views
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Britons go to the polls May 6 to cast their votes in what is expected to be one of the closest elections in decades. While polls indicate the conservatives are favored over the ruling Labour Party and the insurgent Liberal Democrats, it is possible that a hung parliament or a weak coalition government could take office, coming at a time when Britain desperately needs strong leadership out of its economic doldrums.
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The close electoral race has plunged the United Kingdom into a national debate about the possibility that no party will have an absolute majority with which to form a government, a scenario referred to as a “hung parliament.”
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The electoral system employed in the United Kingdom is referred to as “first-past-the-post” — essentially a winner-takes-all system in which electoral districts elect individual members of parliament.
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By Stratfor on May 6, 2010.
Objectivism & Politics, Part 50 - 0 views
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Rand is unique in that she tried to justify capitalism and freedom using the same sort of rationalistic assumptions accepted by the Old Left. She insisted, just like so many of the so-called “scientific” socialists and progressives of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that everything in the political and moral realms had to be explicity justified on the basis of “reason.” But whether used to provide the rationalistic justification of socialism, capitalism, or any other ism that a febrile imagination can dream up, all such rationalisms amount to the same thing: incapacity in the face of the complexities of the human condition.
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Reverence for tradition is, for the intelligent, non-ideological conservative, merely a tool used to compliment less tacit forms of knowledge, such as science and individual experience.
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Traditional usages often have proven their worth over time, and should not be tossed out merely become some rationalist fails to explain it by “reason.” The conservative proceeds cautiously when reforming a tradition, because he knows, from long experience, how easy it is to make things worse, and that when faced with any daunting complexity, sheer trial and error is often a far better guide than the so-called “reason” of conceited intellectuals.
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By Greg Nyquist at Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature on May 4, 2010.
The Effects of the Gulf Oil Spill - 0 views
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That brings us to our primary question, which is not so much about the mechanics of the spill and the cleanup, but rather how deep an impression the cumulative effect will make on the American psyche — and how it will affect the nation’s behavior.
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The political aftermath of Deepwater Horizon will necessarily be painful, and will constrain Obama’s ability to address energy strategy for at least the near term, but it is not yet clear whether the pain will cross a threshold. Our question is whether this incident will become influential enough to cause the United States to perceive — whether justifiably or not — offshore energy production to be unsafe and unreliable, and what the reaction to such a perception might be.
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By StratFor on May 4, 2010.
Japan, U.S.: Tokyo's Policy Shift on Futenma - 0 views
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As STRATFOR has noted, despite the politicized debates over changing the deal, the DPJ remains constrained by the same regional and geographic issues that held the LDP to the deal. Further informing Tokyo’s decision to more publicly shift its stance closer to supporting the original agreement, however, is the recent series of Chinese naval operations around Japanese islands.
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By StratFor on May 4, 2010.
Eight Thoughts About Timescale - 0 views
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By Warren Sender at Running Gamak: Warren Senders' Blog on May 3, 2010.
Viacom v YouTube is a microcosm of the entertainment industry - 0 views
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What if Viacom's frontline production people and even its mid-level execs have a theory about how to maximize shareholder value: they will produce things, make them well known, and stick ads on them to gain profits? They will seek out every conceivable opportunity to make their productions well-known, because though it may be hard to make money from popularity, it's impossible to make money from obscurity.
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By Cory Doctorow at The Guardian on May 4, 2010.
PLoS Medicine: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False - 0 views
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This isn't *lay* science, but an article published at the Public Library of Science by John P.A. Ioannidis on August 30, 2005.
Forget Offshore Drilling Until We Get Some Answers - 0 views
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a 2007 study by the Minerals Management Service (or MMS, the division of the Interior Department responsible for offshore drilling) found that this procedure was implicated in 18 out of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over the 14 years it studied—more than any other factor. Cementing, which was handled by Halliburton, had just been completed prior to the recent explosion. The Journal notes that Halliburton was also the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea off Australia.
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By William Galston at The New Republic on May 4, 2010.
The Global Crisis of Legitimacy - 0 views
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Political crises — as opposed to normal financial panics — emerge when the reckless appear to be the beneficiaries of the crisis they have caused, while the rest of society bears the burdens of their recklessness.
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think of nations as consisting of three basic systems: political, economic and military. Each of these systems has elites that manage it. The three systems are constantly interacting — and in a healthy polity, balancing each other, compensating for failures in one as well as taking advantage of success. Every nation has a different configuration within and between these systems. The relative weight of each system differs, as does the importance of its elites. But each nation contains these systems, and no system exists without the other two.
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This is a useful observation. It'd be interesting to contrast other nations' manifestation of each.
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The corporation is built around the idea of limited liability for investors, the notion that if you buy part or all of a company, you yourself are not liable for its debts or the harm that it might do; your risk is limited to your investment.
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By George Friedman (StratFor) on May 4, 2010.
The Effects of the Gulf Oil Spill - 0 views
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how deep an impression the cumulative effect will make on the American psyche — and how it will affect the nation’s behavior.
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At the current pace, in five days the amount of oil spilled will surpass the 75,000 barrels spilled when a Union Oil well blew out off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. In 40 days the spill will surpass the 260,000 barrels spilled by ExxonMobil when the Valdez tanker hit a reef off the Alaska coast in 1989.
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Both the Santa Barbara and the Valdez spills were significant political events in the United States, leading to a rise in environmentalism and stricter regulation on energy companies and offshore drilling. The Deepwater Horizon incident appears destined to have a similar or even greater impact. It has already prompted California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to abandon his push to expand regional offshore drilling, and caused pressure for U.S. President Barack Obama to suspend his recently announced plans to expand federal offshore drilling.
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By StratFor on May 4, 2010. A look at the psychological affects to the American mind.
Oh Well - 0 views
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But the real lesson of the oil spill may be how bad we are at dealing with unlikely but disastrous events. "We deal with them by ignoring them until they happen, and then overreacting," says John Harrald, a professor at George Washington University's Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management.
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This is like the "big number" problem, where humans have hard time thinking of big numbers, because they're so abstract. For the same reason, we can't figure odds and don't understand sudden systemic changes.
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Why we're so bad at dealing with unlikely disasters like the Louisiana oil spill. - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine on May 3, 2010.
Foreign Policy Watch: Reading Iran - 0 views
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By Jeb Koogler at Foreign Policy Watch on May 3, 2010.
How Our Brains Make Memories - 0 views
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By Greg Miller at Smithsonian.com in the May 2010 issue.
Obama the Centrist - 0 views
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My complaints about Obama are not that he is too bipartisan or too centrist. I am at bottom a weak-tea Dewey-Eisenhower-Rockefeller social democrat – that is, with a small “s” and a small “d.” My complaints are that he is not technocratic enough, that he is pursuing the chimera of “bipartisanship” too far, and that, as a result, many of his policies will not work well, or at all.
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In all of these cases, Obama is ruling, or trying to rule, by taking positions that are at the technocratic good-government center, and then taking two steps to the right – sacrificing some important policy goals – in the hope of attracting Republican votes and thereby demonstrating his commitment to bipartisanship. On all of these policies – anti-recession, banking, fiscal, environmental, anti-discrimination, rule of law, healthcare – you could close your eyes and convince yourself that, at least as far as the substance is concerned, Obama is in fact a moderate Republican named George H.W. Bush, Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Colin Powell.
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By Brad Delong at Grasping Reality with Both Hands on April 30, 2010. This is a sober look at the actual policies that Obama has been promoting. It's anything but Socialist and - if a Republican was doing the stuff he's doing - Fox wouldn't have a problem at all, imho.
Generational Battle Brews Over Gilded Baby-Boom Pensions | GOVERNING - 0 views
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• "As a Gen-X'er, I have heard the same things since I entered the workforce: 1) You will make less than those who came before you. 2) Your benefit package will be less robust than those who came before you. 3) You will pay more for your lower-quality benefit package. 4) You will be required to work harder on more complex tasks than those who came before you."
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In many cases, the most viable way to achieve intergenerational equity will be to bill incumbent workers for a higher share of their retirement benefits. To some, that will feel like a pay cut, but if elder workers' benefits are untouchable, then heftier payroll deductions may be the only option left.
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By Girard Miller in Governing on October 8, 2009. Referenced by Neil Howe (http://blog.lifecourse.com/2010/05/generational-equity/)
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