Common App Short Answer

Every Thursday night a motley crew congregates in the Elm Street Mezzanine under the generally forsaken banner of “Exeter Republican Club.” Despite the palpably disapproving responses I always get from faculty and friends who learn I am a co-head, I would not trade these weekly two-hour meetings for a straight-11 GPA. Our club has a wide draw – we have our southern gentleman, our “midwestern prick”, our east-coast communists, and our mentor, Philip Tisdall, the club’s libertarian nucleus. Philip is a pathologist, and his patients die if he misdiagnoses them. These stakes have led him to a Zen-like state of egolessness which depends on conflict; his friends are those who disagree with him. It is this mentality that unites our club and gives us our one rule: Don’t be offended. Most of us grow up believing what our family believes, uncritically adopt this default position, and then work backwards to justify it. But we seek truth, not approval. Also, we think the Democrats and their rancid ideology must be ground to dust at all costs.

A Moment of Philosophy

Who could expect that a column on why iPads make poor Christmas gifts would offer this profound observation on life:
"The scarcest resource in life isn't money, land, fresh water or gold. For singles under 25, the scarcest resource is sex, and for the rest of us it's time. And the biggest waste of time I've ever discovered—after (computer) games —is the Web. Nothing comes close. It's a total black hole. Do I want to carry a device that lets me surf the Web endlessly wherever I am? That's easy. It's amazing how much time I have to read now that I never look at Facebook."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704259704576033941846942596.html?mod=WSJ_hps_RIGHTTopCarousel_1

Progressive Values

What Progressives really care about:

Two Californias, VDH on NRO

Changes in Health vs Wealth Over Two Centuries

This link was sent to me by a doctor I know In Calgary. It is absolutely fantastic. I think we could discuss it for the remainder of the year. It could certainly be the basis of your undergrad degree. It reminds us why we are free-marketing, Judeo-Christian-Greco individualistic, personal liberty loving, scientific revolution Enlightenment embacing, economic growth trumps all other concern, Republicans

Mr. Lima

Nick Lima, a Dem-Club co-head, told me today that over break he was converted to being a libertarian, and that he now hates government. We should welcome him to our ranks. Also props to Philip, who predicted that "he is too smart to remain a Democrat." Good call.

Cloud Computing: The Third Wave

We are at the edge of the third wave of Information Technology (IT). Following the advent of the the Personal Computer and the Internet, Cloud Computing is going to be the next great disruption of business enterprise. The term refers to the use of physically-remote computers, accessed through the Internet, for IT functions. it can refer to the most basic "utility" functions such as storage, to software programs, eg virus protection, to processes, like payroll, to full services, like building custom applications. It is more than just outsourcing to save costs. It requires a top-down assessment of business processes, such as logistical channels (think overseas manufacturing), distribution or marketing. These are strategic issues for any company that require input from the entire management team. It changes the IT department to the "Business Innovation" department. It is going to be an essential competitive tool for small to medium-sized businesses.
Consider this story told by Honorio Padron of Hackett Group, a process improvement group. He tells of a small drug company that had to compete with the multi-billion dollar majors. It did this by using cloud resources to develop a smartphone application that allowed doctors to look up the drugs they prescribed online using the company's own informational database. By leveraging cloud resources, the company rolled out the app in weeks, without even having to develop its own IT capability, at 10-20% of the in-house cost. Being closer to the doctors is good for their business.
For your generation, the cloud will represent a natural evolution of forces you have already adopted in your personal lives: anyone can connect to any information with any device. Social media sites combined with personal mobile devices on the job will blur the lines between personal and business. Ultimately, business is about connecting people and this technology is just the means.
It is hard to predict the future winners and losers of this. Large companies with powerful IT departments, may be too slow in adaptability. Will growth in heavy data generators like law firms, oil and gas exploration companies and engineering firms be based more on their ability to master their information using cloud technologies than their technical expertise? Will companies that use cloud expertise to measure their financial health outcompete their rivals who don't? Do companies that use the cloud to run their company's adminstrative infrastructure of finance, sales and marketing, be able to be concentrate on their core competencies? Yes, but like all disruptions, the outcomes won't be obvious until after the fact.
So how does one prepare for this future? You do have to be technology literate. Whether you are the most avant-guarde artiste or a civil engineer, understanding technology is essential. After that, you have to understand your business and how it creates and delivers value. This means you must have critical thinking skills. These are not trivial to come by, because they require a way of seeing yourself and the world around you with honesty. You have to always embrace the dissenter; you best learn through reconciling disagreement. You have to know yourself and the people around you. Social IQ matters. I don't know where you can reliably learn these things. I've started to lose my faith in universities. Companies certainly have the knowledge and honesty, but can't allow time for leisurely exploration of ideas. Perhaps certain post-grad programs come the closest to the ideal. Until we know, the best you can do is read the WSJ everyday and come to the Republican Club.

Austrian Politician has Balls of Steel

“Mr. Ambassador, enter the Orient Express and go back to Istanbul, your wonderland!”

So Austria has this guy, and Hayek, and Von Mises. They get my vote for best country in Europe.

Can you learn the Humanities over the Internet?

"You could maybe soften your stance a little on the humanities (perhaps instead of learning about them on the Internet, repeating your thought that you can learn them independently?)" - My college counselor regarding an essay.

I think you can. Actually, I know you can. If you want to read a book, you can find and download it as a free pdf in under 10 minutes. Quite fittingly, this is exactly what I did to get my copy of the Singularity is near.

If you want to discuss it or read analyses, you can easily travel from wikipedia, to sparknotes, to online forums, etc. I often go to amazon.com and read the reviews. Online comments are an ENORMOUS resource of compelling ideas. This is why I think the online WSJ is far greater than the print edition. The comments alone can be better than the original article. Furthermore, you will almost definitely here an articulation of all sides of an argument. I know my knowledge of history has some terrible deficiencies courtesy of our liberal Exeter history department. Reading a wikipedia page tends to give a less biased rundown of what actually happened, and lets you focus on what you personally find interesting.

I have a private blog and on this blog I just copy and paste every phrase or link that I think I may want to recall later. (To do this, just create a blog on blogspot and go to permissions and set it up so you are the only one who can view it). [Evan and Philip, I think we were talking awhile ago about how frustrating it is to forget where you read something because we read so many sources nowadays. Well, here's your solution.]

Anyway, nuff said,

- Jimmy

LBJ Great Society

- Dr. Tisdall, you said at the start of the LBJ reforms, out of wedlock births of African Americans shot from 10% to 60% almost instantly. Do you have any on hand links for this data? I haven't found much.

- Can you type up a quick rundown of the effects of slavery on black culture? I'm a little fuzzy on the details of industrial slavery, the worst part of the whole ordeal.

- Evan, you mentioned a book that covered a lot of the woes of Great Society programs, what was the name of this?

The government bail out of GM

As you head home for Thanksgiving, you liberal friends will no doubt be lauding the government rescue of GM. GM started selling its government shares as the start of the company's return to private ownnership. The IPO was a rousing success, with the "re-born" GM valued at $51 Billion dollars at its IPO price of $30-35 per share. So the jobs of 300,000 GM employees have been saved and perhaps another 600,000 secondary jobs saved in an economy that has lost around 8 million jobs in this recession. As the government sells the rest of its shares, it could conceivably end up getting all of its money back. So there, thank God the Democrats were in power to use the beneficent hand of government to prevent all of that human suffering. All at no ultimate cost to the taxpayor.
The problem with this story can be illustrated with this thought experiment. If government wanted to save GM, why didn't it just lend it the money, like it did with the banks or use an equity infusion like it did with AIG? Bankruptcy, Chapter 11 in this case, is a well defined legal procedure which has always placed lenders, specifically bond holders, ahead of all other creditors. The normal legal procedure is to sell the company and give the money to the creditors, with the bondholders first in line. What the Democrats did, however, was force debtors into a debt-for-stock swab. The government, owed $16B, got 50% of shares, bondholders, owed $27B, got 10% of shares, and the union(UAW) got 40% of the shares for its unfunded "legacy" costs. These were the costs that were such an important cause of GM's bankruptcy in the first place.
What we see then is a good example of crony capitalism. The government stripped legal creditors for the benefit of of its supporters, in this case, organized labor.
So in an industry with overcapacity, will it have been worth saving GM? That will really depend on the company's future success. That, in turn, will depend on how well it changes its culture. Are UAW workers going to shed their worst habits, including restrictive work rules and extravagant benefits? Can GM make cars that people will buy, or is it going to make a mostly electric car with a battery range of 30-40 miles costing $42,00 dollars? In addition, there is no real way to measure this misallocation of capital. We spent $80 Billion dollars up front, with another $45 Billion dollars in future tax breaks, to save a company that made a product that wasn't needed and consumers wouldn't buy. How do we measure the missed opportunity of the new company that wasn't formed or the research for the new product not now imagined? How do we measure the erosion of trust of lenders, who now have to wonder if government is going to strip them of their legal rights to favor a political supporter?

The Chinese Century and Biologic Laws

Economics is History masquerading as Physics.
I have introduced to you my belief that the 20th Century was best conceptualized by the Laws of Physics, driven by Energy (think of WW2 as the "war of oil") and communicated in the math of Calculus. I think that the 21st Century will be best understood through the Laws of Biology, driven by Information, and communicated throught the math of the Algorithm (computers). Two of the laws that I have become aware of, but barely understand, are evolutionary algorithms and cellular automata. The former teaches that information can be created without a directing intelligence, by setting up a system with choice and competition. To see this in action, view this brilliant example of the Blind Watchmaker on YouTube: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0). Cellular automata teaches us that very complex systems can arise from simple rules. To see an example of this, see Wikipedia's entry on Conway's Game of Life: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life).
These ideas are much better constructs for understanding people's behaviour than anything in physics. The reason for this is that the laws of physics teach constancy. For example, Charles' Gas Law teaches that if you keep heating a balloon, the gases will keep expanding until the balloon pops. This is as true now as when Charles first described it in the 1780's. The laws of biology, by comparison, teach change, due to increasing information. The balloon that Charles popped in 1780 didn't reproduce and so to survive and reproduce, balloons would have to find a means to relieve the pressure. There would be many possible adaptations and the best would be sorted out through selection. This means that if you tried to reproduce Charles' experiment in a biologic balloon world, you might get a different result than he did.
It is instructive to apply these ideas to economics, a biologic system based on information. Niall Ferguson has written an article on the rise of China (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704104104575622531909154228.html?KEYWORDS=niall+ferguson). In this article, he states that the 500 years of Western domination were based on six "killer applications":
" Competition: Europe was politically fragmented, and within each monarchy or republic there were multiple competing corporate entities.

• The Scientific Revolution: All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology happened in Western Europe.

• The rule of law and representative government: This optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.

• Modern medicine: All the major 19th- and 20th-century advances in health care, including the control of tropical diseases, were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.

• The consumer society: The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.

• The work ethic: Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation."

This list could serve quite nicely as the "set up" rules of a cellular automata program. The first Ferguson parameter, competition, and parameter 5, consumer society (choice), sets up an evolutionary self-teaching information-adding program. By adopting 4 of the 6 rules, China is getting the predicable result of good economic growth. This has been rapidly accelerated by the fact that they can just copy our science and technology. It is interesting to speculate on the effects of not using two of the rules; representative government and a consumer society. Only a physics-minded economist would try to predict with any confidence.

A Moment in the Singularity: Analog to Digital

My weekly copy of the US News & World Report came today with this cover: "We are writing to inform you that this will be your last issue of (our) magazine...We will continue to publish the usnews.com website". The editor noted that this 77 year old publication started as a broadsheet newspaper and will continue its "information business" as pixels on the screen. I doubt it will last for long. As a long term subscriber, I had stopped reading it seriously years ago, not because of its format but because it didn't provide me with any unique information. Its "Best...Lists(best colleges, best hospitals etc) were entertaining, but nothing you could act on. Just like many city newspapers discovered when Craig's List took away their Classifieds income, not enough people were willing to pay for their low information content to be economically viable.
In today's WSJ, L. Gordon Crovitz comments on the Beatle's tunes coming to iTunes (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704496104575627282994471928.html?KEYWORDS=crovitz). He gives a short history of technology disruptions of the music industry: sheet music, phonographs, 8 track, cassettes, CD's, MP3. He notes that iTunes provided a model for payment after the analog to digital revolution made theft of music ubiquitous. He offers these key insights:
"For music and many content-based industries, the shift to the Information Age from the Industrial Age is a shift to digital versions from older analog versions. The older forms don't disappear altogether. Instead, traditional products find a more limited role alongside newer versions that take advantage of new technology to deliver different experiences to consumers. Sellers may lose scarcity value for their goods as digital tools make copying easy, but as iTunes has shown, convenience is also a service worth buying".
In the same issue of the WSJ, Vacellarp and Schechner write about the coming disruption by Online TV: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704264804575626902698357466.html?KEYWORDS=vascellaro
I don't know how this fight will turn out, but I'm betting on the disrupters. The only objection of the TV stations, afterall, is that they aren't getting paid for their content. Will the cable companies survive? The analog-to-digital disruption has only just begun. I don't expect my specialty, pathology, to survive in its present form. Why would you pay me $150K /yr to read slides on a microscope, when the slide images can be digitalized and read on a TV screen in India for $40 K/yr? Radiology will suffer the same fate. Every industry will feel its effects in some way.
James once asked me what I subscribed to, and I told him the WSJ, Discover Magazine (science) and The Atlantic (thinkers). Only the WSJ is very good. Discover is OK, but it's more of a "geewhiz" content provider than a "this may be important" information provider. The Atlantic was excellent under Michael Kelly, but now has liberal editors and is sinking under their politicized view of everything. In the end, "information" providers will be paid for aggregated data to specialist groups and information to general readers. The conversion of data to information will only be as good as the editors and writers strengths in critical thinking and communication skills. Right now, the WSJ is the most highly subscribed newspaper in the US, and is very expensive at $365/yr in the print edition. It is worth every penny.
People will always pay for information. The analog-to-digital disruption is an essential theme to follow. One of the Internet's famous quotes, by Stewart Brand, is:
"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

A witty commentary on our current politics

This witty article cleverly captures the contradictions in our current political scene.
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/111364/a-war-of-the-worlds-for-the-modern-day

Thinking about College

We've talked a great deal about college. You don't, after all, pay $44 K/yr (retail) for high school because you have little faith in expensive schooling. The elephant in the room is how to cope with predicting the future in The Information Age in which knowledge in science and technology has a half-life of 4 years, the humanities can be learned from the Internet, universities are deeply politicized against us, and the tuitions are so large they are life altering. Steve Cobb and I had a very long discussion about this last night after the club meeting. He has the excellent idea that he wants to be at a research university where he feels he has the best opportunity to be at the cutting edge of the Singularity and have the highest caliber of student body to challenge him. He was having none of my observations that enough smart students can be found at any major college nor that enjoying yourself along the way should be a consideration (I hope I don't get re-born as his kid). He freely admitted that he had been infected by the "East Coast is best" prejudice but swallowed hard when I observed that their tuitions listed around $50 K/yr. The conversation ended when I learned that he had California residency and I observed that most of the UC schools were world class, and for him, very inexpensive. Steve was respectful but skeptical. He hadn't heard of the Shanghai Rankings. Well, here they are and it sure upsets the applecart of perceived truth. The top 50 research universities in the world include surprises like Wisconsin (17) Illinois (25) and Colorado (32). As for Steve, 6 of the 10 State schools in the UC system have ranked in the top 50 universities in the world for all 7 years the rankings have been published. You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Universities

As universities struggle to keep their programs relevant, I came across this article in the WSJ about designing your own college major. Interdisciplinary studies deserve serious discussion. When you read the Comments about the article, remember to ask yourself the question, what is the best fit for ME?
http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2010/11/17/can-do-it-yourself-majors-help-you-land-a-job/

Taleb on QE2

Bestselling financial author Nicholas Nassim Taleb — who is familiar with the Hayekian critique of central planning and has written scathing attacks on mathematical economics — as usual offers an interesting perspective on this second burst of inflation. In a sense, Taleb is the anti-Cowen: whereas Cowen effectively said, "Hey, it probably won't work, but we might as well give QE2 a try," Taleb effectively argues, "Hey, it just might blow up the world financial system, so let's not give QE2 a try."


http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/taleb-nails-it.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=7wMuF4A4XF8C
http://mises.org/daily/4851

Notes on tonights meeting

I got to the club meeting late tonight (had to get art hw done) but here are a few things i picked up on/ were requested to be posted:

- LBJ's Great Society [Connor]
- The Millionaire Next Door
- The New Elite [Charles Murray Washington Post article] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html]
- How do you help people?
- Poverty is not not having money. It is socioeconomic. [Rohan: See socio part]
- Competence vs. Intelligence
- Necessity saying [someone comment with the right one, I think it is: nothing works like necessity, necessity is the mother of invention, etc.] This was used in context of how easy it is to get money in America. It is an indication that life is easy if no one is knocking on your door asking to mow your lawn etc.
- Land of the Billionaires argument. [Philip please expand this one. It's yours and I don't want to skew any points].
- 4 yrs of college vs. 4 yrs of WSJ [See my last post on higher education bubble]
- Chales Murray [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8GN8g0Si7Q] [Philip - please correct me if this isn't the right video]
- On eduction: See WSJ articles: The Origins of Good Ideas; Why Some Islanders Build Better Crab Traps; and No You Can't - Is genius a simple matter of hard work? Not a chance]. Soltas and Tisdall - if you have read any more in this vein, let me know.

As I said, I got to the meeting near its end so please supplement this post in the comments.
- James

[Evan: Add that video, Cobbe: Economist article you were talking about, Tisdall: Article Jack gave you about designing your own undergraduate degree].

PEA Republican Club alumnus

Michael Hamel was a PG at the school 2 years ago. He was a Texan who initially struggled with a certain, how shall I describe it, cultural gap at the school. He found a real home in the club and was valuable contributor. He was the first to check every fact, real time, using his phone. Here is his picture at the inauguration of the Bush Library at SMU, where Michael is a ROTC student. Unfortunately the sign covers his guns, knives and clubs.

False Common Knowledge

Everyone seems to agree these days (especially around Exeter) that liberal politicians are more intellectual and worldly. Bush is recognized as somewhat of a dumbo while Gore, Kerry, and Obama are viewed as intelligent and educated. To believe that government officials are that much smarter can lead one to trust government expansion, a dangerous thing. What perhaps this article does best then, is show how academically mediocre nearly all politicians are, and not merely the republicans. In revealing this notion, one can't help but doubt their current level of trust in our elected leaders.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=553753

Thinking about Wal-Mart and recent Club discussions

Wal-Mart has been the topic of two recent articles in the WSJ that serve to reinforce subjects we've discussed in the Club recently. Miguel Bustillo writes on 11/17/10 that Wal-Mart U.S. sales fell 1.3% last quarter for the sixth consecutive time. This is attributed to "stiff" competition from Target and Dollar stores. Nearly all of Wal-Mart's growth is coming from international operations which account for one fourth of its $400 Billion in revenues.
Mariko Sanchanta writes on 11/15/10 that Wal-Mart appears to have established itself in Japan where it now owns 400 stores and plans to grow by acquisitions. While Japan has one of the largest retail markets in the world, the market is highly fragmented with numerous small, inefficient and highly politically defended family-type stores. Wal-Mart has been trying to establish itself in Japan since 2002 but has only been profitable for the past 2 years. Wal-Mart has attributed its success to Japan's 10 years of deflation making its citizens sensitive to lower prices. Wal-Mart is now focused on entering China, Brazil and India. Success is not assured. Wal-Mart sold its German operations after 8 years of failure and has exited South Korea.
- should Wal-Mart follow the great American business tradition of using gov't to defeat its rivals? Monopoly status looks to be fading if it doesn't.
- If Wal-Mart is unpatriotic because it supplies from China, should we praise it for generating $100 billion dollars in overseas revenue? That outsourcing/buy American argument can get tricky
- national culture: failure in Germany and South Korea, success in Japan. Same company.
- free markets unlock value. Think how happy all of those small Japanese retailers were to sell their stores to Wal-Mart. They can now re-invest or spend the money and Wal-Mart can bring efficiencies of scale for Japanese consumers. Of course those little stores that don't sell in time will be wiped out (Schumpeter)
- why has Japan had 10 years without growth despite massive gov't spending? Compare their "zombie" banks to our banks "toxic" assets.

The Effects of Long-Standing Liberal Government in California

One of the country's most struggling states is California. Despite its proximity to growing powers China and India, its economically supportive weather, and its plethora of great colleges: Stanford, CalTech, etc., California is being strangled by its liberal legislature and courts. While the heavily conservative and libertarian "Great Plains" have best weathered the recession, California is becoming the first US "debt state".

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/552810/201011041910/The-Golden-State-Still-Doesnt-Get-It.htm

Bureaucrats

"The bureaucracy must be expanded to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy"

funny that this came from the same guy who wrote soul of man under socialism...

The Wisdom of Crowds and the Federal Reserve

At 11:38 am on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Seventy-four seconds later, it was ten miles high and rising. Then it blew up. The launch was televised, so news of the accident spread quickly. Eight minutes after the explosion, the first story hit the Dow Jones News Wire.

The stock market did not pause to mourn. Within minutes, investors started dumping the stocks of the four major contractors who had participated in the Challenger launch: Rockwell International, which built the shuttle and its main engines; Lockheed, which managed ground support; Martin Marietta, which manufactured the ship's external fuel tank; and Morton Thiokol, which built the solid-fuel booster rocket. Twenty-one minutes after the explosion, Lockheed's stock was down 5 percent, Martin Marietta's was down 3 percent, and Rockwell was down 6 percent.

Morton Thiokol's stock was hit hardest of all. As the finance professors Michael T. Maloney and J. Harold Mulherin report in their fascinating study of the market's reaction to the Challenger disaster, so many investors were trying to sell Thiokol stock and so few people were interested in buying it that a trading halt was called almost immediately. When the stock started trading again, almost an hour after the explosion, it was down 6 percent. By the end of the day, its decline had almost doubled, so that at market close, Thiokol's stock was down nearly 12 percent. By contrast, the stocks of the three other firms started to creep back up, and by the end of the day their value had fallen only around 3 percent.

What this means is that the stock market had, almost immediately, labeled Morton Thiokol as the company that was responsible for the Challenger disaster. Six months after the explosion, the Presidential Commission on the Challenger revealed that the O-ring seals on the booster rockets made by Thiokol--seals that were supposed to prevent hot exhaust gases from escaping--became less resilient in cold weather, creating gaps that allowed the gases to leak out. Thiokol was held liable for the accident. The other companies were exonerated.

In other words, within a half hour of the shuttle blowing up, the stock market knew what company was responsible. How did they get it right? Said Cornell economist Maureen O'Hara, "While markets appear to work in practice, we are not sure how they work in theory." From The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

The theory of the "wisdom of crowds" is based on the idea that a large enough group of people acting as separate individuals will come up with a conclusion, once their differing opinions are aggregated, that is better than the opinion of those same people meeting as an expert committee (You can read more here: http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/12/critical-analysis-wisdom-of-crowds-by.html or in the book). Researchers at the University of Iowa have actually developed a futures marketplace that allows individuals to place "bets" of up to $500 on future events. It is most heavily used for political elections, and its "crowd-based" predictions outperform the "experts" (www.intrade.com)

This brings us to Fed Chairman Bernanke and his belief that "printing" $600 billion will help our economy. Where can we find signals to evaluate his bet against the wisdom of crowds? Remember, the individuals in the crowd must act independently and must have real money at stake. Here are some described by Alan Reynolds in the WSJ today (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574610003111250.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories#articleTabs%3Dcomments):
1. Gap between regular Treasury bonds and inflation-protected bonds (TIPS): widened by 60 basis points since August (bet is against bernanke)
2. US dollar: dropping against non-Western currencies (bet is against)
3. ETF ProShares: This fund bets against long term interest rates falling. If Bernanke's gambit was to work (ie by decreasing interest rates), the Proshares should drop. So far, it has not (bet is against).

The point here is not so much that Bernanke is "clueless", because he is not. The point is how one best makes a difficult judgement: by trusting experts and committees or by trusting Hayek's marketplace. Free markets out perform top-down marketplaces over time, because they rely on the latter. If you think you can identify an undiscovered predictor from the crowd, you could also make a lot of money.

How many reported on this?

In a report to Congress on Oct. 26, 2010, Neil Barovsky, the special inspector general overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which funds HAMP (The Dem's program to help homeowners avoid mortgage bankruptcy), had this to say. The high profile mortgage-restructuring program "has undoubtedly put people into foreclosure". "It's a parade of documentation horrors." Many borrowers might end up "worse off than before they participated." More than half of the 1.4 million borrowers who have been approved for temporary decrease in their mortgage payments under the plan will fall out and have to repay the modified difference to the bank.
As Reagan said, "the scariest words in the English language are, "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help...""

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704805204575594453938527666.html?KEYWORDS=foreclosure+crisis

the New Deal and today's recession

Jason Zwieg is an economics reporter I've long respected. In the WSJ today (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704405704575596382345085258.html?KEYWORDS=zweig), he discusses an economist from the FDR era, Melchior Palyi who had insights into the New Deal that are as true today as then:
1. Banking Act of 1933, which said that banks could not hold securities that weren't rated "investment grade" by two ratings firms. Noting that in the 1920's these bonds often went under, even in the same year they were rated, he predicted that a bank following the new rules could have 1/3 of its bond portfoloio go bankrupt. Rating agencies are so unreliable, he wrote, that it would be "more responsible to stop the publications of ratings altogether". He felt that the banks had replaced liquidity as a way to handle this risk, with "shiftability" to others that would some day "be magnified into catastrophic dimensions".
2. government push for universal home ownership (1938) would "make the population fixed to the ground" by 'overburdening them with housing costs". Limited mobility of workers in this housing collapse is thought to be a major factor in our current persistently high unemployment rate.
3. "quantitative easing" by the Federal Reserve is "a sort of Santa Claus to the economic system" that can lead to "runaway inflation" and too muchpower in too few hands.
La plus ca change...

Where do your tax dollars go?

I have written about understanding income taxes before, using the "tax receipt" idea from Third Wave. Here is another good example from the WSJ 11/6/10 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704506404575592900454547226.html?KEYWORDS=laura+saunders). As we discussed last Thursday, all of the expenditures below SS, Medicare/Medicaid, interest on debt, and the military (called "non-military discretionary spending) only account for 17% of spending. If you cancellled them all, you would barely cover 1/2 of this year's deficit.
This is a good place to note that there are 7 different ways that income is taxed at the federal level: income from work (to which 3 different tax schemes are applied: federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare), income from interest, income from dividends, income from investments and then all of these combined under another tax scheme, the Alternate Minimum Tax.

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed with a few more examples of Gov. complicity in reducing competition

Mr. Reich, It's Not the Tea Partiers Who Are Out of Touch 

In "Why Business Should Fear the Tea Party" (op-ed, Oct. 29), Robert Reich fails to state that the largest U.S. companies have played both sides of the political fence for years. The result is ethanol, windmills, the elimination of the incandescent light bulb, ridiculous car safety and gas mileage standards, the elimination of top-loading washing machines and other laws that have reduced competitiveness and established a government-business alliance that is part of our spending problem. This has resulted in a tax code that carves out special tax breaks for certain businesses. We in the tea party would like business to be competitive and not part of the ever-increasing crowd suckling on the government teat. So yes, some businesses should be nervous.

Davies Wakefield

Green Bay, Wis.

Energy: natural gas, the Marcellus shale and fracking

We were discussing the importance of natural gas as a transition energy source to carbon-free energy production. The US has vast natural reserves, most noteworthy in the Marcellus shale of the Appalachians. This has become commercial in the past twenty years due to technical advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic extraction, called "fracking". There is real controversy as to the environmental hazards of fracking. It is quite an emotional topic, so make up your own mind, but beware of using secondary sources. Here is a starting reading list:

1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shale-gas-and-hydraulic-fracturing#comments
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing
3. http://gaslandthemovie.com/
4. http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/03/natural-gas-fracking/
5. http://blogs.forbes.com/christopherhelman/2010/08/08/can-gas-fracking-pollute-groundwater-unlikely/
6. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703399204574507440795971268.html
7. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/environmental-defense-fund-admits-propaganda-effort-against-natural-gas-exploration-is-bunk-105903083.html

Cost of public school in New Hampshire

We discussed the cost of schooling in tonight's meeting. In New Hampshire public schools, it is $12,144 / pupil /year. Here is the reference:
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20101010-NEWS-10100341

Universal Absolutes

Conservatives believe that there are universal absolutes for truth, beauty and virtue. Modern science is continually proving us right.

General Articles: http://www.epjournal.net/

And a classical Jimmy attack on feminists:

Evolution designed men to prefer sexy hourglass figures because women who have them give birth to smarter babies: http://www.ehbonline.org/article/PIIS1090513807000736/abstract

Even blind men prefer the .7 wait to him ratio: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18fob-Bergner-t.html?_r=1

... and this has been the case throughout history. This study suggests that prehistoric women shared the same tastes in slutty fashion as modern women. : http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL0782181520071112

"According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today’s girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms,” said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic."

"So much for the hypothesis that men used to like fat girls before the evil fashion industry warped their minds to chase after thin girls.  7,500 hundred years ago men lusted for a hot babe in a mini skirt, same as today.  And, same as today, women knew what turned men on. There are mountains of papers which show that beautiful faces of both sexes have traits in common.  And that what is beautiful and what is ugly is not a mystery or in the eye of the beholder." (http://roissy.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/same-three-girls/)

- Jimmy

The World's First Cyborg

Watch this video:
http://en.vidivodo.com/188787/first-cyborg-of-the-world

Notes from tonights meeting

Just scatter shot of things mentioned in meeting

- how do we define good
- why do 1/3 of americans think america is a fundamentally evil nation
- the american revolution is the only revolution to not end in a tyranny
- culture is everything
- cultural changes, not chronology, is an alternative way to study history
- france's proximity to england and germany forced the top-down leadership to industrialize.
- france: catholic, etc. Top Down culture. Betrayal in verdun and the 1917 mutinies (walked to nomans land and shelled by their own artillery). french battalions at verdune were cycled to the front line, the germans funneled their troops in. so the germans who fought died, the french who fought and survived got out and told everyone else how fucked they were. 1930s france - communists versus facists. french saying "better the germans than the communists". 1940s - because their government had betrayed them the last time, they walked away when the germans attacked. 1950s - algeria and Battle of Dien Bien Phu. total loss of convidence in dien bien, and in algeria, they were successful in their fight against the algerian nationalists because of their torture their way up the command chain technique, but the French saw this in the newspapers etc. and did not want to see themselves as murderers, so they left. 1960s france gets liberal student-run entitlement gov. which brings us to present day bankruptcy.
- israel - army takes 48-72 hours to mobilize. some enemy officer realized they could use hoses to wash away their slowing dunes, so israel almost got owned. but the usa FLEW in hundreds of tanks through portugal and saved the day. israel is unsure whether the usa will provide utter support if anything happens again.
- Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before Israel move

- House of Medici, Lorenzo de' Medici
- There are no shovel-ready gov. projects, but we are throwing money at "fixing the economy" as if there were.

That's all i can remember for now, if anyone else has interesting stuff add it in the comments

also, for those who have not yet seen it, The Onion Money Pit

The Singularity: touchable holograms

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_asia/2009-09-16/163021253061.html

You've heard me discuss that I think the stories humans tell, particularly about ourselves, should be renamed from Literature to Narrative. I believe this better describes the three current basic modalities: live performance, film/video and novels. There are many intermediate forms, for example comic books and cartoons. I've become increasingly aware of a new, fourth modality: interactive video games. The newest Grand Theft Auto IV uses the "criminal immigrant" experience in America as its narrative theme. Rather like The Godfather with a joy stick.
So try and imagine what touchable holograms mean as a narrative tool. What other applications will it have? After you watch the video on holograms, review your understanding of how innovation occurs (here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531790397679612.html?KEYWORDS=innovation ) How do you prepare for this future?

An imaginative idea about taxation and the Federal budget

For many Americans, the amount they pay in taxes is larger than any purchase they make during the year, but studies show they know almost nothing about where that money goes to. This contributes to ridiculous beliefs, like the view that 20% of government spending goes to foreign aid, for example. An electorate unschooled in basic budget facts is a major obstacle to controlling the nation’s deficit, not to mention addressing a host of economic and social problems. We suggest that everyone who files a tax return receive a “taxpayer receipt.” This receipt would tell them to the penny what their taxes paid for based on the amount they paid in federal income taxes and FICA.


from this website: http://www.thirdway.org/publications/335

The Fed...here's one for Evan

"The Fed is making a big mistake by ignoring movements in the price of the dollar, movements in the price of gold, in favor of inflation-targeting, which is a bad idea. The Fed has always had the wrong view about the dollar exchange rate; they think the exchange rate doesn't matter. They don't say that publicly, but that is their view...(But currency volatility) just spoils the effect of any kind of free trade agreement." "
"What would be your winning formula today? What advice would you give to Washington that would help turn around our moribund economy?" (Mundell) pauses to think, but only for a moment. "Pro-growth tax policies, stable exchange rates...The most important initiative you could take to improve the world economy would be to stabilize the dollar-euro rate."

We all know that Evan aspires to be chairman of the Federal Reserve, or failing that, proconsul of a territory like Iraq. So here is a must read article for him. For those of us with a lower level of interest, note that Mundell, father of the Euro, sees fiat currency as a building block, made by gov't, by which others can trade more efficiently. He doesn't believe the Fed should think of itself as responsible for stimulating the economy, rather it provides the tools for others.

Cotton and Hayek

"Cotton prices touched their highest level since Reconstruction on Friday, as a string of bad harvests and demand from China spark worries of a global shortfall..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704300604575554210569885910.html?KEYWORDS=cotton+prices

This is the first sentence in a fun article discussing the modern history of cotton prices. My eye was caught by the use of the word "shortfall". Consider this word in the context of James's re-posting the quote from Hayek on "price" as the essential piece of information in balancing supply and demand. It makes us see the word "shortfall" as poorly chosen in an economic sense. Rather, the authors should have used "decrease in supply", because we are not going to "run out" of cotton this year, that would require government intervention. Rather with a decrease in supply, we are going to see an increase in price, until demand decreases to match the supply. Now the article makes sense.

the Tea Party

Here is a worthy article by Berkowitz as follow-up to our meeting dicussing the Tea Party. Unfortunately, it lacks any data. Maybe there is none to be had.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748704631504575531913602803980-lMyQjAxMTAwMDEwNTExNDUyWj.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Newest data on the rich

The IRS has released its latest data on individual income taxes, which you can view as an update on Chapter 9: The Rich, Fairness, and Politics in our textbook. You can view a summary of the data here: http://taxfoundation.org/research/show/250.html
There has been only marginal change from the previous year, with the top 1% ($380,000/yr) getting about 20% of the income and paying 38% of the taxes. Note that they pay about as much of the taxes as the bottom 95%. The top 5% ($160,000/yr) earn about 35% of income and pay about 60% of income taxes. To be in the top half of tax filers, you need to make more than $33,000/yr.
Remember that these numbers are by tax filing, and don't differentiate between single filer and joint filers (ie husband and wife). So married doctors could easily be in the top 1% 5 years out of residency with hundreds of thousands of school debt. Note also that this is taxable income. If you assume 25% net federal tax (this can vary a lot due to income mix), 5% state tax and 4% medicare/SS, then you could be in the top 1% and have a net annual income of about $250K/yr.
There is a close correlation between income and wealth. Wealth can be total net worth including house, or liquid assets only. To be in the top 1% of liquid net worth takes about $5 million. Net worth also correlates with age, so we see that high net worth individuals tend to be in their 50-60's. It's a pretty steep curve to make the ranks of these rich. You need six times the wealth to go from the 50th percentile to the 10th percentile and another six times that to get to the top one percentile. Here is a good reference. It's a little dated, but these trends move quite slowly.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/scottburns/alsoonline/wealth_scoreboard.html

Best quote from older blog, I got tired of hunting through the old posts to find it worded this way so I'm reposting it here

When your liberal friends say that capitalism demands that the individual be selfish, offer them Frederich Hayek's observation on profit:
"Profit is the signal which tells us what we must do in order to serve people we do not know. By pursuing profit, we are as altruistic as we can possibly be, because we extend our concern to people who are beyond our range of personal conception."

The WSJ and critical thinking skills

I spend 1-2 hours every day reading the WSJ cover to cover. Having the print edition is superior to the on-line addition as it allows for a faster, deeper sweep of all the articles. Today's paper, 9/14/10, presented the connection between two people that required a review of history that would otherwise not have occured to me:
1. Liu Xiabo and Andrei Sadharov. In: The Peace Prize's Subversive Potential by Gal Beckerman
2. Charles Mitchell and Ferdinand Pecora. In: Out for Blood by James Grant, in Bookshelf

when automobiles replaced horses: the Ford Model T

Here is an excellent little video on the Ford Model T, one of the great disrupters for personal transportation in the Industrial Age.
http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=S4KrIMZpwCY
Note that the Model T's engine, 20 horse power, is not equivalent to 20 horses. It moves at 10 times the speed, due the difference in power density between engines and horses.

Government and the Use of Force

A thoughtful article on Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and the free West.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703358504575543762918272950.html?KEYWORDS=stephens+bret#articleTabs%3Darticle

Spider web silk and new technologies

So what effect will having an abundant cheap new material like this be? We all need to pay better attention in Mr. Chisholm's class
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/silkworm-spider-silk

Critical thinking post

This is from Friday's WSJ (let me know if you can't access it).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704483004575524902014176726.html?KEYWORDS=apple+nano
In Comments, give three topics, raised by this post, suitable for a club meeting.

Could this be the club manifesto for 2010?

Read this post and see if you can refute any of the gazillion contentions.
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/from-the-unbelievable-to-the-passe/?singlepage=true

From a classic Christopher Caldwell essay from September 7, 1998, issue of The Weekly Standard, "1968: A Revolting Generation Looks Back": How fitting that Obama's entire working experience was as a Community Organizer, which is, at its core, organizing "grievance" groups for political action.

"The victory of lifestyle politics over class politics had huge consequences. It broke the lower classes' monopoly on grievances against society; the well-off—or subgroups of them, presenting themselves s 'women,' or 'gays,' or 'students'—could suddenly be 'alienated,' too. And they pushed their claims of oppression under a wholly new type of political discourse. The Myth of Objective Consciousness could not—by definition—be dethroned through rational argument. As Herbert Marcuse said, 'A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization.' Because that civilization was so reasonable, so democratic, to argue on its rational terms was merely to make oneself a dupe of power. So sex and drugs and, most of all, 'feelings' became appropriate weapons in the political arena."

Tisdall Textbook - New Link on Right

You will see on the top right of this blog a link to "Tisdall Textbook"

I copied all of the Chapters from the wiki and all of the critical reading (magna carta etc) into it. This will be more of a static (but incrementally growing) textbook for new members than a dynamic blog. This is still the main site.

What do you guys think should be on the Critical Reading List? This can span fiction to political theory, whatever qualifies to you as Critical.

- James

Marriage and Poverty

We talk about this a lot. Here is a nice slideshow showing the data:
http://www.slideshare.net/theheritagefoundation/marriage-poverty-slideshow

Tonight's Meeting

We need to not let what happened tonight happen again. Ie. we can't talk about pornography for half of the time.

Projection;
- We will try to get voting for the posts on this blog. Easy to discern quality of the posts.
- Currently setting up a parallel blog which will be a textbook, ideally read by everyone before coming to club.
- More soon. I have homework...

Shakespeare quote

Hey guys,

I just picked a quote that I thought was fitting when I setup the blog. Now we're on our feet, anyone have any other suggestions?

- Jimmy

The Democrat's Economic Recovery of 2008-10

Principled debate over why our present economic recovery is so tepid has to include comparison with recovery from the recession of 1981-82 which started the Reagan presidency. You can start with this editorial from the Wall Street Journal 9/21/10:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989304575504053230524906.html?KEYWORDS=two+recoveries#articleTabs%3Darticle

Funding for a Club WSJ Account

Given the great respect we all have for the WSJ, I think it would be appropriate if we could get an online account which club members could share. Or something. Funded by Student Council.

I'm not sure how login works - ie, can more than one person be logged in at a time - but if this is possible I see no reason why Student Council couldn't hook us up with the funds for such an account.

What do you guys think?

- Jimmy

____

Update: I spoke with E. Gastman and he thinks we should just ask the library for an account first. I'll get on this asap.

Outline for this week's meeting Sept 23, 2010

THE FEDERAL BUDGET AND THE FISCAL GAP

THE SIZE OF THE PROBLEM

- US economy: $14.4 Trillion (2009)
- US gov’t: revenues $2.14 T
budget $3.52 T (2009)


1. debt as a % of GDP: annual: 10% in 2009 (sustainable 2-3%)
aggregate 60% in 2009 (ideal <40%; meltdown >90%, in 2020)
future: 500% including future obligations
- a reasonable annual goal: 2% (therefore need to derive 4% GDP = $500-750 Billion)
2. growth is compounding (Rule of 72)
- current interest on debt is 2.9%; therefore to cover this, we require growth of >2.9%
- Romer (Obama’s economist): a tax increase of 1% GDP will ↓GDP 2-3%
- current revenue projections = 18% GDP; spending projections = 24%
3. sources of new revenue:
- raise income taxes (end Bush tax cuts: 0.9% rich only, 2.1% all lose them)
- index Social Security to all income
- VAT
4. cut spending
- 33% Medicare/Medicaid, 21% SS, 20% defense, 8% debt, 18% discretionary








CONCEPTS:

- Laffer Curve: effect of taxes on revenues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

- Woodhill: tax revenue versus decrease in GDP growth (present value) http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/09/15/hate_the_laffer_curve__try_woodhills_98671.html

- Hauser’s Law: federal tax revenues have been 20% of GDP, regardless of tax rates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser's_Law



- Present Value and Rule of 72: to understand the power of exponential change.
http://www.econguru.com/present-value-and-future-value/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_72

- Free market Capitalism: see Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU
remember that economic freedom is better measured by failure than success (See: Schumpeter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction


Go to this website and try the simulator: http://crfb.org/stabilizethedebt/

Science Fiction : and you thought I made this stuff up

"Taken as a whole, the field of science fiction today is where most of the most interesting thought about human society can be found. At a time when many academics have become almost willfully obscure, political science is increasingly dominated by arcane and uninspiring theories and in which a fog of political correctness makes some forms of (badly needed) debate and exploration off limits, science fiction has stepped forward to fill the gap. In the work of writers like David Brin and Neal Stephenson there is more interesting reflection on America’s place in the world than you will find, I fear, in a whole year’s worth of reading in foreign policy magazines. Robert Heinlein’s work brilliantly lays out the ideology of populist libertarianism and predicted the revolt against the welfare state that has defined American politics since the 1980s. Read C. J. Cherryh’s foreigner novels for insight into international relations and her Cyteen novels to sharpen your wits about both international politics and the impact of technological change on human society.

The biggest single task facing the United States today is the unleashing of our social imagination. We are locked into twentieth century institutions and twentieth century habits of mind. Science fiction is the literary genre (OK, true, sometimes a subliterary genre) where the social imagination is being cultivated and developed. Young people should read this genre to help open their minds to the extraordinary possibilities that lie before us; we geezers should read it for the same reason. The job of our times is to build a radically new world; speculative fiction helps point the way."

From: Walter Mead at http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/ on Sept 18,10. Read the whole thing.

Outline for this week's meeting

This week's topic is the federal gov't fiscal gap. Please recommend any changes. Philip

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1dI47Wcs0B_TulAlhTGD4eyQHetQ8yPabFn4GniJvScA&hl=en&pli=1#

Quote

Tisdall, I Googled this and couldn't find who it was from:

"Economics is history masquerading as physics"

Who wrote this?

- Jimmy

Debate Strategy

Over the course of our meetings, Dr. Tisdall will often critique those participating in discussion on their debate tactics. Here are a few pointers that I remember. I will post these whenever they come up in meetings.

- Never accept someone else's assertion
- Know the difference between asking a question and stating a fact. If one of your points is true, say it as such.
- Re-frame what your opponent is saying. Tell they what they have said. Control the frame.

The Genomics/Proteomics Revolution (a subset of GRIN)
I wanted to follow-up my comments at this week's meeting with a story. You will recall my declaring that your generation is in the midst of a biologic revolution that is rapid and profound and that it will cause changes that are going to disrupt our current cultural fabric. Well, the next morning at work, I met with a salesman from the start-up biotech company Pathwork, who told me that his company, about one year old, was establishing a niche in cancer diagnostics in the area of cancers of unknown primary. This refers to the 5-6% of cancers that first appear after they have spread (called a metastasis), so that it may not be clear what organ they started in. For example, your cancer may first present because it has spread to your liver, even though it started in the colon. This matters, because there are new biologically-derived drugs ( called targeted biotech therapies) that are organ specific. These didn't exist 25 years ago. Until this meeting, all I could have told the doctor about which organ your cancer had started in was, "I don't know". Pathwork has the developed the science that allows them to extract the RNA from as little as 300 tumor cells (a very small amount), examine the RNA for the 2000 gene mutations that they have discovered to occur in the 15 adenocarcinomas likely to metastasize, and tell you which organ your tumor started in. You can then receive the right treatment. Now get this, the first research in this area started just 9 years ago, and now it is at the level of small community hospitals.
If the cost of $4000 sounds like a lot, bear in mind that the biologic drugs cost $6-9,000 /month for as long as you live, which may be years. There are currently 600 new biotech medicines in human clinical trials or under review by the FDA for all diseases (not just cancer). The cultural and political manifestations are quite unimaginable. Philip

Past Club Discussion Notes (from phone notepad)

Let me preface this by saying I wish I had audio records of all of our meetings. Unfortunately this is not so, and all I have in writing is a few quickly typed names and ideas on my phone. Some of these may be hard to understand, but I'll post them all anyway in case they end up triggering thought in someone else's head. I have written within linear brackets [ ] next to a few notes. Writing within these brackets is not from the original note. As I am just going through all of these as I post them, I am emboldening ones which I need to ask about at the next meeting.

- The Fountainhead [Ayn Rand novel]
- Gone With The Wind
- Mirror Neurons
- Minnesota Identical Twins Project
- Definition of Culture: Everything that doesn't need to be explained
- Beyond mirror neurons, you must know how your audience thinks (ie another culture)
- Breaker Morant [1980 film, I ended up watching this, it was brilliant]
- Gallipoli [1981 film, also watched this, also brilliant]
- Atonement [I believe Evan suggested this film, I have not yet seen it]
- The Beach - Leonardo Dicaprio [I believe Evan suggested this film, I have not yet seen it]
- Waterloo [1970 film, I forget who suggested this]
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- A Confederacy of Dunces [novel, I read it over the summer. It was pretty good. Note: Not brilliant.]
- Gender Equality [hahahahahahaha... fuuckkk]
- The Lunar Society [I am unsure where this is from, although I'm pretty sure it was from a Club meeting]
- Allen Furmer writer 1930s [I spelled this incorrectly on my phone, and still have no idea who it is. Tisdall was very enthusiastic about his work. I'll have to find out.]
- All group rights are gained at the expense of other groups. All individual rights come at the expense of government. [and vice versa]
- Rule of 72 [Easy way to calculate doubling rate. I understand how it works, but am still hazy on all of it's economic implications.]
- Camel's Nose [an old Arabian proverb: "If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow."]
- Government doesn't create money. It takes money. [http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN8.html#B.II]
- Hayek Capitalism [Oh how young I was...]
- Blast from the Past [1999 film, context was a discussion of the Fulda Gap. Quote: "CALVIN     What? Did the politburo just one day say - "We give up?" ADAM Yes. That's kind of how it was."]
- Alan Furst [maybe this is the 'Allen Furmer' of a bullet points up...]

And that's all I have from last year's meetings. Hopefully it will spur some thoughts or laughs.
I'll leave you with a funny one from the summer (I try to record great lines); "Well I feel bad that we didn't bring anything... other than our own alcohol."

Notes from last night's meeting. I am now taking liberty to slightly edit these since they are fresh in my mind.:

- Transformation of the female in 1960: Biology (birth control), Homemaking (vacuum), Mental Labor > Physical Labor (The one reason we will always be better than women is upper body strength. Unfortunately that no longer matters.)
- Change comes when self perception changes.
- Algorithms are the new calculus. Calculus is to physics what algorithms are to biology.
- Black Swan [See "Critical Literature" on right]


That is all,

- Jimmy

Welcome Message

I initially sent this to the co-heads and Dr. Tisdall by email, but figure it can double as an intro to those new to the blog:

I sent out invitations to you all so that you can contribute. If anyone has any aesthetic suggestions let me know. The red-white-red stripe is a nod to The Austrian School of economic thought.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I find that at Exeter I have many 10 minute long segments of free time. During these times I read a lot of quick blog posts etc. I get the sense this blog will be the perfect way to continue our banter throughout the week with Tisdall and each other. Given the fact that I value my 1-2 hour of republican club time each week more than any class, in terms of learning efficiency, I hope this will be an effective way of expanding that short amount of time.

Well, I think the best thing to do is hit the ground running with posts. Let's all get writing.

Post anything and everything - Cobbe, links to that book you were talking about, Evan, post those op-eds you wrote, Min-Jae, do whatever it is you do. Tisdall - you are ahead of all of us. As you claimed to the new club members, let this blog be a display of your mind. I think I speak for all of us when I say we really, really want to know what you're thinking.

- Jimmy

Finding Your Stance: The World's Smallest Political Quiz

This has always been a favorite in our little group, and as tiny as it is, it manages to serve its purpose well. So go ahead, take the world's smallest political quiz and find out where you stand!

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

Republican Club Publications of the Past

http://pearepublicanclub.wikispaces.com/

http://www.pearepublicanclub.blogspot.com/