Romney's Economic Advisor

Here's an interesting article about Romney's economic advisor, Glenn Hubbard.

I think it's concerning that in 2004 Hubbard (along with the chief economist at Goldman Sachs -- remember Goldman, who played such a BIG role in creating the current financial crisis?) heavily endorsed the credit derivatives market and believed it had already been "stress tested" sufficiently and couldn't do significant or lasting damage to the US economy.

Now Hubbard's position is that an across-the-board 20% tax cut won't add to the deficit (but he's vague on how it won't). Not that an economist can't make a mistake, but do you really want one who's made such a big error in judgement co-authoring your economic policy?? I don't.

Time for Some Election Fun

It's election time again and time to explore more about the candidates. Spin is not welcome. Rational discussion and facts are.

Goldman Sachs' Role in the Financial Crisis

This is an interesting 6 page piece from Rolling Stone, based on the (650 pg) report from the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations regarding the causes of the financial crisis. It focuses primarily on Goldman Sachs’ role. (If you decide to read it, the web page is actually the first page of the article, although it’s broken up by a lot of links to other things)

Kissinger on China

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal published this piece by Henry Kissinger about China. It's adapted from his new book "On China" and promises to be a good read.

What goes around, hopefully, doesn't come around.

Here is a fascinating NY Times account of Stuxnet, the computer worm that seems to have attacked and damaged some of Iran's nuclear enrichment equipment. It's got me pondering broader implications.

I knew, for example, that many US commercial, government, and military computers have been broken into by various foreign & domestic hackers. And that the US electric grid is considered vulnerable. But I hadn't really thought about how many other control facilities, say manufacturing or phone communications or air traffic control are also based on computers. And that attacks can be designed to cause lasting damage to the equipment they control - fabricators, generators, transformers, planes, etc. I hadn't really worried about cyberwar before. Now it seems a little more real.

Swarm Intelligence

This Science Friday interview with Len Fisher, author of The Perfect Swarm, blew me away. Apparently it can be proven that (in the right domain) averaging a group of people's independant opinions is more likely to produce the best decision than asking any individual expert. Did I hear that right? I may have to read the book!

Dark Flow

The mathematics are beyond my understanding, but I still find the concepts of modern physics fascinating. If I understood this recent segment of Science Friday correctly, a phenomenon called dark flow may validate string theory. Wow!