Mocking Eye
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Entertainment!--Dystopia, Russian Soldiers and Mind Reading.
October 15, 2007
The most compelling fiction, science or otherwise, often depicts a breakdown of... Read More -
Fractals, Strawberry DNA, and Making Bento
October 9, 2007
While I slowly write more abstract and long posts, I decided I... Read More -
Invest in Peace?
August 13, 2007
This is an old writeup of a proposed way to settle some of the obstacles to peace in Israel. It’s still has relevant as it was then, and the predictions of failure in Iraq (past the removal of Saddam) by its authors were completly vindicated.
I’ve interspersed the writeup with my comments.
Some people think that peace between Israel and Palestine is impossible. One way to solve an impossible problem is to first remove a major constraint to its solution. If the now-simplified problem can be solved, the constraint can be re-added subsequently. For instance, if we remove the financial constraint which always puts peacemaking at a lower priority than military action we could ask: How might the Mideast conflict be solved given funding on the scale of the pending war with Iraq? The wars on Afghanistan and now Iraq are seen as an investment, with a "Return on Investment" (ROI) of establishing new, quisling governments willing to discount the price of oil and natural gas. Could a business case be made that the ROI of a massive investment in peace will be much greater than the ROI of a war? The cost of the pending war is very high, estimated recently at $200B by a presidential advisor in the WSJ, not including the human capital. Rather than spending these vast sums on munitions and destruction, could large scale spending on peace not only avoid the devastation, but actually create wealth through economic growth tied to consumer and investor confidence? Significant peace dividends could come in the form of a reduced dependence on foreign aid as well as enhanced human capital.
No longer pending, the Iraq war has already cost over $400,000,000,000 (zeroes for effect, that’s $400 billion).
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WordPy Test
July 21, 2007
Test post from my n800. Read More -
The Scorpion and the Turtle
June 22, 2007
A turtle was happily swimming along a river when a scorpion hailed... Read More