Daily Archives: November 12, 2008


Each One of us Can Have Our Own Set of Facts

In my previous post Obama’s Challenge: A Transformative Opportunity, I extolled the interview with Robert Kuttner. I said:

Robert Kuttner provides the facts and figures that dispel the notion that we don’t have the resources to solve these problems.

Well, I stumbled across a post on another blog called The Only Winning Move written by Joshua Herring. I was stunned at how someone could hear the same interview that I did, and yet come up with such a different reaction. I post the link to the blog just so you too can see how one’s prior convictions can blind you to information (I am sure that is true of me too). I hope that Joshua does a better job of looking for the truth in his PhD studies than he does in the political/economic realm.

Joshua is so sure of his own set of facts, that he couldn’t believe anything that Kuttner said.  If Joshua had to mis-hear what Kuttner said to reconcile with his own inner demons, then that is apparently what Joshua did.

When Joshua says such things about Kuttner as

He happens to know off the top of his head that the debt is $5.6trillion

then you know he is clutching at straws.  Kuttner is being interviewed about a book that he has just written.  Joshua is sure that numbers that Kuttner is using just came into his mind and were not the product of research for the book.


Michael Lewis – ‘The End’ describes the subprime mess 1

In the late 1980’s, Michael Lewis left his job as a bond trader at Salomon Bros. and wrote ‘Liar’s Poker.’  The book was an eye-opening description of fast-paced life at one of the world-renown Wall Street firms.  Included was a portrayal of John Meriwether’s fabled ‘arb group’ which eventually spun off to form Long Term Capital Management.

The End (Portfolio; Nov. 11, 2008) is Lewis’s lucid and scary description of the subprime mortgage and CDO market debacle. The article is long but is well-worth your time. Lewis is a marvelous story-teller.


Evolution’s new wrinkle: Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective

From News at Princeton comes this article Evolution’s new wrinkle: Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective.

A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.

Why is this political?  Anything having to do with evolution and intelligent design is political.

The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature.

I report, you decide.