Noted for February 7, 2013
Walter Jon Williams: Fear Jerry Brown and His Army of Black Nationalist Cannibals!: "The Rift is a disaster novel. It may be that all disaster novels have a built-in sell-by date…. [T]ake a classic in the SF field, [Niven and Pournelle's] Lucifer’s Hammer. A comet hitting the Earth is still a threat relevant to today’s audience, but… the book’s villains--who, you may remember, were an army of black nationalist cannibals led by Jerry Brown. I’m thinking this is no longer on anyone’s Top Ten List of Things to Worry About (assuming of course that it ever was)."
Fabius Maximus: Too many “takers”? Look to science fiction for the hard-Right answer!: "Jerry Pournelle’s science fiction novels about Falkenberg’s Legion describe not just the problem of too many 'takers' (the 47%, a shiftless amoral idle mob) but also a solution: mass murder…. This should worry the rest of us, as evidence of the real polarization in American…. The opening to 'The Mercenary' (Analog, July 1972; later reprinted in his books) describing a world (“Hadley”) being ruined by the takers…. '"Then some blasted CoDominium bureaucrat read the ecology reports…. The Population Control Bureau in Washington decided this was a perfect world for involuntary colonization….50,000 people a year dumped in here…. These weren’t like the original colonists. They didn’t know anything, they wouldn’t do anything… oh, not really, of course. Some of them work. Some of our best citizens are transportees. But there were so many of the other kind." "Why didn’t you let ‘em work or starve?" Sargeant Major Calvin asked bluntly…. "Because the CD wouldn’t let us!" Banners shouted. "Damn it, we didn’t have self-government. CD Bureau of Relocation people told us what to do, ran everything…".' 'The Mercenary' has a happy ending — at least some will see it as such. The mob’s leaders (commies, leftists) and their followers gather in the stadium; Falkenberg’s troop blow them away."
Mark Thoma: Economist's View: Arguments For and Against the Use of Machines
Economic History: The Ice King
Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis (2002): "The Inheritance of Inequality" http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/intergen.pdf
Amy Davidson: Whom Can the President Kill?: The Release of a D.O.J. White Paper About Targeted Killings
Hamilton Nolan: Unemployment Stories, Vol. Six: 'If It Weren't For My Children I Probably Would Have Killed Myself By Now'
Lindsey Beyerstein: Will Saletan's Weaselly Case for Torture
John Baez and Emory Bunn: Einstein's Equation: "We promised to state Einstein's equation in plain English, but have not done so yet. Here it is: 'Given a small ball of freely falling test particles initially at rest with respect to each other, the rate at which it begins to shrink is proportional to its volume times: the energy density at the center of the ball, plus the pressure in the direction at that point, plus the pressure in the direction, plus the pressure in the direction.'… It is hard to believe that the single equation… captures all… information. It does, though, as long as we include one bit of fine print… we must consider small balls with all possible initial velocities -- i.e., balls that begin at rest in all possible local inertial reference frames."
Eric Loomis: The End of Cod - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money: "Last weekend, I decided to check out Cape Cod in the winter. It was pretty great, even if cold. On my way to the Cape, I drove past a Wendy’s. They were offering a fish sandwich–made with North Pacific cod. That’s right, North Pacific cod on Cape Cod."
