Writings of Thomas Jefferson, II

See prior excerpt here. From Jefferson's letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816. In the letter, he discusses his grave concerns over the "bubble" of rapid expansion of banks and outstanding notes and weighs legislative intervention. The bubble would burst with the Panic of 1819, our country's first financial crisis. Interestingly, quoting Rothbard, "It does not seem accidental that the boom period saw the establishment of the first formal indoor stock exchange in the country: the New York Stock Exchange opened in March, 1817." The NYSE moved the trading done on Wall Street inside. The letter ends with this reflection on public education and participation in government.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

(image credit: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904. Excerpt from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1907)

Song of the Day - Okkervil River

And see how that light you love now just won't shine,
there might just be another star,
that's high and far in some other sky.

English Channel Crossing

Updating our earlier post on Yves Rossy jetpacking across the English Channel, Economist.com has a chart of crossing times for a variety of transport. Really a pretty disappointing effort by the bath tub.

(image credit: Economist.com)

Extinct: You Calling Me Chicken?

Aerosteon riocoloradensis, an enormous carnivorous dinosaur that apparently breathed like a bird, is the next installment in our Extinct series. There have been a couple of big stories recently on bird-like dinosaurs. First, there was the discovery of this chicken-sized dinosaur, and now we have the revelation that Aerosteon (means "air bones"), a giant predatory dinosaur, possessed a respiratory system similar to that of modern birds. This discovery represents more evidence in the now well-accepted (and amazing) theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds

Aerosteon, discovered in Argentina in 1996, lived about 85 million years ago and was approximately 25 feet long and 8 feet high. That's roughly the size of a bulldozer. Using computed tomography (CT) analysis researchers including paleontologists Paul Sereno (who also discovered SuperCroc, maybe a later post) and Jeffrey Wilson demonstrated hollow bones and air sacs in the dinosaur. They hypothesize that this giant might have breathed like modern birds, using air sacs to transfer air to its lungs as birds do, instead of the expansion/contraction lung system that humans use. This system provides more efficient breathing for birds allowing them to achieve high altitude flight. Aerosteon might have used such a system to regulate heat, as Wilson says here: "It's a way to lower core body temperature by getting rid of air".

I have always found the idea that dinosaurs, the monster kings of earth for hundreds of millions of years, became birds breathtaking. Dinosaurs and birds, two great exciters of human imagination, are one. That's extraordinary.

Also extraordinary are efforts to reverse engineer dinosaurs. By manipulating DNA, researchers are giving chickens teeth and tails and scales. Amazing stuff. As famous paleontologist Jack Horner says "‘I have to admit that I’ve certainly imagined walking up on a stage to give a talk, and having a little dino chicken walk up behind me."

There was a great Discovery channel show on this subject recently, I will look out for the clip and post it here.

(image credit: Todd Marshall c 2008, courtesy of Project Exploration)

Sunrise on Mars

From NASA, incredible images of a sunrise on Mars, taken by the Phoenix Mars Lander. The Lander has also recorded snow falling from Martian clouds. (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University)

Meet the (Other) Candidates

The first 2008 presidential debate has come and gone and the political pundits, as always, have analyzed the event in excruciating detail. Absent, however, in all their dissection has been any comment on the enormous amount of room on the stage in Oxford, Mississippi. The last time that a presidential debate featured three participants was during the 1992 campaign when Independent Ross Perot captured 19% of the popular vote (nearly 20 million votes), making him one of the two most successful third party presidential candidates within the past century.

Although this cycle’s third party candidates lack anything near the level of supporters, media attention, and funding that Ross Perot had in 1992, they are indeed an interesting bunch from across the political spectrum. One of them is doing this for the fourth time, two are seasoned Beltway veterans, and three have been interviewed by an alter ego of Sacha Baron Cohen. While many, including the author, do not agree with them on most issues, each candidate presents a unique set of ideas and policies rarely voiced by the two major campaigns. At the very least they offer a much needed breath of fresh air to an often stale process.

So without further ado, the five most prominent 2008 third party candidates for President of the United States in no particular order:

1. Ralph Nader. Contrary to popular belief, Senator McCain is not the oldest presidential candidate in this year’s election. Author and consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader, 74, is making his fourth formal run for the highest office. Named as one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20^th century, Nader’s work on automobile safety led to the passage of the historic National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966 which authorized the inclusion of energy-absorbing steering wheels, shatter-resistant windshields, and safety belts in vehicles. Mr. Nader is also remembered, fondly or bitterly depending on one’s politics, for his spoiler role in the 2000 presidential vote.

This year, Nader is back at it as an Independent candidate and is currently on the ballot in 45 states plus Washington D.C. He is running on a familiar staunchly pro-environment and pro-labor platform with support for immediate international action against greenhouse gas emissions and the phasing out of fossil fuels, a carbon tax initially priced at $50 per ton of CO₂ equivalent emissions, ending mountaintop removal mining, increasing the minimum wage to $10/hour, and the repeal of the Taft Hartley Act which places certain restrictions on unions.

On defense, Nader calls for the slashing of “wasteful and redundant” spending by the Defense Department (such as expensive military equipment and post WWII deployments) and the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq within 6 months.

He also backs a repeal of the Patriot Act, supports a universal single-payer health care system, and opposes privatizing Social Security.

2. Bob Barr. Widely known as one of the leaders of the Impeachment of President Clinton, Barr represented Georgia in the House of Representatives from 1995 until 2003 as a Republican.

Representing the Libertarian Party in 2008 Barr is on the ballot in 46 states and is running on a platform which seeks to minimize the role of government in our lives. He favors cutting federal funding of entitlements and welfare, privatizing social security, and a consumer oriented health care system. On taxes, he supports the reduction and eventual elimination of corporate income tax, estate tax, and the capital gains tax. Barr is a strong advocate for free trade, drilling in the ANWR, and the right to bear arms and would leave the definition of marriage to the individual states. He also calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and slashing of funds to the UN.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Barr opposes several pieces of legislation which he voted for as a member of Congress. These include the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution and the Patriot Act. Barr now considers the invasion of Iraq to have been a mistake and supports an exit from Iraq without delay. At this year’s Libertarian Convention Barr commented on his current opposition to the Patriot Act by telling the crowd that he would “drive a stake through its heart, shoot it, burn it, cut off its head, burn it again, and scatter its ashes to the four corners of the world.” Some voters might consider this a slight change of mind.

3. Cynthia McKinney. Ms. McKinney also served Georgia in the House of Representatives (1993-2003, 2005-2007) but as a Democrat. Her legacy is that of Hurricane Katrina activism, the attempted Impeachment of President Bush, a physical altercation with a Capitol Hill Policeman, and a dangerous belief in the legitimacy of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

McKinney left the Democratic Party in 2007 and is the current Green Party nominee on 32 state ballots. Similar to Mr. Nader, she is running a strong pro-environment campaign with proposals for greater enforcement and prosecution of environmental crime and the taxation of industrial pollution. She firmly opposes offshore drilling with a mantra of “leave the oil in the soil” and would like to stop funding any research which involves animal experimentation.

She supports the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and cutting off of all war funding, repealing international free trade agreements and the Patriot Act, and universal health care. Not as popular, she backs statehood for the District of Columbia, reparations for the descendents of African American slaves, and turning the State Department into a Department of Peace. More information about the Green Party Platform can be found at gp.org/platform.shtml.

4. Chuck Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin is pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Florida and the recent recipient of Congressman Ron Paul’s coveted endorsement in this year’s race as the Constitution Party nominee. Prone to controversy, he has named Presidents Lincoln and Wilson as “America’s worst Presidents” and has called Martin Luther King Jr. an “apostate” who “brought havoc and unrest to America as few men have ever done.”

Baldwin is on the ballot in 37 states and his candidacy’s strict opposition to federal government intrusion is viewed by many as fanaticism. Like Mr. Barr, he wishes the Department of Education and the Patriot Act would disappear, but he would also cancel the Department of Energy, the Federal Reserve, and the Food and Drug Administration. Baldwin favors phasing out social security and sacking the Sixteenth Amendment.

On social issues, Mr. Baldwin supports the Defense of Marriage Act and he would press for the end of legalized abortion by encouraging Congress to pass the Sanctity of Life Act which would give the unborn the same rights as the living under the Constitution.

5. Alan Keyes. If at first you don’t succeed….

After an unsuccessful run during the 2008 Republican primary season, former Reagan diplomat Ambassador Keyes made a bid for the Constitution Party nomination in April but lost to Chuck Baldwin. In what has to be a record third attempt in one election season, he is now trying his luck with the newly formed America’s Independent Party.

Like Nader, he has been here before. This is his third presidential campaign (1996, 2000) and his second campaign against Mr. Obama (2004). Keyes supports a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, and “freedom from liberalism.” On defense, Keyes would like the troops to stay in Iraq for the time being but ultimately turn over operations to the UN. He is currently on the ballot in only 3 states.

www.supercollide.com does not endorse any of the presidential candidates listed above.

(photo credits: news.yahoo.com, wikipedia)

The Future

On a very difficult day, here is inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil giving a TED talk in 2005 about the future. He is a keenly smart and very optimistic guy. He offers some provocative predictions in this talk.

Bailout Fails

Dow and S&P are plunging, politicians are making accusations. Meanwhile, the possibility of a "total systemic meltdown" looms. Stunning. (Illustration by Oliver Burston, Economist.com)

"Disgrace, Rip-Off"

Economist Noriel Roubini, who's been right before, rips the bailout:

In the Scandinavian banking crises (Sweden, Norway, Finland) that are a model of how a banking crisis should be resolved there was not government purchase of bad assets; most of the recapitalization occurred through various injections of public capital in the banking system. Purchase of toxic assets instead – in most cases in which it was used – made the fiscal cost of the crisis much higher and expensive (as in Japan and Mexico).

Thus the claim by the Fed and Treasury that spending $700 billion of public money is the best way to recapitalize banks has absolutely no factual basis or justification. This way of recapitalizing financial institutions is a total rip-off that will mostly benefit – at a huge expense for the US taxpayer - the common and preferred shareholders and even unsecured creditors of the banks. Even the late addition of some warrants that the government will get in exchange of this massive injection of public money is only a cosmetic fig leaf of dubious value as the form and size of such warrants is totally vague and fuzzy.

So this rescue plan is a huge and massive bailout of the shareholders and the unsecured creditors of the financial firms (not just banks but also other non bank financial institutions); with $700 billion of taxpayer money the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession. Instead, the restoration of the financial health of distressed financial firms could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public money.

Large Hadron Collider on 60 Minutes

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in addition to giving this blog its name, may pave the way for teleportation. So says physicist Bob Stanek in the 60 Minutes feature below. And why not? No one really knows what might come of this project. Bob Stanek seems like a great guy. In a collision as strange as any the LHC is likely to produce, he recently appeared on NPR with improv teacher Charna Halperin of MTV's Real World Hollywood fame. I'm not sure what to make of that connection but I'm somehow more confident that teleportation is coming soon.


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Song of the Day - Gnarls Barkley

Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"
And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

538 check

Nate Silver showing a growing lead for Obama, in polling before the debate. It will be interesting to see the national polling results from last night. The pundit opinion was mixed, while undecided voters apparently favored Obama. I'm not sure what bothers me more: 1) that the debate was full of nonsense and distortions or 2) that the media narrative based on the presentation of that nonsense will probably have more effect on polls than the actual debate. It's really a putrid cycle. I thought both candidates did well, in different ways. McCain certainly came across contemptuous, which the pundits think is bad. The use of "Senator Obama doesn't understand" had to be a ploy but I'm also sure McCain believes it. It's hard to imagine a more anticipated VP debate than the one coming up.

Nixonland

Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland, talks to The Economist about Nixon's legacy and our current culture war. Our present political climate is, in most respects, subdued compared to that of 1964-68, but the culture war festers and has acquired a peculiar commercial character.

Battle of the Day: The Battle of Bucaco (or Bussaco), 1810

On this day in 1810, The Duke of Wellington and his Portuguese allies won a defensive battle against the invading French.

By 1808 the only European power capable of resisting Napoleon was Great Britain, which had eliminated the threat of French invasion at the naval victory of Trafalgar.

But Napoleon made the fateful political mistake of putting his brother on the throne of Spain, which resulted in a massive uprising. The British took advantage of the chaos to send an expeditionary force under Wellington to support Portuguese independence and ultimately break French domination of the continent.

In 1810, the French were trying to solve this problem, which had been boiling over in Spain for two years, with a decisive conquest of Portugal. Wellington had suffered a great deal of criticism for not taking the battle to the French as they besieged and invested Almeida, but he was wise: the French had flooded the Iberian Peninsula with 300,000 troops to quell the uprising. To win, the Allies would have to choose the time and place of Battle carefully.

At Bucaco, Wellington did just that, choosing an excellent defensive position and going so far as to build a road for ease of movement along the crest of the ridge. The French, under Massena had an advantage in numbers, with 65,000 men. Wellington had a mixed force of 51,000 Britons and Portuguese on heights overlooking the best road to pursue the invasion of Portugal.

The French attacks were repulsed, with the climactic moment coming when Loison's division launched an assault on what appeared to be a weak spot in Welllington's lines with vulnerable artillery:

"Loison was completely unaware that two battalions of Crauford's Light Division - the 1/43rd and 1/52nd - were concealed in the ground behind the battery. As the French prepared to rush the final few yards uphill to the battery, Crauford waved his men forward and 'eighteen hundred British bayonets went sparkling over the brow of the hill.' At a distance of as little as 10 paces, the line of infantry poured a murderous volley into the front of Loison's Division before wheeling in from left and right to generate a semicircle of fire. Within minutes, the French were streaming back down the hillside in a broken mass with Crauford's troops in pursuit."

After this frustration, Massena flanked Wellington, forcing him to withdraw to another defensive position at Torres Vedras. The French invasion was to fail, and by 1812, Wellington was on the offensive. He had succeeded in convincing the rest of Europe that Napoleon could be challenged, and the Russians, who had previously been cowed and neutralized, rose against the French once more, setting the stage for the fateful French invasion that resulted in Napoleon's downfall.

Geologists Find Oldest Rock: That's Pretty Old

Geologists Don Francis and Jonathan O'Neill of Canada's prestigious McGill University have pushed the estimated formation of the Earth's crust back by hundreds of millions of years with the discovery of a patch of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone at least 250 Million years older than anything previously dated.

As the BBC science page reports:

"Before this study, the oldest whole rocks were from a 4.03 billion-year-old body known as the Acasta Gneiss, in Canada's Northwest Territories.

"The only things known to be older are mineral grains called zircons from Western Australia, which date back 4.36 billion years."

Over the billions since it first formed, most of the Earth's crust has been crushed into particles too small to be recognizable or forced back down into the mantle by plate tectonics where it returns to a molten state.

Which brings us to the important question: this rock is old. We know that. Rocks are old in general, and this one, superlatively so. But is it older than dirt?

The answer is yes.

Bacteria Behave in Groups

Wow, how's about that. Interesting to think how much of our bodies are bacteria. I have heard a biologist describe our bodies as a spongy framework of systems hosting bacteria. Wonder what Quorum sensing will mean for the study of bacterial behavior in our bodies . . .?

Song of the Day: Kings Of Convenience

Kings of Convenience - "Manhattan Skyline"

Jet Pack Crosses English Channel

A jet pack crossed the English Channel. Yves Rossy, who postponed his flight yesterday because of bad weather, jumped from a plane at 10,000 feet and crossed the Channel at a distance of about 36 Kilometers. He circled the landing zone a number of times to show he was in comfortable control before deploying a parachute.

Rossy designed the kerosene-powered engines himself. Rigid wings much like a fighter-jet's gave him what appeared to be adequate control over his flight.

The future of his invention is unclear, but if he doesn't get at the very least a Disney movie out of this, he needs a new agent.

Brain Science

TED talk from Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot and Treo, on brain theory. The talk is from 2003 but remains relevant. Hawkins published the book On Intelligence in 2004.

Battle of the Day: The Battle of Rostov, 1941

On this day in 1941, the Battle of Rostov commenced, one of the first major failures of the German army.

On this day, in a push for the oilfields of the Caucasus, the German 11th army and the Romanian 3rd army lunged forward to take the city of Rostov. But attacks from the Soviet 8th and 19th Army halted their advance, setting the stage for the extended Battle of Rostov, which itself was to result in the truly epic Battle of Stalingrad.

In World War II, especially in Europe, because of the full integration of air power, motorized units, and radio communication, "battles" come to denote much different events as opposed to the battles of previous wars. Rather, there were engagements of various sizes as a result of one or both sides conducting operations, the scope of which might encompass hundreds if not thousands of miles over the course of weeks or months. The Battle of Rostov is a good example.

Though the action began on the 26th of September, the Russian efforts to drive the Germans off their course did not conclude until November the 16th, then the Germans seized the initiative and pressed an assault which took the key town of Taganrog on the 17th, but Rostov was not captured until the 21st. The Germans had been exhausted and over-extended by the advance and a Soviet counter-attack on the 27th pushed them back to Taganrog, where the Battle ended on December 2nd. The withdrawal from Rostov to a defensive position behind the Mius river at Taganrog was the first time the German army had been forced by enemy pressure to withdraw. Hitler attempted to prevent this retreat which resulted in the firing/resignation of Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt, a blow to the German High Command of more significance than the withdrawal itself.

Writings of Thomas Jefferson

Below is part of Thomas Jefferson's letter to John Melish, January 13, 1831. He is discussing the motivations of the then competing political parties, the federalists and republicans, and whether their first interest is power or country.

"This I verily believe, after an intimacy of forty years with the public councils and characters, is a true statement of the grounds on which they are at present divided, and that it is not merely an ambition for power. An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens. And considering as the only offices of power those conferred by the people directly, that is to say, the executive and legislative functions of the General and State governments, the common refusal of these, and multiplied resignations, are proofs sufficient that power is not alluring to pure minds, and is not, with them, the primary principle of contest. This is my belief of it; it is that on which I have acted; and had it been a mere contest who should be permitted to administer the government according to its genuine republican principles, there has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books."

(excerpted from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904)

Song of the Day - Woody Guthrie

She rose from her blanket a battle to fight.
She rose from her blanket with with a gun in each hand
Said, "Come all of you cowboys, fight for your land."

Battle of the Day: The Battle of Loos, 1915

On this day in 1915, in North Eastern France, the British Army under General Haig launched an assault on German trenches after bombarding the position for four days with approximately 250,000 artillery shells.

On the morning of the attack the British used chlorine gas in pressurized cannisters to attempt to flush the Germans out. Confusion about the weather conditions and conflicting sets of orders resulted in the British accidentally gassing over 2000 of their own troops, and at least 7 died as a result.

As in so many battles on the western front in the First World War, at first it appeared that the attack was succeeding; but the decimation of the leading British units during the assault was followed by a masterful counter-attack from the Germans. By the end of the day, the reinforcements that were supposed to consolidate British gains were being used to prevent a disgraceful retreat.

The British lost 50,000 around men, the Germans lost 25,000.

Here Comes the Sun

An intelligent, realistic debate about national security/terrorism and our economy must include a discussion of energy policy and our dependence on foreign oil. Let's see how much play energy policy gets on Friday night (if there's a debate at all). (update: not much play at all, but lots of nonsense)

So far, the campaign energy debate has largely focused on whether and how much to drill. Not much mention of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems or prioritizing alternative energy sources. "Drill, baby, Drill!" has become a political rallying cry. Drilling has, bizarrely if predictably, assumed new metaphorical meanings and become a stake in the partisan and cultural divides. New drilling is, at most, a peripheral consideration in our larger energy policy. It is a typical political contrivance and a short-sighted, irresponsible distraction when very real issues are at stake. A comprehensive energy policy should be central in this campaign, it is paramount for national security and the economy.

Oil, the great fuel of industry, has become an enemy of modernity. Oil money has long shielded many countries from the progressive, democratizing effects of new industry and technology. It has allowed autocracy and fostered zealotry.

Alternative energy has unlimited economic potential, it may well be the next tech boom:

The market for energy is huge. At present, the world’s population consumes about 15 terawatts of power. (A terawatt is 1,000 gigawatts, and a gigawatt is the capacity of the largest sort of coal-fired power station.) That translates into a business worth $6 trillion a year—about a tenth of the world’s economic output—according to John Doerr, a venture capitalist who is heavily involved in the industry. And by 2050, power consumption is likely to have risen to 30 terawatts.

The solution to our energy crisis will undoubtedly be gradual and manifold. Personally, I'm betting on the sun as a big part of the answer. Solar cells continue to become more cheap and efficient and more viable on a large scale. Solar is increasingly competitive with fossil fuels.

In general, the speed of technological advance is underestimated. With an honest, aggressive energy policy, we could be off oil much sooner than people think.

(photo credit: Suniva.com)

The God Particle

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in addition to giving this blog its name, promises to find the elusive Higgs boson. The Higgs is the holdout of the Standard Model of particle physics, well accepted though never actually observed. It is variously known as the "God particle" and "goddamn particle" because it 1) theoretically accounts for particle mass and 2) has proven frustratingly aloof.

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote this great article for The New Yorker in 2007. I recommend the entire article, it's a nice overview of particle physics, the LHC and the Higgs boson. Here is an enjoyable excerpt detailing physicist Robert Wilson's 1969 congressional appearance.

In 1969, the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy held a hearing at which the physicist Robert Wilson was called to testify. Wilson, who had served as the chief of experimental nuclear physics for the Manhattan Project, was at that point the head of CERN’s main rival, Fermilab, and in charge of $250 million that Congress had recently allocated for the lab to build a new collider. Senator John Pastore, of Rhode Island, wanted to know the rationale behind a government expenditure of that size. Did the collider have anything to do with promoting “the security of the country”?

WILSON: No sir, I don’t believe so.
PASTORE: Nothing at all?
WILSON: Nothing at all.
PASTORE: It has no value in that respect?
WILSON: It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. . . . It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. . . . It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.

Song of the Day - Arcade Fire with David Bowie

If the children don't grow up,
our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We're just a million little gods causin' rain storms turnin' every good thing to rust.

The Railway Patriot

Thomas Alexander Scott (1823-1881)

"After my return to Pittsburgh it was not long before I made the acquaintance of an extraordinary man, Thomas A. Scott, one to whom the term 'genius' in his department may safely be applied." ---Andrew Carnegie.

Andrew Carnegie was only seventeen years old on February 1, 1853 when he started working for railway executive Thomas Alexander Scott at the Pennsylvania Railroad. Carnegie earned $35 a month as Mr. Scott’s private secretary and personal telegrapher.

A few years later, on October 2, 1855, Scott introduced the future steel magnate to the world of business by making Carnegie’s first investment for him in the Adams Express Company. When Carnegie later received a white envelope containing a check for $10 from Adams Express, he remembered that day for the rest of his life. "It gave me the first penny of revenue from capital---something that I had not worked for with the sweat of my brow. Eureka! I cried. Here's the goose that lays the golden eggs,” remembered the young Carnegie. Any discussion of Andrew Carnegie’s extraordinary financial success as one of the greatest American industrialists in the late 19^th century is incomplete without mention of his mentor Thomas Alexander Scott.

Mr. Scott and his protégé Carnegie attracted national attention for their work on the Pennsylvania line and Scott was summoned to Washington D.C. in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War to assist with the movement of Union troops and munitions. Later that same year Scott was appointed the first ever Assistant Secretary of War and his duties included the supervision of all government railway and transportation lines.

Not well known is that fact that shortly before this period, on February 22, 1861, Thomas A. Scott participated in a covert operation responsible for arranging the safe passage of Abraham Lincoln from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. for his inauguration. In order to confuse the potential assassins of the Baltimore Plot, he cut all the telegraph wires entering Harrisburg, PA so that no news of Lincoln's movements could be telegraphed. Scott then reunited the severed wires at daybreak on February 23 and the plotters never knew of the President-elect’s bold journey. An unharmed Lincoln was sworn in as the 16^th President of the United States less than two weeks later.

(photo credit: Portrait of Colonel Thomas Alexander Scott by W. M. Chase)

Solar Wind at 50 year low, You Still Need Sunscreen

The Solar Wind, which has a protective role in defending us from cosmic rays, is at a 50 year low. What does this mean? The BBC puts it in a nutshell:

"The charged wind particles also carry with them the Sun's magnetic field, and this has a protective role in limiting the number of high-energy cosmic rays that can enter the Solar System."

These rays can interfere with electronics and may mean high doses of radiation for people outside of the earth's atmosphere. It's a bad time to be traveling in space.

Our own upper atmosphere will cool, which will mean that fewer orbiting objects will be pulled in and burned up, meaning more space debris, also bad for space travelers. Richard Branson is staring at his cornflakes.

There are theories that the solar winds may affect climate on earth, particularly cloudiness, and this turn of events will allow further study. We should remember that the sun's behavior is constantly in flux and this shift is within the range expected by scientists.

Methuselah

The Hebrew Bible's Methuselah lived for 969 years. A good run to be sure, but peanuts for Aubrey de Grey. The British de Grey, biogerontologist provocateur, is optimistic that humanity can solve the problem of aging within his (presumed) lifetime. His strategy, labeled SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), focuses on addressing seven core causes of pathology/aging - cell loss, death-resistant cells, nuclear mutations and epimutations, mitochondrial DNA mutations, protein crosslinks, intracellular junk, and extracellular junk. He is the founder of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, which provides incentives for scientists working on extending life in mouse models. His ideas have, predictably, been met with considerable skepticism including a well-publicized dustup in MIT's Technology Review (de Grey's response).

Aubrey de Grey is certainly an eccentric, he may be naive and wrong, I don't know. But I think I have more confidence in him than his critics, certainly I find him more interesting. The world needs more people like Aubrey de Grey, people of brazen optimism and imagination. I find the reflex to defend convention disconcerting, to say the least. His TED talk from 2005 is below. And, as long as we're discussing immortality, it would be rude not to mention the bristlecone tree. The oldest known of the bristlecones, nicknamed Methuselah, is nearly 5,000 years old. That's only slightly younger than writing, an unfortunate irony for a tree. The hydra and sturgeon fish will have to wait for future posts.

Battle of the Day: The Battle of Handschuhsheim

On this day in 1795, During the French War of the First Coalition, French Revolutionary Forces faced the Austrian Army outside of a little village in western Germany just north of Heilelburg.

The French Revolution had turned on itself and spilled outside of the borders of France. The Terror of Robespierre had resulted in women and children of the nobility being murdered, the poor still suffered terribly, and counter-revolutionary riots were gripping the country. The Revolution had pit France against the traditional Monarchies of Europe, who had formed a coalition to fight it. Even the young United States had turned against the Excesses of the Jacobins and signed an agreement with Great Britain to blockade French shipping. The fall of the Jacobins and the execution of Robespierre left the county adrift and surrounded by enemies. Royalist forces were on the counter-attack inside and outside France. By September of 1795 Revolutionary France had been forced to sign peace deals with Spain, the Netherlands, and Prussia. The Austrians saw no reason to make peace.

At Handschuhsheim, the Austrian army had superior Cavalry forces. They defeated the French Cavalry facing them, then rode down the Infantry. Out of about 12000 men, the French lost around 1500, while of the roughly 8000 Austrians 187 were lost.

Such defeats helped Napoleon seize power; in fact, only a few days later in October, Bonaparte would crush a counter-revolutionary riot in Paris and be named Commander of the Interior.

The Meltdown

Prudence is well-advised. Roger Lowenstein:

In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the government created the Reconstruction Finance Corp. to make loans to banks, railroads and others. President Hoover asked for $2 billion--equivalent in today's money to $30 billion--and spent just under that amount in the RFC's first year. The country then was in the midst of an economic catastrophe. Economic output had dropped 45 percent. Production of steel and autos were each down by three-quarters. Unemployment was 24 percent, and so on.

The allocation sought by Paulson is 23 times bigger. And it is in addition to the tens of billions pledged to back loans to Bear Stearns, Fannie, Freddie and A.I.G.

Conan and the Supercollider

Sadly, it's true that the Large Hadron Collider (our namesake) has been temporarily shut down. Fortunately, Conan O'Brien has it covered:

Politics and Beowulf

Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf is excellent. I love the cover art, his introduction is great, and his translation is direct and beautiful. I recently reread this portion, in which Beowulf offers a response to Unferth's political smears. Fair to say Beowulf would be devastating in the debates. In short, "you are a drunk coward and will go to hell, I killed nine sea monsters, I will kill Grendel and restore sunlight to the world."

Beowulf, Ecgetheow's son, replied:

"Well, friend Unferth, you have had your say

about Breca and me. But it was mostly beer

that was doing the talking. The truth is this:

when the going was heavy in those high waves,

I was the strongest swimmer of all.

We'd been children together and we grew up

daring ourselves to outdo each other,

boasting and urging each to risk

our lives in the sea. And so it turned out.

Each of us swam holding a sword,

a naked, half-proofed blade for protection

against the whale-beasts. But Breca could never

move out further or faster from me

than I could manage to move from him.

Shoulder to shoulder, we struggled on

for five nights, until the long flow

and pitch of the waves, the perishing cold,

night falling and winds from the north

drove us apart. The deep boiled up

and its wallowing sent the sea-brutes wild.

My armour helped me to hold out;

my hard-ringed chain-mail, hand-forged and linked,

a fine, close-fitting filigree of gold,

kept me safe when some ocean creature

pulled me to the bottom. Pinioned fast

and swathed in its grip, I was granted one
final chance: my sword plunged

and the ordeal was over. Through my own hands,

the fury of battle had finished off the sea-beast.

"Time and again, foul things attacked me,

lurking and stalking, but I lashed out

gave as good as I got with my sword.

My flesh was not for feasting on,

there would be no monsters gnawing and gloating

over their banquet at the bottom of the sea.

Instead, in the morning, mangled and sleeping

the sleep of the sword, they slopped and floated

like the ocean's leavings. From now on

sailors would be safe, the deep-sea raids

were over for good. Light came from the east,

bright guarantee of God, and the waves

went quiet; I could see headlands

and buffeted cliffs. Often, for undaunted courage,

fate spares the man it has not already marked.

However it occurred, my sword had killed

nine sea-monsters. Such night-dangers

and hard ordeals I have never heard of

nor of a man more desolate in surging waves.

But worn out as I was, I survived,

came through with my life. The ocean lifted

and laid me ashore, I landed safe

on the coast of Finland.

Now I cannot recall

any fight you entered, Unferth,

that bears comparison. I don't boast when I say

that neither you nor Breca were ever much

celebrated for swordsmanship

or for facing danger on the field of battle.

You killed your own kith and kin,

so for all your cleverness and quick tongue,

you will suffer damnation in the depths of hell.

The fact is, Unferth, if you were truly

as keen or courageous as you claim to be

Grendel would never have got away with

such unchecked atrocity, attacks on your king,

havoc in Heorot and horrors everywhere.

But he knows he need never be in dread

of your blade making a mizzle of his blood

or of vengeance arriving ever from this quarter-

from the Victory-Shieldings, the shoulderers of the spear.

He knows he can trample down you Danes

to his heart's content, humiliate and murder

without fear of reprisal. But he will find me different.

I will show him how Geats shape to kill

in the heat of battle. Then whoever wants to

may go bravely to mead,
when morning light,
scarfed in sun-dazzle, shines forth from the south
and brings another daybreak to the world."

Orwell Diaries

The Orwell Prize is publishing George Orwell's diary entries, 70 years to the day, in blog form. From the July 9, 1938 post:

Overheard local English resident: “It’s coming right enough. Hitler’s going to have Czecho-Slovakia all right. If he doesn’t get it now he’ll go on and on till he does. Better let him have it at once. We shall be ready by 1941.”

Battle of the Day: The Battle of Krasnobrod, 1939

On this day in 1939, the Battle of Krasnobrod was fought in Poland between Poles and Germans. It is notable for featuring the last traditional European Cavalry Charge on record.

Suite101.com has a fine article concerning the last traditional European Cavalry Engagements, the climactic encounter occuring on this day in history:

"On September 23rd the 25th Wielkopolska Uhlan Regiment fought what could be the last cavalry on cavalry engagement when it forced a smaller German cavalry unit off of a hill near Krasnobród and then went on to capture a divisonal headquarters. Contrary to popular belief and Nazi myth, Polish Cavalry was able to charge German mechanized units and make a difference. On the first day of the war, September 1, the German 4th Panzer Division met the Polish Wolynska Cavalry Brigade head on about 100 miles south of Warsaw and lost more than 50 tanks in the exchange.

"The Polish cavalry was wiped out in the campaign as a force but its remnants fought in both the British and Soviet armies later in the War. Elements of the regular polish cavalry served with the Canadian reorganized 1st Free Polish Armored Division fighting in tanks across Western Europe in 1944, ending up capturing the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven in May 1945."

Wilson Hardly Working

The Guardian UK has a snappy little concept with their black cab sessions, in which they record musicians playing in backs of London Black Cabs, between the studio and the hotel, the hotel and the airport, or just to the next pub. They recently captured Brian Wilson:



I love that man.

Politics

Politics, perhaps correctly, has become a pejorative. The mainstream media insists on the game of politics, cable news is fascinated with tactics, simplistic narratives and polls to the exclusion of a real political discussion, even in a time of peril. Of course, by adopting narratives, the media becomes a significant part of the story. Absent undeniably big events (like the financial meltdown) we have a self-perpetuating cycle of nonsense that passes for political discourse.

Having said that, if you're looking for a reasonable, pragmatic analysis of the campaign, FiveThirtyEight.com is a great place to go (538 is the number of electors in the electoral college). Nate Silver, whose background is in statistics at Baseball Prospectus (also a good site), renders comprehensive polling. He is an open Obama supporter but his polling and analysis is honest and his observations have often been correct. His polling metric now shows Obama with a considerable lead (primarily on the economic news) after having McCain ahead since the Palin pick and the convention.

Song of the Day - The Highwaymen

The Highwaymen (Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson) - "Highwayman"

I'll fly a starship across the universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain

The Centre Cannot Hold

The Economist sizes up the financial crisis. (Illustration by Oliver Burston from Economist.com)

"When Atheists Attack"

Sam Harris article on Sarah Palin (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan). In near perfect confirmation of Harris's critique of political discourse, Newsweek editors label the piece "When Atheists Attack".

Cosmic Ray

Damien Hirst’s Beautiful, cataclysmic pink minty shifting horizon exploding star with ghostly presence, wide, broad painting (2004) and Charles Ray’s Rotating Circle (1988). A large collection of Hirst’s work is currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Ray’s work is currently on view at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

Both Damien Hirst and Charles Ray could be said to belong to what Richard Serra calls post-Pop Surrealism. Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami might be this not-a-movement’s most famous sons, but Hirst must rank pretty high on that list as well. After all, the New York Times even covers his auctions.

A recent statement about another work by Hirst might apply to much of what has filled museums and galleries for the last thirty years. Describing For the Love of God, Hirst’s diamond covered, platinum cast death’s head, Roberta Smith writes, “It seems like the perfect summation of our wasteful, high-priced, oblivious moment, an implicitly regal 21st-century equivalent of Cellini’s gold saltcellar.”

That archaeological bloggers have linked it to jewel-encrusted skulls of the past seems fitting. Clearly, For the Love of God is meant for royalty, announcing that our current disparity in wealth is akin to despotic kingdoms of days gone by. James Benning has said that the role of the artist is to pay attention and report well and one way of looking at Hirst’s one-hundred million dollar vanitas is as a report on what he has observed.

But another work by Damien Hirst, Beautiful, cataclysmic pink minty shifting horizon exploding star with ghostly presence, wide, broad painting (2004), can send your mind reeling in a different way. Perhaps the first thing Hirst’s canvas calls to mind is Spin Art; the fact that the canvas itself rotates would seem to be redundant, but upon closer inspection the rotation ceases to be a gimmick and becomes the dominant factor in the viewing experience. The scale is enormous--12 feet in diameter--large enough to fill your peripheral vision. The day-glo landscape before your eyes is moving just fast enough so that you cannot focus on anything for very long. As in Pollock, there is an essential displacement of horizontal to vertical: gravity itself has been recontextualized. Also as in Pollock, the painting moves. But the movement of Autumn Rhythm is only the movement of the painting in your perception. Hirst’s painting actually has RPMs. It is difficult to stand and stare at it, to say the least. “Not unpleasantly nauseating” gets a little closer.

Perhaps the only thing Charles Ray’s Rotating Circle shares with Hirst’s mammoth explosion of color is that it spins. Hirst’s painting is unmissable; like a carnival, it serves as an advertisement for itself--the bright lights are the ride. Ray’s work, on the other hand, is often heard before it seen, if it is seen at all. Looking for the source of a low, humming sound--a child once described it as the noise a refrigerator makes--you find a circle on the wall. Closer inspection reveals that the circle is not on the wall but in the wall: a perfectly circular cut. Intrigued, but perplexed, you take the time to find the wall tag. Upon learning that the name of this piece is Rotating Circle, you stare at it intently trying to discern whether or not it is in fact rotating.

Stare. Stare. Listen. Stare. There are no more clues. Is the sound entirely disconnected? Is the whole thing a brilliant trick? Maybe you notice that the wall inside the circular cut is impossibly smooth, identical with the drywall around it, yet somehow more perfect. At this point, staring, wondering, fixating on a circle and listening to a drone, you have essentially entered La Monte Young territory. In a neat trick, Ray’s cultivated irony has spawned a transcendent experience. Ray denies any connections to Zen, and rightly so: the work has much more in common with the transitional phase between minimalism and conceptual art--Michael Asher’s heat-molded Plexiglas pieces, for instance--than the enso. Like Asher’s pieces, Ray’s raises questions of perception at the same time that it challenges the boundaries between art and the wall and, by extension, art and the world.

Rotating Circle, roughly the size and height of the artist’s head, is human scale. Its content is perception. It is attractive the way that a puzzle is attractive, but it is also utterly banal--you are quite literally staring at a wall. Spinning at several hundred RPMs, however, it has undergone a fundamental, if subtle displacement that makes it both witty and profound. Casually eschewing the heady associations and over-seriousness of minimalism at the same time that it sidesteps the slick irony of the art-market eighties, Ray’s piece surpasses mere cleverness to provide us with an object (or an experience) that helps us reflect on the very nature of perception.

Posted by Madison Brookshire

Song of the Day - Roy Orbison

Maybe tomorrow
A new romance
No more sorrow
But that's the chance - you gotta take
If your lonely heart breaks
Only the lonely

Yankee Stadium

The final game at Yankee Stadium will be played tonight. Here is Lou Gehrig's famous speech.



I remember Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius's home runs in the 2001 World Series most. Strangely, it's hard to find footage of those home runs on youtube. I did find this incredible moment from that surreal time in New York.

Civil War Photography

Photography was recently invented and just gaining prominence at the time of the Civil War. The confluence makes for a painfully evocative record. Well-known photographer Mathew Brady was largely responsible for coordinating that effort. The National Archives has an extraordinary collection online. (photo credit: archives.gov)

Extinct: Megalodon

Megalodon (Carcharodon megalodon) is the first installment in our Extinct series. It was the largest shark and greatest sea predator that ever lived. The photograph to the left, taken sometime in the early 20th century, shows a well-dressed man sitting casually in reconstituted megalodon jaws. It's true that men were slightly smaller in the early 20th century, but megalodon was still an enormous creature. The roaringness of the 20's aside, I doubt very much if that guy would have sat in the jaws of a living megalodon.

Megalodon lived from about 18 million to 1.5 million years ago. Estimates of its size range from 40-80 feet (see wikipedia references). It was an incredible eater, preying on a variety of marine animals including whales. The History Channel has a great show called Jurassic Fight Club, a recent show featured megalodon versus the biting sperm whale (who must have been teased relentlessly in school). The video is below.

Sharks are an incredible evolutionary success story, ruling the oceans for 400+ million years. Megalodon is the predatory apex of that extraordinary line. I think that warrants some reflection.

I actually read the book Meg by Steve Alten years ago when I worked in book publishing. Apparently, a movie has been in the works for many years, with a high-profile screenwriter attached and this amazing tagline: "The Most Fearsome Predator in History, Is No Longer History". I will definitely see this movie.



(UPDATE: image credit, "This photo was taken while the fossil jaws of a prehistoric shark, or Carcharodon megalodon, underwent restoration in 1927 © AMNH/H.S. Rice". See AMNH's Picturing the Museum)

Spore

Spore is the new video game from Will Wright, creator of The Sims. It allows the user to advance from unicellular organism to transcendent intelligence. It seems like an interesting, good game. Articles I've seen about it seem to focus on whether the game is about evolution or intelligent design. Can't it just be about money and fat children? (photo credit: EA)

Song of the Day - Andrew Bird

You're gonna grow old, you're gonna grow so cold
Bearing signs on the avenues, for your own personal waterloo
You're bearing signs on the avenue, for your own personal waterloo now

We'll fight, we'll fight, we'll fight
For your music halls and dying cities
They'll fight, they'll fight, they'll fight
For your neural walls and plasticities

The Crisis of American Capitalism

Kevin Phillips has been right a lot of the time. This talk, given in April, remains worth a listen. Talk is first 1/2, questions second 1/2.

What's the Matter with Kansas?

Every year people complain about the way college football chooses a champion. They complain the system is beholden to money interests and question its integrity in identifying the two best teams. A complex computer formula, based on some statistics and some arbitrary human polls, chooses two teams to play for the title. Just writing that, it seems completely ridiculous.

Last year, Kansas was 11-1 at season's end with the only loss in a close game to conference rival #4 Missouri (who went on to defeat the SEC's Arkansas 38-7 in their bowl game). Yet Kansas was #8 in the polls before their bowl victory over #3 Virginia Tech (who had lost to the SEC's LSU 48-7 earlier in the season). Ohio State finished 11-1 and ranked #1 because they played a schedule deemed more difficult in voters' minds than the Kansas schedule (despite a loss to unranked Illinois). This judgment reflected a bias for Ohio State's past successes and the Big Ten's reputation, it had little to do with the football played in 2007. Ohio State was blown out in the championship game, exposed in that game for a second consecutive year. There was no way to know if Ohio State was better than Kansas or many other teams that might have played in that game. Unless, of course, college football played games to decide its champion.

Many people argue that the arbitrary system is better because it maximizes the value of each regular season game. Others argue that a playoff is procedurally impossible. I believe the current system maximizes the incentive to set a lame schedule, rewards teams that play in well-respected (even if bad) conferences, and insults the integrity of players and the notion of team. Football, by virtue of its violence, has less frequent and much more heavily scrutinized and intensely played games than other sports. Every down in a football game is a battle. A team is forged over a season - players emerge, strategies are refined, cohesion is hard-won. This suggests two often overlooked truths. 1) A loss can make a team better. 2) Apparently overmatched teams with lesser recruits can beat apparently superior teams through strategy, cohesion and sheer force of will. The present system rewards teams judged best in the preseason, necessarily on history and before any games are played. Those teams will remain on top if they don't lose and will receive substantial reconsideration even if they do lose. Opinions, often set in the preseason, are a horrible substitute for playing games. Despite myriad objections from athletic directors, college presidents and bowl game sponsors, a playoff system in college football is viable. A college football playoff might become the biggest sporting event in America. And it would restore to college football the immutable law of sports: Winning makes you the better team. People seem to have forgotten that.

And, as long as I'm complaining, why can't college football continue to play football in overtime? The game completely changes in overtime as teams take turns trying to score from the 25 yard line. I admit it's pretty exciting. But alternating half court shots would also be a very exciting overtime for college basketball games.

Song of the Day - Gram Parsons

Out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels
And a good saloon in every single town
Oh, and I remember something you once told me
And I'll be damned if it did not come true
Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down
And they all lead me straight back home to you.