Centerfield

Bombing Iran Can Bring Us All Ponies

I'm nominally in favor of bombing Iran to put off the day they get nuclear weapons, or at least to get some success on the bargaining table by carrying a big stick. But I'm pretty nervous about it, because the Administration's record so far in using military force, especially in the planning phase, is simply awful. Bush firing a skeptical Joint Chief doesn't do much to raise my confidence, either; problems on the ground don't go away when you kill the messenger in DC.

Another concern I have is that expectations seems to be FAR too high on the right and among some of the military. There's really just ONE thing we can reasonably hope to accomplish in any big scale - put off the day they get nuclear weapons. And even that's going to take some luck, because Iran has famously distributed their nuclear components around the country in reaction to similar actions against Iraq. The bombing of Libya failed to stop anything. I invite you to think of ONE terror group that's been stopped from the air.

Some seem to believe that if we bomb Iran, we also can stop Iran's interventions in Iraq. And there the record should make us all skeptical. Bombing failed to stop Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Libyan-supported groups. I'd rather see more effort spent maximizing a nuclear strike's chances than on that kind of long shot.

Maybe one contributor is that we still see a big culture of people who think that bombing things discourages the targets. But there's lots of evidence that it's the other way around. London and Berlin were hardly discouraged in WWII. Thousands of tons of bombs have hardly discouraged Hesbollah or Hamas. We were hardly discouraged when our Twin Towers were bombed.

And, the Administration and its supporters' aggressive attitude have to make life hard for the diplomats. When did Roosevelt say, "Yell and carry a big stick?"

Friday open thread

Is there anybody out there?

Edwards' Endorsement And VP Choice

I think he's playing for another shot at Veep, and it's not impossible, since he's got delegates, and they're important this time.

Whadja think? Will Obama pick Edwards, Clinton, Webb, Bredesen (my guess, because of geography), or somebody else?

Are Bigger Colleges Better Or Smaller Ones?

While I'm on education... Small schools do have fewer bureaucratic problems, and are less likely to grind students in their wheels through simple bureaucracy.

On the other hand, with bigger schools, you get more different kinds of people and more ideas floating around.

Whadja think?

No Growth: Harvard And The Ivy League's REAL Problem?

Brad DeLong has a thought-provoking post on this.

Having gone to both Hopkins (which grows like Harvard), and UCSD (mentioned as being in a growing U), and now living near UT Austin, which also believes in growth, I think he's right. Society has grown far more drastically than Harvard, and the elite caring about higher ed even faster.

This is a real problem, not just for the Ivies, but for society as a whole. Harvard, Yale, Hopkins, etc., should be admitting more like 10s-100s of thousands. It's terrible for Baltimore, for example because its best school, Hopkins, isn't producing anything like the numbers it needs to sustain itself as in a world where smarts, enterprise, and R&D are more and more important to society. Austin IS doing well, because UT's been growing to meet the increasing numbers of smart kids.

I'm happy to see that Brad DeLong seems to be somewhat recentrifying. I just rebookmarked him after a gap of six years where he was just too extreme for me to find interesting.

Wireless Internet Coming To You?

This has some real potential to get decidedly more and better ISP competition with some mobility.

There's an interesting surprise here, I judge having to do with high cost and problems in the next generation wireless technology that makes this stuff feasible, WiMax. Originally, Sprint had committed to get their own network over to WiMax and have it done years ago. Didn't happen. Evidence is that early WiMax was unreliable for years longer than earlier wireless tech curves suggested. There were also reasons to believe that Google was looking to get in on WiMax.

We can also see from the fact that there are SO many partners involved, and a huge sum involved -$14.5B, that WiMax must be way expensive. Too expensive for Sprint and others to go it alone. We can only hope it happens in a way that allowe competition on the new network.

Japan: What Children?

A Washington Post article about Japanese demographic collapse surprised me.

There's no general agreement on why said collapse, but I blame racism, and especially sexism. Japanese treat their women a little worse than we did before 1960. Women are only expected to hold certain limited jobs, they're expected to become full-time homemakers when kids come, are expected to be obedient, not only to hubby, but to the often live-in in-laws.

Remember, it takes a man and a woman to make a child - and if the woman thinks of marriage as not much better than slavery, then you're in trouble. Of course, we'd be collapsing, too, albeit much more slowly, without our immigrants. But Japan also treats most of its immigrants badly, too, so it's easy to see why they have problems.

Being very interested, I googled some and came up with a long paper on the subject. Here's the IMHO money quote:

.. 9% of Japanese mothers report they derive satisfaction from childrearing, compared to 40-70% in some other countries.

That just startled me. The Profesora loves childrearing (understatement!). But, you know, she didn't have to give up work to have him, nor give up freedom to be my, the kid's, and my parents' quasi-slave. OK, she IS the kid's slave, but she has help in that; I help her instead of expecting her to do everything.

50 years ago, Japan could get away with mistreatment - but now we have global media and blogs, making comparisons of life much easier.

More later.

Friday open thread

It don't cost nothing.

Open Thread: A Big Day

The original plan for today was already pretty big. Today's the Profesora's last day of final grading for her classes. The LAST day before summer. And that was just the planned part!

In Plan A, we WERE going to go out to our great neighborhood restaurant, Shogun, when she got home. But she got a surprise call about an hour before she was due to leave.

Two months ago, we'd placed a big order, and today turned out to be the only day for awhile when they could easily deliver such a big order. So, we put off the great Japanese and had pizza instead, to make time to get things ready.

At 8:30ish, they drove up. I saw the flatbed truck outside. Opening the door and going out, I could see all nine bookcases for us, plus another for somebody else nearby.

We got them from a great Austin specialist, The Bookcase Store. I had been a happy customer since buying their product twice, both in '97 and more recently. We decided on them for the big buy after comparing how my bookcase from '97 had held up vs others we had.

They look both nice and sturdy. I hope to get in some followup bookcase - blogging, with pictures, later. We'll have to try again on the celebration tomorrow.

What's cooking with you guys? Any weekend plans?

Myanmar's Generals Better Watch Out

The generals running Myanmar have been making it hard for aid agencies to help their people. They'd be wise to consider that not allowing aid to reach his people is how Somoza, dictator of Nicaragua, came to fall, and be replaced by the Sandinistas. His fall was specifically due to complete diversion of reconstruction money into his hands, and doing no reconstruction atall.

A little googling showed I'm not the only one thinking in this vein.

Today's Primary Cud-Chewing

Hill seems to be narrowly winning Indiana and have taken a hiding in North Carolina.

I was expecting Obama to do worse in Indiana, because of the "bitter" thing. I WAS expecting Obama to do well in NC because of the coalition between blacks and the high-tech guys like me that've widely gone Obama's way.

Looking ahead at the next round, I think PR will be a tossup between the many with good Clinton memories (yes, Bill was VERY popular there) and those sympathizing with Obama because he partly grew up in ex-colonies like PR. The racial politics is very different there than in the Mexican borderlands, so I don't see so much of that driving things.

UPDATE: Hillary won IN by only two, and Obama won NC by 14. He seems to've done fine off not only Wright, but with the ordinary folk I feared were gone from his coalition from the bitter remark.

Remember, One Virtual Life Lost Is Too Many!

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, of course, is against virtual drunk driving.

Remember, kiddo, no fun allowed!

Some Carefully Wrighted Thoughts

As I see it, the helps Obama. because it's giving him an opportunity to show his character to voters. How many people who heard his first speech think he's untested and callow anymore?

The Wright game annoys me, though, in a way, it'a compliment to Obama. Democracies have always had a habit that annoys me, politics by investigation. Instead of doing all that hard thinking and heavy lifting on issues, you hire a bunch of detectives and see what dirt they can dig up. If nothing turns up about him, you look at his buddies - and this step WILL turn things up. Never mind they aren't on the ballot. Simply associating with somebody extreme is clearly proof of...something.

That's a nonpartisan grumble, by the way - I felt the same way when Molly Ivins dug up even more extreme religious connections to Bush II. Call me old-fashioned, but I think what really matters is issues and the candidate's character.

Red Ken 'Out' And Tory Boris Johnson 'In' In London

Tory Boris Johnson is now Mayor of London, nudging out infamous two-term incumbent Labourite Red Ken. Red Ken implemented one of the first one of the first congestion charging systems, a thing that's gone over well.

Since then, he's lost alot of popularity through corruption, and by failing to get public support behind or even adequately warning the London public about the high cost of the London Olympics, changes to congestion charging, and tax hikes. Other annoyances to some voters include bad policing, playing the Islam card, and, did we mention corruption?

Much whingeing at comments are free, of course.

Friday open thread

What's up?

Is McCain Too Bush-Like to Win?

President Bush is really, really, really, really unpopular. Will McCain be able to distance himself effectively?

For me, the answer's no. To me, he's been unable to separate himself from Bush' mistakes on handling Iraq and the overdone security state.

But, my opinion certainly isn't the only one around. Whaddya you guys think?

Recession? No Recession? Whaddya Think?

Donklephant economic post reminded me I wanted to do another econ post on last quarter's news. The sickly but positive growth makes ME think I was wrong about recession.

It could, of course, continue to get worse. But I've got my doubts - as the Fed chief said, the risk revaluation crisis that was really jamming things seems increasingly resolved, and companies in trouble are now finding capital outside the troubled Wall Street investment banks which had such ugly margins.

At the very beginning of the crisis, I was thinking it couldn't be as bad as the bubble burst and 9/11 coincidence, since not so much was involved in subprimes proper compared to the kind of cash the stock markets lost. Then I came to think that it'd be worse, because the gears were jammed on the workings an entire class of investment, debt.

What do YOU think?