Category: Uncategorized

It’s a mystery

What we have here is a failure of basic logic:

U.S. fertility is not recovering from the financial crisis — and demographers aren’t sure why. The fertility rate fell to a record low 62.9 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2013, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

The total number of births, at 3.96 million, inched up by a mere 4,000 from 2012, the first increase since the financial crisis. But the total fertility rate, or TFR, the average number of children a woman would have during her child-bearing years, fell to just 1.86, the lowest rate in 27 years. TFR is considered the best metric of fertility. A TFR of 2.1 represents a stable population, with children replacing parents as they die off.

Demographers expected the fertility rate to fall during recession, as financially strapped families put off childbearing. But what has surprised some demographers is both the depth of the decline and the fact that fertility has continued to drop even over the course of the country’s five years of slow but steady recovery. The rate has fallen steadily each year since 2007, when it stood at 2.1 percent.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and point out that since it is known that the economic statistics are massaged and seasonally-corrected and smoothed and retrofitted to the point of literal fiction (try to find the 2001 recession in the GDP statistics now), the more reasonable conclusion is that rather than an inexplicable change in historically observed human behavioral patterns, the U.S. economy has simply not been in the slow, but steady recovery reported by the relevant government agencies. Occam’s Razor indicates that the economy is not in a recovery, but an ongoing six-year depression, and as it happens, this can not only be seen in the falling fertility rates, but also in statistics that are not so easily manipulated as GDP, U3, and CPI-U.

An angry terror

It appears we may need to petition the White House to classify angry black women as a terrorist movement. I tend to suspect President Obama would be more than happy to sign it himself.

N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin 7h
They’re already watching my group

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  Jun 6
Everybody’s got a bomb

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  Jun 6
So I have to make choices. Burning bridges is unavoidable; whose gets set on fire first?

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  Jun 6
Just offered to kill one of my oldest friends

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  May 28
It needs to be made clear that the privileging of straight white male voices at the exp of all others won’t be tolerated.

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  May 15
We kinda need to see some shit blow up.

N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin  ·  May 15
One of my co-workers just came into my office, took one look at my face, and walked out. #RestingKILLFace

It is not surprising that Jemisin is against the rights of men. She is, after all, a faux equalitarian, a race-baiting coward who tries to hide behind the idea that she is hated for her genetics and/or her sex rather than for her ideas and her actions. There is no reason to despise the woman for her melanin content, especially not when there is already so much to despise about her dishonesty, her emotional incontinence, her pinkshirted progressive neofascism, her overrated fiction, her slander of the living and the dead, and her avowed opposition to legal self-defense as well as the Constitutional rights to a) free speech, b) free association, and c) bearing arms.

Consider her bizarre concept of “harassment” and keep in mind that this is the very same woman who was “harassing” me five years before I had ever even heard of her:

N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin Jun 6
I can’t do – not to my fullest – if I have to constantly interact with people who *hate* me, not b/c of my actions but who I am.+

Vox Day ‏@voxday 3h
@nkjemisin Never fear, Ms Fully Savage and Proud of It, we only despise you for your actions. Just like the other pinkshirted fascists.

N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin 28m
@voxday Oh, look, fresh harassment. Must have missed this handle of yours. Welp, blocking you now. Don’t talk to me again.

Her courage never ceases to inspire! And I never cease to find it satisfying that so many of those who attack me unprovoked end up running away, pretending I don’t exist, and desperately wishing that I’d never mention them again. After more than 10 years of this blog, you’d think people would have learned better by now, but there is always some brave new progressive champion who can’t resist the urge to stick his hand into the woodchipper.

Mailvox: a case for the Singularity

James Miller, an econ professor at Smith and the author of Singularity Rising, asked if he could present his case for
the future likelihood of a Singularity. Or, as the Original Cyberpunk has described it, “the rapture of the nerds”. Since this is a place where we are always pleased to give both space and genuine consideration to diverse points of view, I readily agreed to his request.

I define a Singularity as a threshold of time at which AIs at least as
smart as humans and/or augmented human intelligence radically remake
civilization. 

1.  Rocks exist!
Strange as it seems, the existence of rocks actually
provides us with evidence that it should be possible to build computers
powerful enough to take us to a Singularity. 
There are around ten trillion, trillion atoms in a one-kilogram rock,
and as inventor and leading Singularity scholar Ray Kurzweil writes: “Despite the apparent solidity of the object, the atoms are
all in motion, sharing electrons back and forth, changing particle spins, and
generating rapidly moving electromagnetic fields.  All of this activity represents computation,
even if not very meaningfully organized.”

If the particles in the rock were organized in a more
“purposeful manner” it would be possible to create a computer trillions of
times more computationally powerful than all the human brains on earth
combined.   Our eventual capacity to
accomplish this is established by our second fact. 

2.  Biological cells exist!
The human body makes use of tiny biological machines to
create and repair cells.  Once mankind
masters this nanotechnology we will be able to cheaply create powerful
molecular computers.  Our third fact
proves that these computers could be turned into general purpose thinking
machines. 

3.  Human brains exist!
Suppose this book claimed that scientists would soon build a
human teleportation device.  Given that
many past predictions of scientific miracles—such as cheap fusion power, flying
cars or a cure for cancer—have come up short, you would rightly be suspicious
of my teleportation prediction.  But my
credibility would jump if I discovered a species of apes that had the inborn
ability to instantly transport themselves across great distances.

In some alternate universe that had different laws of
physics, it’s perfectly possible that intelligent machines couldn’t be created.  But human brains provide absolute proof that
our universe allows the construction of intelligent, self-aware machines.   And, because the brain exists already,
scientists can probe, dissect, scan and interrogate it.  We’re even beginning to understand the
brain’s DNA and protein-based ‘source code’. 
Also, many of the tools used to study the brain have been becoming
exponentially more powerful, which explains why engineers might be only a
couple of decades away from building a working digital model of the brain even
though today we seem far from understanding all of the brains operations.  Would-be creators of AI are already using
neuroscience research to help them create machine learning software.   Our fourth fact shows the fantastic
potential of AI. 

4.  Albert Einstein existed!

It’s extremely unlikely that the chaotic forces of evolution
just happened to stumble on the best possible recipe for intelligence when they
created our brains, especially since our brains have many constraints imposed
on them by biology: they must run on energy obtained from mere food; must fit
in a small space; and can’t use useful materials such as metals and plastics,
that engineers employ all the time.

But even if people such as Albert Einstein had close to the
highest possible level of intelligence allowed by the laws of physics, creating
a few million people or machines possessing this man’s brain power would still
change the world far more than the industrial revolution. We share about 98% of our genes with some primates, but that
2% difference was enough to produce creatures that can assemble spaceships,
sequence genes, and build hydrogen bombs.  
What happens when mankind takes its next step, and births lifeforms who
have a 2% genetic distance from us?  

5.  If we were smarter, we would be smarter!

Becoming smarter enhances our ability to do everything,
including our ability to figure out ways of becoming even smarter because our
intelligence is a reflective superpower able to turn on itself to decipher its
own workings.  Consider, for example, a
college student taking a focus-improving drug such as Adderall, Ritalin or
Provigil, to help learn genetics.  After
graduation, this student might get a job researching the genetic basis of human
intelligence, and her work might assist pharmaceutical companies in making
better cognitive enhancing drugs that will help future students acquire an even
deeper understanding of genetics. 
Smarter scientists could invent ways of making even smarter scientists
who could in turn… Now, throw the power of machine intelligence into this
positive feedback loop and we will end up at technological heights beyond our
imagination.  

I hereby recuse myself from the position of critic, mostly since my position on the concept can be best described as “mild, but curious skepticism”. But everyone should feel free to either express their doubts or offer additional arguments to bolster Prof. Miller’s case.

Another science fiction fraud?

I quite like David Brin’s Uplift Saga, particularly Startide Rising. It is innovative, insightful, and original. While it does betray a few hints of what would, in many later SF writers’ less-capable hands, blossom into full-blown political correctness, such strands do not detract from the story. Unlike the award-winning pinkshirts of today, Dr. Brin never sacrifices the story for his ideology.

There is no question that David Brin is an accomplished science fiction writer. His various awards are well-merited. However, it is apparent that in the course of debate, he likes to throw his weight around as a credentialed scientist, which one gentleman who has had a run-in or two with him is now calling into question:

You have repeatedly used your qualifications as a scientist to denigrate those who disagree with you, particularly on this issue…. If you are a scientist, where’s your scientific publications?  Your public sources list 6 papers in the scientific field in which you trained.  Based on your published Bio, three-to-four were from your Master’s, and two don’t really count, since they constitute a two-part paper authored by your Advisor with you in the “courtesy student author” slot. 

You have one main publication obviously from your PhD dissertation, but absolutely nothing for the next 8 years – where was your scholarly output as a post-graduate professional scientist?

You have only four scholarly papers since your PhD – one was SETI, three in fields other than what you trained, and one of those clearly marked “speculation” – where is there any evidence of you doing science?

All of your academic positions are for “instructor,” “post-doctoral fellow,” “associate,” “visiting scholar.” Nowhere do you list any faculty or academic scientific positions, neither do you list any actual scientific jobs – so how are you a practicing scientist without working in science?

You have 4 scientific publications in over 30 years, and no publications relevant to your scientific training in over 25 years.  How is it that you can currently claim to be a scientist?

If what scientists do is science, and if it is true that Dr. Brin has published no scientific papers in more than 25 years, then David Brin is clearly no longer a scientist and should not be attempting to claim that he is, Wikipedia’s description of him as “an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction” notwithstanding. In such a case, a description as an ex-scientist or a former scientist would be more apt.

Especially given that one of his three featured “science” publications on ResearchGate is “Q&A: David Brin on writing fiction. Interview by Nicola Jones“.

If the writer has his facts straight and Dr. Brin has been appealing to his scientific credentials when he is no more actively involved in science than any other SF writer with an MA in English, that would be pathetic. For example, the astrophysicist who authored our recently published Astronomy and Astrophysics curriculum has more than twice as many scientific publications, more Impact Points, and is more than two decades younger than Dr. Brin. I was the founder of an award-winning, 3x Billboard-charting techno band signed to TVT but I do not describe myself as a professional musician, not when I haven’t set foot in a recording studio in 22 years.

Now, to be clear, I am not declaring that David Brin has, like John Scalzi, committed self-inflating biography fraud. We have not yet heard Dr. Brin’s side of the story; for all I know, he has published scores of landmark papers and is actively working on some ground-breaking science today. We would owe him the benefit of the doubt even if we did not enjoy his fiction. However, these are serious charges of misrepresentation, especially the charge that Dr. Brin has “lied about [his] affiliation with Caltech” and Dr. Brin has a responsibility to answer them, especially if he is the dedicated scientist he portrays himself to be.

UPDATE: Dr. Brin responds:

A brief, measured response.

1) When people engage in a public
pillorying, it is common courtesy to let the target know. Instead of
being offered collegial opportunities for response, I learned of this
blind-side assault fifth hand. The first order conclusion is that this
is not a person who was well-raised.

2) I admit freelance is an
easier life than the academic trenches. I have no need to burnish a
vita. Getting to be a sniff-everywhere scientific generalist and
cross-fertilizer is fun and fits my personality more than specialization
did. Sorry.

3) The Transparent Society is one of the only
public policy books from the 20th Century still in print, and selling
more every year. I now fly all over the world on this topic. Open it.

4)
Beyond fiction and nonfiction, I’m a speaker and consultant on
sci-technological trends. I’m on the board of advisors of NASA’s
Innovative and Advanced Concepts (NIAC) group as well as corporations
and intelligence agencies. So far this year, I consulted in the
Pentagon, for MITRE Corp, ODNI, the Atlantic Council, Google and many
others. Funny, they keep asking to run concepts by me. But I suppose
this blogger would do things differently. Close your eyes and picture
him in charge.

4) I’ll not discuss here my early work in
astrophysics and optics, or my even-earlier career as a microelectronics
engineer (helping to invent CCDs.) But over the last decade I’ve had
papers in (e.g.) evolutionary biology journals and the volume
PATHOLOGICAL ALTRUISM. I presented new ideas at the National Institute
on Drugs and Addiction and have extensive patents. I’ll likely moderate a
SETI panel at the AAAS in February. And funny, the University of
California named me a Distinguished Alumnus, instead of asking for their
PhD back. What fools

5) I suppose I should update my
publications list, and find and correct sites that mistakenly show me
now connected to my alma mater Caltech. But in fact, I… do… not… care…
much. I do have an official scholar position at UCSD. I guess I should
note that. Some time.

Sure, my role in science tends to be as
generalist/cross-fertilizer/consultant/gadfly/reviewer, more often than
via direct publication in specialized topics. But, scientific colleagues
make liberal use of me and that is satisfying enough. Getting to hang
with and exchange ideas with some of the best minds on Earth, my sole
regret is the time I just spent answering bona fide ninnies.

Come
on by http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ and meet a better community.
Better yet, keep exploring. These are great times for those with free
minds.

With cordial regards,

David Brin 

I have to admit, I am more than a little puzzled that Dr. Brin would consider drawing his attention to some questions that I’m told were posted to his own Facebook page is either a public pillorying or a failure to offer an opportunity for a response.

Speaking only for myself, I’m satisfied with his response, as I think there is considerably more to science than simply publishing papers and there is no reason to conclude he is an ex-scientist or that he is, scientifically speaking, pining for the fjords. I think it’s impressive that he has gotten involved in more practical engineering applications; as regular readers here know, I regard them as the only truly reliable science. That being said, his tone and his reference to “bona fide ninnies” does tend to indicate that it is not far-fetched to believe that he might occasionally be inclined to appeal to his credentials in lieu of actually presenting a valid argument when questioned by someone he deems, rightly or wrongly, his inferior.

After all, he freely admitted that his publications list is incomplete and that the ResearchGate assertion of a professional connection to Caltech is incorrect as well. If he thinks asking obviously legitimate questions somehow makes someone a ninny, well, I would say that insulting people simply because they catch you out is unwise. Substantive criticism should always be appreciated. My conclusion is that Dr. Brin is not a fraud, but is overly accustomed to deferential treatment and therefore occasionally finds himself involved in social media debates in which he is not truly prepared to engage.

No one is above being questioned. I answer questions I find painfully stupid on a regular basis. And while Dr. Brin may have found the questions of his critic to be stupid or irritating, I have to commend him for answering them directly.

The myth of Krav Maga

I would not be at all surprised if these Krav Maga snake oil salesmen ended up getting a woman killed one day:

 “Jab your fingers into his eyes.” That’s step one if you’re confronted by an attacker, at least according to Darren Selley, 35, my self-defence Krav Maga instructor. First go for the eyes, then put a knee between their legs (assuming it’s a bloke), using their strength against them. Once they fall to the floor, kick them in the groin. Threat: neutralised.

Darren and his fellow instructor Ricky are here to lead a special seminar on self-defence for women, organised by property maintenance company aspect.co.uk. We’re learning Urban Krav Maga, a blend of nine martial arts specifically intended for use on the streets.

It’s all about quick movements designed to cause maximum impact; breaking an arm, perforating an eardrum, knocking someone out. It’s perfect for most women because it doesn’t rely on brute strength and, as I discover, it’s incredibly easy to learn.

I have no doubt that it is incredibly easy to learn. Which only confirms my impression that it is actually worse than useless, because it teaches women to expect to incapacitate an attacker.

There is a very big difference between training and the real thing. There is nearly as big a difference between drill and full-contact sparring. I’ve fought more than a few karate students, up to and including black belts, who had never engaged in any serious sparring. With NO EXCEPTIONS, they weren’t much better than a complete neophyte.

Drill-based theory is based on the concept of control, and how if you are capable of delivering a strike that stops just short of someone’s face, you could just as easily deliver one that actually hits them. This is true. However, people “fight” very differently when they are essentially shadowboxing and they know their opponent is not actually going to hit them. Furthermore, it deprives the shadowboxer of learning how to take a shot, how to exploit and follow-up openings created, and how to use combinations. Fighting isn’t just about what you can do to the other party, it’s also about what the other party can do to you.

It is very, very difficult to make a precision strike at someone’s eyes. It is even more difficult to successfully knee a man in the groin when he is in a conflict situation. And even if one makes contact, it is likely that it won’t slow him down much, as adrenaline significantly reduces the amount of pain one feels in the moment.

It’s fine to teach women how to defend themselves. But firearms, and where they are not legal, knives, should always be a part of the self-defense strategy, and women need to understand that the odds are severely against them in a physical struggle. Learning technique is fine, but doing fake routines on unresisting opponents is worse than pointless. It takes years to become an effective fighter, so it is risible to suggest that a class or two is going to accomplish anything but instill a false sense of self-confidence in a woman.

I’m also very curious to know how one puts one knee between someone else’s leg using their strength against them. A knee strike is a hard technique, not a soft one. This sounds like pure marketing babble to me.

The $30 trillion demand gap

The good news: outstanding credit is still growing. L1 grew 0.69 percent in Q1-2014. This is still credit disinflation, as it is below the 60-year 2.36 percent quarterly growth rate, but it is not outright deflation.

The bad news: all of that growth comes from the federal and corporate sectors. Household was positive flat, state and local government was negative flat, and financial went negative again after five months of being positive flat. The worse news is that the credit demand gap is growing; it has now reached $30 trillion.

In other words, that’s how far off the US economy is from one that continued at its 60-year pace of growth. That’s why things look and feel so terrible despite the nominally positive economic statistics. Were it not for the $2.4 trillion in new corporate debt and the $7.1 trillion in new federal debt since 2008, the ongoing state of economic depression would be obvious. As one can see from the chart, there is absolutely no indication of any recovery for either US households or US financial institutions.

So, there are two obvious questions:

  1. How much more debt can the Fed force-feed the federal government and the corporations before they can’t service it?
  2. Will that new debt be a) defaulted or b) rolled-over when it becomes due?

The idea was that federal debt-spending would jump-start the two more important sectors. But not only has that not happened, but now the two government sectors combined are larger as a percentage of the total than either Household or Financial sectors. And at the current rate, the Federal sector alone will be bigger than the Household sector by Q2-2015 and the Financial sector by the end of next year.

And the really bad news? Of the $13.1 trillion in Household debt, 8 percent of it is student debt. Which means the credit demand has been pulled forward, as those indebted students are much less likely to be able to take on credit card, auto, and mortgage debt in the future. In fact, without the tripling of student loan debt in the last decade, the Household sector’s decline would be twice what it is now: it would be 10 percent credit deflation despite a growing population.

Data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that the relationship between student loan debt and the housing market has turned ugly fast. People with student debt used to buy homes at higher rates than peers who had not taken out loans, partly because going to college meant earning more money, according to the report.

But in 2012, the New York Fed reported that for the first time in at least a decade, 30-year-old student borrowers were less likely to take out home mortgages than other young people.  Among people around 30 years old, homeownership was plunging fastest for student debtors.

Having already devoured the weak, the starving debt-predators are now being forced to devour the young before they are capable of being safely milked for decades.

Vaccine “safety”

The testing of vaccines is nowhere nearly as extensive as most people erroneously believe it to be:

Mick and Kirsten Button’s daughter Saba was just 11 months old when she received the Fluvax shot in April 2010. The then toddler suffered a hypoxic brain injury, kidney, liver and bone marrow failure. She can now no longer walk and talk and needs round-the-clock care. Three days after Saba was admitted at Princess Margaret Hospital, Fluvax was recalled. It is now banned for children under five….

In the claim the Buttons alleged Fluvax was defective after testing conducted by the company prior to April 2010 identified fever as a serious side effect of the 2010 batch. However the company denied liability then filed a cross-claim against the State of WA and the Health Minister. In return the State of WA filed a defence to the cross claim denying any liability. Settlement was reached between CSL, the State of WA and the family during recent mediation….

After Saba was admitted to hospital in 2010, it emerged there had
been more than 100 adverse reaction presentations to the vaccination at
PMH that flu season. But this information wasn’t passed on to the general public until after Saba was in the intensive-care unit.

The fact, the undeniable fact, is that vaccine companies have tremendous financial incentive to cut corners on safety, since they are not legally liable for their products in the USA. And what little information on the dangers exists is not, for the most part, available to the public. This combination of limited liability and limited information is bound to result in undesirable consequences.

The price of war

I posted this 10 years ago. I think it is still relevant today.

The price of war does not stop being paid when the guns fall silent.
This was driven home to me when we bought our first house from an older
couple who had lived there for many years. My grandfather, a Marine
who’d fought on Guadacanal and Tarawa, recognized the home seller as an
Army veteran and asked where he had served.

 

In Europe, the man answered, and his eyes filled unexpectedly with
tears. He turned away for a moment, and then, composed again, he
apologized and explained that he’d lost his brother in Normandy. This
conversation was taking place 53 years later, but it was clear that the
pain still lingered.

It is almost impossible for us, sixty years later, to understand the
grim realities of D-Day. Yes, we are unfortunate enough to live in
what a Chinese sage described as the curse of interesting times, and
yet, we do not yet live in a real state of war. Most of us know a few
soldiers who are involved in the present conflict – I was relieved to
receive an email yesterday from my Italian cousin in Baghdad, telling me
that he was fine after the embassy attack – but it is not the vast
majority of young men of our acquaintance who are in uniform and in
danger as was the case back then.

A few years ago, I took part in a massive simulation of Gold Beach,
using the Advanced Squad Leader system. Each player was responsible for
a section of the beach; I was commanding three companies of British
troops plus 12 Shermans and a few funnies. The experience drove home
how a relatively small number of defending German troops were able to
inflict terrible casualties on the landing Allies, and it was sobering
to see the pile of cardboard casualties grow and realize that each piece
represented the lives of ten men.

To the left, I lost an entire company, and only a lucky shot and a
wildly aggressive charge by one Sherman commander allowed me to take out
the two AT-guns defending my attack sector and get the two surviving companies off the beach. It
was only a game, and yet, one could see how the valiant action of a single brave man could make all the difference in the world to the rest of the men involved.

In the end, after many hours, the Allies triumphed on the table just
as they had many years before on the real beaches. But there was no
celebration by the winners, instead we found ourselves standing quietly
around the massive array of maps, contemplating those who had fought and
died so long ago. Some may think that it is strange and silly, if not
downright disrespectful, to view the tragic loss of human life through
the lens of a wargame. But, sixty years later, this is the only lens
that many of us have.

Soon, all the young men who stormed Normandy will be gone. But as
long as there are other young men who are curious about history, who
want to know what happened when, where and why, neither they nor their
sacrifices will ever be forgotten.

Negativity

The European Central Bank goes negative on interest rates:

The European Central Bank broke new ground yesterday; it became the first of the monetary superpowers to cut its deposit rate below zero. This is truly desperate stuff. That nearly six years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Europe is still belatedly trying to address the twin afflictions of deflation and economic depression tells you as much about the political paralysis that grips the euro area as about the severity of the crisis.

These are not uncharted waters. Denmark and Sweden have experimented with negative nominal interest rates, and in any case, the difference between minus 0.1 per cent and the pre-existing deposit rate of zero is so marginal as to be almost irrelevant. Certainly, it’s hard to see why, beyond symbolism, it would make much difference to the eurozone’s beleaguered economies, even combined with other measures announced by the ECB on Thursday to ease credit conditions.

None the less, it is quite something when bankers actually have to pay a fee for the privilege of parking their money with the central bank, which is the effect of a negative deposit rate.

It’s important to keep in mind that this is the interest rate paid to bankers by the central bank rather than the interest rate paid to depositors by the banks. Remember, the banks are just borrowing those loan-deposits from the public, so they will still compete on the interest rates they pay. There is a relationship between the two interest rates, of course, but it is not a fixed ratio. Depositors have to worry about bail-ins and manufactured fees more than they have to worry about the interest rates on their savings account going negative.

However, it is indicative of the strong grip that Keynesian economics still has on the central bankers. They are still trying to figure out the best way to fine-tune the magic financial remote for the economy, little realizing that they are the equivalent of children pressing buttons on an outdated remote for a cathode ray tube television, with no batteries in it, pointing it at a flatscreen and wondering why it doesn’t work.

Everything revolves around the concept of the demand gap, and the idea that more liquidity will cause people to spend more. But credit money requires someone, somewhere, to borrow something and while one can print money, one can’t print borrowers. As Americans learned in 2008, even if one creates a new class of borrowers by loosening the standards, they tend to fall behind on their payments and default so rapidly that it would be better to have never loaned them money in the first place.

As usual, the central bank is belatedly reacting to events; it isn’t controlling them. This is merely another indication – not proof, but an indication – that the global economy is in a deflationary scenario rather than the inflationary one most people tend to assume. The takeaway: don’t add to your debt with the assumption you’ll be able to pay it off with cheaper currency.

“Opera” on Amazon

Tor is giving away its various Hugo nominees for free on Amazon today, so I thought it might be a good idea to follow suit. The Hugo-nominated “Opera Vita Aeterna” is now available on Amazon for 99 cents, and it will be given away as a free download as soon as Kindle Select permits. If you’ve read it, I encourage you to post a review there; if nothing else the contrast between the pinkshirts’ reviews and everyone else’s should make for some entertaining reading.

In other Castalia House news, we will be introducing a number of new bloggers in the next two weeks as part of our long term plan to become the leading SF/F destination site. The release of John C. Wright’s latest masterpiece, a real mind-bender, will be taking place this month, and just in time for the World Cup, both QM:AMD and QM:GK will be published in Brazilian Portuguese next week.

Speaking of Amazon, the good news for readers is that they appear to be winning their showdown with the publishers to keep book prices low. From Publishers Weekly: “A spokesperson for Hachette Book Group has confirmed that they initiated a round of layoffs today.”