J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 73

Walter Jon Williams: Charging A Brick Wall http://clarkes...

Walter Jon Williams: Charging A Brick Wall http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/williams_interview_2020/: Arley Sorg: 'What can you tell us about your recent novels���the Quillifer books and the Praxis books���what is special about them to you, and what do you really want readers to know about them?' WJW: 'At some point in the Nineties, my books started to grow in scope and got longer and longer. Eventually I wised up and split the huge stories into multiple volumes, which allowed me as much scope as I wanted, and also to be paid multiple times. Win/win! I���ve only recently realized that I���ve had a single project over the last twenty years, which is to examine the artifacts and tropes of genre, take them apart, and reassemble them in ways that make sense to me. It���s a very science fiction thing to do....

#books #noted #sciencefiction #2020-01-17

Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy http://www.gutenberg....

Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4212/pg4212-images.html: 'This habit of ours is very well shown in that able and interesting work of Mr Hepworth Dixon���s, which we were all reading lately, The Mormons, by One of Themselves.... It seems enough for Mr Dixon that this or that doctrine has its Rabbi, who talks big to him, has a staunch body of disciples, and, above all, has plenty of rifles. That there are any further stricter tests to be applied to a doctrine, before it is pronounced important, never seems to occur to him. ���It is easy to say,��� he writes of the Mormons, ���that these saints are dupes and fanatics, to laugh at Joe Smith and his church, but what then? The great facts remain. Young and his people are at Utah; a church of 200,000 souls; an army of 20,000 rifles.��� But if the followers of a doctrine are really dupes, or worse, and its promulgators are really fanatics, or worse, it gives the doctrine no seriousness or authority the more that there should be found 200,000 souls���200,000 of the innumerable multitude with a natural taste for the bathos,������to hold it, and 20,000 rifles to defend it. And again, of another religious organisation in America.... ���Such are, in brief, the bases of what Newman Weeks, Sarah Horton, Deborah Butler, and the associated brethren, proclaimed in Rolt���s Hall as the new covenant!��� If he was summing up an account of the teaching of Plato or St Paul, Mr Hepworth Dixon could not be more earnestly reverential. But the question is, have personages like Judge Edmonds, and Newman Weeks, and Elderess Polly, and Elderess Antoinette, and the rest of Mr Hepworth Dixon���s heroes and heroines, anything of the weight and significance for the best reason and spirit of man that Plato and St Paul have? Evidently they, at present, have not; and a very small taste of them and their doctrines ought to have convinced Mr Hepworth Dixon that they never could have.... As we shall never get rid of our natural taste for the bathos in religion,������never get access to a best self and right reason which may stand as a serious authority,������by treating Mr Murphy as his own disciples treat him, seriously, and as if he was as much an authority as any one else: so we shall never get rid of it while our able and popular writers treat their Joe Smiths and Deborah Butlers, with their so many thousand souls and so many thousand rifles, in the like exaggerated and misleading manner, and so do their best to confirm us in a bad mental habit to which we are already too prone...

#noted #2020-01-17

Scott Cunningham: "This is basically what I wrote in my n...

Scott Cunningham: "This is basically what I wrote in my notes today. https://t.co/rPrCUyCwxa https://twitter.com/causalinf/status/1217605928767434752: Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough: 'XKCD had it right:

#noted #2020-01-17

I daresay I do not think Ross Douthat has read Matthew Ar...

I daresay I do not think Ross Douthat has read Matthew Arnold. I believe Douthat only quotes him. I think Matthew Arnold was thinking of Douthat's hero Michael Clune���and of Douthat himself���when Arnold cast maximum shade on "futile... bookmen" and noted that "from the faults and weaknesses of bookmen a notion of something bookish, pedantic, and futile has got itself... connected with the word culture...". Getting���from some source���"a fresh and free play of the best thoughts upon his stock notions and habits" was called by Henry Rosovsky "learning approaches to knowledge". And Ross Douthat has no time for Henry Rosovsky: Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4212/pg4212-images.html: '[I] recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said... and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits.... From the faults and weaknesses of bookmen a notion of something bookish, pedantic, and futile has got itself more or less connected with the word culture.... Yet futile as are many bookmen... a man's life of each day depends for its solidity and value on whether he reads during that day, and, far more still, on what he reads during it. More and more he who examines himself will find the difference it makes... at the end of any given day, whether or no he has pursued his avocations throughout it without reading at all; and whether or no... he has read the newspapers only.... [But] if a man without books or reading, or reading nothing but his letters and the newspapers, gets nevertheless a fresh and free play of the best thoughts upon his stock notions and habits, he has got culture. He has got that for which we prize and recommend culture; he has got that which at the present moment we seek culture that it may give us. This inward operation is the very life and essence of culture, as we conceive it...

Ross Douthat: The Academic Apocalypse https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/opinion/sunday/academics-humanities-literature-canon.html: 'Preservation and recovery depend on... belief that ���the best that has been thought and said��� is not an empty phrase.... Michael Clune... insist[s]... that the humanities must offer ���judgment��� on what is worth reading, and G. Gabrielle Starr and Kevin Dettmar of Pomona answer... that no, humanists can only really ���teach disciplinary procedures and habits of mind��� we model a style of engagement, of critical thought: we don���t transmit value.��� The Starr-Dettmar belief was my alma mater���s philosophy when I was an undergraduate; back then our so-called ���core��� curriculum promised to teach us ���approaches to knowledge��� rather than the thing itself. It was, and remains, an insane view for humanists to take.... Humanists have often trapped themselves in a false choice between ���dead white males��� and ���we don���t transmit value.��� Escaping that dichotomy will not restore the academic or intellectual worlds of 70 years ago. But the path to recovery begins there, with a renewed faith not only in humanism���s methods and approaches, but in the very thing itself...

#noted #2020-01-16

Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy http://www.gutenberg....

Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4212/pg4212-images.html: 'We see whither it has brought us, the long exclusive predominance of Hebraism���the insisting on perfection in one part of our nature and not in all; the singling out the moral side, the side of obedience and action, for such intent regard; making strictness of the moral conscience so far the principal thing.... Under the sanction of some such text as ���Not slothful in business,��� or ���Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might,��� or something else of the same kind. And to any of these impulses we soon come to give that same character of a mechanical, absolute law, which we give to our religion; we regard it, as we do our religion, as an object for strictness of conscience, not for spontaneity of consciousness; for unremitting adherence on its own account, not for going back upon, viewing in its connection with other things, and adjusting to a number of changing circumstances; we treat it, in short, just as we treat our religion���as machinery. It is in this way that the Barbarians treat their bodily exercises, the Philistines their business, Mr Spurgeon his voluntaryism, Mr Bright the assertion of personal liberty, Mr Beales the right of meeting in Hyde Park. In all those cases what is needed is a freer play of consciousness upon the object of pursuit; and in all of them Hebraism, the valuing staunchness and earnestness more than this free play, the entire subordination of thinking to doing, has led to a mistaken and misleading treatment of things...

#noted #2020-01-16

Very Briefly Noted 2020-01-16:Dante Alighieri (1320): ...

Very Briefly Noted 2020-01-16:

Dante Alighieri (1320): Inferno https://delong.typepad.com/files/dante-inferno.pdf...

The Angry Staff Officer: Helm���s Deep https://angrystaffofficer.com/2019/10/20/warfighter-helms-deep/: 'Gandalf was able to build combat power through liaison networks and would bring victory out of defeat. He remains the most proficient ideal of the staff officer...

Dante's Library: Lancelot https://sites.duke.edu/danteslibrary/lancelot/: '���A Gallehault indeed, that book and he/who wrote it, too; that day we read no more��� Galeotto fu ���l libro e chi lo scrisse/quel giorno pi�� non vi leggemmo avante, the pilgrim faints: ���And I fell as a dead body falls��� [e caddi come corpo morto cade] (Inf.5.142)...

Gustave Dor��: Dante Alighieri: Inferno: Plate 12 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_-_Dante_Alighieri_-_Inferno_-_Plate_12_(Canto_IV_-_Limbo,_Dante_is_accepted_as_an_equal_by_the_great_Greek_and_Roman_poets).jpg: 'Dante is accepted as an equal...

Kenneth Rogoff: The Inequality Debate We Need https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/global-energy-inequality-carbon-tax-by-kenneth-rogoff-2020-01: 'The scientific evidence increasingly indicates that the world may soon reach a point of no return regarding climate change. So, rather than worrying almost exclusively about economic and political inequality, rich-country citizens need to start thinking about how to deal with global energy inequality before it���s too late...

U.C. Berkeley: Course Capture https://coursecapture.berkeley.edu/home...

Jason Kottke: Ridgeline Maps of the World https://kottke.org/20/01/ridgeline-maps-of-the-world...

John D. Grainger (2002): The Roman War of Antiochos the Great https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Roman_War_of_Antiochos_the_Great/fTf0Nkjw5-gC...

Wikipedia: Roman���Seleucid War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2Seleucid_War...

Samuel Pao-San Ho: Colonialism and Development: Korea, Taiwan and Kwantung : "Economic growth in three colonies within the broad context of Japanese imperialism. It discusses Japan's needs and how they determined the economic role played by her colonies.... The Japanese tried to develop Korea, Kwantung, and Taiwan as they had developed their economy in the late nineteenth century. The colonies were closely tied to Japan to create the "bilateralism" so conspicuous of colonialism...

Gregory King: Estimates https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/king.htm: Population and wealth, England and Wales, 1688...

Scott Alexander: SSC Journal Club: Dissolving The Fermi Paradox https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/03/ssc-journal-club-dissolving-the-fermi-paradox/...

Brad DeLong: Bequests: An Historical Perspective https://www.bradford-delong.com/2014/04/bequests-an-historical-perspective-hoisted-from-the-archives-for-april-2-2014.html...

Brad DeLong: Let's Have a Daniel Davies Day! ("Tricky Cases Where the Rightwingers Happen to Be Right" Department) https://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/11/lets-have-a-dan.html...

HotTubThings.com: Premium Spa Chemicals and Supplies https://hottubthings.com/...

#noted #verybrieflynoted #2020-01-16

George Orwell (1948): Nineteen Eighty-Four http://gutenbe...

George Orwell (1948): Nineteen Eighty-Four http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt: ''How many fingers, Winston?' 'Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I am trying to see five.' 'Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see them?' 'Really to see them.' 'Again,' said O'Brien. Perhaps the needle was eighty���ninety.... 'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?' 'I don't know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do that again. Four,
five, six���in all honesty I don't know.' 'Better,' said O'Brien. A needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same instant a blissful,healing warmth spread all through his body. The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O'Brien.... 'Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?' 'Yes.' 'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war. Do you remember that?' 'Yes.' 'Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men who had been condemned to death for treachery. You pretended that you had seen a piece of paper which proved them innocent. No such piece of paper ever existed. You invented it, and later you grew to believe in it. You remember now the very moment at which you first invented it. Do you remember that?' 'Yes.' 'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers. Do you remember that?' 'Yes.' O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed. 'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?' 'Yes.' And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment���he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps���of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some period of one's life when one was in effect a different person. 'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possible.' 'Yes,' said Winston...

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#noted #2020-01-16

MSW: The Black Watch at Fontenoy https://weaponsandwarfar...

MSW: The Black Watch at Fontenoy https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2019/07/14/the-black-watch-at-fontenoy/: 'On the morning of the battle, when the Highlanders paraded, the commanding officer saw the regimental minister standing in the ranks with drawn broadsword. This was Adam Ferguson, later Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, who was threatened upon the spot with the loss of his commission if he did not at once return to his more orthodox duties. "Damn my commission!" retorted the bellicose prelate and marched off to battle with his men...

#noted #2020-01-13

Peter Jorgensen and Kevin J. Lansing: Anchored Inflation ...

Peter Jorgensen and Kevin J. Lansing: Anchored Inflation Expectations and the Flatter Phillips Curve https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp2019-27.pdf: 'Conventional versions of the Phillips curve cannot account for inflation dynamics during and after the U.S. Great Recession, leading many to conclude that the Phillips curve relationship has weakened or even disappeared. We show that if agents solve a signal extraction problem to disentangle temporary versus permanent shocks to inflation, then agents' inflation expectations should have become more anchored over the Great Moderation period. An estimated New Keynesian Phillips curve that accounts for the increased anchoring of expected inflation exhibits a stable slope coefficient over the period 1960 to 2019. Out-of-sample forecasts show that this model can account for the missing disinflation during the U.S. Great Recession and the missing inflation during the subsequent recovery. We use a simple three-equation New Keynesian model to show that an increase in the Taylor rule coefficient on inflation (or the output gap) serves to endogenously anchor agents subjective inflation expectations and thereby flatten the reduced-form Phillips curve...

#noted #2020-01-13

Note to Self: Stock market ratios:#finance #note...

Note to Self: Stock market ratios:

#finance #notetoself #2020-01-13