August 2009
11 posts
Robots at War
John Carney thinks that the growing use of robots in armed conflict could cut down on war-marking. That doesn’t seem likely. Here’s why.
Consider:
But there’s another type of war demand that probably would be [diminished]. That’s the popular war demand, the “war fever” that has been witnessed countless times through the ages. A key factor of this demand is the...
“There are good ships, and there are wood ships,
The ships that sail the sea....”
– Edward Kennedy
Yale Fail?
Christopher Hitchens is furious at Yale University Press for what he’s referring to as possibly the “worst episode in the steady surrender to religious extremism—particularly Muslim religious extremism—that is spreading across our culture”: specifically, its refusal to reprint the controversial Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons in an upcoming book, The Cartoons That Shook the...
Could New Urbanism Save the Midwest?
St. Louis, Missouri is the prototypical Midwestern city. It’s large in size, boasts a rich local history, and lays claim to a set of wildly popular major sports teams. It’s enviably affordable, and hosts several world-class medical and educational institutions. And its weather? Relatively pleasant (albeit sticky in summer).
But most importantly, it suffers from a staggering...
“You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get...”
– The Sun Also Rises, 1926
Fun with Health and Taxes
Many have already discussed the relationship between taxes and services, but with the health care debate turning near-mindless, it seems like a good thing to revisit. There is a reality in the American political system. It is that high taxes will, more often than not, yield a high amount of public services. Conversely, low taxes lead to low-serivce locales. People tend to have a preference for one...
“Alexander, they say, tried to conquer the world
With a helmet and a shield to...”
– Clark Gesner, 1957
China: The New Russia?
That was then:
Post-Soviet business oligarchs include relatives or close associates of government officials, even government officials themselves, as well as criminal bosses who achieved vast wealth by acquiring state assets very cheaply (or for free) during the privatization process controlled by the Yeltsin government…Although the majority of oligarchs were not formally related with the...