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Thursday, December 15, 2011
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Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The British Euro Farce
By ROGER COHEN
Published: December 12, 2011
LONDON — The British, or rather English, mistrust of what lies beyond the Channel has always been fathomless. W.H. Auden, observing a “cult of salads,” jested that “before very long” the south of England would resemble “the Continong.” There across the sea, on a suspect Continent, lay lands of constitutions, Napoleonic legal codes, defeated armies, imperfect freedom, rabies, wife-swapping and garlic.
Auden, of course, was writing before the birth of the Tory Euro-sceptic, the pinstriped effluence of an ex-imperial nation. This specimen’s ascendancy was reflected in Prime Minister David Cameron’s veto of a Europe-bolstering treaty change to defend the euro through greater fiscal cooperation and tougher sanctions on nations going Greek.
The Euro-sceptic wants less Europe not more. In the place of “ever closer union,” the Euro-sceptic wants ever looser union and, if possible, none whatsoever. In his or her — and it’s overwhelmingly his — heart beats the spirit of Britain’s “finest hour” and the United Kingdom (with a little help from the Yanks) holding out against the Luftwaffe. Only now the object of resistance is Germany’s glum Frau Merkel.
Or so the Tories see it. Since Cameron’s “No,” there’s been much chatter about the return of Britain’s “bulldog spirit.” Self-delusion is a lingering attribute of former imperial nations adjusting to a lesser reality. In fact Cameron, playing the wrong chips without partners or preparation, was not so much opposed on grand principle as eyeing an opportunity to extract concessions for the very City of London financial institutions seen as the villains of the 2008 meltdown and its dire aftermath.
That was politically inept — less the fighting spirit of the Normandy hedgerows than the self-regarding hypocrisy of the giant offshore hedge fund that Britain often resembles these days.
Even without an election five months away, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, would have been tempted to avoid shaking Cameron’s hand. With an election the snub for perfidious Albion was too good to pass up. Of course The Sun, the British tabloid whose dislike of Gauls is exceeded only by its disdain for Germans, shot back at Sarko: “Who do you think E.U. are?”
After uncertain mumblings, the deputy prime minister, Nick (“don’t call me a doormat”) Clegg, managed to reach beyond this theater to something approaching strategic reflection. Declaring himself “bitterly disappointed” at Cameron’s decision, he said: “There’s nothing bulldog about Britain hovering somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, not standing tall in Europe, not being taken seriously in Washington.”
There is no Euro-sceptic strategy; at most there’s a tactic for short-term political gain. For a long time the post-Cold-War widening of Europe to 27 members put off the need for deepening. This suited Britain, which was never interested in political union but saw advantage in a borderless European market. Now the euro crisis has exposed the need for a federative push to give the shared currency political backbone. In so doing, it has also exposed the basic British ambivalence that twice caused De Gaulle to say “Non” to U.K. membership.
As Warren Buffett has observed, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” The mid-Atlantic, as America pivots to Asia, could prove a lonely place for Britain, whose economy is heavily dependent on the euro zone.
Of course, the fiscal pact Britain rejected still has to be turned from words into reality — and if Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, declines to provide the liquidity to keep European bond and money markets working time could still run out on the euro before reform is enacted.
Still, a watershed has been reached. The air has been cleared. The proposed pact represents a necessary if tardy admission: that the euro was an irrevocable step toward the political and particularly fiscal integration that alone can sustain the currency. Ever closer union means just that. With a touch more finesse and a lot less bombast Britain could have accompanied this process without adopting the euro. Instead, it’s isolated.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Cameron’s veto coincided with a young Euro-sceptic Tory member of Parliament, Aidan Burley, finding himself at a stag party in Val Thorens — a French ski resort with a German-sounding name — along with a bunch of mates dressed up in Nazi SS uniforms and performing Nazi salutes in an atmosphere of great jollity. Burley, who’s had to apologize, footed the bill for the festivities.
Britain’s defiant freedom and independence are real virtues proven over time. The thing about the Euro-sceptics behind Cameron’s Brussels bungling is they turn past glory into posturing theater. Their nostalgia for British greatness is often no more than the trumpeting of a bunch of insular snobs who seem to have a hard time restraining their inner-fascist.
Marx observed that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Having a British prime minister say he’ll only go along with Germany saving the euro if City of London banks get an exemption from a financial transactions tax, while a Tory M.P. parties with Nazi lookalikes, and another Tory boasts of Cameron having “played a blinder,” is about as farcical as it gets.
You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter at twitter.com/nytimescohen.
NYTMonday, December 12, 2011
The Children Cried in Chilpancingo!
During and after the earthquake last Saturday, the children cried. They do not understand why the floor, always steady, starts to move, with cups and other small objects falling all over the place. The temblor lasted 45 seconds, and the children were still crying.
Imagine how the little ones in Pakistan feel when an unmanned plane bombs them!
President Obama; stop scaring little children in Pakistan!
Imagine how the little ones in Pakistan feel when an unmanned plane bombs them!
President Obama; stop scaring little children in Pakistan!
Imagining 2076: Connect Your Brain to the Internet
By THOMAS LIN and JONATHAN HUANG
Published: December 12, 2011
Far enough in the distance to dream, yet seemingly within arm’s reach, that year was attached to more predictions of technological innovations from readers than any other in the interactive, crowd-sourced timeline published online with “The Future of Computing,” last week’s special issue of Science Times.
Holographic displays. Robotic restaurants. Computers that replace doctors, translators and drivers. If it’s proximate science fiction you want, you’ll have it, it seems, at the end of the decade.
Looking at 2020 and beyond, readers imagined a future with cures for intractable diseases, direct links between brain and computer, automated everything, contact with alien life forms, sentient machines and no language barriers.
Readers were invited to make predictions and collaboratively edit this timeline, which was divided into three sections: a sampling of past advances in computing, predictions that readers could push forward or pull backward in time with the click of a button (but not, of course, into the past), and a form for making and voting on predictions. Tens of thousands of edits were made.
Starting with predictions from experts like Sebastian Thrun, Georges Nahon, Larry Smarr, Drew Endy and David Patterson, the timeline grew in scope and creativity with the addition of selected reader suggestions as word of the project spread socially via sites like Twitter.
Optimistic predictions far outpaced negative ones — a wishful view, perhaps, of technology as panacea. The most popular reader-submitted prediction came from Roy in Italy, who wrote that by 2020, “Google will provide everyone with the ability to communicate with everyone else, regardless of the specific language they speak, via their smartphone, with real-time language translation.”
Pushing and pulling dates on the timeline, readers said it would take 65 years to connect our brains to the Internet via Wi-Fi, as D. Moysey of Boston predicted, “granting nearly unlimited memory and communication ability, provided you don’t lose the signal.”
Not all predictions were rosy. In David Gibson’s dystopian view, “humans will become so integrated with electronics that more people will die from computer viruses in a year than from biological viruses.” Readers suggested this would happen about 2170.
Many of the negative forecasts were bullish on technological growth, just skeptical about our ability to control it. In 2021, Steve Williams wrote from Calgary, Alberta, “computers will become so ubiquitous that they will be relegated to appliance status like toasters, as people strive to put the misnamed ‘social media’ aside in favor of face-to-face human connections.”
Some predictions, good or bad, were open to interpretation. Within 10 years, wrote Ian Breckheimer, “more people will enter into romantic relationships with people they met online than people they met in person.”
Predictions about the far future — 2100 and beyond — took a broader view of changes that might affect all of humanity. Will we speak telepathically? Maybe by 2484, readers said. Will we be governed by an all-knowing artificial intelligence? In 2267, perhaps. Live forever? That could happen as soon as 2100, according to Jay Snipes of Pickerington, Ohio, who predicted, “Medical and computer sciences will learn to map the human brain, preserving the memories, knowledge, and wisdom of selected individuals before they die.”
When, if ever, will these flights of fantasy become fact? Perhaps the most accurate prediction of all belongs to R. Campos of Brazil, who wrote that in the year 2025, “we’ll be laughing at these predictions.”
More predictions follow.
2012: COMPUTER ON A CHIP “The high-end microprocessor of 2020 will be an entire computer on a single chip: processor and main memory versus the many processor chips and DRAM chips of today.”
David Patterson, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Readers moved this date 906 times.
2013: ELECTRONIC INK “Electronic ink becomes as flexible and thin as paper. A new print revolution starts.”
Ziad Youssfi of East Lansing, Mich. Readers moved this date 800 times.
2019: ONLINE SCIENCE “Scientific publishing will move away from the current journal-and-conference model to a model that takes better advantage of online tools.”
Scott Aaronson, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at M.I.T. He predicted 2026. Readers moved this date 836 times.
2019: UNIVERSAL MEDICAL DATABASE “Your entire medical history from birth till death will be collectively combined in one universal system and available to all your different doctors.”
Chelsea of New York. Readers moved this date 443 times.
2022: HALO OF DATA “Personalized descriptions of what and who is around you will be available at the push of a button on your smartphone, and also by default. A ‘halo of data’ will constantly accompany you. This represents the next step beyond augmented reality.”
Georges Nahon, chief executive of Orange Labs and founder of the Orange Institute. He predicted 2016. As of Monday morning, readers moved this date 674 times.
2023: CURING CANCER “By 2020, the most common forms of cancer will be treated with a personalized therapy based on genetic sequencing. A patient’s therapy will be retargeted every six months as a result of resequencing the cancer to track its inevitable evolution.”
David Patterson, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Readers moved this date 1059 times.
2024: PRACTICAL ROBOT CARS “By 2018, freeway car pool lanes will be opened to robot-driven cars.”
Larry Smarr, the founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. Readers moved this date 646 times.
2026: PROGRAMMABLE ORGANISMS “By 2030, reprogrammable tissue and organismal development will arrive. Scientists will design a life on a computer and print it out in a laboratory.”
Drew Endy, assistant professor in bioengineering at Stanford. Readers moved this date 621 times.
2031: FULL LIFE RECORDING “Most people will own and use a Personal Life Recorder which will store full video and audio of their daily lives. This will be a fully searchable archive that will radically augment a person’s effective memory.”
Jean DesRosiers of Montreal. Readers moved this date 699 times.
2039: DIGITAL ‘LIFE’ AND EVOLUTION “Systems grow so complex that new computer viruses spontaneously evolve from stray bits of code and transcription errors.”
Tim McGovern of Chicago. Readers moved this date 453 times.
2056: CASH IS OUTLAWED “Cash will become illegal, replaced with electric currency.”
S. Morris Rose of Vancouver, British Columbia. Readers moved this date 993 times.
2058: CYBERNETIC INTELLIGENCE “Enhanced intelligence will be available to most people through a combination of nanotechnology and embedded processors.”
Jason of Washington. Readers moved this date 598 times.
2060: FLYING CARS “By 2040, more people will use personal air vehicles for their daily commute than cars.”
Sebastian Thrun, developer of Google’s self-driving car. Readers moved this date 1338 times.
2063: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE “A computer program is created that has all the features of human intelligence, including emotion, creativity, the ability to learn and self-awareness.”
D. Moysey of Boston. Readers moved this date 980 times.
2114: MEMORY BACKUP “Human memory backup system: the whole brain can be synced to the cloud. Humans can restore and backup their memories to the system. The system can even restore memories into a new body after end of the original owner’s life.”
Andrew Kuo of Taiwan. Readers moved this date 952 times.
2259: COLLECTIVE LEARNING “Old knowledge will not have to be learned; only new knowledge will need to be created. Learning will become obsolete. All known knowledge will be contained on a supercomputer. Individuals can download all known knowledge pertaining to any subject directly to the brain.”
Red Dog of Florida. Readers moved this date 336 times.
NYTFokas' New Method
Professor Athanassios Fokas from Cambridge University, invented a new method to solve boundary value problems.
A group of professors, including myself, here in Chilpancingo, are studying his method, which is the result of many years of research.
What a treat!
Professor Fokas was able to put together a series of developments of the late 70s. For those like me, interested in numerical applications, this is good.
The Mathematics Genealogy Project
Wikipedia
From the book, "A Unified Approach to Boundary Value Problems",
"a) Deform the contour of integration of the terms involving the boundary values from the real axis to an appropriate contour in the complex k-plane
b) Utilize the invariant properties of the equation satisfied by $$\^ {q}$$(k,t). "
A group of professors, including myself, here in Chilpancingo, are studying his method, which is the result of many years of research.
What a treat!
Professor Fokas was able to put together a series of developments of the late 70s. For those like me, interested in numerical applications, this is good.
The Mathematics Genealogy Project
Wikipedia
From the book, "A Unified Approach to Boundary Value Problems",
"a) Deform the contour of integration of the terms involving the boundary values from the real axis to an appropriate contour in the complex k-plane
b) Utilize the invariant properties of the equation satisfied by $$\^ {q}$$(k,t). "
Short and sweet.
US Official Charged With Bribery to Plead Guilty - NYTimes.com
US Official Charged With Bribery to Plead Guilty - NYTimes.com:
'via Blog this'
American exceptionalism: anybody?
The only redeeming value here, is that the US legal system, prosecutes sleazy government officials.
'via Blog this'
American exceptionalism: anybody?
The only redeeming value here, is that the US legal system, prosecutes sleazy government officials.
Shortage of Hard Drives!?
What is that supposed to mean?
People are not buying hard drives, they are buying too many, what?
People are not buying hard drives, they are buying too many, what?
Let’s Not Talk About Inequality
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
December 12, 2011, 12:14 AM
Conservatism’s strength, its stress on the value of individual responsibility, is also its central weakness.
The right’s claim that liberalism creates a deterrent to personal initiative and generates an ethos of dependency has resonated powerfully among white swing voters crucial to the ascendance of the Republican Party over the last four decades.
As the aftereffects of the financial collapse of 2008 continue to batter the nation with high unemployment and low growth, however, the conservative message has run into headwinds.
How does the laid-off 55-year-old factory employee “who worked hard and played by the rules,” looking for a job in a market where there are 4.2 applicants for every opening, find comfort when he turns on the TV to see Newt Gingrich declare that “you’ve got to become more employable” or Mitt Romney arguing that
the American people, edified by American principles, will rise to the occasion again, securing our safety, our prosperity and our peace.
One of these principles is a merit-based society. In a merit-based society, people achieve success and rewards through hard work, education, risk taking and even a little luck.
The conservative response to crisis offered by Gingrich and Romney fails to address the anxiety and anger of those millions of Americans who suddenly find themselves with no job, no health insurance and no money to pay the mortgage.
This question will set the terms of the debate for the 2012 election.
With just over three weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, the narrative of the right is under challenge from a competing narrative originating on the left, a narrative that describes an American economy sharply skewed towards the affluent, with rising inequality, a dwindling middle class and the persistence of long-term unemployment.
Describing the influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement on the electorate, Frank Luntz, a conservative consultant who specializes in framing political messages, told the Republican Governors Association meeting in Orlando on Nov. 30, “I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort” because “they’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”
Luntz contended that shifting voter attitudes require Republican officials to carefully monitor and change their language. The public is now favorable to raising taxes on the rich, he said, but “if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no.”
On the other side of the aisle, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin said in an interview that “2012 is going to be about two fundamentally different theories of the economy.” In a Nov. 21 memo to Senator Charles Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Center, Garin wrote:
The success of the Republican Party in the 2010 midterm elections was based to a large extent on the ability of the Republicans, aided by the activism of the Tea Party movement, to focus voters’ attention on an anti-government narrative that blamed the country’s economic problems on excessive federal spending, the size of the national debt, and increased government involvement in the private economy. Recent polling, however, indicates that the Republican/Tea Party narrative about the economy has been superseded by a different narrative – one that emphasizes the need to address the growing gap between those at the very top of the economic ladder and the rest of the country.
Garin cited the findings of a Nov. 3-5 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that asked respondents to rank their support for 1.) a set of policies generally favored by Republicans which would cut spending, eliminate regulations and reject all tax increases, or 2.) a set of policies generally favored by Democrats calling for the elimination of tax breaks for the rich and tougher regulation of major banks and corporations.
The Democratic alternative received far more backing, with 60 percent in strong agreement and 16 percent voicing mild agreement, compared to 33 percent strong support for the Republican strategy, with 20 percent giving moderate support.
An ABC/Washington Post poll provided further evidence of public attitudes on the move. More than three fifths of respondents, 61 percent, said the wealth gap between the rich and the rest of the country has grown larger. The same percentage said the federal government should “pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans,” compared to 35 percent who opposed such policies. Shifting public attitudes do not, however, represent a decisive movement to the left. Instead, the Post survey shows that right now the public is divided, with no clear advantage to either party.
The job ratings of Republicans in Congress have tanked at 74 percent negative to 19 percent favorable, dropping more steeply than Obama’s, which are 51 negative-44 positive. But the Post survey also found that congressional Republicans run neck and neck with the president when respondents are asked “who would you trust to do a better job” on handling the economy (42-42) and creating jobs (40-40). On an issue on which the public traditionally favors Democrats by wide margins, “protecting the middle class,” Obama held only a 45-41 advantage over congressional Republicans.
These mixed results point to an election in which the competition to define the substantial disagreements between the two parties will be crucial to the outcome. Will deficits and debt continue to dominate as they did in 2010, to the advantage of Republicans, or will inequality and government intervention to promote job creation be central, favoring Democrats?
Conservatives, recognizing that they may be forced by the high levels of public concern to engage on the issue of rising inequality, have already begun to develop strategies designed to shift blame back onto liberals.
Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who worked in the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations, argued in a blog post published by Commentary that a Congressional Budget Office study shows that worsening inequality results in part from the fact that government transfer payments
have become less progressive. Why? In large measure because rising entitlement payments are going to wealthier seniors at the expense of lower-earning young people. For example, in 1979, households in the lowest income quintile received 54 percent of all transfer payments; in 2007, those households received just 36 percent of transfers.
In a Nov. 15 speech at the Heritage Foundation, Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, called for addressing inequality by means testing Medicare coverage and Social Security benefits:
Rather than raising taxes and making it more difficult for Americans to become wealthy, let’s lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive. The President likes to use Warren Buffett and his secretary as an example of why we should raise taxes on the rich. Well, Warren Buffett gets the same health and retirement benefits from the government as his secretary, but our proposals to modestly income-adjust Social Security and Medicare benefits have been met with sheer demagoguery by leading members of the president’s party.
The issue of inequality is inherently dangerous for Republicans who are viewed by many as the party of the upper class.
An Oct. 19-24 CBS/New York Times poll asked respondents whether the policies of the Obama administration and the policies of Republicans in Congress favor the rich, the middle class, the poor or treat everyone equally. Just 12 percent said Obama favors the rich, while 69 percent said Republicans in Congress favor the rich.
In this debate, Obama and the Democrats have another factor in their favor – the unrelenting internal pressure on Republicans to remain loyal to conservative orthodoxy, even when such orthodoxy is a liability in the general election. Republicans are now falling directly into that trap.
Romney, desperate to discredit Gingrich’s surging bid, is setting the trap by attempting to create a new conservative litmus test that Gingrich cannot pass. Romney wants to make support for the radical Ryan budget — passed earlier this year by the House but rejected by the Senate — a must for every Republican candidate.
The non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that the Ryan plan “would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals” and “eliminate traditional Medicare, most of Medicaid, and all of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, converting these health programs largely to vouchers that low-income households, seniors, and people with disabilities could use to help buy insurance in the private health insurance market.”
In a May appearance on Meet the Press, Gingrich described the Ryan proposal as “right wing social engineering.” Now, Romney is running an online ad, “With Friends Like Newt, Who Needs The Left.” The ad quotes prominent conservatives criticizing Gingrich, ending with Pat Buchanan describing the former Speaker as “out of the left wing of the Republican Party” and Ryan asking, “With allies like that, who needs the left?”
Democrats are delighted to see Romney put the Ryan budget once again into the headlines. “When you go through what’s in the Ryan budget to voters in focus groups, they are horrified by it,” Democratic pollster Garin said. “The inequities of the Ryan budget are not just striking, they are shocking to people. To make Medicare much less affordable while continuing to add on new tax breaks for people at the very top is mind-blowing.”
It would be difficult to imagine the Republican establishment allowing the presidential nomination contest — in a climate of stark economic adversity for millions of unemployed Americans — to be defined by a fight between Romney and Gingrich over the Ryan budget. But already that vaunted establishment has arguably damaged the party’s prospects by failing to persuade a credible, compelling and charismatic competitor to enter the nomination fight, leaving the field to candidates widely viewed by party loyalists as vulnerable.
Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics.”
NYTDid She Know?
"–Hija, ve el cielo cómo está de quebrado, seguro va a temblar, y ve cómo están estos edificios de feos, fue como, aseguró, convenció a Diana Iris de que no se los dejara, desde el viernes a las 5 de la tarde."
La Jornada Guerrero
Look at the sky, it is broken, we'll have an earthquake, and look at these old buildings, so ugly, was the way she told her daughter Diana Iris, and convinced her not to leave her the grandchildren Friday at 5 PM.
How did she know?
It served her well. though! I told this story to Doña Mica downstairs, here at the school. She said: "Yes when the clouds are broken, there may be an earthquake".
La Jornada Guerrero
Look at the sky, it is broken, we'll have an earthquake, and look at these old buildings, so ugly, was the way she told her daughter Diana Iris, and convinced her not to leave her the grandchildren Friday at 5 PM.
How did she know?
It served her well. though! I told this story to Doña Mica downstairs, here at the school. She said: "Yes when the clouds are broken, there may be an earthquake".
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