CapitalistImperialistPig

Dennis Ross , who held key State Department posts under the first Bush and was a special mid-East envoy for Clinton, has a nuanced discussion of the threat posed by Iran's attempt to gain nuclear weapons in today's Washington Post. His bottom line is that war against Iran would be very bad and so would Iran getting nuclear weapons. War would be difficult and expensive, possibly even calamitous for the US, but a nuclear Middle East would also be pretty bad. In either case, their is a significant threat that Mid-East oil might be lost for a long time, with huge economic effects. His suggestion is that the US engage in direct talks with Iran, which would provide leverage to force Europe to agree to sanctions. While one can argue that the Europeans were trying to negotiate something like this with the Iranians, they were never able to put together a package of credible sanctions and inducements, because the United States was not really a part of the effort. True, this country ha...

My wife, a teacher, says that this week is teacher appreciation week. Is there a physicist appreciation week? Hmmm. I wonder what I should get for Luboš?

Newsweek has an interview with Al Gore on his new movie and book, An Inconvenient Truth . The online only story is entitled "At some point, reality has its day." Most of the story is not new to those who follow the climate debate, but there are some nice quotes. On the deniers and the Exxon Mobil connection: ...I think that it’s an example of the Upton Sinclair quote that “It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding.” The behavior of ExxonMobil is disgraceful. They finance in whole or in part 40 organizations that put out disinformation on global warming designed to confuse the American people. There has emerged in the last couple of decades a lobbying strategy that is based on trying to control perceptions. In some sense it’s not new, but it’s new in the sophistication and the amount of resources they devote to it. It’s not new in the sense it’s the same thing the tobacco industry did after the surgeon general’s repor...

It is not widely appreciated that the foreign policy George Bush has been pursuing since late 2001 has been an unqualified success - for some. Who, exactly? Consider one data point: in January of 2002, the price of a barrel of crude oil was $18 (See, e.g., this NYT story ). So who loves you George? Saudi Arabia, Vladamir Putin, Exxon Mobil (first quarter profit, $8.4 billion), Chevron ($4 billion), etc. A very bad day for the lamb might just be a pretty good one for the lion.

Every tyranny suppresses speech and the press. Every tyrant fears the truth. The more bureaucratic tyrannies, like Communism and the Roman Catholic Church, established elaborate apparatus to suppress dissent. The founders of the United States well understood this and so freedom of speech, religion, and the press are incorporated into the Bill of Rights. This post was prompted by this fragment from a recent Lumo post: Pure science is studied because the human beings have an inherent desire to learn the truth. As it happens, I would like to agree with the sentiment, but as I said in a comment on that post: From where I sit it looks like most people are mainly interested in shoving their version of "the truth" down other peoples throats. That applies to Muslims, Christians, atheists, and some string theorists. Dependable whack-a-mole that he is, Lumo promptly reinforced my point by deleting the comment. So why is it that tyrants fear dissent? Because their rule is built on ...

Lubos has this post up on the debate over funding particle physics, and it's a typical Motl mix of insight and mischief, but I don't want to comment on that here yet. Instead I want to mention this question that his post drew in the comments from Rae Ann: Have there been very many products of pure science that haven't eventually become applied and/or recreational? A very good question with a "yes, but" answer. Fundamental science has a tendency to become important for applications, but sometimes the incubation time can be pretty long. The thirty-something year old standard model in physics might be considered recreational for students, but so far it doesn't seem to have had any important technological implications. General relativity took 70 years or so to become relevant for GPS. Electricity and magnetism took a few hundred years from the initial investigations before technological relevance (but much less time after Maxwell finished up the theory). I ...

It's nice to be rich, must be what Rush Limbaugh is thinking right now, and I suspect that his lawyer is feeling the same. He has apparently reached a deal with authorities on his drug charges whereby he will pay $30k in fines and court costs in return for getting a chance to escape with a clean record (no conviction) if he can stay clean for 18 months. Still, it's nice to know that he does now have an arrest record.