BigThink
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Quick link round
- Puzzles and Mysteries from ZenPundit
- The Captain America Syndrome at the Washington Monthly. – They don’t actually call it that, but that’s what they’re talking about.
- This seems dirty, but it’s mostly medical. Quite funny though.
- Yet more Stirling engines
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Monday link roundup
- A useful post from CodingHorror.com on interface friction
- Al Gore, like Ann Coulter, seems to be a mac person
- A blog for women! And one of the editors might be someone I went to high school with.
- Kuler! The Adobe web color harmony tool – via this site
- Co-Mapping (mind mapping software) looks cool
- Properly bashing ethanol
- HiddenUnities and PurposeSlog have posts on the Wire and 24. I helpfully added the Shield in the comments. All excellent programs, though 24 is basically a commercial for the cell phone industry, not torture.
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First thoughts on Brave New War
I just finished reading John Robb‘s Brave New War and I’m struck by how similar his vision of the future was to David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom.
I’ll have my review of the book later. On the whole I liked it a lot.
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Characterization of Environmentalism
A random thought: A useful way of distinguishing amongst environmentalism is that people see the world as a museum that can never be changed, and mankind must adapt their behavior to suit it, and not the other way around. A good example would be those who would have us reduce our carbon emissions rather than take positive steps to take carbon out of the air (for instance using the proposed carbon vacuums or the algae-iron flakes method).
I realize it’s the views are seldom in stark conflict.
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Tuesday Rapid Fire
- Networks, in Forbes
- Tin Can Stirling Engine – really cool, this would go nicely with the passive solar heating system that I blogged about last week.
- Global warming awareness reaches diminishing marginal returns, aptly explained by Instapundit. I’m still waiting for the Shotgun News green issue.
- Gauss vs Pareto, if you understand bell curves, you should read this.
- Robots, Robots, Robots, in Iraq and elsewhere
- An insightful article on internal migrations in the US. By Michael Barone
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A telling point in the Boyd biography
I’m currently reading Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War and I read a telling passage that stated (approximately) that autodidacts crave approval from conventionally educated academics and professionals. For those who don’t know fairly obscure word, it’s Google defines the word as
Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) is self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact is a mostly self-taught person (also known as an automath), or someone who has an enthusiasm for self-education, and usually has a high degree of self-motivation.
(tip, if you type in “Define:Word to be dined” into Google it defines the word for you.
This seems to be a good explanation for a lot of the tensions in the blogsphere. It also seems to be a natural healthy thing. As I put it in a previous post, science advances funeral by funeral. It follows that if left to their own devices, any field of thought or industry will spend it’s time polishing the corpse of some grand new idea that is mutually agreeable to all (think of the US auto industry before the Japanese came along.
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Funny and strange quotes
From this rather odd article about the future of Israel
As Peter O’Toole said as Lawrence of Arabia in the movie of that title, “Nothing is written.” However, it seems clear how to bet. As so often in history, bet on the horrible outcome.
I think the post is flawed as it assumes that the current Israeli situation will not change by several orders of magnitude in qualitative ways as the decades roll by. Of course, there is no reason for the changes to be good, but current trends seldom hold before Bit Rot settles in. Worth reading
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Random theories I haven’t thought through yet
Of fact-checked for that matter. Nonetheless, here are two bigthink ideas that have occurred to me recently:
- With the notable exception of Imperial Japan, America hasn’t gone to war with any country that likes itself in the past 100 years. While I don’t usually go for theories involving Constructivism, all of the countries we’ve had conflict with, Nazi Germany, North Vietnam and North Korea, et al, are all fighting to some degree for national pride. This is why I’m not particularly worried about Iran, because the Iranians seem to like being Iranian.
- The rise of dominant militaries can be summarized as discipline vs identity. By this I mean that the troops can be effective via skillful execution of a central plan, or simply by being themselves. The Romans were a good example of a disciplined group. They were able to carry out the will of their commanders due to training and tight organization. On the other hand, the Mongols required little central direction and usually just had to be their fearsome selves to successfully win wars. Most of the major conflicts through history can be characterized as a clash between these two tactics.
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Random snapshot of my brain
Whilst waiting for a program to install I came across this article. Blurb:
A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.
I then had the thought that there is no evidence that nature, though beautiful, likes us. Then I thought of the metaphor that everyone views the environment like it’s their grandparent’s house. “Oh, everything is so old and irreplaceable, let us gaze in rapt awe and try to be worthy of it someday”. Mind you, what we do with it is another story.
Then I was reminded of an Ayn Rand line which goes something like “Technology is man’s victory over nature”. Then I Googled that trying to find the exact quote. That led me, somehow, to this page about one of my favorite thinkers, Albert Jay Nock. His excellent auto-biography Memoirs of a Superfluous Man is still one of my favorites. Then I started thinking of my other favorite social critics and came up with Eric Hoffer, H.L. Mencken, as well as Nock. All three of them have a distinctive, elegant style which I associate with urban living prior to the fifties. All three of them wrote from cities (San Francisco, Baltimore and New York) and two of them published all their work between 1900 and 1950. I’m also drawn to movies set in cities in that era.
I wonder why those circumstances have that appeal to me, then I decided to write it all down to clarify it in my head.
And there you go.
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A rogue Core
Subadei has some interesting thoughts on the possibility of a new and hostile Core (shortly defined as a group of connected, interdependent nations) involving Iran, Venezuela. However, I think there is not much to be worried about. Assuming they do create/evolve into a second core, they would have enough incentives/core-like attributes not to do so.
I guess that raises the question, can there be two Cores? Wouldn’t the opportunity cost of maintaining the divide between the two Cores? Wouldn’t the opportunity cost of maintaining the divide between the two Cores become too costly for the divide to be sustainable?
Update:Edited for clarity