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Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...lands_and_us_mexican_relations geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
  • the entire issue cannot simply be seen as an internal American legal matter. More broadly, it forms part of the relations between the United States and Mexico, two sovereign nation-states whose internal dynamics and interests are leading them into an era of increasing tension. Arizona and the entire immigration issue have to be viewed in this broader context.
  • Until the Mexican-American War, it was not clear whether the dominant power in North America would have its capital in Washington or Mexico City.
  • Mexico was the older society with a substantially larger military. The United States, having been founded east of the Appalachian Mountains, had been a weak and vulnerable country.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • The War of 1812 showed the deep weakness of the United States. By contrast, Mexico had greater strategic depth and less dependence on exports.
  • The American solution to this strategic weakness was to expand the United States west of the Appalachians, first into the Northwest Territory ceded to the United States by the United Kingdom and then into the Louisiana Purchase, which Thomas Jefferson ordered bought from France.
  • During the War of 1812, the British tried to seize New Orleans, but forces led by Andrew Jackson defeated them in a battle fought after the war itself was completed.
  • Jackson understood the importance of New Orleans to the United States.
  • Mexico therefore represented a fundamental threat to the United States.
  • In response, Jackson authorized a covert operation under Sam Houston to foment an uprising among American settlers in the Mexican department of Texas with the aim of pushing Mexico farther west.
  • Mexico’s strategic problem was the geography south of the Rio Grande (known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo).
  • The creation of an independent Texas served American interests, relieving the threat to New Orleans and weakening Mexico. The final blow was delivered under President James K. Polk during the Mexican-American War, which (after the Gadsden Purchase) resulted in the modern U.S.-Mexican border. That war severely weakened both the Mexican army and Mexico City, which spent roughly the rest of the century stabilizing Mexico’s original political order.
  • The U.S. defeat of Mexico settled the issue of the relative power of Mexico and the United States but did not permanently resolve the region’s status; that remained a matter of national power and will.
  • An accelerating population movement out of Mexico and into the territory the United States seized from Mexico paralleled the region’s accelerating economic growth.
  • The inclination of the United States to pull labor north was thus matched by the inclination of Mexico to push that labor north.
  • The U.S. government, however, wanted an outcome that was illegal under U.S. law.
  • Three fault lines emerged in United States on the topic.
  • One was between the business classes
  • The second lay between the federal government, which saw the costs as trivial, and the states, which saw them as intensifying over time.
  • And third, there were tensions between Mexican-American citizens and other American citizens
  • Underlying this political process was a geopolitical one. Immigration in any country is destabilizing.
  • Immigrants have destabilized the United States ever since the Scots-Irish changed American culture, taking political power and frightening prior settlers.
  • That equation ultimately also works in the case of Mexican migrants, but there is a fundamental difference. When the Irish or the Poles or the South Asians came to the United States, they were physically isolated from their homelands.
  • This is not the case, however, for Mexicans moving into the borderlands conquered by the United States just as it is not the case in other borderlands around the world. Immigrant populations in this region are not physically separated from their homeland, but rather can be seen as culturally extending their homeland northward — in this case not into alien territory, but into historically Mexican lands.
  • The Mexican-American War established the political boundary between the two countries.
  • The political border stays where it is while the cultural border moves northward.
  • The underlying fear of those opposing this process is not economic (although it is frequently expressed that way), but much deeper: It is the fear that the massive population movement will ultimately reverse the military outcome of the 1830s and 1840s
  • The problem is that Mexicans are not seen in the traditional context of immigration to the United States. As I have said, some see them as extending their homeland into the United States, rather than as leaving their homeland and coming to the United States.
  • when those who express these concerns are demonized, they become radicalized.
  • Centuries ago, Scots moved to Northern Ireland after the English conquered it. The question of Northern Ireland, a borderland, was never quite settled. Similarly, Albanians moved to now-independent Kosovo, where tensions remain high. The world is filled with borderlands where political and cultural borders don’t coincide and where one group wants to change the political border that another group sees as sacred.
  • Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not.
  • Jewish migration to modern-day Israel represents a worst-case scenario for borderlands.
  • An absence of stable political agreements undergirding this movement characterized this process.
  • The problem as I see it is that the immigration issue is being treated as an internal debate among Americans when it is really about reaching an understanding with Mexico.
  • Immigration has been treated as a subnational issue involving individuals. It is in fact a geopolitical issue between two nation-states. Over the past decades, Washington has tried to avoid turning immigration into an international matter, portraying it rather as an American law enforcement issue. In my view, it cannot be contained in that box any longer.
  • anonymous on 03 Aug 10
     
    "...the entire issue cannot simply be seen as an internal American legal matter. More broadly, it forms part of the relations between the United States and Mexico, two sovereign nation-states whose internal dynamics and interests are leading them into an era of increasing tension. Arizona and the entire immigration issue have to be viewed in this broader context." By George Friedman at StratFor on August 3, 2010.
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Chin Up, Gen X'ers: Obama's Right There With You - 0 views

www.politicsdaily.com/...rs-obamas-right-there-with-you generations
shared by anonymous on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Focus on all the possibilities out there. In your same age range, if possible.
  • Gen X'ers should be ecstatic. We aren't home alone anymore. We finally have a president in the White House who came of age wanting his MTV.
  • Obama's mother was a Baby Boomer, which clearly makes him a member of the next generation.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But true to generational form, he isn't exactly having the best of luck in his job. He's not alone. An ailment of Generation X? Bad luck. In love. In finances. In life.
  • According to statistics, we could care less about the country's leaders. Ironically, Generation X is the most educated of all other living generations, according to a the 2009 Census Bureau survey. The winner here? Student loan collectors. Just ask Obama. He owed on his until he landed a book deal a few years ago.
  • The "reactive generation" label is not good news for Gen X until we're too old to care. The authors wrote: "A Nomad (or Reactive) generation is born during an Awakening, spends its rising adult years during an Unraveling, spends midlife during a Crisis, and spends old age in a new High." The crisis, according to the authors, that we're facing: The War on Terror. Obama is dealing with that in spades. Bummer.
  • anonymous on 03 Aug 10
     
    "You aren't having a mid-life crisis. Repeat, you aren't having a mid-life crisis. I retract that from my previous post. Instead, consider yourself simply afflicted with a smidgen of arrested development." By Suzi Parker at Politics Daily on July 31, 2010.
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The Cost of Economic Reform in Cuba - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...0802_cost_economic_reform_cuba geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
  • According to the president’s speech, Cuba will drastically reduce state control over the economy to boost efficiency and ease some of the burden on the state. Part of the plan entails restructuring the labor force: Cuban government officials have said they plan to eliminate or shift one million inefficient jobs over the next five years (200,000 per year) to other sectors.
  • With 85 percent of the country’s five-million-strong labor force working for the government, there is certainly room for privatization.
  • Many argue that lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba is a policy long overdue and one that would provide the boon to the Cuban tourism sector to fuel the country’s economic growth with American dollars.
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  • The more interesting question in our mind is whether a political rapprochement between Cuba and the United States would even bring Cuba the economic benefits it seeks. The island’s decades of prosperity during the Cold War were a product of enormous subsidies and technological support from the Soviet Union.
  • Cuba has very few natural geographic economic advantages. There is already stiff competition in the rum and sugar markets, and islands throughout the Caribbean boast similarly beautiful beaches.
  • anonymous on 03 Aug 10
     
    "Change appeared to be in the air in Havana when Cuban President Raul Castro confirmed reports Sunday of a five-year liberalization plan to update the communist country's economic policy." At StratFor on August 3, 2010.
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The Geopolitics of Turkey: Searching for More - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...politics_turkey_searching_more geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • STRATFOR begins its assessment of Turkey at the Sea of Marmara because, until the Turks secured it — most famously and decisively in May 1453 with the capture of Constantinople — they were simply one of many groups fighting for control of the region.
  • This consolidation took more than 150 years, but with it, the Turks transformed themselves from simply another wave of Asian immigrants into something more — a culture that could be a world power.
  • Modern Turkey, with its Asiatic and Anatolian emphasis, is an aberration. “Turkey” was not originally a mountain country, and the highlands of Anatolia were among the last lands settled by the Turks, not the first.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • the Turkish core is the same territory as the core of the Byzantine Empire that preceded it, namely, the lands surrounding the Sea of Marmara.
  • Such lowlands ease the penetration of peoples and ideas while allowing a central government to spread its writ with ease. One result is political unity; rivers radically reduce the cost of transport, encouraging trade and thus wealth.
  • In terms of political unity and agricultural production, the region’s maritime climate smoothes out its semiarid nature.
  • It may not be a large, unified, well-watered plain — split as it is by the sea — but the land is sufficiently useful that it is certainly the next best thing.
  • In terms of trade and the capital formation that comes from it, by some measures the Sea of Marmara is even better than a navigable river.
  • First, Turkey is highly resistant to opposing sea powers.
  • Second, the geographic pinches on the sea ensure that Marmara is virtually a Turkish lake — and one with a lengthy shoreline.
  • As a result, the core of Turkey is both capital-rich and physically secure.
  • The final dominant feature of the Turkish core region is that, while it is centered around the Sea of Marmara, the entire region is an important tradeway.
  • It is a blessing in that the trade that flows via the land route absolutely must travel through Turkey’s core
  • As with all isthmuses, however, the land funnels down to a narrow point, allowing large hostile land forces to concentrate their strength on the core territory and to bring it to bear against one half of the core
  • Establish a blocking position in Anatolia. Expand up the Danube to Vienna. Develop a political and economic system to integrate the conquered peoples. Seize and garrison Crimea. Establish naval facilities throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
  • if the Turks turned inward, that would restrict trade between Asia and Europe, virtually inviting a major power to dislodge the plug.
  • Establish a Blocking Position in Anatolia
  • the Turks had little interest in grabbing all of Anatolia early in their development; the cost simply outweighs the benefits. But they do need to ensure that natives of Anatolia are not able to raid the core and that any empire farther afield cannot use the Anatolian land bridge to reach Marmara.
  • A secure block on Anatolia starkly limits the ability of Asian powers to bring war to Turkey, which can use the entire peninsula — even if not under Turkish control — as a buffer and be free to focus on richer pastures within Europe.
  • Expand up the Danube to Vienna
  • First, at only 350 kilometers (220 miles) away from the Marmara, it is the closest major river valley of note.
  • Second, there are no rival naval powers on the Black Sea.
  • Third, the Danube is a remarkable prize. It is the longest river in the region by far and is navigable all the way to southern Germany; ample tracts of arable land line its banks.
  • There are also four natural defensive points
  • The first lies in modern-day Bulgaria.
  • The second point is where the Black Sea nearly meets the Carpathians
  • The third point lies in the Danube Valley itself, on the river where modern-day Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria meet.
  • The final — and most critical — defensive point is the city of Vienna, located at a similar gap between the Carpathians and the Alps.
  • The problem is getting to Vienna.
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 10
     
    "StratFor begins its assessment of Turkey at the Sea of Marmara because, until the Turks secured it - most famously and decisively in May 1453 with the capture of Constantinople - they were simply one of many groups fighting for control of the region." August 2, 2010.
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Space Cadets - 0 views

www.antipope.org/...space-cadets.html longnow technology politics
shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • For starters, they're overwhelmingly white male Americans (plus a handful of Brits and Canadians). Politically they're right-of-centre (by American standards), and libertarian-leaning. They are enthusiastic proponents of space colonization, but will boost any other technological or scientific work oriented in an upward direction (as long as it's carried out by people who look like them: they're somewhat less gung-ho about the former Soviet, and now the Chinese, space programs).
  • There is an ideology that they are attached to; it's the ideology of westward frontier expansion
  • My problem, however, is that there is no equivalence between outer space and the American west.
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  • There may be possible technological solutions to both problems that don't require the combined lifelong effort of millions of humans. We don't have (a) strong artificial intelligence, (b) self-replicating machines that can work from raw materials extracted from their natural environment, (c) "magic wand" space propulsion technologies (which may themselves be Fermi paradox solutions insofar as their existence implies either flaws in our current understanding of physics or drastically efficient and thereby destructive energy sources), or (d) the ability to re-engineer ourselves. If any one (or more) of these are achievable, then all bets against space colonization are off.
  • These conditions do not apply in space. You don't get to breathe the air on Mars. You don't get to harvest wheat on Venus. You don't get to walk home from an asteroid colony with 5km/sec of velocity relative to low Earth orbit. You don't get to visit any of these places, even on a "plant the flag and pick up some rocks" visitor's day pass basis, without a massive organized effort to provide an environment that can keep the canned monkeys from Earth warm and breathing.
  • I postulate that the organization required for such exploration is utterly anathema to the ideology of the space cadets, because the political roots of the space colonization movement in the United States rise from taproots of nostalgia for the open frontier that give rise to a false consciousness of the problem of space colonization.
  • In other words: space colonization is implicitly incompatible with both libertarian ideology and the myth of the American frontier.
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 10
     
    "Attempts to discuss the prospects of human exploration and inhabitation of the cosmos on the internet tend to attract a certain type of participant. If you've been following the comment threads here you probably recognize them ..." By Charlie Stross at Charlie's Diary on August 2, 2010.
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Glenn Beck and the Oakland shooter - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010073003254.html politics
shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Other than two mentions of Tides on the show of Beck's Fox colleague Sean Hannity, Media Matters said it was unable to find any other mention of Tides on any news broadcast by any network over that same period. Beck declined comment.
  • The killings came after Beck told Fox viewers that he "can't debunk" the notion that FEMA was operating such camps -- but before he finally acknowledged that the conspiracy wasn't real.
  • Beck has at times spoken against violence, but he more often forecasts it, warning that "it is only a matter of time before an actual crazy person really does something stupid."
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  • Beck has prophesied darkly to his millions of followers that we are reaching "a point where the people will have exhausted all their options. When that happens, look out." One night on Fox, discussing the case of a man who killed 10 people, Beck suggested such things were inevitable. "If you're a conservative, you are called a racist, you want to starve children," he said. "And every time they do speak out, they are shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?"
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 10
     
    "Late on a Saturday night two weeks ago, an unemployed carpenter packed his mother's Toyota Tundra with guns and set off for San Francisco with a plan to kill progressives." I think you can see where this is going... By Dana Mibank at The Washington Post on August 1, 2010.
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Four Deformations of the Apocalypse - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...01stockman.html politics
shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
  • Once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.
  • In fact, since chronic current-account deficits result from a nation spending more than it earns, stringent domestic belt-tightening is the only cure. When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed castor oil, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain — from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.
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  • The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world.
  • The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt.
  • The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector.
  • The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore.
  • It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 10
     
    "David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, is working on a book about the financial crisis." Basically, he's saying 'sorry'. By David Stockman at The New York Times on July 13, 2010.
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The North Korean Nuclear Test and Geopolitical Reality - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/..._test_and_geopolitical_reality geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Even before an atomic bomb was first detonated on July 16, 1945, both the scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project and the U.S. military struggled with the implications of the science that they pursued.
  • understanding the implications of the atomic bomb was largely a luxury that would have to wait
  • But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the advent of the nuclear age is how little actually changed.
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  • Wars of immense risk are born of desperation. In World War II, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan took immense geostrategic gambles — and lost — but knowingly took the risk because of untenable geopolitical circumstances.
  • By comparison, the postwar United States and Soviet Union were geopolitically secure. Washington had come into its own as a global power secured by the buffer of two oceans, while Moscow enjoyed the greatest strategic depth it had ever known.
  • What was supposed to be the ultimate weapon has proved too risky and too inappropriate as a weapon ever to see the light of day again. Though nuclear weapons certainly played a role in the strategic calculus of the Cold War, they had no relation to a military strategy that anyone could seriously contemplate. Militaries, of course, had war plans and scenarios and target sets. But outside this world of role-play Armageddon, neither side was about to precipitate a global nuclear war.
  • The history of proliferation shows that few countries actually ever decide to pursue nuclear weapons. Obtaining them requires immense investment (and the more clandestine the attempt, the more costly the program becomes), and the ability to focus and coordinate a major national undertaking over time.
  • A nuclear North Korea, the world has now seen, is not sufficient alone to risk renewed war on the Korean Peninsula.
  • Iran is similarly defended. It can threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, to launch a barrage of medium-range ballistic missiles at Israel, and to use its proxies in Lebanon and elsewhere to respond with a new campaign of artillery rocket fire, guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
  • In other words, some other deterrent (be it conventional or unconventional) against attack is a prerequisite for a nuclear program, since powerful potential adversaries can otherwise move to halt such efforts.
  • Despite how frantic the pace of nuclear proliferation may seem at the moment, the true pace of the global nuclear dynamic is slowing profoundly. With the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty already effectively in place (though it has not been ratified), the pace of nuclear weapons development has already slowed and stabilized dramatically.
  • Nuclear arms are better understood as an insurance policy, one that no potential aggressor has any intention of steering afoul of. Without practical military or political use, they remain held in reserve — where in all likelihood they will remain for the foreseeable future.
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 10
     
    "North Korea tested a nuclear device for the second time in two and a half years May 25 (2009). Although North Korea's nuclear weapons program continues to be a work in progress, the event is inherently significant. North Korea has carried out the only two nuclear detonations the world has seen in the 21st century." By Nathan Hughes at StratFor on May 26, 2009.
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3D Printed Fabrics - The Death Knell Of The Needle And Thread? - 0 views

www.unfinishedman.com/knell-of-the-needle-and-thread technology
shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 10
     
    "Though these "clothes" are obviously hideous, the technology's potential is staggering. What happens when 3D printing allows for (normal) looking clothes to be printed at the click of a button? The implications on the labor markets and foreign production are staggering. Instead of having workers in China stitching together shirts emblazoned with wolves and crying eagles, we can have computers do the work instead, leaving workers more time to create poisonous children's toys and toxic overalls." By Chad at Unfinished Man on July 29, 2010.
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How Puritans became capitalists - 0 views

www.boston.com/...ow_puritans_became_capitalists society economy
shared by anonymous on 01 Aug 10 - Cached
  • How could people who loathed market principles birth a modern market economy? That question captivated Mark Valeri after he read sermons by the fiery revivalist Jonathan Edwards that included detailed discussions of economic policy. Edwards turned out to be part of a progression of ministers who led their dour and frugal flocks down a road that would bring fabulous riches, and ultimately give rise to a culture seen as a symbol of material excess.
  • anonymous on 01 Aug 10
     
    By Michael Fitzgerald at The Boston Globe on August 1, 2010.
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The Way We Live Now - I Tweet, Therefore I Am - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...01wwln-lede-t.html technology reflections
shared by anonymous on 30 Jul 10 - Cached
  • I quickly mastered the Twitterati’s unnatural self-consciousness: processing my experience instantaneously, packaging life as I lived it. I learned to be “on” all the time
  • Back in the 1950s, the sociologist Erving Goffman famously argued that all of life is performance: we act out a role in every interaction, adapting it based on the nature of the relationship or context at hand.
  • Effectively, it makes the greasepaint permanent, blurring the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The expansion of our digital universe — Second Life, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter — has shifted not only how we spend our time but also how we construct identity.
  • “On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you are,” she explained. “But because you’re also creating something for others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. Your psychology becomes a performance.”
  • I enjoy those things myself. But when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy?
  • anonymous on 30 Jul 10
     
    "Each Twitter post seemed a tacit referendum on who I am, or at least who I believe myself to be. The grocery-store episode telegraphed that I was tuned in to the Seinfeldian absurdities of life; my concern about women's victimization, however sincere, signaled that I also have a soul. Together they suggest someone who is at once cynical and compassionate, petty yet deep. Which, in the end, I'd say, is pretty accurate." By Peggy Orenstein at NYTimes.com on July 30, 2010.
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Sussing Out Patterns in American History - 0 views

www.miller-mccune.com/...erns-in-american-history-19190 generations
shared by anonymous on 30 Jul 10 - Cached
  • authors William Strauss and Neil Howe in their books Generations (1991) and The Fourth Turning (1997) suggest that throughout the 500-year span of Anglo-American history, a more or less predictable cycle has played out, a cycle in which generational types are in a certain stage of life at any given time.
  • According to Strauss and Howe’s model, we’re currently in an Unraveling, with the aging prophet Baby Boomers moving into elder mentorship roles, the middle-aged nomad Gen Xers assuming the highest leadership positions, and civic-oriented Millennials coming of age to become the doers and institution-builders of the next High.
  • While we may be a bit different than our forebears, history suggests that even they were not without their faults, and that we have more in common with them than we’ve given ourselves credit for. If they could dig themselves out of catastrophes like the Civil War and the Great Depression, why can’t we?
  • anonymous on 30 Jul 10
     
    "If the past is any guide, argues historian Neil Howe, the institution-building Millennial generation will take America to a new era of good feelings." By Ben Preston at Miller-McCune Online on July 23, 2010.
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Anchoring Effect - 0 views

youarenotsosmart.com/...anchoring-effect criticalthinking
shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The Misconception: You rationally analyze all factors before making a choice or determining value. The Truth: Your first perception lingers in your mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions.
  • In many situations, people make estimates by starting from an initial value that is adjusted to yield the final answer. The initial value, or starting point, may be suggested by the formulation of the problem, or it may be the result of partial computation. In either case, adjustments are typically insufficient…that is, different starting points yield different estimates, which are biased toward the initial values. - “Judgment Under Uncertainty” by Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky
  • Anchors can make big numbers seem small, throw estimates out of whack and lead you into decisions which, in the long view, seem silly.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • You depend on anchoring every day to predict the outcome of events, to estimate how much time something will take or how much money something will cost. When you need to choose between options, or estimate a value, you need footing to stand on.
  • When you haggle over the price, you are pulling away from the anchor, and both you and the dealer know this.
  • Drazen Prelec and Dan Ariely conducted an experiment at MIT in 2006 where they had students bid on items in a bizarre auction. The researchers would hold up a bottle of wine, or a textbook, or a cordless trackball and then describe in detail how awesome it was. Then, each student had to write down the last two digits of their social security number as if it was the price of the item. If the last two digits were 11, then the bottle of wine was priced at $11. If the two numbers were 88, the cordless trackball was $88. After they wrote down the pretend price, they bid. Sure enough, the anchoring effect scrambled their ability to judge the value of the items.
  • People with high social security numbers paid up to 346 percent more than those with low numbers. People with numbers from 80 to 99 paid on average $26 for the trackball, while those with 00 to 19 paid around $9.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    "The Misconception: You rationally analyze all factors before making a choice or determining value. The Truth: Your first perception lingers in your mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions." By David McRaney at You Are Not So Smart on July 27, 2010.
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Sun Could Set Suddenly on Superpower as Debt Bites - 1 views

www.realclearworld.com/...power_as_debt_bites_99088.html generations geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • We have been raised to think of the historical process as an essentially cyclical one. We naturally tend to assume that in our own time, too, history will move cyclically, and slowly.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 10
       
      Really? I had thought that we all assumed a linear-time-frame. Strauss & Howe's cyclical view doesn't strike me as common main-stream thought.
  • Yet what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arhythmic, at times almost stationary, but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?
  • Complex systems share certain characteristics. A small input to such a system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes, what scientists call the amplifier effect.
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  • What are the implications for the US today? The most obvious point is that imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises: sharp imbalances between revenues and expenditures, and the mounting cost of servicing a mountain of public debt.
  • There is a zero-sum game at the heart of the budgetary process: even if rates stay low, recurrent deficits and debt accumulation mean that interest payments consume a rising proportion of tax revenue. And military expenditure is the item most likely to be squeezed to compensate because, unlike mandatory entitlements (social security, Medicaid and Medicare), defence spending is discretionary.
  • It may not have escaped your notice that China now has the second-largest economy in the world and is almost certain to be the US's principal strategic rival in the 21st century, particularly in the Asia-Pacific.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 10
       
      This is conventional thinking. StratFor disagrees, though. I can't wait to see what *actually* unfolds. One or another could be wrong. Moreover, *both* could be wrong.
  • But what if the sudden waning of American power that I fear brings to an abrupt end the era of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region? Are we ready for such a dramatic change in the global balance of power?
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    A counter-argument to Strauss & Howe's generational view of the world - with particular regard to global power-politics. By Niall Ferguson at RealClearWorld on July 28, 2010. Hat Tip to Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch (http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2010/07/again-on-empire-and-punctuated.html).
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Foreign Policy Watch: Again on Empire and Punctuated Equilibrium - 0 views

fpwatch.blogspot.com/...-on-empire-and-punctuated.html generations geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • First, and this may be a minor point, Ferguson positions the piece against "cyclical" views of history, arguing instead that history is "arhythmic, at times almost stationary, but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car."
  • He then goes on to explain (or at least hint at) cyclical processes that lead to these sudden shifts. A better way of putting it might be that history is cyclical, but that the outward, superstructural manifestations of long cyclical processes often change very quickly.
  • Beyond the specific issue of American fiscal health, though, Ferguson's thoughts raise some interesting and under-explored issues; namely, the role that generational shifts might play in international relations.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • It would be interesting to try to track generational attitudes toward foreign policy, and in what way those attitudes create cognitive "hangover effects" that make it difficult for countries to adjust policy to changing circumstances. There must be a decent book to be written somewhere in there.
  • *Just a note, if you haven't read Strauss and Howe's Generations: A History of America's Future, you really should. It's a bit theoretically baroque, and I certainly don't agree with everything in the book, but it's a very conceptually-interesting journey through the ups and downs of generational memory and experience.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    By Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch on July 28, 2010.
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Again on Empire and Punctuated Equilibrium - 0 views

fpwatch.blogspot.com/...-on-empire-and-punctuated.html generations
shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • First, and this may be a minor point, Ferguson positions the piece against "cyclical" views of history, arguing instead that history is "arhythmic, at times almost stationary, but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car."
  • He then goes on to explain (or at least hint at) cyclical processes that lead to these sudden shifts. A better way of putting it might be that history is cyclical, but that the outward, superstructural manifestations of long cyclical processes often change very quickly.
  • Beyond the specific issue of American fiscal health, though, Ferguson's thoughts raise some interesting and under-explored issues; namely, the role that generational shifts might play in international relations.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Just a note, if you haven't read Strauss and Howe's Generations: A History of America's Future, you really should. It's a bit theoretically baroque, and I certainly don't agree with everything in the book, but it's a very conceptually-interesting journey through the ups and downs of generational memory and experience.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    By Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch on July 28, 2010.
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After Breitbart and Shirley Sherrod, We Need a Slow-News Movement - 0 views

www.politicsdaily.com/...od-we-need-a-slow-news-movemen media news criticalthinking
shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • What brings this journalistic parable to mind is the arrogantly unapologetic way that Andrew Breitbart has reacted to the furor over the ripped-out-of-context Shirley Sherrod speech excerpt that he posted on his website. Choosing bluster over blushing, Breitbart told Matt Lewis in a Politics Daily interview: "I couldn't wait to get this story. I knew from past experience that I had a news cycle to get this out." Later in the interview, Breitbart underscored his cavalier publish-or-perish approach to fact-checking: "It had to be done at the exact moment in time that the press would notice it." A new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism details how the Sherrod charade migrated from conservative blogs taking their cues from Breitbart to Fox News and then to CNN.
  • Breitbart is just a symbol of a larger problem that transcends the poison-pen politics of ideological warriors (of both the right and left) and the slippery ethics of the blogosphere.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    A good case for why we need to kill the modern news-cycle. By Walter Shapiro at Politics Daily on July 28, 2010. Thanks to Dylan555 for the hat-tip (http://twitter.com/dylan555/status/19764594739).
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BPA Receipts Bombshell: Paper Slips Contain High Levels of Bisphenol A - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/763_162-20011903-10391704.html health layscience
shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Animal tests have linked BPA exposure to a range of health problems, including cancer, obesity, diabetes, and early puberty. The studies are controversial though, and how they related to human health is not fully clear, according to WebMD.
  • If you're worried about being exposed to the cancer-causing compound BPA, you may already know to be wary of some water bottles and food cans. But you'll never guess where BPA, a.k.a. bisphenol A, is showing up now:Cash register receipts.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    "...you'll never guess where BPA, a.k.a. bisphenol A, is showing up now: Cash register receipts." By Aina Hunter at CBS News Health Blog on July 28, 2010.
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Whoa There, Rising Powers! - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...whoa_there_rising_powers geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 26 May 10 - Cached
  • Some critics have alleged that the U.S. administration passed up a golden opportunity for peace in a fit of pique at diplomatic interlopers, or that Iran had made painful concessions to fellow emerging nations that it would not make to the West.
  • something important has shifted in the world order, and we will have to get over our flinch reflex. Brazil and Turkey are middle-sized powers -- eighth and 17th in the world, respectively, in GDP -- that live at peace with their neighbors and believe they have a calling to play a role on the global stage.
  • "rhythmic diplomacy," which sounds like jazzercise but in fact, as he put it, "implies active involvement in all international organizations and on all issues of global and international importance."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The Brazils and Turkeys of the world are not likely to form a coherent new bloc, but they will be far less inclined than they were in the past to stay within the lines chalked in by the referees of the West.
  • Partisans of a "concert of democracies" have assumed that maturing democracies in the developing world would seek to advance the same, supposedly universal, values prized by their elders in the West, but it hasn't worked out that way.
  • There's no question that Brazil's interests, or Turkey's, overlap in many places with those of the U.S. and Europe; Turkey seeks nothing more ardently than full EU membership, for instance. But in many other places, interests diverge, and the middle powers are inclined to view the current world order as an instrument to advance Western designs, not theirs.
  • For Obama, the really important question is whether he should reconcile himself to an unavoidable clash of interests with rising powers, or try to win them over by offering a deeper and more substantive kind of engagement -- for example, by pushing for a greater democratization of the institutions from which those states now feel excluded. It may be that the only chance to get Brazil to act more like a global citizen is to treat it like one.
  • When I first read the news about the nuclear deal that Brazil and Turkey reached last week with Iran, I flinched. My reflex reaction was: Third-World troublemakers rally to the side of evil-doer in the face of Western pressure. That was, of course, the wrong reflex.
  • anonymous on 26 May 10
     
    "Brazil and Turkey's diplomatic forays may be annoying, but they also signal a huge shift in the way the world works. Is Obama paying attention?" By James Traub in Foreign Policy on May 25, 2010.
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Comparing the Costs of America's Wars - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25marsh.html visualization geopolitics war
shared by anonymous on 27 Jul 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 27 Jul 10
     
    "Figures in billions except for World War II and post-9/11 totals; all are in fiscal year 2011 dollars." At The New York Times on July 24, 2010.
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