Worth Highlighting:

• Already as of mid-2003 I appear to have been convinced that “the Singularity is in our past light-cone”: 2003-08-11: HUMAN MENTAL AUGMENTATION: Henry Farrell expresses skepticism about “transhumanism”–which he defines as… plug[ging] in new bits and pieces all the time, just because it’s cool”…. But, Henry, it’s too late…. What has happened to the Third Chimpanzee over the past million years has already created gulfs between us and our chimpanzee and bonobo evolutionary siblings that dwarf any future Singularity…. And if serious toolmaking and language didn’t do it, agriculture did. And if agriculture didn’t do it, writing did. And if writing didn’t do it, large-scale social organization did. And if large-scale social organization didn’t do it, metallurgy did. And if metallurgy didn’t do it, large-scale environmental manipulation (i.e., building cities) did. And if LSEM didn’t do it, printing did. And if printing didn’t do it, steam-power did. And if steam-power didn’t do it, the second industrial revolution did. And if the SIR didn’t do it, modern information technologies did…. After each stage, very few people want to go back…

• Ooooh Boy! One that I got really wrong, in retrospect. High fixed costs mean that the typical market structure shifts to profound oligopoly—with investment focused at least as much on building moats as in complementing other factors of production: 2003-08-13: The Information Age Means Fiercer Competition: The Information age means increasing returns to scale—write-once, run-everywhere. But it also means that it is easier to get… information. Which means that all of the hassle and ignorance factors that produced local monopoly power are bypassed. Which means fiercer competition and better deals for consumers…

• The American right was never much better—either in honesty or intelligence—than it is today. Long before 2003 the Brain Eater had eaten the brain of Tom Sowell, and he has still not woken up to the failure of the California economy to crash into some sort of middle-income trap: 2003-08-13: What Is Wrong with Thomas Sowell?: Rant[ing] about how migration data covering the 1995-2000 period show that the California state government is killing California’s economy: Thomas Sowell: The real voting…. ‘More Californians have been moving to other states than people in other states have been moving to California…. People are voting with their feet. California’s total population has not gone down, however. Immigrants have replaced Americans. Apparently California is still considered to be preferable to Mexico or Central America…’ But the 1995-2000 period Sowell references—the one during which Americans “voted with their feet” against California—saw employment grow by 14% in California…12% in the rest of the country… real gross state product in California grow by 27%…21% in the rest…. To call the California economy between 1995 and 2000 a failure doesn’t pass the laugh test…

• National Review started out cheerleading for segregation and claiming that southern whites had the right to preserve segregation by any means necessary—i.e., if they wind up firebombing churches and killing schoolgirls, that is on you liberals, for encouraging the Negro to try to overthrow the God-given natural order of the races. National Review today cheerleads for kleptocratic neo-fascist grifters. Was there a moment in between when it had a moral compass with respect to public policy and journalistic ethics? No!: 2003-08-12: DOWNWARD SPIRAL: National Review can’t find anyone smarter than Donald Luskin to write for it: CalPundit: Watching the Watchman: ‘Poor old Donald Luskin…pulls a full frontal Dowd by demanding that the New York Times publish a retraction [of]… Krugman’s flatly deceptive claim that this growth “was simply a matter of keeping up with the population and inflation”…. Here’s what Krugman said… “most of the spending growth was simply a matter of keeping up with the population and inflation.“… So why did Luskin decide to leave out the word “most”?… UPDATE: Weirder and weirder. Luskin emails Glenn Reynolds to say that of course he understood exactly what Krugman was saying, but many other people were confused and Krugman ought to write more clearly…. But if he understood what Krugman was saying, why did he write the paragraph above? And why did he Dowdify the quote?…’ I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again. There are lots of very smart right-wing economists who would love to write for National Review – and who would not embarrass the magazine the way Luskin and his cohorts do…

• Thirty years ago when I came to Washington I realized that Republicans lie because journalists pretend to believe them, and so it works. Alan Murray twenty years ago was one of the few who did not play along: 2003-08-11: ALAN MURRAY WONDERS WHY WE ARE RULED BY THESE LIARS: The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Murray bangs his head against the wall at the Bush Administration which has “willfully deceived the public and Congress about the costs of the Iraqi war and its aftermath… [and] continue[s] to do so…”

• Lying during your confirmation hearing is a long-time Republican judicial practice: 2003-08-10: PAGING SENATOR De CONCINI…: Al Kamen on yet another misrepresentation of his views from Clarence Thomas…. ‘Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.)… “I was also pleased to hear that Judge Thomas agrees that the fundamental right to privacy also extends to non-married individuals.”… In the court’s ruling in June striking down anti-sodomy laws, Thomas dissented, saying: “And just like Justice Stewart, I ‘can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy” quoting Potter Stewart’s dissent in… Griswold…

• And one on our side of the hill: Al From and Bruce Reed work to lessen Democratic chances of winning elections in order to increase their chances of getting White House jobs: 2003-08-10: DOES THE DLC HAVE A PURPOSE?: Democratic Leadership Council honchos Al From and Bruce Reed are suddenly “discovering” large ideological gaps between themselves and Howard Dean…. A DLC that invents policy gaps where they do not exist is not…

& Þere Was a Lot MOAR as Well:

2002-08-13:

• Laurence H. Meyer: Ah. If I were a rich trader of fixed-income securities rather than a poor academic, this is a service I would buy: Laurence H. Meyer’s Monetary Policy Insights. Larry Meyer is very smart, very thoughtful, and very good at making what he has to say sound fascinating…

• The Economist Is Unhappy at the U.S.-E.U. Trade “Deal”: I find this infuriating…. Building momentum for freer trade in a Republican administration should be as easy as falling off a log. But the Bush Administration can’t even fall off a log reliably…

• One Hundred Interesting Mathematical Calculations, Puzzles, and Amusements: Number 18: Sunscreen: The Freak Mutant Near-Albino Problem…

• Charles Stross (2003), Singularity Sky (New York: Ace: 0441010725): Before the Singularity, human beings living on Earth had looked at the stars and consoled themselves in their isolation with the comforting belief that the universe didn’t care. Unfortunately, they were mistaken…

• Signs of a Weak Labor Market due to insufficient aggregate demand…. I think the NBER made a mistake in going for an “output” rather than an “employment” definition of the business cycle…

• Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: Why sleight Bernanke and Gertler–and Fisher, and Anna J. Schwartz, and Milton Friedman? Is it because [Greg] Ransom doesn’t want to explicitly call Ben Bernanke and Milton Friedman “witch doctors”?…

• It Is 10 PM. Do You Know Where Your Laundry Is?: When things communicate–or at least, broadcast their identity and their location: News: RFID chips sent to the dry cleaners: ‘Chipmaker Texas Instruments on Monday announced a wireless identity chip for clothing…

• Yes! Telecom Price Wars!: To us economists, prices ought to be signals of social scarcity. We overbuilt fiber-optic networks, we have ample wireless bandwidth, and so telecom capacity is definitely not scarce. So it should fall through the floor—and it is…

2003-08-12:

• Lurker Day: Chuq von Rospach talks about mailing-list “lurker days”: ‘Teal Sunglasses: experimenting in groups: the quiet voices: One thing Laurie and I have been investigating over the years is how to bring forward the quieter voices…. That second population to be as knowledgable and interesting as the primary population—just quieter.… One of our more successful ways we’ve found to draw these people out, at least temporarily, is a concept we’ve called lurker day…

• A WORRISOME TREND…: In the past week, three messages that I did want to read got filtered into the “spam” mailbox…

• GOOGLE CALCULATOR: Google calculates that the speed of light is 1.8026175 × 10¹² furlongs per fortnight… The scary thing is that (tonight at least) it is faster than launching a calculator from the dock…

• “SUSTAINABLE GROWTH”… It’s not clear to me that we are on track for growth faster than 3.5% per year over the next couple of years…

• SCORN FOR PRESIDENT BUSH: The Economist explains the currently-limited power of monetary policy… is scornful (in its understated, very British way) of President Bush’s concentration over the past three years on long-run tax cuts that do little for short-run demand…

• HUMAN PROGRESS…. “Could I just point out that the philosophy of ‘I would be a better, happier person if I only got that new technological gadget’ has failed so spectacularly at the personal level” “I dunno, toilets are nice”…

• THE JOB-LOSS RECOVERY: The Economist notes the large wedge between output growth and employment growth in America today…

• BUSH-LEAGUE IMPLEMENTATION: Last February Daniel Davies asked if there was any reason to think that the Bush adventure in Iraq would not be a SNAFU…. Now comes Daniel Drezner to say that the Bush Administration has created and is unlikely to be able to fix the SNAFU that is the reconstruction of Iraq…

• REINSTALLING WINDOWS XP: Mark Pilgrim loses five hours of his useful lifr…

• I DEEPLY RESENT THE WAY THIS ADMINISTRATION…: It was Teresa Nielsen Hayden who said: “I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.” Here Jeffrey Sachs succumbs to the belief that the real reason for the invasion of Iraq was to get enough military ground power in place to give the U.S. the capability to conquer and occupy Saudi Arabia in 72 hours…

• GRANT, OH GODS…: I’ve been reading Dan Simmons (2003), Ilium (New York: HarperCollins: 0380978938): ‘Hector stretched his arms towards his son, but the boy cried and grabbed for his nurse…

• FAIR AND BALANCED: Matthew Yglesias’s weblog is fair and balanced: Matthew Yglesias: Fair And Balanced II: ‘If you’ve got a blog, please consider adding a “fair and balanced” tag somewhere in recognition of Rupert Murdoch’s out of control litigiousness (tort reform, anyone?). You also should consider buying the book…

• THE TIP OF THE WHIP THAT IS THE BUSINESS CYCLE: The most cyclically-sensitive sectors of all—the tip of the whip that is the business cycle—make the equipment needed to make the capital goods that firms purchase in order to produce durable goods… in particular—Applied Materials…. Investing in Applied Materials is, as the Financial Times writes, a clean and highly leveraged bet on the strength of America’s current anemic business-cycle recovery–a bet only for those with “iron nerves”…

2023-08-11:

• FALSE ADVERTISING: I said. “We can certainly go see the giant sequoias… We will… cross the main crest of the Sierras… at Ebbetts Pass…. It should be called “Ebbetts Saddle that is marginally lower than the highest Sierra Nevada peaks, but that should not be driven by the faint of heart and acrophobic, especially not in a poorly-made Ford Taurus with 130,000 miles on it and a twice-rebuilt transmission…

• FEDERAL RESERVE POLICY: I find it extremely odd that Alan Greenspan is finding it hard to convince the bond market that he will be patient…

• THE LIST MOM IS DEAD: Grizzled Internet Old-Timer Chuq von Rospach–originator of the List Mom style of internet community moderation–thinks that the concept has reached the end of its useful life, and that it is time to shift moderation style not back to the List Nazi but forward to… what? It is not clear to me, and I’m not sure that it is clear to him either…

• ONLY IN CALIFORNIA…: It’s not just in politics that California is the Doofus State…. Odwalla… ingredients: 1. Water. 2. Lime juice. 3. Organic evaporated cane juice (10%). Now I ask you, would a company anyplace other than California call “sugar” by the name of “organic evaporated cane juice”? It’s C₆H₁₂O₆ either way…

• SOME OPTIMISM IN THE FORECASTS: Forecasters are beginning to expect that higher corporate profits will lead to more investment spending. Unfortunately, forecasters seem to see no declines in the unemployment rate until next summer…

2023-08-10:

• LONG-RUN FISCAL TRAIN WRECKS: The Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt writes about the Bush-caused future fiscal train wreck…

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