The past two weeks have been the beginning of the semester crush, together with a lot of other writing projects coming together at the same time, which has meant little attention to the blog. That’s changing, as things are settling into a new steady state.
One of the things which I want to blog a great deal about this semester is an entirely new course that I’m teaching “Business and Public Policy.” It was a great deal of fun to put the course together, as it draws together quite a number of my personal, scholarly, and research interests. One thing I found the blog very useful for was working through issues for lecture and discussion, and B+PP is well suited for that.
There’s a simple answer. (Other than the January thing). It’s because those evil Americans have used a sooper sekrit Death Star laser to blow up our outer atmosphere.
As Bill Cosby’s Noah said to God, “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.”
I’d like to propose this as our new national motto:
Russian scientists are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that the high-energy beam fired into the upper heavens from the United States High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) radar facility in Ramfjordmoen, Norway this past month has resulted in a “catastrophic puncturing” of our Plant’s thermosphere thus allowing into the troposphere an “unimpeded thermal inversion” of the exosphere, which is the outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
To the West’s firing of this ‘quantum’ high-energy beam we had previously reported on in our December 10, 2009 report titled “Attack On Gods ‘Heaven’ Lights Up Norwegian Sky”.
To how catastrophic for our Planet this massive thermal inversion has been Anthony Nunan, an assistant general manager for risk management at Mitsubishi Corporation in Tokyo, is reporting today that the entire Northern Hemisphere is in winter chaos, with the greatest danger from this unprecedented Global event being the destruction of billions of dollars worth of crops in a World already nearing the end of its ability to feed its self.
So powerful has this thermal inversion become that reports from the United States are stating that their critical crops of strawberries, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables grown in their Southern States, are being destroyed by record cold temperatures. The US is further reporting record amounts of snowfall in what they are now warning may be their worst winter in 25 years.
Reports from the United Kingdom today are, likewise, showing a Nation in chaos as brutal cold temperatures continue to batter the British people suffering under the worst snow blizzards to hit them in almost 50 years. So dire has it become in the UK that their National Grid yesterday issued only its second warning in its entire history stating that their Nation’s gas supply was running out due to this unprecedented event.
Believe it or not, it gets weirder from there. It’s not the completely perfect piece of moonbattery: it’s not blamed directly on George W. Bush (I mean, how hard would it be to throw in that Halliburton must be the contractor building HAARP? The editorial standards at the Pakistan News and Pravda are slipping). I guess that’s just implied? Plus, how are the Knights Templar and the House of Rothschild involved?
The semester starts up next Wednesday, and the students get back to campus the end of this week.
Last week was delicious: with the kids back at school, it was a seemingly endless time to just sit at the desk and write. I’ve got a number of writing projects in the chute, and by the fall semester two of them had formed an ice dam of sorts, blocking the whole flow. Prioritization, and insight developed from a bit of critical distance broke the dam, and so it’s been fun sitting back and letting it flow.
One entirely new class this upcoming term: Business and Public Policy, which I’m looking forward to enormously. But it’s been a fair amount of work getting that up to speed as well.
Favorite time of the week, though: listening to “In the Bleak Midwinter” while thumbing through the Burpee Seed catalog. Dreams of spring are rife.
BragawBlog movie recommendation: Young Victoria. AWESOME! We saw it on date night last night, and it was perfect–but then again, I’m an Anglophile and a bit of a throwback sort of guy.
One hazard: I did get smacked by The Dear One for making the suggestion that the movie could’ve used Colin Firth’s Darcy to come swooping in to give Prince Albert a wedgie, and some true English blood in the Royal Bloodline. Albert was a bit too emo for my taste, but then again I like my English heroes more in the Jack Aubrey/Lord Nelson rather than Lordy Byron mold. (Note to self: must not profane the sacred memory of Firth/Darcy [or "Farcy," as I sometimes refer to him]). The dangers of being married to a Jane Austen fan.
Anyhoo, here’s the trailer: luscious sets and costumes, probably should win Academy Awards in those categories if they don’t decide just to give the whole cart of them to the wretched Smurf Terminators. In some sense, the movie would’ve been even better as a 10 part BBC miniseries. I found myself very much wanting to see more of their domesticity: the scene where they both sit at their desks at the end was truly priceless.
Of course, I give it about a month before someone does an awesome trailer mashup of Young Victoria and Young Frankenstein, particularly since Victoria’s mother bears a striking resemblance to Frau Blucher (NEEEEIIIIGHHHH!) (Bonus points for mashing up Young Victoria into a Buffy-esque vampire/zombie killer)
There’s no catching up on the blog about everything that’s transpired in the last week without spending all day on one post (which I don’t have): the Harry Reid racist comments double standard, Dodd getting forced out, Dorgan retiring, the underwear bomber, the Mass Senate special election…. Safe to say that this spring’s Intro to American Politics class is going to be interesting.
Seriously, I haven’t gotten this excited looking at the hull of a ship since Australia II was lifted up out of the water in Newport after winning The Cup. (I think the fact that my Dad has a masters from MIT in Naval Engineering & Design is showing…)
Meet the latest ship in the United States Navy: the USS Independence, the first in the new class of littorial combat ships.
“Littorial” means it’s designed as a close to shore combat ship that draws very little and as the picture shows has an incredibly tight turning radius. Think a WW2 PT boat that’s spent a year training with Mark McGuire’s pharmacist and dressed in a Conan the Barbarian costume.
Destination: the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa, once trials are complete one can well imagine.
The only thing that would have made it perfect would’ve been to name it the USS Stephen Decatur.
The spam sure piled up over Christmas Break! Unfortunately, there’s no way to sort all that, so if you’ve commented, please accept my apologies. I also still have no idea of traffic or visits, since we still don’t have google analytics.
Things I’d like to add in the new year to make the blog more functional: a column widget to put in the feed from my twitter account; sitemeter or google analytics scrip to be able to track traffic; a library thing widget to be able to share book ideas; tag word cloud; and a flickr stream for campus pics. We’ll see.
he Financial Times UK comments on the near insolvency of the CoE church pension fund. Notes the Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop of York criticism of the equity market when the Church of England itself has been playing the market with risky investments:
Questions are now being asked as to how the Church was able to lose so much and why its actuary ignored a decade of advancements in portfolio theory to advise on a course of action it knew to have inherently large risks. While UK pension schemes are all suffering the after-effects of the credit crunch, the Church’s stands out; unusually, it invested all its assets in stock markets. “They just decided to go double or quits at the casino,” says John Ralfe, a pensions consultant who has been critical of investment strategies that focus on the returns, but not the risks, of equity investment.
Broken dioceses such as Winchester must now foot the bill. The annual cost each diocese must remit to the church’s central pension pot, already the cause of a budgetary nightmare, has risen from £4,672 per pensioned member in 2003 to £7,571 in 2008 and is set to worsen. To boot, ordinary parish priests face the unenviable role of leading the UK workforce into later, poorer, retirements. Church authorities have concluded that clergy must now work until 68 and need to have been in service for 43 years if they are to receive a full pension. Clergy can, however, “rest assured” that existing pensions are secure and will be paid, according to Jonathan Spencer, chairman of the Church of England’s pensions board.
The crisis facing the Church pension fund is only one of a litany of problems affecting public and charitable schemes around the world. Isolated from the public glare meted on the retirement funds of blue-chip companies, they long relied on unchallenged actuarial assumptions and outdated investment principles that are only now beginning to reap the whirlwind.
In Business and Public Policy this spring, we’re starting off with Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money to give students an overview of the historical overview and development of the connections between governments, organizations, and public finance. My favorite chapter is on the Mississippi Bubble from the early 1700s. Good thing something like that couldn’t happen today.
The Economist looks at the economic dimensions of Harry Potter. (Not an examination of economics in Harry Potter, mind you: that would be an entirely separate piece examining the creepy absolute statism of wizarding public policy and law.)
