By way of a Mark Galeotti retweet comes Humor Northern Submarine Fleet, a wacky comic by O.V. Karavashkin.
I don’t know if I can parse the subtleties of the politics, but the look is amazing. It’s very representational, while simultaneously being somewhat reminiscent of MAD Magazine in the 1970s. Here’s an appreciation by the blog War Is Boring. Below, a sample.
Big-deck carriers have been made by only one US shipyard since 1961. Could it be more?
(Answer: Maybe. But it would be tough.)
Eugene Wei listens to a podcast (Econtalk) with a fascinating guest (Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire) and writes it up in an impressive way. One liner by Wei that should stand alone: “You can generate your own scarcity just by having a broad palate.” But Laudan’s argument that French haute cuisine conquered the world because of diplomacy is at least as good.
From the Twitter account of the National Museum of Australia:
“On This Day in 1930: The two spans of the Sydney Harbour Bridge were joined together at 10pm!”
Obesity. Not just for humans anymore.
Last night I started reading Hank Paulson’s book, Dealing With China. I’m still in the Introduction, and distracted by the howlers.
For example, Mr. Paulson to the contrary, China is not the largest holder of US debt — the US is. There’s slightly over $18 trillion of US debt. Foreign holders have only $6 trillion of that, or about one-third. The other two-thirds Americans owe to each other. Even among foreign holders, Japan is the largest holder, although that just happened in February of this year, and given long lead times for books Mr. Paulson may be forgiven for that specific oversight.
He also claims the US relationship with China is “our most important bilateral relationship.” Given who our largest trading partner is, and that we share a 5500 mile peaceful border with them, I’m fairly sure our most important bilateral relationship is with Canada, not China. Especially on a military basis — the fact our border hardly needs protecting because we’re so secure with Canada as a neighbor gives us a huge advantage over states not so fortunate.
And while it’s not a howler as such… In over 100 visits, Mr. Paulson says he’s learned no Chinese. Even I recognize 中国, and 你好. No intellectual curiosity at all, eh, Hank?
My wife and I were eating in our local taquería. They had the television tuned to Univision, as they usually do.
I saw a commercial for Microsoft Windows. From Microsoft, en Español.
Which was very strange to me, because when I was most familiar with Microsoft’s internal structure, I knew they had no Spanish-language product support.
According to this phone list at their web site, they still don’t. Moreover, Microsoft’s Spanish-language website isn’t based in the Western Hemisphere, but in Spain.
It continues to confound me how Microsoft can show such contempt to a large segment of the US market — one they’re advertising to, no less.
Turns out the People’s Liberation Army (aka, the military of China), have something resembling MREs. This guy lived on a diet of nothing but these things for a few days. Good times.
Americans seem to get twitchy when their Executive has very mild instances of trespass. It seems like only yesterday when the White House had to deal with party crashers. Now it’s a man with a knife. Did he intend to use the knife? Hey, who knows… Although, if he meant Mr. Obama harm, it’s tough to see why he would have left “800 rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete in his car,” when he went on his fence climb. Now, reportedly, the Secret Service wants to screen “tourists and other visitors at checkpoints before they enter the public areas in front of the White House.” Not that such a method would have had any effect on the intruder, but in these kinds of circumstances the syllogism is frequently, “We need to do something; this is something; therefore let’s do it.”
Like last time, Leopold Kohr hangs heavy in the air, writing in 1957 in The Breakdown of Nations:
A citizen of the Principality of Liechtenstein, whose population numbers less than fourteen thousand, (in 1957 when Kohr was writing) desirous to see His Serene Highness the Prince and Sovereign, Bearer of many exalted orders and Defender of many exalted things, can do so by ringing the bell at his castle gate. However serene His Highness may be, he is never an inaccessible stranger. A citizen of the massive American republic, on the other hand, encounters untold obstacles in a similar enterprise. Trying to see his fellow citizen President, whose function is to be his servant, not his master, he may be sent to an insane asylum for observation or, if found sane, to a court on charges of disorderly conduct. Both happened in 1950… You will say that in a large power such as the United States informal relationships such as exist between government and citizen in small countries are technically unfeasible. This is quite true. But this is exactly it. Democracy in its full meaning is impossible in a large state which, as Aristotle already observed, is ‘almost incapable of constitutional government’. (pg. 99-100)
What’s very strange is how, this time, many people (up to and including Congress) seem to want even more distance between the President and the people he serves, even more of a bubble cutting him (or her) off.
Of course, we’re a bigger country than we were even in 2009, so I suppose Kohr would not be surprised.
I’ve been saying for years it’s a very curious thing US businesspeople are so averse to environmentalism in general, and mitigating climate change in particular. My reasoning is, almost all the measures to do such mitigation boil down to doing more with less — and isn’t that the classic definition of increased productivity, and thus profits?
Well, I now have some company in this view: the New Climate Economy Project, the International Monetary Fund, and an economist who’s won the Nobel that isn’t a Nobel.
A fairly interesting bunch with whom to kibitz.