... the world's richest 500 individuals have the same income as the world's poorest 416 million people.Here Kristoff means combined income. It is an astounding ratio, almost 1 to a million. Assuming many people can be "bought" for 10 times their income, each of these 500 lords could pay for 50,000 vassals and still retain half their income. That's a pretty large barony.
The Globe and Mail: Is your mind changing? Scientists think soThis is one in a series of fascinating findings over the past few years, but the research is only beginning. I've blogged previously on the ASPM gene (it's undergone many mutations compared to chimps) and the timing of language and alleged gene relationship (including FOXP2), most recently there was the Ashkenazi IQ article.
In two papers published today in the journal Science, Dr. Lahn and his colleagues report that the specific gene mutations they have found appear to have swept across certain areas of the globe so quickly that they are practically the norm. With prevalence rates higher than 70 per cent in Europe, for example, the researchers argue that chance alone cannot explain the changes, which first sprung up at the same time that modern humans developed culture and language...
...Testing 1,184 DNA samples from around the world, the researchers found, for example, that the frequency in West and sub-Saharan Africa is less than 10 per cent...
...They found that a particular series of mutations in the microcephalin gene appears to have been passed on and is now, surprisingly, carried by large numbers of people from different ethnic backgrounds. They estimate this series first emerged about 37,000 years ago, around the time modern humans settled Europe and began producing art.
The changes they found in the ASPM gene are far more recent, springing up about 5,800 years ago, coinciding with the rise of cities and the first record of written language.
Humans Brought Domesticated Dogs to New World More Than 12,000 Years Ago, UCLA Biologists, Colleagues ReportThis UCLA article focuses on research showing early Americans traveled with dogs into the new world over 12K years ago, but it also mentiones that native American dogs died out shortly after the Euro invasion.
... these data suggest Native American dogs have not genetically contributed to modern dog breeds,' Wayne said. 'DNA sequences from hundreds of dogs from dozens of modern breeds from throughout the world do not show traces of American ancestry. Native dogs may still have living descendants in some unsampled New World population, but their absence for a large sample of modern dogs reinforces the dramatic impact that the arrival of Europeans had on native cultures.
'Declaring war on 'terror,'' as one military strategist later remarked to me, 'is like declaring war on air power.'A superb quote. The title of the article is taken from a famous science fiction story. This article is required reading for all citizens.
Four years after the collapse of the towers, evil is still with us and so is terrorism. Terrorists have staged spectacular attacks, killing thousands, in Tunisia, Bali, Mombasa, Riyadh, Istanbul, Casablanca, Jakarta, Madrid, Sharm el Sheik and London, to name only the best known. Last year, they mounted 651 "significant terrorist attacks," triple the year before and the highest since the State Department started gathering figures two decades ago. One hundred ninety-eight of these came in Iraq, Bush's "central front of the war on terror" - nine times the year before. And this does not include the hundreds of attacks on U.S. troops. It is in Iraq, which was to serve as the first step in the "democratization of the Middle East," that insurgents have taken terrorism to a new level, killing well over 4,000 people since April in Baghdad alone; in May, Iraq suffered 90 suicide-bombings. Perhaps the "shining example of democracy" that the administration promised will someday come, but for now Iraq has become a grotesque advertisement for the power and efficacy of terror.The author off-handedly points out that we've lost the Iraq war we started, and, incidentally, so have the Iraqi people. I'm not sure history will indict Bush for the decision to invade Iraq -- though I suspect it will. I am sure, however, that he will be indicted for not firing Rumsfeld and moving Rove aside.
The sun is setting on American dreams in Iraq; what remains now to be worked out are the modalities of withdrawal, which depend on the powers of forbearance in the American body politic. But the dynamic has already been set in place. The United States is running out of troops. By the spring of 2006, nearly every active-duty combat unit is likely to have been deployed twice. The National Guard and Reserves, meanwhile, make up an unprecedented 40 percent of the force, and the Guard is in the "stage of meltdown," as Gen. Barry McCaffrey, retired, recently told Congress. Within 24 months, "the wheels are coming off." For all the apocalyptic importance President Bush and his administration ascribed to the Iraq war, they made virtually no move to expand the military, no decision to restore the draft. In the end, the president judged his tax cuts more important than his vision of a "democratic Middle East." The administration's relentless political style, integral to both its strength and its weakness, left it wholly unable to change course and to add more troops when they might have made a difference. That moment is long past; the widespread unpopularity of the occupation in Iraq and in the Islamic world is now critical to insurgent recruitment and makes it possible for a growing insurgent force numbering in the tens of thousands to conceal itself within the broader population.
Econbrowser: On the nature of economic recessionsSmall companies, startups, and some privately owned companies may yet value generalists and "personalities", but I believe most well run large publicly traded companies will be increasingly designed around modular, interchangeable, specialist units of labor. These labor units may be aggregated and outsourced, or replaced by similar units -- as the market requires.
The level of prosperity in an advanced economy results from a high degree of specialization of labor, capital, and most importantly, the institutions (shops and firms) that coordinate their activities. What happens in an economic recession is that the market's success at coordinating this specialization breaks down. Firms and workers suddenly find that the activity for which they are uniquely suited is no longer in demand, and the degree of specialization makes it infeasible to redirect these productive inputs immediately to other sectors. These sudden demand shifts can occur, for example, if sharp energy price changes and the uncertainty accompanying them produce dramatic changes in consumers' purchases of items such as cars.
More importantly, one must recognize that there are limits to what powers the federal government should exercise in a crisis. Yes, it is the right and duty of the president to override state drug policy, to determine who can or cannot marry, to indefinitely detain citizens without due process and to torture and kill prisoners as he sees fit, but disaster relief is a matter that should be left to the states.This blog is fair and balanced, and so is Fafblog.
Fafblog: With Great Power Comes Little Else
Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: The Best Use of Firefighters: Props in a Photo-OpThe allegation is that Bush is all hat and no horse.
... As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas....
The agency's core budget, which includes disaster preparedness and mitigation, has been cut each year since it was absorbed by the Homeland Security Department in 2003. Depending on what the final numbers end up being for next fiscal year, the cuts will have been between about 2% and 18%. The agency's staff has been reduced by 500 positions to 4,735.I know a few federal bureaucrats. Impressive people. Dedicated public servants. Scrupulously apolitical -- as they must be in public. They're the equal of the private sector executives I know. They can take other jobs. Under Bush they've been taking those other jobs.
