zenpundit.com

NEW TOY FOR ZEN

Multiple “meat space” projects and family activities have partially pulled me offline the last few days. Getting this HP and trying it out was one of them. The wireless connection speed is fantastic! Originally, Mrs. Zenpundit had to talk me in to it as our house has no shortage of available PCs, including a brand new Mac, but this laptop is already proving to be quite handy.

Someday, I may even liveblog an event on location. :o)

THANKS!

To Secretary of the U.S. Senate, Nancy Erickson who had the staff of the Historical Office send me a gratis copy of the newly issued Volume XIX of the Executive Sessions of The Senate Foreign Relations Committee -1967. An important year, and the volume reflects closed session discussions and testimony on such topics as the Glassboro summit, strategic arms control, the Six Day War and Johnson administration policy in Vietnam.

Primary sources like this along with FRUS are the bread and butter of American diplomatic history.

WHAT IF A MAJOR ASPECT OF OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNIVERSE IS WRONG?

A Harvard physicist proposes ” Unparticle physics“.

Dr. Von, you were there for the top quark, what’s your take on this ?

And as long as we are on the frontiers of theoretical physics, experimental geneticists have reached the point of designing artificial life. Top that, I say.

RECOMMENDED READING

A Sunday line-up.

Ideas – “Loaded Dice: How to bias research“

Secrecy News – “ODNI Document Suggests a Larger Intelligence Budget“

In From The Cold – “Mr. Putin’s Not-So-Serious Offer“

Middle East Perspectives -“New Chairman of the Joint Chiefs “

Pacific Empire – “How to overthrow your government“

Duck of Minerva – “Rome on the Potomac“

That’s it.

THERE’S A FINE LINE BETWEEN AN ACT OF PIRACY AND JUST SIMPLY TAKING SOME INITIATIVE

A fascinating economics paper sent to me by Fabius Maximus (hat tip accorded) that took me a few days to get to reading. Wish I had looked at it earlier:

“An-arrgh-chy: The Law and economics of Pirate Organizations” (PDF) by Dr. Peter T. Leeson

Peterson argues that historical pirates, far from being Hobbesian outlaws, governed themselves with rule-sets that minimized conflict and maximized cooperation and profit ( albeit at the expense of civilized seafaring states). Looking at broad principles of functionality, Leeson’s work is applicable to other violent non-state actors – Latin American drug cartels, 4GW insurgencies and terror networks, warlord and sectarian militias, Bunker’s 3 Gen gangs, TOC groups like Chinese Triads and Russian mafiya and so on.

This argument struck a chord with me on two points. First, it mirrors the historical experience of traditional Russian banditry where robber chieftains ruled over there fellows according to “Thieves Law”, something Solzhenitsyn discusses at length in The Gulag Archipelago.

Secondly, network theory research indicates that small systems that seem chaotic or “noisy” actually develop emergent rule-sets that bring the system into an orderly pattern, even if the rules and patterns are very simple ones. A pirate ship, even a fleet, much like a terrorist network, is simply a small, complex, social network. Rules accepted on a consensual basis cut down on ” noise” and allow the network to become more efficient.

A must read.