… who looks after things.
… but you non-Ben’s can read it if you like. I lied slightly. The next post down has some economics in it and there are some in the archives. What with the election and all maybe it’s time to check back in on the record of N. Gregory Mankiw.
No matter your politics, you have to agree Winston had a way with words.* The [U.S.**] National Academy of Sciences at least knows how to steal good writing. Their new report about economic competitiveness in science and technology, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, has a proposed solution for a mere 10 giga$/year. That’s like two weeks worth of depleted Uranium shells in Iraq
Anywho, former President of MIT, Charles Vest visited Richard Freeman’s:
Economics 2888hf : Economics of Science and Engineering Workshop
to give his insights into the report. Held in a multimedia lab of the Division of Continuing Education, there were participants at Harvey Mudd College [the top rated engineering school] and the National Science Foundation. I am told that the webcast will be posted to the DCE website later this week.
“Chuck” and I are now on a first name basis [sort of]. I thanked him for the dinner Bob Jaffe signed for. Chuck readily admitted that he is not an economist. We had a somewhat animated [I was anyway] discussion about Thomas Friedman’s, The World is Flat. For now, let me just say that I don’t think Chuck is aware of Tom’s underlying economic assumptions and how he has ‘ginned the intelligence’ to support them. In particular, Tom seemed to be bent on eliding free software and open source software. The underlying political economics is different. This article from gnu.org describes it. [I’d prefer a more stuffy quacademic treatment. I’ll look.] I’m concerned that Chuck may be doing the same thing. Rather awkward since, the free software movement started at M.I.T. Also missing from the discussion was a socio-economic analysis of just who benefits from his recommendations. The ‘U.S. economy’ is a much too simplistic answer. It has somewhat of a trickle down character to it. Said another way, it follows the Feldskew view that the aggregate indices say it all about the people. How can an economy be “doing well” if MOST of the people in it aren’t? Platonism is on the march! In any case, it’s pretty clear that if Congress enacts Chucks recommendations, a good slice of the money will land at MIT. Old Presidents never die they just lose their faculties.***
Chuck did manage to mention both “intellectual commons” and “intellectual property“**** in the same talk. I will have to listen to a recording to give a good comment.
More soon.
*not available from Project Gutenberg.
**that would be “the colonies”.
*** except at Harvard, where they do die … or leave which is the same thing.
**** Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation raises the question, “Is there really such a thing as intellectual property? Or is it an overgeneralization wrought to legitimize right wing economics? Very interesting.
The upside of growing old at Harvard is that you have young people to remind you of all the important things going on in the world. [The downside is the constant reminder that i’m not the guy i used to be.] Anyway, thanks to some Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance [BGLTSA] folks tabling outside the Harvard Science Center, i am now aware that today October 11 is National Coming Out Day. i’m thinking that the ‘Supporters’ thing means that even if you are not BGL or T, but just a boring old het, you can still wear the rainbow ribbon. You could view it as a King Christian X of Denmark thing. Or maybe you want to avoid the regrets of Pastor Martin Niemöller. Just a thought.
I agreed with their assertion last year. The world is still here, but in considerably worse shape I’m giving them a plus mark in truth in advertising. It’s a little earlier this year. It may well be bigger this year. They have been advertising on Air America Radio with a click through to the WCW national site. The Boston group has a blog. Today Oct. 5 starting at noon at the Bandstand on Boston Common. I will stop by at noon, but briefly. I’m going to respond to an invitation forwarded to me by the Harvard Cambridge Peace Walk.
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Special Seminar
The Imperative and Possibilities of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: Hibakusha and Japanese Movement PerspectivesHiroshi Takakusaki, General Secretary of Gensuikyo (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs)
Shoji Sawada, Professor of Physics (emeritus), Nagoya University, and a Hibakusha (a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing)(Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead Center’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations)
*
This event is being carried out in cooperation with the Cambridge office of the American Friends Service Committee and Joseph Gerson.
This is important because some people actually don’t know that seeking hegemony is a bad thing and why. One of the justifications for the invasion of Iraq was nuclear weapons. It was a policy of Non-Proliferation through Preemptive War. According to Scott Ritter the U.S. Government has been flying U2’s over Iran for at least two years. This is an act of war. Scott was right about the Iraqi nukes. So mostly likely, we are secretly already at war with Iran. The question is, will that war go “hot” or nuclear. Scott was wrong about the bombing starting June a year ago, but seeing the future is an imprecise science. The drumbeat from the administration has gotten louder. And with the manpower problems of the military, if the war does go “hot”, the “nuclear option” is likely. Then there is North Korea. The notion of a series of small nuclear wars to prevent proliferation is not the classical picture of THE UNTHINKABLE, but that’s kind of the point. The administration seems to be dedicated to making THE UNTHINKABLE thinkable. I don’t buy the premise.
So I’ll go briefly to WCW06, then to the Knafel, then get with Marion Lamm, then I’ll go to my little desk by the door. Maybe latter I’ll reconnect with WCW, they say they’ll be there for 24 hours, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to do it.
…and apparently someone else.
I found this posted on G level of Littauer [the old one.] Nicely done. Art and economics. Pop quiz. Identify the pictures. I know the second offhand, but I will have to Google the first. Hmm, I think I’ve got it, but I’ll Google to be sure.
I did know the answer to the first picture. I don’t see it offered in the near future at the Harvard Film Archive*, but I’m sure it’s available on DVD.
On looking at the second picture again, I realize that I don’t have any special knowledge about it. It is, obviously high tech. I initially assumed from the clean suit that it was semiconductor microchip manufacture, but mybe not. The technician in clean suit is looking at one of a row of monitors. I don’t know what is in h(er|is) hand. => I don’t know if the technician is a man or a woman. In the early days of integrated circuit manufacture, the workers who sat for hours at microscopes microsoldering the the chips to package leads where overwhelmingly women. I was in high school then. In college, the doctor from Planned Parenthood who came to give us a birds, bees, and condom talk***, added that the technicians who handled the eggs in vaccine manufacture were overwhelmingly women. But it’s different now?
——–
*You might like, En El Hoyo** offered on Saturday October 21 as part of the Boston Latino International Film Festival. Mass College of Art and the Latino Arts Center are cosponsors. I don’t know the full meaning of that.
**according to Google translate it means “In the Hole” although it sounds like the film happens above the main roadway.
***I think the Dean of Women at the time was the fossil that called the freshman women together and told them not to wear patent leather shoes. She retired early in my college career. She was worried about reflections. I’m not making this up. She had been there for a Sagan of years and it was a small Methodist school. She was worried about reflections.
