- The Thermodynamics Behind the Mac Pro, the Hypercar of Computers Strictly for thermodynamics geeks, but an interesting example of how Apple can sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to stop a hot computer running, er, hot.
- For some farmers in New Zealand, Britain and Australia, drones are not just a toy
- A Self-Driving DeLorean Is Taught How to Drift Leading-edge uselessness from Stanford.
- Sapiens as a blog post Yuval Noah Harari’s epic history of human evolution condensed into a 30-minute summary.
20 Questions for 2020
The Financial Times (behind paywall) at least gives clear answers.
- Will Boris Johnson agree a trade deal with the EU? Yes.
- Will Britain’s Labour Party return to electability? No.
- Will Angela Merkel’s grand coalition collapse? Yes.
- Will Mattel Salvini come back to power in Italy? Yes.
- Will Donald Trump win the popular vote in November’s election? No (but he will still be re-elected because of the Electoral College).
- Will the US go into recession? No.
- Will China become world leader in 5G telecoms? Yes.
- Will India regain its status as the fastest-growing large economy? No.
- Will there be war with Iran? No.
- Will South African debt hit junk levels? Yes.
- Will the protest that have shaken Latin America continue? Yes.
- Will France’s Macron engineer a “reset” with Putin’s Russia? No.
- Will we see meaningful regulation of Big Tech? No.
- Will Disney+ change the game in streaming? Yes.
- Will Uber become profitable in 2020? No.
- Will vaping be banned? No.
- Will global carbon emissions fall? No.
- Will Brent crude prices end the year above $65 a Barrel? No.
- WIll the three-decade bond rally finally come to an end? No.
- Will Europe’s banks keep slashing jobs? Yes.
So now we know where we stand. Happy New Year!
Hong Kong: only two possible end-games
Roger Cohen, in today’s NYT:
The most significant, perhaps the only, foreign policy achievement of the Trump administration has been to get behind the Hong Kong protesters while pressuring Xi on trade and keeping channels open to the Chinese leader. This American pressure, which has made Trump popular in Hong Kong, must not relent.
Mike Bloomberg, who has said Xi “is not a dictator,” and Joe Biden, who has said China “is not competition for us,” should take another look. Universal suffrage for Hong Kong is the only endgame I can see to the “one country, two systems” impasse, short of the People’s Liberation Army marching into the city and all hell breaking loose.
China’s abuse of human rights is possibly the only thing that the fractured US Congress agrees about. And Trump reluctantly signed the Bill.
Practice makes perfect
Tyler Cowen, the economist, is one of the most interesting public intellectuals around. His blog is a marvel (and a daily visit for me). His capacity to absorb ideas is remarkable. And he is fearsomely productive. So how, one wonders, does he do it?
This week he shed some light on how he works:
I write every day. I also write to relax.
Much of my writing time is devoted to laying out points of view which are not my own. I recommend this for most of you.
I do serious reading every day.
After a talk, Q&A session, podcast — whatever — I review what I thought were my weaker answers or interventions and think about how I could improve them. I rehearse in my mind what I should have said. Larry Summers does something similar.
I spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to crack cultural codes. I view this as a comparative advantage, and one which few other people in my fields are trying to replicate. For one thing, it makes me useful in a wide variety of situations where I have little background knowledge. This also helps me invest in skills which will age relatively well, as I age. For me, this is perhaps the most importantly novel item on this list.
I listen often to highly complex music, partly because I enjoy it but also in the (silly?) hope that it will forestall mental laziness.
I have regular interactions with very smart people who will challenge me and be very willing to disagree, including “GMU lunch.”
Every day I ask myself “what did I learn today?”, a question I picked up from Amihai Glazer. I feel bad if I don’t have a clear answer, while recognizing the days without a clear answer are often the days where I am learning the most (at least in the equilibrium where I am asking myself this question).
One factor behind my choice of friends is what kind of approbational sway they will exercise over me. You should want to hang around people who are good influences, including on your mental abilities. Peer effects really are quite strong.
I watch very little television. And no drugs and no alcohol should go without saying.
Footnote ‘GMU’ = George Mason University, where he works.
Quote of the Day
“Looked at in one way, everyone knows what intelligence is; looked at in another way, no one does.”
- Robert J. Sternberg, 2000
Sex sells, apparently
Well, what do you know? the best-selling book over the last decade was E.L. James’s 50 Shades of Grey, which which sold 15.2 million copies from 2010 through 2019. It was originally self-published as a Kindle ebook and print-on-demand publication in June 2011; the publishing rights were acquired by Vintage Books in March 2012. Smart move. I wonder what they paid for them.
Quote of the Day
“You don’t need to hack people to spy on them if you can get people to willingly download this app to their phone. By uploading contacts, video chats, location, what more intelligence do you need?”
- Patrick Ward, a security expert consulted by the New York Times for “ Total Surveillance Is Not What America Signed Up For.”
Holy Cow! er, water
This is the kind of thing you really couldn’t make up.
A Roman Catholic church in rural Louisiana hoping to maximize its blessings has come up with a way to do it: filling up a crop-duster plane with holy water and letting the sanctified liquid mist an entire community.
“We can bless more area in a shorter amount of time,” Rev. Matthew Barzare of St. Anne Church in Cow Island, La., told NPR.
Following this past Saturday’s mass, parishioners from the church in southwestern Louisiana headed to an airstrip about five minutes away from the church.
Churchgoers brought with them 100 gallons of water, which was loaded into the crop duster.
“I blessed it there, and we waited for the pilot to take off,” Barzare said, noting that it was the largest amount of water he had ever turned holy.
“I’ve blessed some buckets for people and such, but never that much water,” he said.
The pilot had instructions to drizzle certain parts of the community, including churches, schools, grocery stores and other community gathering places.
Word of it raining blessings spread fast in Cow Island, which Barzare points out is not really an island. But when hurricanes strike, he said, the community is typically surrounded by water, hence the name.
Some distant members of my extended family live in Louisiana. I’m beginning to worry about them.
Boeing’s idea of reassurance
Source: New York Times
Boeing’s 737MAX remains grounded (rightly) as the company struggles to overcome the design flaw that caused two crashes that killed everyone on board. In the meantime, Boeing has been surveying airline passengers across the world to assess their thoughts about flying in the MAX once it gets certification. The news is not good, according to this report in the New York Times: people are nervous about flying in the plane. In order to get ahead of the problem, Boeing has been preparing draft briefing materials for airline staff giving guidance on how to soothe and reassure nervous passengers. Above is a draft of the crib-sheet that’s been obtained by the Times.
As you’d expect, it’s an exercise in consumer manipulation.
This has a personal dimension for me. The place to which I most often fly is Ireland. And the only way to get there from Stansted, my local airport, is via RyanAir. But RyanAir plans to replace its existing fleet of Boeing aircraft with 737MAXs. So will I trust the Federal Aviation Administration enough to continue flying RyanAir? Or will I have to plump for much less convenient alternatives?
Hmmm…
Merry Xmas
It’s not Christmas in our house until this guy has been taken out of his box and suspended in flight mode.