Vinegar Joe’s Long Walk (Conclusion)

(OK – finally the last of the history post I started earlier this week. Things to do, places to, things to write about. I said I would have this second part on Friday, but … real world, you know?)

Towards the end of that day, May 6th, 1942, the road petered out. Stilwell abandoned the last of the trucks and the radio van – the radio set weighed 200 pounds alone. Last messages were sent, one advising General Brereton, in New Delhi that Stilwell and his party were on foot, heading for Homalin and then Imphal, and asking for them to be met at Homalin by resupply and medical aid. “Indian govt. should be warned rice, police, and doctors urgently needed by refugees on all routes to India from Burma. Large numbers on way. All control gone. Catastrophe quite possible. End.” Another, to the US War Department via Chunking, ended, “We are armed, have food and map and are on foot 50 miles west of Indaw … believe this is probably our last message for a while. Cheerio. Stilwell.”

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The Fermi Paradox and SETI

The Atacama Compact Array
The Atacama Compact Array

In 1950, amidst the UFO hoopla that was sweeping the world, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi posed a simple question, Where are they? By that he meant with lots of people making the argument that in a universe full of stars presumably with planets there should be lots of intelligent life out there. That seems plausible. So, he wondered, how come there isn’t a shred of evidence for it? After all, if we lived in a city full of people, wouldn’t we see them or at least see evidence of them being there? So why don’t we?

Kepler

In 1961 astronomer Frank Drake, interested in that very question, made an estimate of how many intelligent civilizations should exist inside our galaxy. The Drake Equation has seven terms, each a guess, from how many stars are born per year and how many of those have habitable planets through how many of those planets have developed technologies (like radio) that allow them to be detected. In 1961 there was not enough data to give reliable estimates to any of the terms. In the intervening 50 years we’ve accomplished enough basic research to apply actual values to the first few terms.

The Milky Way produces about seven new stars per year. Virtually every star forms within a disc of gas and rock/metal dust called a protoplanetary disc that eventually condenses into planets. According to research derived from data collected by the Kepler spacecraft, at least 22% of Sun-like G type stars have an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone, the habitable zone being defined as the distance at which water neither boils off or is continuously frozen. Result: the number of habitable Earth-like planets in the Milky Way is at least 50 billion.

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“Two Presidential Candidates: Consistent Treatment?”

Seth Barrett Tillman considers legal issues relating to the respective presidential candidacies of Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton.

Guess whose candidacy raises the most complex and troubling legal questions?

There are many fora (including several widely read individual, group, and journal-run blogs) whose mission, if not primary mission, includes discussion of time-sensitive legal issues of public interest. Should not the public be informed about these Clinton-related possibilities and risks well before votes are cast? Why the silence among journalists, academic commentators (with expertise in election law, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation), and bloggers who usually very much like to write on issues of public moment? Would not this make a suitable–if not outstanding–journal symposium issue: “The Hillary Clinton Candidacy–The Legal Issues”? Any takers?
 
Given the silence, you would almost think “natural born citizen” were the only legal issue out there. Odd isn’t it?

Why the Big Short didn’t work but the next one likely will!

In promoting the Hollywood version of The Big Short by Michael Lewis, Paul Krugman (NYT, December 18) misrepresents the central point of this excellent book, previously made by Peter Wallison, who Krugman attacks for his Republican dissent to the 2010 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) majority Report.

The Hollywood version reflects the Report’s fundamental conclusion that the root cause of the financial crisis was Wall Street greed: hardly newsworthy, disputable or dispositive. The Big Short is about the equally greedy speculators who were shorting the housing market: had they succeeded early on – as they do in less distorted markets – they would have prevented the bubble from inflating to systemic proportions.

Contrary to the “indifference” theorem (i.e., between debt and equity finance) of Nobel Laureates Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller, both household borrowers and mortgage lenders chose to finance almost entirely with debt, a strategy best described as “going for broke.” The first distortion – tax deductibility of debt – makes leverage desirable until discouraged by rising debt costs. The second distortion – federally backed mortgage funding as Depression era deposit insurance became virtually universal and the Fannie Mae “secondary market” facility morphed into a national housing bank – prevented these costs from rising. This highly leveraged strategy was guaranteed to fail systemically if bad loans entered the system.

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Cologne Tapes Erased?

German admin ordered CCTV of Cologne attack erased

Anchor: It is difficult to imagine that in front of the main train station in Cologne there wouldn’t be any TV cameras. While for the most petty crimes we often have recordings, here there is nothing.

Dr Zoltaniki: Police officers claim that data from their protocols was deleted. Yes, by their superiors.

It seems our politicians and Europe’s are on the same page, at least when it comes to destroying evidence.