Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Administrivia, Economics on Feb 9th, 2012
I just realized I didn’t have a link in my blogroll to the excellent EconLog blog, run by economists Arnold Kling, Bryan Caplan, and David Henderson. Like most engineers, I don’t let the lack of much economic training get in the way of good economic philosophizing/debating, but I’ve learned a lot from their takes on [...]
Posted in Business, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Politics on Oct 17th, 2011
I was reading an interesting article the other day that had to do with the OWS movement giving some data on the background of the “top 1%” and the “top 0.5%”. Can’t say I agree with everything in this article, but it was still worth a read. What really stood out to me though was [...]
Posted in Economics on Apr 28th, 2011
Nothing to do with space policy or technology, but this has to be one of the most brilliant music videos I’ve ever seen: Someone actually made a rap video that I not only watched all the way through, but watched again. Alas, the ending seems all too close to reality.
I was reading my RSS feeds tonight, when I stumbled on this article. I remember discussing this concept of cycles of history with both my mom, and my brother-in-law. Jame’s Delong’s description of the “Special Interest State” I think fits our current political climate very well (both Democrat and Republican). If you’re in for more [...]
Posted in Economics on Mar 25th, 2009
I just watched The Princess Bride again a couple of days ago. One of my favorite lines in the movie is when Inigo turns to Vizinni (after he said “Inconceivable!” for the bajillionth time) and says “You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” That’s what I [...]
Posted in Economics on Mar 17th, 2009
Sorry for another non-space blog post (space posts take time!) I saw this link over on Arnold Kling’s blog, and thought it was worth sharing. The article is reviewing a book that’s almost as old as I am: The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities, by Mancur Olson. Basically, the [...]
Posted in Economics on Mar 6th, 2009
Just a quick thought on the economic situation. A few days ago, Pat Lang (who usually blogs about military issues) had a post asking people’s opinions on whether the current economic situation was just a typical business cycle downturn, or whether it was a financial Gotterdammerung. His point was that in reading a lot of [...]
Am I the only one who notices the eerie similarities between the debate over the current “stimulus” bill and the run-up to the Iraq War? The same drumbeat of propaganda coming from the press. The same repeated warnings of imminent disaster from some quarters–if we don’t give the government the emergency powers it needs to [...]
Jim Henley hit it on the head (again): My kids bought me an insurance company! Sweet children: they don’t even have jobs yet. I’m really looking forward to helping pick up the tab for the past several decades worth of government fiscal mismanagement in this country. But not to worry folks! Our plucky moose-hunting Reformer [...]
Posted in Business, Economics, Launch Vehicles, Orbital Access Methodologies, Space Development, Space Policy, Space Transportation, Technology on Nov 13th, 2007
In order to discuss the business, finance, and policy approaches for creating low cost and reliable space transportation, it helps to have an understanding of the underlying technology, in order to provide context for those discussions. It also happens to be a lot easier for one trained primarily as an engineer (and whose business experience [...]