I am going to try and get back into the swing of things!

So James Fallows has an interesting take on existential threats, basically boiling down to the idea that any nation with sufficient nuclear capability represents an existential nuclear threat to every other nation on the planet, so the only way to get rid of the threat is the "Countdown to Zero," a.k.a. total nuclear disarmament.

Of course, any futurologist/technologist will tell you, that's sort of silly. The nature of knowledge is that once it's out of the bottle, it can't be stuffed back in, and when combined with the increasing ease of access to manufacturing, existential threats are going to start popping up from every group with sufficient resources and a grudge. Fallows makes the point that Iran is a rational actor, which given the nature of states, is true! Thus Iran, as a rational actor, is not going to provoke a war in which both sides lose massively. Sure, fine.

But, for example, take the recent Israel-Lebanon war; or, as NPR called it today, the "Israel-Hezbollah conflict". Now, Lebanon - as a rational state actor - would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons against Israel if it had them, and Israel would in fact be less likely to violate Lebanon's territorial sovereignty. But what if those weapons were in the hands of Hezbollah? Would Hezbollah, as a non-state actor, hesitate to use nuclear weapons for fear of nuclear reprisal? Or would they assume that they would be protected by the shield of the uninvolved civilian population in Lebanon?

I think that this sort of problem is likely to be the future of anti-proliferation efforts. We need to figure out a way of understanding, and where appropriate, changing the nuclear calculus.

This is a pretty incredible graph:





























I think sometimes that the only way the human mind can comprehend the enormity of sums like these is when it's visualized; reading about it in text is fairly unhelpful.

One of the things I find truly striking about this is the second graph in the lower right; for all that we are spending now in real terms, it's truly incredible what the absolute wealth of this nation is that the cost as a percentage of GDP is so low. That also means that for the purposes of reducing the deficit, it seems clear that cutting the military budget alone will be nowhere near enough, we're going to have to start making some hard choices about how we run our entitlement programs in this country. Often said, it's true, but little realized.

Coming to Terms with China's Energy Use

So rather unsurprisingly, Chinese officials are furiously denying that their country could possibly be the number one energy user on the planet. Why, that would be the same thing as being responsible.

If you subscribe to a realist mindset, it's hard to see why China has much interest in slow-but-sustainable development. China's economy is so large and so much of the rest of the world depends on it, that very little but either internal pressure from its citizens or global economics can have an effect on its decision-making processes, and currently green energy is still relatively more expensive than building a ton of cheapo coal-fired electric plants - leaving out long term environmental costs, of course. Now I don't know much about the state of domestic Chinese environmentalism, but I do know that brownouts due to a rocketing middle-class and industrial sectors would cause a lot more damage to the Chinese government than the ongoing pollution seems to be doing for them. I can't see for the life of me how China changes it's energy policy without further steep drops in the price of renewable energy.

The irony here, of course, is that while China is now the world's dirtiest, largest energy hog, they are also speeding ahead with green power development at the same time. I suppose that's one of the few benefits of the centralized state-capitalism model.

The frustrations of a space enthusiast

I think this article from the Atlantic pretty well encapsulates both a lot of what's wrong with the state of space exploration today and the incredible frustrations associated with being a proponent of the development of space.

The last time this country did something really innovative in regards to its manned space program was in the mid 1970s, with the development of the Shuttle as a "space truck." Since then, we've been content to pop off a couple of hundred million dollars for new science satellites or Mars rovers every few years, while now - in 2010, thirty years after the Space Shuttle was introduced - all we've managed to do is plunk ourselves in Low Earth Orbit on a multinational boondoggle that is scheduled only to last the decade.

I'm in agreement that the problem lies with the way NASA is run and the budgetary constraints of the government; in fact, it's a testament to the way that space captures the imagination that NASA budgets haven't been cut further. So really, we need to start looking at new models for space exploration.

Again, as the article notes, much of the innovation in space technology and access to space is currently being driven by private companies, and I think the Obama administration took a right turn when it promised additional funding to foster competitive action in the industry. Of course, that has been cut back somewhat with the funding authorization bill, but it's a right turn nonetheless.

At this point, the only ways I can imagine NASA getting back in the game of manned spaceflight is either

• An economic need to find cheapish sources of minerals via asteroid mining, or
  
• A new space race with China.

Given that private companies are slowly starting to step up toward the plate, I worry about the agency's capacity to handle the latter.

Outside the Box

A neat case of innovative problem solving in the New York Times. I have a feeling conservatives will read this and think, "Gosh! This is exactly why we need to privatize education and everything else! It really works!" I think the title is a tad misleading, however; the "outsourcing" done by this community is hardly a case of the free market at work. I didn't see any references to healthy competition to drive down prices in say, the "security" market of Maywood. Rather, what you have here is simply a case of a city too corrupt to function bringing in trained specialists from its neighbors at what is likely a discount. It's hard to extrapolate more than that.

Taking on the Intelligence Community

Four days without a post! Blogging is hard.

Probably the biggest news story of the day today is the Washington Post's investigation of our massively expanded intelligence community. I've only had the chance to peek at it, along with its excellently-designed infographics laying out many of the incredible statistics about all the different organizations (three Pentagons' worth of floor space!), but a thought did occur to me.

It's a clear truth that when the intelligence community is doing its job well, nothing happens and noone notices. When it's not, there is fire, death, and calls for the reform - and often the expansion - of the community itself. But under what circumstances do we call for the devolution of the beast we've spawned? It seems to me that whatever party advocates for actually reducing the size of this thing (rather than just an overhaul of command-and-coordination which is helpful but perhaps not as relevant given the community's hugeness) is going to beat savagely by the other party because we do not have the capacity in this country for much in the way of civil political dialogue.

Just sayin'.

"I stab at thee, Waldo, from the fires of hell."

Cafferty and the Tea Party

So if you've ever watched CNN's The Situation Room, then you have no doubt seen Jack Cafferty being the network's lovable curmudgeon. If you're not familiar with him, he's a somewhat grumpy older man who speaks out as an olde soule and informs us, from under his caterpillar-like eyebrows, just how things have gone wrong in the country and who is responsible.

And y'know what? Most of the time he makes a lot of sense. For example, he was today saying that Americans and Washington generally are responsible for the oil spill because of our dependence on foreign oil and our total inability to reform our energy policies.

Lovely jubbly! But the problem with the Cafferty Files is that he never actually offers any solutions. It's more just a grumpy rant against the Forces That Are Doing Us Harm; the secret to Cafferty's relative popularity is that the moment he takes a side - and says, oh, we need to put a price on carbon - his popularity drops away.

I think this is the appeal of the Tea Party. They can't be taken seriously if they were to offer actual solutions, so they either on a conscious or subconscious level suppress the actual solutions and offer that which everyone today can buy into: rage!

The trouble with relative popularity

I keep reading in the Daily Kos and elsewhere this notion that people dislike the Republican party more than they dislike the Democratic party and as such, there won't be as many pickups by the GOP in November as the current predictions would seem to suggest.

This is, in my own humble opinion, a pretty dangerous notion to be spreading - given the enthusiasm gap between Democratic and Republican voters, why would one want to push the notion that Democrats shouldn't need to worry? Every sign I've seen, anecdotal or poll-based or historical or otherwise, suggests that liberals/progressives should be at the exploding-head stage right now about how to turn this thing around. I'm usually a pretty optimistic guy, but there's no reason to put on the rose-colored glasses when a serious threat to the implementation of progressive reforms is in as much danger as it is this year.

Naturally some of it is structural, Democrats are simply overextended. And in a rational world, I think the fact that Republicans are relatively unpopular as compared to the Democrats would hold back the conservative wave. But we don't live in a rational world.

The sense of visceral frustration, especially in those districts where these races are going to be won and lost - we're talkin' Rust Belt districts and leaning-conservative pickups from '06 and '08 - is going to lead Democrats to a total whuppin' this year because Democrats own 2/3 of the government and this is the year they're finally being seen as responsible. Swing voters, who are as noted earlier typically the least informed, are going to take it out on the party in power because it's not clear why 41 Republicans in the Senate should be responsible for holding up the extension of unemployment benefits...

...that is, unless some prominent Democrat wants to get his butt out there and push the message much harder than he has been up 'til now. That's right, I'm talkin' to you, El Presidente.

Jonathan Bernstein, in responding to a post by Matthew Yglesias arguing that we need to have a democracy in which a majority can implement its agenda more easily than it can our current system, says that a majoritarian system is unreasonable because it gives the most power to the swing voter and he would prefer:

A Madisonian system, with checks and balances and separated institutions sharing powers, guards against that sort of dictatorship of the swing voters. Elections still matter a lot, but other sorts of representation matter, too. Elections matter not only because they reward good policy outcomes and punish bad ones, to the extent they do that, but also because they mobilize voters to join groups and make demands on the government, and they encourage politicians to take their representative relationships with constituents seriously. And because elections don't determine everything, citizens are encouraged to continue that involvement between elections -- and they really do so! Not all of them, of course, but quite a few, either as activists themselves, or as members of various groups. All of that counts as "democracy," and much of it would be, at least in my view, a lot less successful in a true majoritarian system.

Firstly, it seems to me that in the 2008 election, even though more pro-choice legislators (and of course, the President) have been elected, pro-choice policies have hardly been enacted. There was some speculation that the health care bill might provide additional support for abortion, but the Stupak amendment and the President's Executive Order that came shortly after the health care bill would seem to suggest otherwise.

Secondly, though, I think this misses the point. Yglesias is unhappy that - in essence -winners can't implement their agenda. I imagine he wouldn't care if it was done under a Madisonian or majoritarian system, he just thinks it would be more likely under the latter. What Bernstein is not answering in plugging his own system is how to enact change when one part of those vaunted checks and balances are preventing the rest of the system from addressing problems.

On the other hand, it's possible he figures change shouldn't happen if 41 out of 100 Senators are against it - which sounds great in theory, but I worry about dedicated opposition for opposition's sake.

This brought me a lot of joy today:



(h/t Cute Overload)

The Inaugural Post

So- I am starting a blog. It will not be the most insightful blog ever to appear on the internet, and in all likelihood only a few people will ever read it. My intention is to share interesting or important news of the day with coherent and illuminating commentary. I want to break down the wonkish words of other blogs and contribute with clearness and conciseness. Also, I would like to post pictures of cute cats.

This is going to be a blog focused on issues political, social, environmental, international, and astronomical. I have a few pet loves I'd like to share:

• The Future - predicting where the state of the world will be in the next two or three decades
• Space - the place where homo sapiens needs to be
• Sustainable development - How we can green the future without greenwashing it
• Pictures of cute animals.

About myself - I am a recent graduate from a university in the Northeast, and I come from upstate New York. My education has been focused on political science and Asia, and I have a deep and abiding love for science fiction and pop music.

My goal is to post once or twice a day, although this may increase if I get into it or there's a lot of activity going on. Thanks for tuning in!