by Peter | 21 Jul 2009 |
Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on the Moon. Michael Griffin, former NASA Administrator, observed:What is most striking about this 40th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon is that we can no longer do what we're celebrating. Not "do not choose to," but "can't."By the 40th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Oregon Trail was carrying settlers to the West. By the...
by Dan Nexon | 20 Jul 2009 |
Turns out my father is (or, more accurately, was) blogging, although I'm not sure if he even knows what a blog is. Which leads me to suspect that someone else might be entering those posts on his behalf.Some more recent comments appear here, although he's much more acting in his capacity as an employee of AvaMed.
by Dan Nexon | 20 Jul 2009 |
Not every behavior needs to confer a reproductive advantage, dammit! Despite Daniel Enger's valiant effort:Despite this bestiary of autoeroticism, scientists have spent relatively little time on the question of why animals might have evolved to masturbate. At first glance, the behavior would seem to be maladaptive. First, there's all the energy that's wasted on the production of spilled seed—macaques, for example, are thought to devote between...
by Dan Nexon | 19 Jul 2009 |
Patrick Porter writes about two contending visions of the Afghan insurgency:Burke is playing down the economic angle. But there is a certain tension, or tradeoff, between ‘power’/'politics’ and ‘tribal vendettas’/'ethnicity.’Identity can define allegiance, but not exhaustively. Calculations about power balances can wreck the whole day of cultural ties.In Afghanistan, it is more prudent, given the impermanence with which different power brokers...
by Dan Nexon | 19 Jul 2009 |
The weather favors us today, so much so that the dog refuses to come inside. It is 81 degrees and dry.I have a beautiful new bike, which I have ridden only a few times. The wife and kid are out of town. And yet my flu-like illness lingers. Not enough that I feel actively sick, but with sufficient tenacity that I cannot engage in strenuous activity. In other words: teh suck.
by Dan Nexon | 19 Jul 2009 |
Over at Coming Anarchy, "Munro Ferguson" writes:This past December, UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon warned that the current geo-economic crisis would add fuel to the already raging fire that is international human trafficking. 146 years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, there exists more slaves on planet earth now than at any other given time.The UN puts the number of current slaves at some 27 million human beings, though a...
by Dan Nexon | 18 Jul 2009 |
Not a few people have asked me to comment on Steve Walt's "10 lessons of empire" post. Or, more precisely, they've asked me "why haven't you written anything on Walt's post?" I guess my initial reaction was, more or less, that I've said my piece on empires and imperial dynamics; if a prominent academic wants to blog about the "lessons" for the US he found in a history of the British Empire that he read on vacation, then, well, more power to...
by Daniel McIntosh | 17 Jul 2009 |
Here's an interesting factoid: For the first time since the Great Depression, the migration of people from the less-developed to developed countries may have reversed. Remittances are expected to be dropping next year by 8 percent. On the other hand, many of the returnees have skills and capital, and that may help back home.
by Peter | 17 Jul 2009 |
40 years ago today, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on its way to the moon. Monday will be the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk. In celebration, NASA has released restored footage of the moonwalk, revealing in incredible clarity the amazing steps of Armstrong and Aldrin.Its a fascinating moment for reflection on one of the most incredible accomplishments of the 20th century. The Space Program revolutionized America, revolutionized...
by Daniel McIntosh | 15 Jul 2009 |
What does a citizen need to know? What skills and knowledge should we assume in our interactions with others? What makes a person a well-rounded person? The issues go back for centuries, and every so often some suggests modifications to the list of "liberal arts." I teach at a university with a "liberal arts" requirement, and I know from experience the battles to have a class listed as required (or optional) include issues of academic politics...
by Drew Conway | 15 Jul 2009 |
A few months back I wrote a post discussing Sean Gourley's TED talk on the Mathematics of War; specifically, noting that his finding (a power-law distribution of attack frequency and severity in Iraq) was—well—old news. This set off an excellent discussion on Sean's work, my comments, and more generally how the social and hard sciences can clash. More recently, Tom Ricks of The Best Defense blog revisited Sean's talk with his own skepticism,...
by Drew Conway | 13 Jul 2009 |
A few months ago fellow NYU inhabitant Joshua Tucker of The Monkey Cage asked what, if any, social science research had been done on the effectiveness of torture in obtaining valuable intelligence? Josh's primary question was an ethical one, that being if a researcher had a personal objection to the use of torture, but through an empirical analysis of data found that it in fact did extract valuable data, should the researcher attempt to get it...