Author Archives: drlorentz

“… the lamentations of their women.”

Well worth 20 minutes or so of your time.

Former DNC chair Donna Brazile turns on Hillary, Obama, and her predecessor Debbie Wasserman Schultz. This continues the theme put forth by our esteemed proprietor:

The Clinton machine has become toxic for Democrats.

Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC

You may have heard they had a referendum over in Catalonia recently about leaving Spain. The central government was, um, somewhat opposed to allowing anyone to vote. In spite of that, lots of people turned out and almost all of them voted to get out. The cops gave some citizens a wood shampoo. And folks in the US talk about police brutality.

I posted this at the other cafe also.

Need I say more? It’s the gift from the cafe that keeps on giving. Still no sign of a book, though.

A week or so ago, I finished reading Tramp Royale by Robert Heinlein. It is a travelogue documenting an around-the-world trip Heinlein and his wife took in 1953-54 by ship, rail, and airplane. Mostly, the book is a light-hearted description of their travels with his wife (Ginny, aka “Ticky” in the book) humorously cast as his troublemaker companion. She published the book in 1992, after her husband’s death.

This is not a book review. It is the book’s concluding passage, extensively quoted below, that struck me as applicable today as it was over 60 years ago. Heinlein speaks of America’s many enemies and few friends abroad … Continue reading →

OK, maybe three cheers. I came across this article published in Foreign Policy about ten years ago. Surprisingly for this rag, the article promotes the patriarchy:

Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.

…

Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system — which involves far more than simple male domination — maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn’t were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but … Continue reading →

I’ve been reading Nassim Taleb’s(Black Swan guy) books lately, as well as some of the work of Kahneman & Tversky (behavioral economics guys). They have lots of interesting ideas that apply to economics but also more broadly to all interactions among humans, including politics.

Here’s an outline of the two related topics I wanted to talk about and get everyone’s thoughts:

Assumption of rational actors (Nassim Taleb)

• predictability/chaos
• mathematical tractability
• game theory (ludic fallacy)

Intuitive vs. rational thinking (Daniel Kahneman)

• heuristics (System 1)
• reasoning (System 2)

Please see comment below for a discussion of the figures.

Linear plot:

Log plot:

Continue reading →

Today is the 48th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein discuss it:

https://youtu.be/b3LhFaPDeD0?t=26s

One of the striking aspects of the discussion was the universal optimism among the participants. Even Cronkite was unwavering, saying, “You can’t stop progress, and this is progress… We stop a lot of other things. It can’t be done.” Which member of the media would make such a statement today?