Previous month:
June 2016
Next month:
August 2016

July 2016

A Man for All Seasons Trial 2 of 3 YouTube

Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Gehenna: Zack Beauchamp finds a Republican validator--one of those who has spent most of the past decade stridently arguing that ObamaCare will make America a worse place and needs to be repealed-and-replaced--in the midst of what appears to be a nervous breakdown:

Zack Beauchamp: A Republican intellectual explains why the Republican Party is going to die:

[Avik Roy:]

I don’t think the Republican Party and the conservative movement are capable of reforming themselves in an incremental and gradual way.... The conservative movement is fundamentally broken. Trump is not a random act.... Goldwater... a historical disaster....

Continue reading "" »


"Gunpowder Empire": Should We Generalize Mark Elvin's High-Level Equilibrium Trap?

Islam Constantinople jpg 428×283 pixels

OK. Popping the distraction stack again. A chance remark by the extremely sharp Cosma Shalizi when he came through Berkeley has caused me to spend a lot of time meditating upon a passage written by Bob Allen:

Robert Allen (2006): The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective:

The different trajectories of the wage-rental ratio created different incentives to mechanize production.... It was not Newtonian science that inclined British inventors and entrepreneurs to seek machines that raised labour productivity but the rising cost of labour... due to... Britain’s success in the global economy... in part the result of state policy... Britain['s] vast and readily worked coal deposits....

Continue reading ""Gunpowder Empire": Should We Generalize Mark Elvin's High-Level Equilibrium Trap?" »


Ploughing with Twelve Yoke of Oxen? 24 Oxen! In Israel in 1000 BC? Wednesday Economic History

Call of elisha Google Search

What field in the Levant could possibly require a plough pulled by 24 oxen? What is going on here?

1 Kings: 19:15-21:

And the Lord said unto [Elijah]: "Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria: And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room.

Continue reading "Ploughing with Twelve Yoke of Oxen? 24 Oxen! In Israel in 1000 BC? Wednesday Economic History" »


Expenditure Shares, Price Measurement, and True Relative Labor Productivity Growth in Post-WWII Manufacturing: What the Aggregate Deta Suggest

Distraction Google Search

Tuesday Morning Distraction: Well, I was supposed to be sitting three tables down from Aaron Edlin at the Claremont Peets this morning doing research. But I got myself distracted--convinced myself that I ought to right something about the sharp Matthew Yglesias's (and why, Harvard Economics Department, was he not an economics major?) piece on premature deindustrialization. And then I got myself redistracted...

Let's start with one of the standard graphs: the American share of (nonfarm) employment that is in manufacturing:

Continue reading "Expenditure Shares, Price Measurement, and True Relative Labor Productivity Growth in Post-WWII Manufacturing: What the Aggregate Deta Suggest" »


Testing Datawrapper...


O9LpN  2

QP1qD


Static Chart Link--Production

Static Chart Link--Employment


(Late) Monday Smackdown/Tuesday Hoisted Idiocy: Embarrassingly Poor Legal Reasoning from Michael Cannon and Jonathan Adler

Hoisted from Four Years Ago: What passes for Republican think-tannery these days. Judge Paul Friedman's smackdown should have ended this then--rather than later, at the Supreme Court, 6-3, with John Roberts writing:

Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter...

The idiocy, from Michael Cannon and Jonathan Adler:

Continue reading "(Late) Monday Smackdown/Tuesday Hoisted Idiocy: Embarrassingly Poor Legal Reasoning from Michael Cannon and Jonathan Adler" »


The Wayback Machine: From Ten Years Ago: July 20-July 26, 2006

Peabody and sherman original Google Search

  • The Invisible College http://www.bradford-delong.com/2006/07/the_invisible_c.html 2006-07-25: I would like a larger college, an invisible college, of more people to talk to, pointing me to more interesting things. People whose views and opinions I can react to, and who will react to my reasoned and well-thought-out opinions, and to my unreasoned and off-the-cuff ones as well. It would be really nice to have Paul Krugman three doors down.... The political scientists are too far away to run into by accident — somebody like Dan Drezner would be nice to have around (even if he does get incidence wrong sometimes). Over the past three years, with the arrival of Web logging, I have been able to add such people to those I bump into — in a virtual sense — every week. My invisible college is paradise squared, for an academic at least...

Continue reading "The Wayback Machine: From Ten Years Ago: July 20-July 26, 2006" »


Live from the Gamma Quadrant: The Star Trek movie reboot series strips the utopian core out of Star Trek--and continues the process of turning it into a third-rate "Guardians of the Galaxy" knockoff...

A.X.S.: “Star Trek: Beyond” strips politics from the universe:

The television series and some of the films studiously explored the big moral questions facing a bloc as diverse as the Federation, from the limits on cultural integration right through to how a peace-loving organisation should tackle imperial forces.

Continue reading "" »


Live from America's Better Self: "When They Go Low, We Go High!"

What I, at least, thought was the highest of the high points at the 2016 DNC:

Michelle Obama: "Barack and I... try to guide and protect our girls through the challenges of this unusual life in the spotlight, how we urge them to ignore those who question their father’s citizenship or faith.

How we insist that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country.

How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level.

No, our motto is: when they go low, we go high!...

Continue reading "Live from America's Better Self: "When They Go Low, We Go High!"" »


Liveblogging World War II: July 26, 1946: Eleanor Roosevelt

NewImage

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day:

NEW YORK, Thursday—Most of us listened to the radio with great interest yesterday when the under-water atom bomb was tried out in Bikini Lagoon. The damage seems to have been considerable, and I cannot help feeling a little sad at the sinking of the aircraft carrier Saratoga. Her fame will live in the annals of the Navy, and I suppose it is a perfectly good end for a valiant ship.

Continue reading "Liveblogging World War II: July 26, 1946: Eleanor Roosevelt" »


Liveblogging the American Revolution: July 25, 1778: From John Adams to Thomas Cushing

John Adams: To Thomas Cushing:

Passi July 25. 1778

Dear sir--

I had this Day the Pleasure of your Letter by Captain Barnes, of June 9. I did myself the Honour, when in Boston to call at your House, but was told you was ill and could not be seen, upon which I sent in my Name, as the Fashion is, intending to call at another opportunity, but was dissappointed.

Continue reading "Liveblogging the American Revolution: July 25, 1778: From John Adams to Thomas Cushing" »


Procrastinating on July 25, 2016

NewImage

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

Continue reading "Procrastinating on July 25, 2016" »


Live from the Journamalists' Self-Made Gehenna: Doug!: Only love can break your heart:

I’ve been impressed by how many right-wing pundits--George Will and Robert Kagan stand out--are so freaked out and upset about Trump that they’re willing to be anti-Trump all the time and note devote any columns to fragging Hillary. Meanwhile, the professional centrists continue to treat Trump and Hillary as two sides of the same coin:

Continue reading "" »


Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Gehenna: Reince Priebus Defends Donald Trump's Right to Imply Your Dad Killed JFK:

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took a bold stand in favor of free speech on Sunday, specifically, Donald Trump’s freedom to speak about your father and his possible connection to the murder of John F. Kennedy, The Washington Examiner reports. “He’s got a right to talk about whatever he wants to talk about,” said Priebus....

Continue reading "" »


What Thinkers Will Define Our Future?: No Longer Fresh at Project Syndicate

Preview of Untitled 3

Over at Project Syndicate: Which Thinkers Will Define Our Future?: BERKELEY – Several years ago, it occurred to me that social scientists today are all standing on the shoulders of giants like Niccolo Machiavelli, John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim.

One thing they all have in common is that their primary focus was on the social, political, and economic makeup of the Western European world between 1450 and 1900. Which is to say, they provide an intellectual toolkit for looking at, say, the Western world of 1840, but not necessarily the Western world of 2016. What will be taught in the social theory courses of, say, 2070? What canon – written today or still forthcoming – will those who end their careers in the 2070s wish that they had used when they started them in the late 2010s? Read MOAR at Project Syndicate

Continue reading "What Thinkers Will Define Our Future?: No Longer Fresh at Project Syndicate" »


Links for the Week of July 24, 2016

Most-Recent Must-Reads:

Most-Recent Links:

Most-Recent Storified:

Continue reading "Links for the Week of July 24, 2016" »


OUTDOORS Sea otter madness close to Hoh Head Port Angeles Port Townsend Sequim Forks Jefferson County Clallam County Olympic Peninsula Daily NEWS

Live from the Olympic Peninsula: Sea otter population: 500,000 pre-fur trade, down to 1-2,000 in early 1900s, now back at 100,000...

Michael Carman: Sea Otter Madness Close to Hoh Head:

THE CALLS POURED in. To the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, to the National Parks Service and to the Olympic Coast Marine Sanctuary. Have you seen all those sea otters? What visitors were spying off the Pacific Ocean coastline, a raft of hundreds upon hundreds of sea otters, was unusual in both scope and location.

Continue reading "" »


Must-Read: Neuronal dictatorship for speed of response, neuronal democracy for accuracy of perception and movement:

Ari Berkowitz: Is Your Nervous System a Democracy or a Dictatorship?:

For some behaviors, a single nerve cell does act as a dictator.... Touching a crayfish on its tail; a single spike in the lateral giant neuron elicits a fast tail-flip that vaults the animal upward, out of potential danger.

Continue reading "" »


Weekend Reading: Aceto: Review of Cynthia Ozick: "Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Lit..."

No subject brad delong gmail com Gmail

Aceto: Review of: Cynthia Ozick: Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Lit...: I am the Problem:

Cynthia Ozick has written a collection of essays centered on criticism. Criticizing criticism is a thankless job. One gets oneself into all sorts of quagmire. She posits 'nothing is worth doing unless it has never been done before...', as one mode, then the other as '...the sweet value of ripeness.'

Continue reading "Weekend Reading: Aceto: Review of Cynthia Ozick: "Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Lit..."" »


Must-Read: Mike Konczal: The Forgotten State: "Where Levin sees the government crowding out more worthwhile enterprises...

...Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue in American Amnesia that the state is central to the success of our economy. In fact, it is impossible to separate them, and you wouldn’t want to anyway.

Continue reading "" »


Must-Read: This really ain't rocket science, people. Or brain surgery...

Paul Krugman (2013): Other Austerity Bloopers: "It’s worth recalling the other paper that swept through the ranks of the VSPs...

...briefly becoming orthodoxy, what everyone knew, until people took a hard look at the data. Remember Alesina and Ardagna? That was the paper that supposedly showed that spending cuts were actually expansionary, because of ConfidenceTM.

Continue reading "" »


The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation--Hoisted from the Milken Review of Nine Months Ago

The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation Milken Institute Review

Live from Cyberspace: Welcome praise for J. Bradford DeLong (2015): The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation - Milken Institute Review: Hiccup ... or Endgame? Let me put a copy of the whole thing below the fold...

Paul Krugman: "Good Review by Brad DeLong: There are still real policy issues out there! 'The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation'" https://t.co/f5ancyOEHT

Continue reading "The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation--Hoisted from the Milken Review of Nine Months Ago" »


In Which I Face My Social Media Ineptitude Squarely

The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation Milken Institute Review

Live from Cyberspace: Welcome praise for J. Bradford DeLong (2015): The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation - Milken Institute Review: Hiccup ... or Endgame? Much appreciated. Thanks...

Paul Krugman: "Good Review by Brad DeLong: There are still real policy issues out there! The Scary Debate Over Secular Stagnation" https://t.co/f5ancyOEHT

Continue reading "In Which I Face My Social Media Ineptitude Squarely" »


Liveblogging World War I: July 23, 1916: Battle of Pozières

NewImage

Wikipedia: Battle of Pozières:

The Battle of Pozières was a two-week struggle for the French village of Pozières and the ridge on which it stands, during the middle stages of the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Though British divisions were involved in most phases of the fighting, Pozières is primarily remembered as an Australian battle. The fighting ended with the Allied forces in possession of the plateau north and east of the village, in a position to menace the German bastion of Thiepval from the rear. The cost had been very large for both sides and in the words of Australian official historian Charles Bean, the Pozières ridge "is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth"....

Continue reading "Liveblogging World War I: July 23, 1916: Battle of Pozières" »


Procrastinating on July 23, 2016

NewImage

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

Continue reading "Procrastinating on July 23, 2016" »


Liveblogging Postwar: July 22, 1946: The Terrorist Bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem

The Times of Israel:

On July 22, 1946, a bomb demolished the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. This newsreel shows the aftermath of the explosion. “The hotel housed the British army headquarters, and the Palestine government offices, and casualties were very heavy,” the British reporter announces, as workers on-screen sift the rubble for bodies. “The tragic scene is like a serious incident during the Blitz.”

Continue reading "Liveblogging Postwar: July 22, 1946: The Terrorist Bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem" »


Weekend Reading: David Kurtz, Tierney Sneed, and Lauren Fox: Whence the Republican Base's Anger?

David Kurtz: Whence The Anger?:

If there's one thing Tierney Sneed and Lauren Fox found while reporting for us in Cleveland that I probably don't factor in enough in assessing the Trump phenomenon it's the deep resentment and bitterness Republican Party rank-and-file feel toward their own leaders for not fulfilling the extravagant promises made to them since the 2010 Tea Party revolt. I tend to focus more on the white resentment, race-baiting, and xenophobia that arise from the tectonic social shifts way below the surface. They're not decoupled from each other, but the promise that Obama would be put in his place (with all the accompanying racial overtones to that notion) and his political and policy agenda expunged from the public record were powerful GOP draws for three election cycles, as detached from political reality as those promises may have been.

Continue reading "Weekend Reading: David Kurtz, Tierney Sneed, and Lauren Fox: Whence the Republican Base's Anger?" »


Weekend Reading: Donald Trump: Bananas Attack on Ted Cruz

Trump just held one of his weirdest Cruz bashing JFK conspiracy theorizing rallies ever Vox

Live from Gehenna, with the Republicans in Bed with the Short-Fingered Vulgarian: Needless to say: There is no picture of Ted Cruz's father and Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast. There is no picture of Ted Cruz's father and Lee Harvey Oswald not having breakfast. There is no picture of Ted Cruz's father and Lee Harvey Oswald.

Dylan Matthews: Trump: One of His Weirdest, Cruz-Bashing, JFK Conspiracy-Theorizing Rallies Ever:

I looked for signs, but at no point in the video does Pence blink twice or otherwise signal that he was being held against his will, but his presence is by far the most bizarre part of the video. Mike Pence endorsed Ted Cruz for president. He clearly thinks he’s a respectable politician.

Donald Trump: Bananas Attack on Ted Cruz:

If you turn on the television, if you turn on some of the dishonest media, you’ll see, "Oh well, this happened and this happened." What happened? Somebody [Cruz] got booed the hell out a place by thousands and thousands of people. There wasn’t one person in the room. Not one. And then they said: "There may not be unity!" Unity? There wasn’t one person in the room who wasn’t--including the Texas delegation, right?

Continue reading "Weekend Reading: Donald Trump: Bananas Attack on Ted Cruz" »