What a weekend, eh? That’s the first run on the bank I’ve ever seen, so in the future I’ll be able to say “Well, I remember back in the Panic of ’07…what, you don’t remember the Northern Rock? What do they teach these people today? Yes, they had branches then; and cash!” “You’re not my…
Read More Build upon the Rock and not upon the…whoopsBring back the Office of Technology Assessment, say the Hoofnagles at Scienceblogs. Good point; for about thirty years, the US Congress had its own staff of scientists and engineers whose task it was to provide the legislature with independent technical advice, until it got zapped by Newt Gingrich. I’m sure it would do them some…
Read More Office of Technical AssessmentCognitive neuroscientists staged an experiment in which subjects were asked to make decisions on whether or not to invest money. It was the classic set-up that demonstrates risk-aversion bias: on each round, the subject could choose between keeping $1 and taking a 50 per cent chance of getting $2.50. Theoretically, you should always take the…
Read More I am the message centre and I am in controlSo last week’s mobile-phones-kill-bees screamer front page was bad enough. They ignored all the countervailing evidence and picked out a tiny uncontrolled study carried out in someone’s spare time that neither mentioned the condition they were interested in, nor even attempted to measure how much RF energy they were using. This Sunday, they were at…
Read More The National Inquirer, now fortified with Patrick CockburnWhatever Sir Ian Blair says, the opposite is probably true. It’s a basic working assumption that has at least one major advantage – that even when it’s wrong, it won’t lead you into anything too terrible. Rather like the Malatesta estimator. To estimate a value people disagree about accurately, take the most and least exaggerated…
Read More Sir Ian Blair: IgnorantWhy, asks Chris Dillow, do we consider Milton Friedman a man of the Right? Dillow was thinking of such things as the earned-income tax credit and his opposition to conscription, but the question requires some unpacking. I don’t believe, for example, that his concern with liberty is incompatible with the Left. Neither is it impossible…
Read More Friedman: a man of two halvesThere seems to be an increasing belief around that we’re still in Iraq because the UK/USA leaders can’t bring themselves to book a loss, as Ezra Klein puts it over at Tapped. David Kurtz at TPM argues similarly that Bush thinks the only way the US can be defeated is if it chooses to leave…
Read More Enron and IraqThe chatter is building up that a serious change in policy in Iraq is afoot. Supposedly, there is talk of an ultimatum to the Iraqi government to do various defined things or face undefined sanctions (this is an old John Paul Vann idea from South Vietnam), but there are also reasons to imagine that the…
Read More Talking to Iran, part 2Apparently if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, A nuclear Iran is likely to give or lend nuclear weapons to terrorists, resulting in an undeterrable nuclear strike against an American city or cities. And the answer to this dread scenario? Why, a credible threat of force. Eh? Employing a credible threat of force is only useful…
Read More More DeterrenceThe North Koreans are attention-seeking again, flaunting the possible launch of some sort of rocket that possibly might be the putative Taepodong-2 ICBM. And, apparently, the US government is thinking of shooting it down with their ballistic missile defence system. Well, system. Experimental test rig would be more accurate. This is incredibly stupid. Fortunately for…
Read More Missile Defence and Deterrence